WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.320 Hard work will not make you rich. 2 00:00:02.320 --> 00:00:07.360 I get driven nuts by the amount of gurus and influencers and whatever who want to brag and say no one can outwork me. 3 00:00:07.360 --> 00:00:10.800 I'm the best in the world. So many people outwork me. I still make more money than them. 4 00:00:10.800 --> 00:00:14.320 There has to be something else. One of the things that grinds my gears about 5 00:00:14.320 --> 00:00:18.560 a lot of the people that I see on Instagram that you probably see too is this whole like 6 00:00:18.560 --> 00:00:22.880 no one can outwork me mantra. First off, it's objectively false because many people 7 00:00:22.880 --> 00:00:26.800 A outwork you today, V outwork you've done the past, C you haven't met everyone, 8 00:00:26.800 --> 00:00:30.480 indeed it doesn't matter anyways. It's the same thing when someone's like I'm the best 9 00:00:30.480 --> 00:00:33.840 and you have to say you're the best because if you don't think you're the best it shows that you're 10 00:00:33.840 --> 00:00:38.000 not confident. To me I don't take that at all. If someone's like I'm the best then why aren't you 11 00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:42.720 on fucking billboards? That's what the best would look like. Absolutely you need to do the work. 12 00:00:42.720 --> 00:00:47.040 You need to put volume into the only way you get better. But if you start claiming that you are the 13 00:00:47.040 --> 00:00:51.920 best you cannot be outworked. You are making statements that you know are not true. Why are we bragging 14 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:57.040 about work? Because work has very little to do with the highest levels of the game. Warren Buffett 15 00:00:57.040 --> 00:01:00.720 talks about if he makes two good decisions a year he's had a good year. And so how is it that one of 16 00:01:00.720 --> 00:01:04.400 the best investors one of the best business people in terms of measuring it by money which is how 17 00:01:04.400 --> 00:01:08.480 you measure business? Talks about how he does basically nothing reads five or six hours a day, 18 00:01:08.480 --> 00:01:12.240 eats McDonald's and makes a couple good decisions a year. How is it that that guy is making so much 19 00:01:12.240 --> 00:01:15.040 more money than the people who are bragging about the fact that they work so hard? Everyone only 20 00:01:15.040 --> 00:01:19.760 has the same hours of the day. Anybody who only sleeps eight hours or only sleeps seven hours and 21 00:01:19.760 --> 00:01:25.760 works the remaining of hours of the day all of them would be tied for hardest working. So what 22 00:01:25.760 --> 00:01:30.160 creates output? You have volume of activity and then you have the leverage of the activity that 23 00:01:30.160 --> 00:01:34.480 you're doing. That's what creates the total output. In order to do anything you must do something. 24 00:01:34.480 --> 00:01:38.960 There has to be some level of energy that gets input into the system. Our activity in terms of 25 00:01:38.960 --> 00:01:45.040 number of activities is a very newbie measure of success in the beginning. Warren Buffett doesn't say 26 00:01:45.840 --> 00:01:49.760 I said a thousand emails today. He doesn't talk like that. He's playing a different game. Jeff 27 00:01:49.760 --> 00:01:54.000 bases is like woke up at four a.m. today. Now mind you, I'm saying this to somebody who likes waking 28 00:01:54.000 --> 00:01:58.400 up early. We can't be as superstitious about what matters. We can't early doesn't matter. 29 00:01:58.400 --> 00:02:01.840 Going a bit late doesn't matter. Not sleeping a lot doesn't matter. The few things that matter are 30 00:02:01.840 --> 00:02:06.480 the inputs that go into the system that have the most leverage to create the most output. Now if you're 31 00:02:06.480 --> 00:02:10.960 a newbie and you can't get your ass off the couch then by all means figure out how to actually get 32 00:02:10.960 --> 00:02:14.640 your ass off the couch and do stuff. But then there's only so many hours and so boom and then 33 00:02:14.640 --> 00:02:19.760 very quickly you hit your capacity of work. Great. You maximize that. Now what? The leverage that we 34 00:02:19.760 --> 00:02:24.240 have on that activity is going to dictate how much we get out of it. And if we do a low leverage 35 00:02:24.240 --> 00:02:28.800 activity many many many times we might get more than a high leverage activity that gets done once. 36 00:02:28.800 --> 00:02:32.560 A CEO who's going to work with acquisition.com works virtually every hour of every day when they 37 00:02:32.560 --> 00:02:35.760 come in. Almost everybody does. Sometimes they ask they're like, am I going to be working more 38 00:02:35.760 --> 00:02:39.040 or like it's impossible for you to work more? But you are going to be changing what you work on 39 00:02:39.040 --> 00:02:43.040 because that's the only lever we have. There's only 24 hours. So we're going to switch these nine 40 00:02:43.040 --> 00:02:46.720 out and we're going to plot these in with higher leverage activities. And so the way that we do that 41 00:02:46.720 --> 00:02:50.640 is we look at their calendars and we look at their org chart. This is how you fuck some grow business. 42 00:02:50.640 --> 00:02:53.840 You look at what they spend their time on and you see which of these activities are low leverage. 43 00:02:53.840 --> 00:02:57.360 Is there anyone else in this org chart that we can hand these activities to? And if a large 44 00:02:57.360 --> 00:03:00.800 percentage of these activities are a certain type of thing and they don't exist in the org chart 45 00:03:00.800 --> 00:03:05.120 then it's a role that we need to hire. The point of why I hate the concept of no one cannot work me 46 00:03:05.120 --> 00:03:10.880 is that there are many ways to win the game. If you were to think about an amazing goal as a dragon 47 00:03:10.960 --> 00:03:15.440 to be slain if you are familiar with video games in any way when you create like a war party you have 48 00:03:15.440 --> 00:03:20.320 a group of people that are going to go go in a quest. You don't just have 10 paladins or guys who 49 00:03:20.320 --> 00:03:24.720 just have shields and swords. So you've got a healer a mage that's really good at damage but can't take 50 00:03:24.720 --> 00:03:29.440 a lot of damage. You've got a paladin who can't hit his heart but he can take a lot of shots. You 51 00:03:29.440 --> 00:03:34.240 find people who have complimentary skills. If you're playing football you don't have 10 running 52 00:03:34.720 --> 00:03:40.560 backs. The entrepreneur really should be the coach of the team. It's about organizing the pieces 53 00:03:40.560 --> 00:03:44.560 and how well they play together that ultimately determines how good the team is. Like how many times 54 00:03:44.560 --> 00:03:48.960 have you seen the team with the all-star that has the poor supporting cast get beat by the overall 55 00:03:48.960 --> 00:03:53.760 better team. It happens all the time. A lot of entrepreneurs as I see them are trying to play the 56 00:03:53.760 --> 00:03:59.840 game like they're the star player and they want to score all the points but they lose to Apple because 57 00:03:59.840 --> 00:04:06.400 Apple's got a team. We celebrate a specific action like work when it's really just saying oh look 58 00:04:06.400 --> 00:04:11.040 there's a paladin who can take a lot of hits. Cool that's not the only thing that's required to win. 59 00:04:11.040 --> 00:04:16.080 I think what is more valuable is to know what are each of the roles that exist within the business 60 00:04:16.080 --> 00:04:21.360 A. B is they're one of these that you map to based on your characteristics and skill sets and then 61 00:04:21.360 --> 00:04:26.240 C. What is my eventual evolution through entrepreneurship? We'll start at the beginning which is what are 62 00:04:26.240 --> 00:04:29.840 the players on the field. So if you think about it by function you've got somebody who has to 63 00:04:29.840 --> 00:04:33.280 promote who's got to be a good marketer. They have to understand how to make things known across 64 00:04:33.280 --> 00:04:37.760 different platforms. Telling stories, building a brand, providing value to an audience. That's 65 00:04:37.760 --> 00:04:44.240 what marketing is. Sales is being able to convert that raw attention into a sale. Direct response 66 00:04:44.240 --> 00:04:48.640 ads, sales pages, video sales letters etc which is pretty much anything that's physical products 67 00:04:48.640 --> 00:04:53.120 or software based that's low ticket or it's higher ticket. People to people hand in hand combat who 68 00:04:53.120 --> 00:04:57.920 know how to in the beginning sell and then later train how to sell and then later later lead 69 00:04:57.920 --> 00:05:01.760 people who train how to sell. These are not necessarily the same people. I've met really brilliant 70 00:05:01.760 --> 00:05:05.040 markets with second sales and we're really good salespeople with second marketing. Then you've got 71 00:05:05.040 --> 00:05:09.760 somebody who understands product. How do we make something beautiful? The guy who started Shopify 72 00:05:09.760 --> 00:05:14.880 he's not CEO Shopify. He's had a product. He's a mage. He knows how to cast spells and then you've 73 00:05:14.880 --> 00:05:19.600 got the experience people who managing everything outside of the actual product itself. How do customers 74 00:05:19.600 --> 00:05:23.040 engage with us? How can provide more value? How do they're amazing experience? How do we make 75 00:05:23.040 --> 00:05:26.240 sure they're hitting these models though? This person who knows customer experience a customer 76 00:05:26.240 --> 00:05:30.880 success is not the same person who understands product and UX and design that's a different game 77 00:05:30.880 --> 00:05:33.040 which is different than the guy who knows how to close. There's different guy that knows how to 78 00:05:33.040 --> 00:05:37.280 promote. The bigger the enterprise gets the more specialized the skill becomes and the deeper 79 00:05:37.280 --> 00:05:41.280 the well of experience the people need to be they have to be more specialized. When people are like 80 00:05:41.280 --> 00:05:46.640 I can't be out worked you're bragging about the wrong thing. It should be like I can't be out 81 00:05:46.640 --> 00:05:51.440 recruited. I can't be out managed. No one can build a culture like me. That's super high leverage 82 00:05:51.440 --> 00:05:56.960 across the organization. No one can lead like me but no one can out work me. It's just an irrelevant 83 00:05:56.960 --> 00:06:01.680 activity metric. I love working. I work all the time but I would never claim that no one works 84 00:06:01.680 --> 00:06:05.600 harder than me. I tend to have very good leverage with the activities that I do. I spend tons of time 85 00:06:05.600 --> 00:06:09.040 writing a book in that book, for instance, I'll copy forever. It's a different way to play the game 86 00:06:09.040 --> 00:06:14.080 and so level two of this which player you are. In the middle run of this you end up segregating 87 00:06:14.080 --> 00:06:17.840 yourself to a portion of the business that you're an expert at or that you're best at. CMO or 88 00:06:17.840 --> 00:06:22.160 chief sales officer, chief product officer. It's not about one player being the champion here. 89 00:06:22.160 --> 00:06:26.640 It's about how the team works together which then gets to the third level of this is just about 90 00:06:26.640 --> 00:06:30.320 being the coach. Think about what the best coaches do. They're literally trying to headhunt the 91 00:06:30.320 --> 00:06:33.920 best players and they're trying to recruit the best people from college. Look at what Google does. 92 00:06:33.920 --> 00:06:38.400 Think about their recruiting efforts. They have huge influxes dedicated to getting the best and smartest 93 00:06:38.400 --> 00:06:41.840 people out of college and they have another ring for the best and smartest people come out of business 94 00:06:41.840 --> 00:06:46.240 school and then another one is their very high level recruiting at the top of the executive level. 95 00:06:46.240 --> 00:06:50.480 The parallels between sports and business, they are almost the same in that way. Now mind you, 96 00:06:50.480 --> 00:06:54.800 you can only have, you know, 10 or 11 people on the field. You might have 10,000 but if each of those 97 00:06:54.800 --> 00:07:00.320 players represents a function or department of the business, it makes more sense. When we move up 98 00:07:00.320 --> 00:07:05.120 the levels of entrepreneurship, we need to make sure that we're playing the right game and that 99 00:07:05.120 --> 00:07:09.840 we're using the right metric to measure our success. Final level of this is being the coach. 100 00:07:09.840 --> 00:07:14.320 It's recruiting the top level executives and creating a farm system underneath to feed into the 101 00:07:14.320 --> 00:07:18.400 companies that you have so that you can have a sustained competitive advantage and create a 102 00:07:18.400 --> 00:07:23.680 dynasty for the team so you can create the best winning team every year and have the soft skills 103 00:07:23.680 --> 00:07:28.320 of creating culture of high performance so that you get the most out of every individual player. 104 00:07:28.320 --> 00:07:33.440 And the difference between amazing coaching and mediocre or poor coaching is what would players do 105 00:07:33.440 --> 00:07:37.120 if they had no coach or leader and then what would they do if they had the best coach and best 106 00:07:37.120 --> 00:07:42.720 leader. The delta between those two is the value of the coach, the value of the CEO. The CEO 107 00:07:42.720 --> 00:07:46.160 needs to have the highest return on time out of anyone the organization because they need to always 108 00:07:46.160 --> 00:07:50.640 be solving the next problem. As long as when they replace their time, the activities they do with 109 00:07:50.640 --> 00:07:56.720 the new stuff builds the business even more, then that trade will always work.