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If we think about what the product of this business is, when you're in a service

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business, the product is the service, meaning the people who deliver the service

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are the thing you sell. And the margin of the business is the difference between

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what you have to pay them and what you need to charge for their work, right? And so

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our acquisition process, the skill of business, doesn't have to be customer-facing

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because you've got it phoned, drinking off the hook. There's already tons of

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demand. There's insufficient supply. The top 1% of business owners aren't smart

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of the game. They do things differently. And that's when we explain in this

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video. I'm Alex Ramazi. I own Acrozynaka. It's a portfolio of companies that

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generate hundreds of millions of dollars per year in revenue. And so I've seen a

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lot of different patterns across businesses that we both invested and scaled

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in or something that we turned down. And so if you feel stuck, it's because what

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got you from zero to a hundred thousand or what a hundred thousand dollars

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per million or a million to 10 million or 10 million to 30 million isn't going

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to be the thing that gets you to the next level. And you're probably working on

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something that was once very important, but is no longer. And so the first

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going to do is share some examples of real businesses that I built right to

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learn this lesson the very, very hard way. And then I'll show you how to correctly

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identify the core problem for your business today, not what it was last year or

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two years before. And finally, how to confront it and break through it. So to

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make this real, I'm going to be three examples of my own business experience

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of what I thought the business I was in versus the one I was actually in. So in

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the very beginning, I was into fitness. I got into it thinking that my life was

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going to be about what workouts were going to be. And the periodization and how

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is going to structure the weights and the intensity and what cardio we were going

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to weigh in. And that's what I thought all of the business was going to be about.

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And then as soon as I actually got into the business, I realized that the biggest

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issue is most people don't even show up to the gym. And so periodization means

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almost nothing. And so all of my attention was like, oh my God, I have to get

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people first in the door. And how do I get them to stay? And how do I run this

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profit when I've got rent? I've got trainers. I've got equipment that breaks.

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And all of a sudden, I was like, oh my God, I thought I was going to be in the

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scientific fitness business. When in reality, I was in the sales and marketing

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business. And so one of the easiest ways to identify what business you're really

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in is to zoom all the way out to the people who are already 100 steps ahead of

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you. All right, not just one or two steps, but like a hundred steps. And the

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reason for that is because if I said, if you just look at someone who's one or

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two steps ahead of you, you should do what they do. The thing is that they're

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one or two steps ahead of you and they're probably going to get lost to.

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All right. And so sometimes someone's two steps ahead of you on the mountain,

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but you're both you're both climbing the wrong peak. All right. But if you

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look at the people or all the way at the top, typically it's because they

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figured out something that you haven't figured out. And so I remember in the

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early days of me when I was marketing, I used to see like Apple and Nike. And I was

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like, oh my God, if they knew the direct response stuff that I know, they'd be

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making so much more money. And I said this as I'm like living out of my

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parents' basement. I didn't actually live in my parents' basement. But you get

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the idea. And so the thing is is that when you look at the biggest fitness

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businesses, you're like, wait, how does this fly to my business? Don't worry, it

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will. If you look at the biggest fitness businesses that are gyms, most of

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them are basically in the sales and marketing business. They have absolutely

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mechanized the ability of getting people in the door. Their general managers

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for each location are just people who have membership quotas who are driving

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sales day in and day out. And so for me, I never even sold a poor. I didn't know

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what a lead was. I didn't know what email marketing was. I didn't know any of

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this stuff. And the thing is, as I signed a lease and 30 days later, I had to

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come up with $5,000 and I'm like, how am I going to do that? And so then I found

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out that selling was when I was begging people to buy to buy my gym

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memberships, that was a form of sales, not good sales, but it was a form of

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sales nonetheless. Right? And so all of a sudden through repetition, I was like,

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oh, okay, so I have to have these consistent conversations that get people to

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buy. And if I do that more effectively than all of a sudden, I make more money.

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Okay, cool. So this is really important to this business because believe it or

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not, people don't wake up someday and say, you know what? I'm going to sign up

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for a gym membership. Doesn't usually happen that way. Usually they got to get

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interrupted. So they have to get interrupted with some sort of ad and that then

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reminds them that they're not in the shape that they want to be or they put

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on their clothes in the morning. They're like, oh my God, I can't close this

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thing. But still, they don't just say, oh, I'm going to call the gym up, not

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usually how it happens. Instead, again, it's other people stopping them at the

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park and like, hey, do you want a free workout or a thing or showing up to their

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office of work and saying, hey, we made these protein muffins. Hey, while you're

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eating these muffins of ours, can I tell you about what some of my private

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training might do for you? Right? Like you'd actually have different ways of

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getting you have to get in front of people in order to ultimately bring in the

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gym. The other problem with gyms that I didn't know I was in is that basically

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no one sticks with gyms. All right, now there's a very small select group of

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people who are hardcore lifters who do absolutely get obsessed with gyms. But

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here's the crazy part that everyone in the industry doesn't tell you. They are

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such a small percentage that they're the ones who actually take up all the

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space in the gym. And if the amount of people that actually were subscribed to

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the gym, all of them came. No gym model would work at $10, $20, $30 a month.

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Like if you actually had people pay who only used it, your gym membership would

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have to be something like $200 to $300 a month, which just so happens to

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coincide with with the vast majority of service-based gyms, cross-training

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facilities and boot camps and semi-private training facilities. All of those

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have clients who all show up and that's why those prices are where they're at.

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And so even a business like Crunch or Planet Fitness, they have $10 a month

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membership, but they still have like five or six percent per month of their

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customers who turn out. So that's like half the customers per year are leaving

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out the door. And so if you've got thousands of customers and you lose half of

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them every year, guess what else you need? A machine for generating another few

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thousand customers to fill up the bucket. And so these very large companies know

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how to train sales staff, recruit sales staff, market across different channels

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to get customers in the door. And once I figured that out, my gyms started

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growing. But until I did, I was like lost. Okay, so every business has to be

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a marketing sales business. Uh, kind of. And so then I got into the

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sublimest business. And I thought I was, okay, so this business for sure is

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about what's inside of the bottle, right? And so I got Dr. Katz, she's the smart

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screen being that I know, he's a PhD biochemist. God is, you know, PhD when he was

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21 years old, he also did the stacks for Olympic teams. And he has a national

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on press record. So I was like, this guy is going to come with the most

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efficacious product, the best ingredients. And I just said, listen, you make the

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best thing you could possibly make. I'll figure out how to sell it, right?

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But here's the thing. That was the business that I thought I was in. The

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actual business that I was in with supplements is actually in the brand and

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distribution business. So let me explain why. So the thing that the ugly secret

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of the supplement business, at least in the United States is that if something

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actually works, it's most of the time illegal. Because if something works a

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little bit, then typically if you put a lot of it in, it works a lot of it.

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Now, I think supplements are good for, you know, filling up holes, nutritional

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holes, and people's diets, so that they can get some of these other, you know,

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minerals or whatever into what they eat. Or it's a truly a supplement where

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you're like, I need to eat more protein. Can I just like have a powder that has

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oh, you know, a higher concentration? So I think there are benefits to that.

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But the thing is is that if you're a customer, when you have two different

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proteins that have the exact same calories and macros, what gets you to buy the

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brand? And so because every single supplement supplier has access to the same

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ingredients, more or less is everyone else. And the research studies that are

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out there, anyone who says that they know the research, the customers certainly

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don't know what the research is, nor do they really care what they really care

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about is, how good does it taste? And do I feel cool when I drink it or eat it?

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And I was like, oh my God, this is not at all what I spent my entire time

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building this business to be. And so then I had to learn all this stuff about

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brand. Now, I didn't know anything about brand at that time. And so that business

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kind of got to what I would consider like a direct sales model, because I took

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all the gym stuff of like, oh, it's going to all be about sales. It's all hand

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to hand. But what I really missed was the cool factor. I didn't understand how

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to make my products cool. And with somebody's got to buy a cretin for me

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versus a cretin that's 14 bucks in mind, 60, why are they going to buy it?

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I didn't have a good answer to that question. And not only that, I didn't have

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distribution that was convenient. And so in the beginning for business like

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this, like you can sell online to consumers, they cover the shipping and stuff.

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But a lot of times people still like buy supplements in person, because it's

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very easy. You don't have to pay the extra shipping. A lot of supplement sales

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happen in brick and mortar retail stores. So the business that I thought I was

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in was a combination of sales and making it great product. But the business I

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was really in was a brand and distribution business. And maybe like, okay, so

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that business was maybe different. But the third time he'll definitely get it

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right. You would hope that. But I, I didn't. And so the, the next business that

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I had that I wasn't good at was my first software company. Now, everything

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here I say with it, you know, with a tongue in cheek in terms of good or bad,

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right? Like that business still got to just y'all about a million and a half

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a month within sixish months of us really launching it. And so that business

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did pretty well by most people standards. But I really thought the business

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could be a lot bigger than that. And at this point when I got into it, I was

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like, okay, listen, I can market and sell this thing. And so that's all that's

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going to matter because I had, you know, again, I learned I hit everything with

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the marketing and sales hammer because that was what I was good at. But when I

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got into the software business, I realized that you could sell software

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really, really easily because most software solves a problem that's pretty

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easy to describe. And the technology is supposed to remove a lot of pain. And

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so selling tech is like really easy. The problem is that a city of someone

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logs in and it doesn't solve that problem or it solves that problem by

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introducing even more pain into their lives, which is very common. They then

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immediately hate it and you by default, right? And so I thought I was in the

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marketing and sales business yet again, when in reality, I was in the product

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business and I didn't know anything about product from like a software. I

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didn't know how to I didn't know how to write code. I didn't know what UX or

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design is like, I'm still not that good at design. And so the whole thing was

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just kind of like screwed from the from the onset. I didn't have any of the

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talent and my strategy was not around products. So the fundamental issue with

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that business was that the product wasn't good enough to deliver on the

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promise. And the problem was I needed to make a better product than I didn't

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know how. Now, I ended up selling that company to somebody who did have a full

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in house dev team. And I had built because of my sales and marketing ability,

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still a pretty decent size distribution base that he could then leverage with

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his software and continue to expand the business. So that worked out okay.

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But let's double click into this one a little bit more because I think there's

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a lot of businesses that this concept will apply to, which is that I at the

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time hired an outsourced development team, right? And so I just had them

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build the product. I was like, yeah, do all the code stuff and you know,

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ship it back to me. But the issue that I ran into is a couple of things.

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Number one is that I literally aligned myself with someone who had a

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disincentive to do a good job. So they go as they bill hourly. And so their

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incentive is to charge as much as seemingly possible and do as little as

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possible in that period of time. And just keep me on long enough that I don't

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cancel. Now, the longer you work with the now sorts of Elma shop, the harder

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it is to leave them because they have all these developers who are dedicated

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to your account. And they're all read up on the code. And so you're like, well,

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I can't switch now because they already have five or 10 or 20 developers that

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are allocated to me. And here's the even worse part. Let's say that you're

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still really good at marketing and sales. Guess what happens next? They see

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how much money you're making. They own the damn software. Right? So they can

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see that you're making money. And you know what's crazy is that I noticed as

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we kept making more money, my fees just kept going up wild almost so much

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that I was like, wait, where's my profit? Right? And so at the end of the day,

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the dev shop was more or less taking advantage of us. And because I had no

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technical proficiency, nor did I have a co founder who was really technical,

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because you can't absolutely have a business like this. Somebody's got to

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know how to code. Right? Somebody's got to understand technology. And I didn't

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know it. And I didn't have anybody else in a specific, I didn't have anybody

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else who is incentivized to help because in the software business, you can

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make the promise of good, fast, cheap, and people are going to buy. But you

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have to fulfill that promise. And that's fundamentally what makes that business

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so hard, but also so lucrative when you get it right. So I'll give you another

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example of what business you really have. So I talked to a guy recently who is

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in the M&A world, so emergency acquisitions. And he was buying up plumbing

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businesses. And so you bought up a plumbing business. And I was like, okay,

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well, what's limiting the business? And he said, well, I can't find good

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plumbers. And the questions that he was asking me were about marketing. And

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I was like, why are we asking about marketing? Like, do you have an issue, you

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know, getting new customers? He's like, no, actually, like the phone rings. And

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we like have to turn customers away because we can't even deliver on it. And

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so I was like, okay, hold on a second. What's this? And at that time, he was

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like, I'm thinking about leaving plumbing and just getting into HVAC. So like AC,

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heating, et cetera. And I was like, wait, you're thinking about leaving this

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business and going to the other reason, yeah, because it's just so hard to find

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plumbers. I was like, well, what's your system for getting plumbers? And

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honestly, he didn't have one. And so I was like, okay, dude, if we think about

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what the product of this business is, when you're in a service business, the

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product is the service, meaning the people who deliver the service are the

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thing you sell. And the margin of the business is the difference between what

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you have to pay them and what you to charge for their work, right? And so our

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acquisition process to scale the business doesn't have to be customer

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facing because you've got phones ringing off the hook. There's already tons of

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demand. There's insufficient supply. And so the question is, what are you doing

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to outmarket your competition for talent? And so I introduced to him a concept

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that I love to talk about, which is the cat to LT, I don't even know what the

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letters are, but it's cost of acquiring talent relative to the lifetime

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gross profit per employee. Alright, it's a lot of letters. But basically, this

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is how much it cost you to get people. This is how much you make from them. And so I

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said, well, how much does it, how much do you make from a plumber per year in

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gross profit? So revenue minus what you pay them, what do you make? He said

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probably about, you know, 300,000 dollars a year. And I was like, okay, I was like,

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so what are you willing to spend to get another plumber? He's like, well, I think

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we have like a $500 referral thing if any of the guys refer somebody else. So I was

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like, okay, so think about how wild this is. You're willing to pay $500 for

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$300,000 per year. This is per year. Alright, for from your plumbers. I was

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like, does this feel a little bit low? Of course it did. It's insanely low. Because

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the thing is, is that if you're a smart competitor, what am I going to do? I'm

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going to be like, well, shoot, I'll pay $30,000. You're one. So all of a sudden,

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if I offer $30,000 to everyone in my staff, if they can go get somebody, what

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do you think's going to happen? They're probably going to find more plumbers for

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me. But guess what else I can do with $30,000? I could also say, you know what? I'm

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willing to spend that in paid ads or in recruiting or headhunting of people

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who just go and post people from firm to firm. Well, how do I know? How do I know

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if it's going to work out? Well, if you're doing a referral bonus, you can say

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that it's after their productive at month six. Now you've got some of you did

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the referral who's super invested in making sure that it works out. Most recruiting

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firms have 90-day clauses to make sure that if the person doesn't work out in

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the first 90 days, they'll swap them out for free. That's a pretty typical offer.

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If you're running ads, you don't have to worry about either of those because it's

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just the cost of the ads. And so the question is, if the one thing that's

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limiting this business is that he doesn't have enough plumbers, literally

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everything that he does with this time that is not about creating an acquisition

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system for talent is the thing that's limiting the business. And so the thing is

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he comes in thinking, I'm in the marketing and sales business for HVAC, when in

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reality, he's in the talent business. I'll give you a different example. And the

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reason I'm keeping these examples is because it happens in every business. And

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this is typically what keeps business owners stuck, right? You start doing

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something, maybe it worked and then it stops working. But you think, oh, I need

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to keep doing this thing or do more of this thing when sometimes that's the

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truth. But a lot of times it's just that the game changed where the real

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constraint of the business is not the thing you think it is, right? So I was

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talking to a media company, all right? So that just think super large YouTube

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or big creator, right? And I said, well, what's the goal? And they said, we

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want to build, you know, make more money. I said, okay, great. What do you think

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it is right now? And they're like, well, you know, right now, just to give you

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context, they're a way bigger general than me. All right? Very big. Many

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millions, tens of millions. All right? And so I said, what are you doing right

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now? They're like, well, we think that we've really mechanized our process of

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creating content. And, you know, we think that we can get this, these new levels

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of efficiency in the content creation. It was like, okay. So out of a hundred,

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compared to the marketplace, what would you guys rate your content out right

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now? So it's funny is that like they were, they were like, I think we're like

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maybe a 90, but I'm like, like, if you just do percentiles here, like your

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points, yours, yours, but everybody, when it's your own game, you know so much

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about it, you've forgotten more than people who have been in this for two years,

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know about it. All right? And so I was like, you guys are probably like a 99 out

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of 100 on marketing. And so the issue with your business, despite the hundreds

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of millions of impressions per week, that you're generating is that you're

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just not making that much money. So would you really think that doing more

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media is the solution? And so they looked at me for a second, I was like, what do

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you sell to make your money? And they're like, well, I mean, we do, you know,

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we do sponsorships every once in a while. We basically this and that. They

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had ad revenue as a, as a, as a source of income. I was like, okay, do you

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think it's possible that not having a clear monetization mechanism is the issue?

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What would you rate your monetization strategy at? And they're like, oh, we'll

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probably like a five out of five out of 100. I was like, okay, so you've been

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deploying all your resources to go from 99 to 99.5%. Rather than taking those

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same resources and the thing is is that when you're this low, going from five to

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like 25, probably takes less effort than going from 99 to 99.5. And so what we

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need to do is fix the monetization of this business. When they had this larger

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goal, the business that they thought they were in, which is media, which they

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were to get to here, but to get to where they want to go, they were going to

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have to enter into having a business model. They're going to enter into

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monetization as the issue in the business. And so I could keep going with these

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like cleaning people who think that they have to go marketing itself, but

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marketing is selling cleanings really easy. The hard part is getting made to

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speak English. Don't steal shop on time or willing to do it for a long

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career time. If you're in the massage business, you're in the recruiting

293
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hiring training business because getting people to get massages ain't that

294
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hard. The problem is finding good masseuses, right? So like I can keep going

295
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with this, but the problem that most businesses have is they don't know the

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business they're actually in. And they keep trying to solve the problem that

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they enjoy solving rather than one of the business requires to be solved. And so

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every business has a big, very problem. And this has been my experience. And

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maybe just because it took me too long to learn, or I, you know, I only learned

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about it once I get into it. And so as a recommendation, so this is a, this is

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a hack of hacks. If you're entering a new marketplace, talk to the people

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already in that marketplace and ask them with the hardest part of their

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businesses. And a lot of people follow me because they're in education or

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consulting information products. So think yourself, well, if you're in that

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world, what business do you think you're really good? Well, if you learn the

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basics of marketing and sales, just like any business, but if you want to make

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it big, look at the big consulting firms, look at McKinsey, look at Bay,

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look at Irtson Young, or KPMG, these are all recruiting machines. Because on a

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long enough time horizon, very beginning, you learn a market and sell. But on a

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long enough time horizon, you have to learn how to do other stuff. Because you

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can only keep selling infinite people for a period of time until eventually

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you've sold everyone within a marketplace and there's no one left. You've

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already pillaged the land. And so instead, we have to find a way to keep people

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to keep buying. And so if it's in the service business, it means having

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exceptional people. If it's in a physical products thing, it's how do we get

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customers to come back again and again? If you're in the the software business,

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it's the same thing, except you're doing a via code, rather than kind of

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recurring, how do we basically engineer consumption? Right? And so a lot of

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entrepreneurs who are in the education space, and I bring this up because I'm

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literally educating right now, is that they have one talented person, they have

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some guru, and then they hire people who really aren't as good, and then they

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dilute the service quality over time. And then they're surprised that somehow

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their business stops growing when they were smaller, really fast, because you had

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a good product, which was you. You were exceptional. And then you hired all

325
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these other people, and they're not exceptional. But then you're like, oh, I love

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this one. I decided to stop doing it because it's not scalable. One of my

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favorite lines to hear, I'm going to try not to curse to be hard not to. I'm

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like really struggling. Motherfucker, they are building cities in the middle of

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the ocean. We are sending rockets to space and building internet from

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satellites globally, right? We have electric cars, we have AI robots, and you

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think that you can't scale service? Of course, it's scalable. You're just not

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good enough. But when you phrase it that way, now it becomes a problem that you

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can solve. And so this is a second hack of hacks for figuring this out. Insert

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the problem that you claim to have that is unsolvable, and frame it in the form

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of an I don't know. So for example, no one can sell like me. I hear this all

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the time. No one can sell like me. What if you said, I don't know how to get

337
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anyone to sell like me? Sales people suck. I don't know how to find good sales

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people. There's no good plumbers. I don't know how to recruit higher and train

339
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good plumbers. All the leads are crap. I don't know how to advertise to get good

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leads. What does it complain? The others are question. And the question has an

341
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answer. And so as soon as you could actually ask the right question, you start

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walking down the path to getting the thing that your business actually needs

343
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rather than you're just complaining and giving yourself an excuse for why your

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business isn't growing anymore. And then you cast out a power out to some

345
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external thing that's amorphous or circumstantial. And that way you feel good

346
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and you can rock yourself to sleep every night saying, you know what? I gave it

347
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the good fight. But there are some people who actually want a fucking win. And so

348
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for those people who are making this video for the thing that you're doing

349
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right now, if you keep doing it and it's not working, is the wrong thing. So

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let me give you one that you might not know as much about. So in the

351
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investing world, so I got into this, right? So we lay on it. So got, you know,

352
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tens, many tens of millions of dollars in distribution. Then we also sold the

353
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company for lots of tens of millions of dollars. And so we had enough money

354
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that we could start our own family office and actually start buying companies

355
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and investing. And so I thought investing was about doing lots of deals at good

356
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prices, right? I was like, okay, if we just buy stuff for really cheap, then

357
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we're going to basically make our money on the buy. And what's interesting

358
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about this is that in some businesses, it does work that way. So like if you

359
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are selling cars, right? A lot of times the price of a Honda 2000, whatever is

360
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this. And so it does come down to like how low, basically, your proprietary

361
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way of getting a commodity for less, you're not going to get it by by jipping

362
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people on the sale. Sure, you want to close at retailers as close to as possible.

363
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But you're not going to buy a Honda and then all of a sudden sell for a hundred

364
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grand, right? So you're going to make more of the money on where you buy. And

365
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then you make up the difference on the sale at market rate. Whereas in the

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investing world, and this is what I thought it functioned that way. But it

367
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assumed businesses were commodities. So think about this for a second. It

368
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assumed that, okay, I'm just going to try and buy as many businesses I can.

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And buy them as far as low as possible. This makes sense because I'd read all

370
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the stuff, like got a decrease your risk, got a decrease your basis. But the

371
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problem I was missing is that a really good business can outperform all of your

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bad ones with one good deal. And sometimes good deals. And this is what's

373
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crazy. They did this big research study on this in the venture capital world.

374
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Oftentimes companies that have up rounds as in like very quickly, they go, you

375
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know, they find that sometimes the enterprise value in like six months. Those

376
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ones which have absolutely absurd increases and investors are like, Oh, I

377
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don't, I don't want to invest in that. They were just, they were on fifth of

378
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that price, you know, six months ago. They'll still end up being phenomenal

379
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investments on a longer term basis because they usually figured out something

380
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very core to the economics of the business. Now that have now dramatically

381
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decreased the risk of the business. And that five X prices because it's

382
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anchored to that smaller price rather than thinking about it as a discount on

383
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the $20 billion company, it's destined to become. And so for me, what I

384
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thought I was in was the high volume discount deals. The business that I was

385
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really in was learning how to say no at a much higher velocity to a much higher

386
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number of deals because you only need one Facebook. Right. I'll give you

387
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real numbers. So we did 22 deals over the last three years. And four of those

388
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deals represent 90% of our returns. And many of the deals were complete and

389
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utter waste of my time and money. And the largest company on portfolio,

390
00:25:03.760 --> 00:25:07.120
generate over $100 million last year, just one of the companies. Right. And so

391
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getting that company from $100 million to $150 million is actually the same

392
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level of work, sometimes even easier than going from zero to one million or

393
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one million to 10 billion. Because that's $50 million dollars in absolute

394
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growth. And you get a premium on that EBITDA when it comes to enterprise value.

395
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And so you're like, okay, taking a company from 100 to 150 is a 50%

396
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improvement, taking it from one to 10 million is a 10 X. Right. Not only that,

397
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the $100 million business has way more infrastructure as way more

398
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people. And so you can they can deploy strategies that are in a more rapid

399
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format. One to 10 million. It's like, you've got very limited resources.

400
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So you can do like, you've got to pick a couple shots and like, that's it for

401
00:25:41.600 --> 00:25:44.880
the year. Right. And you might hear this to be like a couple shots. That's it

402
00:25:44.880 --> 00:25:47.760
for the year. If you've been at the same place for a while and you're not

403
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thinking like that, there is a reason. And on top of all that, despite the

404
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fact that the absolute growth is easier with larger businesses. And despite

405
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the fact that they have more resources, despite all of that, the increase

406
00:25:58.560 --> 00:26:03.080
that you get then drops to bottom line. And so if you were to have go from

407
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one million to $2 million in profit in that one business, first is going

408
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from 20 million to 50 million in profit with the second business. Guess what

409
00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.640
happens? That 50 million dollars gets a higher multiple than the one to two.

410
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Even though it's a hundred percent increase. And so hopefully, me

411
00:26:18.280 --> 00:26:20.720
bragging to death with different examples of different industries has

412
00:26:20.720 --> 00:26:23.800
gotten you think, okay, maybe just maybe this could applaud a bit.

413
00:26:24.800 --> 00:26:29.560
Real quick, guys, I have a special, special gift for you for being loyal

414
00:26:29.560 --> 00:26:34.200
listeners of the podcast. Layla and I spent probably an entire quarter

415
00:26:34.200 --> 00:26:39.640
putting together our scaling roadmap. It's breaking, scaling into 10 stages

416
00:26:40.120 --> 00:26:43.320
and across all eight functions of the business. So you've got marketing,

417
00:26:43.320 --> 00:26:45.960
you've got sales, you've got product, you got customer success, you've got

418
00:26:45.960 --> 00:26:50.200
IT, you've got recruiting, HR, you've got finance. And we show the problems

419
00:26:50.200 --> 00:26:53.080
that emerged at every level of scale and how to graduate to the next level.

420
00:26:53.080 --> 00:26:58.040
It's all free. And you can get it personalized to you. So it's about 30-ish pages

421
00:26:58.040 --> 00:27:01.240
for each of the stages. Once you answer the questions, it will tell you exactly

422
00:27:01.240 --> 00:27:06.120
where you're at and what you need to do to grow. It's about 14 hours of stuff,

423
00:27:06.120 --> 00:27:09.160
but it's narrowed down so that you only have to watch the part that's relevant

424
00:27:09.160 --> 00:27:12.360
to you, which will probably be about 90 minutes. And so if that's at all interesting,

425
00:27:12.360 --> 00:27:17.400
you can go to acquisition.com forward slash road map, R-O-A-D map, road map.

426
00:27:18.040 --> 00:27:24.600
So let's confront the real problem. At each stage, I've had these learning

427
00:27:24.600 --> 00:27:29.560
curves where I thought I knew the business, what the business was about. And then I realized

428
00:27:29.560 --> 00:27:35.640
what it was really about, the big, hairy problem that I had to solve. And so here's how I think

429
00:27:35.640 --> 00:27:41.640
through this. And it can be painful because oftentimes we spend so much time trying to solve

430
00:27:41.640 --> 00:27:45.560
every other problem that we think we know how to solve rather than solving the one that we know

431
00:27:45.640 --> 00:27:49.640
we need to solve, but don't know how to. That's a lot of times what makes that big, hairy

432
00:27:49.640 --> 00:27:53.240
problem so hard is that you just don't know what to do. And this is why so many entrepreneurs

433
00:27:53.240 --> 00:27:55.720
start a second business because they're like, I don't know how to solve to grow this

434
00:27:55.720 --> 00:27:58.360
investors one. And then they make up a reason and then they start on the business because they

435
00:27:58.360 --> 00:28:01.720
think somehow the second business can be different than the first. When in reality, you're just

436
00:28:01.720 --> 00:28:05.080
going to reach a plateau that you don't know and then you're going to stop again, right? So you

437
00:28:05.080 --> 00:28:08.760
have to confront the issue, you have to confront the problem. And so this is how I mentally trick

438
00:28:08.760 --> 00:28:12.280
myself into getting to being okay with solving hard problems that I've no idea how to solve.

439
00:28:13.080 --> 00:28:18.200
I imagine to myself, this is purely hypothetical, all right? So let's say that I've got a business

440
00:28:18.200 --> 00:28:23.480
that's doing $10 million a year, you can use whatever zeros you want, okay? And let's say that it's

441
00:28:23.480 --> 00:28:29.880
got, you know, $3 million in profit, okay? So this is top line, this is bottom line,

442
00:28:29.880 --> 00:28:35.800
aka profit, leftover, cashola, cheese, cheddar, lettuce, money in the bank account, whatever you

443
00:28:35.800 --> 00:28:39.560
want to say, all right? So that's our top line bottom line. Let's say that we've got this big,

444
00:28:39.560 --> 00:28:44.040
hairy problem, all right? That's actually a pretty good big, hairy problem. So we have this big,

445
00:28:44.040 --> 00:28:48.440
hairy problem. Now we think that if we solve this big, hairy problem, we're going to be able to

446
00:28:48.440 --> 00:28:53.960
continue to grow the business to $20 million a year in top line revenue. And that three, because

447
00:28:53.960 --> 00:28:57.560
we've covered a lot of our base, our fixed costs in the 10 million is actually going to jump all the

448
00:28:57.560 --> 00:29:02.920
way to like seven or eight million, all right? In profit. So a big, a disproportionate profit

449
00:29:02.920 --> 00:29:08.760
increase with the increase in top line, which is not uncommon. So here's what's crazy. This

450
00:29:08.840 --> 00:29:13.320
business might be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $15 million. I'm just going to make an estimate,

451
00:29:13.320 --> 00:29:21.800
that's a 5x on this $3 million. Okay. Now this $8 million business might be closer to worth maybe

452
00:29:21.800 --> 00:29:29.960
like $72 million, right? That's with a 9x. And so the delta here, all right, between here and here,

453
00:29:30.520 --> 00:29:42.360
is $57 million. And so the difference between these two amounts is $57 million. That is a big,

454
00:29:42.360 --> 00:29:49.160
a lot of dollars. And so here's how I mentally trick myself. I say, man, this big, hairy problem

455
00:29:49.800 --> 00:29:56.760
is big and hairy. But if someone paid me $57 million to solve it, would I be willing to solve it?

456
00:29:56.760 --> 00:30:02.440
I'm like, hell yeah, I probably solve it for $1 million. And so I've got this nice $56 million

457
00:30:02.440 --> 00:30:07.480
dollar surplus of what I'm willing to do it for versus what it's actually worth. And so I tell our

458
00:30:07.480 --> 00:30:13.000
founders in the portfolio, I say, once we figure out what this big, hairy problem is, I always try

459
00:30:13.000 --> 00:30:17.880
and remember to do this. I say, hey, if we do this, this is going to lock $50 million enterprise value.

460
00:30:17.880 --> 00:30:22.600
This is going to lock $100 million enterprise value. If we solve this one problem. And so sometimes

461
00:30:22.600 --> 00:30:25.880
there's, there's a common saying in the venture capital world, which is, is this a feature,

462
00:30:25.880 --> 00:30:31.800
is this a bug? All right. So what does that really mean? So there are some businesses that I will

463
00:30:31.800 --> 00:30:38.680
see founders bang their heads against the wall, being like, I have to solve the churn issue in my gym.

464
00:30:38.680 --> 00:30:44.520
I have to get it so no one leaves. I can tell you right now, you're never going to solve churn

465
00:30:44.520 --> 00:30:50.360
in fitness. You're not going to do it because it's a human problem. It's not a bug. It's a feature.

466
00:30:50.360 --> 00:30:54.120
And so we have to look at what are the features of our business versus what are the bugs of our

467
00:30:54.120 --> 00:30:57.800
business? The bugs of the business are the things that you can and should work on that can help you

468
00:30:57.800 --> 00:31:02.520
get to the next level. The features of the business is like, this is the core way this business works.

469
00:31:03.160 --> 00:31:06.920
Right. And so if you know for a fact that people are going to cancel fitness because let's face it,

470
00:31:06.920 --> 00:31:11.960
people do, then what then becomes the issue? I need to build a marking machine so that I never run

471
00:31:11.960 --> 00:31:15.720
out of people. Now, the good news, a couple of pieces of good news, if you're in one of those

472
00:31:15.720 --> 00:31:20.680
businesses is that one, some people come back into the business, right? So if people lose weight

473
00:31:20.680 --> 00:31:24.840
or they don't lose weight in two or three years, they might still want to lose weight and try again.

474
00:31:24.840 --> 00:31:29.480
And so there are people entering and exiting every single market on a consistent basis. Now,

475
00:31:29.480 --> 00:31:35.400
that tends to be true of markets that have higher in hair churn. Whereas there's other companies,

476
00:31:35.400 --> 00:31:39.720
let's say you're your internet bill, right? You probably have a switch providers in a wire.

477
00:31:39.720 --> 00:31:43.160
Who does your banking for you? You probably have been with the same banks since you got a

478
00:31:43.160 --> 00:31:47.640
looney to this account when you were six, right? And so you've probably had this around the same

479
00:31:47.640 --> 00:31:52.280
things for a while because it's a pain to change and you probably don't care that much about it.

480
00:31:52.280 --> 00:31:56.440
And so for those businesses, they're all about aggregating market share just having a really

481
00:31:56.440 --> 00:32:02.200
sticky customer base. But guess what? They have problems too. And so my CFO told me this and I

482
00:32:02.200 --> 00:32:06.760
love this line. I was griping to her one day about about basically features of this business.

483
00:32:06.760 --> 00:32:09.800
Like these are things that are absolutely true about this business and I was basically just

484
00:32:09.800 --> 00:32:13.880
complaining because there's nothing I could do about it. And she said, Alex, you know, I've been in

485
00:32:13.880 --> 00:32:17.640
business and I've seen a lot of different businesses over my career. The grass is always greener

486
00:32:17.640 --> 00:32:23.400
on the other side because no one sees that's fertilized with. And she's like, it's all shit.

487
00:32:23.400 --> 00:32:29.000
They're all shit. Every business has shit. But the idea is that every business has overhead.

488
00:32:29.000 --> 00:32:32.840
Every business has stuff that are speechless and there's bugs. Things that are wrong with your

489
00:32:32.840 --> 00:32:36.840
service that should get fixed and things that are inherent to the very nature of this business.

490
00:32:36.920 --> 00:32:40.440
Banks are probably going to have far lower switching than then gym memberships.

491
00:32:40.440 --> 00:32:45.560
An app that sells some sort of easy game on your phone is probably going to have people who

492
00:32:45.560 --> 00:32:49.320
delete the app because it's either wasting their time or they beat the game or they just,

493
00:32:49.320 --> 00:32:52.920
you know, for whatever reason they just lose interest. It just happens. It's very, it's not as

494
00:32:52.920 --> 00:32:57.800
common as like unless you have a super RPG that has an unlimited timeline and things like that. But

495
00:32:57.800 --> 00:33:02.360
again, new games come out and then people, people lose interest. So there's core features inherent

496
00:33:02.360 --> 00:33:06.520
to every business and we just have to be able to confront the issue that is at hand. And oftentimes

497
00:33:06.520 --> 00:33:11.240
it's big, Terry and it sucks. And we got to make sure that we're not trying to spend all over

498
00:33:11.240 --> 00:33:15.160
effort trying to fix a term problem that will literally never get fixed because you're trying to

499
00:33:15.160 --> 00:33:19.960
gas humans to stop being human. And so if you think about entrepreneurship is a video game,

500
00:33:19.960 --> 00:33:25.160
which I often do. All right. So let's imagine we've got these levels here. All right. So we've got

501
00:33:25.160 --> 00:33:30.760
level zero. We got one, two, three, four, five, six, where I should probably let end on seven

502
00:33:30.760 --> 00:33:34.600
because seven feels like a better level. But let's let's go with six. All right. So maybe in the

503
00:33:34.600 --> 00:33:38.120
very beginning, you have to figure out what you're going to sell. All right. You've got a what?

504
00:33:38.120 --> 00:33:41.240
And the big issue at this point is that you just can't make decisions. You're completely

505
00:33:41.240 --> 00:33:45.240
indecisive. You can't commit to anything. You have this fallacy of the perfect pick. You think that

506
00:33:45.240 --> 00:33:48.040
that whatever you pick has to be the one thing that you're going to stick with the first real life.

507
00:33:48.040 --> 00:33:50.520
But the reality is that you're probably not because you don't even know what you're doing. Right.

508
00:33:50.520 --> 00:33:53.320
You don't have the perspective from which to make a judgment. And the only way you can gain

509
00:33:53.320 --> 00:33:56.280
perspective in which to make a judgment is to actually pick something and then start and then

510
00:33:56.280 --> 00:34:00.280
gain more data. All right. And so you have to do that first. Now let's say that you graduate

511
00:34:00.280 --> 00:34:04.520
from that level and you actually made a selection. Congratulations. Now you have something to sell.

512
00:34:04.520 --> 00:34:08.440
So then you have to learn advertising 101 because no one's going to buy your thing

513
00:34:08.440 --> 00:34:12.920
unless they know about it. Right. So you have to learn that skill. Now this is this is the point

514
00:34:12.920 --> 00:34:17.240
that I want I want to make at every one of these levels. You will have entrepreneurs that just

515
00:34:17.240 --> 00:34:22.920
get to level one. And then they they don't learn level two. Let's say that let's let's say level

516
00:34:23.080 --> 00:34:27.720
two is they learn how to profit. All right. They learn a business model around it that they wrap a

517
00:34:27.720 --> 00:34:32.680
business around it. Okay. Let's say that's that's level two. Well, they get to level one. And then

518
00:34:32.680 --> 00:34:39.880
they say, you know what? I just saw this thing over here that that looks easier to to to scale up.

519
00:34:39.880 --> 00:34:43.800
So I'm going to I'm going to race through level one and level two here. And they do. And here's

520
00:34:43.800 --> 00:34:47.880
the crazy part. This next business. They do this in one third of the time and they're like,

521
00:34:47.880 --> 00:34:53.560
oh, yeah, this was a great idea. I just boom. Look how fast I'm going. They crash in the same

522
00:34:53.560 --> 00:34:58.200
level again. They're still stuck at level two because they never learned it. And so the big

523
00:34:58.200 --> 00:35:02.200
area problem is typically the problem that you need to solve to get to the next level. And it

524
00:35:02.200 --> 00:35:08.440
typically requires an entirely different skill set. And most people can't confront that level of

525
00:35:08.440 --> 00:35:13.480
uncertainty or that level of dissatisfaction with themselves. And so they just start something else.

526
00:35:13.480 --> 00:35:19.960
And I will I will probably keep repeating this because it needs repeating is that the woman

527
00:35:19.960 --> 00:35:26.120
and the red dress, right? She is the distraction. And if you don't know what I'm talking about

528
00:35:26.680 --> 00:35:32.280
in the matrix, there's a moment where Morpheus is training Neo. They're walking through a busy

529
00:35:32.280 --> 00:35:36.520
city. There's people walking. It's very like black and whiteish kind of like very monotone in

530
00:35:36.520 --> 00:35:41.000
terms of the colors. It's not black and it's green, but whatever. So they're walking. Then all of a

531
00:35:41.000 --> 00:35:46.840
sudden, a woman in red dress walks by Morpheus is talking. Neo looks back and then Morpheus says,

532
00:35:47.400 --> 00:35:51.560
were you listening to me, were you looking over the red dress? And then he looks back at him, he says,

533
00:35:51.560 --> 00:35:56.440
look again, he looks again, there's a gun pointed at him. And he says freeze. And he said this whole

534
00:35:56.440 --> 00:36:00.920
point, this training is to teach you one thing, which is that if you're not one of us, you're one of

535
00:36:00.920 --> 00:36:06.760
them. And so the one of us is if it's not the core business, it is the distraction from the core

536
00:36:07.000 --> 00:36:11.080
business. Because every one of these other things, every one of these other people in the street,

537
00:36:11.080 --> 00:36:15.560
every one of these other opportunities can look attracted because you don't know the shit on the

538
00:36:15.560 --> 00:36:19.720
other side. It's the grass is greener because it's on the other side of the fence. And if you got

539
00:36:19.720 --> 00:36:24.200
closer, you'd see the manure that you had to sit in in order to get it to grow. And so the craziest

540
00:36:24.200 --> 00:36:29.320
part about all this is that you can be just about everyone if you can stick with something for a few

541
00:36:29.320 --> 00:36:35.560
years. Let me, let me conquer a big belief that is common among entrepreneurs. One of the biggest

542
00:36:35.560 --> 00:36:40.040
reasons that people switch from their current business to the next business, there's two big ones,

543
00:36:40.040 --> 00:36:45.800
in my opinion, that I, that I hear a lot. One is a fancy way of saying it's hard. This is the like,

544
00:36:45.800 --> 00:36:50.520
I don't think my business is that scalable. I'm like, remember, cities, middle of the ocean,

545
00:36:50.520 --> 00:36:56.280
rocket ships and space, cars that drive themselves, robots that are smarter than humans. Really?

546
00:36:56.920 --> 00:37:00.760
You think it's not scalable or you don't know how to scale it. Remember, let's flip it into a

547
00:37:00.840 --> 00:37:05.320
question. I don't know how. I don't know how to scale it. How do I scale a business like mine?

548
00:37:06.200 --> 00:37:11.320
So what is the difficulties? The other one that they do is that they will say, I don't think this

549
00:37:11.320 --> 00:37:17.560
business can get to the size that I want for myself. Now, I will put a big disclaimer here,

550
00:37:17.560 --> 00:37:21.720
which is that if you want to be the richest person in the world, yes, you're going to probably have

551
00:37:21.720 --> 00:37:27.960
to do some sort of technology that has mass global appeal. And it can't look like any of the

552
00:37:27.960 --> 00:37:32.840
technology businesses that already exist because those already exist. So it has to be a true

553
00:37:32.840 --> 00:37:37.000
de novo idea. And I'll tell you something else. If your goal is to become a trillionaire,

554
00:37:37.000 --> 00:37:41.320
you probably won't. And the reason for that is because the people who are the absolute richest

555
00:37:41.320 --> 00:37:46.120
in the world are missionaries and on mercenaries. They do it because they genuinely believe that

556
00:37:46.120 --> 00:37:51.400
the solution deserves to exist in the world. And they're willing to eat glass for a very long time.

557
00:37:51.400 --> 00:37:56.600
Now, in your mind, and I say this as also an entrepreneur who has money goals,

558
00:37:56.600 --> 00:38:00.360
a trillion dollars is just like you just see that as winning because it means that you're the

559
00:38:00.360 --> 00:38:04.520
richest person in the world. But like, can you name the richest person in the world 30 years ago?

560
00:38:04.520 --> 00:38:09.480
You can. And that guy was number one, right? It wasn't Bill Gates. It was a Japanese guy named

561
00:38:09.480 --> 00:38:13.240
to talk you something. I can't remember. But like, yeah, he's richest man in the world for 10 years.

562
00:38:13.240 --> 00:38:16.840
He can't name him. And so I say, like, do you know Paul Gettie was richest man in the world?

563
00:38:16.840 --> 00:38:21.880
100 years ago. 30 years used rich man in the world. You can't name him. So this idea that you

564
00:38:21.880 --> 00:38:25.640
think of becoming the richest man in the world is going to somehow make you you'll be immune to

565
00:38:25.640 --> 00:38:28.760
impermanence that you're going to that your life is going to now be meaningful because of that.

566
00:38:28.760 --> 00:38:33.960
It won't be. And I can also tell you that like a billion dollars is a lot of money. 100

567
00:38:33.960 --> 00:38:39.160
million dollars a lot of money. And so if you if you're not at that level, like I think having

568
00:38:39.160 --> 00:38:45.000
that goal is a bit silly because things will change as resources change the math and the pieces

569
00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:49.880
and the board change as you develop us an entrepreneur. But under the assumption that you have what I would

570
00:38:49.880 --> 00:38:54.760
consider to be modest goals of let's say a hundred million dollars. Let's shape. Let's make that our

571
00:38:54.760 --> 00:38:59.880
modest goal. All right. So bear with me here. Every business in my opinion can get to a hundred

572
00:38:59.880 --> 00:39:03.560
million dollar enterprise value. All right. So I want to be clear. I'm not saying every entrepreneur

573
00:39:03.560 --> 00:39:06.680
can get to a hundred million dollars. I'm not saying every every business is it currently stands

574
00:39:06.680 --> 00:39:10.600
and gets a hundred million dollars. I'm saying that there's a version of every business that's maybe

575
00:39:10.600 --> 00:39:14.840
adjacent or one or two steps away that can absolutely become it. So let me give you an example.

576
00:39:14.840 --> 00:39:20.120
So let's say that you're you're like I have a restaurant. I don't think it's scalable and I don't

577
00:39:20.120 --> 00:39:24.600
think that I can be a hundred millionaire. Well, all we'd all we'd have to do to disprove this is

578
00:39:24.600 --> 00:39:30.360
say is there anyone who's worth over a hundred million dollars in restaurants turns out there is.

579
00:39:30.360 --> 00:39:35.160
There's actually a ton of them. In fact, my neighbor above me is worth a deck of billion 10

580
00:39:35.880 --> 00:39:42.280
10 billion and he owns restaurants. The guy who started subway was the primary owner of subway.

581
00:39:42.280 --> 00:39:47.000
Like and those are two different models for restaurants and they're both those are both fast

582
00:39:47.000 --> 00:39:51.240
casual right or fast food depending on you want to see it right and and either the what is a

583
00:39:51.240 --> 00:39:56.360
franchise model the other is privately held. Okay, so you wait so I definitely have to do

584
00:39:56.360 --> 00:40:00.360
friend you can do either of them but you have to pick which one you're going to do and you have

585
00:40:00.360 --> 00:40:05.400
to go all in for a period of time and you would be like well yeah sure subway well let's let's play

586
00:40:05.400 --> 00:40:12.760
a fun game. How old do you think subway is 59 years old as of right now me making this video

587
00:40:12.760 --> 00:40:18.520
how long do you think Andrew turn in pay you turn of Panda Express have been doing Panda Express

588
00:40:19.160 --> 00:40:26.680
42 years and so you're right the five years you've been making your restaurant is probably not that

589
00:40:26.680 --> 00:40:31.080
close to the 59 years that subway has and you're like oh well maybe I'll be like check for like

590
00:40:31.080 --> 00:40:38.280
78 years now can a restaurant business become a billion dollar business as fast as a software

591
00:40:38.280 --> 00:40:42.680
company or technology company no but what did we say your goal was set a hundred million bucks

592
00:40:43.320 --> 00:40:47.320
a hundred million bucks that means you have to get about 10 million dollars in profit in the

593
00:40:47.320 --> 00:40:53.640
business between now and the time you die doable that's not a promise there's not a guarantee

594
00:40:53.640 --> 00:40:59.080
I'm just saying it's doable and so even if you're like okay why have a dry cleaning business okay

595
00:40:59.080 --> 00:41:03.480
well we can make that a tour franchise model and then scale that way we can privately own them

596
00:41:03.480 --> 00:41:07.800
and just keep compounding the the business and what is what's the business we really in when

597
00:41:07.800 --> 00:41:12.040
we're in dry cleaning honest truth I don't know I've never been in it what I would do is I talked

598
00:41:12.040 --> 00:41:15.560
about your dry clean people what sucks the most about the business maybe talents not that hard

599
00:41:15.560 --> 00:41:19.800
and directly because maybe the skills of many of dry cleaning business are not that tough maybe the

600
00:41:19.800 --> 00:41:23.880
issue is the machines break a lot and you're actually like actually I'm in the logistics and you know

601
00:41:23.880 --> 00:41:27.160
machining business I need a lot of tech inside of that business okay well that's the business

602
00:41:27.160 --> 00:41:32.280
you're in right like ask people who are in the business what the hardest part of it is right oftentimes

603
00:41:32.280 --> 00:41:36.040
they'll give you the big-haired problem and then you just get to say is that the type of problem

604
00:41:36.040 --> 00:41:40.360
that I prefer to solve and this is a frame that Laila uses a lot that I love when we're when we're

605
00:41:40.360 --> 00:41:44.360
we're helping an entrepreneur make a big a big decision what we'll do is they say hey there's

606
00:41:44.360 --> 00:41:48.280
these two paths side in front of me and I'm not sure should I do the franchise should I do the

607
00:41:48.280 --> 00:41:53.640
private home all right now the big overarching thing that no one seems to mention is we might ask

608
00:41:53.640 --> 00:42:00.760
what's the goal right but the subtext underneath of that is in what timeline because almost all

609
00:42:00.760 --> 00:42:06.280
goals are accomplishable on a long enough timeline but there's an unspoken thing that all entrepreneurs

610
00:42:06.280 --> 00:42:12.520
will like yes I would like that yesterday please and without without risk or or work right or any

611
00:42:12.520 --> 00:42:17.080
level of uncertainty of course there's uncertainty you don't know what to do yet now back to the two

612
00:42:17.080 --> 00:42:20.520
paths let's say that you're making that decision I want to start a franchise or I want to keep

613
00:42:20.520 --> 00:42:27.480
privately out okay if this is the path what you want to do is you want to adequately be able to

614
00:42:27.480 --> 00:42:32.040
know what the big hairy problem is in each of those paths because there's one and they're different

615
00:42:33.080 --> 00:42:37.320
and then you ask the fog question which is which of these problems would I rather have

616
00:42:38.120 --> 00:42:42.840
followed to that is which problem do I feel more equipped to solve today and so that gives you

617
00:42:42.840 --> 00:42:46.280
a lot of insight because a lot of some people want to think about the upside but the downside

618
00:42:46.280 --> 00:42:51.800
mitigation is what gets you to the upside like Elon has this really great quote that he has from

619
00:42:51.800 --> 00:42:56.200
somebody else but he says entrepreneurship is a lot like staring to the abyss and eating glass

620
00:42:56.200 --> 00:43:00.200
the staring the best part is because you're constantly facing the uncertainty of the business

621
00:43:00.200 --> 00:43:05.560
and existential risk to the business every single day feeling like it might not work right on the

622
00:43:05.560 --> 00:43:10.920
eating glass side it's that entrepreneurship is the most efficient funnel for having nothing but bad

623
00:43:10.920 --> 00:43:16.280
news so think about it like this there are problems that are very hard to solve and there are problems

624
00:43:16.280 --> 00:43:22.680
that people don't want to solve you get to have the best of both as in you get problems that no one

625
00:43:22.680 --> 00:43:26.680
wants to solve and they're really hard right problems that are hard that people want to solve

626
00:43:26.680 --> 00:43:30.440
they'll still work on them for you problems that are easy the people don't want to do

627
00:43:30.440 --> 00:43:35.000
ah you can usually pay someone enough but like it's solvable but it's the ones that really suck

628
00:43:35.000 --> 00:43:39.640
in no one wants that you get to have and what happens is this becomes your lens of the world

629
00:43:39.640 --> 00:43:44.440
because you just think all day every day is problems that absolutely blow and don't want to do

630
00:43:44.440 --> 00:43:49.720
that but you have to do it because who else is gonna do it it's your business and so every single

631
00:43:49.720 --> 00:43:55.000
day is just trudging through this mock and you think that somehow another business is gonna have

632
00:43:55.000 --> 00:44:01.480
different mechanics but this is a feature of entrepreneurship not a bug the mechanics of

633
00:44:01.480 --> 00:44:05.160
entrepreneurship and ownership and especially specifically being CEO being the person who's calling

634
00:44:05.160 --> 00:44:10.040
the shots that's your life and that's where you get compensated for and so there's a lot of

635
00:44:10.680 --> 00:44:16.200
romanticism about entrepreneurship the freedom that entrepreneurship gives you well it depends how big

636
00:44:16.200 --> 00:44:22.520
you want to go because basically the day that you stop eating the last the day that you you

637
00:44:22.520 --> 00:44:27.160
you stop dealing with that is the day that in my opinion you sacrifice something for potential

638
00:44:27.160 --> 00:44:31.800
for comfort and I think that's okay things totally okay but that's a trade you get to choose to make

639
00:44:32.920 --> 00:44:36.360
but the end of the day I said that there's two big reasons that people say I think I should switch

640
00:44:36.360 --> 00:44:39.720
my business one is that the business I have is currently not scalable hopefully I've popped

641
00:44:39.720 --> 00:44:44.280
that balloon for you and the other is that I don't think that this thing could become super big

642
00:44:44.760 --> 00:44:48.920
well we have to ask question how big and why do you want it to be that big is if it's just for you

643
00:44:48.920 --> 00:44:52.680
go you're probably never gonna make it because it's too hard and you already have satisfied your

644
00:44:52.680 --> 00:44:56.680
material needs so the reason that those massive companies existed because the people who started

645
00:44:56.680 --> 00:45:01.400
them genuinely thought that it's almost like their purpose in life was to make was to do this

646
00:45:01.400 --> 00:45:04.680
service for the world it has a result the company continued to grow and they were willing to do

647
00:45:04.680 --> 00:45:09.240
with all the glass with an entire period of time and we talk about Jeff Bezos with Amazon yeah

648
00:45:09.240 --> 00:45:15.560
you know it's only just been like a chill 30 years brand was on 35 like we talk about these fast

649
00:45:15.560 --> 00:45:21.800
growth tech like Facebook's like 20 something years old formally notice Facebook excuse me all right

650
00:45:21.800 --> 00:45:26.280
and so at the end of the day you're gonna have this choice and I want you to know that there is

651
00:45:26.280 --> 00:45:31.560
absolutely a version of your business that can become $100 million I really genuinely like I

652
00:45:31.560 --> 00:45:36.040
thought very hard time having someone convince me that there's not a version of just about any

653
00:45:36.040 --> 00:45:39.720
business because there's because of this no matter how small the niches there's eight billion

654
00:45:39.720 --> 00:45:45.000
people in the world and so with online we can now access that this might not have been true 30

655
00:45:45.000 --> 00:45:50.760
years ago but today kind of this anything brick and mortar you can scale nationally any national

656
00:45:50.760 --> 00:45:54.440
size business now if you're like well I'm in a country that only has seven seven people okay well

657
00:45:54.440 --> 00:45:58.360
then guess what you become international are you saying it's impossible or difficult want to make

658
00:45:58.360 --> 00:46:02.760
sure we're clear here I don't know how to go to national do you think no one else is going

659
00:46:02.760 --> 00:46:07.240
international for oh people have done it therefore it is possible therefore I can learn I think about

660
00:46:07.240 --> 00:46:10.600
these big area problems because this is what hopefully the entire point of this video is figure out

661
00:46:10.600 --> 00:46:14.040
the business you're really in and being able to confront the problem ahead of you so that you don't

662
00:46:14.920 --> 00:46:19.960
switch paths and you actually solve the thing they do the next level while you're going through this

663
00:46:19.960 --> 00:46:24.520
I think that there's this personal experience that you have to learn the difference between which is

664
00:46:24.520 --> 00:46:29.400
what's good hard and what's bad hard and this actually ladders up to a very classic entrepreneur

665
00:46:29.400 --> 00:46:34.120
question of do I push or do I pivot and you're like wait a second I think you said that I shouldn't

666
00:46:34.120 --> 00:46:40.920
switch new things it's different so if you're and this typically the pivots happen typically when

667
00:46:40.920 --> 00:46:45.000
you're smaller not when you're bigger just to be clear and when I say smaller I'd say like sub three

668
00:46:45.000 --> 00:46:49.880
million is when you're like kind of these pivots kind of happen above that like a true like true

669
00:46:49.880 --> 00:46:54.280
pivots like we're doing something totally different versus you know three million plus let's like

670
00:46:54.280 --> 00:46:59.000
we need to add this tiny little tweak to our our service to make it better right the good kind of

671
00:46:59.000 --> 00:47:03.960
hard is when you have underlying assumptions that you believe to be true from first principles

672
00:47:03.960 --> 00:47:07.880
and just have to push through via iteration that sounded like a bunch of words so let me just give

673
00:47:07.880 --> 00:47:11.400
you an example so if I'm going to start running tiktok ads for one of our companies because we

674
00:47:11.400 --> 00:47:14.360
did we decide like you know what one of the things the big area problem here is that we don't

675
00:47:14.360 --> 00:47:17.640
know how to advertise on paid and that's what's that's what it's going to take for us to unlock

676
00:47:17.640 --> 00:47:21.480
I would ask the question let's say I have an accounting firm are there accountants on tiktok

677
00:47:21.480 --> 00:47:26.840
yes sorry if I sell two accounts right I would say okay are there accountants on tiktok

678
00:47:26.840 --> 00:47:31.560
any as would be yes and so it's like okay well is there a way that we can run as profitably to get

679
00:47:31.560 --> 00:47:34.680
our messaging in front of those people if the answer is yes then I fundamentally believe that

680
00:47:34.680 --> 00:47:39.000
there's a profitable way to turn those eyeballs on the customers period now you might have run

681
00:47:39.000 --> 00:47:42.680
the tiktok ad to get accountants and not gotten them but it doesn't mean that getting accountants

682
00:47:42.680 --> 00:47:47.880
on tiktok is impossible it's just you don't know how to do it solvable and you might be like oh but

683
00:47:47.880 --> 00:47:51.960
that's going to be hard remember there's going to be a big dollar sign a big price tag

684
00:47:52.040 --> 00:47:56.520
associated with solving that problem let's say if we we start running ads and we don't immediately

685
00:47:56.520 --> 00:48:00.760
see our why that's the good kind of art because we can iterate remember I say good kind of you

686
00:48:00.760 --> 00:48:05.160
iterate right do we get enough clicks do we get enough opt-ins are they the people opt-in or

687
00:48:05.160 --> 00:48:08.920
the right type of people if not maybe we need to change the messaging change the targeting right

688
00:48:08.920 --> 00:48:12.280
all these are just iterative but it's not that it's impossible it's just it takes work

689
00:48:13.160 --> 00:48:17.720
this is iterative hard that's good hard and so to be clear I don't see losing money on ads is

690
00:48:17.720 --> 00:48:20.920
losing money I see it is investing in something that's going to increase the enterprise value by

691
00:48:20.920 --> 00:48:26.200
creating another acquisition channel and simultaneously diversifying how we get customers and so

692
00:48:26.200 --> 00:48:30.680
having multiple acquisition channels meaningfully increases enterprise value without even having

693
00:48:30.680 --> 00:48:34.600
additional profit because it decreases the risk for the in a choir as in the person is going to buy

694
00:48:34.600 --> 00:48:38.200
the company right if I have two ways of getting customers I feel way better five six ways again

695
00:48:38.200 --> 00:48:41.880
customers I feel even better than that but not only that each of the six ways also brings more

696
00:48:41.880 --> 00:48:45.080
customers seven also grows the business and he increases the risk it's one of the valuable things

697
00:48:45.080 --> 00:48:48.520
you can do in a business and so it would make sense that the reason it's such a valuable thing

698
00:48:48.520 --> 00:48:52.520
you're doing the business is because it's hard and because it's hard it's why most people don't

699
00:48:52.520 --> 00:48:57.160
do it which is why it is valuable and it is rare I can't say that I want this really rare outcome

700
00:48:57.720 --> 00:49:03.320
and then at the same breaths say I'm not willing to do very rare levels of work so let's let's

701
00:49:03.320 --> 00:49:07.720
do I have to they go so if a business is worth 10 million dollars okay and I can add a second

702
00:49:07.720 --> 00:49:12.120
acquisition channel that doubles the revenue and diversifies the risk that might add 15 million

703
00:49:12.120 --> 00:49:17.640
dollars to enterprise right so if I lose a hundred thousand dollars figuring out tick tock ads

704
00:49:17.640 --> 00:49:22.440
over six months but I get a ten million dollar return on it would I do it absolutely but the

705
00:49:22.440 --> 00:49:26.920
thing is is I say this and if people in other heads or they're listening they're like yeah I believe

706
00:49:26.920 --> 00:49:34.680
that but you have to see these as investments in the business like I'm going to invest this time

707
00:49:34.680 --> 00:49:40.600
in this money and I am willing to not see success for this period of time before deciding to truly

708
00:49:40.600 --> 00:49:45.160
call it and honestly though when you decide to truly call it is just your ability to do with

709
00:49:45.160 --> 00:49:50.520
pain so there's something about human behavior around this which comes down to frustration tolerance

710
00:49:50.520 --> 00:49:56.120
so the basic behavior is how many times you try something again before you quit and this

711
00:49:56.120 --> 00:50:01.400
typically has to do with your history of being reinforced after multiple attempts so I'll give you

712
00:50:01.400 --> 00:50:06.680
a very simple example so if you go to a door and you try to open the door and you turn the handle

713
00:50:06.680 --> 00:50:12.920
and it doesn't turn how many times do you jiggle the handle yet well it's going to depend on the

714
00:50:12.920 --> 00:50:17.240
amount of times in your past where when you jiggle it on the second time or third time it actually

715
00:50:17.240 --> 00:50:24.120
opened and so I'll give you a different role example if you say hey I'm not going to buy something

716
00:50:24.120 --> 00:50:29.000
from you and the salesman says well like have you thought about it like this or have you thought

717
00:50:29.000 --> 00:50:33.080
about that the amount of times that that salesman is willing to both follow up and ask again on

718
00:50:33.080 --> 00:50:38.600
the call is directly proportional to the amount of times in his past or her past that after asking a

719
00:50:38.600 --> 00:50:44.280
second third fourth fifth time they were rewarded for doing so and so if someone gets rewarded again

720
00:50:44.280 --> 00:50:47.880
intermittent reinforcement doesn't mean they have to get reinforced every time they ask five times

721
00:50:47.880 --> 00:50:52.760
if they get reinforced enough times that they ask five times they will ask five times every time

722
00:50:52.760 --> 00:50:59.000
so if you have a dog and they come to the table and you give them food because they beg right

723
00:50:59.000 --> 00:51:03.800
then what do you do you reinforce begging so they come back and they beg now if they come back and

724
00:51:03.800 --> 00:51:25.880
then you don't give it to them because you execute your well power and they sit there and

725
00:51:25.880 --> 00:51:32.200
That they have to wait for extended periods of time. You've rewarded them trying again and again and again and again

726
00:51:32.200 --> 00:51:36.840
And so entrepreneurs, we are like this too and if you're newer to the game

727
00:51:37.040 --> 00:51:40.960
Then I would encourage you to increase your frustration tolerance

728
00:51:40.960 --> 00:51:43.320
I can't manufacture the win that you're going to have

729
00:51:43.320 --> 00:51:48.160
But this is why I try to make these videos is that the amount of times that it has taken me

730
00:51:48.680 --> 00:51:53.640
A hundred iterations to get an ad campaign to work is a lot and so now

731
00:51:53.640 --> 00:51:58.760
I just have a fundamental belief and like if we keep working on this we will make this work because down to fundamentals

732
00:51:58.760 --> 00:52:01.240
There are eyeballs here and we can pay to to reach them

733
00:52:01.240 --> 00:52:05.800
But there's no reason physically why we can't get them to take a click and then ultimately buy our thing

734
00:52:06.120 --> 00:52:10.160
We just aren't good enough and so we just have to look are there people who could buy my stuff on this platform

735
00:52:10.160 --> 00:52:12.400
Is there a way to reach them and can I do this profitably? Yes?

736
00:52:12.400 --> 00:52:15.200
Great then we will make money on a long enough time horizon

737
00:52:15.200 --> 00:52:20.920
And so the only thing we have to do is just not run out of money while we try I said that this is what this looks like in reality

738
00:52:21.160 --> 00:52:24.760
You make this decision to make this investment because you see the big price tag on the other side

739
00:52:25.080 --> 00:52:29.080
Right and you say it would be reasonable for me to spend a hundred thousand dollars a million dollars

740
00:52:29.080 --> 00:52:33.640
Whatever the number is for you and six months to get this thing that's going to double our acquisition

741
00:52:34.040 --> 00:52:36.040
Right of course you would make that investment

742
00:52:36.040 --> 00:52:39.640
But the first month you spend a hundred grand and then you don't make money back people throw their hands up

743
00:52:39.640 --> 00:52:40.840
But they're like ah it doesn't work for me

744
00:52:40.840 --> 00:52:42.680
Of course it didn't work the first time

745
00:52:43.240 --> 00:52:45.240
This is why you get paid to solve big problems

746
00:52:45.800 --> 00:52:49.480
That the types of problems that occur in entrepreneurship is they're all one of a kind

747
00:52:50.120 --> 00:52:53.080
And you're like wait a second I thought business behaving patterns absolutely

748
00:52:53.320 --> 00:52:56.840
So I think there's this great you know like history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes

749
00:52:57.240 --> 00:53:03.080
And so it's the same thing in business like if I knew every single thing that I was going to do with every business that I started

750
00:53:03.560 --> 00:53:06.840
Of then it would be instant right you'd be instantly instantly bigger

751
00:53:06.840 --> 00:53:10.520
But no there's similarities there's patterns that you recognize but you're like okay

752
00:53:10.520 --> 00:53:15.080
We're gonna have to turn on paid ads, but we've never done this for B2B on TikTok

753
00:53:15.160 --> 00:53:18.600
So we're gonna have to learn that little nuance in this setting

754
00:53:19.080 --> 00:53:20.840
And even if you dump B2B on TikTok

755
00:53:20.840 --> 00:53:25.080
Maybe you haven't done B2B in TikTok for accounting, but you did it for marketing agencies, right?

756
00:53:25.080 --> 00:53:28.200
So like okay fine we did that there's always going to be more nuance

757
00:53:28.200 --> 00:53:31.240
Because I can always say cool you did that a year ago, but what about today?

758
00:53:31.880 --> 00:53:39.400
So the idea that you're going to know the solution is a false belief that will make entrepreneurship significantly harder for you

759
00:53:39.960 --> 00:53:42.120
Or at least more painful for you

760
00:53:42.120 --> 00:53:45.080
So I said earlier this little diet tribe that I was going on

761
00:53:45.720 --> 00:53:49.000
There's good kind of hard and there's back on hard. So what's back on hard?

762
00:53:49.960 --> 00:53:53.080
Back on hard is when your underlying assumptions are proven incorrect

763
00:53:53.720 --> 00:53:55.480
So this is the classic pusher pivot, right?

764
00:53:55.480 --> 00:53:58.760
So if you've pivoted several times, but I've pushed a lot more

765
00:53:59.400 --> 00:54:02.680
So you pivot when your underlying assumptions are proven incorrect meaning

766
00:54:03.080 --> 00:54:07.400
So let's say for example if a report came out saying TikTok had banned accounts from the platform

767
00:54:07.640 --> 00:54:09.640
Then I would say we don't push on TikTok

768
00:54:09.720 --> 00:54:13.080
The underlying assumption was there are people here. We can reach them profitably

769
00:54:13.240 --> 00:54:15.240
Well, the underlying assumptions wrong. That's not true

770
00:54:15.560 --> 00:54:18.840
So at that point we have to pivot to a different platform or different advertising with it

771
00:54:19.240 --> 00:54:23.640
And so I just use this a clear test of what I'm being stubborn versus what I'm being intelligent

772
00:54:24.600 --> 00:54:26.200
And so before making a big investment

773
00:54:26.200 --> 00:54:29.240
I like to identify what I call the need to beliefs, right?

774
00:54:29.240 --> 00:54:33.800
Or the assumptions that I believe to be true or must believe to be true in order for the remainder

775
00:54:34.200 --> 00:54:36.360
To follow as desired, right?

776
00:54:36.440 --> 00:54:38.680
So as long as those assumptions are true, we keep pushing

777
00:54:38.680 --> 00:54:42.680
And if one of those assumptions is proven wrong with supporting data then you change

778
00:54:43.240 --> 00:54:46.360
And so fundamentally that's the ignored tax we all pay

779
00:54:47.080 --> 00:54:50.840
Is that sometimes you have these assumptions because you can't know everything you're not god

780
00:54:50.840 --> 00:54:54.120
And so sometimes you got to find out on your own and you find out that

781
00:54:54.760 --> 00:54:56.520
That assumption that I had is not true

782
00:54:56.520 --> 00:54:59.080
And that was kind of like the whole thing this was predicated on

783
00:54:59.080 --> 00:55:00.440
And so then you pivot

784
00:55:00.440 --> 00:55:04.280
You find something else out that is true that you didn't know was true before

785
00:55:04.360 --> 00:55:05.640
And then you make a change

786
00:55:05.640 --> 00:55:10.120
I'd tell the story in my $100 million offers book of a good friend of mine who

787
00:55:11.160 --> 00:55:13.720
Had a technology bus so you think oh technology

788
00:55:13.720 --> 00:55:16.680
This is something that you know obviously it's going to be cutting edge

789
00:55:17.320 --> 00:55:21.800
But what he chose to do was try and you know turn around a dying industry

790
00:55:21.800 --> 00:55:23.880
So we tried to turn around newspapers

791
00:55:23.880 --> 00:55:26.040
So he said hey I'm going to take you into the digital age

792
00:55:26.600 --> 00:55:30.920
And we're going to have an ad product for you that'll take all your all your print ads

793
00:55:30.920 --> 00:55:33.240
And turn them into online ads on your site

794
00:55:33.320 --> 00:55:36.680
It's just you know you can use our software to do it and it's one click whatever it's very easy

795
00:55:36.840 --> 00:55:41.160
And so with that you think okay that business makes sense you're going to transition these guys over

796
00:55:41.160 --> 00:55:42.920
It gives them a whole another thing that they can sell

797
00:55:43.720 --> 00:55:45.480
Cool groovy now

798
00:55:45.480 --> 00:55:46.840
What was the problem with the business?

799
00:55:47.560 --> 00:55:50.440
What are the need to believes in that business the need to believe through that

800
00:55:51.320 --> 00:55:55.000
Newspapers with their inherent business model are going to continue to exist

801
00:55:55.720 --> 00:56:00.280
Right, that's a need to believe like if this is if they can't make money with their current

802
00:56:00.920 --> 00:56:02.280
Because to think about it goes

803
00:56:02.280 --> 00:56:04.280
Maybe maybe

804
00:56:04.280 --> 00:56:08.760
You could get you know a certain percentage of you know newspapers to switch over to your thing

805
00:56:09.240 --> 00:56:14.120
But if all of their revenue from print goes down to 10% of what it was before

806
00:56:15.000 --> 00:56:20.120
One maybe if you had the other you know online side they've already lost their distribution base

807
00:56:20.600 --> 00:56:23.480
So fundamentally newspapers would have to continue to exist

808
00:56:24.200 --> 00:56:28.440
In order for that business to be viable now at the onset you might get into that business thinking well

809
00:56:28.600 --> 00:56:30.440
I'm gonna help them convert that makes sense

810
00:56:30.680 --> 00:56:37.800
But if those businesses cease to exist there is no one left to convert because all the people have just switched their consumption out of their platforms

811
00:56:38.600 --> 00:56:42.120
And so in that instance that's what I consider bad hard

812
00:56:42.600 --> 00:56:45.880
That's like the underlying assumption of this business is no longer true

813
00:56:46.280 --> 00:56:49.320
It's proven incorrect. We thought that they would continue to exist

814
00:56:49.320 --> 00:56:51.960
We could flip them over and they'd generate the same revenues they were before

815
00:56:52.360 --> 00:56:56.440
And so then we'd have this massive market to go after but in reality many of them just went out of business

816
00:56:56.920 --> 00:57:01.000
And so there's really no one to go after the few that did that you could go after continue to shrink over time

817
00:57:01.480 --> 00:57:04.600
Not a good market to go after that is a bad hard

818
00:57:04.840 --> 00:57:09.320
It's super hard just like the other hards except it's the kind of hard that you can't fix

819
00:57:09.880 --> 00:57:13.640
And so in that setting you have to pivot he would then have to ask the question

820
00:57:14.360 --> 00:57:18.520
Okay, what other businesses could I add digital ads to

821
00:57:19.640 --> 00:57:24.440
And then at that point you'd have to say okay, maybe I could take blogs and make it make a network of blogs

822
00:57:24.520 --> 00:57:29.880
And that's kind of more new age traffic and help them either cross sell across each others

823
00:57:29.960 --> 00:57:33.800
And you know basically create this network of traffic like that would be an interesting business

824
00:57:33.880 --> 00:57:36.040
Again, there'd be need to believe around that as well

825
00:57:36.120 --> 00:57:40.360
But at that point you'd have to have a real existential question of like who do we want to be when we grow up

826
00:57:40.360 --> 00:57:42.440
Because who we thought we wanted to be ain't gonna work out

827
00:57:43.240 --> 00:57:45.240
Now little little subtext here

828
00:57:45.800 --> 00:57:51.800
It's very rare in what I would consider traditional businesses to have a need to believe that's actually not true

829
00:57:52.760 --> 00:57:59.640
If you're an accountant you're in lawn care you're in your plumbing business your website design

830
00:57:59.960 --> 00:58:05.160
Notwithstanding AI for the time being and robots taking over notwithstanding those two things

831
00:58:05.800 --> 00:58:09.480
For the last however many years 50 60 80 years those businesses

832
00:58:09.960 --> 00:58:15.480
More or less you not being able to scale them was a you problem is fundamentally you didn't know how

833
00:58:16.680 --> 00:58:18.440
That was it there wasn't anything wrong with the market

834
00:58:18.520 --> 00:58:22.200
There's nothing wrong with HVAC there's nothing wrong with probably another one lawn care all those things are going to do exist

835
00:58:22.600 --> 00:58:25.880
And so if you were limited in what any kind of business that I would consider a normal business

836
00:58:26.280 --> 00:58:29.160
Just note that there's nothing to do with the scalability of your business

837
00:58:29.400 --> 00:58:31.720
It's your ability to scale that is the problem

838
00:58:32.280 --> 00:58:33.480
yours

839
00:58:33.480 --> 00:58:37.480
And so at the end of the day a lot of entrepreneurs get into this for some sort of freedom or some sort of monetary

840
00:58:37.480 --> 00:58:39.560
Or because they want to solve a problem or a combination of all three

841
00:58:40.120 --> 00:58:43.880
But we fundamentally get paid to solve big hairy problems

842
00:58:44.120 --> 00:58:49.000
And the bigger and hairier the problem in general the bigger and hairier the payoff

843
00:58:49.240 --> 00:58:51.560
Paul Graham said this quote on Twitter the other day and I really liked it

844
00:58:51.720 --> 00:58:52.680
He said

845
00:58:52.680 --> 00:58:55.960
If you want to make a million dollars you must endure a million dollars of pain

846
00:58:57.480 --> 00:59:01.560
And I like to consider how much enterprise value I'll get on the other side of this concrete wall

847
00:59:01.560 --> 00:59:06.920
Then I'll bash my head into and if the number is big enough and I've got a strong enough helmet

848
00:59:07.160 --> 00:59:11.800
I will keep bashing into it so I can get to the other side and that's what keeps motivating me

849
00:59:11.880 --> 00:59:17.480
So as long as I'm solving the right kinds of problems the ones where I can reason to first principles that there is a solution

850
00:59:18.040 --> 00:59:20.040
And that it in that solution will make money

851
00:59:20.600 --> 00:59:25.480
Then I keep going and if I get to the bottom of it and I find out that my underlying assumptions wrong

852
00:59:25.880 --> 00:59:27.880
I have to change and that's just as hard

853
00:59:28.520 --> 00:59:31.080
And so for the entrepreneur star crew listening to this we're watching this

854
00:59:31.800 --> 00:59:33.560
Identify the business that you're really in

855
00:59:34.440 --> 00:59:36.440
Confront the big hairy problem in front of you

856
00:59:37.240 --> 00:59:44.920
Don't jump ship thinking that some reason the grass is greener or that the woman in the red dress is somehow different and not crazy from the woman that you're married to right now

857
00:59:45.240 --> 00:59:48.600
She just has a different kind of crazy and you'll discover that in time

858
00:59:48.920 --> 00:59:54.360
So you might as well be happy with one you got because you know what you need to do to make this person happy and you keep forging

859
00:59:55.000 --> 00:59:57.000
and then you decide

860
00:59:57.000 --> 01:00:01.160
Whether or not you would push or you want to pivot based on the underlying assumptions and if you push

861
01:00:01.720 --> 01:00:06.520
Focus on making progress and breaking through that wall because the payoff is on the other side

862
01:00:06.840 --> 01:00:08.840
And that's what makes entrepreneurship worthwhile