← Build with Leila Hormozi
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Most people. Most people are not pivoting because they're strategic. They are pivoting because they're bored or scared or because they hurt their real first obstacle. And then they're like, oh, my gosh, this is too hard. This is so hard. I've hit my hard limit. I no longer can tolerate the kind of hard that it is required to run this business. What's up, guys? Welcome back to Build In. Today I want to talk about doubling down rather than diversifying. So I have been seeing this trend everywhere, and people have been asking me about it everywhere. Founders have been hitting me up. People on Instagram have been hitting me up. People in our advisory practice have been asking the question. It's like, layla, should I pivot? The market's changed. AI is hot. Like, the AI run. Like, I need to do something different. And I totally understand that. And I would be lying if I told you that I don't have those same thoughts in my head at times of like, oh, my gosh, should I completely change my business based on this new thing or this new trend or the new way the market's going? But I'm like, okay, hold up, brain. Before I burn down everything that I've built, let me ask you something, right? And I literally ask myself this. What if the problem isn't my business? What if the problem is that I've gotten lazy about all the ways that I can make my business better? And that's the frame I want to share with you guys today. Because here's what nobody tells you. Pivoting has become the new quitting. It just has better PR around it. It just sounds better. It just doesn't sound shitty when you tell it to somebody else. They're like, oh, I'm pivoting my business, Guys, you're not pivoting your business. You're quitting and starting a completely new one and maybe using, like, the same team. That's really what's happening. And I see this happening all over the place, and I get it. I have been there because you're grinding, things get hard, maybe growth slows down, and then suddenly there's like, a shiny new opportunity. It looks way more fucking appealing than the thing that you've been fixing right in front of you, right? And you're like, man, this thing has so much baggage. There's so much shit. I don't know if I can fix it. Here's what I've learned, and I. Gosh, I just really try and talk about this a lot, but I don't Know if I even talk about it enough. But after building and selling multiple companies and helping hundreds of people, thousands of people, tens of thousands of people scale their companies, most people. Most people are not pivoting because they're strategic. They are pivoting because they're bored or scared or because they hurt their real first obstacle. And then they're like, oh, my gosh, this is too hard. This is so hard. I've hit my hard limit. I no longer can tolerate the kind of hard that it is required to run this business. Does that resonate? I hear this all the time. And get this, okay. The average business doesn't even hit peak growth until year seven to 10. And most people pivot or quit by year three to five, the majority of founders. So you see, the problem here is that you're literally leaving before the party starts. And so while you're busy chasing whatever, the next thing is chasing the trend, trying to pivot your business, thinking about all the opportunities, distracting yourself from serving your customers. Your competitor is going deep and stealing your fucking market share. I tell people all the time, like, don't focus on your competition. Focus on your customer. If you focus on your customer, all the new trends in the market, all the AI, all that, that just becomes tools that you can do to serve them to a greater degree. And the thing is, is that if you're like, okay, that's not enough for me, Leila. Well, you know what? It is. Your competition loves when you pivot, right? Because every time you pivot your business, every time you get distracted, every time you have shiny object syndrome, it means they get your market share for free. Because people. People don't want somebody who's dipping their toes in to be the person they're doing business with. They want the expert, right? And every time that you pivot, you distract yourself, you start something new, you advertise something new, well, you just have taken off the crown, my friend. You have just said, I am not the market leader, and I'm giving it to somebody else. Because a true market leader doubles down on that market. They double down on the thing that they're doing. They don't continue to distract themselves over and over again every time a shiny object pops up. Because every restart is a reset, and every reset costs you years that you cannot get back in your business. So here's my favorite principle that I want to share with you guys, okay? And it's counterintuitive. I call it the boring business rule, okay? The less exciting your business sounds at a dinner party, the More money it probably makes. Why? Because everybody else gets fucking bored and moves on. And they leave all that money on the table for you to go gobble up and dominate. And all the time that you spend pivoting is puns. And all the time you spend pivoting is spent. And all the time you spend pivoting is time that you do not spend dominating your market. So why do we really want to pivot? Right? We really want to pivot because things feel hard, the thing right in front of us, and we have this illusion that things will be easier if we change. That's it. It's why people leave relationships, it's why people leave friendships. It's why people leave cities. It's why people live like that is what we do. But the reality is, is that the grass is not greener on the other side. And so I think we just first have to admit to ourselves, why do you want to pivot? Is it because you really want to capitalize on the AI revolution? Or is it because you're just not good enough yet at the thing that you're currently doing to get the returns you want? I've had so many people come to me. They're like, well, I think I need to build an AI company. And I'm like, dude, you can't even make your dental clinic work. And you think that you're going to build an AI company that's going to beat out OpenAI and Meta and all these companies, you don't think they're going to gobble up your fucking market share in the next few years? You can't even make a dental clinic work, and yet you think you can build the next open AI? We have to ask ourselves these real questions. Am I even qualified to capitalize on this opportunity? I'll tell you guys, you know, people come to me a lot and they're like, well, Layla, what are you doing about AI? You know, acquisition.com, market leader. I was like, listen, I am not starting an AI company because of this AI run that we have. I am investing in AI companies because we are an investment company. I am integrating AI into the way that I do work. I am using AI and learning about it so I can teach it to our clients and partners. So I am integrating it fully into my business in all ways, shape or form. In fact, this last quarter, I went all in on it. Hired a cto, built a complete engineering team from scratch, built complete AI infrastructure from scratch. But it takes time, right? And I'm not saying I'm going to Change my business and become, quote, become an AI business. I'm going to integrate AI into the business I already have. So there's just a nuance there. And I think a lot of people, like, you're thinking, I need to go start this new thing. It's like, what about the thing right in front of you? You know, say your dental clinic, you're like, well, how am I going to AI? It's like, great. How can you use it to make a better customer experience than fucking anybody? How can you use it to diagnose your patients better than anybody? Faster. How can you even use it to make appointments faster? Train dental clinicians faster? Like, think about all the ways that you can use it to make a better business that you currently have and use it as a competitive edge rather than like, oh, dental clinics. Lord knows how long those will be around. I need to go start an AI company. It's like, one, we need our teeth cleaned. But two, you guys know, if you follow me on Instagram, like, I didn't go for the last seven years and I just went for the first time, no cappy stuff. But that being said, it's not about pivoting out of the business that we're in. It's about pivoting in to the new way of doing the current business we have. Okay, so let's think about two companies that could have pivoted, but they decided to evolve, to grow, to pivot inward instead. Okay, 1994, Jeff Bezos, what was he doing? He was selling books online. That's it, books. I wonder if he woke up one day and was like, you know what? Books are boring. Fuck this shit. Let me pivot to cloud computing. No, he said, how do I become the fucking best book company and then the best everything company, the best commerce company. The thing is, is that he used the same infrastructure, the same customer obsession. He just went deeper and then eventually went wider. Another example, right, Reed Hastings, he started with DVDs, remember when you used to ship them out from Netflix by mail and you have to mail them back? And then when streaming happened, he didn't just abandon everything and say, I'm going to start a social media company where I stream things on the Internet? He evolved the same core mission. He got content to people more efficiently with better technology. That's it. And so I, I think what they understood that a lot of founders don't is that your business model isn't your identity. Your mission is what's your mission? That's your identity. Your business model does not need to be. So if that means that you now integrate AI into the model, great. But what's the mission? Has it remained the same? There's this quote that I heard. I don't even remember who said it, but it's really resonated with me, which is, champions don't change sports every season. Like Michael Jordan. I know he wanted to play golf at one point, but it's not like he was like, I'm going to play basketball, and then next season, tennis. They don't change sports every season. I tell myself this all the time because, honestly, I really want to master what I do. And I. I have seen how advantageous it is to master one thing. I'll even say, like, you know, when we decided to sell gym launch our first company, I knew that I was giving up a lot of mastery, and I was okay with it only because I realized that I had gotten into that industry by accident, not on purpose. And I was like, this isn't the one I choose to do the rest of my life. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. But I knew how much mastery I was giving up. I'm sure that if I had stayed in that industry, stayed in that company, like, we probably would have had a company even bigger than acquisition.com by now, because we had seven years in it. I just knew that for me, I was just like, that's okay. I don't need that. I don't need that money. I don't need that. I'm. I'm good. Starting over. I'm not gonna stop. I'm not gonna, like, do nothing until I die. I don't plan on retiring. Like, this is what I want to do with the rest of my life. And so I made the trade. Now, here's the thing. A lot of us trick ourselves. We think the grass is greener on the other side. And the reality is, is that the grass is not greener on the other side. You know what happens when you finally break through something really fucking difficult? Our brains go, never again. That fucking sucked. Let's find something easier. That's what our brains do. That's what they're built to do. And so what happens is we start fantasizing about the perfect business with no problems, no difficult customers, no operational headaches. Fantasizing, not reality. Okay? The reality to check is that the only reason the new thing looks easier is because you haven't tried to scale it yet. Every business has the same amount of problems. The question is, do you want familiar problems that you know how to solve? Or do you want brand new problems that you have no clue about, that your brain's gonna say the same thing after you overcome those? Never again. That sucked. Let's find something easier. Not to mention, I remember reading this really cool set. I think it's by McKinsey, or maybe it was Harvard. 70% of pivots happen before a company hits peak profitability. So think about that. People literally give up and pivot their business right before the moment that they would have made the most amount of money. And the kicker is, is that not only do you leave all that money on the table, but then when you started from zero, you have to learn new problems, build new systems, when your original business could have been printing money by that point, could have been really helping customers by that point, could have been really growing and building something of impact at that point. And so while you learn new problems and learn how to solve them and trip up and take a long time to solve them because you're starting from scratch, somebody else is solving the old ones that you gave up for profit. And the only thing harder than building a business is literally rebuilding it every two fucking years. And some of you guys listening to this. That's what you do. Every two years, you're starting a new business. And you lie. You say, I'm just changing what I'm doing here. But it's like, no, you just took the same team and start a new one. It's probably not even the right team for the new business. Let's be real. And so what we want to understand is this. Your brain lies to you. Your brain loves novelty. It is wired to think that new equals progress. But that is not how business works, okay? New isn't strategy. New is therapy for those of us who cannot finish what we start, okay? And I say those of us, but, like, I can admit my deficiencies, okay? I can be a people pleaser. I can be too optimistic. I can believe in people's potential too much. I can take on too much on my plate. But I am not dilute in my focus. And what happens is that what do successful founders do? I learned this a long time ago. They fall in love with the process of optimizing and making things effective. They get excited about the boring shit that other people find boring and that other people give up, and that's what makes them excellent. They understand that mastery is not sexy, but it is what grows a business. And so I want you to think about, like this. I'm going to make this up. I'm going to call it the seven year rule, okay? The real money, the real returns, the real success shows up after year seven. When you built the systems, when you understand your market intimately, when you have optimized everything three, four, five times. But the thing is, is that most people quit by year three because they're just chasing that feeling of having something new. You're following your dopamine instead of discipline, of building a real business. And think about it. I think what I see a lot of people do is they, quote, optimize something one time and they're like, oh, I optimized. I got. I'm like, dude, what are you talking about? Like, what, what are we doing over here? Like, in business, you have to continue it over and over and over again. And that's where it really, really hit the sweet spot. And so while everybody else is jumping around like the big money, the smart money, the big success, the smart success, it is built when you dig the moat. When you go deep, I mean, you create something defensible. When I had my quarterly with my team, it was last quarter, I used a visual of building the castle. And then digging the moat. I said, great, we've spent three and a half years building a castle, now we dig the fucking moat. We create something insanely defensible that cannot be shook. That's what you do, and that's how you become a market leader. You can't just build the castle. You also have to build something that's defensible and that will stand the test of time. And a lot of people just don't stand around long enough to even pass the test of time, which is the real issue. And that's where I have to constantly tell myself, like, my brain lies to me. I know it wants new. I know it wants novelty. Guys, I love me a new business. I love me a new business. Like when I first started gym launch, it was the funnest thing ever. The first two years, so much fun. Starting acquisition dot com. First two years, so much fun. You know what I've hit in the last 18 months? The not so fun part? A lot of people think because of our brand that Access.com has been around for long. No, it has not. It has not been around that long. Right. And it's growing fast and it's exciting and all, but you know what? The fun, unpredictable, crazy, wild ride piece I'm after that, it's gone. And so now I'm in the like, Yep, gotta put these people in place. Gotta put this stuff in place. Gotta stay ahead of the market, Gotta defend the company, gotta get legal, finance this. Like all the stuff that's boring. But I've realized that excellence comes from boring. It doesn't come from trying something new over and over again. One thing that I was proud of is, like, I was able to hip thrust 500 pounds, right? And that's in the gym. That's an exercise. If you don't know, I hope you do. I didn't get there by quitting hip thrusting. Like, I've done it for, you know, four years straight. Every week, I'm hip thrusting more and more to get to 500 pound hip thrust. I didn't say, oh, I'm gonna do bench now, and I'm gonna do deadlifts. I'm gonna do. I only did things that optimize for hip thrust. And so I got to a 500 pound hip thrust. I mastered it, but it was boring as doing it every week. It got to the point where it didn't feel hard, didn't feel challenging. I wanted to try something else, but I was like, I set this goal up for myself. So that being said, if this resonates with you, listening to this today, I want you to ask three questions to yourself. If you're like, layla, I've been thinking about pivoting. I'm thinking about this AI revolution. Should I jump on the bandwagon? Okay, ask yourself these three questions. One, is this business model broken or is it just hard right now? Hard and broken are not the same thing. Hard means you're growing. Nothing you do moves the needle. That's the first question you ask. Now a second question you ask. Am I running towards something better, or am I running away from problems I don't know how to solve? Okay, if you run away from problems you don't know how to solve, I promise you, they will follow you into the next business. It'll be a new business, but it'll be the same founder with the same problems. This happens to everybody, okay? It sucks. It sucks to see it happen over and over again. The last question I want you to ask, what would this business look like if I optimized it for 10 times instead of starting over? What would this business look like if I optimize it 10 times over instead of starting over? Most people never ask this question. They assume that incremental improvement when they should be thinking about systematic transformation. And so that's what you really want to think about in your business. Your business doesn't need to exist within the current constraints that you currently see it in you need to get blue sky sometimes and get enough space to say, how could I 10x this business with just optimizing it? How could I 10x it with AI? How could I keep the same business, you know, and 10x my revenue just by integrating in AI? If you can't answer all of these questions in a certain way, then you're probably not ready to pivot. You probably got to get back to fucking work, okay? And I also think these are just gonna provoke the right thoughts you need to have in your brain to grow your business. Oftentimes, our business is just a set of questions that we've asked ourselves. And it's also, our business is a manifestation of our beliefs. So if you don't believe that your current business can get ahead with the AI revolution, it probably won't, because you won't think about it. But if you blue sky it, you could probably figure out a way. So here's my challenge for you. I want you to take the next 30 days, and I want you to ban yourself from researching new opportunities. I'm fucking serious. No market research. No, I'm just looking. I'm just testing. I'm just having this conversation. I'm just getting on this call. I'm just. I'm just going, this one mastermind. No, shut the fuck up. We're not doing any of that, okay? And I say this with fucking love, guys, but, like, no, we're not doing that. No conversations about this. Instead, spend that time asking, how can I 10x what I already have? How can I AI it? How can I modernize it? How can I make it so fucking good competitors can't touch it. The businesses that wins are not the ones that pivot the fastest. They are the ones that evolve in the smartest ways and stick around the longest. I do not think you need a new business. I think you need to, quote, fall back in love with the one that you have. And if you can't do that, maybe, maybe just consider this. Maybe the problem isn't the business. Maybe it's you. So let's commit to not looking for the easy button, because there is not one. But there's a better button, and it's called commitment. And right now, while everybody else pivots, commitment is your competitive advantage. Guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode. This was just really top of mind for me. If this resonated with you. If you see somebody that's out there and they're pivoting their business, they're continuously trying thing after thing, and they're just not reaping the reward. Please send this to them. More people need to hear this. I want more people winning. I want more people building fucking amazing businesses. And with that, I will see you guys on the next one.