If You Want More, You Have to Think Differently | Ep 274

Summary

Episode Overview

In Episode 274 of "Build with Leila Hormozi," titled "If You Want More, You Have to Think Differently," host Leila Hormozi delves into the complexities of scaling businesses by engaging with entrepreneurs facing unique growth challenges. The episode offers a wealth of insights on hiring strategies, team management, delegation, maintaining company culture, and strategic focus, providing actionable advice for business owners aiming to build unshakeable enterprises.

Guest Profiles

Peter Livingston

Peter Livingston represents a faith-based nonprofit generating $6 million in revenue and aiming to scale up to $15 million. His primary challenge revolves around managing rapid growth that outpaces his team's capacity, prompting questions about when to hire new talent versus investing in coaching existing team members.

Michelle Haynes

Michelle Haynes is a mortgage broker from Sydney, Australia, who grew her business from sole operations generating $300,000 annually to hiring her first employee. With aspirations to reach $2 million, Michelle seeks strategies to expand her referral-based business without prior experience in paid advertising.

Leyla

Leyla leads a software services company focused on long-term technical partnerships. With revenues of $35 million and a target of $50 million by the end of 2026, she navigates the challenges of maintaining growth, fostering long-term client relationships, and balancing business operations with technical implementation.

Samuel

Samuel manages a thriving tennis academy, having scaled from solo operations to a team that supports substantial revenue growth. His focus is on developing strategic steps to further expand his academy while maintaining high-quality coaching and operational efficiency.

Key Challenges Discussed

Scaling Faster Than the Team Can Handle

Peter Livingston addresses the dilemma of scaling a nonprofit faster than the current team can manage, questioning the balance between hiring new talent and coaching existing employees to meet growth demands.

Hiring and Onboarding Strategies

The conversation emphasizes the importance of hiring individuals with the necessary skills rather than relying solely on degrees as proxies. Alex Hormozi advises focusing on specific skills required for each position to minimize training time and ensure team members can contribute effectively from the outset.

Delegation and Maintaining Focus

Leyla discusses the critical need for delegation to prevent the CEO from becoming a bottleneck. She highlights the challenges of maintaining strategic focus amid growing operational responsibilities and the importance of empowering capable team members to take on leadership roles.

Leveraging Referrals and Expanding Lead Generation

Michelle Haynes seeks guidance on enhancing her referral-based business model. She explores methods to increase leads from existing referral partners and considers incorporating additional channels like paid advertising to sustain and accelerate growth.

Strategic Decision-Making and Business Goals

A recurring theme is the necessity of establishing clear business goals to guide progress. Leila and her guests discuss aligning team efforts with overarching objectives to ensure sustainable and coherent growth.

Insights & Advice Offered

Emphasizing Skills Over Degrees in Hiring [00:02:46]

Alex Hormozi advises business leaders to prioritize specific skills when hiring, stating, “When you're hiring somebody, I'm thinking, what skills do I want them to already come into the job with? Because I think that they'll take too long to train.”

Building a Robust Onboarding Process [04:37]

Alex underscores the importance of a structured onboarding system, emphasizing that "structuring that out as ruthlessly as you would" for high-value clients is essential for team members' retention and performance.

Hiring for High-Growth Experience [06:07]

For businesses in high-growth phases, Alex recommends hiring individuals with experience in similar environments. He asserts, “I look for people who have a sense of urgency and work with a bit of intensity.”

Communication and Cultural Alignment [08:16]

The discussion highlights the importance of setting clear expectations and maintaining cultural alignment to reinforce high-growth standards. Alex notes, “Here’s the thing. For example, I just made a podcast on this because I think it's really important subject...”

Delegation and Prioritizing CEO's Time [17:55]

Alex advises CEOs to treat their time as a scarce resource, suggesting the cancellation of non-essential meetings and prioritizing strategic activities. He states, “You have to treat your time differently than what you did a year ago... if my calendar looks the same, quarter over quarter, I'm doing my company a disservice.”

Focus on Scaling Proven Models [33:22]

For Samuel's tennis academy, Alex advises duplicating successful models, raising prices, and gradually scaling by adding new locations only after refining existing operations. He mentions, “I prefer that you guys duplicated with the other courts first.”

Strategic Pricing Adjustments [37:15]

Alex recommends testing price sensitivity to manage supply constraints and increase revenue, especially when demand is already being met by current offerings.

Notable Quotes

• Alex Hormozi [00:02:46]:
  “When you're hiring somebody, I'm thinking, what skills do I want them to already come into the job with? Because I think that they'll take too long to train.”

• Peter Livingston [04:07]:
  “I've worked for large brands before, so I haven't been from the ground floor at this level... we've gone from one to six is where we've gone from the past two years.”

• Alex Hormozi [06:07]:
  “I do think that you need to look for people who like have a sense of urgency and work with a bit of intensity.”

• Alex Hormozi [17:55]:
  “You have to treat your time differently than what you did a year ago... if my calendar looks the same, quarter over quarter, I'm doing my company a disservice.”

• Samuel [13:17]:
  “I do some research on them before I call them and, you know, build some rapport over the phone.”

• Alex Hormozi [23:40]:
  “You can place somebody above somebody who can mentor them and get the company to a hundred million.”

Detailed Summary

Introduction and Setting the Stage [00:02]

Alex Hormozi opens the episode by emphasizing the importance of having clear business goals to measure progress effectively. Without defined objectives, businesses risk relying on arbitrary metrics like money or views, which may not align with long-term aspirations.

Peter Livingston's Scaling Dilemma [00:41 - 08:50]

Peter Livingston shares his experience with a faith-based nonprofit that has achieved $6 million in revenue and aims to reach $15 million. The main challenge he faces is scaling operations faster than his team can manage, leading to the question of whether to hire new employees or invest in coaching existing ones.

Alex Hormozi responds by discussing the critical balance between hiring individuals who already possess the necessary skills versus training team members. He advises that for rapid growth phases, it's often more effective to bring in skilled professionals to keep up with the pace rather than spending excessive time training generalists. Peter acknowledges that his team is transitioning from generalists to specialists and is working on enhancing management capabilities within the leadership team.

Enhancing Onboarding and Training [04:37 - 10:20]

Alex delves into the importance of a robust onboarding process, highlighting how critical it is for retaining talent and ensuring that new hires align with the company's culture and objectives. He suggests a structured approach, likening it to onboarding a high-value client, to ensure that new team members are effectively integrated and productive from the start.

Michelle Haynes' Journey in Mortgage Broking [10:20 - 37:16]

Michelle Haynes discusses her experience growing a mortgage broking business from $300,000 to over $500,000 in revenue, with plans to double it. Her business relies entirely on referrals from accountants and existing clients, without any paid advertising. She seeks advice on generating more leads and expanding her referral network.

Alex suggests that Michelle should focus on delegating administrative tasks to free up her time for lead generation. He emphasizes the importance of training someone to handle the initial outreach, allowing Michelle to concentrate on building deeper relationships and closing deals. Additionally, he recommends testing price sensitivity and possibly increasing service fees to manage demand and optimize revenue.

Leyla's Software Services Scaling [37:16 - 28:50]

Leyla shares her challenges in scaling a software services business from $35 million to $50 million. She highlights issues related to maintaining focus, delegating responsibilities, and ensuring that team members are not overly dependent on leadership for direction.

Alex advises Leyla to prioritize her time by eliminating non-essential meetings and focusing on strategic initiatives that drive growth. He underscores the importance of hiring experienced leaders who can operate independently and align with the company's vision. Additionally, he suggests building a board of mentors to provide guidance and support as the company scales.

Samuel's Tennis Academy Expansion [28:50 - 38:52]

Samuel discusses his tennis academy, which has grown to generate $515,000 with the support of two part-time coaches. With aspirations to expand, he seeks strategies to scale effectively without compromising the quality of coaching.

Alex recommends duplicating the current successful model by adding more courts and possibly opening new locations. He advises raising prices to manage demand and ensures that scaling efforts do not detract from the core coaching activities. Samuel acknowledges the need to balance business growth with maintaining high-quality coaching and considers long-term plans for establishing flagship locations.

Conclusion and Final Advice [38:52 - End]

Throughout the episode, Alex Hormozi provides tailored advice to each guest, emphasizing the significance of strategic hiring, effective delegation, maintaining clear business goals, and fostering a strong company culture. He reinforces the idea that successful scaling requires a combination of skilled professionals, robust processes, and unwavering focus on long-term objectives.

Conclusion

Episode 274 of "Build with Leila Hormozi" offers a deep dive into the multifaceted challenges of scaling businesses. Through engaging conversations with entrepreneurs like Peter Livingston, Michelle Haynes, Leyla, and Samuel, the episode highlights practical strategies for managing rapid growth, enhancing hiring and onboarding processes, delegating effectively, and maintaining strategic focus. Leila and Alex Hormozi's expert insights provide valuable guidance for business owners striving to build resilient and thriving enterprises.

Transcript

[Alex Hormozi]

This is the thing. If you don't have a goal for the business, how do you know if you're making progress? Just by like arbitrary measures of. Okay. Money, views, whatever it might be. But it's. If that's not getting you towards a greater goal, it becomes very difficult to keep going at some point. What's up? How you guys doing? Oh man, this is new. Okay. So we had a different stage and they were like, it's gonna be different. I was like, yeah, this is different. It's interesting. We're gonna see how this is gonna go with heels. Maybe it's gonna poke a hole. You guys good energy? Feeling good. Okay, great. So we will. Yeah, we're gonna get right into it. Right into it. Let's do it. All right. Amazing.

[Peter Livingston]

So my name is Peter Livingston and I work for a faith based nonprofit and we sell classes and books and education to men 50, 24 to 25 to 54 who need practical help in life. And we're about at 6 million in revenue. We're trying to get to 15. And the thing that's stopping us is that we're scaling faster than our team can handle from a pacing perspective. So we're hiring, which will help. But how do we, how do we know when we need coaching for the team members that are on the bubble and just to give them more time versus when have we passed the threshold that we're outpacing or out or not able to coach those team members into becoming what the we need them to be?

[Alex Hormozi]

It's a tough question because I think it comes down to the business model and what you want to do now and in the future. So let me explain. When you're hiring people, so you're hiring people for a position, you want to think, okay, what skills does this person need to come in already preloaded with. I'm not going to take the time to train them on these skills. And that's where we list requirements, right. It's like you want to come in with these skills. Like I think °all that, it's bullshit. We just want skills, right? We, we approximate a degree approximates to a skill and that's why we put it on there. But really we want someone to have skills. And so whenever I'm thinking about hiring somebody, I'm thinking, what skills do I want them to already come into the job with? Because I think that they'll take too long to train. That's the first thing I think about when I'm hiring. Now. Then when somebody comes in, if all everybody is taking too long to train, then maybe we don't have the right type of mix of the teammates or maybe we don't have the right level of skill of the person. The other way that you could look at it is, okay, well how much do we want to invest in the people? I think that it's a ratio more than do we want to or do we not want to? Which is, I think as a team, when a team's small and you're not growing fast, it's easier to invest in people. There's less people to invest in. You have more time and you have more resources. And then when you're scaling, you need to be doing the thing and then it's like everyone's just trying to find extra time to pour into people, which is usually when people have to switch into. Okay, now I need to hire people who come with more skills.

[Peter Livingston]

Yeah, that's our problem. More the second.

[Samuel]

Yeah.

[Alex Hormozi]

Okay, so you're at the point now where would you say coming in, like, what are the skills? Let's be like super specific. What are the skills that are missing in the teammates or that you're working on training into them?

[Peter Livingston]

Yeah. So I would say we're a young team, so there's a level of polish that we're trying to instill into the team and drive culture. But I think that we're kind of going from generalists more to specialists and so on the leadership team we've got guys that have talent but their ability to manage a team and deliver on their job, that's one of the things that we're really working on. And then we're just trying to bring in more specialists that can raise the bar professionally of what the expectations are.

[Alex Hormozi]

Yeah. So there's no straightforward answer. It's like multiple golden BBs here. How what's your leadership team look like, what's it comprised of and how experienced are those people?

[Peter Livingston]

Yeah, so C CEO Landon CEO and myself. And then we've got a head of sales and marketing and then operations and operations for us is producing content. So we do a lot of content. We have one content provider that produces about a billion views last year. So we have a wide end of the funnel on social.

[Alex Hormozi]

Yeah.

[Peter Livingston]

And so everything we do is digital and kind of a one to many system.

[Alex Hormozi]

And have you ever grown a business like this before?

[Peter Livingston]

I've worked for large brands before, so I haven't been from the ground floor at this level. I've been from. I work for a lot of billion dollar brands, so I've Done larger things, but not from this level of scale to, you know, from one to six is where we've gone from the past two years.

[Alex Hormozi]

Yeah.

[Peter Livingston]

And then trying to get to 50 in the next couple.

[Alex Hormozi]

So let me ask you this. How do you guys train people?

[Peter Livingston]

Right now it's a lot of on the job training. We're implementing more of a robust onboarding system which is focused on a lot of culture and then one on one onboarding for the actual job and the role specifically. And so that's one of the things we do want to improve is like our onboarding process. Because I know there's tons of good data on retention and how much that matters for, you know, what that employee is going to end up being in their tenure and whatnot. But that's one of the areas we definitely need to grow in.

[Alex Hormozi]

Okay, let me ask you this. So if you're like, how, when do I know I've put too much or I've put enough time into training somebody, what does the mechanism of training look like? Are they watching a video? Are they watching you do something? Are they sitting? What does that usually look like?

[Peter Livingston]

Yeah, it's usually on the job training with someone who has either done the job or is overseeing them.

[Alex Hormozi]

So they're shadowing them.

[Peter Livingston]

Yeah, exactly. And we do a kind of, we do a crawl, walk, run phase with most things. So it's like, I do it, you watch, then I do it, you help, then you do it, I watch, so on and so forth.

[Alex Hormozi]

That's fantastic. I think based on everything that you're telling me, where I think that you would get the most is the onboarding for sure. Like one of the first things I did when we went into high growth in gym launch, which was like eight years ago, maybe when that happened was I just was maniacal about the onboarding and how much time you put into people in that and how it's structured and how many touch points there were and how much context transfer. So structuring that out as ruthlessly as you would if you were. I looked at like this, I, I just use this frame as. Okay, so let's say that you just sold an enterprise client that they're going to make the company $150,000 a year. How are you going to onboard that person? Okay, well, let's look at the employee and think about how much revenue they're going to help generate. Why would we not onboard with that kind of vigor? And so I think that's a good frame shift. The second piece is that it's kind of like there's two ways that you have to do it, which is like one, I think at the leadership level, maybe you need to consider that you need to bring in even just one person who has a little bit more experience in a high growth company. It's very different to have operated in a large company and to have operated in a small or medium company, but to have gone from small to medium to large is completely different.

[Peter Livingston]

Yeah.

[Alex Hormozi]

So something I look for constantly in people that I'm recruiting. When I'm in, I'm in high growth is it's not good enough that they've just been here. I need people who have been through the journey, ascended to there. Yeah, exactly. Because it's a different pace that you have to take. And the reality is this is that you will not be slowing down by most likely your marketing or your sales or your market, but your people. So slow people slow business. And it's not for everybody. It's. It's just not. And so if you want your business to go faster, you have to look at people who like have a sense of urgency and work with a bit of intensity. I look for people who have a little bit of a chip on their shoulder. I do. Right. And it's like Alex says, we're a little weird. And so I'm just being honest. So like I look for people like that to join the company because I see the people that come and they apply and they, they're like, oh, I've been at the companies where it's 80. I was like, you don't have enough anxiety for this. So there's not a little. You just don't have that drive. It's just not there. And this isn't gonna work. You're not gonna like this, right? You're not gonna like it. You're not gonna go fast enough. And so I think it's a little bit of looking for that, especially with leaders that you're bringing in. The second piece is setting the expectations to people on the team, which is like how you want to work and I think constantly reinforcing to them what high growth looks like and how you act in accordance with it. And what's normal is something that you have to continue to embed in the team. Because here's the thing. For example, I just made a podcast on this because I think it's really important subject, which is when a company is growing quickly and they have a really potent culture. I don't view hiring, I don't view firing people as bad because I'm letting go of people who are clearly not a culture fit and clearly dragging down the other hundred people in this company. I'm doing us a favor by getting them off the bus so I can protect everybody else who's on here. Most companies firing people like that means, oh, the company's not doing well, oh the person, the company didn't give them a shot, the company didn't. There's so many instances like that that have to be a reframe. The other one is change. Change in a lot of organizations means things are bad, things no longer work, things when in high growth things are constantly changing. And so the change management has to be normalized to people. This is good. This is just how we do business. So for what you're asking, there is not one cookie cutter answer because it's a million little things. But I'm curious which one resonated?

[Peter Livingston]

Yeah, I think that the. They all resonated. Like we've been, we've been doing a lot more cultured talk or conversations and lunch and learns and whatnot on pacing because we've realized like in the hiring process that's a differentiator of not only asking pacing related questions, but then asking experiential questions to show if they really are that or not. We've also thought about doing the Colby just to kind of see where people are on the quick start in terms of the hiring process. But I think, I think I really like what you were saying about because we, we do have a lead team slot that we need to hire. And thinking about someone who has been through that growth journey, I think that is, that's something I hadn't thought about quite in that way. That's super helpful.

[Alex Hormozi]

I also think it's the frame which is so many people, especially as an employer, people are fearful of setting the frame for the people on the intake call or like when you're set, this is what we're looking for in the job because there's been, there's so much regulation, there's HR bullshit and all this stuff. But like the most powerful thing that I think about is my job is not to sell you on the job. My job is to tell you exactly what it's like inside this company. And if you don't fuck with that, then you don't take the job. And I almost look at it as like, you know, I'll say to someone, I'll be like, I don't know, I scared the fuck out of that guy. And he still wants a job. So, you know, I mean, you know, it's just, I mean, it's the honest truth. Because when you're growing fast, I'll give you an example. There's two roles I just hired for and I was like, dude, it's so fucked up. That's why I told the. I'm like, I don't know, it's really fucked up. So like, you're have to fix all that shit and I can't really help you because I don't have the skill. And then they're like, great. I actually like fixing that shit versus people who have just been at this level in a company forever. They're like, oh God, how do we fix that? You know, I don't want that right now. So I think a lot on the front end can help set the tone for how people act. Because culture is just the norm of how people interact. Like act in your company and if your culture was one of speed, they would act with speed right now. But it's not yet. And so that tells me it's like the front end is the main piece that you've leveraged at. And then even telling people, I don't think I reinforced this enough. Guys, we have to act with urgency. We need to go fast. We're not making haste decisions, but we're every day in the micro going quickly. I think it's just more of that messaging will help a ton, especially if it comes from, you know, the C level. Yeah.

[Peter Livingston]

Awesome. Thank you so much.

[Alex Hormozi]

Of course.

[Michelle Haynes]

My name is Samuel and I'm a mortgage broker from Sydney, Australia. We did 300,000 last year. I say we. It was just me, I first of.

[Alex Hormozi]

Fully me and my leader.

[Michelle Haynes]

So Grand. I did 300,000 last year and I and my first employee as of a couple of months ago on track this year so far to double last year. And I would like to get the business to 2 million in revenue ASAP, however quickly. I can do that. I guess my question is I feel like I have a million questions. But the main thing is and selfishly, if you were me, how would you get the business to 2 million revenue? Our entire all of our business comes from referral partners. We've never run an ad. I don't know how to run an ad. It's just been from referral partners and then existing clients referring business. So I guess, yeah, that my question would be have you worked with mortgage broking businesses in the past and what's worked if anything?

[Alex Hormozi]

Yeah, it's specific to the business. There's a million ways just like any Business that you could grow it. So the question is this, which is like, why are you not at 2 million right now? Is it that you don't.

[Michelle Haynes]

I don't. Sorry.

[Alex Hormozi]

Is it that you don't have enough leads from the referral mechanism? Is it that you don't know how to convert those leads? Is it which one of those.

[Michelle Haynes]

Not enough leads. And almost all aspects of the business, I feel like I don't know what I'm doing.

[Alex Hormozi]

That makes sense with where you're at right now. That's normal though, so just get used to that.

[Michelle Haynes]

Okay.

[Alex Hormozi]

Um, yeah.

[Michelle Haynes]

Cause I. Sorry. Just quickly. So I feel just as confused now as when we did. I did zero dollars.

[Alex Hormozi]

Makes sense.

[Michelle Haynes]

Like, I just thought it would feel different. Doesn't feel any different.

[Alex Hormozi]

Yeah, Success doesn't create the feelings you want. Yeah, success and happiness and contentness and certainty. Also different. No, because it's just like new problems at a new level. You know what I mean? Like at every level in business, unless you've been there before, you're going to feel like you don't know what the fuck you're doing. And people will tell you this and that and this and that, but it's just like everyone's just trying to do their best. I mean, I can say that even like at the level with acquisition.com, it's like, of course there's an element of, well, now, I haven't been to this level. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing now. You know what I mean? It's like you can accommodate for all the levels below now. I think the more you learn, the more you like pattern recognition. There's the same cycles at different levels, just a different magnitude of problem or magnitude of the cycle you have to go through. All right. It's leads, it's customer success, it's retention, it's employees. Whatever it is for you. If it's in terms of getting leads, it's just you, right, doing all of.

[Michelle Haynes]

This now I have one employee with me full time helping because I needed the help. I was.

[Alex Hormozi]

Okay. And what are they doing?

[Michelle Haynes]

Like administrative stuff, inputting data and documents, et cetera? Yeah, just all the stuff that takes up a lot of my time, really.

[Alex Hormozi]

So how do you get leads right now?

[Michelle Haynes]

Referrals from accountants.

[Alex Hormozi]

Like, how do you ask them for leads?

[Michelle Haynes]

Oh, I can just get either introduced to them through my existing network or. Or I'll just call them and say, hey, I'm coming into the office to chat. And then I tell them I'm really Great.

[Alex Hormozi]

And they're not like, fuck off.

[Michelle Haynes]

No, I do some research on them before I call them and, you know, build some rapport over the phone.

[Alex Hormozi]

Okay.

[Michelle Haynes]

And then I just say, I'm the best, you should work with me. And then, and then they give me something and I don't know what I'm doing. I have to figure it out. So.

[Alex Hormozi]

Okay.

[Michelle Haynes]

Yeah.

[Alex Hormozi]

And so here's my question. Are there no more accountants left to call or is it that they're not referring business to you or is it that you don't have time?

[Michelle Haynes]

I think it's a mixture of both. And I. Partly. Part of me feels like I know the answer, which is just, just call more people and just get in front of more people. More or less. Oh, yeah. Also. Yeah. I wanted to ask if you've, if you've worked with a mortgage broking business in the past and what's worked, has it worked to kind of just call more people, get more relationships and more referral partners, or is it better for me to onboard more brokers?

[Alex Hormozi]

You need to stop asking this question because this is the thing. Every business has their own unique advantage. So yes, I've worked with mortgage brokers and so some of them use referrals, some of them use paid ads, some of them have an organic following. It doesn't matter. It seems any business. Okay, and so it's just what is already working for you? We don't want to say, you know what, I don't know if we can get more referrals, so I'm going to run paid ads. What a fucking waste. You're going to give up on this thing that's already making your company to where it's at now the next logical step is that you've been doing it and it's been working, but it's just you. So my first thought is, okay, so you're calling them, you're doing these things. Why don't we get somebody else that can sit next to you, learn how you call them and then all they do is fucking dial all day. And then maybe what you do is first they dial all day, you go into the office and have the conversation. And over time that person can train so that they can make the dials and go into the office and have the conversation. And then you're just facilitating and overseeing everything on the back end. That's the area where I think you're going to get the most leverage. Now the key is this, for you to keep conversion at the same percentage that you convert people at. You need that person to literally be tied to your hip. Like, they need to watch you. They need to sit with you for, like, weeks. They need to hear everything you say. They need to draft a script out of what you say on the phone. They need to come with you in person and follow you and listen to what you say to that person in the room. And then they need to understand somewhat what happens after. That's what I would do if I were you. I'd be like, well, you've not run ads before. You don't have organic following. You've been doing referrals. It's working. But the constraint is that's just you. So it makes sense that you would bring somebody else in. You would have them just learn exactly what you're doing, and then you would figure out how to get one more person to call the leads and generate business from the referrals. That's what I would do.

[Michelle Haynes]

Okay, perfect. Thank you very much.

[Alex Hormozi]

Of course. Thanks.

[Leyla]

Leyla. Good to meet you. My name is Michelle Haynes. I sell software services. More specifically, partnership. Long term, vested partnership when it comes to technical implementation.

[Alex Hormozi]

I don't know what that means. Can you explain again?

[Leyla]

Yeah. It means I don't want one project. I want to be with you for 10 years. And anything you need, technically, I want to do that for you and pursue it.

[Alex Hormozi]

You're like outsourced tech for a business.

[Leyla]

You got it.

[Alex Hormozi]

Okay, that makes sense.

[Leyla]

We do about 35 million in revenue right now. We'd like to be at 50 million by end of 2026, and we've been at 35 million for three years in a row. I'm going to reframe this question. It's less about what's stopping me. It's more of. I know that the problem is focus. So I would love to hear more from you. You lived this. You experienced this. Running at 35 million is not what was required when we were running at 10 or 15.

[Alex Hormozi]

Yeah.

[Leyla]

And none of us really know what the fuck we're doing either. Like, we just wake up every day what needs to be done. We get it done. We look at is it going to work long term. What's your advice for creating that focus when you're needed everywhere and you don't have the training to do the things that you necessarily are responsible for doing, but you care.

[Alex Hormozi]

Sounds like you let other people dictate where your focus goes rather than you. That's a problem. You're a common. So this is what happens, and this is for everybody in here, is that you Are the founder, the CEO, some of you, the coo. You're at the top of the company, every single person. This is never gonna get less, it's always gonna get more. They all want something from you. They want your time, they want your resources, they want your money, they want your attention, they want your approval. And what you have to recognize is that that only becomes a scarcer resource. And if you don't make it a scarcer resource, then it is the reason the company doesn't grow. And you have to treat, this is the hardest thing for so many people. You have to treat your time differently than what you did a year ago, two years ago, three years ago. I say this all the time. If my calendar looks the same, quarter over quarter, I'm doing my company a disservice cuz it means I'm not going to grow. So if you're, if your calendar looks the same, are you accepting the same conversations? Are you saying yes to the same hour long bullshit? Are you still allowing other people who don't know what you're focused on or don't know how to grow a company to dictate where you should spend your time?

[Leyla]

Yes, I am. I'm doing that.

[Alex Hormozi]

I want to make you angry about this.

[Leyla]

I'm feeling very passionate.

[Alex Hormozi]

Yes, I get passionate about it because it is really think about it. Right? So there's people in your company who have less context than you on what's important and what's happening. And you are allowing them to dictate where you spend your time rather than you dictating where do I need to spend my time. And with what I have left over, I will spread those resources to the people who are asking for it if I think it's worth my time. Because it might not be. So I look at it like this. The way that you dictate how you spend your time and what you prioritize is also how you train your team on how they do their time and how they use their time. And you train them on how to use you. And so there's two things with this, which is like one, you become the reason that the company can't grow because they're constantly, one of my mentors says on the teat, they won't let go. They're still, they're not even on bottle feeding yet. You know what I mean? And that is a terrible analogy that I will take off of my recording and never put that on the Internet. But it was men that use this analogy, not women. And I didn't think about it. So anyways, you. You're allowing them to be dependent on you.

[Leyla]

Yeah.

[Alex Hormozi]

Right. And so it's very common with people, especially if you're more empathetic and you care about people. I'm the same way. It's very difficult for me to be like, I understand you're having a hard time.

[Leyla]

Figure it out.

[Alex Hormozi]

I still can't. You have to figure the fuck out.

[Leyla]

Still no.

[Alex Hormozi]

Right. Exactly. And so the question is, you've known this. Your company hasn't grown, and it's still not enough for you to change it. So what else is in.

[Leyla]

I would say delegating, allocating, giving those responsibilities over to a team that's capable. And I'll share a little bit more context, because context is decisive.

[Alex Hormozi]

Yeah.

[Leyla]

We have a really high success rate with homegrown leaders.

[Alex Hormozi]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[Leyla]

And when we hire in people with experience, they tend to pee in your Cheerios. Right. It's. Here's. It's just what it is.

[Alex Hormozi]

Right.

[Leyla]

It's just, here's the way to do it. Here's how you should fix it. This is the process. And I say fuck off. You have no idea. Right.

[Alex Hormozi]

We.

[Leyla]

We've gotten to where we are today. That doesn't mean I'm attached to the structure we have. I'm open. We all have to learn and grow, but we're not gonna just swap out bodies for skill sets to get to some arbitrary number. It's like we're. We're in it for the people we care and we want to grow. So it's an and conversation. People come first. And yet we can't take care of people unless we're taking care of the business.

[Alex Hormozi]

Why does taking care of people mean that we don't change what we've done? Or open to testing things?

[Leyla]

Can I use a real example? I'm going to use.

[Alex Hormozi]

Yeah, use a real example.

[Leyla]

And we're. This is a little strange. I'm not the founder of the company, so I want to say that where.

[Alex Hormozi]

It'S okay.

[Leyla]

I didn't start it, and yet it feels like mine. And that's why I'm here and the CEO is not. And I've got two colleagues with me and we've been having some. They can keep me honest. So anything I say is bullshit.

[Alex Hormozi]

Oh, geez. You guys gonna overthrow the crown?

[Leyla]

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's up to them. Well, can fight for it. Take it.

[Alex Hormozi]

I don't want any part in this.

[Leyla]

You're the tiebreaker. Leva. No. So Skyler Comes to me, he's doing business development and he's, listen, if I'm not the leader, you need to get to 100 million. You do what you got to do to get to 100 million. And my commitment to business and people is to say, you're the guy. Now, you might not have the skill set, but I'm not going to do this without you being a part of becoming a hundred million dollar companies. You're not a commodity. I'm not like, hey, you're out. You didn't get the job done, let's go. It's like, how can you he get the skills he needs so that we can go far together? So that's where the business and the people part. Sometimes they grind a little bit.

[Alex Hormozi]

Yeah. Well, if you look at it like that, like, why would it be bad to bring somebody above you who knows more than you, who can mentor you, invest in you, and you can stay with the company and learn from that person? I would love. And that means the whole company would succeed.

[Leyla]

How do you find those people that's they don't want to pee in your Cheerios, you know.

[Alex Hormozi]

Well, there's. You're gonna have to try harder for one meaning. I think the issue a lot of companies have is that they don't frame like so much more is trainable than people think. And so much more is about how you frame somebody coming in. So when I have somebody new come in, actually, when Ed came in, Ed came in and he was like, oh, I see all these. And I was like, nope, nothing. Don't touch. I need you to build relationships with people. I know you have great ideas, but for the first two to three months, I don't want you to touch anything because then you just piss everybody off. This isn't like abnormal. It's what everyone wants to do because you hire somebody who's competent. Why? Because of the skills they have. So what do they assume if you don't say anything? They assume that they should go change the things. Right. But if you're communicating consistently, then why would they do that? So where's the communication gap?

[Leyla]

Yeah.

[Alex Hormozi]

Do you get what I'm saying?

[Leyla]

Totally.

[Alex Hormozi]

The second piece to it is that I do think in a company that's fast growing, in a company where you have things that you like to do more your way, you want to look for people who are not at, I would say, don't have old career energy, which is if somebody's already had a pinnacle moment in their career and they are looking to come in and they're like, I just want to find somebody who I can basically tell them how to do it my way. And you can usually sense that because I try to give people feedback on an interview, and when they don't accept the feedback or they get a little ruffled, then I'm like, all right, this is people. You're trying to be like, oh, I'm gonna tell young little Layla what to do. I'm like, I'm good book, so nice. Right. And so it's not that I don't want your input. It's not that I want your opinions, but I don't want somebody trying to be my boss. And so I think that you don't want that, of course, but I think a lot of this is just the framing when you're speaking to people. There's. This is a communication issue, in my opinion, from everything you're telling me. Right. And it's a belief problem, which is you don't need to boot somebody out of your company in order for them to be there to get to a hundred million.

[Leyla]

Right.

[Alex Hormozi]

But you can pro. You can place somebody above somebody who can mentor them and get the company to a hundred million. They get to learn. The company will grow you unbottleneck what's going on now. Does that mean you might have to use, like, a recruiting firm and tell them exactly what you're looking for? Tell them, I don't want this. I want this. These are the kind of people I'm looking for. Here's the culture we have. Here's what I want the person to come and do. Here's what the first 30, 60, 90 days are gonna look like and what I want them to accomplish, which literally can say, don't do anything for the first 90 days. Provide your observations like it's whatever you want.

[Leyla]

Yeah.

[Alex Hormozi]

I don't think that these things are impossible. I think it's just like, at the end of the day, if the company doesn't grow, eventually it will die. Being honest. And so trying to prioritize it to the detriment of the company is going to just bite you in the ass later. If it's stagnating right now, the next thing that happens is it declines.

[Leyla]

Mm.

[Alex Hormozi]

You guys know that. And so, like, I say this because I. I want you to win, and I want you to break past this, and that means that maybe all of you need somebody else to help you, because what you're explaining to me sounds like something that. Even if the CEO's not translating that to you, then both of you lack an experience there. Which then says, do we need to reach out for mentorship? I'm working with multiple people to help mentor me. Now I don't have one mentor, but I have different people to help me with different aspects of my job who have been there, done that in any one area of my CEO, founder responsibilities. And so it's like, how do you build your board of directors unofficially to help you guys continue to level up and grow? Some of them you'll hire, some of them you might place above yourself. Some of them you'll put below you guys. But even look at, gosh, Ben Francis Gymshark, he was out here and I thought it was so noble of him. He was like, I realized I was not a good CEO, so I hired a CEO and I took a backseat and I just learned from him for four years, five years, I don't remember how long it was as he was young and he was like, you know, I just don't have the experience doing this. He's. And then I realized I learned enough. I stepped back in, put him in a different role. Here we are. So I think it's also just there's so many different ways that you can facilitate the skills. It doesn't mean that you guys don't exist in the company. It's just, I think you need to expand your vision for the type of horsepower it's going to take to get to the next level. How many C suite executives are in the company right now?

[Leyla]

Four.

[Alex Hormozi]

Okay. How many do you think have the skills to be in the company right now? Let me, let me define a C suite. Yeah, they can operate. They need to be aligned with the CEO and founder and alignment is the number one thing they need from that person. They need alignment and they need the CEO or founder to clear the way for them to work on the things they aligned on. They do not need help with doing their job. They don't need like daily management. They can align with a once a week call or every two week call and they can do exactly what they need. Because let me define intelligence. Intelligence is being able to take vague direction and then execute on it. Right. And so you want people at that level that are smart and they can take a 30 minute call and they know what to do for the next month because they're aligned with the person at the top.

[Leyla]

Got it.

[Alex Hormozi]

And so if you guys have people in the company who are C level and they're, they need to speak every day and they need all these things, then maybe you don't actually have a C level, maybe over titled.

[Leyla]

That fits too. I mean, with the. With you defining it that way. I would say we have a larger team that we can really count on who has that initiative and that vision and who can just go figure it out once they're given a directive. And we need more. We've got 1200 people.

[Alex Hormozi]

So.

[Leyla]

So it's not enough.

[Alex Hormozi]

That's not enough. And I think you all need to be looking out. You need to bring in people that. There's an analogy where it was like barrels and ammunition, right? And I can't remember who wrote this article. It was such a good one on. Most companies bring in ammunition. And the reality is that a company's constrained by how many barrels it has a barrel, you can just point in a direction, it will just fire the fuck off. As long as it's ammunition, it will clear the way. It will build a product, it will build revenue. Right? Ammunition, they need a barrel. And so what happens is a lot of people hire for the ammunition and they back up all the barrels. And the barrels aren't as effective because they just have so much ammunition because you just haven't got enough barrels on board. Or the worst when you try, you think that ammunition is a barrel. Got it. So it sounds like you guys need more barrels.

[Leyla]

We need more barrels.

[Alex Hormozi]

It sounds like you need to say no. Say no. Ridiculous. I need you. This is what I think you should do is you should honestly cancel all your meetings. Start from scratch, all right? See what breaks. I seriously, I. I have people do this when they have this tendency. I'm like, okay, great. So it's like all these people really need to cancel it all. And I think the other piece too is if people want your time and you know it's not the priority, you can't feel bad when they're upset, right? Like, you have to willfully tolerate the upsetness of people on your team in order to grow your company. Because at first, when you grow a company and start a company, it's like, you see, your friends and family are like. And it's like, maybe your con, your audience is like. And eventually it's your team because. Ugh. Because they're too far away from you. They don't understand what you're spending your time on. And you have to be okay with it.

[Leyla]

Absolutely. I'm good with that. I'm great with that. I think that's a great result.

[Alex Hormozi]

Delete. Can you guys hold her accountable? Delete the calendar. Wait, who. Who do work. Who you work with? Wow. I was looking at the other two the whole time. They were closer to you. So I figured, well, that's terrible. You're like, why have you been staring at me this whole time?

[Leyla]

You're thinking, also really nice. All right, thank you, wave. I appreciate it.

[Alex Hormozi]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Samuel]

So, first of all, I have a ton of respect for you and what you've done here with this team. This team is incredible. Like the, the empathy in, in Frank's eyes and, and what Ed has said to us. The team here is truly a team. As an athlete, this. I've seen a few teams that have like, players that do their role and do it really well. This team does that. And so what I would like to do is I would like to do something like this with tennis. We have a tennis business right now. It's an academy. We do lessons, we do camps. But the same way business owners come to you and you're able to put this on and develop them and change their frameworks and change their mind, I would like to do that for tennis. And so where we're at right now is Jeremy and I, we were teammates in college and we've been doing it for two years and we were just super opportunistic about everything. We found courts that we could rent. We used the university that we play at or played at to give lessons and to run the camps. And so now the eight courts that we rent are basically full. And the question is, where do we go from here in order to develop? And then with this big end goal in mind, what are the next couple steps? And really what I was looking for is a strategy for the next 612 months. Just put the head down and do two or three things. And I'm trying to figure out what those two or three things are.

[Alex Hormozi]

What's your revenue and what's your pricing model right now?

[Samuel]

Well, thanks, Ed. It's about to change. Our revenue right now is a little over 500. It's 515,000.

[Alex Hormozi]

Okay, and what's the margin on that?

[Samuel]

About 70%.

[Alex Hormozi]

Okay, so is it just you two? Do you have instructors?

[Samuel]

Just us and then two part time coaches.

[Alex Hormozi]

Okay, so that's exciting.

[Samuel]

Yep. And the players are pretty good. So that part we've done well. We focus on ages 9 to 13.

[Alex Hormozi]

So how do you get the business?

[Samuel]

They're young. I started with a couple players and they became really good. And then people asked where they trained and then they came to us.

[Alex Hormozi]

Honestly?

[Samuel]

Yeah, we've done no sales, we've done barely any marketing. Um, we're Trying to figure that part out. All we did was learn how to teach tennis and start teaching. And then we started. We tried to fix business on the side. And so when problems would come up in the business, we would teach six hours, eight hours in the Texas heat and then come back and try to fix the business side as well. So, you know, that's kind of where we're at it. It's going fairly well, but where we go from here is kind of tough.

[Alex Hormozi]

Right. Well, right now you're supply constrained, not demand constrained. Right. And so I'm sure what the team said when you talked about the pricing model was like one of the shorter term things you do is you would raise the price.

[Samuel]

Correct.

[Alex Hormozi]

Right. And test the sensitivity of people in terms of. Because that's the first thing is like, you can't just keep overextending yourself and doing 15 because you're not gonna be able to grow the business. So it makes sense as well just to raise the prices. So that's the first thing I would do is I would raise the prices. The second thing I would do is I think that you have to zoom out. And let me ask you guys this. Did you start this out of college? Like, opportunistic? For sure. But is it like, we want to make a bunch of money. We want to sell the business. We like doing this because we're passionate about it. We want to grow into an empire. Because if I don't know your goal, I don't know how you make progress towards it.

[Samuel]

Yeah. So when I would get super mad when I was a player, I would think, in the match, it's okay, it's fine, I can lose this match. I'm going to be a better coach than I am player because I have to stop playing when I'm 22, 23, 24 years old, and I have an unlimited time horizon. Well, basically to. To be a coach. So if. If I'm doing things wrong, I'll be able to figure it out. And so for me, it's. I want to coach, I want to coach tennis.

[Alex Hormozi]

So you want to be out there coaching them. You don't want to just be building the business?

[Samuel]

I like both.

[Alex Hormozi]

Okay, that's fine. And for you? Yes, same. Okay, so this is more of make money lifestyle. Like, lifestyle as in you want to do the thing you like. Yep. And make money while you do it. Okay, cool. I am a maximizer and big impact. So, like, for me, it's like I'll sacrifice everything, so I have to recontextualize My advice, so very helpful. So I think a great question for you is, do you know, for example, like you're saying that spaces was limited, right. So you've had to continue renting out those courts. Are there other courts that you could rent out? Have you specked those out?

[Samuel]

There are, yes.

[Alex Hormozi]

Okay. And is the, does it make sense, pricing wise, time wise, space wise?

[Samuel]

Yes. But part of our deal with the, the school that we're at now, is there a state champion high school team? And our deal was we run our program out of this facility and we produce players for you. And so he wants us to be the main coaches at that site. So if we, we could do another facility, but we would have to hire and train coaches, give them the system and then put them there. That's one way. Actually the team told us to go this way because we already do it and it works and we can just kind of copy this system. Um, we were also thinking about doing school because we have a very strong in person community and taking them to school. Is it. I think it would be a good option. So we, we're thinking about the different ways that we could go from here and renting more courts is one of them.

[Alex Hormozi]

I mean I, I prefer the first thing you do is just duplicate what already works. It's like when you find something that works, the first thing people want to do is they want to fuck it up. They want to make it more complex, they want to change it because they say, well, I don't know how to scale that. And you've got to keep doing what's unquote unscalable until it's not. So I would prefer that you guys duplicated with the other courts first. It's raise the prices for the ones that you're at and then duplicate with the other courts, see how that does first. And that will take you six to 12 months. I don't think you should do anything else besides those two things. Plus like minor improvements and just make it better correct. Like we always say, like in anything that's especially a physical location or anything you're doing, physically nail it before you scale it. It's just a lot of, there's so many intricacies to doing the in person location model. And it's so hard to scale that compared to. Because you have to go and you have to watch them do things. You have to watch on the camera versus if it's remote. It's like you can listen to a call, you can get recordings, whatever. Right. It's a little More isolated. So I think that that makes the most sense for you guys to do right now. I do think that you're gonna have to make a decision which is, okay, so if that works, then what, you get another court? Because one more court and you're not coaching. Right. So you have to decide really what you want out of this. I mean, you found something. You guys are young. It's making good money, it has a lot of potential, you're doing good. Clearly people really value it. Do you wanna scale it and lean into more of the business side for the next five years, or do you want to continue to just remain close by doing the coaching piece? And I think that's a decision you're going to have to make in the next 12 months that will dictate everything else. This is the thing. If you don't have a goal for the business, how do you know if you're making progress? Just by like, arbitrary measures of, okay, money views, whatever it might be. But it's. If that's not getting you towards a greater goal, it becomes very difficult to keep going at some point.

[Samuel]

I think I would stick with the coaching then and do it that way. So increase the pricing and then stay heavily involved in that side of it.

[Alex Hormozi]

It's good that you know that maybe.

[Samuel]

A couple other locations locally would be good, but scaling beyond that would be like you said it would take. It would take away from the tennis part and then it would just be, you know, you're. You're putting all of your time into training the coaches and then putting on and making sure that the facilities are running properly.

[Alex Hormozi]

Yeah. If you have more than one more location, you'll pretty much be full time running the business.

[Samuel]

What. How could we end up with a super location so where we have all the courts, you know, you have fitness facilities, you have all of that stuff in one place. We would need a lot more money for that.

[Alex Hormozi]

I was gonna say. What. How you think.

[Samuel]

Yeah, but that.

[Peter Livingston]

Build it.

[Samuel]

I think that that would be the end goal. Cause then instead of scaling and having facilities all over, you scale and you have a facility all in one place. And then hopefully people come to that.

[Alex Hormozi]

So here's the thing. I think what you have right now is you have an opportunity and you have something that's working well and you're making really good money from a population that typically isn't willing to pay a lot of good money in something that's not worth a lot to a lot of people. Just being honest.

[Samuel]

Yeah.

[Alex Hormozi]

And so, like, you have an opportunity Right now, if you have that vision for wanting that in the future, I always say we can have everything we want, but probably not at the same time. And so I do think that you have the opportunity. Like you're never gonna be younger, you're never gonna have more energy than you do right now. If you really want to open up that kind of location, I might say, you know what? I'm going to take the next three years, I'm going to try and just scale this and you know, create as much profit as possible. So then for four years from now, five years now, we can invest it in creating this location that we really want and dream up. Yeah, I don't think that's a bad idea. But it would mean that in the short term you might sacrifice some of the coaching.

[Samuel]

Yeah, okay, I, I would be willing to do that if it led to it in the end. And then still keep some of the coaching.

[Alex Hormozi]

Sure. We figure that out, it'll become impossible. And then you'll be like, oh, she was right. The only thing I'll say is this scope out. You need to do this scoping out of understanding what it takes to build something like that. Cause I want you to understand what it would take. Talk to people who have find the founders of those kind of super locations. I know people have built facilities like that. Understand how much money it takes to do that. Yeah, it's important.

[Samuel]

And where it could come from.

[Alex Hormozi]

Well, hopefully you make a decent so that you not beholden to people for the rest of your life.

[Samuel]

Yeah, that's the goal. And that's, that's what we were trying to figure out is how we can take the next couple steps, basically bring off the, the make a lot of money and then also have a way of making a lot of money so that once we have the facility, you know, it's kind of already filled with the business that, that works.

[Alex Hormozi]

You already know what to do. Raise the price, duplicate a different one. You're going to have enough problems between now and then, and then see if you can do it one more time and one more time and keep saving the money. And while you're doing that, the behind the scenes is trying to figure out, okay, well, how much would it cost? What would that look like? How long would it take? That's the biggest thing. I mean, if you look at everything going on the market right now, I don't know what that's going to do in terms of affecting cost of goods. Import, export, all that stuff. We just don't know. So there's a lot of stuff you have to take into consideration when you're talking about building something, okay?