Ownership Lessons We Can Learn from the Coldplay Jumbotron Incident | Operator Pod Ep 2

Summary

Summary of "Ownership Lessons We Can Learn from the Coldplay Jumbotron Incident | Operator Pod Ep 2"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Build with Leila Hormozi
• Host/Author: Leila Hormozi
• Description: How can you create an unshakeable business? My name is Leila Hormozi and I crossed $100M by the age of 28. Now I’m growing acquisition.com into a billion-dollar portfolio. In this podcast, I share the lessons I’ve learned in scaling big businesses and helping our portfolio companies do the same. Buckle up, Let's BUILD.
• Episode: Ownership Lessons We Can Learn from the Coldplay Jumbotron Incident | Operator Pod Ep 2
• Release Date: July 30, 2025

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1. Introduction to Crisis Communication

The episode kicks off with Sharan Trivaza introducing the topic of effective communication during crises, emphasizing its importance for business owners and entrepreneurs. He references a recent incident involving Coldplay’s Jumbotron mishap to frame the discussion.

Notable Quote:

• Sharan Trivaza [00:00]: "Bad news doesn't get better with time... how you communicate during times of crisis is really important."

2. The Importance of Honesty and Accountability

Leila Hormozi stresses that honesty is paramount when a company faces a crisis. She advises against seeking PR angles or managing reputation through manipulative tactics. Instead, taking full accountability is crucial.

Notable Quotes:

• Leila Hormozi [02:03]: "The worst thing you can do is compound the lies. I think that the worst thing about a mistake is that you double down on it, doubling down on the lie."
• Sharan Trivaza [04:02]: "You have to be the first to tell the truth."

3. Owning the Narrative

Both hosts agree on the necessity of owning the story immediately to prevent misinformation and rumors from taking hold. Leila shares her experience with her company’s initial negative feedback and how honesty helped turn the situation around.

Notable Quotes:

• Leila Hormozi [04:23]: "Own the narrative and be the first to the headlines."
• Sharan Trivaza [13:07]: "Bad news doesn't get better with time. I just need to be the first response."

4. Building and Maintaining Reputation

Consistency in behavior and communication is highlighted as a cornerstone for maintaining a strong reputation. Sharan shares a personal story about handling a financial crisis within his team and the steps he took to regain trust.

Notable Quotes:

• Sharan Trivaza [25:47]: "I have not lost my cool since then... it's a promise to yourself."
• Leila Hormozi [09:20]: "Until you change your behavior and do it for enough time, your reputation is damaged."

5. Leadership Sacrifices for Company Growth

Leila and Sharan discuss the personal sacrifices leaders often make to ensure the company's success. Leila mentions providing valuable resources for free to establish goodwill, positioning the company as an industry leader.

Notable Quotes:

• Leila Hormozi [21:07]: "We gave everything away. That alone could have been a $30,000 online course or a workshop... here's everything we've learned."
• Sharan Trivaza [21:08]: "Goodwill of marketplace is really important."

6. Effective Communication Strategies

The conversation delves into practical strategies for communicating changes and initiatives within a team. Leila emphasizes gathering feedback from all levels and addressing concerns with empathy.

Notable Quotes:

• Leila Hormozi [28:08]: "I'm always getting feedback from the entire company... addressing their concerns."
• Sharan Trivaza [33:43]: "Fears, frustrations, wants, and aspirations... It's a framework to think about them."

7. Optimizing One-on-One Meetings

Both hosts highlight the significance of well-structured one-on-one meetings. Leila shares her approach to creating a safe and productive environment for these interactions, while Sharan emphasizes preparation and meaningful dialogue.

Notable Quotes:

• Leila Hormozi [54:43]: "If somebody doesn't take the time to prep my one on one... it's not worth either of our time."
• Sharan Trivaza [62:39]: "If you're a manager and you're not spending time thinking about the one on ones, you're leaving a lot of impact and opportunity on the table."

8. Strategic Hiring and Valuing Character

The episode explores the importance of hiring individuals with strong character and integrity, sometimes even over those with higher compensation. Leila recounts advice from her mentor about prioritizing personal values in recruitment.

Notable Quotes:

• Leila Hormozi [47:34]: "Nobody with high character will work for somebody with lesser character than them."
• Sharan Trivaza [48:27]: "The one thing you have going for you is you're actually a good person."

9. Practical Frameworks for Messaging and Decision-Making

Sharan introduces a framework for effective messaging by understanding the audience’s fears, frustrations, wants, and aspirations. This approach ensures communication is empathetic and aligned with the audience’s needs.

Notable Quotes:

• Sharan Trivaza [33:43]: "Fears, frustrations, wants, and aspirations... This removes my bias from the situation."

10. Conclusion and Key Takeaways

The episode wraps up by reinforcing the critical role of honesty, consistency, and strategic communication in building a resilient and respected business. Leila and Sharan provide actionable insights and frameworks that leaders can implement to navigate crises, foster trust, and maintain an unshakeable business foundation.

Final Thoughts:

• Leila Hormozi [56:12]: "I have to know what I'm doing... auditing your time, auditing your calendar."
• Sharan Trivaza [58:00]: "If you do that job well, you win."

---

Key Lessons:

1. Honesty and Accountability: Always be truthful and take full responsibility during crises.
2. Own the Narrative: Quickly address the situation to prevent misinformation.
3. Consistency Builds Trust: Maintain consistent behavior to establish a strong reputation.
4. Leadership Requires Sacrifices: Personal sacrifices are often necessary for the greater good of the company.
5. Effective Communication: Utilize frameworks like fears, frustrations, wants, and aspirations to communicate empathetically.
6. Strategic Hiring: Prioritize character and integrity when recruiting team members.
7. Optimize One-on-Ones: Prepare and structure one-on-one meetings to maximize their effectiveness.

By integrating these lessons, leaders can enhance their ability to manage crises, build strong teams, and sustain long-term business success.

Transcript

[Sharan Trivaza]

Hey, before we start, we wanted you guys to react to this video. Bad news doesn't get better with time. If you're a business owner or entrepreneur, this episode is for you. Because how you communicate during times of crisis is really important and we've seen a lot of that in the news right now. And my partner Leila Hermozi and I are going to talk to you about the tactics and the strategies that you can use, not just to communicate crisis based situations, but also how you communicate in a normal world that empowers your organization and makes you a standout person in your industry. This is a behind the scenes episode of the Operator podcast with me, Sharan Trivaza, and my partner, Leila Hormozi.

[Leila Hormozi]

Look at these two. Oh, wow. He even said it.

[Sharan Trivaza]

When I saw that clip, I just had this mix of emotions.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

I was afraid for them, scared for me for some reason. What if this happened to us? I quickly was rifling through everything that I have done in the past. I'm like, oh my goodness, did. Was I ever in a situation like this? And I think what happens a lot of times when you see that is we instantly go to, what would I have done in that situation? So the question for you is, let's say something like that happened. And it was one of our portfolio companies and we were advising their CEO. What's the piece of advice that you give to that person?

[Leila Hormozi]

I think in those moments, the only thing you can do is be honest. I think it's just like everyone tries, like, what's the PR angle? What's the. How do we manage it? What's the reputation? It's like, be honest, Thomas, you just got caught. The worst thing you can do is compound the lies. I think that I remember hearing, like, the worst thing about a mistake is that you double down on it, doubling down on the lie. I think that's the worst thing you could do. So my first thought would be like, you've gotta be completely honest and take full accountability and responsibility.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Leila Hormozi]

And I think that's the only way that you can ever make value in a side. It makes me think of when we started the company, Allen, and we made our first, like, release of new features. And I get into the group with all of our beta users and they're basically like, this is shit. And I was like, oh my gosh. And then they're like, I can't believe that I'm even paying a dollar for this, like, all this stuff. And I was like, immediately I was like, oh, my gosh there's. How do I respond to it? And then I was like, I'm just gonna do what I've always done, like, tell the truth. Like, I'm so sorry. I fucked up. My fault. I'm not even gonna tell you all the excuses I did. Like, just my fault. I'm sorry up. And, like, I won't even say I'm sorry too many times. I'm just going to change my behavior going forward.

[Thomas]

Right.

[Leila Hormozi]

So when I see that, I think you just have to admit the truth.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

The thing that I saw instantly was in this modern day of social media and things going viral and the news spreading so fast.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Whoever it is has to get ahead of the story, because I remember this quote I will never forget it is bad news doesn't get better with time.

[Thomas]

Mm.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Especially in this modern world.

[Thomas]

Yeah. Right.

[Sharan Trivaza]

So not only do you tell the truth, you. You have to be first to tell the truth. And for a framework for telling the truth is I think it really comes down to core values. Right. So if we were to say something, we would say, hey, that was not me. That was not a sincere candor moment. Let me own that.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

And that was not, you know, we stand for unimpeachable character. Let me own that.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

If the positive way of living our lives is operationalizing our core values, then the way to take responsibility is to also just take responsibility for violating those core values in some way. But I think speed of acceptance of the truth is so important in today's world, because if. What if they'd waited four days before that'd come out?

[Leila Hormozi]

You have to respond immediately.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Yeah.

[Leila Hormozi]

I do think of it like, anytime I fuck something up, anytime I make a mistake, anytime even, like, the company makes a mistake, I just say, like, own the narrative. Like, you want to be the first to the headlines, because then you write the story versus letting other people make assumptions, catastrophize, fill in the blank with their own whatever. It's like, then you own the story of what's happening.

[Sharan Trivaza]

I will tell you this. Maybe you can talk about this. I am so impressed with leaders who can apologize. It is the most. It is very hard to get mad at somebody who is actually apologizing. Honestly, truthfully, who's taking. When I say apologize, I say apologize and take responsibility.

[Thomas]

Right.

[Sharan Trivaza]

There's something so deeply human about apologizing and taking responsibility. And that may have been, hey, I looked at the numbers wrong internally and provided poor guidance to my team. That may have been, hey, I did not, you know, I was I was assigned this project, but I did not get it. I. I've missed my email, whatever it may be.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

When someone takes responsibility, it's the fastest way to like wipe the, the slate clean. And so there's something with this whole leaders who have built this self esteem up.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

And saying sorry or taking responsibility is not a macho thing. And I would just, I would just offer that it's. You are deeply human and deeply loved and cared for when you actually just apologize, take responsibility because now you have a clean slate to go fix the thing.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Leila Hormozi]

I also think it allows, like, if you apologize, you say I up. Then it allows other people to feel like I'm okay being human as well. I've always looked at like that. It's funny, I give a framework to the EAs, for example, for apologizing because, you know, they do 50 tasks a day for you, like they're gonna mess something up. And so I say like, you. You say what you did, Take responsibility for it. Say you're sorry. Don't follow up with excuses or reasons. Follow up with what you'll do differently next time.

[Thomas]

So good.

[Leila Hormozi]

And then it's future pace. Like, here's what I'll do differently in the future. I think that's always helped me a lot too, because, for example, like, if I'm like, if me and Alex in our marriage, like, we have an argument or something, or it's like we just say, I would prefer if you do X next time. Instead. We don't ever say like, I can't believe you did. I can't. Like, we both, we can tell, like, he goes, he just like bites his tongue. I prefer you do X, Y and Z next time. That's it. Because like, at least it's a directive.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Leila Hormozi]

Which keeps you focused in the future rather than feeling bad about yourself and such. But I think at the same time, you know, I watch that clip and I'm like, man, like, that feels bad because even if you say you're sorry and they're just gonna. You're gonna get shit on for a long time for that one.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Do you think that if something, if there is a moment of poor judgment, like the cold flay incident or something else that happens, especially that's publicized, that could be in the company, outside the company, et cetera, for anybody, if something negative happened, sometimes there's nothing you can do about it. It's a, hey, you accept the responsibility and you then pay the price for it. And you tell it. You tell the world that you apologize. And then you work really hard with change behavior to go fix it. So now this guy Andy has to go and spend the time to reclaiming and reworking and rebuilding his reputation. There is no other choice. Right.

[Leila Hormozi]

There's no delete button in the memory. There's only create new memories.

[Thomas]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

So let me ask you this. That was a company leader doing that. It applies to it inside of a company as well. What about in a market situation? Like, let's say there is a. It was Covid at gym launch, which is a. A market catastrophe where there's a market struggle.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

And you're. You are in that industry. Is it the same as. Is that the same crisis you think and as a leader have a similar responsibility?

[Leila Hormozi]

I think it actually might be. I would say yes, similar responsibility. But I think the emotion around it is so different because when it's you, you feel so entrenched in it that it's very hard to see what you do because you're like, I feel terrible because they're all telling me I suck. But personally, I think Covid, you're thinking like, wow, this sucks, rather than I suck. Um, so I think the moment it happened during COVID the first thing that we did is we pulled. We said we need to work around the clock so that tomorrow afternoon we pull a call with all of our clients, and then we pull a call with anybody in the community that wants to join. And then we change all of our marketing and it's like, it's no longer marketing. It's like messaging to the community of, like, what's happening, what's ours. Taking this, we feel confident, you know, here's the direction we need to take. And so we just tried to, I would say a couple things, which is like, one, own the narrative, like, address what's going on, but also own the narrative of how you're going to respond. So I was super transparent about, like, here's what we're going to do as a company. The second thing was addressing the obvious, which is I don't have control over everything. I cannot control if a tornado hits tomorrow or a hurricane or this or that. But what I am damn sure of is I'm going to work my fucking ass off. And if anyone's going to try their hardest to make this work, it's usually we have the most incentive, we have the most resources, we have the most this. And so I think instill confidence in people that you actually can solve the thing going forward and then just see it through. I think there's Nothing but action after that. You just have to live up to what you say. I think it's similar with like a personal crisis because your reputation is the consistent behaviors you do over time.

[Thomas]

Right.

[Leila Hormozi]

So until you change your behavior and do it for enough time, your reputation is damaged. And I think it's unfortunate, but it is. The truth is, like, until he goes out and is in a company, leading a company, not unfaithful for a period of time, his reputation remains as is and it will forever be changed. Because like, when you think of Tiger Woods. You know what I mean?

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Leila Hormozi]

So it's interesting because like, I, I watch that and like, I think to myself, I'm like, I remember my first mentor said, layla, you're always going to be seen through a microscope and heard through a megaphone. And that's why I quit drinking so good. Because, like getting drunk, you know, I have two sips of something and I'm. But like, I, I remember hearing that and I was like, oh, it's not because I don't want people to be like, oh, she drinks. It's because what if I do something stupid while I'm drinking and I'm in public? Because like, I asked myself, where am I vulnerable? And I was like, oh, well, if I get drunk and I do something stupid, because I tend to act silly if I'm drinking and then somebody catches that on camera. They do. And it's like, that's my, my weak point. So I see that with him and I was like, wow, that was, it was that concert in public. That's crazy. Like when you're married.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Leila Hormozi]

That's insane. I don't even barely kiss Alex in public.

[Sharan Trivaza]

The crazy thing that happened one time was it this is real seems really basic.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

It's like five, six years ago and I never had a potty mouth, but I would. Oh no, I would curse.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Whenever I thought it naturally came out. And in a business meeting once I cursed, it was probably, I remember the day, it was probably a well positioned curse.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

And we lost like a big deal because of it. And so I made a commitment to myself that I. It's hard to completely turn off that. And so. But one, I don't curse at home. And so instantly my wife and I don't curse at all. And so that changed everything. And the second is now I only curse in positive way. So I'm like, awesome, right?

[Leila Hormozi]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

You will never see me say, yeah, I would not say that. So I only. My only time I curse is like, it's A. It's a positive. It's an adjective.

[Thomas]

Wow.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Okay.

[Leila Hormozi]

Sean's a better human than me. I feel like this is.

[Sharan Trivaza]

No, but, but, but I think what that did is. So when I'm on. So when I'm on stage, even when I'm stage now, I self beep out my own curse. I'm like that amazing thing. And so I just self beat my own stuff out.

[Leila Hormozi]

So interesting.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Which is so a small thing like that while something had to happen. But it is changed behavior.

[Thomas]

Yeah, right.

[Leila Hormozi]

I'll tell you, it changes your reputation because you don't curse. And it comes off a different way to people.

[Sharan Trivaza]

There have been times where I've been invited to speak at events and in rooms where they're like, I don't have to worry about Tron not cursing. And it's also easy. It's easy because it's not. I don't think you can get Gary V. Not to curse. It's not a good thing or a bad thing. But he's built his reputation around that.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

But talking about the industry, I want to tell a crazy story. And I think this will happen to more people. This is like a year, year and a half ago when I was still at Real and there was in the real estate industry, had this huge litigation against it as an industry as a whole. It was like a commission dispute and all of that. And it all. Everything hit. The lawsuit against the industry hit on a Friday. And we were all kind of taken aback. We thought one half of the commissions are going to go away. And everyone was in a tizzy, freaked out. I had no idea what to do. So I just put out a social post that says, I'm going to show you how to navigate this environment. Come to the Zoom on Monday. That's all I did.

[Thomas]

Right.

[Sharan Trivaza]

And I said, open to everybody in the industry because we have to roll this boat together.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

There were tens of thousands of people on my Zoom and I had committed to doing that, which had no idea, no plan whatsoever.

[Leila Hormozi]

And smart.

[Sharan Trivaza]

The thing that was resonating in my head was bad news doesn't get better with time. I just need to be the first response. So anybody that responded after they were in second place, they were like, well, Sharon had already done that. Shiran showed up first. Sharon is our. You know, is leading the industry, doing this chart. Every single person. It didn't matter. It was. I was the first one to stake, like put a stake in the ground that said, I'm going to help everybody in this industry. And whoever came after Even there if their content or ideas or everything was better, all that they remember is who. Who showed up for.

[Leila Hormozi]

They associate you with the first solution.

[Sharan Trivaza]

That's it. Well you talk about brand being association, right? They're like this thing happened. This person came to support me a hundred percent. It got to the point where for the next multiple months that webinar that I did was played in other firms conference rooms.

[Leila Hormozi]

I remember this. I was walking down the RA and you were telling me this and I was like that's insane. Like competitors, right?

[Sharan Trivaza]

Correct.

[Leila Hormozi]

That's crazy.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Can you imagine we don't have any competitors per se, but can you imagine we don't.

[Thomas]

Right.

[Sharan Trivaza]

But can you imagine other private equity firms playing our content in their conference rooms? I've actually seen it.

[Leila Hormozi]

But. But yeah, it's because if you're a clear. You clearly said I'm the market leader or I'm, I'm the leader of whatever the solution is going to be at the moment. No, it's really smart.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

What do you think about um, what do you think about industry based messaging in maybe a crisis or maybe hey, AIs taken over the X industry. Like I'm sure that's happening to industries right now or it's. There's X regulation that's happening or like in when the tariffs hit and a lot of the E commerce people got went to struggle. What do you think about messaging in a one company messaging to the industry as a whole. Do you think that's a positive thing? Do you think leaders should do that? How do you kind of. How do you think about it?

[Leila Hormozi]

I think, I mean I don't know what you think about. I think about the market leader, like whoever's leading that industry, the market. They're number one. They message the industry whereas I think other people message their competitors. Like number one never needs to talk about number two or three or four to prove their worth. They talk about the greater good and the greater good for their customers and the industry. Whereas like number 2, 3, 4 talk about each other for rocks at each other. They're playing that small game. When you're playing the big game, you're looking at the big picture. I almost look at like the. Even if you're not number one yet, you don't get there unless you start talking about that stuff.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Do you think that if, if there's a, there's a leader of a company that is watching right now.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

And they are call it one of a thousand companies in their industry and they, they see a trend where the industry is going, or they see how, how they can serve their collective clients better. Do you think that their voice can be heard as a kind of industry reputation manager? Or do they. Or they're like, well, my. My voice is too small. No one cares.

[Leila Hormozi]

So I actually have an interesting way I thought about it, which is like, if you treat your audience like clients, I think eventually your audience becomes your client.

[Sharan Trivaza]

So good.

[Leila Hormozi]

So if you treat the whole fire today, am I really so good? Eat some caffeine today.

[Sharan Trivaza]

But that is so good.

[Leila Hormozi]

No, I. I think, I think about that way because it's like, how would I respond to this person if they were a client? And that actually came to me like three years ago because I was going through my IDs when I started making content, and I was like, oh, was this person a client or not? Were they a client of my company or not? And then I realized I was like, I should just treat everybody like they're my clients. And so I kind of made that a mantra. I was like, treat my whole audience like they're my clients. So it's like, I respond to as many as I can. I get back like, I. I hold boundaries where I went, like all that. And that's helped me a lot. So I. I have a hard time believing that if you don't treat people like they are clients, that they wouldn't want to be one day.

[Sharan Trivaza]

You know, so good. I also think that the. If someone says, oh, yeah, that makes sense. But I think the switch there is we respect our clients. We respect our clients for their decision to work with us. We respect our clients for what they do. We respect that we deliver some kind of service to them, that they can be better.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

And because of that respect you handle, you approach the conversation differently. I actually think it's no different than when you have a players in your organization. When you have a players in your organization, you respect them more. Therefore you're not an ass to them. So when. If anyone's being an ass to their team members, they just don't respect their teams.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Like our teams. I don't want to offend anybody. I'm like, yo are rock stars. And so there's this deep level of respect. They're saying like, hey, tell me how I can. I told the team, tell me how I can make my content better. Like, if I need to reshoot that three times, I trust your judgment. Tell me that. There's a deep level of respect. And when you respect somebody, you change the way you communicate with them. So, so even if someone is rude to you on the DMs, and you have. That's like a client just being rude and you. You would handle that. Not with rudeness back.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

You would handle a lot more neutrality overall.

[Leila Hormozi]

Yeah. Like, oh, I could see what you're saying there, but here's my perspective. Yeah, no, that's really interesting.

[Sharan Trivaza]

It changes the frame completely.

[Leila Hormozi]

It does change the frame. Now, I think, paired with the industry messaging, I'm curious what you think about what it takes to be an industry leader. Like, looking at what happened in that Coldplay incident, like, where my mind goes is, I'm kind of curious, like, what do you think the sacrifices are that you've had to make to be an industry leader and to continue to be. Like, if you really think, like, what do you sacrifice every day, months, over the years that you're like, if I didn't have this responsibility, maybe I'd be doing those things. Have you ever thought about that?

[Sharan Trivaza]

Yeah. In a lot of ways, I see this as the biggest difference between those that are leaders in an industry and those that are not, to me, is just one thing. Those that are not are consistently inconsistent and those that are. Are consistently consistent. I just love being around consistently consistent people. Even if you're a total jerk, I know that you're going to show up as a jerk over and over again. We know you're a jerk. Right. You know, we know you're a jerk. So don't be a jerk one day and be like, you know, awesome the next day. Like, being consistently consistent is really, really important because it allows people to have a sense of safety with you.

[Thomas]

Right.

[Leila Hormozi]

And.

[Sharan Trivaza]

And when people are safe with you, they will open up to you. They will be more vulnerable with you. They'll want to hire you. They'll want your advice, they'll listen to your stuff. And that's why consistent content is important.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Consistent messaging is important. Consistency.

[Thomas]

It. Yeah.

[Leila Hormozi]

So it's not about. So, okay, let's. If this is like a hypothetical extreme. If Andrew Tate got caught at the concert with a girl when he had a girlfriend, would anybody say anything about.

[Sharan Trivaza]

No. He's consistently content.

[Leila Hormozi]

Yeah. He's consistent with the fact that he's. He does that. Right. And so it's more. You're saying it's not necessarily about avoiding being flawed, it's about being consistent with it.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Yeah. Because at some point, you're messaging to the world who you are.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

And this is an incident only because the messaging was incongruent with.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Who he. Who he portrayed himself to be. And you know, you talked about that Adam Grant quote, which I thought was awesome.

[Thomas]

Right.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Which is how you do in a lot of ways. How you do one thing is how you do everything. You can't be. You can't have high integrity at home and not have high integrity at work. It's just you're. You're working the same muscle.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Leila Hormozi]

No, that's a tough one.

[Thomas]

Right? Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

The, the other thing about, the other thing about being an industry leader is sometimes you do it at the direct cost of success of your company. You. You do something for like, I will tell you the reason why in a lot of ways we don't have competition. Like, I don't know, no one is saying, hey, I'll go work with acquisition.com or someone else. There's no someone else. Right. But I think that's because we give everything away. Like the scaling roadmap. We just give everything away. That alone could have been a 10, 20, $30,000 online course or a workshop or whatever. We just said, here's everything that we've learned. Go get it.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

And could that have been seen as a reduction in revenue for us?

[Leila Hormozi]

You could, yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

You could fight that. But then we just said, hey, this is the goodwill that we're putting into the marketplace. I think goodwill of marketplace is really important.

[Leila Hormozi]

That's actually interesting. The more goodwill you deposit into the marketplace, the more you position yourself as an industry leader because you have all that goodwill to stand on.

[Thomas]

That's.

[Leila Hormozi]

That's fascinating.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Goodwill also opens doors.

[Thomas]

Right?

[Sharan Trivaza]

It's. People are like, well, I see Layla stuff all the time. If you reached out to somebody on dm, there's a, the, the chances of you getting a response back are so high is not because of any other reason than because you have been, one, consistently consistent and two, you've given everything away. So there's so much goodwill deposited.

[Leila Hormozi]

I should message like one person because I don't message anybody.

[Sharan Trivaza]

But my point is you. You could. You could. Yeah, right. But I think that is that here's a behind the scenes thing that you don't know about. The key is that while Layla doesn't message others, it helps us in our. In hiring a players.

[Thomas]

Yeah, right.

[Sharan Trivaza]

So when, when somebody, even though you don't make the ask, someone coming on board gets a chance to see all the goodwill and they have this immense love when they show up for the interview. So the frame is completely changed. They're like, what would it take for me to be a part of this ecosystem, like, and that part's nice.

[Leila Hormozi]

When people come in and they're like, oh, I saw in your stories that you said this or that, or, you know, I had someone that was interviewing for EA and they're like, I saw you didn't go to the dentist for six months and like, I'd help with that. And I was like, smart. So no, that does. That does definitely help there. It's interesting because, like, you know, as I think of the industry leader piece too, I do think, like, being consistent. I think at the beginning, though, I definitely thought. And I'm thinking what other people are thinking too. They're like, I can't have flaws. I can't make mistakes. I can't. How do you see, like, have you ever. Can you think of, like, the most. The biggest mistake you've ever made in leadership and how you came back from it, like, just something you did in front of your team? Because, like, I can think of maybe two times where I did something. I was like, fuck, I feel really bad about that. Like, it dug at me and I felt like it was inconsistent with who I was. And then like, how did I come back from it?

[Sharan Trivaza]

So this is why you get coaching, which is good. I will not forget this. There was a team meeting. It was just all execs, probably like eight, nine years ago. And I remember what happened. It was like a little financial crisis. We found that somebody was embezzling from the company and. Which is bad. It would not end us, but it was irritating because we didn't have controls. And I'm normally like a pretty even keeled guy.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

And I lost it.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

I didn't yell, but I was belligerent. I was not cool in the meeting. I. They saw me, you know, semi unhinged. They saw me. Well, no, you know, they like, I'm like this all the time.

[Leila Hormozi]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

They saw. They saw me off base. Yeah, they saw. It really bothered me. They saw how someone poked my integrity buttons. And I got off the call. I got off the call more upset about how I had handled myself than about the situation.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

And I called my coach about it and she said, so what? You know, she. She asked me this crazy, crazy question. What are you telling yourself about yourself? It's a really weird question if you ask about anything. Anytime you're down, anytime you're happy, anytime you're sad narrative. Even when you're happy. So let's say. Let's say we did something and we had a big win.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

And you feel good.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

So, like, what are you telling yourself about yourself? I'm the man. I'm awesome. I created this, all that. And then the opposite is true too, right?

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

So that was a. So I said, I don't know how to answer that question. She goes, if you can't answer that question, you will not be able to reset yourself out of this. And the thing that I. I realized was that I needed to. I needed the. I needed my team to see me back on an even keel. And so I was telling myself that, man, my team doesn't see me on this even keel anymore. My team has lost trust in my ability to handle a tough situation. Will they think that every other situation going forward, I'm going to be semi unhinged? And I learned these words which was they often never use in a professional context, which is the ultimatum of that will never happen again. So when you say something like that will never happen again, you make a promise to yourself.

[Thomas]

Oh, yeah, right.

[Sharan Trivaza]

And so I said, I'm so sorry. That will never happen again. And I have not lost my cool since then. And I'll tell you the. The behavioral change that my coach taught me. She said, anytime you feel like you're coming unhinged, you can only do one thing. You can ask a clarifying question. So as soon as I know that I'm getting riled up, I say, leila, I'm kind of curious. Could you help me understand how we did A, B and C? So now I reframe the question. I get a chance to catch up. So anytime I. Anytime I'm reeling, I go back to a clarifying question that has been the most valuable. Like D. De Escalating, emotionally regulated mechanism. Mechanism for me, especially if you do it in a group, the group sees you with so much thoughtfulness and respect in this entire situation, that one thing helped me so much. And then making a promise to myself that I will never do that again. Otherwise, you're breaking a promise. So if you ever want to fix something, you just say, I will never do that again.

[Leila Hormozi]

That's so interesting. So now I'm like thinking where I could apply that.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Now you're thinking, man, next time Shiron asks a question, he's like, I ask, oh, he's getting unhinged a little bit here.

[Leila Hormozi]

Unhinged. I don't know, though, because he's good at emotionally regulating.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Well, but let me ask you this. This may. This may bring us to what operators are doing day to day. So let me kind of break down communication. Overall. One of the things that I've seen you do super, super well is whenever we come up with an idea or a new initiative, however small it could be like, hey, this is what we're doing for holiday coverage to this is what we're doing for a new building launch. To this is what we're doing for making this investment. To this is what we're doing in this new policy. You have a very thoughtful way of saying, okay, well how should we message this to everybody so that no one feels like it was just thrust down upon them? And because when you have a players, they all want to be a part of the company, not be told about what's happening, at least in most situations. Right?

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

So for the operator that's watching, who's building and growing the team, can you talk about, like when something happens, how do you think about how to communicate it?

[Leila Hormozi]

I think the first piece is that one thing that I always do with any situation is I'm always getting feedback from the entire company. So when it's something that's going to affect the whole company, then I make a conscious effort, whether it's me or to have other people gather feedback from the entire company, meaning not every single person, but a person at every level in the organization. And so then when I'm messaging something, I can say I've acknowledged the feedback at all levels. So it's like I've taken. Because I think if you really think about empathy, what is empathy? Which I think in order for a leader to message things well, they have to have empathy. I think empathy is the ability to take anybody's perspective. It's like, I can have empathy for you because I can put myself in your shoes. I can have empathy for Kai because I can put myself in her shoes. I can have empathy for Luke. Cause I can put myself in his shoes. Like you just go. And then you're like, what would they be thinking during this? And then I take that into how I would message people by basically addressing their concerns. Usually I1, I bake their concerns into the solution. So it's like I'm trying to address as many global concerns as possible with the solution and cannot catch all of them. And so then when you cannot catch all of them, you explain what you've done to address the majority and that there are no perfect solutions. And I think I really try to hone in on those two things, which is like, one, I've done my best and I believe this is the right course to take. We're never going to have a perfect solution, but this is the best one for us right now. Two, the solution might change in a year. Things are always changing. We're growing. We're growing fast, and so things are going to alter. So, like, what works now might not work in a year, and that's okay. We'll revisit it then. This is good enough for now. And then I think the last one is thinking through. Okay, you have these ancillary concerns left. I think that's either me. I think there's two things I have to do with that one. One, I ask myself, do they need a different perspective, or do we need a different procedure? Do they need a different perspective? Like, because sometimes I think you can get caught up when you're empathetic and like, oh, well, they. And I'm like, no, no, no. They need to learn actually right now to take my perspective. So sometimes I say they need a different perspective. They need to understand mine as the person that's looking out for this business for the next forever, that this is the perspective I have, which then I say, okay, so to address the rest of the concerns, I might have to give them my perspective. Here's from my perspective, why is it that we can't all have assigned desks in the new headquarters? Because if I want to assign you desks, I have to make you be here a certain amount of days a week. And I think you'd like that less than not having an assigned desk every day. And that's because I've also been a high performer, and I know what it's like to have those expectations. So I made the trade off, right? And I take responsibility for that. The next one is, if it's not that they need my perspective, then maybe there is something that I can change. And maybe I haven't worked through the solution enough. And maybe I say, you know what? Hey, I actually really consider your concerns, and I don't think I took them into the first solution. So let me go back and think about that. So it's like when there's the leftovers, after I've acknowledged everything, then I think, okay, is it that I need to teach them my perspective or. Or do I have I not taken into account some of their things? I need to change the procedure I'm doing.

[Sharan Trivaza]

I really like that. And, Sid, if you're a business owner and you just heard what Layla just said, and you're like, man, I'm afraid to get the feedback. So let's talk about that for one second, and then I have a framework that I can share. Yeah, if you're thinking through a solution or thinking through a problem, or thinking through a challenge or thinking through something, how do you message for feedback without it influencing your decision at the end? Because I can see a business owner with a team of 10 saying, Man, I can go ask what XYZ policy should be. I know they're all going to come back and say they want more time or more money or more tools or whatever. Now that I've given them the opportunity to say that, if I now come back and say, no, I look like I'm not taking their perspective into play, like, how do you think about that?

[Leila Hormozi]

I think there's a couple things which is like, one, you have to remember everyone has bias. I think about that all the time. What is their incentive in this situation? You know, I think that as the founder or the leader of the organization, you tend to have the most aligned incentives. But some people don't have the most aligned incentives. Sometimes they want people in the organization to fail because it would make them look better. Sometimes they have an incentive to work less because they have something going on at home. Sometimes they had an incentive. So I'm always taking into account of the feedback I'm getting before I. Before I take into consideration what is everyone's individual incentives and bias. What are they bringing to me? Right? If we're talking about a new initiative that we want to launch, if there's five people on the team who have skills that apply to it and five people that don't, the ones that don't probably are going to find ways to say the new initiative won't work. Whereas the ones who do are going to find ways to say it's going to work really well. So that's one thing that I take into consideration whenever I'm taking the feedback, even when I take it for myself, when I'm saying, hey, do you guys think I should hire this role to help me? I'm thinking this took me a while to learn as a leader when people were like, no, I actually don't think you need that person. Oh, because you'd have a new boss. Of course you don't want this person to help me. Because in helping me, they also take you away from me. Right? That's the first thing that I think through. The second thing is that a lot of the times I do is. Cause I know people feel a lot of weight giving their perspective or they feel like, what are you going to do with it? I just say, like, hey, I'm asking a lot of people this question. I would love your feedback on this piece. Don't worry, I'm going to take it with a grain of salt, not making any decisions based on your feedback alone.

[Sharan Trivaza]

That's so good that that was what I was looking for on that. Right. Because it then it also reduces the stakes for both parties. Correct?

[Thomas]

Right.

[Sharan Trivaza]

So it makes their field feedback valued, but at the same time it also pre frames what is going to happen in the future.

[Leila Hormozi]

100%. And sometimes I tell them too, if they're afraid, because it's going to be, I say, listen, my hair is full of secrets not going anywhere. So like anything you tell me doesn't leave this.

[Sharan Trivaza]

So I'll tell you one framework that I think think about often, which is probably the number one framework that I keep going through in my head.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

In messaging, anything is. We've talked about this before is fierce frustrations, wants and aspirations.

[Leila Hormozi]

Oh, yeah, that's really cool.

[Sharan Trivaza]

So anytime I talk, anytime there's an idea, I'm just like, okay, we're talking, we're talking to Phil. What would be. What was Jeff, what would his general kind of fears beyond this?

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

And then what is things that he's frustrated by? What are his wants for his career? What is aspirations? All right, cool. Now I have. I can do that for collectively for the entire organization or the entire group of people that I'm helping. And now that becomes a very easy pattern because it also removes my bias from the situation. I'm thinking about their fears, their frustrations, their wants and their aspirations. But the best part is once you have that, you can actually build a messaging, you know, kind of cadence that talks to each of this. You can say, hey, many of you may be afraid that this, this, and this is going to happen to you. Let me show you why many of you are frustrated by this, this, and this. And I wanted to include that. And I know that all of you want this, this, this and this. And so I wanted to make that as a part of everything. But the aspiration of our organization is this, that everyone wants to go on this journey. That's why we build this.

[Thomas]

Right.

[Sharan Trivaza]

But if you do that over and over, it's like insanely helpful because it takes you out of you and it allows you to think on them, which is so much easier to message after that.

[Leila Hormozi]

It's so much better now. It's funny because, like I do that, I've baked it in. But that's such a good framework to like, just. Let's just run it through the. The chatgpt of Fears, frustration, wants and aspirations.

[Sharan Trivaza]

But, but in the interesting part is you can also use it as a avatar with AI. You know, I think you can do fears, frustrations, wants and aspirations of your clients when you're messaging something.

[Leila Hormozi]

Oh, my gosh.

[Thomas]

Yeah, Right.

[Sharan Trivaza]

If you're changing pricing, people instantly go to, oh, I'm changing pricing. They're going to get frustrated, it's going to drop in value, it's going to this. And you can say, hey, hey, AI. I'm trying to raise pricing from, you know, $1,000 a month to $1,500 a month on my service. My core avatar is home buyers.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

This is a service that we provide. Can you walk me through what their fears would be, what their frustrations would be, what their wants would be, what their aspirations would be?

[Leila Hormozi]

So super good.

[Thomas]

Right?

[Sharan Trivaza]

And here's my old pricing and my new pricing. Based on those. Can you tell me where I'm misaligned? And it'll literally give you a starting point for having a discussion that is not in your head.

[Leila Hormozi]

Yeah, no, that's really good. Should we answer questions?

[Sharan Trivaza]

Let's. Yeah, let's do some questions.

[Leila Hormozi]

Answer these questions. I don't know what your framework for this is, but I'll give you my framework, which is just there's expectations. And if you want to improve retention, then results or delivery has to meet or exceed expectations. And you can do that in two ways, which is like, one, if you want to make sure that you're always meeting or exceeding, then what you tell them is going to happen is actually you've lowered it by about 15% of what you are sure is going to happen. So you give yourself buffer room. If I'm telling them where the company is going to go, I'm going to like, under index by 15% because I want to provide myself with buffer because I would like, when they come in, for them to be overjoyed about the fact that the company is actually doing better and growing faster than I might have explained. Explained on the interview. The other way that you can do that is by increasing your ability to deliver on the expectations. But I always think it's easier just to position it as anything that when anyone's coming in, I think I always make it sound worse than it is. And I don't make the wins sound as good as they are. Not by, like demeaning the company and being like, it's a losing company. Like, of course we're a winning team, but I'm not going to oversell. And I think a lot of the time, what happens is that people are desperate to get people in, and so they kind of oversell on the interview process. They oversell in the job description. They oversell on their. In their website. And then when people come in, they feel undersold because their expectations are here, but reality is here. So you want it that either they're matched or that reality is better than the expectations.

[Sharan Trivaza]

When I think about kind of retention, I don't love the word because when I think about retention, I feel like we are putting a chokeholder on somebody and having. Forcing them to stay here. So I think language is important because the limits of your language are the limits of your world. However, connection is really good, right? I think people come for the opportunity for the connection. I think about this framework as rapport results, reward. Rapport is if I have a really good relationship with Layla and I can talk with her and I feel like the relationship exists, then it feels safe. One of the things that most. You know, most people don't do well is they make their relationship about the. The safety about the relationship, and that's really hard. So, for example, if I was in a room with Leila and. And we were in a meeting and I wanted to share something vulnerable with her, I would not say, hey, I'm sharing this with you. You know, is this like, you know, is it okay for me to share something vulnerable with you? I say, hey, I'm just assuming that this is a safe room. I create the safety of the environment. That way, it doesn't put Layla in a safe spot, in a tight spot. Right? So I get rapport by making the environment safe. Therefore, the people in the environment are safe. Right? So that's number one. But the results are, we all need to be very, very clear that whatever you say you're going to do, you're going to do. So this is the say do ratio. Hey, I. Phil said I'm going to deliver on X. I deliver on X. Phil, freaking great job. Because whatever you said you're going to do, you're going to do, and I'm going to recognize you for that. And the third is, what is the reward? Hey, Phil wants to go and become, you know, a play for the Anaheim Ducks. Awesome, right? Well, if we are not committed to getting Phil to the point where he is on a path to paying for the Anaheim Ducks, I am sorry. We have failed because we need to say, hey, this is your stepping stone to go doing that. Let's do whatever we can to go doing that. So if we miss the Rapport, you don't get the safety. If we miss the results, you don't get good work. And if you don't, if you miss the reward, they just never stay longer.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

So I always think about rapport. Results, reward.

[Leila Hormozi]

No, it's good because I hit the beginning, but you hit the whole journey, which is fantastic. I think it's important. The last one, you said, like, you always have to be thinking about their goal. Yeah, I think that's. That's one of the most important things that I feel like I didn't understand until probably the second to last year with Jim launch is like, I always have to know their goal and keep that in mind as much, if not more than my own.

[Sharan Trivaza]

I want to. If there was. I'll give you the entire value of this entire episode with a question that I'm going to ask Layla, which she has no idea about. When you're gonna have talked often about this, and this is your idea. Okay. When you're talking to managers, owners, leaders, team leaders, et cetera, when they're talking to their team members and let's say they want to guide their direction differently.

[Thomas]

Right.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Hey, they're doing something that could be done better. They could improve performance in some way. It feels like a strange conversation. And you've always talked about anchoring. Can you talk about, like, how you have that conversation without it being an awkward conversation?

[Leila Hormozi]

Yeah, I think I've just desperately seek to avoid awkward conversations and. And hard, shitty ones. So I found what I consider a better way, which is anchor to their goal. So I would start the conversation with, like, hey, Sean, you told me that you want to own the Anaheim Ducks, right?

[Thomas]

Yes.

[Leila Hormozi]

Amazing. So I want to get you there. And I look at it like we're here, like, I'm your partner to get to the Anaheim Ducks. So I think that if we want to get to the Anaheim Ducks, what we need to do is. What I would think we should start doing is I think you should start doing X, Y, Z. And if you do that, I think you'll get there faster than if you do it the way you're currently doing it. Do you think? What do you think?

[Sharan Trivaza]

Yeah, I. I didn't see it that way, but, yeah, that. That makes sense.

[Leila Hormozi]

I just. I just think it gets there faster. That's like. Do you agree?

[Sharan Trivaza]

So good. It's so good.

[Leila Hormozi]

So it's like, can you get it if you have their goal? And it's like, how can I get you there faster with less pain, with more fun?

[Sharan Trivaza]

Because. So just to Contextualize this for everybody, right? So let's say you have a team member who does good work but takes too long, right? And you know that their goal is to, you know, I don't know, be CFO someday. I'm just making this up, right? You can say, hey, hey, Jimmy, I know that your goal is to be the CFO someday and you do insane work, but in a fast moving organization, do you agree that we have to make some fast decisions? One of the things that I think that will get you there much faster is this faster turn of decisions, which we know that sometimes you may make the wrong one. That's okay. The way we fix that is us talking about it together. But again, you make it about. About Jimmy wanting to become cfo.

[Leila Hormozi]

Jimmy wanting to become cfo. I. I think yes. And I think another one that you can do is if you don't. Okay, so here's one. If you don't know their goal, if you're going in the conversation, you don't know their goal. I always use this line, which now my whole team's gonna know, but I'm like, do you know what would make you a fucking weapon so good? Then they're like, what? I'm like, if it's just this one piece, the missing piece, it's the fucking weapon and it's the missing piece. The missing piece is like, you're fucking grinding. You're communicating well, you're an amazing teammate, but you just don't address the hard conversations quite soon enough. The moment that we fix that, you are fucking unstoppable.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Leila Hormozi]

And I just want to get you there. So, like, let's just work on this one thing for the next two months and like, oh, it's going to be day over.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Leila Hormozi]

Especially works with sales teams.

[Sharan Trivaza]

I wish we had started with these questions because this is actually way more valuable. The one thing that I will tell the number one reason why you have team members that underperform is not because they are underperforming. It's because they just don't know how to do something. It is our responsibility to actually teach people how to do something. So, for example, if you've never actually let a person go, you're going to be really nervous because you don't know what to say. Because no one has taught you how to let a person go. Right.

[Leila Hormozi]

No script.

[Sharan Trivaza]

No, you have no script for that. Or if you don't know how to, you know, if you don't know how to do a reconciliation, no one's ever taught you doing that. So you don't know how to do that. So it's our job to teach people to do that. I would just assume that they don't know how to do it and say, hey, this one thing will get you there faster. Can I show you one way that I do it and you can come up with your own way. So now you're like, I'll give you mine, but you can add your own sauce to it. But I think the way to get people better is not to tell them to do something better is to like teach them how to do it.

[Leila Hormozi]

Teach them. You know, one of my favorite things to ask people too is do you want me to do the V1? How about I do the V1 or, or do you want to do it? And then they feel safe like, oh no, no, no. Because then it's like if they don't know how to do it, they're like, you do the V1. And I'm like, okay, great, I'll do a V1 and send it over to you. Or they're like, oh no, I got the V1. So it's like, oh, you have enough reps in the tank?

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Leila Hormozi]

Is it's like, then they feel like it's okay that I don't know how to do it. You know what I mean?

[Sharan Trivaza]

It's so good. That's awesome. This is my favorite.

[Leila Hormozi]

Go for it. Me find money.

[Sharan Trivaza]

The biggest misconception is thinking that you have to pay top money for people because everyone thinks that, hey, I've got a talent and I have to pay A plus money for it. It is not the case. In a lot of ways you can start a consulting for equity. In a lot of ways you can say, hey, you want this? I will promote your current product in a lot of ways it's like, hey, why don't you and I do a collaboration series together and then maybe you can spend time consulting with my team. It is, there is. You just have to accept that there is another way where, if, if, if money was not an issue, what else, how else would I kind of compensate this person? And I actually will ask the person that, hey, let's just put money aside and if, if we could get paid in edamame and it was not money, what would like, what else is important to you to kind of kick off this relationship? Because I just want to get started to show how amazing this could be working together. And now you co create what a non monetary way is to get that up and running. And then when you create a Result, then you could do something with that result. Right? So I, there, there are ways to do it, but it is hard when you don't co create it. If I just said, hey Phil, would you like, would, would you trade workouts? Like you're like, bro, I'm, that's not, I'm not interested in that. But if you said if money was not on the table, what else could we work with for us to kick get this started? I think that allows for a co creation of it in some way.

[Leila Hormozi]

You know what co creation is too? The currency of co creation is freedom.

[Thomas]

Huh?

[Leila Hormozi]

They have freedom in your company working for you because autonomy is freedom, right? So now they have autonomy. So they're trading, working at some big corporation, getting all this money, but they don't have freedom. So now they say, well I want to work for somebody who I now I get freedom. But you do get less money. So like one thing I tell people a lot of times when they come in, they're like, I don't want to work at this because all this stuff, hey, but why don't you pay as much as the. And I'm like, freedom money. You told me that you wanted freedom. There's trade offs. It's just not going to come at every company. You can't, I mean we've talked about this. Like if the value proposition is like you have a hundred percent of everything, it's like you don't have a value proposition. You're just shoveling, you're just too much.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Yeah.

[Leila Hormozi]

So it's like your value prophet is freedom and autonomy, not money. So sell to that. And then it's like, I mean we've had people joining this company. I've taken like 50% of pay cuts. They were like these absurdly funded VC backed companies, but they were like this, you know, and they couldn't do anything, they couldn't make decisions. There was red tape everywhere and they came here and took a 50% pay cut because they were like, I just want freedom. Like, yeah. And I think that we give that. And so that's probably what attracts a lot of people here.

[Sharan Trivaza]

I would. Another thing that I would say is the depth of your pipeline is going to be so dependent on the, the compensation that you can offer. Meaning we always talk about this internally, which is talent trumps timing. You find somebody that is extremely talented, you've got to find a way to engage with them, even if it's the smallest possible way. And so we are attracting, we are recruiting, we are connecting for the, for the Role we don't even have for the future. So I'm sorry. In a lot of ways, Layla and I are professional recruiters. That is our job. We. That is there if you take everything else off the table. Our only job is to work super, super hard and just be professional recruiters. That is, if we do that job well, we win.

[Leila Hormozi]

It's really true. And I think that's why also, when people ask, like, what. What's the number one skill I should get if I'm going in the business? I'm like, sales. Because it's, you know, like, you don't stop selling. Like, the.

[Thomas]

The.

[Leila Hormozi]

I. I've literally thought, like, I feel like I'm, like, one of the top sales people in the company because I have to sell people on the opportunity of joining the company all the time, which is.

[Sharan Trivaza]

It's.

[Leila Hormozi]

It's intangible. There's no certainty. There's no, you know, you don't get a refund. Like, you know what I mean? There's, like, so many things to overcome there. I also just think going with that question that they're asking is like, how do you get a talent? Is like. I remember one of my first mentors told me this. He said, a talent. If you want to get a talent and you don't have the experience and you can't pay as much as them, you better be a better fucking person.

[Thomas]

Than all of them.

[Leila Hormozi]

And I was like, what do you mean by that? He's like, the one thing. He told me this. I remember. He's like, the one thing you have going for you is you're actually a good person. And I was like, I don't even understand that people have businesses or not good people. It's crazy. And he was like, but you should lean into that. He was like, because nobody with high character will work for somebody with lesser character than them.

[Thomas]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Leila Hormozi]

And that clicked for me, which I remember thinking, every skill I have, at some point, somebody will be better than me at it. But if I can just continue to double down on my character and my integrity and my values, and if that is the most potent thing I can become, then, like, that I will never have to outsource that. I will never have to find somebody who can replace that. You know what I mean?

[Sharan Trivaza]

I love it. I will say golden nugget number two on this one. If you're not listening to anything else, you listen to this. The thing that Leila and I talk about the most is how people show up for interviews. I will say this. If you, no matter who you are, if you're a founder entrepreneur, you don't think you're interviewing, you are interviewing. And if you're a teammate and you want a leader, want to work at a company, if is not an interview, you're showing up for a client presentation, just change your frame from showing up for an interview to showing up for a client presentation. It is not about what they're going to ask you. It is about what you're going to present. If you would you show up for a client presentation with not well dressed, not well prepped, no slide deck, not pre done homework, not like a roadmap for where the company is going. Not you're like, hey, I, I had a person said, hey, I went through your website and while I was doing all this research, a couple of things really bothered me and I know that this is probably going to take away my shot at this role, but I wanted to share this with you. There are nine typos on your website. You know what? The detail oriented. That is insane. Yeah, it's insane. And so, but that's a. He showed up for a client presentation.

[Leila Hormozi]

And it's.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Leila Hormozi]

That that shift is honestly so important for people to understand because I think when we talk about like, what are the best interviews, it's when people present to us the argument of like, this is why I should be here. Because we show up to those calls with this is why you should join. It's a co. You know what I mean? And so it's like if you bring that and then they just bring like nothing. It's very difficult.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Yeah. And it also affects the energy of the interview. You're waiting for Sharon to ask you questions. You're waiting for Layla to say tell me about a time when. To tell me about a time when. Are you serious? Like we don't. Welcome to AI. Welcome to a world of collaboration. I don't need a time when you're doing anything. I just need you to show me how good you are.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

And I have 20 minutes for you to show me, like, show me how good you are.

[Leila Hormozi]

If you think about it too, like when the person isn't presenting to you, you're having to pull from them so they put the work on you rather than taking the work away. I think the best thing that ever had happened was when I interviewed you as me for the EA role and I just said, well, to be honest, I've never interviewed for this role. But she goes, let me just tell you what I'm going to do. And Then the whole call was her just being like, here's how I'm going to do this. Here's how I'm going to onboard myself. Here's how I'm gonna. Like, she gave me the instruction manual for how she was gonna do her job. And I was like, this is amazing. She already took, like, I didn't have to talk the whole, like, immediately, like, you create immediate relief.

[Sharan Trivaza]

So good.

[Leila Hormozi]

And so it's like if you think about if humans, we ultimately follow our emotions. It's like when you interview with somebody, if they make it really hard for you to pull out, then it's like you're just gonna be like, oh, feels. It feels heavy. Like a lot of work, right? So it's like, oh, that doesn't feel good. I want you to. I'm hiring you to create relief in the organization.

[Sharan Trivaza]

That's it.

[Thomas]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

So good.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Leila Hormozi]

Such a good frame that you.

[Thomas]

Yeah, Awesome.

[Leila Hormozi]

I don't know how you see this, but I. I answer pretty nuanced, which is like the same. The hires that you make in one company are not the hires you make in another company. Because in the beginning, you are essentially the company. And you and you and you and me and you are all different. And so what am I bad at and what do I hate doing that are the lowest dollar per hour that I can hire for is usually what I'm going to try and hire first. What am I worst at? Right? So like, for me, when I first started a gym launch, it was like one of the first things, like, I need it. That was literally one of the first rules. I'm like, listen, I'm not that techie. I don't have any interest in learning it. I don't think it's my skill. I think everyone knows, like, people. I'm more a people centric leader. So, like, tech is just not my thing. So the first thing I was like, I need it. And I also need finance. I remember I was doing the books and I was like, what the fuck I'm doing here? Yeah, can you imagine that? Scary at this point? Um, and filing tax returns. And I was like, oh, my gosh. So then I said, okay, what are the two things that are critical to the business growth? But also I'm really bad at doing finance and it. So in my first six hires, those were two of the people that I hired for. And so I think everyone has to think that way. You have to zoom out for a second and say, you know, what are the things I'm doing of the Things I'm doing, what am I good at, what am I bad at, what do I like, what do I hate? And I think you first try to get rid of the things that you, you're bad at and that you hate that are the lowest dollar per hour in there. And then you work your way up from there and eventually you just try to get to the things that you're very good at that you love doing. But that comes after many years of work because I think it's kind of like growing a child. It's like, well, in the beginning, like you're still gonna probably have to change the diapers and. Cause it's just, it just wears diapers for a couple years. You're just gonna have to do that. But I think eventually you can get to a point probably by year. I feel like between years 5 and 7 are. Where are the years where like it's grown to a point where you can really operate in your sweet spot and like not have to veer off very often and you don't even have to jump in when things go wrong. Cause there's other people that can jump in. But until then I think you're constantly going through the cycle of like, what do I suck at? And I'm not good at that I should get off my plate. I think another piece to it is like I, I asked you this yesterday. I said like sometimes I have a hard time knowing where am I best utilized in the company, right? And so I think it's also zooming out and saying where am I best utilized, where am I strongest that I should double down on and continue to do. And I think knowing that as well is important to success because it's just as important to know what you should get off your plate as it is what you should keep on your plate. Because a lot of people don't keep stuff on that. It's like they are a marketing genius, but they just, it frustrates them. And so every once in a while they're like, I gotta get this off my plate, this marketing bullshit. It's like, oh, the engine for the entire company. You're world class at that's gonna be tough. That's probably gonna take a couple years, 18 months to get. Cause you're probably gonna need. You're a unicorn. We gotta get like six all stars to replace you. So that's how I think of it with a, a first time founder. And I think you probably bring it fairly different perspective as well.

[Sharan Trivaza]

No, I think you're right. The. I think about it in two ways.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

The first way is I think about what would be the last thing that I would give up.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Leila Hormozi]

Oh, that's good.

[Sharan Trivaza]

If you think about, hey, so you take Alex, right? If you say what would be the last thing he would give? He would, the last thing he would be give up would be marketing.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Right. So. So you know that that is off the plate. Which also means that, hey, I'm going to hold onto that because that is driving the business. For founders in smaller companies, they are everything. And if, if they always think that, well, if I bring someone over and they leave, then I have to take the job back. It is not the taking the job back is that the rest of the company will struggle. So if one, if you can just understand that what would be the last thing you would give up, then you start to realize that, hey, am I okay with that?

[Thomas]

Cool.

[Sharan Trivaza]

That was the original reason why I got into this. So I'm. That would be the last thing I would give up. The second thing I think about is what is the farthest thing from revenue that I have to do.

[Leila Hormozi]

That's a good one.

[Thomas]

Right?

[Leila Hormozi]

Because we say the lowest dollar per hour, it's usually farthest from revenue.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Yeah. So it's like, I have to deliver this, I have to do all of this, but at the end of the month, I have to do stripe reconciliations that, that really are affecting me. And no one else can do this. That is not true. So just assume that anybody else can do whatever you're doing, but what is the farthest thing from revenue? And then you just keep backfilling. Farthest thing from revenue. And then it'll finally come to the thing that you don't want to give up.

[Leila Hormozi]

I like that frame. Yeah, it's a good one. That's like, I remember telling people when we had Jim Ocean, it was like profiting like over a million a month. And I was like, oh, I'm still taking like the highest level sales calls. And they were like, what? Like, you have a team of 50? And I was like, I, I didn't want to skip the steps. Like, I, I, I, I don't want to. If I outsource myself from all these things that drive revenue at once, then revenue will dip too much.

[Thomas]

Right? Yeah. Right.

[Leila Hormozi]

That's good.

[Sharan Trivaza]

And just those two things allow you to start to have a better conversation. So you can actually talk to a coach or a mentor or a mastermind group saying, hey, I'm really jammed. I can't grow the business. The thing that I don't want to give up is sales. Because I have all the sales relationship. The, the things that are the farthest away from revenue are these four things. I'd love some help on figuring out which one to give up first. Now, the group, the coach, the mentor can actually give you some feedback on exactly how to do that. And that gives you some safety and relief. Most people don't know what to give up because they don't know how to talk about it with somebody. If you know how to talk about it with somebody, you can get some good advice around it. So having a framework of being able to talk about it will probably get you better advice.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Leila Hormozi]

Which means you also know what you're doing. When I say, hey, what are you working on? They're like, everything. Well, that's not helpful. You know, I think auditing your time, auditing your calendar, spending time looking at where does my time go? I think we spend a lot of time looking at that and we talk about it all the time. Like, where's my time going? Oh, my gosh. I notice it's disproportionately going here. We should get a resource here.

[Sharan Trivaza]

The one of the best frames that I got was from a sales Coach maybe like 10 years ago.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

And he said to me, a lot of people tried to say they're going to do 10 sales calls this week. They're like, if I do 10 sales calls a week and my conversion is 60%, then I will close six out of 10. And therefore, the math, Right? And I said, yeah, I do that too. He goes, instead of doing that, your job is to put 10 sales call blocks on your calendar. And every week, your job is to fill each of those blocks. So instead of saying, I'm going to schedule 10 sales calls, he's like, you've got 10 sales call blocks on your calendar. You only have two left. You got to schedule those. So every week you wake up saying, I got to fill these 10 blocks. That I did. And that's what changed everything for me because I knew that I knew where my time was going now because I had pre built the big rocks of those 10 sales blocks.

[Leila Hormozi]

You scheduled your priorities correct rather than scheduling around them.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

And now you know that if you missed a week, you're like, oh, I did, I did eight out of ten. You didn't. Like, those two blocks were unfilled. Like, you underperformed and there's no weights right in front of you.

[Thomas]

You.

[Sharan Trivaza]

You cannot get away from that. And that just makes you know that I've got two more slots to fill this week.

[Thomas]

Yeah, that's really good.

[Leila Hormozi]

I'm like thinking how I can do that with myself on certain things. Just take away the deals.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Turning more free blocks for you.

[Leila Hormozi]

So many of them. We have so many free blocks.

[Sharan Trivaza]

The one on one queen right here.

[Leila Hormozi]

I'm actually, I'm super curious what you would say about this one.

[Sharan Trivaza]

No agenda, no meeting, no memo. No meeting, no memo.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Write a fucking memoir.

[Leila Hormozi]

Why do you deserve my time?

[Sharan Trivaza]

Well, unstructured meetings are not productive. We all have to just agree to that as a baseline. One on ones are a very sacred time to help with rapport, results and reward. You have to like figure that out. So Leo and I do one on ones the same. Like we talk about this the same way, which is we have a running log on everything that we're thinking about. And when we get on our one on one, we just go to our running log and we just work through everything that's on our log. No agenda, no meeting. I'd say that's the first thing. The second is if you're not. If you don't have some kind of weekly end of week reporting cadence, it will dramatically affect how you run one on ones because you don't know what you worked on that past week. You don't know what the struggles were or the blocks were. Therefore you don't know what to actually fix to move the ball forward. The easiest way to fix one on ones is to start an end of week reporting cadence. If you do that, you, you'll know exactly what to talk about in the one on ones.

[Thomas]

Yeah, it's.

[Leila Hormozi]

It's a thousand percent true. I was just playing on my template to guide my.

[Sharan Trivaza]

No, you, I think you sharing. You've done one on ones across orgs for a while. I will say this one thing.

[Thomas]

As.

[Sharan Trivaza]

I actually don't mind reworking one on one structures based on the, the seniority of the person.

[Leila Hormozi]

1,000%.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Right.

[Leila Hormozi]

You don't need a lot of structure with the highest people in the company. Correct. Because they're, they intuitively will not waste your time.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Correct.

[Leila Hormozi]

And if anything they're like, I will maximize this time by bringing a chunky problem that we haven't had ton talk about.

[Sharan Trivaza]

That's exactly right.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

And the second is sometimes in your organization, if you're doing a one on one, let's say you're working with your CFO and that's a direct report and you're working on a one on one and they're going through an Insane finance transformation. Like, the last thing you want them to do is. Is to distract them from that big mega focus for that quarter. If that's their only goal. You just keep asking them about that goal and nothing else, right?

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Leila Hormozi]

It's funny because with the book launch, I've done that with two people. That one rolls into me, one doesn't, is like, we had call, and I was like, don't want to talk about that. Parking lot, parking lot. We only focus here. And then I was like, all right, well, we don't need as much time even, Right? Great. That's fine. But I'm not going to distract you from this, because the rest of this needs to come after. The way that I've liked doing it is, like, I would say for, like, if you're. If you're chunking up to, like, individual contributors and not senior and executive, but, like, management. The framework I like to use is like, I essentially send. I have a template which is, like, they have to fill out ahead of time so then I can digest it and decide, okay, do I think these are the priorities to discuss? And if I need to move calls, the EAs need to move anything. They also know, hey, that's a priority. This is not. The first is, like, quick wins. Just give me, like, any quick wins this week since we last talked. The second is, what are your challenges? So it's essentially like, write down all the blockers or roadblocks you have right now and why they exist. And then the last one is feedback. Where's an area that you want me to give you feedback on this week? And I like. I really like the one. It's like, quick wins, like, starts playing positive. Then it's like, okay, tell me what your problems are. This is the meaty part that we're gonna go back and forth. And usually I do thinking ahead of time on that one. And then the last one is just, okay, where do you want feedback from me? Which actually gives me insight into. It's always keeping in mind, where's the goal? Where are we going? And I actually. I added that one in, like, eight months ago, and I really like that one because it's like, it just keeps. It keeps me synced up with, like, they have that greater goal. But then I'm like, oh, this is what they're wanting to know. Am I doing a good job or not on this thing specifically, which is cool.

[Sharan Trivaza]

I don't know how you think about this, but I. I have learned to take my one on ones very seriously, because a lot of people have approached. Generally people approach one on ones as the I, you know, my, I hate organizational hierarchy. That's just like not my jam. However, if it's a, you know, manager with a, with a direct report, the manager generally assumes that the direct report, the one on one is for the direct report, which is correct. But the direct report has to do all the work. And Leila said something really interesting there where she said, hey, I'm going to prep for this one on one.

[Thomas]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sharan Trivaza]

And I don't think managers prep for their one on ones. They just show up with whatever the topic is. Sure. They're like, oh, this is my time with you. I need to do this thing. And I will just respond and I will react. And a lot of times I'll show up with my one on one saying, hey, I have two things. Do you want me to give them to you up front so we can add them to the agenda or should I do it at the end? Yeah, it's like, well, why don't you tell me now and we can figure that out. So I always show up with a couple things because it forces me to have thought about that one on one in a lot of ways. So I would just offer that if you're a manager and you're doing one on ones and you're not spending time thinking about the one on ones, you're leaving a lot of like impact and opportunity on the table.

[Leila Hormozi]

I think it also just shows how many shits you give, you know what I mean? Like, it's like, it's crazy, but it's like I look at that way which is like if somebody doesn't take the time to prep my one on one who needs it to be prepped is like the. You know what I mean? Like I can engage in the organization then like I don't take it seriously or like I have gotten to the point now where I'll be like, then we'll cancel it. Because if you don't have the time to write a memo or even fill out an agenda about what we need to talk about, it's not worth either of our time. We're just doing a disservice to the whole org. And then I would say to the same degree, I've learned that I prep so one when I do end of week reports, I note things that I want to discuss in the one on ones. And then the morning of when I like say I have four one on ones that day that I'm doing again, is this still a priority? Like rechecking to be like, is this the best use of our 30 minutes together? Yeah, because it's like. It is funny though. Cause you said that. Cause like, I think of the one on Toms Ones as like, this is the most facetime somebody gets with me in the company. And so their entire impression of me and my reputation with them is based on this one call. So it's like, why wouldn't you take it seriously? Like, they, if they want to stay here, if they feel safe here, if they feel like they can express, you know, what's going on in the org. Like, all of that comes down to how much up to that one call. So it's funny cause, like, I used to try to do all my one on ones in one day. And then I told my team, I was like, dude, I can't. Because, like, I have to have good energy for all of them. Otherwise I feel like I'm laying them down. Like, they got okay three weeks in a row. Neil got shitty Layla.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Leila Hormozi]

Like, I feel bad. I don't want to be shitty layout to my one on ones.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Leila Hormozi]

You know, because it used to be like, oh, one on ones. Like we can put them after all these calls, I'm like, no, no, that's bad. They. They need their own. So I try to have like two days where I have 50, 50%. I like that setup.

[Sharan Trivaza]

I will do an operational hack that maybe a few people can use. Leo and I use this, which is if you're an organization that uses Slack. The one thing that I love is in every direct message channel. So if it's a. If it's a Layla and I, we have a canvas that is just built for Layla Sharon, one on one. And anytime we're chatting about something, we're like, yeah, we should talk about that. I instantly just add it to my canvas so I don't lose context of going to a doc, writing it a note, etc. It's all managed in the canvas.

[Leila Hormozi]

Tall man is sure on jam topics.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Is all the jam topics. And as we finish it up, you can actually put the checkboxes around it.

[Leila Hormozi]

You can also link things, you can.

[Sharan Trivaza]

Link things to it, you can make comments around it. But what we have noticed in we spent a lot of time on Slack that the conversation ends up getting messy and you realize that you need time to talk about it and you just convert it into a one more topic.

[Leila Hormozi]

And then you can see that the other person added it, which is nice. Like, I'll see, like Sharon added to the canvas and I'M like, oh, fuck, it's that thing, huh?