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I think you can beat 99% of people not by beating them in every possible facet, but just picking one thing to beat them on. And that's how you can win in competition. Now, if you do more than one, you dominate. What's going on, guys? This will be either the absolute best video ever see, the worst video ever see, or somewhere in between. So was it you can be 99% of other businesses if you only pick one thing to beat them on. Now, if you can beat them in two vectors, you become impossible. But there's four that you can compete on. All right, and so that's what we're going to talk about. Now, the first of the four vectors is speed, right? How do I do what I'm going to do faster than everybody else? Now, what's interesting about this is that I have been doing business for a minute now, and I would say that of the four vectors, I'm starting with speed because I actually think it's the most important of the four. And I think the reason for that is that humans learn behaviors with decreased latency. Meaning if like, like Facebook and, and, and Instagram or whatever you're watching this on, like, has trained us to come back. Not because they pay us to come back, because they have compressed latency for some positive outcome. And the positive outcome they give us is a thumbs up. They literally give us a little red light and other people give actual money, but add a delay and they struggle to get people to do things. So think about it like this. You pay someone who works for you every two weeks. It's much harder to motivate them than if you actually paid them in real time. And paying someone in real time is actually so effective, it's illegal. And so truckers, for example, used to be able to get paid per mile and like almost essentially in real time. And so they actually outlawed it because guys would just keep driving to the point of like insane sanity and wouldn't sleep for days, and it was unsafe. All right? That's how powerful speed is, because that is what trains behavior. And so functionally, the questions that we have to ask ourselves is, okay, if speed is gonna be my competitive advantage, it doesn't matter what we do, right? If you're in lawn care, there's, there's components to speed, right? So on one angle, like, you have to think about each of these larger vectors in smaller sub vectors. So for speed, it could be the distance between when someone purchases and when they get something, right? That's one vector of speed. The other vector Is that if you're doing something on a recurring basis, how much time is it going to take each time? So for example, if I had a 10 minute workout, it's me more valuable than an hour long workout. If I could get the same results, right? If I, if I say I'm going to help someone get leads and I can help them get those leads in an hour versus waiting a week to turn on the ads, that's more valuable, right? And so at all times it's always like, how can we take what we're currently doing and do it faster? And I can promise you, if you just did that one thing compared to everyone else in your marketplace, you just delivered faster, you will have a sustainable competitive advantage over them and be able to charge premium prices for it. What's really interesting about speed is that speed rarely actually costs more. It typically is. It typically comes from idea alpha, meaning like idea over performance. Like you've thought through the process of their steps better than the competition has and as a result you actually can get better outcomes. Now part of this also comes down to what types of customers you're picking. If you have a hundred different types of customers, it's very difficult to do things quickly because you're doing lots of different things for lots of different people. This is why niching down also helps you provide more value because you're being more selective about the customers you're picking. And then as a result, you can be more templatized in the, in the types of services and, and, and products that you ultimately offer. And so there's kind of three different vectors that I think about with in terms of like, what can I actually do to improve speed? Because you're like, okay, I get that, but how do I actually do it? All right, so number one is I want templates. All right, how can I take what we're currently doing and make these into templates? Can I have ad templates? Can I have email templates? Can I have landing page templates? Can I have, can I have presentation templates? Can I have like at least, at least templated steps that someone's going to follow? Right. All of these are just templates that we can pass on to somebody else, create a repeatable process. If it's repeatable, they don't have to decide take. Decision making is typically the slowest part of the organization. So how do we remove all decisions to speed up the time of completion? The second one is pre made. So if you're in physical products or even food, it's I mean, fundamentally, McDonald's changed the game in fast food because they started pre making food. They already had burgers on the line. So when someone ordered a burger, they just handed it to him. And if you haven't seen the movie founder, great movie, he experiences this and he's like, no, no, no, I, I just ordered. They're like, yeah, that's your burger. And he's like, no, but I just ordered. And they're like, yeah, that's your burger. And he's like, huh? And it's this big aha moment. Like, oh, this changes everything. And so sometimes if you know, there was a great Persian place I used to go to, it crushes in California. It's called Panini Cafe. Go check it out. But they make amazing Persian food. But one of the things I realized is right as the lunch hour started, because I lived pretty close by back then, they just started grilling chicken because they knew that they were about to get the lunch rush and they knew that they were going to have people who wanted juju kebab shout out for those who know, all right. And so they just thought ahead of time and it became really valid because I would show up and be like, juju kebab, extra rice, my whole thing. And they would just boom. They would deliver for me because they didn't even have to make to order because they just knew certain amounts of things are always going to have demand. And even if for some reason someday they're not going to hit that, the, the benefit they get of the vast majority of their customers immediately getting served and how many tables they return faster, more than paid for the small extra chicken that maybe they didn't, they had to throw out at the end of the day. The third element here, and this happens a lot with services, is availability. Now what does this mean? I'll give you a couple examples. So if you, if you have a spa or a salon or something, if you have more availability for people to book, it means they want something and they can immediately get it faster. They can get the appointment with you to get their nails done, get their hair done, get, you know, get their back crack, get their, get their, their pain away, whatever it is. Basically the sooner you can have that availability, the more you will be able to convert and the more people will be willing to pay. And so if someone says, hey, I have an appointment in four days, I have an appointment in one day, they're probably far more likely to come to you and be willing to pay more for that one appointment. And so what? But how do you increase availability? Sometimes it means you have to pay people more or extend their hours or hire more people. But the reality is that this is one of those things that is one of the largest vectors in terms of increasing throughput on a business that is underappreciated by the vast majority of business owners. And so when I invest in a company or I look at a company, I. A lot of times I'm like, ooh, like, it's one of those huge hidden diamonds. I probably shouldn't even share this, but it's one of those hidden diamonds that I could almost always drive 20, 30, 40% more through business by simply better staffing the hours. And so, like, even. Even@acquition.com we currently sell 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and we're now investing so we can get to 20 hours a day because we have such a larger international market, right? So it's like we always want to increase our availability because I know the math behind this, and it's a huge impact on the bottom line. All right, so the first vector, macro vector that you can win on and you only need one, but if you have more than one, you just dominate everyone. All right, Is that we went over speed. Now, the second is risk. All right, so how can we make our thing not risky? Now think about McDonald's. The example I gave every year. Well, they're both fast and they're not risky. So what does that actually mean? Now part of you are like, oh, no, they're risky because of cancer and all this stuff. So, well, let's ignore that because why. Why do people not care about this stuff? Actually, it's funny. Speed. It's not latency. If you ate a burger and immediately had something growing on. On. On you, no one would eat the burgers. But because it happens 40 years from now, no one cares. Speed changes behavior and lack of speed doesn't. So what about risk? So a way you can translate risk is reliability and consistency. It's a different way of saying it, which is when people buy. This is especially important for services that are recurring where people get month after month after month after month, they keep coming back again and again and again. It's. The question is, how can we consistently match conditions between the perfect and ideal state and every state that happens afterwards? And most people dramatically underestimate the amount of variables that exist in any given encounter. And so as a result, they have far less consistency than they otherwise should. All right, so that's just the output. Now, what are the other components of this I'll say, what is consistency? All right, in terms of, in terms of, in terms of decreasing risk, we could also consider that reliability. If you say you're going to cut someone's grass, but sometimes you're late or you show up a different day, or you don't show up one week, like that's a major hit. People just don't want to deal with that stuff like they're not willing to. On the flip side, if you're the type of guy where someone's like, you know what, I could, I could undercut your lawn care guy, you know what, I could, I could clean instead of your cleaning person. A lot of people are like, you know what, I've been with rose for, for 10 years and she's never missed a day. You're like, I just, I'm not willing to take the risk because she's already paid down so much. It's like, but I could do it for 20% less. It's like, it's just not worth it. Right? That's real value that actually defends the business. Now what other types of risk mitigation can we offer? All right, one of them is reputation, right? So this is where brand comes in. So you can. The consistency reliability typically happens after someone makes a purchase. But how do we, how do we shift the perception of the customer that they're going to have a high likelihood outcome that they're going to get what they want? Well, one of the easiest ways is that you've gotten somebody else exactly what they wanted and that person found out about it. Now if they don't know someone directly, but then they just heard lots of whispers, that's a reputation. You've done it enough time for enough people that you just have a reputation for keeping your word. Right? And a lot of people, especially in the, in the small business space, especially, especially in their response base, all of a sudden sometimes their, their, their cost require customer goes up rapidly and they're like, what's going on? What's happening? But the thing is, is that the CPMs in your industry haven't gone up by double or triple in that same period of time. So what is it? Is that your word of mouth? People believe in positive word of mouth. You think negative word of mouth doesn't exist. Negative word of mouth is like 10 times as viral, as positive. And somehow you think that doesn't affect your sales? Of course it affects your sales. People who would have otherwise purchased choose not to because of something they heard or read online. Right? And so one Is okay, so we've got reputation, we've got. And we've got consistency. So how do we do this? How do we actually operationalize this? Now, I've talked a lot about guarantees. I talked about in the offers book, all right? And a lot of people took that immediate, like, oh, guarantees are the only way that we reverse risk. It's just one of the components. And I give that to people because I assume that a lot of people don't have a good reputation or don't have a reputation at all, or they don't have enough customers to really develop a process to become consistent. But these two things are how you deliver long term risk mitigation in the short term. You do guarantees now, again, and I. What's really interesting about this is that everyone assumes that I was like the guarantee guy, but like a lot of my stuff that I sell has no guarantees. Right? But the thing is, is that there's four different types that I cover the book, all right? The first is unconditional guarantees. When you're starting out, that's a great way to do it. Conditional guarantees. If you do this and it doesn't happen, then I'll do. Then I'll do. Why? What's my, what's my consideration, right? What am I going to put on the table if you're going to put this money on the table? And a lot of times people mess this up. Guarantees only work if you have stakes. So if you don't have reputation, you've got to. Basically, it's literally like giving a payday loan. It's like, you got to put. You got to take your watch off and be like, if you give me the money, I'll put the watch down, right? You can take my car if I don't pay this loan back. It's the same idea. Just in business, you're starting out, you're like, here's my shirt. If I don't deliver these leads or I don't deliver a great back, you know, massage, or I don't deliver a good fitness experience, you can take my shirt, right? But over time, there's the first two. There's two other types of guarantees. There's implied and then there's anti. All right, so implied guarantees is one of my favorite types to use, which is just performance based. If you're good at what you do, winners always want a competent performance. Think about your best salespeople. They always want the most upside because they're good. And so if you're actually good, be willing to put it's another way of putting skin in the game for you, right? And so just put skin in the game. And people are far more willing to take risk if you take some risk for them. So it's like we've got this big pile of risk. How much are we going to eat down versus the customer eating down real quick, guys, I have a special special gift for you for being loyal listeners of the podcast. Layla and I spent probably an entire quarter putting together our scaling roadmap. It's breaking scaling into 10 stages and across all eight functions of the business. So you've got marketing, you've got sales, you've got product, you got custom success, you've got it, you've got recruiting, hr, you've got finance. And we show the problems that emerge at every level of scale and how to graduate to the next level. It's all free and you can get it personalized to you. So it's about 30ish pages for each of the stages. Once you enter the questions, it will tell you exactly where you're at and what you need to do to grow. It's about 14 hours of stuff, but it's narrowed down so that you only have to watch the part that's relevant to you, which probably about 90 minutes. And so if that's at all interesting, you can go to acquisition.com roadmap R O A D map roadmap right now here's the cool part is that you can shrink that pile of risk over time with reputation, which brings up the fourth guarantee, which is an anti guarantee, which once you do have reputation and you are consistent, you don't see McDonald's saying we guarantee that the burger's going to be good. You just know it's going to be good, right? Because you've had enough people now people are like, oh my God, McDonald's not good. Calm down. You get the point from a business perspective, all right, so that's Vector 1 is speed, is how can we do whatever we're doing faster? Number two is risk. How can we do it more consistently? How can do it more reliably? How can we and in so doing build our reputation over time? And that consistency, reliability, how do I do that? Tactically, it's actually looking at as many variables that affect the condition or confect the outcome for the customer as humanly possible and then actually trying to control for all of them. So B.F. skinner, famous behavioral psychologist, said, if many variables exist, many variables must be studied. And so you might find out. So, like, for us to make videos we have like a hundred different little golden BB's, little things that, when put together, make a good video. And if we just do 98, it's just a little bit less good of a video. We do 97, it's a little bit less good of a video. And so we just try it. Every time we learn a little bit more, we add that list. Week. Another condition that we didn't realize existed that mattered. We were just talking about one right before I did this video. So we did this big filming session where I did a walk and talk. And it was hot outside, so I took my shirt off and I was doing it. It was in Florida, it was super humid. And that whole series of kind of like walk and talk things that I did murdered. It was like some of my. It was probably the single best recording session I've ever had in terms of performance of the clips in the session. So we were like, oh, walk and talk work great. So then I did another series of walk and talks where I'm just like, in normal clothes, because it wasn't. It was actually cold out. I think I put a jacket on. And so I put a jacket on in the second one. And literally, I think it might have been the actual worst recording session that I ever had. And so what we got to see there is that it wasn't the walk and talk that was the thing that made the shorts valuable. It might have been me being shirtless, which I have other considerations for, which was like, maybe, maybe I'll start only Alex someday. But for now, those are the first two. Speed and risk. Or risque, if you will. Now the third one is price. It's cheap, right? So you can be faster, you can be less risky, or you can be cheaper. Now, we have a fourth one too, but let's talk about this for a second. I'm always the. I tend to be the sell for more, more expensive guy. But you can win with any of these three vectors. If people absolutely know that your stuff's amazing, they'll be willing to pay more for it and they'll come to you instead of somebody else. If you're the fastest, they absolutely will come to you over other people because you can deliver all these vectors of speed. If you're the cheapest, people will absolutely come to you. Like, to pretend that price doesn't matter is silly. Of course price matters, but so does value, because value is a. Sorry. The deal, rather, is the comparison between price what you pay and what you get, right? And so something is appropriately cheap if you get Tremendous value for a low price. But the answer is not hearing this and saying, oh, I will now lower my price. That is certainly a terrible decision. But instead, it's day one, deciding our competitive advantage. The mode that we're going to build around is being cheaper than everyone else, and you have to start that way. Day one. That means every component of the business, from click to close to delivered, is organized such that you can pass on as much of that cost saving to the customer. And so, for example, if you were like, hey, I want to start a, you know, a marketing agency for small business owners, well, in general, typically a pretty bad business. Why? Because it turns out really high. Their volatility reflects on you. With an exception, if you can make the services cheap enough. I have seen it work well, but I mean, way cheaper than you think. I'm talking 100 to $300 a month for services that most people charge $2,000 a month for. When you can do that, now you have something that a lot of people are interested in, so that even on their worst day of business, they're like, well, I'm not going to cancel that. Like, it's. It's only a hundred bucks, only 200 bucks. And it certainly makes way more than that even on my worst month. Right? And to the same degree, we. They basically, okay, if I want to do this or if you're. You, like, okay, how do I actually build for cheapness? All right, so there's three ways that I think about this. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You guys are awesome. We had our highest month ever in terms of downloads for the podcast, and the only person that I can think is you guys, because you're the only ones who share this. And so I keep making these because you keep sharing them. So thank you. But if you know somebody, you have an employee, can you share it with, you know, your team on Slack? If you have, you know, a friend, can you text it or you know, DM them? Or if it's just something that you think you would want to share with your audience because it's something that resonated with you, please put it on your. On your gram, on the ig, or maybe on your linkedins or whatever it is that you like to share with your audience or maybe send it as an email. Why not? Let's get crazy. It would mean the world to me and maybe it might mean the world to them. So number one is you can have AI right day one. Now, a lot of you guys should be already be investing this stuff, like, for sure. AI is giving the best employees 10x the leverage they had before. And so if there's ever been a time to have to pay people better, it's been today, because AI is now taking your best person and making it 10 times as effective. So it's like, why would you not, like, you're always like, man, if I could have 1010 Johns or 10 Daniels or 1010 Michaels, man, that would be amazing. It's like, well, AI is giving you 10 Michaels, and so be willing to pay the Michaels of your business more because you actually do get more from them now more than ever. So number one is AI. The second is, I'll just say automation, because I think automation for some reason has, like, been forgotten about. Um, there's still lots of stuff that can get automated that doesn't necessarily have AI, but you build day one with those automations in place. Now, the third is offshoring, right. Or nearshore, basically paying significantly less for the same labor. But you're actually making this your entire business strategy from day one. We are going to win by being the cheapest. And if that's you, then you state that first and foremost in your marketing, in your sales. And what's really cool about is typically when you're the cheapest, the sales are pretty easy. Marketing is not that hard. The difficulty is being profitable. But I've seen some tremendously profitable businesses that structure themselves from day one on being the cheapest. And a little, little tidbit, a little pro tip that I think a lot of business owners are going to miss out on. I think people are not, are not getting this. If you do all this stuff, let's say you do the offshore, you do the automation, do the AI. You don't need to tell your customers you can just have AI, automation and offshoring into your business and you just sell a normal service. You need to tell them you have a bunch of VAs in the Philippines. You need to tell them that a lot of your stuff is from AI. Don't say, hey, we're at AI design firm. Just be a design firm and then charge the same rates or good deal for design because you just have an automated backend. Great. Amazing. So that'll allow you to get more cash flow in the business and ultimately provide more value. All right, so three vectors so far. Speed. How do I do it faster than anybody else in the market? Risk. How to do it more reliably and build a reputation better than anyone else on the market? Cost. How do we do it cheaper consistently and still Be profitable than anyone else in the market. And finally, you have ease. Now, before I dive into ease, I want to make this point. If you just win on one of these, you can have an incredibly successful business. If you could do multiple vectors, then you'll crush everyone, right? A quote that I like is the best for the most people, for the least. And so best probably takes into account speed and ease and risk. And for the most, it's going to be like, total number of people that it helps. And then for the least, right? It's like. And I've had different ones, like unique, expensive, sticky air. How do I do something that no one else can do? How do I have it that they keep buying it? How do I have it that I have high gross margins and how do I have it? So it's over and over and over again, right? So we think about these little monikers and I think about this when I'm trying to build a business, because ultimately these are the ways that you win. These are the strategic modes. So people talk about strategy, but fundamentally it's going to have to ladder up to one of these things, right? So, so if you're like, oh, by the way, what's acquisition.com, it's going to be this one, probably primarily. And then I would say secondary vectors are. These were obviously not cheapest, right? And so that's where I've built my business around. Now, if I had a different. Now, not all the business, our portfolio are built that way, right? We have a teeth wedding chain that's more around speed, ease and cheapness. Right? And so you get like, you have to make sure that the strategy is. Is best tailored to the customer avatar you're trying to serve. All right, Talking about ease. So I want to make a big point about ease. If you want to make your product more convenient for customers, you don't make something convenient because we want to. Like, I want to do something to my product. It's actually the opposite, which is why I think most products suck. You make something easier by removing everything that is no longer required. You make something easy by saying what is what is hard about this and then removing everything that's hard. And so what's cool about this process is all like. Like, easy is not the outcome. It's removing all hard. And then easy happens as a consequence, right? So like, easy is not noticeable. It's like good design. It should vanish, right? Like if you look at an iPhone, an iPhone is the result of what happens when you rip everything that sucks about a phone and what remains is an iPhone. The, the. The UX vanishes into the screen. There's no menus. You just hit what you need. It immediately opens up, right? This is how we have to think about ease. And so this happens for services, it happens for products. And just like I was saying earlier with if many variables exist, many variables must be studied. You. And the nice thing is that customers will tell you what's. What's hard thing number one, what's hard thing number two, what's hard leader. But three, what's hard thing number four. And you have that list. And then the way that you make something easy is one at a time, crossing things out one at a time until eventually people are like, man, this thing just works. And that takes work, right? And so take a thing, figure out what makes it hard, remove all those pieces, and then what you're left with is something that's easy. This is the work. And I wish I could say this in a hundred different ways, but, like, honestly, that's the game. And so when we're thinking about this, it's like, as a customer, like, you want to think again. Click to close to delivered. So when a customer is coming into your ecosystem, into your world, right? Or like, how much information do they need to get? Do they have to give information the same information on multiple calls? Are we passing calls to tour apps? Like, I'll give you a really simple example. So right now you probably, like, if you have a business that sells via appointments, right? You have phone calls, you have people who made the calls. If you have multiple calls that occur in order for someone to buy, let me tell you what happens all the time. Call one, tell me about your business, all right? Tell me about the size of the business. Tell me about some qualifications, blah, blah, blah. Okay, cool. So then let me set you up with Charlie. Charlie get you set up. Okay, cool. Now, now we get on the phone with Charlie. Three days later, Charlie's like, hey, how's it going? What's the revenue of the business? What's the size of the business? What's it. You're like, dude, I just, I just told the. Why am I. Why am I telling. I hate you already. Right? And so instead of doing that, let me show you. The thing is that this is a very binary outcome. This is a very binary one. Not a lot of them aren't. A lot of them are more continuous, but this is binary. And the only thing easier than doing what I'm about to share with you is not doing it, which is why most people don't your salespeople, your setters, or your salespeople in general should take notes on the customers. And here's what's cool. If you start the second call and say, hey, had a conversation with Charlie. Charlie told me that your revenue is this, your industry is this, and the biggest issue you're dealing with is this. Does that sound about right? They're gonna be like, wow, they actually did some homework. This is a pretty buttoned up operation. You know what, that just made it easier. And so we have to think about every single little step that's just, that's just the sale. And if you don't think that how you sell affects their perception of the quality of service that you have, you are kidding yourself. Many people will make a judgment based on how good your product is, based on how good your sales motion is, how clean it and how dial it is. If you call someone in 30 seconds, they're like, man, these guys are on it. They would imagine that if you make a promise about speed later, guess what? The past experience they have that they're going to use as judgment is on the sales process. And so this, again, I'm just talking about sales because everyone, like, you know, everybody likes talking about sales, but, well, I like talking about sales. Fine. Caught me on the flip side is the back end is the same thing. What's the onboarding call look like? What are the activation points? What are the touch points with the customer? What kind of reporting are we going to provide to them so they know that we're, we're delivering them value? What things do we give? We're giving massage. Are we giving a map? We show them where the pain is and we show them, hey, when they come back in, this is where you said last time you were in pain. How's that on a scale from 1 to 10 a day? Wow, that was really good. Like, I mean, can you imagine you walk into a massage place that you've been to before and they were like, oh, last time you struggled with your shoulder. And the reason that so many people like just going with the same person is because the businesses have so few processes. And so it's like, well, I might as well just go with the same masseuse because she knows me. But if every masseuse or massager, I don't know, the male version, whatever massager, already knew the pain that you were dealing with beforehand, could you imagine what a superior experience that would be as a company? And then also, how much more would you be able to keep customers whereas when the masseuse leaves, they take all the customers that went with them. Not very sticky, but if every massage person knew all the pain points of the business, that would make it easier. Easy is when everything that's hard vanishes and that's all that's left is the value. Now if you're looking at these four, how can I do it faster? How can I make more reliable? How can I do it cheaper? How can make it easier for the customer? The end state, the, the kill shot is that you have all four. Now, to have all four, it almost always has to be tech. Now you can typically have three of the four if you have, if you have labor. All right, so if you have a service based business, you're basically going to need to pick three. But specifically you need to make sure you have one. Now why, well, why am I so hard on this one thing? Well, customers do not understand multiple benefits. Now they can, like from a messaging perspective. Now when they buy something and they experience it, that's different. But from a marketing angle, if you say, hey, we're the fastest, we're the least risky and we're the easiest, it's too much. Just focus on the core vector. And if you're like, which one do I pick? Pick the one that values the most to your customer. Pick to the one that they care about the most. And so if you know that your people care the most about speed, then speeds, the speed's the angle. If there's a huge cost when something doesn't go well with a business, then risk is the angle. Right. Or the customer, whatever. Right. And if, and if just in general a huge pain to do this thing, then how can I make it easy? So I'll tell you, there's a, there's a lady that I know in Albuquerque, New Mexico that I used to, that I used to go to church with when I went to church. And she had a massive business in New Mexico and her entire business was built on one thing, speed and ease. And so she had a DMV business where she just privatized getting people their IDs. That was it. That's all it was. And I remember her talking to me and she was like, yeah, they just passed a new law that everybody in New Mexico has to get a new ID because we just changed the license. And she was like, well, that's, you know, 12 million people times 50 bucks. And I just remember saying that. I was like, how elegant. Right? And the thing is, is that her $50 is like she was able to get people in and out in 15 minutes from the time they walked in the door to the time they left. Could you imagine how lovely of an experience that would be? Everybody when they think about getting their idea right now it's like just pain. All you think is just like waste of a day, just frustration. Dealing with inept people who have no urgency, no regard for other people and just generally deal with you as a nuisance. Like you're somehow inconveniencing them in their day of not working that you have disrupted their day of not working by existing and breathing on them. Right. Of course you hate them. And so she just had a business not hard to beat. Right. When that's the standard again there are industries that are like this, that are privatized, that still no one tries to compete in. And so if you're wondering which of these do I pick? Obviously you start with the customer, reverse backwards. But let's do the DMV example. I just said is she going to win on being cheaper than the government? No, I'm pretty sure it's free or it's a nominal price in order to get the new, the new IDs. And so she's not going to win on cheap. But what could, what else could she win on? Speed, ease in other ways. The ease can also be like positive customer experience. Like those are things that improve the overall experience for the customer. Could she double her prices? I'll bet you plenty of people probably would be willing to pay $100 to not have to waste a day. Right? So she doesn't have to win on this, Right. So she has to pick the one that, that now risk. I mean as long as you get the id, I mean you have to be good enough at this. Right? But she's going to work on her reputation by being, having a reputation of being faster and easier. Right? And so if you're trying to pick one, you pick the one that's going to matter most of the customer. And if you are competing in a space that has a lot of cheap or sometimes even free competitors, just remember this fast beats free. So back in the day there was Napster, which some of you guys may have remembered it's probably before actually probably half of yalls time there's something called LimeWire that happened later. There was Kaza. There's all these different basically shareware things where you could share files with one another and ultimately just like steal music for free. I'll just be honest. That's what it was. Right? So when that was happening, how Did a company like Spotify come in, not really free, and beat them? They won on speed and they went on Risk. Because when you download a limewire, you knew that you were downloading all sorts of viruses to your computer. Number one and then number two. On Spotify, it was like. It was just. You just picked the song, you could immediately start listening to it. And so they beat an industry that was literally free by being faster. And I remember when I. When I went to get Chipotle once, this was at University of Maryland. I was visiting the campus and it has, I think it's like the number one highest grossing Chipotle in like the nation. This thing is packed. It's in the middle of like the. The commons or whatever, right? And it was. Happened to be Halloween, the weekend that I went to visit. You can imagine. And so at Halloween, for Chipotle, they do this thing where if you wear any kind of foil, you dress up like a burrito. They like give you free burritos, whatever. And I didn't know, I didn't think that that was the day that I wanted to go have Chipotle. So I walk up and I'm like, oh my. And it was, it was. Imagine a grocery store parking lot. So massive parking lot. There's a chalet there. The line stretched through the entire parking lot. It was insane. And I just remember thinking to myself when I got there, and I was like, I would pay $20 to just have the burrito that I want and not have to wait in this line, even if it's free. And that was the moment where I singed that. That, that, that concept fast beats free. So if you're not sure, start with the customer, reverse backwards. Look at the competitive landscape. You're probably one of these four vectors or maybe more. And so if you want to get into a new space or you already have a business and you're like, how do I actually win? I feel like I'm the same as everybody else. Pick one and dominate. With that being said, rock and roll. Hope you enjoyed this and I'll see you guys next.
Podcast: The Game with Alex Hormozi
Host: Alex Hormozi
Episode: Ep 879
Release Date: May 5, 2025
In Episode 879 of "The Game with Alex Hormozi," entrepreneur and business strategist Alex Hormozi delves into the four strategic vectors that can enable businesses to outperform 99% of their competitors. These vectors—Speed, Risk, Price, and Ease—serve as foundational elements for creating a sustainable competitive advantage. Throughout the episode, Hormozi provides actionable insights, real-world examples, and strategic frameworks to help business owners apply these concepts effectively.
Hormozi emphasizes that speed is the most crucial competitive advantage. By executing business processes faster than competitors, companies can train better behaviors within their organization and deliver superior customer experiences.
Key Concepts:
Notable Quote:
"[00:45] A: ... speed is what trains behavior. If you just deliver faster compared to everyone else in your marketplace, you have a sustainable competitive advantage."
Strategies to Enhance Speed:
Example: A Persian café anticipates lunchtime rush by pre-grilling chicken, allowing them to serve popular dishes like juju kebabs instantly, enhancing customer satisfaction through speed.
Reducing risk enhances customer trust and loyalty. Businesses can achieve this by ensuring reliability and consistency in their offerings.
Key Concepts:
Notable Quote:
"[10:30] A: How can we make our thing not risky? Think about reliability and consistency."
Strategies to Minimize Risk:
Example: Alex discusses how having a reliable and consistent service can compel customers to stick with your business despite cheaper alternatives, highlighting the importance of trust over price alone.
Positioning price as a competitive edge involves offering cheaper solutions without compromising profitability. Achieving this requires strategic cost management and operational efficiencies.
Key Concepts:
Notable Quote:
"[20:15] A: If you're the cheapest, people will absolutely come to you. Like, to pretend that price doesn't matter is silly."
Strategies to Achieve Competitive Pricing:
Example: Hormozi illustrates how a marketing agency can offer services for $100-$300 a month compared to the typical $2,000/month, making the service accessible and reducing customer churn during tough times.
Creating ease involves removing all barriers and complexities in the customer journey, resulting in a seamless and enjoyable experience.
Key Concepts:
Notable Quote:
"[35:50] A: Easy is not the outcome. It's removing all hard. And then easy happens as a consequence."
Strategies to Enhance Ease:
Example: A DMV business that processes ID renewals in 15 minutes by privatizing the service, transforming a typically frustrating experience into a quick and hassle-free process.
Hormozi concludes that while excelling in one vector can lead to significant competitive advantage, mastering multiple vectors can dominate the market entirely. The integration of technology is often essential to achieve multiple vectors, particularly in scaling operations efficiently.
Strategic Alignment:
Notable Quote:
"[55:00] A: If you can beat them in two vectors, you become impossible. ... If you have all four, you have a kill shot."
Final Takeaways:
In this episode, Alex Hormozi provides a comprehensive framework for businesses aiming to surpass the vast majority of their competition. By strategically focusing on Speed, Risk, Price, and Ease, and leveraging technology to enhance these vectors, businesses can create a formidable market presence. Hormozi's insights underscore the importance of operational excellence, customer-centric strategies, and continuous process optimization in building a successful and sustainable enterprise.