Neue Ideen killen dein Business

0:00So, I want to share some tactical advice on how I personally stopped getting distracted by all the shiny objects and new ideas that I have because every entrepreneur has enough new ideas to kill their business. So, I want to provide some examples to drive that home and give you my thoughts on how I approach new ideas. I'll tell you a story. I was talking to a friend of mine. Um, he just inherited a billion dollars. His father was in private equity. He now manages their family office. And so, I was talking to him about acquisition.com and school and some of the other things. And he was like, "Yeah, man." He said, "Sometimes the most profitable thing you can do is wait.

0:30And so I think that um that might be the most profitable thing you can do. Like doing nothing is something. >> It's an action. I mean, I mean, how much willpower does it take to not start new things? >> A lot. >> A lot. >> Right. And so I think you should give yourself credit for like I you're banking goodwill with the business. >> Um Jeff Basos had a a speech recently that he did in Italy. Some of you guys I shared a story of it for those who follow my Instagram. Um but he talked about his his rate of releasing the work. And so basically he said if I had 30 minutes I could write a 100 ideas on the whiteboard that would destroy my company.

1:02>> And so you have you you absolutely have enough ideas to kill your business. >> So what we want to do is prevent that from happening. And so um this is super tactical but for everybody because this is like really really really really dramatically changed my trajectory as an entrepreneur. I have a lot of ideas which is like I kind of scratch my itch of ideas because I get to idea about other people's businesses and then I go home and then Leila's like do you want dinner? And I'm like yeah but I forgot that we have a business too. So, I wasn't allowed I didn't I didn't I didn't have a way to mess that one up, right? And so, [laughter] and so and so what I do is I have I honestly have a document that's called Alex's big list of ideas.

1:37>> And every time I have an idea, I totally flush it out. I I put, you know, I put a link on the doc to another doc that has a big memo that has like this is how it work, this is what we'd make, this is how blah blah blah blah. And then I keep living my life. And then when I finally see the team looks like they have smiles on their faces, like they're well rested, they have a glint in their eye, then I pull back out my big list of ideas. And what's interesting is that like some of the ideas that I'm like, "This is going to be huge." I'm like, "That's why would I think that's a good idea." Um because you get so emotionally charged and sold on the idea while you're in the process of the idea, in the throws of the idea. But when you get a little bit of space, you're like, "Oh my god, this is how other people would hear this idea." And I agree with them.

2:13I think it's a terrible idea. But every once in a while, um I'll give you an analogy from uh um the Sandra Bulock movie with the the offensive lineman. Remember that one? >> Blind side. So she said that I actually think about this a lot with ideas. She said if you like a shirt, she's like, you know, don't buy it, but if you go home and you're still thinking about it, you know, a week or two later, like you should probably go back and grab the grab the shirt or whatever, right? And so I think about that with ideas. Like if I'm able to like I have this fear, what if I forget the idea? If I forget the idea, it wasn't that good of an idea. But the ones that like keep you up at night, that keep gnawing at you, those are the ones that like I'll flesh out more and more and more, but I still have to release the work at a rate that the business can handle. And so then it gives you respect for the output capacity of the business. And then what ends up happening, which you real like you realize as you scale up, is that manpower is almost always the limiter

3:05>> is talent. Which is why you see the the billionaires on stage and they're like, "Guys, you just got to get a good team, you know, find good people and get out of their way. But the issue is that good people don't want to work for you, not you. Entrepreneurs in general. And so that's why like we have to go through this kind of bootstrap phase sometimes where we have to prove that we can earn the right to get true A-level talent because if you had the best AI person in the entire world, you could have a multi-billion dollar company within the next six months. The problem is that guy doesn't want to work for you.

3:36>> And so it's like who do I who do I need to become and what do I need to build in order to get that level of talent to come with me? And so we actually like a lot of in my opinion a lot of the entrepreneurial journey is creating the proof that then allows you to attract the talent that's required to build the next thing >> like the level of talent we were able to attract after we sold gym launch versus while we were scaling gym launch night and day not even close and so I see that as the trajectory and what also ends up happening is that you end up becoming like a collector of talent um and so the like and if you do write by people throughout the entire process what happens is the stars stay around and they come with you from thing to thing.

4:12And so all of a sudden the bench of stars just keeps getting bigger and and they don't want to work with other people because they're like, "We we have a great team. We have a great culture. We know how we do things here." And so in the beginning of your career, you have no stars. You're the only star. And then and maybe you're a half star, [laughter] right? Um but eventually you'll get one other star and you're like, "Oh my god." But the reality is like if everyone thought like, "Man, if I only had 10 of these people, I could be 20 times bigger." You will get there.

4:37It's just it takes way more not stars that you thought were stars that you then have to fire and replace with another person that's also not a star to get another person to then replace with another person that's not a star. And I fundamentally believe that the reason that you can scale so much faster the second time or third time around. Who here has been uh who here this is not their first business. Can you get raise your hand real quick? Okay, cool. Keep your hands raised. Um if you if this is not your first business and this this business you scaled faster than the businesses you did before, keep your hand raised.

5:07Right. And like why why is that? It's not like the physics of business changed. It's just because your pattern recognition improves. And in order to get the pattern recognition, it's like you have to just get punched in the face a bunch of times with shitty people. And so like for me, like I know a vertical stack of what a a salesdriven org looks like up to a few hundred sales guys. Like I know what that stack looks like. I know what an SDR looks like. I know what an SDR manager looks like. I know what a closer looks like. I know what a closer manager looks like. I know what a a director of sales looks like. I know what a VP of sales look like and they have different archetypes and they have different skills and they have different behaviors. But if you've never done it, then you hire a VP of sales and he sucks and you hire another VP of sales and he sucks. You hire another VP of sales and she sucks and then all of a sudden one comes in and you're like

5:49>> you don't suck. >> This is amazing. And then from that point going forward, either that person comes with you or you know exactly how to pattern match and so you find the person really fast. And fundamentally every level of the business, it's kind of like bricks, right? you like keep putting these level of bricks as you scale. The problem is that only one of those bricks prevents you and sometimes for years because you are lacking this hole and you don't know what it looks like when it's right. >> And that's one of the big issues. And so the goal is like how can I how can I be willing to have a hard conversation which means that I might like this person as a person but they're not doing their job. And how quickly can I can I can I close that gap so that I can replace them with somebody who's good.

6:25The hard part is that we don't like having hard conversations. >> Yeah. And so it's like I mean I do like the quote like the distance between where you are and where you want to be is the number of hard conversations you're willing to endure. >> And a lot of people just aren't. So to ask answer the original question of like why don't people do what they want to do? A lot of them just can't have a hard conversation.