Lead Gen vs. Closing: Which One’s Broken? | Ep 913

But there's probably a hundred things that I want to improve about it. But every time I want to go improve one of those things, four others drop. And it's not worth the cost of change. And so most of us just don't factor in the guaranteed 20% decrease for the potential.

After a result said and done, it's five. Was that worth it? No. My name is Ricky. We have a bar cocktail mix that we sell to B2B.

country club resorts part of ben potts who's on the cash guys yeah we do 3.5 last year and revenue and our biggest thing that's stopping us was uh my father he was the man salesman that he had a position he's doing this full time as well as trying to focus on whether we should try to grow the business awareness just because a lot of people don't know about it unless they know us or referrals

or just try to just get more account can you explain a little bit more about the product yeah so a pina colada strawberry daiquiri margarita stuff like that it's mainly it's a frozen product something frozen last two years once you thought it lasts a week but it's mainly for people who are high volume so you can spit out like a lot of shifts and things like that yeah uh mainly like a frozen drink machine or like a blender so got it

okay and so the question is whether you should focus on awareness oh like growing the brand because it's like every public it's only mainly people that know us we talk about it or just people who guests are like this is amazing are they all word of mouth yeah basically okay so you have no well you have your father who's who does sales yep and how does he do sales previous relationships from being in the industry for over 20 years yeah okay so what stops you from

mechanizing this existing outbound motion and then getting like 10 guys to do it we haven't done it it's just you know so like i mean if i had to pick between more of that thing right and this brand new thing that you've never done i definitely would mechanize the existing thing

yeah so yeah it's going to be a conversation that you're going to have with your father obviously we can help but like breaking down like okay let's take this thing and break into 50 pieces because it's not like hey how do you do outbound like that doesn't work

It's like, okay, what's initial contact look like? What's first message? What's second message? What's the script? What's the opener? What's the offer to get them kind of enticed? Once we have that conversation, what's the thing that we can increase the pain between where they're at and where they want to go so we can insert ourselves?

One of the biggest things, at least, is with getting them to actually try the product because it's like, oh, it's just, it's another mix. So once they taste it, it's different. But, you know, getting to that personal decision is, you know, part of the thing.

so many ways to do that yeah but yeah i mean you you need an outbound motion there's probably a combination of conference trade show that would work really well too especially because you are at pete like literally tasting yeah and it would probably crush in that setting probably be very easy to sell

yeah i just don't i don't think you should go brand now especially since you built the whole business off b2b yeah i would just do more of that for now to start okay thank you yeah my name is sam tierling because i sell a service i own a transportation company cool we uh deliver chemicals to the

fracking companies last mile transportation revenue wise we did 10 million last year year before that was seven year before that was five and it just kept growing and this year decided to slow it down a little bit not like get myself out of it day to day. Okay. And it's worked. Right. While doing that, I realized that I can make more money taking and selling to customers that my customers don't sell to the same product that we're transporting.

Let's hit that last part again. All right, so I'm more of a specific type of person. I transport polymers, friction reducers. SNF is one of the biggest. They make it. There's 40% of customers they won't deal with. want to deal with me that want to buy from us my struggle is is i figured out how to continue to replicate the trucking industry like trucks and grow that so do i keep focusing on that which is a very cash intensive business i can actually put a lot of money up front

Or do I use my trucks to sell the product to the end user? But I also struggle with that because how do I balance the two? So if I'm regularly floating... million and a half, 2 million in receivables for BKT. And I want to start buying the product. Well, I have to pay in 30 days. I'm not going to get paid. So basically, if you're buying the stuff that you're going to sell to the end users, like you're going to add cash constraint to the business.

okay right yeah so then they would further constrain it would basically pile on these constraints so said differently why do it versus just doubling the existing business because like the way that i'll explain where my thinking is

So I had a good friend of mine from high school, actually. That's a strong statement. An acquaintance of mine from high school who had a general contracting business. And in his general contracting business, he realized he was pretty good at roofs. And so he started doing roofs.

And I called him up. I was like, hey, how's the business going? He's like, oh, we're growing. It's great. And so he was explaining. So he's like, so we do roofs primarily. I was like, okay. And he's like, we also do some contracting work. And I was like, okay, that's another thing. He's like, we also kind of buy and flip houses.

I was like, okay. He's like, I didn't want to leave money on the table, which is like my favorite entrepreneur statement ever. And I was like, so what stops you from being a billion dollar a year roofing company? And the answer is... the general contracting and the real estate flipping. I said, well, what stops you from being a billion dollar a year real estate flipper? The answer is the roofing and the general contracting. And so basically, if you already have a winning model,

To me, I'm like, there's no reason to not just become even better at this thing that you're currently doing and compound the competitive advantage that you have. There's always going to be opportunities. I guess I looked at it as more of a control thing because there's...

For the most part, our customers we've started with have been with us for six or seven years. On the trucking side? Yes, on the trucking side. But they also do dictate the rates. I can continue to raise my prices and eliminate customers, which we have done.

they're only willing to pay so much. And it's like, well, if I'm selling the chemical, I'm still going to get what I want for transporting it. And then you're getting paid to sell it too. The only reason I hesitate is like it's adding, it adds complexity to the business. Again.

Given the limited context that I have five minutes of hearing about the business, it's a huge decision. But from my personal experience, when I had Jim Launch and Prestige Labs, I basically said, oh, I've got this distribution base. of gyms and so why don't i just sell supplements through my distribution base which on the service level seemed like a smart idea but what it ended up doing is that it completely slowed down the growth of my main business which was the licensing licensing business

And so it felt like, oh, there's this big pot of gold right here. But if I took all the attention that I put into starting this supplement company and manufacturing it and distributing it and testing it and the flavors and the marketing and all that stuff and the support team.

it had to do for the product i could have taken all of that energy and just gone double down into the thing that i should have done it was one of the bigger mistakes that i've made and so if you already have a business that's gone from five to seven to ten

I'm like, well, maybe next year you're at 13. Year after that, you're at 17. That sounds like a pretty good business. I guess it was more of what I wanted to do. If you want to do it, that's a life question more than a business question. How do I make sense to not screw my first business up? well yeah that's always the i mean like there's always opportunities and the thing is just the bigger distribution base is which it will continue to grow the more enticing the other opportunity will be

right the woman in the red dress she just always is more and more attractive the more distribution you build the more skills you have and the more opportunities you see like believe me the amount of opportunities that i have to turn down now is sickening but it's just like taking to the natural extreme

can i build a hundred million dollar per year trucking business if the answer is yes then what risks that everything that isn't that that's fair i mean it seems like a simplistic way of viewing the world but it's also really hard But I also think it's probably the right call. I guess I was more or less thinking of it in transportation most of the time for hazmat companies. Once you get to where you do 15 to 20 million revenue, you get bought out.

okay context and if dana do you not want to get bought out no i started this just a lot of you could always just keep owning it because they can't force you to get they can't force the money down your throat no I'm just being real like I mean a lot of people take the exit then because at that point they probably have you know between I know what are margins okay yeah so 20 got 4 million in EBITDA maybe five

right and so at that point they maybe give you eight or ten on it and so most people are like okay well for 40 million bucks i'll walk away and that's why a lot of people like usually that's i mean i think part of the reason that institutional investors come in at that five ish million is that at that point is where most business owners are like

okay, this is enough for me to be done forever. And that's probably why there's a ton of M&A activity. This is me just speaking speculatively. So I don't think there's anything inherently like, okay, if a lot of people get bought out at 20, fine, but there's also companies that get to 100. And it's usually just a... a more stubborn founder who does it for different reasons, which I actually think is a good thing. Okay. That gives me peace of mind. Thank you. Yeah, you bet.

My name's Chase. I own an exhaust hood cleaning business in San Diego. So we sell like- Exhaustive? Exhaust hood cleaning. Yeah. So we do like grease removal from ducks, fans, hoods in restaurants in San Diego. Cool. Where we're at right now, just hit month six.

um is that like 18 wheelers like semis they do that on what is that we just have like a van with a hot water pressure washer and chemical roll in the restaurants guy want water and truck okay oh so restaurants the restaurant okay got it so like in all the restaurants there's a hood system above where they cook

yeah it's like a fire hazard so everyone has to legally do it yeah it's a great business it was described to me differently in a different setting so yeah okay that's why i kind of put in 10 or else people are like the hell are you talking about yeah so we just hit month six we're doing like

6k a month right now okay but we have people on it's a subscription-based business so our book right now for like yearly recurring revenue is like right around 100k cool i think what's stopping us right now is just like not a clear offer

all right because i deal with restaurant owners who only care about their bottom line a money thing those business owners yeah sure they're like well if you can give me a better price i'll give you a shot and right now i'm just like the hungry kid that's like yeah i'll beat your price easy right so

i think what's stopping us is figuring out pricing and offer with a service that more or less is the same no matter who you go with but we have added value adders with like customer portal streamlining back-end support things like that So you say that to the business owner. Say that to the business owner. There's good fastest Jeep. Pick two.

And so the problem is you can have somebody else who can do this. To your point, you started with the premise that this is a commoditized service. I would just erase that from your memory. Because at the end of the day, you have to believe before anybody else that it's not a commoditized service. And so I would say, what are all the reasons that somebody who sucks at this sucks? And let's fix all of those things.

And so what's really interesting about good, like what does good even mean, right? So good is basically the absence of hard, right? And so I think about this when I'm creating a product or service, and this has actually been really helpful for me in terms of like how you operationalize value. in terms of quality is you think, what are all the things that suck about the existing services? What makes it hard? And so a lot of people use the term friction, right? And so something that is easy.

You can't make something easy. You can only make it not hard, right? Like if I said, make it easy. It's like when something's easy, all the hard vanishes and all that's left is the outcome, right? And so if we want to make our products or services easier, which then means more valuable. We have to remove all of the elements that make it sucky.

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've got customer success, you've got IT, you've got recruiting, you've got 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.

free and you can get it personalized to you so it's about 30-ish pages for each of the stages once you answer 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 You only have to watch the part that's relevant to you, which will probably be about 90 minutes. And so if that's at all interesting, you can go to acquisition.com forward slash roadmap, R-O-A-D map, roadmap.

And so if we're thinking about the competition they're competing against, maybe a lot of them are not that personable. They may be terrible service. Maybe they don't do a complete job. Maybe they're not willing to come back if something happens. What risks does the restaurant incur if it's a shoddy job?

Is there a cadence that they have to, like, maybe we can treat it in a way that allows us to come half as frequently. So we're more per cleaning, but they don't have to pay it as often, right? So we have higher gross margins.

and that actually works fine for us and it's less for them like you're i'm going with this yeah and then from an economies of scale perspective it's like how can we increase now you're super early on this but like over time it'll be how can we increase route density so that like we don't waste as much time and so we get more efficient with the routes

and we can ultimately make more than our competitors or at least increase our gross margins even if we keep our price fixed. Right. No, that makes sense. One more question. So everybody has to get it done at least twice a year. So we're signing people a year agreement anywhere from twice a year.

Some people do quarterly, some people do like three times a year. So based on what you just said, would you recommend potentially going more towards just pushing semi-annually, but keeping price higher so that they feel like they're paying less over the year? Yeah, I look at my gross margin. I mean...

real real i'd rather sell someone more yeah right start at four down sell to two if you can and then probably play with payment terms which is like can i stack more of that cash up front right versus getting paid quarterly you pay in full up from yeah okay

gotcha cool the big picture i mean i like if i'm you i'm putting all my effort into trying to figure out how to decommoditize my service because it is probably the most important thing otherwise you're right you will just consistently be dealing with if you are

the same to the customers the first chapter of offers right like you're the same thing to the customer these two things are about the same i'll buy the cheaper one it's the worst comparison it's not the fight you want to fight so it's like i put all my effort whenever i start any business or any product line into like why is this different

Like that's my full, like I don't even think about pricing. I don't think about anything until I answer that question. And I have to at least be able to articulate it to them really simply, which is like, here's the five things that happen that suck. Here's how we don't have any of those five. And for that in exchange, instead of paying this.

You paid this, but this is why it's worth it. Right. And then in that, our only form of outbound right now is just like door-to-door, knocking restaurants, and then cold email. So then building that offer out with the decommodities. That's even a freaking word. And then put that into the offers, the emails, the text, the cold outreach, basically. And just sell the shit out of it. Sell the shit out of it. Heck yeah. Thanks, dude.

Kyle, I sell outdoor lighting to homeowners. We do 880,000 revenue. About 40% is in the holiday season, doing Christmas lights. The problem is we don't have enough leads in the not holiday light time of year.

So the first half until basically now. I've fixed this business so many times. So I want to just walk you through it. Yeah. Okay, cool. So basically you have one kind of existential decision that you need to make, which is, are we going to be full-time lighting? Because there's nothing wrong with that. Look at the Hollywood store.

They're open two months a year and they just murder it. And that's all they do. Right. The alternative is that you basically have a home team that goes from lawn care and other home services to.

you know lighting the lawn care guys have the equal opposite issue they're like okay well there's grass that's growing nine months of the year and then it's holiday season and what do my guys do for three months or four months depending on whatever geographic area you're in right and so i tell you which one i prefer

I prefer the keeping the holiday season business year-round, and I'll explain why, but either option works. I just want to be really clear about that. I like thinking about it. How many months of the year are you doing the lights? Three?

Yep, 45 days. Perfect. So the way I think about it is how can I take, how can I equip my existing team with as many skills as possible so that the other 10 months of the year, all they're doing is getting business. And so like the perfect business in the world is you sell all year.

And then you have to deliver for this much. It's an amazing business. You just collect cash all day long, collect cash, collect commitments, collect cash, collect commitments all year round. And then you boom, you basically earn the living over the next 45 or 60 days. And then you go back into the sales cycle.

and so that's one way of doing it i like that because it's such a simple like you just have to think about one thing for 10 months which is marketing and sales yeah and that gets pretty nasty and the cash flow is really good the alternative obviously is you're like okay well these guys don't have these skills

Which then begs the next question is, what type of talent would I need to facilitate model A versus model B? If you have model B, which is maybe you have lower skilled people who work for you right now, then it's like, okay, can I buy some lawnmowers? Can I buy some...

landscaping stuff so that i can give them something to do for the other nine months of the year yeah so we were doing lawn care and picked up christmas lights to fill that gap well where i live in october you have to do both so i got rid of the lawn care

okay well just do just christmas and you made better margins yeah yeah yeah so that was awesome so what we're doing now is project-based permanent lighting jobs with the exact same team so we can literally just shut it down as soon as christmas time starts cool so I guess from what you're saying would be just sell Christmas all year, which is like really hard to sell this time of year. Really like super easy to get leads in Christmas. Yeah. So my thought was sell how many lights. And then also.

50% of them still get Christmas lights. But... Why not do that? That is what I'm doing. Well, great. Well, so the problem is the leads problem. Okay. So I'm running out of Christmas light customers to sell landscape lights to because that was a natural first, like easy to get them. Well...

I'm running meta ads. So lead gen for permanent lights? Yeah, exactly, is the problem. So what I'm trying to figure out is the problem like lead magnet issues or landing page issues is where I'm at. Right, so now we're in the immediate event. Yeah, yeah. No, I'll bet you that... The crate is probably not that good because I think it's a pretty easy thing to sell. Yeah. The permanent lighting, like you show a house before and after. You show the dark before and after. Like, oh, look.

lights i think it's very visual yeah i think that i actually think that the ads is probably the issue what's the lead man you're offering right now yeah we come to your house to a free demo so you can see how it looks yeah yeah i'd probably try and enhance that offer

The nice thing is in local markets, it's very offer driven. I'd have to think more than two seconds about it because it'll be the front end of the whole business. But it would probably be some element of some amount of lights that come for free. So I think something that would murder would be like... Can I light someone's, not their deck, but maybe from the sidewalk to the house? Or can I just light the driveway? Some small element. So we talked about it in the Leeds book.

A lead magnet can either be a trial of something, it can be one part of a multi-step process, or it can be a third thing. But for yours, I think the one step at a multi-step process, I wrote it down so I don't remember it. Yeah. Because I'll prefer to start with a banger offer and then add friction. Because the thing is, you can say, I'm going to give this away, but you don't have to give it away to everybody.

you can say i only give it away to houses that are over x and you can have people put their address in and then run an api to zillow look at home value and then rank order the leads based on value of home and then basically prioritize those leads ahead of time

And so you can go to those houses first and probably sell much bigger packages overall. But I think if I'm struggling to get leads, I just need them to say they want lighting. I don't really care how they say they want lighting. I just need them to say they want it and then the sales process takes care of the rest.

Mm-hmm. Cool. Do you like that? I'm just trying to process, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like how that would go. I mean, you're 100% right. That's the problem is people, once they say they want lighting, selling it is easy.

Yeah. So I just got to get them to say it and put their phone numbers. Exactly. So give them a better offer than I'll give you a free sales pitch. No, I'm just being real. Yes. So fundamentally, that's it. So I think you say like, we'll do the install for free. You just cover the cost of the lights.

for this tiny amount, see how I'm developing. I like it. All right. Now you put the markup on the lights and put zero on the labor. It doesn't matter either way. You just basically mix and match how you're showing the money. And that way you'll still break even on that first thing. And you'll just know that one out of two or whatever it is. You buy the first thing by the 10 times bigger package. And then that's just math. Cool. That's it. I like that. I like that. Awesome. Thanks.

So my name is Kira Brinton. We're going to clean out my closet for a minute. Okay. So last year, my company made a million. I've already made a million this year. So I think I'm on track for four, but I hope to hit 10. so here's the deal is that i get really bored right and so i'm also really amazing visionary and so i've built a lot of different things and what i'm needing right now is i need clarity

Okay. And I need you to, I would love for you to help me focus. Okay. So I'm going to share with you, I'm going to share with you what I've done. I'm going to share with you what I have. And then I would love for you to show me is how do I get clarity? Okay. What do you sell?

yeah so i have a publishing house okay but really what i've sold is that i take people on these five-day adventures like luxury adventures and i can help people channel their books in five days and that's what's filled my pocket but it's also just not scalable and so it's not skilled well because one week a month i'm on these adventures and i love it but it's like there's like a ceiling

and so then i like rented this island in the middle of the british virgin islands i took 15 people there we all write their books for five days and so that was like scalable which that landed me a tv show so now i have like this tv show but then i have like like my publishing house and then like i have this business school for women yeah and then like i'm also like a single mom of five kids also i like write books

on the corner also i did a live event in january and closed 1.25 million in five minutes to a crowd of 30. so it's like i have all these things i just like yeah you gotta pick you gotta pick one of your five kids The 10-year-old all day. There you go. So you just got to think about which one's the 10-year-old of your business. It's just like the roofing thing that I said. The thing is, is the more talented you are, the more opportunities you know you could crush.

which just means more things you have to take. And it's just like, it's the reality of it. I mean, the thing is, is there's a price to that, which is if you continue to do what you're currently doing, you pay a price on either side. If you continue, you pay the price of how big...

the impact you want to have, and how big of a business you ultimately build. That's the price. What you get for that trade is you get to have the novelty and the excitement of new things happening all the time. On the other side, you build something really big.

that has teams and systems and it just you know grows really large probably maybe not bigger than new vision but large much larger than what you have right now uh and what you give up for that is all the novelty that's associated with doing your thing yeah

So which one? Well, it sounds like you know which one you should do and want to do something different. I feel like when I've been looking out, like, well, what has brought people to me? It's always the books. And I keep trying to get out of it because there's so many people and there's so many things and all these systems in publishing. And I'm like, but if I just ran the business school, like I don't have to have all these like editors and formatters and book covers and right.

But then I look at like, well, what do people always come to me for? It's always books. So you run the business school, right? Yeah. So imagine I come to you and I'm saying, hey, I've got this business that everybody wants to buy for me. It has good margins. I sell it like crazy. But I have four other businesses that I want to start. They don't grow as quickly as this other one. What should I do? Weird. Sounds so easy when you say it. Yeah, obviously. Right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah, okay.

No, I mean, like that's the, I mean, the thing that we, what you're encountering is, is problematic. Everybody in this room has dealt with, right? It sucks. but like you have to realize that like you can't pursue every opportunity not only can you offer every opportunity you basically have to say no to every opportunity to be able to make one opportunity worth pursuing if my tv show is on amazon prime and i'm helping people write books

And then I'm like, but I'm pushing my business goal. That doesn't even make sense. Yeah, I wouldn't push the business goal. Just have the media asset of... prime that pushes you writing books and then help people write more books and then have a second season of amazon prime helping you you know people writing books and then sell more people writing books yeah all right

That's my financial advisor in the front shaking her head. We got this, Julia. Yeah, Julia's like, I've seen the financials on the book. Do more of that, right? I want to hit on this one because I think I'm not really talking to you. I'm talking through to everybody else. I had these massive multi-year plateaus where I just stayed stuck because I wanted to pursue every single thing. And so you have to trade novelty for loyalty.

and so it's like you become loyal to the business i also think that occurs with relationships like you make the trade a new person every one you know every week every month every whatever for somebody that you know that you've built something meaningful that's deeper it's kind of like i think business in a lot of ways is like a fine wine where like

you understand it at a different level as the years go by and you go through different seasons. And I think that you miss out on that opportunity if you're going after, you know, one night stands and flings from a business perspective. No, but like I, I, I'm keeping you. I feel this. No doubt. This is helpful. Thank you.

Yeah, you have to. Life will not give you what you want if you want everything. Ah, damn. Like, we have to make trades, but we get nothing. And it's tough. And I think there's a big realization, I want to say a few years back, where...

Once I realized how much work it takes to make something truly great and something big, I had this moment of deep sadness where I realized that I could only do a few things throughout the rest of my life. I was like, oh, I only have two, maybe three entrepreneurial seasons left in me.

Yeah. Which is kind of like crazy to think about. It's like, I only get two or three more big swings. That's it. And the real, real is that if the swing just keeps going, which is what I plan on doing acquisition.com, it's like, this is it. I'm going to do this until I get too old to do it. And that's it. Yeah.

that's all it is now what i want to do is give you something tactical all right because it's this is we're all the way up here so um i'm going to make a a video on this because i think it's really helpful

which is that you have to take your creative energy, and I have a lot of that too, and you have to channel it into something that is accretive to the business, something that adds value rather than something that attracts value. And so what are the components of the business that need novelty on a regular basis? I think...

I can give you a hint. What? Marketing. Marketing. I was just going to say sales and marketing. Yeah. So if you want to build and you want to create, I have the same itch. Yeah. I put all of my ADD into content. I've become a significantly better entrepreneur. by making content because it distracts me from fucking up my business.

this is legit i just wrote a book about this i just wrote a book about when leaders get bored they just fuck it all up and burned it in the city yeah and i just keep doing it over and over so instead just like just paint the city Okay. Just paint it. Don't destroy it. Just paint a different color. Got it. And so that goes for everyone. My ADD, I put it into ads. The reason I write books is mostly for me. Layla's like, can you just write another book?

Because she's like, you're just getting into all of these things that you should just not get into, right? And so the thing is, is that when I am in writing mode, the business does exceptionally well because I do solo. Yeah. Right? Feel this. Yeah. I don't normally talk about this, but I think this feels incredibly relevant. Yeah. This is going to feel real for you. Yeah. And everyone else. So let's imagine the business, like everyone's revenue here represents this line, your revenue.

aggregate like this is that's your business that's normal business app what i realized this is me so this is anecdotal is that whenever i decide to make a change in the business i see about a 20 percent

decrement or decrease in performance from whatever that changes. So I change the sales process, I change the leadership process, I change the onboarding process, I change something that I have to train people up on something new. Now, even if that change is something that I think is superior, I'm still going to have an immediate decrease in performance.

Now, if I assume this to be true, which in my experience, it's been about 20%. So if you're like, what's the data research behind it? It's Alex doing this, right? Now. If I think that this improvement is going to make, let's say, a 5% improvement in the business, like I think it'll improve our closing rate by 5% or something like that, then I'm going to take a guaranteed 20% loss.

for a potential 5% increase. Bad trade. Now, how many months is it going to take me in order to make up for the 20%? It's going to take four or five months, right? Now, here's the really fun thing is that on an alternate timeline, You have this thing. But when you leave people alone, they tend to just get better at their jobs. So you'll get the 5% improvement. And so what's happened is that I've actually created this rule.

which is that if I don't see an adjusted, a risk adjusted 20% improvement. So let me explain what I mean by that, which is I need to see a 40% improvement that I think has a 50-50 shot at happening for me to make any change at all. Yeah. And so I have a list right now. It's Alex's big list of ideas. Yeah. Which I encourage you to have. Okay.

And I had it. It's on my phone. Where every time I think of something else that we could do to improve this business, instead of messaging the team and saying, hey guys, emergency meeting, we're going to do this. This is such a great idea. I just... write it down. Yeah. And I just keep living my life. Okay. And every once in a while, I'll have one where I'm like, this is actually a 40, 50% potential move. Then I'll go to the team and say,

here's my reasoning behind this. And then they'll say, cool, you have four other 50% return moves that you've told us about in the last 30 days. Is this better than those ones? And then I'll look at it and be like, no, that's not better than those ones. And so then I'll keep it on my list.

And in the event that the entire team has bandwidth and they're all breathing a little too easy, then I can go destroy their worlds. But what's ended up happening is that my businesses have improved so dramatically by me just saying, let's just let people do their jobs and so i'm going to be crude yet again just to emphasize this point which is that i have grown to accept that some shit stays fucked yeah

and so there are tons of things about the experience that you guys went through today hopefully it's been really positive between yesterday and today i hope it has been the team was great but there's probably a hundred things that i want to improve about it But every time I want to go improve one of those things, four others drop. And it's not worth the cost of change. And so most of us just don't factor in the guaranteed 20% decrease for the potential.

which we're usually overly optimistic on. I think this will be 40%. But then after it's all said and done, it's five. Was that worth it? No. And so hopefully this is not, you know, this is not, I'm not just talking to you. I see a lot of heads nodding.

This has been one of the most useful razors that I've used as an entrepreneur and it has made all of my business significantly better. And so tactical takeaway for you is number one, channel your ADD into the stuff that benefits the business by being creative.

Yeah. Number two, make a list of all your crazy ideas when they come up and don't tell anyone about them. And if it seasons for two or four weeks and you still think about it, it's like maybe when you go to the store, you're like, maybe I'll buy this dress. And then.

you decide not to. And it's like, if you still think about the dress a month later, then go back and buy it. But in the moment, if you buy it, then it's usually a terrible decision. And so it's the same thing with this. Put the list down, sleep on it. If you're still thinking about that idea a month later, it probably has some legs. Yeah. Right?

And then number three, if I am going to pull something off of my big list of crazy ideas, it better be worth it because I'm going to absolutely detonate a bomb in my business and it better be worth what's going to happen when the dust settles. Wow. This was hard for me to hear and like everything I needed. Thank you. Cool. Thank you guys.