Stop Confusing Patience With Delaying The Inevitable | Ep 843

0:05What's been top of mind for me has been parables. all right and i think the reason parables are so interesting is that they're very memorable right like remember stories better than just about anything else and there was a parable that uh that i've been thinking a lot about there's two different ones and they apply a similar lesson and then i kind of want to just like uh juxtapose that against a lot of different scenarios so i will tell you the first parable now you guys ready so this is the uh this is the parable of the infected tooth. So a CEO has a talented but toxic executive who drove short-term results, but poisoned the culture.

0:44Her board and employees warned her repeatedly, but she kept this executive, fearing the pain of removal and the dip in performance that would inevitably ensue after the removal. So quarter after quarter, she would rationalize. She would say, well, next year or after this big contract, or once I onboard this new customer or after I hire a replacement, etc, etc. So then when she finally needed to fire him, she had to morale then plummeted. And then project stalled, three key employees quit. And so she goes to our mentor and she says, see, removing him wasn't a good idea. And so then the mentor replied, the pain you feel isn't from removing the tooth, it's from letting it rot so long that it infected the jaw.

1:26The extraction just revealed the damage that was already there. And so she realized that every day she delayed had made both the problem and its inevitable solution more painful. And so then the mentor added, remember, the mistake wasn't pulling the tooth. It was watching it decay and calling that patience. That's parable one. Parable two. The parable of the drowning ship. So a merchant owned a ship that sprang a small lake. The repair would cost him a month's profit. I'll fix it next quarter, he decided, taking on more cargo instead. The leak grew. Now repairs would cost six months of profit, significantly more.

2:01I'll fix it next year, he reasoned, taking even more cargo to make up for the lost speed because it was leaking. By year's end, the ship could barely stay afloat. Repairs would cost everything he had. He then said, I can't afford to stop now, mortgaging his house to add yet more cargo. The ship eventually sank. Staying on the shore, a wise trader told him, the best time to exit a bad deal is when you first realize it's bad. The second best time is now. And so with both of those parables, I find them really telling because I want to now translate that into kind of real world stuff for me. So one of the most difficult and painful things that you have to do as an entrepreneur is that you have to replace anybody on your team.

2:46But the further up they are in the organization, the more painful it is. Because typically, if they are not a culture fit or there's a performance issue or a combination of both, the people that they hired underneath of them will likely also suffer some form of deficiency related to that leader. So it's almost like an entire tree branch of the company becomes rotten. And it's not that they're bad people. It just might not be that they're fit for the culture that you have at the business. What makes this so painful, and this is the thing that I find really interesting. I remember a pastor was telling this story.

3:18He said a lot. He said he was talking to a husband and the husband had cheated on his wife. And so he was saying, you know, you have to tell your wife. And he was like, I feel like it's really selfish for me to tell my wife and hurt her. He said, why is it? Why should I hurt her? That feels like the wrong thing. Basically saying it would be almost a sin to hurt his wife. And so then the pastor said, the sin occurred when you cheated on your wife, not when you told the truth. And so I kind of see it that way within a company, which is that when you have somebody who works for you or is especially a leader, you basically incur this debt, right?

3:59And so this is operational debt, leadership debt, management debt. There's different ways of saying it, but basically you have somebody who's not there. And for every day that you don't replace that person, you incur more debt of what's going to come later. And that debt comes due with interest. And so it hurts even more. And that's something that I would say that it's taken me a long time as an entrepreneur to just come to terms with it. Just like when you see something bad, the moment to address it is immediately. Because when you wait, it literally just gets worse. And so sometimes we wait until, you know, our hand is forced, but wouldn't it be better to not have your hand forced and then never have to get to that moment?

4:42And so I was giving this example to a new leader in the business who took over a department and he was going through some of the pains of having to like basically raise the standard, raise the bar, you know, cycle some people out who weren't really aligned with kind of the direction of just like high performance. and I said so if I walked around here and I told everybody that they didn't have to use the bathrooms and they could just shit all over the building they literally shit and and that's what I said that was the expectation that I said well the day that I come in and say hey guys uh stop shitting in the building and use the bathrooms everyone's gonna be like what the hell man that's not how we've been doing things you know why are you changing the expectations why are you changing everything, right?

5:25And the reality is, who's the one whose fault it is? Now, ultimately, it's always the entrepreneur's fault, because it's everything within a business is your choice, either directly or indirectly. But under that assumption, right? The fault was from the manager prior, not the person who's basically paying the bill. And so it's like this person, whoever they are in the business for you will basically run up this tab, right? They're just spending, They're spending, and it can be money, but a lot of times it's spending goodwill. It's spending culture, right? You're basically doing this work at the cost of culture.

5:58And the thing is, is that the bill will come due. And the thing is, is oftentimes the person who runs the debt up and spends lavishly and gets everyone to love them is not the one who pays the bill. And that's where it's really tough. Because, like, if you're, for example, and here's the real, real. You may be this person. I think this may be you. And so you're, you know, you're going out there and you're, you're, you're splurging, right? You're, you're saying everything's great. You guys are doing awesome when you know, they're not doing awesome. All you're doing is kicking out a bill that you're going to have to pay later.

6:34And the bill comes due with interest. And that interest is usually just the entire culture of the team has suffered. And so then you have to, it's like, it is like a decaying tooth. You have to pull it up, but then you got to scoop out all the gunk and all the root and everything else around it so that you can start fresh. And it's just been, this was just top of mind for me. And that's why I had these two parables that I tried to put together around this. And I guess that was the moral of the story for this morning is that you probably know who that person might be in your business. And the best day to root out cancer is the day it happens.

7:14The second day is right now. And so I think that some of you may have some people on your teams, and it may just be you that you need to have that talking to and say, like, I'm no longer going to stand for this. Because if we think about the job of the CEO or job of the entrepreneur, our job, in my opinion, above, I'd say we have two primary kind of roles overall. Number one is that we are chief allocator of resources, right? We have limited resources in terms of time, money, human capital, people. And we have to allocate that limited amount of time, money, effort against unlimited potential things.

7:53And so the best entrepreneurs get the highest returns for the limited resources they have. Fundamentally, it's an exercise in resourcefulness rather than resources. The second job, in my opinion, is holding the bar. And so fundamentally, this is a combination of the vision of where we're trying to go. but the bar is more about how we're going to get there, right? What are the ways that we choose to deem valuable? What are the behaviors that we say, this is how we want to do it? And your culture is a direct reflection of you. And I think that's, it's one of those really true, very harsh realities that like, if you don't like the culture, there's really only one place to look, right?

8:35You have to look at the leader and it trickles all the way up, right? Like whatever you deem acceptable is what everyone will deem acceptable. Because there's no place, realistically, that you're going to be able to house 200 rules of behavior. And so what we do is we try to abstract that into a few pithy aphorisms, a few little quotes that say, we're customer obsessed, we're speed over everything, whatever. But it's more so because if I look at somebody and say speed over everything, there's some inferences I can take from that, but it's not actually very good directions in terms of how do you act?

9:10How do you behave? Right. And so we're expecting that someone uses their second brain cell to then reason for themselves in this situation. How do I balance all three of these values? And then what behaviors would ensue? And so fundamentally, the reason that values can decentralize decision-making across an organization is that it's supposed to be a very high level filter for what to do in situations that have not been prescribed, right? Like a traditional, a rule has a condition and then a behavior, if this, then that, right? And so if we want, I mean, fundamentally, we could write a rule of behavior around everything that exists in the business.

9:46There's a couple of problems with that. One is it would take forever. Two is that it would then we'd expect everyone to then refer back to this book of rules, which would also be a pain. Three, the rules would be constantly changing and dynamic. And so instead, we try and chunk up two values and we hope that in the gray, in the nuance, people can reason. But we're always flabbergasted at people's inability to use the second brain cell, as I like to say. And so it's like, what do you do? What do you do in the situation? So I think that the biggest thing that happens is as you continue to move on in your entrepreneurial career is your understanding of what talent means and what talent looks like.

10:23And so if we look at how quickly an entrepreneur will, like anybody who's listening to this, if you've had more than one business, which if you're an ADD entrepreneur, you probably we have. Your first thing compared to your second thing, I'll bet your second thing happened way faster than your first thing, as in like, you got to your old first things level in half the time, a third of the time, a 10th of the time, right? Because you knew how to beat all the bosses. And then you got into quote, virgin territory where you're like, I don't know what to do from here, right? And in my opinion, especially if you build an organization, the where do I go from here part, a lot of it comes down to who do I hire from here?

10:58And what do they look like? And so if we think about a company as the output of the collective intelligence of the people contained within it, which is one of my beliefs. I think Elon said something to that degree, not that like a couple of days ago. But I've long held this belief. If you think about a business as a Christmas tree, let's say that there's four heads across and that's like the second rung of the tree and then the peak kind of goes a little bit above that. In many smaller businesses, the person who's learned everything is you, the founder. You did every single person's job and And then you try and buy some of your time back.

11:30But what ends up limiting the business is that it's limited based on one person's skill and experience. Because you will know how to do everything. And you can do it better than them. But the limit of that business is purely based on your basically intellectual capacity. And so you can make a significantly larger business if you can visually imagine like beefing up the top part from, call it, four people to 20 people. All of a sudden, the hypothetical peak goes way, way, way, way, way up if that was the width of the peak. right? So the width of the part before the peak, the peak rises. And so if you're adding people to the organization, you want it to be a net increase in overall intellectual capacity and or skills and experience so that every person who comes in actually adds to the peak, right?

12:14Adds more knowledge that other people didn't already have. And by doing that, you will, it's just a really good razor. It's like, does this person know things that other people don't know within the organization. Now, I want to be clear, sometimes there are roles that are front level, it's likely you have the third sales guy, then that might not be one of those. But when we're talking about leaders, which are going to be the people who are going to increase the rate of growth of the business, because they're actually the people who can take things off of your plate, or start new division, start new revenue, revenue streams.

12:42What most of us lack is a high enough standard. Is that and that's what I think really develops most over time as an entrepreneur is that like, what happens is you just hire a bunch of people in the beginning, They have a pulse and they seem like they can speak a language that you also speak. And you say, oh, that must be all that is required in order to do my job or do this job. And then by pure dice roll, pure chance, you will hire somebody who's actually pretty good. And then all of a sudden you're like, man, if I only had five Sarahs, this company would be so much bigger. And so what happens is your bar raises.

13:16And one of the most difficult things about transferring from one entrepreneur to another, kind of like between generations, is pattern recognition. And so there are some lessons, and I think Williamson talked about this, and I actually really liked the frame, which is like, why is it that some lessons, we have difficulty transferring, whereas other ones are immediately accessible? I'll give an example. Like if I needed to teach you how to cold call or teach you how to do outreach or teach you how to sell, it's a very easy to transfer skill, right? But if I had to teach you, let's say that money isn't going to make you happy, it's like you hear it, but you're like, well, I'm going to find out for myself, right?

13:53And so it's like what separates these types of, and that's more of a statement than it is a skill. But anyways, the zoom out thing here is that pattern recognition amongst people, I think, is one of the harder things to transfer from one quote generation to another or for me to transfer via Zoom, right? Is that like, hey, you know, I remember I met, I met, I mean, I've met a lot of number twos, people who have, they're like, hey, this is my COO, this is my whatever. And within like one minute, I'm just like, yeah, this isn't the guy. But it takes the entrepreneur two years to figure that out. And so this is, in my opinion, where people stay stuck.

14:29This is why they stay at the same level for an extended period of time is that they don't know what they don't know. It's the unknown unknowns that kill you. It's not the known unknowns. It's the unknown unknowns. It's the what is the sales director supposed to look like? What is the VP of finance supposed to look like? What is my first sales guy supposed to look like? You don't know. And so then you waste six months hiring somebody, training them. Maybe it doesn't work out. And then you have to start all over again. And then you do it again. And then it doesn't work out. And then you start again.

15:01And then finally, on the third shot, you get it right. And you're like, oh my God, this is what a salesperson should look like. And it takes you that 18 months to do one thing, recognize a pattern. It's a set of behaviors, a set of skills that somebody exhibits that you can say, ah, this person has this. And that is now what I'm going to look for this archetype in new people. And so you level up as an entrepreneur. And so I think a lot of the levels of entrepreneurship are about who, not how, and figuring out what does this person look like? And I would say, conversely, how quickly can I get people out when I know they're not it?

15:37And I think that speed on both sides is what ultimately dictates the growth of the company. Because taking a hypothetical extreme here, if you're the absolute best people in the entire world in each of the positions or functions within an organization at your stage of growth, your company would grow probably insanely fast. And so then the question becomes like, if that's true, then who do you need to become in order to get those people? And what skill sets and behaviors, and even what vision do you have that people who are high quality find compelling? So those are my two little parable anecdotes for the day.

16:13Just food to think on for you guys. It's something that was kind of top of mind for me. And I think a lot of the mistakes that I've made as an entrepreneur have been betting too long on someone that they were going to be different or recognizing that someone was insufficient and then keeping them for a long period of time. Layla and I have also worked recently to eliminate two-week notices. So basically, if someone says that they want to quit, we just want to let them go immediately because we actually suffer more as a business with a cancer of somebody who doesn't want to be there, just poisoning everyone around them once they've basically, it's like, they're like, I'm out the door.

16:48Let me tell you how much, you know, this place sucks, whatever. And I think a lot of that is because people don't have the emotional maturity to say like, hey, I'm going to break up with this girl and she can be a great person, just not a great person for me. Most people can't do that. Most people have to, in order to justify their decision, shit talk their ex-girlfriend, shit talks their ex-boyfriend or whatever, in order to feel okay about that decision, because they probably did have some conflicts, right? If they work there for an extended period of time, and then they ultimately decide not to work there, they have to like feel good about it.

17:15And so their way of feeling good about it is making everyone else feel bad. And this is something that we've worked pretty hard on is like when we when we hear it now, we actually just get them out. I would rather suffer the hole or the vacuum, then then have the cancer kind of like take even more root and plant more seeds while it's gone or while it's on the way out the door. So that's a that's a tactical nugget that I would say that I've changed about my behavior with relation to the parables that I was telling earlier. So hopefully that can at least, you know, save one of you guys a massive headache when it comes to running your business.

17:44I also saw you had the parable of the bread maker if you wanted to go into that? Well, I'll tell you guys that one pretty quickly. I mean, for everybody who's starting out, it'll probably be a little bit more applicable for you. The parable of the bread maker. So bread maker sold the best bread in town for one copper coin. He worked 18 hours daily, but barely survived. So one day an old merchant walks up to him and sees him turn away customers when he runs out of bread, which he does all the time. And so the merchant goes to him and says, hey, double your price. And the baker says, that's impossible.

18:20I'll lose all my customers. And the merchant who's much wealthier than the baker says, just try it. And so reluctantly, the baker decides to listen and he does. So he doubles his prices. And so then the next day, he loses half his customers, but he made the same amount of money working half the time. And so now that he had half of his time back with his free hours, he experimented on new recipes, new ways to bake the bread, new ingredients, and the bread got even better. So all of a sudden, over time, now the customers that he lost, he got some of those back, but he got even more customers. So now he's selling out yet again, but at double the price, but now he's working 18 hours again.

18:59So the merchant goes up to the baker and says, hey, double your prices again. So he does. Yet again, he loses half his remaining customers, but the profits now rise. All right, because he's now done two doubles. He's at 4X. And ultimately, at this point, the customer just stayed valued the quality over the price. And so by a year later of this process of continuing to improve the product, he ended up selling the same amount of lives as he used to, but at four times the price and to people who really loved and treasured his craft. So he worked less, he earned more, and he loved his work again. And so the moral of the story is that basically, the price you charge, you tell the world to value your product at that price, and the world will believe you.

19:44And so for some of you, and I've overheard this, there's been an unwillingness or like a fear around raising prices. So I want to like put some of that, some quell some of those concerns. So number one, worst case scenario, you can just change it back. All right, like not a huge deal. You can just change the price. Not a big deal. Second, the risk of not raising your price, like everyone's talking about the risk of raising your prices, but what are the risks of not raising your prices? The risk of not raising your prices is that you work all the time and make no money, right? You attract the worst customers.

20:16You attract people who demand even more for every dollar off that you give them. And so fundamentally what I'm going through is the virtuous versus vicious cycle of pricing, right? And the thing is, is that your conviction also goes up. And because you have higher gross profits, you can spend more on the product and on the experience to make it even better. You can also attract better talent because you may have more money left over. So there's all these cascading downstream effects. Now, if you're a technology platform, fine, it's a little bit different, right? But the vast, if you have any kind of services that you're rendering, it's almost always in your best interest to try and be the premium seller rather than a budget, a budget dealer.

20:55The only way to be in the service business and try to win on price is that your entire competitive advantage has been built on the lowest cost basis possible. Like that's that, like, and if you didn't start that way year one, you're basically just at a race to the bottom to go out of business. So the, the counterintuitive thing, which is raise your prices often feels like it's the riskiest, but it's actually the least risky thing to do because you will attract people, uh, and you will signal to the marketplace that you are like other premium providers who sell fewer customers and ultimately provide a better experience.

21:30The thing that's a mind, trying to be PG here, but it's a mind fuck, is that when you raise your prices, you will hear no more, more often, but you will make more money. And that's what I think gets people really twisted. You will have more people turning you down, but you will make more money. Think about the equal opposite. If you make it free, you never hear no or just about never hear no. And then you just want to end everything because it sucks, right? And so at the absolute extreme, you only have one customer who's 100 % of your business. And so for sure, there is a sweet spot, right? As you continue to raise prices.

22:07But if you had some sort of certainty that that one customer would never leave, then it would be the most efficient business model in the world. You'd find the person who could pay you the most, who valued the thing the most. And then that's the business. And then you could just absolutely over-deliver like crazy to that person. Obviously, there's a sweet spot. And the parable exists really just to point out that when you have fewer customers, it doesn't mean you have a less healthy business. It often gives you back resources, not just money, but time to improve their experience and ultimately reinvest with your focus and attention into making the product or service better.

22:39And so for the vast majority of you, there's so many businesses that are mispriced. I'll give you a couple of like little telltale signs here. If you're getting on the phone with prospects and you're over 50 % close rate, you're probably mispriced. Now, if you're the founder and you're the one selling, it's normal for it to be a little inflated. But if your team's selling over half of people they get on the phone with, the price is probably too low. And so I'd say the sweet spot, this is just my rule of thumb, is about 30 % to 40 % is kind of the benchmark. mark. And so big picture, you just need to do the math.

23:12You can't always do the math when you have small data. And so this is me just giving you a rule of thumb of what I have found is that usually closing about 35 ish percent is kind of like, okay, we're doing okay here, right? You get much above mid 40s. It's like maybe we're a little high. If you're like in the 70 to 80%, you almost certainly have a double or triple in pricing capacity available to you. A double or a triple. very a huge amount of pricing is kind of it's kind of there does this depend on the elasticity of the good sure but for most services consumer and business services uh that is a good rule of thumb to go by that that i use