The Brutally Honest Cost of Success | Ep 962

0:00Do you think that you can keep the same friends? Do you think that you can keep the same hobbies? Do you think you can stay up late and sleep in on weekends? Do you think that you don't have to sacrifice what average people care about? Do you think that they will support you when you start to pass them? Do you think anyone will think this is healthy, balanced, or logical? No. And they're right.

0:24Yeah, I went white shirt today. It's been a little wild. So as you guys are hopping on I told you that my two kind of themes for this year are Live and interactive for my media and so I'm telling you guys right now you guys make content I'll tell you my cards like we just started and so we're gonna be doing this more I'll tell you why a couple reasons and then I'll get into the stuff. I want to talk about today. I think that fundamentally we have to Do stuff we like which sounds kind of obvious And so if you want to do a tremendous amount of volume of anything like it's very hard to do it if you don't enjoy it.

0:54And so I've kind of taken the perspective yet again, and I think this is like a calibration thing. Like you do stuff you like, you find a portion of it that works really well, you do a ton of that, and then you kind of go off over here, and then you're like, okay, I don't like this anymore. And so you kind of come back to center. And so I enjoy talking to you guys more than anything else, which is why that's kind of the center pillar of what I'm gonna be doing for media strategy going forward. As a result, though, I think we'll be able to put out like a huge amount more volume because me trying to think of like, hey, you know, what's a really interesting topic that I can bring on today or riff on today is different than just like helping you guys solve your problems specifically.

1:25And so the way that today is going to be structured is same as last week. I'm going to do a quick kind of top of mind thing that I've been thinking a lot about. And then I'm going to be answering questions from y 'all. All right. So to do the job, your love thing, Sammy, by the way, hilarious. And like everybody knows what she's saying, but there is some hilarious meme accounts on that that are just like S tier. All right. With that being said, I'm going to do a quick YouTube intro so you guys can actually see this in like real time, how we do it. and then I'm going to get into my little mini topic of today.

1:54All right? I have used one strategy to win repeatedly across 13 years in business and also outside of business. And it's one of the biggest reasons that we had a$105 million launch for$100 million Money Models in 72 hours for my latest book. And I'm going to explain why it's the highest risk-adjusted return move that you can make to win more in business or just win more in life. And so if you're not sure what to do right now within your specific business, no matter what industry or size business you're in or whatever goal you're pursuing, this will help. I talk about more, better, new, a lot. But I want to dive into the one that is near and dear to my heart, the one that has made me the man that I am, which is more.

2:34And I want to talk about that because the fundamental question that every single business owner needs to answer and even every person pursuing any skill or endeavor needs to answer is, why can't I do more? And for most people, doing more is the answer. And it's far more common than it is more. What's very sneaky about more is that you get to a point and then you say, there's no way I can do more. And at that point is where the big unlocks in volume really occur, right? And so Napoleon had this really great quote back in the day, and maybe it's misattributed to him, but he said, I'm sorry, quantity has a quality unto itself.

3:06Meaning like if you do so much volume, you do so much work, and in the military sense, if you just have so many people, at some point it almost takes on its own quality of the amount of work, the amount of people, the amount of volume that you're putting into something, whatever it is that you want to break through. I wanted to give you a couple cool little anecdotes to reinforce this. So some of you guys know about Sharon. He was on the live with me. He's our president at ACQ. I'll tell you two stories about Sharon that really drove this home. And I can tell you so many of them in my life. But one of them about Sharon that really like, I'll tell you the moment where like we went from being friends to me being like, man, I really want him to be, you know, president of acquisition.com.

3:43So he was talking about how he was growing real. And so real is a $200 million or was a$200 million per year business after a$200 million market cap. So they're publicly traded. And he was talking to me of the business. And he had grown it from$200 million to$1.2 billion in less than three years, so like 30 months. And I want to put that there as a moment for you guys to think about that, how insane that is. $200 million to$1.2 billion, less than three years. How does he do it? We're having dinner. And he says, I just did 260 events in the last 365 days. And I was like, what do you mean? And he was like, I flew around and I did every single real estate event.

4:21I spoke on every single stage. And that's how I generated more demand for our platform for realtors. And when he said that to me at dinner, I was like, this guy, he gets it. Now we've been friends for years, but seeing him so tactically involved in the business and being like, that was the thing that took a$200 million business to$1.2 million. Just sheer volume. Now, most people might hear that and think, well, yeah, I speak on stages one time a month. And I'm on stages all the time. It's like, no, no, you're not on stages all the time. You have no idea what being on stages all the time actually means.

4:57And so most business owners wildly underestimate the amount of volume, one, that is required and two that they are capable of. All right. And the thing that is required is almost always higher or sorry, your capability is always higher than what is required. But the thing is, is that you might not know it yet. And so I've had so many times in my life that has become my de facto operating principle. Like I got stuck in trying to grow muscle for a really long time. And this is before I took testosterone. All right. So to be very clear, I've taken testosterone, exogenously injected inside of me and gotten all the man juice.

5:30But this was before that. And I was able to put on like another 20 or 30 pounds, like seven years into lifting. And the main thing was I ended up saying, well, I wonder what would happen if I made it my job to lift all day. And I was like, well, what does that mean? So I lived at a gym, obviously, because I had my own gym. And I set a timer to work out every 45 minutes. So I'd set up three exercises. And every 45 minutes, I'd go in the gym and I'd hit one set on all of them. And I'd go back to work. And I was doing nine or 10 sets every day, right? Which is a lot of sets. And I did it every day.

6:05And so what ended up happening is that like in a matter of four weeks, I put like 15, 16 pounds on. And I was like, holy, and it broke me through all these plateaus of size and strength that I had been stuck at for years. And so then later I was like, let me see if I can do it for six weeks and do it even more volume. And that's what ended up happening. Now to be clear, some people have different genetics. Some people have, you know, their joints can't take it, whatever. But the point is, is that the solution set we have to think about is like, how can I do more? And the answer to that question, the thing that's stopping you is the constraint of the business.

6:35All right. And so many of you guys have heard the story of the pottery class where you have a teacher, he signs two classes, you guys, you will get graded on making the best pot. So the quality of your pot is what I'm going to grade you on. And the other class, he said, I'm going to grade you on the number of pots that you make. And at the end of the semester, quality team had made one pot and it was decent. And then the team that had just done sheer volume of pots, not only did they make way more pots, their pots were better. And so the thing is, is that kind of like the Napoleon quote, quantity takes on a quality unto itself.

7:05Like you get better by doing more. And so that is why there's this tied relationship between the two that's massively linked that people underestimate. And so I want to read you this. This is from my internal sales handbook that I have for my sales team. Because I want to set, like this is the culture of acquisition.com, we ask, how can we do more? How can we do more? Now, leverage is a part of doing more inputs and outputs. If we can get more output with leverage, let's do it. Let me read this to you because I think it'll frame how we think about this. Many people say they want to be in the top 1 % or 0.1 % or even 0.01%, but saying that has zero bearing on whether it happens.

7:42Achievement comes from actions, not aspirations. So let's get real. To be the top 1%, you need to enter a room of 100 people and leave number one. To be the top 0.1%, you need to enter a room of 1 ,000 people, like a local high school, and leave number one. To be the top 0.01%, you need to enter an arena of 10 ,000 people and leave number one. Think about it, a stadium. And in a battle to the death in that stadium, you have to come out on top. You beat everyone. Not almost everyone, everyone. And so if you have the goal to be in the top 0.01%, do you think that you can live a normal life? Do you think that you can keep the same friends?

8:25Do you think that you can keep the same hobbies? Do you think you can stay up late and sleep in on weekends? Do you think that you don't have to sacrifice what average people care about? Do you think that they will support you when you start to pass them? Do you think anyone will think this is healthy, balanced, or logical? No. And they're right. But it doesn't matter. When you want to be the 0.01%, there's no greater waste of time than explaining stuff to people who actively don't support you. It's normal for people to not understand why you do what you do. I say this because you cannot make yourself exceptional and live a normal life.

9:02To make yourself exceptional, you must live an exceptional life. And an exceptional life does not always mean better. It just means that it's so different that most people will reject it and you. And when that happens, you must reject them as well. Oil and water do not mix. That is what it really means to be exceptional. You must become the exception. So I routinely get asked the secret to success. And it just comes down to this. Number one, get better. Number two, never stop. If you do only those two things, you will win on a long enough time horizon. The problem is people convince themselves they no longer want something once they see the experience of how hard it really is.

9:43So I want to set this expectation for you as you head off to practice scripts, mark your calendar and set your alarms. The work begins when your motivation ends. Just win. That's from our internal handbook that we have at ACQ for our sales guys. And it's one of the ways that we welcome guys on. And I want to read that to you because I want to frame what I'm talking about today. It seems like a very simple thing, just saying, just do more. But like, it's almost become an art form and something that I have like a deep passion about, which is very odd to say. But more actually has the highest risk-adjusted return move that you can possibly make within the business.

10:16The reason more has the highest risk-adjusted return for a business or for you is that it's so hard to get something to work, right? Many of you guys have tried anything. You have a new marketing channel, a new sales script, a new offer. You try a bunch of things, and then finally something works. The likelihood that you're changing that thing and that next thing working is actually statistically very low. Think about how many different things you had to try before something actually worked. And so the idea is, okay, I have these limited resources. I can allocate them to take a risk and roll the dice, or I have this thing that I know works, and I need to jam more into that machine, which is why it's the highest risk of just a return move.

10:55Now, one of the other misconceptions, I think, is that there's a huge preponderance of people who talk about optimization, getting as much as you can for as little as you can. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. The difference is that there are optimizers and there are maximizers. maximizers try to ask the question, how do I get as much as I possibly can? Optimizers ask, how do I get as much as I can out of as little as I can? But when you're looking at returns, maximizers win. So what's the difference between first place, you know, gold in the Olympics and second in the Olympics?

11:27Silver, right? A tenth of a second in a race. But what is the realistic difference, the real world or pragmatic difference between being the best in the world and second best? everything. And so when you're talking to an Olympian, you're talking to somebody who wants to be the top 1%, 0.01%, 0.00001%, diminishing returns are still returns. It's you need to do more because you're trying to win, not be cute about saying that you had great return. And I say this as somebody who was a converted optimizer. So in the earlier part of my life, I really prided myself on doing school with as little work as possible.

12:04I was like, you nerds, I was like, you guys needed to study, I can walk in and hit a 91 with no studying. And I'll tell you the story that really, really changed my life. So this guy named Kemp Knott, I gave Kemp a hard time. I did when I was in high school. And he was a kid who didn't catch on to stuff as fast. And you know, Kemp's a successful guy, now he's done great. But this thing happened. So all of high school, I kind of gave this guy a hard time. And when we went to go apply to colleges, I wanted to go to Duke. So Duke's a top five school in the US. And I didn't get into Duke. I ended up going to Vanderbilt, which is also obviously a great school, but I wanted to go to Duke.

12:39And guess who got into Duke? Kemp Knott. And so what was really interesting is that this whole time, like Kemp would go to study hall. He'd be like, teacher, you forgot to assign his homework. Like he was that guy, right? And I honestly just really disliked him, but mostly because it probably just reminded me of my own inadequacies of like, I was just unwilling to do the amount of work that he was. And I shamed him for doing the amount of work that he did. I was like, you have to work so hard just to try and just try and come close to me, right? But in the end, he got into the better college. And so it was this really humbling lesson for me that it was like, none of the colleges cared that I worked less than him.

13:17They just cared about who had the best applications and who had the best grades. And it was this really like very eye-opening experience. And so when I went to college, I had a different frame that I was like, well, I'm not going to lose. I want to go here and I want to maximize. I want to study all the hours of the day that I'm not in class, at the gym, or at the cafeteria. I'm in the library. And you can ask anyone that I ever went to school with, if you ever meet them. Like, that's where I was. I was in the library 12 hours a day because I was like, well, if I just study more than everyone, I'll get good grades.

13:47And that worked out pretty good, right? And so that's just kind of a, just a little bit of framing around why I have such a, such a strong affinity for more. Now, I'll give you a second, kind of a little bit more heady reasons. So I talked about how more is the highest risk adjusted return. I talked about how diminishing returns are still returns. They're still at the end of the, they're still output, right? The next piece though, is that change has a fixed cost, all right? And a variable reward. All right. So let me explain what that means. So if we have this thing that's working, right? So I want you to imagine that this line right here, Ooh, nice and wet.

14:22Oh, I like it. My markers, Calm down, guys. Okay. So I've got this line. This represents your revenue or whatever your current level of activity or output is. Okay, this is output. Whatever your thing is. Okay. Now, what happens is most entrepreneurs, they say, you know what? I'm going to change something. All right? And guess what happens? Because they think they're going to change something and things are going to get better. Right? You tweak something. You mess around. You change your page. Change your script. Change your onboarding process. Whatever. Right? So then what happens? Well, if there's people involved, typically output will go down.

14:51You have to retrade the team. They have to practice. You know, this variable affected two other variables you didn't know about. And so you get, and this is completely based on my observation, you typically get about a 20 % decrement or decrease in performance, okay? And so what this has created for me is my minimum rule of 20%, which is that if something is going to give me a guaranteed 20 % decrease in output by me changing it. Now, this is initial. What ends up happening after that is it might not work, and then you stay here, or it might be worse, and it goes here, or it might get better, and it comes back up eventually, right?

15:29And then maybe you have a 5 % higher output here, and now this is now your new baseline is a little bit higher than it was before. Now, here's the thing. If you have a 20 % guaranteed decrease, and you have the potential for a 5 % increase, do you take that bet? No. But I see entrepreneurs every day, myself included, for many years, taking that bet over and over again because I was like, I just have to get it better. I just have to get it better. But it was a fallacy. It's not true. Your business will never be perfect, and you have to accept that back. It will not be perfect. You will always see things that you could.

16:04And the thing is, you don't even know if it's going to get better. You just aren't sure if it's, quote, good enough, and so you just want to change it. You want to mess with it. But the magic is the compounding returns you get when you do the same thing over and over again. You get this depth of understanding, this depth of skill that happens with repetition, right? If necessity is the mother of invention, repetition is the father of skill, all right? So coming back to our 20 % here, right? This is cute, right? But let's look at what entrepreneurs will normally do. Maybe they'll start seeing some increase here, but what do they do next?

16:34They say, you know what? I've got this other idea I have. And so then they get another 20 % decrease. And so they're constantly living significantly below their output means or your revenue or whatever your thing is below what your potential is because you're constantly changing stuff. And I want to be real with you for a second. If you're a small business owner, you've got maybe 10, maybe 20 employees, or if you have anything less than that, then hear me right now. The amount of resources that you have to implement change are so limited. They're so limited. I pick one big thing a year that I do.

17:10Like one. And what happens is when you realize how limited your resources are in order to deploy successfully a new change or a new experiment, what happens is it forces prioritization. It forces you to focus on what things, if I only had one thing that I could do this year, what one thing would I be like, this is the bet I'm going to take? Well, it certainly wouldn't be a 5 % thing, right? Well, maybe if we write handwritten cards, we'll get a 5 % increase in referrals. Maybe, right? But given those resources, what else could you do? And so when you look at the whole thing, the whole spectrum, and this is how I want to frame strategy for you around this.

17:48So most people think about business strategy. I got this from Sharon. I love this. I'm using it all the time. It's so good. Most people think about business strategy like they think about making dinner. So they go to their kitchen. They open up the fridge. They look what's inside and say, what am I going to whip up? That's how they think about business strategy. But the question that we should be asking isn't, what am I going to whip up from what's inside the fridge? we should ask the question, what the fuck do I want to eat? And then go get the ingredients and go make it happen. And so when you have, when you're saying, I'm only going to take one bet or two bets this year, they're going to be material.

18:20Then it forces you to be like, it's got to be worth it. Because here's the part that no one else knows. Assume this is still the same output, right? You've got your output. What happens is that if you change nothing, believe it or not, people get better at their jobs. People just keep getting better. They get more skilled. And so you'll typically have one, two, three percent increases that happen kind of month over month from you just not changing anything, from just leaving it alone. And so this has taken me so much time because I'm a natural, I'm a yes hinge, right? I'm like, let's do it. Let's shake it up.

18:51Let's change things. Because the thing is, is I have this need from my business. Like earlier days, the business satisfied multiple needs and I didn't satisfy the business's needs, meaning I had cravings for novelty. I wanted to do new things. I would get bored of doing the same thing over again. And so because of that boredom, I would say, let's shake it up. But why? Because the times I've made the most money in my life have not been when I've been changing the most. It's actually when the business has been really boring and we're just blocking and tackling and doing it over and over again. And so this is something that some people never learn.

19:25Honestly, a lot of entrepreneurs never learn this. And the hard question, the hard problem to solve is not the new idea that you want to try. It's how can I do more once I've already exhausted my existing way of doing more? I'll tell you a story to illustrate this. So I went and spoke at this personal training thing, God, I don't know, eight years ago, long time, right? So I was still successful gym once at this time. So I was like considered an authority just within the fitness space. And so I go there and I give my whole, you know, I give my whole presentation or whatever. And so then a girl raised her hand and asked a question.

19:56She said, hey, I currently do outbound DMing from my Instagram to get customers, but I want a more scalable method of acquisition. And I kind of looked at her. I was like, what do you mean? She's like, well, outbound doesn't really scale. And I was like, in what world do you think that outbound doesn't scale? Of course it scales. Some of the biggest companies in the world do exclusively outbound. The problem that she had an encounter was how do I hire, onboard, and train another SDR or another outbound route or another DM setter, right? And so some people get to like five and they're like, there's no way I can have more than that.

20:31But that becomes the complex problems that we then get to solve rather than saying, I'm going to do something new, right? And so I bring this up because, and I'll circle back to this 20 % real quick. So for me, the minimum rule is that it's got to be over 20 % if I'm going to get a 20 % loss guaranteed, right? Of course. But I don't even know if I'm going to get this 20 % because we have to analyze this through. This is an investor frame, by the way. It's called ICE, right? Which is impact, which is like how big, right? Confidence is how likely. And then ease is what are the resources required for us to make this thing happen, right?

21:09Now, the perfect world is something that has gigantic impact, gigantic competence, and super easy, right? That would be the best type of thing. And so when we have a risk-adjusted return move, we think, okay, I think this could double the business. I have super high confidence, and I think it could be easy. Then those are the types of bets we want to take. Because said differently, if you know that somebody could double your business with one move, why would you do three, right? Just because you have this compulsion to be busy, to mess with your team, doesn't mean it's what the business requires.

21:43Real. And so a lot of people use the business to satisfy their own ADD, to satisfy their own need for novelty. When the business thrives on same, it's very rare that you're Kodak and you need to adjust to the digital world. It's very rare. We love to tell these stories, but what we don't tell is the guy who just said, you know what? I've got three levels of my membership and we're doing a million dollars a year. How do I 10x my traffic and get to$10 million a year? And then once I'm there, what do I need to do to get to another 10x of traffic, to get to$100 million a year? We don't ask those questions, right?

22:18Because one of the fallacies or the pains of small business owners is that we, and myself included, right, we consistently think small. We don't think big enough. And so let me give you an example on this, right? So let's say this is where people get obsessed around optimization. They get obsessed around relative returns rather than absolute returns. So let me tell you, let me give you two examples of this. So let's say that you've got a marketing campaign where you put$100 in and you get, call it, let's say you get$1 ,000 out, okay? So this is 10 to 1. Amazing, right? Cool. But as soon as you scale to$200, let's say that you now are getting 6 to 1.