Your Standards Are Too Low w/ Alex Hormozi | Ep 208
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What of guys? I have a special episode for you today. In this episode, alex, I actually are talking about the importance of standards and business.

And so we had some time on a sunday and felt like doing a podcast together. Actually, alex is reporting podcast because he likes to patch him back to back, and we want to hang out. So I joined him. If you are somebody who is growing a business or wants to grow business, and you want to understand what IT takes some kind of standards you need to uphold, the opposite is free.

I wanted to talk about something that I feel like will be a media subject for both of us with regard to business. But IT probably does have some tendrils that extend to regular life. And that single, proper or word is standards.

The reason, I think to be really good topic is because as a business owner, I have a few themes of lessons that I have to continue to learn over and over again, like I feel like the concept of the lesson stays the same, but my understanding of IT deepens. You see the zillionaire on stage saying, hey, you just have to hire great people. And then the local barber shop guys, yes, got to hire great people.

But there is, are so many levels to great people for standards. IT kind of works the same way, which is, in a lot of ways you get the business you tolerate later. Made this tweet earlier today.

And I think in seeing that tweet, I thought to myself, you know, I think it'd fun if we did this together. So I will read you the tweet that you had. The reason your business shit is because you are comfortable with a shit business. If a ship business made you uncomfortable, you wouldn't stop until IT was fixed.

Um yeah, that was really on my mind because people tell me all the time how desperately they wish to have a great business. But the truth is, is that I know the way we are, which is like I will not stop and you will not stop until we don't have a ship business or would say if our businesses are ship, but I would say a decade ago, maybe.

And so it's just a matter of like are you willing to put in the work IT takes and run your head against the wall million times or you fail ten, fifteen, twenty times to figure that out? And I think a law, the times building a great business are just fAiling over and over and over again, just figuring out what works because learning how to lead people, learning how to build a culture and learning how to build a team. It's not like any of that is like one skill.

People like, tell me how to lead people like get, let me give you fifty skills. And one conversation like write a book of leadership. Okay, I could write you with a fluffed llc book, but IT actually so many micro skills that bundled up into this one word.

The concept of holding standards for ourselves, I think a lot of people in the beginning is really easy because you see, oh, I have nothing. These people have something. I need to raise my start to get that.

And then when you're making million dollars, you're making two million, five million, ten million and twenty million. If you keep raising your standards, and then as you get there along, I think a lot of people tend to play to. And I think a lot the reason that they platos, they don't know who to look for, to set the new standard for what's required to grow.

And the reality is, is that in a business, people always ask, well, why is that that you know, you need to continue at the same, higher, higher is because as your business grows, you at the top have to be the most post source of those standards. Because as more people get on your team, as you more people under you, those centers only dilute, they only get worse. And so if you don't continue to raise the bar and to raise the standards of who comes in and what the standards are, then they dilute even more. And so it's like fighting natural inertia of like if we're not trying to make things Better.

things will get worse. Two things. So first off, i've been spent a lot of time thinking about motivation. Doctor k, who's my very best friend, basically brother.

At this point, we talk with us the law because it's kind of one of these conditions til concepts. And you like, how does motivation have to do with standard? Well, let me explain.

If we define motivation, the equal opposite of deprivation, meaning, if you are, you know, if you haven't eaten in a while, you have great motivation to eat. You are hungry if you haven't something in a while, a great motivation to sleep. And so you will know be more likely to go sleep.

The issue with motivations that you cannot measure in an action until IT is taken. So you don't know how motivated someone, what is until after they take action. And I think the reason that standards are so important and so amorphous for entrepreneurship is that they are the thing, they are the line in the sand that separates you from where you want to go.

And the further you are from your standard, the greater the deprivation, and the greater that deprivation to hire the motivation to fix IT. The reason I think standard are so important is because they actually are to see the, the, the catalyst for the actions that we have to take. And so I have this theory on business in general, which is that within any team, the person, the visual is the highlander should be the one who makes the decisions.

And so there's ever a day where there's someone at acquisition, dotcom, who is a higher standard of excEllence for this business in lyon. I have then that person should run IT and not us. I think it's a wonderful limit test to also identify like up in coming leaders in the business. You look at the department, say who here in the department has the highest standard, who here raises the bar and who here says we are deficient compared to this ideal. I think the reason that I have gotten more value informs the changes in my life.

Like I, I can mark the huge material changes in leoni's income through interactions that we have often times with people ahead of us or add of us with an a function, right? And so I mean, when lay and I want to begin on, we went to this this little meat up with these, you know, youtube worth that. I think the small person there had like twenty million subtribes.

But the thing is that they reset our standards for how much more work we could be doing on the youtube side. I think we had a lot of takeaway from that. I think our youtube performance tremendously increased as a result of that, not even from any attack.

IT could simply from an understanding of how much more work was required. And it's very difficult to translate that via a podcast or a blog order or something like that. But seeing IT in person, in the flesh until one little story going to jump on this. But we had A, A, A team that came, that came the building, and we talked to some the team mates in this particular company. And immediately afterwards, lyon, I both meet, were like, that is a higher standard then we have in this particular in this particular field.

And IT created tremendous change in terms of our thinking process around who, what, how for, how we want to ask you to, to now resolve this much larger discrepancy between where we were or even that describes in our ideal and what supposedly or what least look like their ideal. And so they created more motivation by showing us what was possible. And I think that's actually the biggest gift of, like, being in the room with people who makes signify more than you, more than any tactic will ever give you.

I agree. I also do think that like some people use that as an excuse, which is like Alice, I hear that sometimes I can't get a room with you. I can't get a room.

It's like, okay, well, look at the internet. You and I send each other snippets from iron mask, from, you know, Steve jobs, from jeff bases all the time. And we don't need to sit in room with them.

We can just say, you know what, i'm just gonna a take the fact that there are that much more ahead of me that i'm going to apply that as truth and i'm going to see how those we don't have to essay IT is easier to be in the room with the person, but you can see something they say, you can read something in an interview, or you can watch a video on youtube and you can raise standard right then. You know what I actually think IT is, is that people don't believe IT until they see IT. Often when you have insert of proof like you on monster of faces or something like that, then IT makes IT easier.

And we also just know that there's just know anything way that they got there by having the same standard to other people. And so it's easier for us to do that. I actually want to read an email that we got from somebody who spent some time with alex other day because I think this demonstrates s know people hear us talk all the time about you working hard and putting the hours in this time.

I think until you work in opposition dot com and you see that we are here before you every day and that we leave after pretty much most people every day, then you don't really know what that looks like. So this email, hey guys, as i'm handing home from the airport on my way home, I want to take a moment to express how much I personally appreciate the experience of acquisition com team and everything you ve been created. Seeing alex yesterday delivering at the highest level non stop for nine hours state, without literally leaving the room, has completely reset the bar for work ethic and dedication for me, our call l as post on his birthday, where he praises his work ethic and commitment, something few people get to witness.

Now, witnessing myself and knowing that I only caught a brief glimpse, IT really hit home on an entirely different level. I've attended quite a few business workshops, and I know many are successful and many high performing entrepreneurs as well, but nothing has even come close to alex is delivery yesterday. I genuinely don't know if anyone else could sustain that level of focus on excEllence. Thank you for all you do. And a special thanks for alex for raising the standard and demonstrating what's truly possible.

What one of zero looks like in real life. No, but it's one of these things were like, you know, short last thirty seconds or some instagram real. And to be really clear, i'm not saying because I think either saying, hey, go sacrifice your life, you know, do something you don't want to do.

I think that if you happen to be fortunately enough to have a big go that propels you, then I think a lot of is just basically ignoring everyone who tells you that they're something wrong with IT. And I think that it's OK to behave differently than most people. Like I had my my father call me today and he said, hey, don't forget to, you know, take some time off and I just like, why no and and and he said that right after of saying, like it's. They go together and also when I have a day off and this isn't going i'm not going to go to work at this stuff with this, but I just making this point is IT like we take rest when we need a rest. There's there's this idea that there's something wrong with not having a hobby or there's something wrong with, you know, not taking vacations and the things if you want that, then do IT, but you do not need to command .

other people to do IT or say that there's something wrong. I that the standard for excEllence looks like is low, and then people throw rocks that people like you and me who are actually trying to fucking make the world a Better place and actually produce jobs and actually help people. And so I would like to ask everyone who's listening, the people that tell you that you're too obsessed to, that you work too hard, that it's not Normal, that it's not healthy, what if they produced for the world, like for real, anybody that we know, we know people who really make this world a Better place, and they worked their fucking ass off.

And none of them have ever talk smack. But like, you guys are work. So I like, don't forget to like every single one of them, like, do keep crushing anyone who's below is the ones who have something to say.

I made a tweet the other day. Actually, I was talking about this because I was really bugging me. What has become Normal in the last few years is just unacceptable. Most people just try to distract themselves with useless activities until they die. Don't apologize for attempting to make something useful with your life.

Is you bring that up because I also had a tweet that I did. I have writing and rewritten multiple times, and I haven't got IT to hit the way I make someone trying to do this on this podcast life. If there were an immigrant who came here and was working three jobs, right, and basically put everything on the line in order to make his family successful and set them up, and he did, he barely saw his kids.

He barely said anything justice to help his family survive, everyone would be like, man, that's so great. Then if an entrepreneur who happens to let's play IT out, let's say that guy keeps working his three jobs, and also he does at his family up, and he does know his business does grow and he does make IT work, then what is that? Persons with you now stop successful actions. Are they supposed to to do something entirely different as a result? And then of a sudden, they go from being the underdog to the man.

And I always, I always wondered about this, like, at what point do you become the man? And I say, the man for those you are Younger, like it's kind of like it's A A majority term for like corporate man sky, but that everyone is like man here, a big boss man now you like when you become the man, like where's that transition? And my opinion of that transition is when you do Better than the person is making the judges.

If we look at the behaviors, the immigrant who's trying to set IT their family up first is the entrepreneur who is trying to set the world up. Yeah, the actions are the same. And so it's this whole false of intention is that people want to somehow like say that there is something wrong with the intention by something in all you and I least to obsess over is we just for those you don't know is that well, we completely disregard intention, cereal man.

completely roll up. We only focus on behavior.

Yeah, if you accidently kill somebody like or you purposely ly kill them, as far as i'm concerned, you killed. Now that has lots of tendrils attached to IT and i'm not onna get into that. But the reason of this is that we focus on behavior, we focus on the actions that people take and do these things propelled sh towards articles.

And I think that having standards to circle the wagon, having standards, we will create a larger deficit. And so the reason getting around people who are way ahead of you in a function, or in general, resets the standard, and what often happens is, and this, I mean, this has happened multiple times of my life. When I see someone who's far ahead of me, and then I end up finally meeting them, I find out that they're not working twice as hard as me.

I found out they're working twenty times as hard as I am. And that was like the except with the youtube guys when we met them and they're like, I will send me your brief and I was like, what are you talking about? The like you know all the preproduction for the videos that you make and was like, you know, we kind of you know, I have a couple of things you like yeah no I mean, obviously like we spend entire week like five guys in a room to figure every single frame of what we're going to do and how he's going to transition in what first five seconds certain in all the props and we source at all and I was like, wow. Well, IT makes sense that your videos get twenty times more reviews than .

might do is funny. You say that it's like another one that I think about a lot because obviously focus more on like the people culture stuff meetings, people like, well, I don't know why my meetings are so about. Like I spent today two and a half hours prepping one fucking meeting because I want to make sure that I have outlined everything so that if I pull fifteen people into a room, IT is worth the money.

But does anybody else spend two and a half hours to prep one fucking in meeting? Probably not. Same goes for planning for a company. People like how does the company grows with us? I don't know. I probably spent two months planning, two months planning what a year of growth is going to look like every weekend, every saturday, every sunday, every morning, going through every model, talking every person on the team, talking to you, talking to all the executives, talking to the front line, making sure that this plans in a fucking work. It's like when people, I got to know why my business and growing, did you put two months into planning what .

the next year lais militant when IT comes to against standards, but for people. So no standards has a lots of different functions that you you can late IT to, but standards with regard to bringing people in. And so i'll give you a taxable example of this.

If we're hard for A A senior director of marketing at acquisition, not come to take some stuff off my plate. When the candidate got on with ella for her interview or for his interview with her, he said he was shocked that both you and I had watched the recordings of all the other interviews that he had had prior. And so at this point, I think he'd had three other interviews, full thirty or our long interviews, that had happened prior to that.

You might be thinking, well, wow, what a waste of time. But the thing is, is that if you listen all of those one often times, you can just not have the interview that you are going to have with them and just cancel because if you're like, not I want to do I don't want to do with this guy or this guy. On the other hand, you can also create a significant experience for that candidate because they're not being reached the exact same questions yet again.

okay. So actually this morning I spent again two hours. I watched every interview of somebody who's coming into a very high level senior room in the company, who everyone said that they love. And I have the next interview with. And so my goal is i'm going to watch every interview because guess who has higher standards than fucking anybody, me.

And so the reason really is actually comes back to this video, which is there might be something that they say to someone, also my team, but if I have the highest standard, i'm going to catch that thing Better than anybody else will. And so basically what I come up with the landing every canada is what's the one thing that i'm not sure if if it's up to standards. And so for this personal speed, I don't know if they're going to be fascine.

And so that's why many hamer home on the interview going to see i'm going to test them on speed. But again, it's just like a matter of standards. And it's again, it's funny.

People ask all the time they're like, I don't understand why I higher their own person. What did you watch every interview? Did you listen to every single year they had with your team? Did you take the time to steal five questions to review over an hour that you're gonna deep dive into? And like really understand who this person is, but that's how you uphold a strong team and the standards of IT as you don't let the wrong people in.

I think lily are right now like there's a big theme like internally. I mean also say this is that like right now we're a season of .

standards which is grown .

really fast yeah which is great. The types of videos that later I passed each other like the little real, or if I mean he said the names early, like jen wang from the video, we still looks at look at lots of job stuff, some stuff from alban loser, from elon basis. And more recently, i've had this like this, this very short center into my mind.

That's kind of been like front and center, which is fewer, Better people. And the thing is that like as as the company grows, you inherently add headcount, right? But what I want to do is D I Q per capital. I want the average I Q of the company to go up. And if you know that you're hiring front line roles, that means that you have to really won the front line roles in general, have to get Better.

And then the people who are coming out, you know at the top, like even higher level than that and companies delete, I think little at IT earlier, like your culture deut your standard salute as IT grows unless you are incredibly forceful and intentional about IT, partially because people hire people who are not as good as them because they feel safe in their roles. And that's a huge, a huge risk to a business. But fewer, Better people also require significantly less overhead in terms of management.

And if you think about the perfect company in terms of effectiveness as a hundred percent individual contributors that had zero management, that would be the perfect organization of human beings. Now the difficulty would be aligning their actions and aligning goals and then lying resources across departments. And that's why these lines of communication exists.

But fundamentally, in a perfect world, this is a hypothetical idea that whatever go to achieve, you would have people who just work all the time and don't spend any of their time needing to communicate, finding people who. Fire, less communication and the less accountability, and less repeating yourself and less having to explain down to a two year old what has to occur in order for their jo B2Be suc cess, or for them to be successful job. Make such a big difference when you multiply by a hundred or two hundred or five hundred across an organization .

yeah I would say this ably applies mostly like knowledge workers in companies because there are some companies where I think that that's tough for somebody with with a high level intellect. Look a chick .

flays employee's versus like mcDonald hundred percent.

They're not directors, no for sure.

but standard relative to so we will say shoulder to shorter standards.

Yeah, have higher dangers in your competitors.

Yeah, actually used to win. yeah.

If you have low dangers for employees, then you have lot of them. And if you have high singers, employees and you don't need as many even further, what's the the elephant in the room, at least when I think about this conversation, is that people rise to the standard that you set with your actions, not the thing that you request with your words.

And the difficult to of everything that we talk about right now that if someone is listen to podcast, and then they go to their team and they say, I want you to be doing this on weekends. I want you to be warnings. I want you to be nights.

I want you to be this. I want you to do that. Like, well, if you're not doing that, I can get fucking to you that they're not going to do IT either or they might do once and then never again.

Or though resent you, that doesn't create loyalty, know I talk about IT with the team when I said, I said our culture, competitive greatness. What does that mean when IT comes to how we treat our office building? I said, listen, if I walk in and the coffee machine doesn't have water, that does not show competitive greatness, refill IT after you're done. If it's low on water and you walk away as a competitive greatness being the type person that you refill IT before you walk away. And so if you don't do that, you're not a pulling your standard.

Here is a shopping card test.

IT is. And it's funny, because what happened was about five days after that, I was refiling the coffee machine and one of our artists tes walked in and SHE was like, fuck, I was by myself. I, I was like, you know, sk, something here. I was like, the end of an event, whatever, and that was when I was like, dam SHE really means that another guy who was taping the event, he came over. Somebody had thrown a donor into the trash, and he had, like, hit the trash sprinkles everywhere, right? I was there picking up little, he walked and he taped IT and he came to me, he, his brain new and he said, I just want you to know everything that you have said and everything i've ever heard you say just became validate in that moment because I saw you picking up the fucking spink's from the floor around the trash. So it's like if you guys are listening to this and you're thinking like how I raise the standards, like you must be the standard.

It's it's like you have to be almost an exaggeration of the standard. Everyone is going to be a delusion of that standard. If you want everyone to be a ten on something, you have to be a hypothetical twenty one out of ten like you if you want everyone to behave a certain way.

I think one of the tough parts for entrepreneurs is that like in order to somebody that yes, that means that you're standing for yourself always has to be higher. No one has an issue with a boss who ask something of them that they clearly demonstrate in excess of the ask. Like just really think about IT like, man, I keep at my team to shop on time.

But like what are you on time? Yes, team to do you follow my team to be more logical and how logical are you? So it's not just yes, no, are you but to what extent, to what degree is that something is is IT ww worthy is something when they get home, they have their first week at the job, they tell their wife, they tell their, you know, they tell their spouse they are like to these guys are insane. Like these guys work, I think is not like, man, their attention to details.

I've ever seen people with highest standards. The cool thing about getting the office, the headquarters has been seeing how people watching our how we actually work in person has changed the work, the standards of the teams. I think that's the one advances that we have of the in persons teammates that we have because we're hybrid. We have some people are full remote. But I think that the people who really want to learn from us and that come into the office get to see because they walk in at seven or eight or river and they're like, they have been here at seven, eight, you know, and then they leave before we leave, you know, it's just like it's setting the standard. Everybody else, I think about that all the time.

every single day. Our team knows if they come on a sunday, they are going to be on a at day going to like you get here at six, you're going to see this mean, we're here. We're here for IT that .

I mean that tie back around like I think that the issue has been for a long time. I think a lot of people are too apologetic about raising the standard because the reality is as you raise the standard, you are the few, not the money, and therefore, other people tell you there's something wrong with you. And if other people are telling you that they're going wrong with you.

you're probably on the right path. And IT feels tough because you will be again in the minority. And so it's very hard for like I think humans like cognitive programing. If the majority of people are telling you that something is wrong, you have this very deep desire to .

change IT IT just takes eventually. I feel like you and I like reprogramme where it's like if you are telling me I am obsess ong like on the right path, what everyone else is doing.

I don't want to be like that. It's clearly not working. What happens though, as you raise the standard, this is work is really tough. Rubber adding the road here is that as as the company grows, whatever whatever say that the bar will always have to get reset. And if you don't reset IT, you will eventually delude, you will blow.

You'll get too many, you know, unintelligent people, people who don't work as hard to don't share the values to the degree that you need them to, will want them to. You know, it's kind of like in a quality or kind of like a tree where IT grows and you have to prove the tree to keep the tree healthy, like you have to keep the most concentrated version of IT. And I like the ordinary as a visual.

It's like, it's like IT goes in and then IT expands out, IT is in and then IT expends out. And is this distillation process. I mean, like I think about this with with jobs op, because I think about what people he had in his immediate viny.

Like who are the people that really drove things? And what interesting is that like gmail, for example, was like a team of five and you know the team that built the origin iphone, very, very small team. Now you have these, you know huge, huge jorgen ization, but they're still these very small teams that are incredibly effective of highly intelligent and motivated people who have leadership that just simply aligns the vision and then more or less gets out of their way.

And I think this is something that i've been using as my own personal limits test for the people that are in my vicinity. I will hold people accountable through the standards that I uphold for myself. If I have to keep moving a task along a hey, and where you out, hey, where you out with that that's not the calibre of person at this level .

that needs to be here. Accountability, which I, I, I made a little formula.

I, if you know this.

you see you expectations plus measurement times reinforcement set the expectation put in a tool to measure if the expectation is being met and then your job as a little AManda is reinforcement, I call IT like reinforcement the only multiple?

Er so for me when I talk about count ability, i'm talk about IT because I know that if I reinforce the activities that somebody does to uphold those expectations than I get even more, they'll be an eleven out of ten or twelve out of ten if somebody and this is about the else a day, I was, oh, men, you know, I really worry about like people taking all the things I talk about, applying IT to city teammates. Nobody who reports to me is someone I have to write their ask about something. And I promise you, if it's somebody who I have to write their ass, then they're gone.

I'm kind, i'm not nice not going to keeps someone is ineffective on my team because that actually just grows up the whole thing. And your job as a leader is to protect the entire company, not one person's feelings. That's just like one thing that I keep thinking about with the accountant piece, which is like what people miss is they think that one that setting expectations, I have a whole video on that on my youtube um but like they think that setting expectations means constantly giving some instruction to.

They think that measurement means that they are measuring the person where as all the examples I give are how that person measures themselves. And then three, they think that constant feedback means that, that person probably fucking up and you're having to constantly tell them what are doing wrong. Like no, i'm trying to get winners into my account, the formula, i'm not trying and losers if I have to constantly tell somebody what they're doing wrong, if I to repeat myself three, four times, if somebody is unable to do something, sometimes it's just not worth to return. And you have to ask yourself that which is like, is this worth my time as the CEO or the founder of the company? Should I be spending hours and hours a week trying to train one customer support rap on how to manage tickets?

Probably lucky not. I'll read this tweet that I I wrote the other day. I know, of course, anything that's like Operational higher value kits is zero reach.

But a lot of Young leaders think that the point of their job is to keep everyone another team happy, when in fact, it's to keep the best people on their team happy. That means that you have to allow the rest to rise to the occasion or weed themselves out. And that means that low performers will wine.

And then leave. And so when I say wine, it's easy to hear the word wine complain, but you have to think about them like you raise the bar. Like if a new sharif in town, let's say you you want to take over under performing team, like the first things gonna en, is you reset the standards. If the like every single sports movie where the new coach comes in the town and it's the loser team, what do they do? They reset the fucking bar.

Is the number one a rule? If you're taking a department, he had to be Better, you know me Better.

Don't take IT over now. And I think right now, many, many businesses and many business are listen this, it's either the entire business or function within the business has a leader there who is two legs. They are not strong enough.

They are people pleasing. They're being nice, not being good. They're not being kind.

They're being nice. They want to be liked by everyone. And that is not the way. That is not the way. And the thing is, is like it's uncomfortable because you might find out that if you go take over a department or function or whatever, that maybe half the team is into standard or when e one one in a twitter eighty percent war to his standard.

right? Yeah I think there's actually two things I would give us. Like, you know, nice first is good. I would say nice first is kind that I talk about the walks.

I think people I wouldn't call myself nice, but I think i'm kind be as nice is about avoiding conflict, right? And it's disguised. It's basically weakness.

Disguise ed as being polite, but it's weak in kind is doing what's difficult right now, even if it's difficult because you love somebody, because you want invest in somebody, because you believe in body. I am very kind. I am not nice, because I am constantly telling people the truth about where they stand in the company.

And IT always means that it's uncomfortable the moment, the amount of every every time I see that, I have to say that because it's like if I don't think who else does when people are looking at these within the departments. The question I ask myself with this, which is I look at my my leadership team, I look at people who report to me, I look at people in the company in key roles. And I just ask me about this one question. This is unlike IT for me, which is, is this person making IT easier or harder to achieve rules? And like at the end of the day, if somebody makes IT harder for us to achieve our goals as the company, then either something has to change or they have to lead.

And I think a couple of vectors to like of measure this on mentally is if you look at someone and say, okay, is they do they meet my quality standard? Okay, maybe they meet the quality, but do you they mean my quantity standard? Are they are doing maybe they have quality, but they're they're not doing enough.

Do they meet my speed standard? Do they do IT fast enough? And so those are just some different like vectors you can consider when you're talking to someone, when you're like how to know is so and so up to standard.

It's a well, having different frames or lenses to look through can kind of guide that conversation if you if you feel like someone is difficult and you like I think one of the biggest things that I i've got signally Better out over the years is being able to put words to discrepancies between desired and actual. And so I think, like in the beginning, for example, when I would communicate somebody was not doing a good job. I D be like, hey, you're not doing a good job.

That is actually very difficult for someone to hear because it's basically generic and not specific behaviors that they can change in communicating a standard. Having clear examples of IT is a standard that you work six days week, that is a standard. But if you're like I, they're just not working.

If like translating to like I need you to work harder, which no knows how to do to, I need you to show up earlier. I need you to stay later and take more calls. I need you to A, I need to spend about twice as much time on these, on the shorts.

I need you to make sure that these transitions are smoother than they are. Like, I need them to take less time. I need to send more out per day.

Like again, you can think in quality. You can think in quantity. You can think it's speed. There's obviously other vectors, but those are the ones that come top of mind in terms of like large erik, things that you can kind of women on.

Yeah, the last thing i'll say just in terms of like where I see this go wrong, is that I just feel like a lot of people are as the company grows, they accommodate mediocrities and low standards rather than upholding the high standards. And because what happens as they start to question, maybe I was just, you know too hard on that. Maybe I this was on a realistic maybe I and like you kind of have to be a little unrealistic.

You know like the amount of times that's a final candidates to me. And i'm like i'm not taking this call. People like why and i'm like, this is not the person after all that work.

This is the best, best we got is not the I feel very bad about that because I know that my number one of is to be the steward of the company. no. And I think that if you are the steward of everyone's feelings, IT makes being the start of the company very fucking hard.

There's like you need to be the start of the company, not the start. People's feelings. You and I think that's really good.

I would say that like when we first met years years ago, I think you would have been very influenced by like people having a bad day, people complaining um and I say complaining is them generally saying to go this is harder like or i'm overwhelmed I think you in the earlier days would have held felt more empathy towards them and being like, oh maybe I am overwhelming them rather than thinking like they are just not at the standard of person that we need yeah and we would have been taken the other woman that were being too demanding and so it's honestly a little bit of pushing pull because some fans are going to hear this would be like i'm going to immediately raise the standard on my entire thing but here's what happens so what happened? You go run there, hear this podcast and you have this, you have this, you know, come to jesus with your whole team. And then here's the next thing.

They just go back to living their lives because you don't enforce IT. And so what you how to exist, what you tolerate becomes the standard is the lowest thing, not the highest thing. That's what crazy is. The one time you let someone be late to meaning you don't say something, you have not demonstrate to everyone that that is acceptable.

And so you have to pair IT with likely if you have, you feel like you need to change the, you know, turn the title, change the ship, is that if you do have a new standard, you set the standard. And if people don't meet IT, IT means, yes, you might need different people. And that means that you might have to go through period of time where you're rebuilding because you have to basically cycle through new team and bring in and reset the culture, reset the standards.

And honestly, every single entrepreneurs i've heard has been in business for extended period time has had to do this one, two, sometimes three times that of the company's history. We were like, I just needed to set the bar higher. And I knew that the team that got me here .

wasn't the team in the play behind that is the you that got you here is not the you that gets you to the next, you know, you save me ten years ago, you know, even six years ago. I mean, it's been an ongoing thing for me because and and that's why i'm so vicious about making sure we have the right people because I will be as loyal to the right people as they are to me, and I will pour a lot in time, I will just in them.

But when one thing that I have done away with is being nice, which is, in my opinion, sacrificing the long term, sacrificing its best for the whole team, for one person, but I will say this, which is you're so caught up in the data day and you're so caught up in everything is going on, that you don't catch these things that slip your standards are talking one of our friends about something. What happens over time that I get so busy that i'll all have twelve meetings a day and my one meeting at ten, I am somebody says or does something that's not to standard and i'm so focused on getting to the next meeting that I forget about IT. And so I have to put your mind ders every day to ask myself, was there anything like, basically I put what I call like a look up, which is like, look back up at the rest of my calendar and say, like, did anything go wrong that I need to address before tomorrow? And I try to give that feedback immediately.

And onest ly, that's a kind of all IT takes is like recently, the centers is not some like monument to event that occurs. It's you giving feedback every single fucking day, not forgetting to do IT on every call, on everyone of one, your reaction to every mistake IT is all of the little things that just a hundred golden BBS. There's not one silver bullet. But I think a lot of people that's very overwhelming because IT means that you to change your way of existing as the founder, the sea of the .

company and hard to t people, I think, are afraid of osa confrontation, like a lot of people are afraid of confrontation. They don't want to just say, like him in this sucked. I expect that you would have returned on this or hey, i'm surprised this took so long. What else got in the way that I don't understand, like me understand why they .

take a week is is a post on because I think people are afraid of quite, confront all they do, insult people. They don't actually know how to criticize people so yeah, I mean, I give so much feedback and I critical people all the time, but I never make people IT doesn't feel bad when I delivered IT because I don't tell them they suck. I just tell .

them what to do differently no, but exactly that. Like if you go to IT, let's say I i'll use video oors because we have immediate him as a simply example. But like if I went to immediate and editors, hey.

This real sucked that hurts, right? But it's also unhelpful. IT hurts and is unhelpful. And so everyone has these these fears around those exchanges are almost right.

So but if you just said, hey, this hook was off and needs to be cut this way, can you do that going forward? I think most people would be like, yes, sure. Did the thing before that suck? yes.

But just saying that is sucked to help? no. Does explaining what they should do differently is that the feed back you need to do? yes. And so like this is for all the hotter heads founders were out there, my home is IT has been one of the biggest breakthrough in my ability to lead and not block on people was, if I am upset, asking myself the question, what do I want them to do instead being as specific as humanely possible with that, a laundry list of how to behave. And by doing this one, that slows me down.

So that gives me time to think, because like in the moment they basically insert you basically computing the work out that might even quality compared to your standards, right? And this infuriates because your customer order or vender sadder other employees, whatever IT was. And this, this makes me very angry. But if you just think from the perspective of what do I want to, what do I want them to do instead, this then create much more useful frame to then approach the person.

And if you can't articulate that, then don't talk to them until you can, because then they will actually be able to change and you be able to measure and say, yes, you did a good job afterwards, which gives you more opportunities to not be the dick and just say, great job. So with that being said, that is standards by alexa laa a joint pot, if you like a joint pot, let's know if you didn't then otherwise, an amazing day for to your teammates. If a barn needs to be reset, you need .

to reset .

IT first, then reset IT. I ever go on.