All Entrepreneurs Have Only 1 Problem…

Summary

• I've realized the single hardest thing entrepreneurs face is a people problem; finding, recruiting, managing, and growing talent is key especially when you scale from $10 to $30 million a year and beyond.
• The growth of a business after reaching a certain size becomes less about the entrepreneur and more about the talent within the company.
• Recognizing the difference between A players and everyone else is critically important for a thriving business.
• A players take ownership and elevate your business, while B players simply do their job and go home.
• I recently promoted a brand manager who exemplified an A player by taking initiative and refusing to settle for subpar products for our apparel line.
• A players increase customer lifetime value (LTV) by providing high-quality products and always looking to improve the customer experience.
• Every person in a company should have a low tolerance for mediocrity, with a culture of intolerance for anything but excellence starting from the top and trickling down.
• It's crucial to have the right people in the right positions; if someone cares more about the company than you, they should be running it.
• Building a company culture of A players creates a championship team environment with high expectations, quick response, and excellent teamwork.
• Chick-fil-A's head of people said that many companies lose not in the championship but in the draft, emphasizing the importance of picking the right people from the start.
• Some employees come 'with batteries included'—natural winners who just need the right environment to excel.
• Investing time in finding A players is worth it; a Harvard study showed that A players are worth five times more than B players.
• True business growth and successful hiring come with experience and an increasing intolerance for mediocrity, sharpening your ability to recognize and develop top talent.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest starting by understanding the importance of talented individuals in your business. When you scale, it's less about you and more about the team. Focus on hiring A players – these are the people who take ownership and consistently look to improve your business.

Here are some practical steps to implement what we've talked about:

1. Use the brand manager story as a blueprint: Look for team members who refuse to accept mediocrity and take initiative to find the best solutions, just like the brand manager who sourced quality apparel for her company.

2. Develop a culture intolerant of anything but excellence: Inspire everyone in your team to reject subpar work and elevate their standards, starting at the top with you.

3. Hire people who care deeply about your business: If you come across someone who shows more dedication to your customers and business than you, consider empowering them with more responsibility—they might be your next A player.

4. Remember, time spent finding A players is an investment: A Harvard study said A players are worth five times more than B players. So, take your time to interview thoroughly and find those who are natural winners.

5. Compare your current team to the standard of an A player: Be honest with yourself about each team member’s performance. Are they showing initiative or just doing the bare minimum?

Always aim for the best when hiring, and create an environment that attracts and retains top talent. That's how you build a championship team that will drive your business to new heights.

Quotes by Alex Hormozi

"The single hardest thing that entrepreneurs face is a people problem"

– Alex Hormozi

"Once you've seen an A player, you can never unsee them"

– Alex Hormozi

"Finding people who think like an A player compared to people who think like the B player is the difference between companies that grow and companies that die"

– Alex Hormozi

"Having a level of intolerance for anything but excellence starts with us"

– Alex Hormozi

"Only hire people worse than them and so if you're one level removed or two levels removed… imagine what's being hired on the frontline"

– Alex Hormozi

Full Transcript

all right in this video what i want to talk about is um i just finished our strategic meeting and it was so apparent um some of the new talent that we brought in um how much they were really driving growth in um in some of our companies and i want to talk about this because i think it's the single hardest thing that entrepreneurs face like every single entrepreneur has one problem they think they have multiple problems but they have one problem and it's a people problem they don't know where to find good people number one number two they don't know how to hire and recruit those people number three if they don't know how to manage those people number four they know how to grow uh and cultivate the talent right and so that entire process embodies what really growing a business becomes after you get to probably about 10 10 to 30 million a year is when when ops really really start taking over especially at 30 it's all about talent and i think i've said this before this is probably the big it's been the biggest bottleneck for me crossing 30 to 100 um is was really understanding that it was understanding that it was all about the talent it's actually not about you and that can be really hard for your ego because you love being needed and that's like an interpersonal need that we you know have from childhood or whatever it is we didn't get hugged enough but like that need is something that is outside of the business the business doesn't require you the business should be able to run on its own and this is something that has shifted over time um that being said it doesn't mean that you can't have the strategic vision for the business you know bezos just stepped down for the first time after you know 30 years or whatever um but but you're the actual doing the leading all that stuff over time the company becomes a company of companies right it becomes a conglomerate as you grow and so what i want to talk about specifically today is how to find and know the difference between an a player and a b player or really an a player and everyone else and i can't really stress how unbelievably important this is and the thing is is that we've talked to entrepreneurs they're always like my team's awesome and you talk the same entrepreneur a year later and they're like that team was horrible this team's awesome and that's because we're eternal optimists right that's that's just the reality of it if you can't look at someone on your team and be like i think this person's kind of weak or i think this person could be better um then you really have rose-colored glasses on right and that's the hard part and i honestly this isn't this wasn't real for me until i actually saw teammates of mine growing divisions of our companies without me doing it in ways that i had never thought of once that happened it became real for me i think there's these different steps in your entrepreneurial journey i mean the first one was when i remember the first person who did a sale for me i cried i remember i cried because i heard about on the phone and they're like yeah i sold two people today and i i had done every single sale for my business for like a year and a half it's just it was just no one could bring it in right and and the answer is other people can bring it in you're not special um but i it wasn't real for me and as soon as this this girl did this i was like oh my god like i don't have to i don't have to literally make the money someone else can do this and i can actually start running the business and so it's a huge breakthrough um and there's obviously levels to this right and i think the the level that i just recently had a breakthrough on was watching teammates actually grow the business um without me right and it's really special it's really awesome so you're like that's awesome for you alex why are you talking to me great question a players and b players so what i want to do is tell you a quick story because i think it's perfect for illustration so we just recently promoted a brand manager one of our companies and she was given uh the task of like hey why don't you think about other revenue streams that we could possibly bring into the company and so she said i thought we should start an apparel line because i'm getting lots of messages on social media about how we should have apparel um and i think that'd be a good opportunity and so her her supervisor said i think that's a great idea go for it right and so what she did was she emailed you know 20 different uh you know manufacturing companies uh for for apparel um she got samples from all of them she tried them all on she felt them and she showed up to the strategic meeting and she was like they were crap she was like i'm not sending that to my customers she said those exact words and i can't tell you what it felt like for me as an owner to hear that she said i'm not sending that to my customers and it was because it showed so much ownership and one of our core tenants is bureau and boss which i'm switching to act like an owner but that's exactly what she did and to push it even further she didn't just stop there and say all this stuff sucks because that would just be presenting a problem instead she was like but i did find some manufacturers that don't do manufacturing and fulfillment because some centers do both which is much more convenient for me as a business but she's like but their stuff is legit it's awesome just like so i just need help figuring out how how many pieces do you want to order as a baseline i'll figure out the logistics to get to a third-party fulfillment center so that we can do this apparel launch and so we ended up coming with a solution for it and she felt great about it we looked at different you know designs and uh and with with the great quality we were able to come up with a solution but here's here's what i want to bring a break apart for you imagine a normal person a b b level employee nothing wrong with them there's lots of them right but they show up they do their job they go home right they don't take ownership because what what an alternative story of what would have happened is the director says hey why don't you look for new revenue opportunities and that person may or may not have done at level one right level two they actually do it and they say i think apparel she says okay go check out apparel now what that person probably would have done was look at three companies from a google search maybe or maybe not even sample the product just look at the pricing and say hey i found an apparel company we can print our logo on it we can ship it out that is what a b player would have done and honestly unless you have an a supervisor the a supervisor probably would have let it go and what and i'll tell you the difference the difference is with the a scenario you have a high quality product that people buy enjoy and buy again and that massively increases the ltv of the customer and on top of that that brand manager cares deeply about the customers and their experience and she's going to be thinking top of mind how do i make this easier how do i make this faster how can i improve their experience right whereas the b player you already lost them like oh yeah they don't like the t-shirts i mean what do they expect right i mean like they're 30 t-shirts i mean they're not gonna be you know xyz and so that difference is the game and finding people who think like that a player compared to people who think like the b player is the difference between companies that grow and companies that die companies that barely compete and make it and companies that thrive and none of what i just described was earth shattering it was just a willingness to do more work and raising the bar it was having a level of intolerance for anything but excellence and it is my belief that within a company hierarchy every person the higher the person who runs the division or the department or the company should always have the lowest amount of tolerance for anything but excellence which means you should be intolerant of anything that is not amazing right and that trickles down it gets deluded right at every level it's diluted a little bit more a little bit more a little bit more and if there comes a day where you see two people and you see a supervisor and you see someone underneath that supervisor and the person underneath has a has a lower tolerance for anything but excellence than their supervisor those roles should reverse the person who cares the most should be the one in charge and so if there comes a day where someone cares more about my customers and the experience and the business that we have than i do they should rightfully run the company not me and sometimes entrepreneurs get to that point they have a ceo and they elect them because they're like i think that you're better equipped for this and i think that you care more deeply and that's okay that happens right you know phil knight doesn't run nike anymore but um i mean shoot jeff bezos says and you obviously step down for other reasons and what not but the big picture here is having a level of intolerance for what an a versus a b looks like starts with us and the thing is is whoever you hire most people only hire people worse than them and so if you're if you're one level removed or two levels removed dear god imagine what you're what's what's being hired on the front line right and so you have to carry this torch you have to raise this bar you have to set the standard so that a players will be attracted to you and also so that you can have a team of a players and then the entire culture rises right if you've ever been on a winning team a championship team you know the difference between the vibe how people come to practice how they play the expectations of one another right the speed of response the teamwork all of that that's culture and that's only created through having the right players on the field the right people on the bus and kicking off the wrong people and i'll end with this quote from the head of people for chick-fil-a which is a company i admire a lot she said a lot of companies want to compete against us in the championship but the reality is they lost in the draft and that one really resonated with me because and i'm paraphrasing here that might not even be your title but that was what she said in general and that that really struck me because so many of us are always trying to develop or awesome develop talent i was trying to do all these things management styles etc but some people just come with batteries included there are some people who are just winners right and you just need to get out of their way and i think that it's worth the extra five interviews it's worth the extra 20 interviews to find the a player because once that person is in place they will grow right they will grow whatever they touch and this has been a deep lesson for me which is what you know people are like it's all about people and it is it's just boring and unsexy for most entrepreneurs because we love the promotion we love the sales we love the marketing we love all that stuff right we love the product but the people is what runs it and i think that this has been this has been a deep lesson for me um and i hope i hope if you look at your team right now you don't think oh they're all amazing right because the reality is they're probably not right um and every single entrepreneur says that i can tell you right now some people that are weak on our team right but you have to be honest about it and you have to think not just what are they doing but what would i be doing in their position what initiative would i be taking that they're not taking what questions would i be asking that they are not asking and ideally you want someone who's asking questions that you haven't thought of and that's when you know you've got an a player so anyways this comes with time it comes with experience it comes with once you've seen an a player you can never unsee them and then you start to use that template to apply to other people all right and so and then you repeat it over and over again and i think that's why entrepreneurship takes time like you grow you grow in levels you grow intolerance you grow an interpersonal understanding you grow an awareness of other people and by as you grow in that awareness so too will your selection of talent so too will your recruitment of talent um your management and growth of those people so anyways hope that made sense hope that was valuable for you if you're hiring people only look for eight players put in the extra time to get the a player because it will pay you dividends beyond your wildest dreams and there was a harvard study that showed that eight players are worth five times more than b players and with that i'll catch you soon bye