Boring Sh*t That Will Make You Rich
Summary
- I've scaled four of my own businesses and many others by recruiting the right people, giving them the resources they need, and showing them how to use those resources to grow the company.
- By the age of 24, I was earning roughly $1.2 million a month, and by 29, my net worth surpassed $100 million.
- Entrepreneurs often struggle with scaling because they lack the who, the what, and the how—three elements crucial for growth.
- At Acquisition.com, we focus on recruiting the who, providing the what, and teaching the how to help businesses scale from tens to hundreds of millions in revenue.
- My journey began with gym launch, a service-based business, where I learned high transactional sales and the importance of capacity and limitations on a sales team.
- The most significant realization was that capacity constraints, not lack of client acquisition, were hindering our growth, highlighting the need for a talent acquisition funnel similar to a client acquisition funnel.
- Talent acquisition involves application generation, applicant nurture, and the interview process.
- Specificity in job titles and descriptions is critical; it’s marketing to attract the right candidates.
- Use multiple methods to recruit, including cold reach-outs, paid ads, content, recruiters, and team referrals, to cast a wide net and create endless options.
- Speed is essential in hiring; the top candidates are usually off the market within 8 days, so act quickly and follow up persistently.
- To ensure hiring success, use a five-step interview process: screening, expectations & culture, skill test, alignment interview, and CEO interview if applicable.
- A robust interview process can lead to better employee satisfaction, reduced turnover, and faster time to productivity.
- Address any concerns or expectations upfront, test practical skills, align career paths with company growth, and articulate the company vision convincingly during interviews.
- Remember, a company's success depends on building a strong team, not just on having a visionary founder; leverage the collective brainpower of the team for growth.
- Addressing the fear of hiring and losing control is essential; hiring capable individuals is a vital step towards significant growth and avoiding stagnation.
Video
How To Take Action
I would suggest implementing a few key strategies to scale your business or personal growth.
First, focus on talent acquisition just like client acquisition. Here's how:
- Create job titles and descriptions with crystal clarity — it's like marketing to attract the right people.
- Use a mix of methods to recruit: cold reach-outs, paid ads, content, team referrals. This widens the net for better candidates.
- Move fast in hiring because top talent gets snapped up quickly, often within 10 days!
Second, ensure your hiring process is top-notch by:
- Using a structured five-step interview process: screening, expectations & culture, skill test, alignment interview, and, if fitting, a CEO interview. This helps find the right fit faster and reduces turnover.
- Address concerns right away, test practical skills, and make sure the job path aligns with both their and your company's growth.
Lastly, overcome the fear of hiring and losing control. Remember that success is about building a strong team. Trust in hiring capable individuals, and it will be a significant step towards growth and avoiding a plateau.
In summary:
- Be specific in job roles and quick in your hiring process.
- Use a structured, thorough interview strategy.
- Work past the fear of hiring by trusting in the strength of a team to grow your business.
By focusing on these areas, you can scale effectively without a large upfront cost. Keep it aligned with your growth goals, and adjust as you learn what works best for your unique business.
Quotes by Leila Hormozi
"the secret that has been responsible for scaling four of my own businesses and hundreds of others"
– Leila Hormozi
"your number one job as a leader is to find the people to help you build your business"
– Leila Hormozi
"I'm actually one hire away from all the growth you want"
– Leila Hormozi
"it's not the [__] funnel, it is this funnel"
– Leila Hormozi
"if you wanted to win the Super Bowl, you wouldn't say 'I'm going to go win the Super Bowl alone'"
– Leila Hormozi
Full Transcript
this video today is how I scale to 100 million in sales using other people's skills this is the boring [ __ ] that's actually going to make you money this video is from a keynote I did I hope you enjoy the secret that has been responsible for scaling four of my own businesses and hundreds of others I don't say that as like a hundreds of others like actually hundreds of other businesses I've been doing this for the last seven years I just started making content so if you don't know who I am I just want to give like a brief this is who I am in 60 Seconds so since the age of 24 I've taken home about 1.2 million dollars a month I don't say that to brag I say it to tell you and to give an emphasis on the fact that what I'm telling you today does make you money and I personally built scaled and sold three businesses one was service which was gym launch one was e-commerce which was Prestige labs and the other one was software which was Alan and by the age of 29 I crossed 100 million in net worth and now our portfolio does about 200 million in Revenue per year which is comprised of brick and mortar chains e-commerce B2B SAS b2bc Services B2B services and e-learning so it's a lot of companies um and what I've really learned is that independent of Industry okay entrepreneurs typically lack the who the what and the how to scale those are the three things that you need to scale your company and at acquisition.com what we do is we recruit the who we give them the what and then we show them the how and then once the entrepreneur has all three of those things they can scale their business and that's how we scale businesses from 10 to 100 million of course it was not always like that and so to give you a little bit of backstory uh back to 2016. uh this was me and Alex uh that was when we made ads because we met and we started this company called gym launch which it was not a company back then it was me and Alex uh learning how to do Facebook ads and knowing how to sell people into gyms and teaching them how to retain those customers and so what we actually used to do is we would literally fly out to a gym like he would be in Virginia I would be in Hawaii we would turn on the marketing for them and then we would literally sit at their front desk and we would sell people into their gym for them so like then we call each other every night and be like how made you sell today like I got 30 I got 20 I got 15 like just High transactional sales into these gyms and we did that for about 11 months uh flying Spirit living out of the Extended Stay living out of our cars sleeping at clients houses we were broke we had no money and we started to gain a little bit of success um and so we thought to ourselves you know we're exhausted looked like [ __ ] I've aged like five years at this point and we probably should try and hire some people to do this for us and so what we did was we decided let's not hire one sales person let's just hire six at once and so we hired six sales guys to fly out to these next locations and so we booked up six gyms the next month to basically fill them up and they were like okay they're gonna do what we just did and so we did that and it was a little painful um but we made it work and we started to gain a little bit of traction but we started to realize that this model wasn't necessarily going to work um in fact we continue to have endless problems we almost went bankrupt twice and we thought maybe this isn't the right model so we switched the model to licensing which is if any of you guys know us or our backstory that's what gym launches today it's a licensing model and so you know we switched to licensing which was basically we'll teach people how to do what we were doing we're not going to fly out to gyms anymore we're going to teach those gyms how to do what we had just done and so we switched to the licensing and we finally started to gain some traction like it finally felt like I wasn't under water we weren't like going to go broke every other second you know I wasn't anxious all the time and then we hit a point where we couldn't scale so like we gained a little bit of success and it felt like things were going right but it was just like why are we not growing more you know we wanted the fast growth we wanted to be like a rocket ship and we continue to bang our heads against the wall trying to figure out like is it the marketing is it the funnel do we need to tweak the offer is it the sales like what do we need to do and we couldn't break past about 400 000 a month and so after about two months of setting sales targets and not hitting them something occurred to me which was that the reason that our sales targets weren't being hit was not because of our marketing or a funnel or a lack of client acquisition like we had a super strong client acquisition arm it was actually due to capacity and limitations on our sales team and so we actually couldn't hire fast enough to even contact all the people that were opting in for gym launch that was actually the issue like when I logged into the CRM I was like we have hundreds of leads sitting here that nobody's ever contacted and just when I thought that I was starting to understand the issue one of our reps quit I was like [ __ ] [ __ ] sucks and so I called my mentor who I'll call Bob and I was like Bob I [ __ ] hate my life what do I do like we finally found some success I don't know what to do I don't know how to actually scale this business like I don't understand what's wrong like we have this super strong marketing and super strong sales like we're tweaked the funnel and we did this but like I just I don't see anything wrong with it at this point so I don't really understand like I think there's like limitations on our team maybe but like I don't really know mind you at this point I'm 24 years old I've never built a business before I've never managed a single person in my life I have no idea what the hell I'm doing so Bob was like well what's your talent acquisition funnel look like Layla and I was like the [ __ ] is that you know like anyone heard of that I had not at that point I was like I don't even know what that word barely means and so he explained Layla the talent acquisition funnel is the mirror to every business if you want to keep clients coming in the front door then your talent needs to continue to come in the back door and so the reason that we couldn't scale was not due to lack of client acquisition it was actually due to lack of talent acquisition and so what I want to explain is that you are all familiar with this okay everybody pretty much I would assume maybe I don't know gets this lead generation lead nurture and sales do you guys get that is that familiar simple enough right that's a funnel that most people use to acquire clients right that's the simplest way I could put it but what about Talent acquisition who talks about that Talent acquisition if you think about a lead you can think about application generation if you think about lead nurture you can think about application nurture and if you think about sales you can replace that with interviewing and that was really the light bulb moment for me is when I put those two funnels side by side and I was like oh this is how you grow business so as soon as we paired Talent acquisition with client acquisition that is when you're able to scale from four hundred thousand dollars a month to four million per month it was not guys we did not even change our funnel when we were doing four million a month it was the same funnel the same sales process that it was when we were doing 400 000 a month all we did was add in the second funnel and then we lived happily ever after obviously not it's pretty good though um but we did realize that Talent acquisition was going to break us through that barrier and that was what we needed at that point in time and we really realized that we were just like they say one funnel away I just like to spin this out I'm like we're actually one Higher away from all the growth you want from all the leverage you need from all the sanity that you typically think you've lost when you start your business and all the lessons that we don't all have time to learn for ourselves and so here's a thought experiment for you guys is if someone could come in today and do everything you do in your business and you wouldn't have to do anything and your business would grow the exact same amount why are you necessary the answer is that you're not your job is to find the people that can do those things for you and for a lot of people they'll just never get that and they're going to continue to spin their wheels over and over and over again why is it that I work so hard and I don't know why my company's not growing well duck is it's not you that needs to work so hard you need to have an entire Army of people who work hard and so your number one job as a leader is to find the people to help you build your business this is how you get to 100 million it's not the [ __ ] funnel it is this fungal and so after all if you wanted to win the Super Bowl you're not going to say I'm going to go win the Super Bowl alone like me Layla is gonna walk on the field in front of like another team of 30 people right I would never do that I would need offense defense special teams coaches trainers in other words you need marketing you need sales you need product you need customer success you need Finance HR it you need a team and so only us entrepreneurs are really crazy enough to think that we can do this alone after all Steve Jobs was not the one who built the iPhone Steve built the team that built the iPhone and so I know you're probably thinking well that's great Layla for you and Steve but what about me like what the [ __ ] do I do what is this funnel right and that's what we're going to talk about in our short amount of time we have here today to get repeatable outcomes we use a repeatable process at acquisition.com we call this the value acceleration method the van this is like our proprietary process that we use to teach people how to scale their businesses and these are real metrics of the businesses in the portfolios that have implemented the van impressive metrics this is the first year and two years of portfolio companies working with us I took the first six that have been there the longest about two years that's actually their profit growth 2.6 X 2.8 x 9.8 x that one was a good one and so our average stats for the first year are that we 1.8 x revenue and we 3.8 X 3.0 whatever 3x profit whereas the second year it's about 2.3 x in revenue and 4.7 x profit so I'd say that it works pretty well maybe interesting yeah I don't know I can just walk off stage so okay what I want to explain is that the van comes down to three things right it's the who it's the what and it's the how today we only have time to talk about one of them so we're going to talk about The Who so let's Dive In all right if you can acquire customers you can acquire Talent I know and there are three Key activities that are in the tile and acquisition funnel I showed these earlier there's application generation there's applicant nurture and then there's the interview process so first we're going to start with applicant generation and if you guys are note takers this is when I would start taking notes because I am trying to give you the tactics of how you can actually scale your business I'm not trying to give you fluff up here so Legion getting people to want to work for you right that's what I would consider it to be is if you can market and find customers then you can market and recruit Talent it is literally the same skill set and I talk to marketing Centric CEOs all day who don't believe me when I say you already have the skill set to build a team and they're like there's like marketing and making this and do that I'm like that is what is needed to acquire Talent is the same let me show you the job title is as important in capturing the attention of your applicants as the headline is in capturing the attention in your ads it is literally one for one so think about this right this is an ad from gym launch there's kale CEO of gym launch um gym owners we call them out just like you call someone out in your ads we're like who am I speaking to what does this person already call themselves that is exactly what you're doing when you're putting together a job title people don't even think about this that way they're like what do I need oh I need a blank that's what I'm gonna go hire for but the question is not what do I need the question is the type of person I'm looking for what do they call themselves because what they call themselves might not be what I call them and so there's two pieces that go into this and understanding it there's the ad itself and then there's the distribution of the ad kind of like if you're doing Facebook there's the ad there's the picture there's the copy there's all the aspects of it and then there's where are you going to distribute it right which is like optimizing it where are you placing it all that stuff the same goes for recruiting when it comes to lead generation so for the ad this is what most people do one they do not relate it to marketing so they don't think about it in marketing terms at all the first thing you have to understand is this is marketing big companies Market to get employees not just customers and so most people what they do is they make it extremely vague and they forget the audience that they're talking to oftentimes I'll see people that are trying to recruit for example an executive level person because maybe you're a small company you're growing you're like I need some help and I read the ad and I was like that sounds like something that would be on Craigslist like it's kind of skimmy right so you have to understand the audience you're talking to is the first piece the second piece is that people always include abbreviations because they're not paying attention they use Insider language and idioms that nobody else can understand and then they include way too many words because they're not being concise and so here's what we do and I'll give you some examples the first one is you have to be incredibly specific there are so many specificity specificity I can't say the word around jobs that you really have to understand and Target in to who you're talking to the second is that you want to spell it out because a lot of people use abbreviations and I'm telling you like this is a small thing but if you use any abbreviations across a platform you're going to get down regulated indeed LinkedIn monster Glassdoor literally all of them the third is that you have to speak from a place of assuming nobody knows you and has any idea what the [ __ ] your job is talking about because most people that are going to read a thing then you're going to get on with them and they're like wait I said customer service and you worked at a gas station what that's what happens all the time and the last piece is that you want to cut the fat and you want to make sure that you're not using excess terms and they're actually getting straight to the point so I'll give you some actual examples of how I've seen this in our portfolio companies because they haven't been able to acquire talent for these exact reasons first so one example was somebody was looking for an analyst they could not get anybody every time they got on the phone with somebody it was like some dude that just graduated college or even high school or someone that was just doing an internship and he was like I just can't get an analyst and I was like that's because it's a senior financial analyst be specific the moment I'm not kidding you literally the next day he got 50 applications and out of 50 about 20 of them were qualified the actual ratio typically would be that 5 out of 50 would be qualified this time there were 20 because he was so specific in what he needed so when you're titling jobs we have to understand it's the same as the headline in an ad you need to be so specific in calling out the avatar the second one simply said don't abbreviate senior customer success manager like abbreviating senior and manager again you're down regulating yourself on all the platforms and they're not going to show you they're not going to give you as much distribution and they're not going to show you to all the different eyeballs third is using Insider language so this is actually a real example I have a portfolio company that said hey Layla we want to hire for student happiness lead and I was like the [ __ ] is the student happiness lead and they were like what's this I mean it's amazing like they just do all the stuff for our customers and like they're like making sure the customers are happy and like measuring kpis and like that they use the product and like getting them consume it and I was like yeah that's ahead of customer success and they're like well we don't say customer and I was like nobody that is looking for a job is going to have any idea what the [ __ ] a student happiness lead is and they were like hmm because they couldn't fill this role for like three weeks and I was like let's just change it just try it I'll pay for it for all I care literally again the moment that they changed it they got the guy within a week and he is still there today crushing it customer support representative customer support Rockstar again I think it's I think what I would say here is don't be cute so back when I started gym launch in 2016 when I was running it and I was recruiting using the words like Rockstar and Superstar it was actually like really helpful like I got more people to apply people thought it was cool they were like I love that you're like so pro-employee now people look at it and they're just like that's disgusting it's scammy it's gross the platforms all down regulate you now so even if you think it's cool Glassdoor LinkedIn indeed monster they don't think it's cool anymore so don't use those kind of terms when you're recruiting for people and lastly is this one I see a lot is that Everyone likes to put how much someone's gonna make in the title 100K minimum base for a sales rep this is the most common one I see again I don't know if like anyone knows this I have people that worked at Lincoln that I talk to You're Gonna Get Down regulated and sometimes they're going to be in your account forever so when you're advertising to acquire people you can't put that in the title and not long ago I was reminded of this myself because I was looking for what I called a customer success executive for acquisition.com and I put it out there and I was like I need this person like this is what they're gonna do blah blah blah and I was super excited I put it out and I was like you know we have more brand now and we have all this like I'm definitely going to get someone who's super qualified and I put it out there and I got jack [ __ ] is like the people I did get I was like worked at Verizon I was like what the hell I'm just like sitting there pissed off and I'm like okay I need to use my own methodology to think this through and so I realized that nobody that wants to work at a PE firm has ever and ever will call themselves a customer success executive has anyone here heard of someone that works at PE firm called a customer success executive no I felt like such an idiot but I did it myself so then I did some research and I realized it was actually called a portfolio operating partner and as soon as I did that and I changed the title I got inundated with applications and I filled the role immediately and so the bottom line when it comes to generating interest to work for you is that you need to understand who you're talking to just like if you were advertising you could probably some of you who are really good at marketing you could look at someone's funnel and be like dude it's so clear you don't know who you're talking to it is the same when you're trying to get people to work for you if you don't know who you're talking to they're not the right person will never come to you and so that is what the ad looks like right those are the components of it but what about the distribution of the ad where where do you get the eyeballs so here's what most people do most people ask their Network I would say that 95 of businesses that are doing below 2 million a year that I talk to when I say how do you acquire people to work for you and maybe even below 3 million a year they just say I reach out to my network okay here's why that doesn't work and is not a good idea by the way I've done this myself so I can tell you firsthand is that one you're going to exhaust this quickly it's not like you can actually continue to ask your network over and over and over again and the good sources are going to get annoyed that you do the second is that you are so much more likely to give someone the job who's not actually qualified for the job because your selection pool is so small and then lastly is that you don't have enough selection to make it a hard choice and what you want is that you want it ideally in any scenario so like when we're recruiting for our portfolio companies I say I'm going to bring you two to three highly qualified candidates that I think it could be hard for you to pick from and that is when people actually make good decisions and so just like you wouldn't rely on your network to get you clients why would you rely on your network to get you employees something I I just want to hammer home and so here's what we actually do instead there's six ways six not five to get new employees one is your network okay there are certain rules that it's going to be easier through a network specifically if they're industry specific roles right those are the ones that you typically want to look at your network for now the second and the one that I like the most is cold reach outs just like you would cold reach out if you're looking for an Enterprise client like say you're in software and you're like I need an Enterprise client who's doing between x and x and revenue and they're this kind of software company you're not going to put out an ad necessarily for that because it's actually probably going to cost you more to run an ad than it would to just do cold outbound so I'm going to do cold Outreach for specific positions that are hard to find then we've got paid ads so high volume transactional positions are best run with paid ads so an example we were actually talking about this last night is like Molly Maids for example how does Molly Maids beat so many people in the cleaning industry because they can acquire employees the hardest thing about the cleaning industry is that it's hard to get people to work for you and actually stay there and that's what they do really well the fourth is your content and following how many people here have a Following on the social medias okay well if you do um you can always post there and sometimes you know different people have different kind of segments in their following like Alex for example if we post for a sales role we're just going to get inundated with people because a lot of people follow them for sale stuff so knowing you're following what kind of people live in there five is recruiters so recruiters again this is a useful tool if you're a small company if you don't have a brand and you don't know how to go do it yourself right and maybe you actually have the money so if you have the cash flow you don't have the time and you don't have the brand recruiters are a good option to acquire Talent and then lastly is team referrals because people that you acquire through other good employees are five times more likely to be a fit than those who aren't and I say that we should use all of these methods because what I lived the first time that we built gym launch I say the first time because I literally feel like the thing got reincarnated like multiple times because we had to turn over the team the first team that I built I literally built through my entire network when I said that we flew out six sales guys to those locations those were my friends from college just all six of them my friends from college and then what they did was they brought more of my friends and more of my network and then what happened was the first probably 30 people that worked for our company were just purely from my network and the thing was is that one day what happens is that eventually you realize when you start to understand what real talent looks like is that you've been compromising and if you have reach and if you have distribution and if you have options you don't need to compromise and for me as soon as I started using these six methods and understanding how to utilize each one that is when I was able to actually get the generation of the applicant flow that I wanted and so the bottom line is that you want to use every method possible and you want to make sure you know what tool you're using for what problem you're solving and so you want to make sure that you cast the wide net and create Endless Options the reason that people don't have good teams is not because they don't necessarily know what good looks like it's also because they don't have the options if you had 2 000 people apply for a job do you think you would have somebody better in that position than you do now probably Endless Options is what you want and so those are the two pieces to application generation we've got the ad and we've got the distribution okay if you do those two things together you're getting a [ __ ] ton of qualified applicants so the second piece that goes to this is applicant nurture okay that is essentially getting them bought in before they buy interesting stat which is that 68 of candidates state that the hiring experience has the largest influence on whether or not they take the job the average hiring process takes 23 days the top candidates find a job in eight so speed is king during this process I can't tell you how many times helping our portfolio companies recruit before they really get this we lose candidates because they say oh it's Friday you know let's I we Monday I have so many meetings let's wait till Tuesday and I'm like they're gonna be [ __ ] gone dude happens all the time and most people tend to believe that the experience is actually the interview itself but that's like saying that the sales process is the sales call itself so there's actually two Frameworks around the nurture process and the experience for the candidate they're sorting and there's communication so once you're able to generate demand for talent the first thing you want to do is sort right and this is what most people do is they don't actually read the resumes because that would be boring and take a lot of time they don't actually look at the past experience and make sure the person's work there because again that would be very boring and take a lot of time they don't read how long someone's been at different jobs because again reading and they disregard people who job hop around because they rationalize why that person would do that in their own mind they're like maybe they're entrepreneurial like me well then probably don't have them work for you right they ignore the lack of progression and they ignore the obvious red flags we're always justifying because typically when you're looking for someone you're in so much pain that you don't want to pay attention to this [ __ ] I know because I've done it and so here's what we do now one we read every resume thoroughly I hate it but I still do it the second is I'm going to take out anybody who has unmatched experience who job hops who's never moved up who hasn't done the job in a long time in a place similar to ours okay you have to be picky and it's funny because a lot of people like oh Layla I can't do this anymore like I've been looking for four weeks I'm like four weeks it took me five months just now to find my director of people but now she's perfect she's the exact fit I need this could take months and that's okay because it costs you more to do it the other way to hire the wrong person and have to fill it over and over again until eventually you do find the right person because eventually you take my advice and wait and find someone who's a good fit and so what's left when you do this is you have people with perfect experience who have grown in their role who stay at their jobs for a long time who don't jot pop and who are focused in really just one line of work and How likely do you think it is that you could find a winner at that point Maybe [ __ ] it Ferry and so just so you guys understand because when I'm telling you this this is a volume game for every 100 applications that I get only two to three of them even get past the screening phase if I get 100 applications I screen typically seven to nine and then maybe two to three get past it typically I spend maybe two thousand dollars on any like any given role at any point in time and that's not an executive role and that's in terms of how much I'm spending putting behind it trying to get applications and so you have to understand again this is a volume game you want to create Endless Options and if you don't do that and you're like I'm just gonna like put something on you know just get a few or like you we have 10 people to choose from that's not it you want hundreds maybe even thousands to choose from depending on what kind of role it is and so what that leads us to is now that you understand the volume game and sorting those things is how do we get in touch with them communication here's what most people do somebody applies for this role or you're creating the communication Cadence around what you do once someone applies and these are the thoughts that we think to ourselves we think if they really want this job they're going to do these 27 steps I'm putting in place here they're like I'm gonna make it [ __ ] harder for them yeah I'm only going to get the good ones right then you're like oh my God I emailed them and they didn't email me back [ __ ] them right piece of [ __ ] and you're like I don't need to follow up they should want this job right they should already know who I am right and we don't want to give any communication on next steps because they should know what to do because obviously this isn't complicated and we should go slow because we're very busy and important and we should make it again extra extra complicated so we only get the Smart Ones that's what most people do here's why that doesn't work and like listen I did that [ __ ] I was like I'm gonna make it so hard for these [ __ ] you know I'm only gonna get the Smart Ones first is ego thinking people even know who you are listen like I mean some people might think like we have somewhat of a brand and I get on the phone with people all the time and even my damn employees now they're like oh it's so funny all these people think on Instagram you're so cool it's like [ __ ] you know the second is laziness making a good process is hard saying people are stupid is easy so what we do is we just blame them we're like [ __ ] who do you can't even apply for the job like it looks like a piece of [ __ ] I don't even know how to read what you just put on this job application like nobody even knows what that question means the third is assumptions which is assuming that all this Pearson is thinking about is working for you the reality is in the market today that is not the case people have a lot of options and you're not just competing against the people next to you you're competing against them having their own business of their own them doing side work them being a virtual something for there's so many different ways people can't make money now that you're not just competing against the other people who want to pay them you're competing as the other options they have for themselves and then lastly is again Distortion which is assuming they don't have other options and here's the thing if somebody doesn't have other options I wouldn't [ __ ] hire them probably means they suck and so here's what you want to do it is not just a customer experience in your business there's a candidate experience in your business and the candidate experience really composite is comprised of these four things the first is speed write this down same day next day would you let a lead sit in your funnel for more than 24 hours if you win your your CRM right now and you looked and your sales guy hadn't followed up with the lead and that lead came in 24 hours ago how would you feel you'd be [ __ ] pissed right be like what the hell go work that lead yet for some reason people put up ads they do post they do all this work to get job applicants and then when they get people and they're like yeah I'm gonna go check that on Friday I'm like what the [ __ ] like these are hot leads like these are hot leads same day next day the second is volume it's understanding on average right now acquisition.com to fill any role that is management level and above gets over 500 applications for that role that is how we are so picky minimum of 500. so just think on that level if you had 500 people to choose from what would that look like and what do you need to do to generate that 500 it's not always easy sometimes you have to use all six methods the third is personalizing your messaging so again if we're thinking about a really high ticket client that we're trying to attract or we're trying to sell are you going to send them an automated text message to ask them if they want to get on a phone call if that client's worth say two hundred thousand dollars a year is that what you're going to do is that how you're going to treat them no you're gonna be like sales dude make a [ __ ] custom video something they didn't respond cool find them on LinkedIn glass door like find them on all the platforms hit them up hunt them down you have to do the same with Talent so like people will tell me they're like well they didn't respond to my email I'm like [ __ ] go message them on LinkedIn go find them on Facebook [ __ ] find their number on somewhere people find mine all the time right there's so many ways you can get a hold of people and that brings me to omnichannel which again is just getting a hold of people on all the platforms that they live on showing someone especially guys if you're a small business if you're doing Less Than 3 million per year you're lucky to get top talent to work for you and I hate [ __ ] saying that but I work with business of that size all the time it is hard to get talent to work there they have big corporations they could work for that are going to give them six grand a year to go work out at a gym they have so many things that are offered in different places that when we're small and we're trying to get Talent we have to follow up like we mean it and so that is the communication side we've got sorting and we've got communication right so if you get a hold of the best candidates fast using the two of those pieces so here's what actually happened when we did this with one of our companies okay this is a true real case study so we had a business it was a course business and it was on decline when they came to us their revenue is down about like 60 it's a lot I was kind of nervous um it was at like 1.8 a month when we started everything was on fire like I looked inside and I was like I have a headache and I feel sick to my stomach right but we knew that there were five very key missing rules to that business it was a CFO it was a CS lead it was a tech lead it was a CEO and it was a VP of sales we're like okay if we can get those people and we can implement this process in there we can fix this business because they can't do it alone over the next six months we kicked off recruiting process for all those five roles we were like we're gonna film immediately fill the slots within six months the CEO felt immense relief because he used to feel like everything was on his shoulders he was in constant pain like he was like I want to close my business I hate this blah blah they are now at 12 million per month 18 months later this [ __ ] works when you're not in pain all the time you can actually grow your business because you have help and honestly not everyone's going to explode like him but even if you got like a tenth of the explosion I think that would be kind of cool so that is applicant nurture which brings us to the last piece which is the interview process AKA sales right which is selling them on the vision of the company and the impact of the role sounds so cheesy when I say it out loud but that's what it is so just like you sell customers on life after they purchase your product you also sell employees on life after they take a job with your company okay so as you level up in your company and as you level up in your tenure you don't stop selling you change who you sell to people say to me all the time like oh don't you you know you have a background in sales so how's that help with building a company I'm like if only you knew like you never stop selling when you have a company and so who here has sold a client but you didn't sell them well and so they remained like a really shitty client for the rest of time that they were with you anybody you know that one's always grumping you're like [ __ ] we didn't sell them right that's exactly what you get if you don't properly sell an employee and so the question is what is the ideal sale of an employee look like there's two sides to this there's the process and then there's what comes out of your mouth so here's the process here's what most people do and it's why they can't hire the right people one is they overestimate their ability to judge character something I say all the time is I'm like everyone thinks they're really good judge of character until they've got to hire somebody because then you realize you're like [ __ ] blow sucks right we all make mistakes and we're all biased and that's why it's really tough to go like 100 and always hire the right people the second is that most people only conduct one to two interviews that's okay for certain roles that are high transactional roles that you're safe feeling and turning all the time but for majority of people building their core team doing one to two interviews doesn't make sense you're not mitigating your risk the third is that they typically only utilize one person to make the decision so I think as Founders as CEOs as entrepreneurs typically we feel like it's all on us I have to make the decision by myself why couldn't you bring other people from the team in even if they're their peers more people making decisions there's been tons of studies done on this are going to lead to better hiring decisions the more people that talk to the candidate the fourth is that a lot of times we delegate this because we're busy to somebody who doesn't even understand the role and so by default they hire the wrong person which leads to number five is that most people think it is a waste of their time to be the one hiring they're like Layla I'm [ __ ] generating as deals right now I don't have time to hire these people like okay good luck 100 million here's why that doesn't work one is that there's a reason the top companies have robust interview selection processes in fact the top 26 percent of companies claim themselves to have world-class Talent acquisition processes that is contained as one of their strengths this is a paper done by McKinsey the second is that companies that are reacted and fragmented with hiring are in the bottom 14 of company performance I don't think that's a coincidence the third is that 63 of candidates reject a job due to lack of information during the hiring process I see this all the time unfortunately and then last is 85 I checked this like multiple times 85 percent of people lie on their resumes I've had that happen to me so many times it makes me feel sick and so here's what we do to mitigate risk and make sure that we get the best candidates in once we've selected them there's really a five-step process and I'll go into more detail the first is the screening so just like I I like to explain this would you ask a sales rep to book somebody on their calendar for an hour or 90 minutes without screening them no so then why would you book an interview without screening them making our [ __ ] crazy person I wouldn't screening second expectations and culture I like to call this a want match which is like what I want what you want same thing which is like probably like on a first date if you're like hey do you want kids and he's like hell no you're like okay I guess we can go now same thing for the first interview it's like you want to hit that stuff the hard stuff the non-negotiables on that interview because you always know there's non-negotiables for a role in for a company and you need to make sure you addresses in the very first interview before you put them any further and waste anyone else's time third is a skill test interview people miss this one all the time they say Layla how do I test skills for this role it's so hard it is not that hard let's think of a problem that occurred last quarter with somebody that would have been this role would have solved how would you solve that problem fourth and typically the final is an alignment interview so I typically conduct this interview um if we're like a smaller team if it's a bigger team might be like the VP of whatever Department an alignment interview is aligning what's your career path what is the career path available in this company do they align because I always want to make sure if somebody comes into our company or into one of our portfolio companies that they understand what the growth looks like and a lot of people end up churning because what they thought that they were going to end up doing isn't what they're doing a year later and so then they did and lastly if you're big enough and for nods irrelevant there's a CEO interview which is meeting with essentially the key stakeholder and so after implementing this process in my last company this was the stats that we got which is one we doubled our acceptance rate probably because they had more information they felt like they knew multiple people in the company they felt like they had more information about the job 50 turnover reduction that's a lot of money saved and then a hundred percent time to productivity increase timed productivity is basically the time it takes to get someone productive in the roles that they're actually taking it over this saves money more money good as Zach says if you're watching this sec and so the bottom line is that it costs you more money not to do this than to actually do it the thing is is that in the short term not doing this feels like it's saving you money and time but I can tell you that in the long term is costing you money and adding so much time to how long it's going to take to grow your company and so this really brings us to the last element which is I went through the process but the question is what do you actually say to the people when you're on with them because that's where everyone gets stuck I can online this whole thing everyone comes up to like Layla what do I ask what's the top question right so it's the scripting the first is the screening clarify the role and what the company does I have a little Spiel I give so the first thing I do when I get on the phone with anybody is I'm like I'm Layla from acquisition.com here's my little backstory blah blah here's what the role does every single time it's like I've got like a 60 to 90 seconds feel I just want to clarify then you want to go into basically making sure that they're not a weirdo and not expecting something completely weird um so you know what attracted you apply for this company I've gotten it plenty of times where it's like you know virtual work you always work less I'm like all right [ __ ] me um you know are you flexible to traveling maybe they have to travel for the role if they're like hell no you're like see you later like just making sure that those things don't get through because there's no point taking an interview with somebody who doesn't fit the basics of the role the second one the expectations culture interview that I talked about you guys should screenshot this if you interview um is again one clarify the role in the company notice that this is gonna be through every interview you're always going to be clarifying the role in the company you don't want them to come in and be like I didn't realize this is what I'd be doing and this was the company it's like I said to you five [ __ ] times like it's on recording like we have done this but really here what you want to do is you want to dig into not just the expectations but the culture are they culture fit like what do they like the most and the least about their last few roles because like some people I'll be like what do you like the most about your world they're like well I loved that I was a manager and because of that I didn't have to work as much and I'm like okay I'm gonna go right what's your ideal day look like they're like I feel like three hours is my Optimum working time I'm like I'm just gonna kill myself I'm like probably not a fits we're all working 50 hours a day right so you just want to make sure if somebody's not a culture fit and they don't meet your expectations they're not moving them on and if you move them on this is to the skill test which is a skill test I actually think is the easiest interview which is literally this is what you're gonna do you're gonna think okay what is this role doing what are the problems that I had last quarter or in the last six months that if this person was there they would have been the one solving bring those like scenarios to the interview and say how would you do this here's the problem what would you do right so it could be something like you know you're hiring a it integrator I don't know head of IT Integrations I don't know some [ __ ] like that some tech role right and so you're like hey we get every time someone opts in for something we actually get five duplications of it in our CRM how are you gonna fix it that was a real life one that I actually did on an interview and there was like three people that just I was like all right [ __ ] I guess I need to find somebody else until I found the person I was actually able to fix the problem and if they can solve the problem in the seal test interview most likely they can do it when they come in that's my favorite interview and then there's the alignment interview right which is understanding a couple things one I like to understand I'm like what kind of compensation do people like does it excite them like do they get excited for salary do they get excited for performance some people I have that I present packages to where it's like you know medium salary and then like crazy high performance and they're not excited because they're more security driven I can easily take some of that performance and put it to their base and then understanding you know what's their interpretation of work from home that's a big one you'd be surprised how many people I'm sure a lot of you just do work from home in your remote you don't have offices the amount of people that work from home is so different for that's such an important question to ask and then discussing benefits going over the onboarding plan all the other boring [ __ ] and if you're big enough including a CEO interview which is essentially the top person in the company is also going to interview them basically paint the vision of the company for them edify the role edify the position explain the career path and so the bottom line that I hope you're getting from this is that you want to have a script and an objective for each interview when you say the right things and have a clear objective you push the wrong people out and you're going to pull the right people in and if you script and choreograph a sales process to acquire clients then you can script and choreograph an interview process to acquire Talent think about the same thing you don't send a sales guy he comes in he's never trained before you put him on a call with no script Nobody Does that so why would you put other people on calls or even yourself without a script for the hiring process you don't there has to be an objective there's a purpose there needs to be an outcome so I really love this quote Mark Cuban learn to sell in business you're always selling prospects investors employees to be the best sales person you have to put yourself in the shoes of the person you're selling to and you don't sell their product you solve their problems how does your company solve someone's problem what is their problem is it that they're not fulfilled is it that they don't have enough money what is it do you even know why do they work for you and so here's what happened when we did this with a niche certification company so there was a niche certification business and it was stuck at about 400 000 a month and so it was a really charismatic leader like typical genius with a thousand helpers super marketing charismatically really controlling holding on tight genius with a thousand hand type business uh he was frustrated because uh everything was always breaking and he was always having to do everything himself kind of one of those like if you want everything done you just do it yourself because you do it right nobody else does and what we found was that he had his best friend that was an operator who'd been there from the beginning again he got that person from his Network no one had ever scaled a company past 400 000 a month including his operator I said dude that's the problem and so we kicked out the old operator we kicked off a recruiting process we brought in an entire leadership team found a new operator gave the what in the how and he scaled to 1.2 million a month within six months you still crank it simple stuff we literally again I just want to say this again didn't change his funnel didn't change his sales nothing changed the people and so that is the interview process and that is why it's so impactful and so what we covered today was why Talent acquisition is really the missing funnel in your business and how pretty much every problem you have can be solved by finding the right person how to attract the right applicants using the right ads and the six ways to get new Talent how to nurture the right applicants by using the right sorting and decision process and how to sell the right people in the interview process using the five-step interview process and scripting objectives so a quick reminder of why this [ __ ] works Smith more more money this is the boring [ __ ] that's going to make you money this is going to make you more money than any tactic ever will but like most the time what people do is they get so distracted they're like I need to do this new funnel this new marketing campaign a new offer I need all this new [ __ ] I'm like maybe you need a team because the fact that you're the only one thinking about this about your business is frightening of course it's not growing there's one brain growing it you need 10 brains growing it you don't build the business you build people and the people build the business I have never been good at any one thing the only thing that I am good at in my team's here as we say this all the time is picking the right people if I could translate one thing to you guys to help you be more successful that would be that and my this presentation was my best attempt so if you want to learn more about we grow companies for free you can go to acquisition.com you can also search Layla formosi on whatever platform you use I'm supposed to check the time do I have five minutes okay so I was thinking about this presentation and I was like man like I'm really racking my brain over it because like I try so hard to try and make this [ __ ] sexy like I'm not super like I don't focus on marketing I don't even look at my [ __ ] after I put it out I don't think about influencer branding nothing I just build the company but I was like how can I get this across so here's what I've noticed is that most people when I talk about this stuff literally never go and do it the people who do that we have coached we have trained and we have in our many businesses are always the top performers the ones who get both sides they get both Alex and me if you just have one or the other you're never going to scale and so the reason that I know a lot of people won't is because I struggle to get our own CEOs to do this stuff that's why I have all the stories and I can recall so many things because I literally live it every day today I had somebody do something I was like [ __ ] before my damn presentation please come watch this because the thing is is the reason why most people don't do this is because it's easier for you to continue to do the work yourself than to find other people to help because typically this is how it is is that to start a business you have to put all the work into it all the time all the effort it's like Blood Sweat and Tears and so you train yourself to work really [ __ ] hard but you don't train yourself to create any Leverage you don't train yourself how to work other people very hard because how could they get as good as you if you don't give them the same experiences if you don't put them in the same conditions and so why is it that most CEOs never actually create Leverage they refuse to give up control I see this time and time again and I know because I know what it feels like because the moment that I not only had to ascend multiple times in my business but then had to not even be CEO anymore had to step back and just be founder and sell my business that was the hardest step for me and what we typically do and what I try not to do is we believe the lies our brain tells us to keep us safe from these like imaginary threats it's like they're gonna those threats sound like what if I hire them and they're actually worse than me and they crumble my whole business right like what if I hire them then we actually make less money because they blow so bad and we can't afford them what if I hire them and my current team hates them and then they hate me by default what if I hire them and they see I'm not as smart as I see probably not what if I hire them and they steal from me that will happen and so here's a thought experiment and this is how I get myself to do [ __ ] what if you let your fear prevent you from implementing this process and hiring smart people what does your business look like five years from now if you don't do this best case in my opinion from what I've seen thousands of businesses you become the genius with a thousand helpers you get mediocre success in fact in the beginning people like oh my God you're so good at this is so amazing and you're like I know I'm so good blah blah it's all you though and then you eventually stagnate probably decline because it's all your brain worst case I say the shits you guys do something you're not [ __ ] here in five years a business cannot survive off one brain and so the choice is yours become a relevant mediocre or face fear and succeed [Applause]