How my job changed from $10k/day to $100,000/day

Summary

• Entrepreneurship is challenging because it requires a shift in identity and how you view the world.
• Initially, entrepreneurs transition from having little control (working for someone else) to complete ownership over outcomes.
• The ability to take full control can also hinder growth; as a business grows, an entrepreneur must "buy back" their time by delegating tasks.
• Early delegation often begins with low-skilled support tasks, followed by higher-level administrative roles like billing and collections.
• A significant hurdle for many entrepreneurs is giving up control of sales because they believe no one can sell as effectively as they can.
• To scale beyond personal capabilities, outsourcing sales and eventually managing a sales team becomes a necessity.
• Past the $1 million sales mark, fully controlling sales becomes unfeasible, and at around $10 million, leadership control must be distributed due to the broad scope of the business.
• A useful rule of thumb I've adopted is to always "know where the bodies are buried," meaning to be aware of the problems and imperfections in each department, even while delegating control.
• Maintaining awareness and transparency ensures you're not too detached from departmental issues, even if you're not in direct control.
• Listening for only good news from a team might indicate being too removed, which can be a risk to the business.
• Overcoming personal barriers, such as trust issues, is essential for an entrepreneur to continue this cycle of buying back time and relinquishing control to grow the business successfully.
• Entrepreneurial growth involves continuously relinquishing control, from frontline tasks to high-level leadership, for the freedom to scale and succeed.

Video

How To Take Action

A good way of doing business as an entrepreneur is to start by changing how you see things. You've got to think differently as you grow. When you're just starting, take control of everything. This is your show. But as time goes on, you gotta let go a bit to grow big.

First, start by hiring help for simple stuff, like answering phones or managing emails. This doesn't cost much and can save heaps of time. Trust me, free time is like gold for your business. Then, move on to the trickier jobs like billing or contracts. Get someone good at these things, and that's more time for you to do important stuff.

Now, here comes the tough part. Let someone else handle sales. I know, I know, you're the best at selling your thing. But you can't do it all. Once you hit that $1 million sales mark, you gotta build a sales team. And from there, keep giving up control as you make more and more. It’s like a cycle. Buy back time, then let go of some control.

Always know about the problems in each part of your business, even if you’re not in charge of it all. If you only hear good things, that's a sign you're out of touch. That could be risky!

Also, ya gotta deal with trust issues. We've all got 'em, but you can't grow if you can't trust your team. Trusting others can be scary, but it’s necessary. So take a deep breath, and let others help you shine.

To sum it up, start small, get help with easy tasks, work your way up to the big stuff, and always keep an eye on your business. Remember, control is good, but too much control can make your business stuck. Keep letting go and trusting your team, and watch your business soar!

Quotes by Alex Hormozi

"Entrepreneurship is so difficult because it forces you to change who you are, your identity"

– Alex Hormozi

"The most valuable rule of thumb that I've learned in scaling our companies: Know where the bodies are buried"

– Alex Hormozi

"I'm going to take back that power, I'm going to take back the control over my outcomes, take responsibility"

– Alex Hormozi

"If you want to build something great, you have to be willing to trust other people"

– Alex Hormozi

"Every level of entrepreneurship is always uncomfortable because the thing that you are now holding on to is the thing that you have to give up"

– Alex Hormozi

Full Transcript

what's going on everyone alex from moza here three companies who uh now have done over 110 million dollars in sales and this video i want to talk about the entrepreneurial journey as it relates to control and the reason i think this is so important and this is probably the biggest reason that people get stuck all right and so at the end so what i'm going to do here is i'm going to explain kind of how control shifts throughout the entrepreneurial journey where people get stuck and at the very end of the video i'll tell you basically the the most valuable rule of thumb that i've learned in scaling our companies all right so first thing is the reason entrepreneurship is so difficult is because it forces you to change who you are your identity the values that you supposedly have as you continue to grow i'm not saying your you know honesty etc those types of values but the the way that you see the world and how you operate because in the very beginning you most of us at some point have to transition from a lack of control to complete control right and what i mean by that is either you you know went straight into entrepreneurship where you shifted control from your parents to yourself right or in many other instances you started you had a job someone else was kind of responsible for your income for the most part because they're paying you you weren't generating it yourself and so you're very limited right and then you jump to taking complete ownership over all of your outcomes right and so you have complete control the difficult thing is is that the thing that takes you the first step that huge leap of saying i'm going to be completely in control is usually the thing that will stifle most entrepreneurs who are trying to grow right because if you have complete control and complete ownership that's great but there's only one of you right and so what what that leads to is kind of this this buyback and i think the first time i heard this recently was denmark tell us talking about buyback principle and i just like the terminology but basically you just continue to buy back your time as you continue to grow the company and so in the very beginning most people are buying back support time so it's just kind of like lower skilled support tasks that they're doing in their business so it's like them and then they've got maybe an assistant right and then after that there might be higher level support or administrative tasks so that might be like billing collections contracts all that kind of stuff that might happen in the business after you have like your kind of support role taken care of from there the next level of control that people have to give up is selling right no one can sell like me no one gets it like i get it people just don't relate to my customers right and the issue is control you're trying to control the whole thing and the thing is is that every time you add someone in and you buy back more of your time you relinquish control and so the thing is is that every level of entrepreneurship i'm telling you right now it is always uncomfortable because the thing that you are now holding on to is the thing that you have to give up and this has been one of the hardest things for me a lot of this is because we identify with being the thing right in the beginning i'll give you a simple example because we work so many gyms people be like no one treat trains a class like i do right so that's the first level of fulfillment right first level of of delivery is is training right it's also the first thing they need to outsource and the reason for that is because the market will pay someone 15 an hour somebody will come in for 15 an hour to do that work well if you have work that pays you a hundred dollars an hour then you should be doing 100 an hour or not the 15 hour work but they think because they like to feel special they like to feel unique no one can train like i can train well i mean obviously there's probably some people train a lot better than you so maybe you should let them do the training right and then after that usually the business owner will do contracts billing you know and they're usually not that good at it anyways because they're entrepreneurs and so that's the next thing that happens right and so then the next piece might be some sort of assistant of some kind or some sort of right-hand operator that would help you out right and then again there it's like well no i don't trust anyone with the money if i'm not looking at the money then then we're gonna we're gonna lose well i used to say the same thing until i had someone who's better at tracking the money than i am huh crazy right and so i had to give up control of the money i'm not saying i don't look at it right but i had to give up control of it and so then i'm just selling right because that's the highest value thing i could do at the time was i could just talk to people and get them to give us money right but then eventually there's too many too many consultations that have to happen i still have to run the business right and so i have to give that control over to someone else which is probably one of the biggest and most difficult people this is usually either thing that gets in the way of people going i'd say from a million over so we're doing over a million so up to a million dollars a year you can just sell yourself right like you yourself can sell and you can have these other people who are assisting you but once you cross a million it's usually difficult to be doing the selling yourself and that's where you have to start scaling sales so you have to give that control up right the next level after control of the sales is now you have to teach other people in a group not just one person but a group of people how to sales you have to manage a sales team you have to recruit you have to hire you have to train compensate etc and again that's levels of control but again here here even with the sales team you're talking maybe three maybe 10 million when you get to 10 million trying to go to 30 the level of control that you're giving up here is leadership weird right because there's too many departments too many people you can't lead everyone right so you have to lead a small group of people and get them to lead the people who are underneath of them right and so again it's a level of control it's control over your your culture now obviously you want to lead it you want to lead by example you want to be the the most distilled down version of that thing so that it it permeates right but as you continue to buy back i think the question that i like to ask myself is what am i what am i trying to control what am i trying to control and i think if you think about that and then rather what part of my identity am i giving up by giving up this control i used to think i was you know such a great salesman right no one can sell like i can sell but you know what i can't outsell 12 guys right i i literally can't you know what i mean i can't do it and so and if the business model requires you know only a soup like your level of sales to to make it work then the model's broken right you should be able to have people close half as many as you and still make the model work right now obviously over time you want to get them to sell better than you because all they're doing is selling right whereas you were when you were selling the way you did you were running the business and so with each each of this kind of cycle is you have to give up control and so i told you the beginning of the video that i will give you the rule of thumb that has been served me very well in running my companies which is how far away do you get right how far away do you get when you when you relinquish control because the thing is is you relinquish control but you still take full accountability and responsibility for the results that's what's wild is that you have to say i'm going to give this over to you i'm losing control and yet i'm still responsible that'll trip you up but the rule of thumb that i use is know where the bodies are buried know where the bodies are buried and so what i mean by that is if i don't know where the flaws are in a department i'm too far away so if i'm if you know if i talk to let's say a marketing director or i talk to a sales director i talk to uh you know customer support i talk to you know finance and i don't know where the bodies are buried like i don't know what the issues are because every department has issues every department has problems it's a business it's made of humans and humans are imperfect right which means that there are always imperfections there are things that are not working as well as they could if i can't name problems if i don't know where the bodies are buried in the department then i'm too far away right now when i say that doesn't mean i have given up too much control that's not the issue it's just i need more transparency i need to be paying more attention to that area and this rule of thumb has served me well so if i start hearing only good news from a department and i don't hear anything negative i'm too far away and this has been my my managerial leadership rule of thumb that has really helped me a ton is know where the bodies are buried and so this is the entrepreneurial journey in a nutshell i got a lot of feedback from the zero to 100 million dollar video that i made of kind of the steps from a business model perspective but from the personal perspective the issue is control and that's why most people can't get stuck because they have all these personal issues that prevent them from controlling i'm sorry alex i just don't trust people i have trust issues well get over it because you're not going to build something great without trusting other people so if you want your mom or your dad or the thing that you know you have your trust issues with to be the reason that you're not successful but give them more power go you know power to you right just get just keep giving them control over your life because you have these issues right or you can decide i think this person's done enough damage to me in my life i'm not going to let them stop me from accomplishing what i want i want to accomplish and so i'm going to take back that power i'm going to take back the control over my outcomes take responsibility which may feel shitty in the moment because it means i suck but at least i suck and i don't point at them saying they suck because i can control what i do and as a result i can go through this process and continue to buy back and relinquish control buyback and relinquish control buyback and relay cruise control first of the doing then of the admin then of the the ops then of the sales and then of having a sales team and then of the leadership and then continuing on and on as we relinquish more and more control right how can you be free if you control everything interesting anyways lots of love keeping awesome i'll catch you guys on the flip side hope you found this valuable bye