Serial CEO Sells 4 Companies Using This Ancient Business Strategy

Summary

• I learned not to be "cute" in business from a successful serial CEO; stick to what works instead of trying overly complex strategies.
• In business, the fundamentals typically breed success over getting fancy. Simple, consistent actions trump complexity.
• One common mistake among entrepreneurs is not repeating successful actions. It's critical to replicate what works before trying new things.
• If you're given a system or advice that works, follow it to the letter until you outperform the one who taught it to you. Don't get creative prematurely.
• We often need reminders more than teachings; this is especially true with successful actions in entrepreneurship.
• In optimizing conversion processes, focus heavily on the first elements people read or see. Headlines and above-the-fold content have a massive impact.
• There have been dramatic improvements, like a 3x to 5x increase in throughput, just by tweaking or removing a single headline on a page.
• The general rule: replicate success before trying to innovate. You need a deep understanding of the process to improve it effectively.
• Every expert has a history of failures. Those failures bring expertise, which is why duplicating their success is a rapid path to your own.
• Remember, don't be cute, don't get fancy, and repeat successful actions consistently to achieve outsized returns in entrepreneurship.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest you keep it simple when it comes to business strategies. Forget about trying to be too "cute" or complex. Focus on what has already been proven to work. Consistent, straightforward actions often beat complicated ones.

If you find something that brings success, do it again. It’s a common mistake not to repeat what works. Don't jump into new things without leveraging the wins you already have. And here’s an important point: if you’re following a system or advice from someone successful, don’t tweak it. Follow it exactly as it is until you achieve similar or better results. No need to get creative until then.

We all need reminders of these successful steps. It might seem obvious, but it’s easy to forget when you're eager to try out new ideas.

For those of you optimizing your websites, pay extra attention to the very first elements people see, like headlines. These can hugely affect your conversion rates. Sometimes, just tweaking a headline or removing it can triple or even quintuple your results.

The general rule is clear: replicate successful steps before trying to innovate. A solid understanding of the process is necessary to improve it effectively. Remember, experts often gain their knowledge through a series of failures. So, by duplicating their success, you're actually taking a shortcut to your own success.

Don’t get caught up in fancy strategies or ad hoc changes. Stick to the plan, repeat what works, and focus on where the highest impact is. That's how you can boost your business without wasting time or resources.

Quotes by Alex Hormozi

"Don't be cute"

– Alex Hormozi

"Put the two fat guys in the middle, run to the right"

– Alex Hormozi

"We need to be reminded more than we need to be taught"

– Alex Hormozi

"Repeat successful actions"

– Alex Hormozi

"Replicate before you get fancy"

– Alex Hormozi

Full Transcript

bring this video to you downtown coming in hot from austin uh what i want to talk about today is a saying that we have said over and over and over again in our community and some real world applications to it and that saying is don't be cute and so the first time i heard this saying was from a serial ceo he was a mercenary ceo so basically that is is a ceo who's you know once a company like a private equity firm purchases a new company they go have this kind of black book of their their all-star players their swat team that they drop in so that they can grow the company right that's kind of how it works and so he's one of these ceos he's one of these guys that's brought into a deal they get the company and then he grows it again for the private equity usually in a three to five year span and then they exit he's done this exit process four times and he was the one who told me this story and so he was like hey don't be cute he has this long island accent um and i was like i don't really know what that means he's like all right so you know when you're playing backyard football um i'm not even trying to the accent and i was like yeah he's like so you've got two you know you try and make these super fancy plays you're like right we're going to go fake left and then double fake right and then we're going to swing around and then you're going to pretend to be the quarterback and then i'm going to throw it that way right he's like what happens he's like you try it and then you know tommy fumbles the ball and you lose 10 yards and you lose the ball right he's like instead he's like put the two fat guys in the middle run to the right right and what is that he's like consistent yardage and he's like don't be cute and so that story has always stuck with me because it's so true in business and that's what he was applying it to but i feel like so many of the entrepreneurs that i talk to and the ones that we work with um a lot of times you know myself included like we try and be cute and we try and get fancy when it's usually the fundamentals that breed success and one of the biggest telltale signs i think of somebody who's newer is that they do not repeat successful actions and that's there's two types of successful actions there's successful actions that you do that yield a good result and you think oh i did that that worked let me go try and do something else rather than doing more of that thing right that's the first way the second way is where you are paying for a system or you're paying for advice or whatever and the person says do it this way and then you do not repeat their successful action and so this is one where a lot of times i feel like we need to be reminded more than we need to be taught and this is one of those instances because over the last probably week i've had three separate conversations um two with entrepreneurs are doing about three million a year and one with a brand new entrepreneur my uh my neighbor i think i've referenced them before um and when i was talking to my neighbor uh he just bought this system so he can start flipping real estate and he's doing well um and you know he was he was like i think i might do it this way and i was like listen until you make more than the guy who taught you that system you do the system exactly the way that it was outlined all right you don't don't get cute don't think you're you're special don't think you're a snowflake just do it exactly as it's outlined because there's a reason it's outlined that way and the two entrepreneurs that i talk to who are on our agency side who are doing about three million a year we just did a call and i was like hey what are your wins from this last month and both of them were like you know you know we've been doing we've been trying a lot of stuff and finally we decided to just you know do it the way that you had outlined it and we're actually seeing a lot better results and um they said it kind of the tone was like i don't have reluctance the right word but like feeling feeling silly right um about themselves that they had taken this long to do that right and the reason i'm bringing this up is that if you purchase a system if you take advice if you watch a youtube video of somebody who's doing better than you at something which is why you're trying to learn right and they're doing it a specific way there's a reason that they're doing it that way it's probably because they have the same goal that you do and probably suffer from the same cons that you suffer from and they've already balanced those for the best outcome right and so recently this morning i was on a call with our marketing uh team our traffic guys and i was looking at our uh funnel that we're optim we're in the process of optimizing and my traffic guy's like man if people knew how much we work on optimizing our conversion process he's like i feel like they wouldn't want to change anything because they know that we've probably already tried it and i wanted to at least pay homage to that because right now we're maybe i'd say three weeks into optimizing this conversion process of series of pages and copy and messaging and whatnot and even in those three weeks we've already tested over 100 different pieces of this conversion process this funnel the series of landing pages messaging etc and so that means we've changed the headlines a handful of times we've changed the buttons we've changed the flow of the pages we've changed where each one leads multiple times and so these iterations stack and stack and stack and so if i'm going to eventually show someone hey this is how it works what do you think the chances are that if they change something it's going to be better probably low right and so the thing is is that we somehow you know i think it's an ego thing as entrepreneurs like we always think we're special we think we're different we think we're smarter or whatever um but my word of my my rule of thumb for me is until i'm doing as well or better than the person who taught me this thing do not change it replicate before you get fancy right and so that's where you know doing the boring work don't be cute those kind of things we need to be reminded more than we need to be taught like those sayings are pervasive in our community because i think they are the things that are the bedrock of successful entrepreneurship and it's repeating successful actions and there are certain points where once we get this conversion process optimized where i think it should be i probably won't change i won't be pushing as much attention to that i'll be pushing more of my attention towards filling the top side right so right now we just i'm putting enough attention on bringing in traffic so that i can find the optimal way of converting that traffic but once i feel like the numbers are optimized i probably won't tweak that very much because now it's a successful action and i want to repeat it as many times i possibly can and then i'm going to be focused all of my attention on bringing traffic into the top of that conversion process and so as a total side note because that's what these are for i guess um if you are in the process of optimizing something which if you're using someone else's templates or anything like that then use them the way they are there's a reason they are that way but if you're coming up from these things from scratch what i can tell you is that after having now done this i've done this optimization process a zillion times in my life now the the headlines and the messages the top that literally the first one to two things that someone reads are going to have the biggest swing on the needle and so many times i've spent hours and days and weeks optimizing the bottom part the the the images and the pages and the sorry not the pages the um like the the copy bullets and things like that that are below the fold right on the newspaper if you if you flipped it open there's a fold and then you can flip the second half landing pages work the same way above the fold is what someone sees when they land on their desktop or on their mobile phone that's above the fold below the fold is everything else i routinely have seen changes of doubling to quadrupling the throughput of a page meaning the percentage of people who click to do the optimal action you want them to do simply by changing the sentence at the top or the sentences at the top and the one image that someone sees and so if you are trying to optimize something if you're if you're below if you're way below where you need to be don't even worry about anything below the fold and in fact you could probably spend 90 of your attention above the fold and get way higher returns than your time than everything below the fold and i can't say the amount of times we're literally just deleting everything below the fold got us better better throughput on those types of pages and actions than even putting anything there to begin with right and so um just recently i changed the headline of our landing page for agencies who are going to be partnering with us for our allen software and uh we 3xed the the throughput of that one page simply by changing the headline right and on our scheduling page which is the third step in this process we 5x the throughput by removing a headline that was there we didn't even add anything we literally removed something that was there and so um which was hey you know you finished this process the next step is this we just took out you finished this process basically and so people are like oh i'm not done i need to take this next step and so it's just this huge massive jump by removing something that was there and so all of this at least for me is this continuous reinforcement that we need to be reminded more than we need to be taught we need to repeat successful actions when they're there if someone gives this advice or we're taking advice from someone especially for paying for that advice to not take advice is akin to literally burning your money right because this person or this youtuber or this this thing that you're you're trying to learn from this person you're trying to learn from has already suffered the consequences of trial and error and so why would you not at least just duplicate replicate their process and what they're doing first and then when you surpass or at least match them then and only then you will have the understanding of the process to improve it and the thing is is a lot of times people become experts because of how many failures they have if the first time you stepped the plate you hit a home run you may not know why you did that is it because of your hip stances because when you dropped your dropped your elbow was it because you kept your eye on the ball like there's so many other factors but if you want the shortcut to getting to where you want to go replicating other people's success repeating successful actions both on yourself and what other people have done is one of the shortest paths to getting there and so anywho don't be cute don't try and get fancy don't run the the super crazy whatever play just look at the fundamentals follow the steps only iterate after you've duplicated the results of the person you're trying to learn from and so um that was my message for you today that was top of mind the same advice i gave the 18 year old my neighbor who's flipping real estate right now really proud of him and the same advice i give people we're doing 3 million plus a year is don't be cute repeat successful actions we need to be reminded more than we'd be taught and then just keep doing the same things over and over and over again and you will get outsized returns so anyways have a happy day hope your marketing is converting like crazy money um and leading you to financial wealth and freedom um only to realize that it is empty and that uh in the process you will turn most of the people that who know you secretly against you they won't purposely tell you that but they secretly envy you and that's okay because i'd rather be invid than pitied so with that have an amazing day and i'll catch you guys on the flip side bye [Music] [Music] [Applause] you