The DIFFERENCE between 7 FIGURE and 8 FIGURE CEOs..
Summary
- As a successful CEO, it's important to recognize that having problems in your business doesn't mean it's broken; it's a normal part of business and life.
- At seven figures, CEOs often mistakenly see every issue as a problem needing a fix, but many of these are just facts of business that need managing, not fixing.
- Effective leadership involves distinguishing actual problems from mere challenges that are inherent to the business model you've chosen.
- High churn in a low-cost gym, like Planet Fitness, is not a problem to be fixed but a consequence of a business strategy with a low barrier to entry.
- The time and energy of a CEO should not be wasted on "problems" that aren't truly impactful. Reflecting on my own experience, many meetings I called to address issues were unnecessary in hindsight.
- Elevating to eight or nine figures requires a CEO to be very selective about what is labeled a problem and to focus on issues that are both consequential and irreversible.
- Before making significant decisions on consequential and irreversible matters, testing with small, controlled experiments can reduce risk and provide valuable insights.
- Consequential issues with irreversible impacts, like changing pricing for all customers or launching a new product line, warrant careful consideration and testing before full implementation.
- Moving from seven to eight or nine figures involves improving the strategic approach to problem-solving, focusing on growth, and advancing the team, rather than fixing non-issues.
Video
How To Take Action
I would suggest recognizing that problems are normal in business, just like in life. If you want to grow your business or yourself, you should focus on the real challenges, not just small issues.
Here's a good way of doing it: Look at your business like a low-cost gym model, where high churn rates are just part of the strategy, not a problem to fix. Spend your time and energy on big issues, not on what's expected. This helps you stay calm and not waste time.
When facing big decisions, like changing prices or starting a new product line, first try small tests. Controlled experiments give you clues on what will work without risking too much. This is much smarter than changing everything at once.
If you're busy all the time trying to solve every little thing, you might be stuck. Instead, manage the challenges that come with your business model and grow your team and business.
To move from seven to eight or nine figures, think about what's really a problem. Ask yourself: Does this challenge have a big effect and can't be changed back easily? If yes, it deserves your attention. But always test your ideas in a small way first. This way, you reduce the risk and learn important things that can guide you better.
By focusing on what's truly important and testing ideas before fully committing, you'll make smarter choices. Remember, not everything is a problem that needs fixing. Choose wisely what to work on and you'll grow faster and smarter.
Quotes by Leila Hormozi
"50% of business is pretty much problems"
– Leila Hormozi
"Most people are so busy solving problems that don't actually matter"
– Leila Hormozi
"Is this just a fact of business? Is this the downside of my upside?"
– Leila Hormozi
"If you're at seven figures…you're just trying to solve problems that aren't problems"
– Leila Hormozi
"You want to be solving problems that are consequential and irreversible"
– Leila Hormozi
Full Transcript
what i want to talk about in this video is the difference between a seven figure and eight versus nine figure ceo and this came about from a question um that somebody asked me at dinner the other night um he was saying you know what do you think is it like what do i need what am i missing to get to the next level um and right now i think that he's at um you know multiple seven figures and almost into the eight but having a hard time and is really stuck right now at that like seven million mark this is something that i sat and i thought for like probably three minutes before i could answer the question and i felt like it would be really valuable to share because it just comes from my experience um in looking back to say like what was the difference between me as a seven figure ceo versus me now as an eight nine figure ceo right depending on the company so this is what i would say i want to start with a premise which is that most people when you're starting off are still engulfed in this illusion that business is amazing um and that for some somehow um that your business is going to be perfect should be perfect should have no problems and the question i would ask you is does anything in life come without problems no yet for some reason and probably because of social media and all that people think that their business is broken because they have problems and because 50 of business is pretty much problems and so they assume that their business sucks and the reality is is that that is just not the case that's just how life is right and so i think that that's the first thing i'll start with is i think that when you're at seven figures one thing that prevents you from getting any higher is that you consider things to be problems that are simply not right they're actually just facts of business and this is a pattern that you see um with people in other areas of life as well i'll give you an example um so say that you're trying to lose weight and you know nothing about losing weight and so you're like i don't know how much weight i should be losing each month and you're losing three pounds per month and you're like this just isn't fast enough like i'm doing something wrong is it my eating is my exercise am i not getting enough rest like what's going on why am i not losing more while if you know say myself comes in somebody who understands weight loss and nutrition and i'm like three pounds a month is great like there's no problem here like this is exactly what should be happening and it's so funny because you see this in business too it's that people spend all this time trying to fix something that isn't broken but in their mind it is broken because they don't have the perspective to judge and to understand is just something that comes with the job it comes with the business it comes with having one and so that's the first thing i would say is that that's the biggest difference between being at like a seven figure or an eight nine figure um business is that it's where you spend your time on these problems because if you believe that these things are problems then where does most of your time go probably trying to solve these things that are just actually not able to be solved right and so they're not even problems therefore they're not to be solved there are dichotomies that are to be managed okay you can manage this so an example would be say you have a well you see example of a gym right um so you have a big box gym if you have a big box gym and it's ten dollars per month to join say it's like a planet fitness would it be reasonable to say that they would have higher churn because a low barrier to entry i would say yes however i have seen many people um who have big box gyms that are really cheap to get into and then they have churn that's maybe like 12 or 15 month over month and they're like i just don't know how to fix the turn i just don't know how to fix the turn et cetera et cetera um and the reality is that the churn is part of like you cannot have lower turn without lower upside right you would have to raise the price probably and increase the barrier to entry to lower the turn which then means that there's no point in doing the method that you have in the first place right and so this is what i see in a ton of people in business is that you are constantly looking at things that you consider to be problems that are actually not and that is why you stay stuck at seven figures is because you spend all your time doing it and that's why most people are so busy right i know that was for myself like i was so busy solving problems that didn't actually matter like they weren't even problems i can't even count the amount of times i like called people in on meetings at like 7 p.m or 6 p.m or 8 p.m at night to talk about things that just didn't matter at all like and i can prove that they don't matter because i don't remember them today i just remember that i was being a frenetic in it like like i had so much phonetic energy around these things because i didn't know and so i would say that if you look at the difference between seven figure and eight figure eight-figure nine-figure entrepreneur or ceo that's the biggest one it's just what do you consider a problem now if you're saying okay well i get that that's a seven-figure ceo right that's what they consider problems is pretty much everything that doesn't go perfectly because they just don't know any better like you've never done it before you don't know what it's supposed to look like and all you see on social media is everyone doing things perfectly and it looks amazing which is [ __ ] um and so you just assume that's what's supposed to be and that if you do have problems um that you're doing something wrong and because of that you also don't want to grow your business because you're like oh it's broken it's just it's just this vicious cycle and so what do you do when you're at you know eight or nine figures that's different is you're very selective about the problems that you solve and you're also very particular in what you call a problem right is it and and this is how i think of it now right i'm like one is it just a fact of business right i like to say is this the downside of my upside um and what i mean by that is like every business has their strategy that gets them off the ground and gets them started and is what creates all the momentum and that every strategy every upside what i call it has a downside which is like the consequence of that and so one is this just the downside of my upside that i just need to accept and maybe just mitigate the best i can right the second piece of this is i think to myself okay say it's not the downside to my upside it's it's more than that right is it consequential or inconsequential meaning how much will this actually affect the business or the team or the customers right like is it going to have a large consequence or a small consequence if the consequence is small i'm not going to solve that problem i'm not going to make that decision i can delegate it to somebody else now if it is consequential and it's large then i would say okay that probably makes sense i'm involved but wait is it reversible or irreversible and so that's the biggest one i ask myself um and what i want to spend my time on now and what i would say for you if you're trying to get to an eight figure nine figure rate is you should focus on solving these problems are the ones that are consequential and irreversible okay and so you look at like something like changing the price on all of your customers that is an irreversible decision for the most part like i mean you could reverse it back but that would be a bloodbath so i wouldn't ever suggest to do that something else would be like launch a completely new product line um that is also very hard to reverse and you can also beg to say like everything except for death is reversible but you get what i'm saying and just be extremely difficult and so those kinds of things i think okay i want to be involved in those decisions right so it's consequential and it's irreversible but here's what i would say to start with thinking when you are making those decisions is rather than making the decision thinking to yourself how can i test this out before i even commit to the decision right so if you're trying to make a decision on something that is consequential and irreversible i would think to myself okay well how can i make it so it is reversible and it's not that consequential and this is where like in our company since day one we've run beta tests which is like we're not going to launch a new product line we're not going to start doing uh running traffic on a new platform or anything until we've done a small test and so that usually means you know bringing in like a couple people from each team there's this little like squad of like three or four people um and they're testing out this new thing and then we can decide from there and make a more informed decision to figure out you know is this going to work or not and so then it actually makes the decision less risky and you know it's funny because if you play it like that there's not a ton of things that you need to be involved in in decision making if you are able to slow yourself down and test things and you know survey customers and survey employees and gather information first because the more information you have the more you understand about a problem or a situation the less risky it becomes so to recap that if you're at seven figures the biggest issue that i see from knowing myself and seeing other people do it is that you're just trying to solve problems that aren't problems they're just facts of business they're just dichotomies that need to be managed they're not problems to be fixed and you're spending all this time doing that and you could be spending it doing so many more productive things like growing your business and moving the team forward and then the second piece to that is understanding that if you're at the eight or nine figures or you're trying to get there that you have to be very selective about the problems that you're solving and where you put your time into and so remember you want to be solving problems or making decisions on things that are consequential and irreversible so if you found this video useful go ahead hit subscribe and i will see you on the next one