Stop Trying to Fix the Thing That's Working | Ep 978

I want to talk about a business myth that needs to die. It's something that so many business owners believe. Someone has claimed what it is, how it's applied to thousands of businesses that have come to our headquarters, tiered acquisition.com, in Vegas, and how it's likely holding you back. And it's one of the most insidious beliefs, and I think it might be the one that ends the most businesses, and the crazy part is that it has nothing to do with the business and everything to do about how you treat it. It's not that your business isn't scalable. It's that you want scaling to be easier, and that's the issue. Your business isn't broken. You don't need to change the business. You need to deal with the fact that solutions take time, and that this might just be a feature of the business you're in. Now, part of you might think, well, if this is a feature of the business that I'm in, I don't want to have this business. Okay, well, let's walk through that. So, hypothetically, if you were very good at solving that problem, would that be a problem that you'd be more okay with dealing with? Maybe. And if you're considering an alternative path, you should also consider the alternative problems. Right? You're like, why would I do something else? Okay, tell me all the things that suck about that path, because I promise there are things that suck about that path. And then the final question of that is, are you better equipped to solve those problems? Now, in the hypothetical world, you always think you're better equipped to solve those problems. But oftentimes, you've never even solved them before. And maybe the problems you think that are there are not actually the real problems. The real problems are much deeper and more nefarious than the ones you're currently dealing with. And so, I think that there's something so deep about the saying, the devil you know, right? Is that like, the business is the devil you know, and you've maybe been doing this for a year or two years or five years or 10 years, how long you've been in your industry 20 years? The thing is, is the longer you've been in industry, the more you've mapped the system, right? You've more, you've mapped the terrain. You understand the good, and you understand the bad, and you understand what to do about the bad. And so, fundamentally, problems will not end. And I think this is like, it's almost like a human problem that exists with entrepreneurs is that they want problems to stop. And they will never stop. They will never stop. You're wishing for something that does not exist. And in so doing, you were consistently changing things about the business. That is working. It's probably the same thing for people who have from relationship, relationship, relationship. I want to find a relationship that has no problems. It's not going to happen. You're not going to find it. But the biggest problem is all of all is that you think that there shouldn't be problems. You have a problem with your problems. And that problem is solvable. You decide that there isn't a problem with having problems. You accept that having problems is a fact of life. It's a fact of business. It's a fact of wherever you're trying to go. It's like, find me $100 million, $10 million, $100 billion, $1 billion, entrepreneur, who says, I got here, and there were no problems. In fact, today, I have actually solved all of my problems. It doesn't happen. And so we have this demand. We have this wish. And that wish is the actual biggest problem in your business because it's the thing that's causing you to break the thing that's working. And this is where you need to give time, time. You need to give solutions time to breathe. And you need to give solutions time to work. And as always, once the solution actually happens, play it out. Let's say that we've got, we finally fixed our counting, our counting recruiting problems. We now have lots of accountants. We've created a whole school for accounting. We need 20 partnerships with different accounting schools. And now we have this. We have guys banging down the door being like, man, I would love to work for you. What's your problem now? Well, you know what? Now that I've got all these accountants, I've got all these guys with empty, empty calendars. They could have so much more capacity. I'm overpaying in payroll because I got all these guys. But I need to get more customers. And so what do you do? You start marketing more. But now, but now the customers are coming because you're trying to fill slots, you're lowering your bar. You're taking worse quality customers. Now your term becomes an issue. Right. And your margin start going down because you can't charge these people as much. And you've already taken on more fixed costs because you started hiring all these people. Is this sounding familiar? These are sounding like business problems because wouldn't it be convenient if that accountant would say, hey, I will wait here patiently until you have acquired 20 accounts of appropriate size. And then and only then, well, I choose to come on board. And at that moment, you can collect their revenue. And all of these customers will say, you know what? I will, I will wait in line until you get 19 more customers just like me. And then all at once, we will start working with this new account that you're bringing in so that your payroll and your revenue can match. Wouldn't that be nice? It also be nice if this table was made of gold or diamonds. Be sweeter for your diamond or add a man to him, even cooler. But very unlikely. And so if you want to be in the wishing game, then maybe entrepreneurship isn't the right path for you. But if you want to live in the real world, you have to accept that there will be problems. And there will be things and they typically revolve around one core issue, which is the delta between your expectations around time. So let me explain what I mean by this. Probably fourth concept. The problem isn't your expectations of the business. Your problem is the timeline of those expectations. If you want to change the world, you absolutely can't. I believe that wholeheartedly. I think any one person, any one man, anyone who can change the world, I believe that. But not tomorrow. It will probably take time. It will take infrastructure. It will take help. It will take a movement. It will take many other people helping you along the way. And that does not happen overnight. Like there's the saying, Rome wasn't built in the dead. And it's true. It wasn't. And so now I'll give you a realistic timeline. I think I work on, which is I work in decades. And the reason I choose that number is that you can go from new idea to massive global company in about 10 years. You look at zero to a Microsoft, which they IPO at about seven years. Right. You look at like obviously open a eyes. Like we saw their very rapid growth. But they're also they worked since like 2017. And now they're right like eight years in. So again, seven years, six years. I, I ran a little higher because you know, I don't think I'm, I'm Elon Musk. And maybe you don't think you are either. And if you're politically charged about it, pick a different entrepreneur, whatever. The point is the rush you have is imaginary. It's not real. It's in your head. You've made it up to get to where by when why? Like why? Like we have to double this year. Why? Maybe the fact that you think you have to double this year is the reason you'll never double over the next five years because you keep trying to cut corners. You can't build it right. And because you don't build it right, you don't get the right people in on the front end. You don't get people right people in the back end. You get the wrong town. You get the wrong customers. You keep turning this up because of arbitrary arbitrary completely made up lines that you draw on the sand and say this must occur. And so I think if you you can have the business you want just not by the time that you want it. And so I don't think you need to change your dreams. I think you need to change your time. And so the idea that your businesses and scalable is actually yet again in relation to speed. Of course it's scalable. It's just not as scalable. It doesn't scale as fast as you'd like. And what part of this can we change the as you'd like it to that part you can change now of course you could advertise more you could try a higher bigger. We're hurting team within the constraints of your business given the resources you have sure of course you can add more resources. But you're not going to solve it. These are features. And so I think a lot of people are wishing for a business that has no difficulty. And if you find it, let me know. I have yet to see it and I've looked at a lot of businesses. And so I say this because many of you probably one don't need to change your business probably need to keep doing the business you're on number two. The business you're on is probably scalable all businesses are scalable. It's just how hard is it to scale. And when we translate hard into what problems must I solve in order to scale it. And what are the alternative problems to this path that I would have to encounter if I didn't follow this path which you'll find are often also equally difficult. And probably you're less equipped to solve them because you've never solved them before. And so the idea is I want no problem but really you're only trading problems. And so when you're thinking about I want this to not be this way. Think about what problems you'd rather have. There's a big pile of problems in the table. All the business owners are tossing them in in the middle. And it's like you got to throw your cards in your problems in you got to pick somebody else's when you look at everybody else is like I don't know. I don't know if I would pick them up. And the thing is the longer you do with your problems the better you get it dealing with them. Kind of like the longer you've dated somebody you're like I kind of know how to deal with this person. I know how to do it. They're crazy. And over time they kind of know how to deal with your crazy right. So you business probably some broken. It's probably just not growing as fast as you want because you are demanding that it grow faster. But you are instead doing trying to break things about your business that we're making it work in order to get it to not work so that you no longer have that problem and you create another problem. Now you have two problems to solve which is harder than one your timelines are the biggest issue in the business and the fact that it is hard is a feature not a bug and the vast majority of your business career will be spent waiting in painful tolerance of the solutions that you are implementing to kick in. And you have to deal with the last things of life while that's happening and look at everyone in the team in the eyes and say we are working on it and they're going to be like well why don't we change this and you have to look at them say no. And they're going to say but there's this fire and you're like yeah but if we do your thing that we're going to have another fire and we're also going to incur the cost of change between both scenarios which I'd rather just have pain one rather than pain to and cost of change pain pain three. And so it is it's erratic it's frenetic energy it's the feeling like you must do something and if you do if you do have that energy and you're like man I got to do something about it go to what you're actually trying to do with the solution and try and promote yourself go do take some of the interviews yourself try and speed up the cycles there by all means try and speed up. You're just not going to eliminate these will be features these will be things that you live with you know leave you with one thought there's an old there's an old saying an old bull in a young bull and they see a bunch of you know pretty cows at the bottom of a bottom of the house and so the young bull is looking at the old bull and he's like hey let's chase let's go run down there and see if we can catch one to procreate with and the old bull's like no that's a terrible idea. And he's like why is it well because if we charge down there is like they're all going to scatter and the young bulls like yeah but I'm going to take this you know will each get one. He's like yeah but if we walk down the hell slowly he's like we can procreate with them all now how does this related business does this mean that if I take my time I can pursue every single entrepreneurial endeavor. I actually think that within the context of entrepreneurship it's backwards you're never going to sleep with all the women you can't there's so many businesses that exist and the reason for that you have more ideas than you have time. And I think that there is a there's a there's a fixed cost that we must accept that it will likely take if you really want to go. It's gonna like look at the biggest businesses. They're 20, 30, 40 years old. And you're like, "Well, I'm 30 now." It's like, right, that means until you're 70, one thing. You just keep growing. And so what does that mean downstream? It means that there are opportunities, not just some opportunities, but all other opportunities besides the one that you're currently working on, you will have to say no to. Think about that reality, like let it settle with you because you have to come to peace with it. And the fact that you haven't come to peace with it is why you keep wanting to pursue all of these things. But by pursuing all of them, you will get none of them. You can't sleep with all the limit in the world. It doesn't matter what your novelty desire is. Like you have to understand that this is fact of life. You're not going to start every business. You're not even gonna start every great idea you have. You're not even gonna start 20% of the great ideas you have. 10%, 5%, 1 out of 20, 1 out of 100. You're gonna have one idea, and then you're gonna have to keep sticking with it. Because that's where all the gains come in. It comes in the compounding. It comes in the sticking with it. The hard part about the plan isn't thinking about the plan or doing the plan. It's sticking with the plan. That's the hard part of the plan. And believe me, in the frustration that I'm having, the reason I'm almost shouting like this is 'cause I'm shouting at me. I'm not shouting at you, I'm shouting at me. Because it's so hard. Like this is what's hard. It's the hard because it's a muscle you're not used to. It's a skill that you have to learn. It's a trait. You have to flex over and over and over again. And I will say this, the more you say no, the better you get at it. It never goes away hard it is. It just gets a little bit easier. It just gets a little bit easier with time. And eventually I think you'll know that you will have appropriately flexed that muscle when you can have no fomo. If you can hear that someone else is doing great and be like, that's amazing for them. I know my game. I've been doing this for six years. I've been doing this for eight years. I'm gonna keep doing my game. And the thing a lot of it is that we have this desire for permanence. We have this desire for legacy. We have this desire to live forever. When outside of Brian Johnson, no one else is really talking about that. And up until this point, the death rate on humans is 100%. And the forget, the likelihood of forgetting of a human's life is also close to 100%. And of the people who are remembered, they're not remembered by the people they know. They're remembered by people they don't know. And by the way, they're dead. And so we have this desire. And I think it just comes into direct conflict with the idea that we just live finite lives. Time moves faster than you think. And the younger you are, the less you realize the older you are, the more you start to be like, "Man, that was pretty quick." You only have a couple, a couple big bullets in you. You've got a couple decades, you know, or couples too. So a few, three, four, maybe seasons. And if you really want to go big and something starts working, then you're going to do that thing for 34 years. And so like the idea of like, "Oh, I'm going to owe it all these things." Like you have divisions within a business of it makes sense. But most of the time, it doesn't. Most of the time, you could start this other thing or you could just do more of the things already working. Why isn't it happening faster? Because you're demanding that it happen faster. But there's nothing wrong with your inherent business. You're saying the problem is a problem that you create it. Basically you just take reality, you move the line of expectations, and then you say there's a problem. and I see more businesses ruined because of that than just about anything else. You could make it work if you just stuck with it and you stopped thinking that there's something wrong with your business and maybe look at the factor it might be something wrong with your expectation. That's what I got, that's my Thursday, Thursday Thursday, Thursday Thursday, Thursday Thursday, Thursday threats are over. The ferman. (upbeat music)