The 5 Reasons Your Team Isn’t Following Through | Ep 882
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All right, so let's face it, getting other people to do what you want is arguably the most important skill because if you have that one skill, it unlocks every other skill that every other person potentially has. The problem is other people don't always do what you want them to do. So I'm going to share a five-step framework that I call the star system that you can use whether you're a business owner or you work within a business to influence other people. So let's dive into it. What's going on, everyone? Welcome back to the game where we talk about making more money

so that we can eventually question the meaning of life to begin with. And today I've got a fun little star system, very tactical. Fundamentally, the thing that separates your business's growth from happening is people doing stuff that you want them to do. And I have a little five-star system

that has worked very well for me to have very direct conversations that in no way feel direct and have really really helped a ton and i would show this framework to every one of the people who works for you so that they know what you're going to be going through and then it just becomes almost like a it's just it's just a it's almost like an unspoken language of performance management

And so when you walk through all five of these, you can remember them very easily. And you can run through it in five seconds with a teammate who's not performing the way you want to. So with that being said, enjoy. So I want to read you a real exchange I had with an employee that wasn't performing the way I wanted him to. I said, hey, what are you doing today? And then he gave me his little rundown. And I said, I asked because I haven't felt like I've seen a lot of production from you compared to what I think you're capable of.

So I'm curious whether it's not knowing what to do, that I want you to do it, how to do it, or that something's preventing you, or if you're not motivated to do the above. And by framing it that way, it completely shifts the whole vibe of the conversation and

By adding the piece, and I think this is really key in terms of how it was framed, it's just like compared to what I believe you're capable of. So I'm basically weaving in a compliment saying, I think you're capable of more. I think your potential is significantly higher. Rather than saying, hey, you suck. I'm actually saying, hey, I think you're awesome. And I think your performance, which is separate from you as a human being, is below what I believe you're capable of. So what do we think the gap is? Is that you know that, how, what,

When? Or something's blocking you or you're just not motivated. Help me help you. And from this perspective, both of you are basically attacking the problem on the same side of the table, trying to figure out how to get the person to their potential, which both of you are aligned to have happened. And I'm telling you, it's just like, imagine if I had started that being like, hey man, you're subpar right now. You're under expectations. Like that sounds pretty bad. Right?

Right. And that everyone's going to be defensive. They're going to be thinking it's attack on their character when it couldn't be further from the truth. And so having little frameworks like this have just like made life so much easier for getting people back to where you want them to be.

So let's paint the scene. You say, hey, Kyle, I need you to make me that TPS report by Monday. OK, fine. You said that Monday comes. Kyle doesn't have the TPS report. What do you do now? Normally you could be like, I could yell at Kyle. You'd be like, what the hell, Kyle? Whatever. Right.

Right. But the thing is, is a lot of people don't confront people who work for them because they're afraid of pissing them off because they're afraid of losing influence. Like, hey, if I bring it up, I don't want things to be weird. And so being able to have these kind of confrontational conversations and having a framework around it has made it so much easier for me to have really good conversations that don't in any way attack the other person. All right. And so thinking through this framework is how I do it. And so I'm going to make this really simple because it has to be simple or else you're never going to use it.

it. All right. And so it's called a star because there's five points to the star. And there's really a five points that you work through when you're figuring out why they didn't do something. And so the first thing is, Hey, Kyle, and I set this frame. So the people who work for me already know that I have this room. So I don't think you need to keep this a secret. I mean, listen, there's only five reasons someone doesn't do anything. It's either number one, you didn't know that I wanted you to do it. So did you know that I wanted you to give me that TPS report?

And he might be like, oh, I thought we were just talking. Now you might hear that and think, wow, Kyle, what an insignificant or what an arrogant ass, right? No, but like, let's be real for a second. Like you probably don't follow up on a lot of stuff that you tell people to do. And what do you think people learn?

They learn that if you don't follow up, it's like, oh, it probably wasn't that important to him. Because like you probably maybe as an entrepreneur have a lot of ideas. And if someone actually acted on every single thing that you said, they would have a mountain of stuff. They wouldn't even be able to do their normal job. Right. And so they kind of just like wait for you to maybe cool off on the idea for a second. And if you mention it two, three, four or five times, they're like, OK, this is something I actually have to do. Right. And so the solution for the that problem is you write it.

All right. And so one of the things that we have internalacquisition.com is if it isn't written, it never happened. Right. So if you just have a verbal conversation that exists, IRL, just in the air,

It doesn't ever matter because no one has proof of it. You don't have proof of it. They don't remember it. You remember it differently than them. And so this is why crystallizing those experiences is so important because then you can point back to it. That way everyone's on the same page. Hey, I thought you said you wanted me to send you the KPIs by Monday. It's like, no, I said the TPS report. It's like, oh, well, here's the KPIs. It's like, that's not what I asked for. But how do we know? Maybe you did say KPI. How many times have you said something, thought you said something different? Happens all the time, right? And so number one, figure out,

Set the frame that these are the five reasons and be like, hey, Kyle, you didn't do it. There's five reasons someone doesn't do anything. So did you not know that I wanted you to do it? If it says, I didn't know, then you're like, great. It's problem solved. I'm going to write it down next time. Here we go. I'm going to write down for you right now. And if you want, I'm going to memorialize this with an email and send it to you. That way we have a timestamp and everything. But what if he's like, oh no, I knew that you wanted me to do it. It's like, oh,

Well, then did you not know how to do it? So once we're like, okay, Kyle, did you not know that I wanted to do it? They might be like, okay, yeah, I did know that. But then did you not know what I wanted you to do? Because he did send me something. Okay, what's the that versus the what? Let me explain. So two things don't always mean the same things. And it's like, what does that even mean? Well, you want to define what you're asking someone to do in terms of behavior.

uh or outcomes so if i wanted that tps report right now that's a really simple example um i would probably be like when i say like give me that i was like does that mean it's going to be printed out does that mean i want to print it on my desk does that mean it's an email does that mean it's going to be like like verbally given to me is it gonna mean it's a presentation in what format and the thing is is like you might hear this and be like oh that sounds like such a pain but it's like

It probably takes like two or three extra minutes for you to be like very clear. And then someone's going to take that two or three extra minutes and then save themselves like two or three extra hours. And so it's high leverage, like clarity is high leverage work. Right. And so like I would say that if this is something that makes you uncomfortable, you need to break that habit for real. And let me explain why. How do you think AI works?

Why do you think prompt engineering is such a high leverage skill right now? Because the problem is no one even knows how to communicate. Like you have this ultimate being or whatever you want to call it, right? You've got this thing of ultimate intelligence that can do things incredibly quickly, has access to the world's information. And yet you can't get AI to do stuff for you. It's not because AI is dumb. It's because you don't want to talk to AI. And if you can't talk to AI, you can't talk to a human.

Right? AI honestly has more context and more, like, tries to ways to figure out what you're trying to say because we communicate like monkeys. Right? The thing is, is we're communicating with other monkeys. We got to be as crystal clear as humanly possible. Now, what's interesting is that the bigger the organization gets, the more this banana phone issue becomes a problem.

and so this little five this little five system the star system i i run through it in my head all the time right did they not know that i wanted them to do it did i did that know what i wanted to do which i defined in terms of behaviors or outcomes and you need i need this thing on my desk by monday printed out with that nice paper or it's i need you to when someone says this say this instead next time right not

be less of a dick or, you know, you know, stop harassing Courtney. It's like, well, what does harassing Courtney look like? He obviously isn't trying to harass Courtney. She might describe his behavior as harassing. He might describe his behavior as being cordial. So now what happens until you actually break down the behavior that they are both labeling differently. He's saying, Hey, I said good morning to her. She's saying, Hey, he's hitting on me. And you're like, well, what the hell? Like,

What's going on? But until you figure out, wait, Courtney, when you say he's hitting on you, what exactly did he do? It was just like, he always like smiles at me and waves when he comes in. It's like, I don't think he's hitting on you, Courtney. I think he's being polite.

Right. And you might on the flip side, it's like, what do you think hitting on you is? It's like, he always squeezes my ass when he walks by. It's like, well, that's a fucking problem. Right. And so like, let's be clear here, Mike, you shouldn't squeeze anybody's ass, let alone a girl's. All right. On the flip side, like you go to saying you're like, if we say he's hitting on me or be less creepy, no one knows what it means because one person thinks they're trying to do something like no one wakes up and says, I want to be creepy today. No one does that.

Creepy people act in ways that they don't think is creepy. And so by telling them to stop being creepy, they don't know what the fuck that means. That's the problem. And this is why we have to describe this. This might be one of the best explanations I've given of this. This is the problem. And this is why so many people behave in ways that they don't want to. Not because they don't want to do a good job, but because they don't know what doing a good job looks like because it hasn't been taught to them. And so you just got to tell them, right? And so number one, they didn't know that they want to do it.

If they did know that, you're like, hey, you know, be nice to Courtney. He did. He grabbed Courtney's ass rather than saying hello. Right. He didn't know what to do. Right. So if he did know those two things, well, what's the third thing that could be the issue? OK, well, they do that. They wanted the TPS report and they knew how to deliver it. OK, they knew that I wanted the TPS report and they knew exactly what it was. Well, then why didn't why didn't it happen? Well, did they know how to do it? So I told you to do that, but.

I was like, honestly, you asked me to, but I don't know how to put a TPS report together. And I'm like, wait, I didn't, like, you didn't get that in onboarding? It's like, honestly, no. It's like, oh, okay. Well, the solution to this is training. And all you do, by the way, if you're like, man, and I, like, this drives me absolutely insane is that I will hear people say, you know, these things aren't trainable. Everything is trainable. How do you think a baby learns how to do anything? How do you think humans learn things to begin with?

It's just that some things are more trainable, take longer to train than others. And it's not even that a specific thing takes longer to train. It's just that that term has more skills underneath of it that ladder up to the larger thing. Meaning if I say be kind, be kind has like 500 behaviors underneath of it. And so, yeah, it's harder to train aptitude than attitude because attitude is 500 behaviors. Aptitude might be 20.

And so, yes, it is easier to train this than that, but it's not that something isn't trainable. And this is why specificity is so important. And so what we have to do is like, okay, if you don't know how to do it, what part do you not know how to do? Do you not know how to turn on a computer? Do you not know how to turn on the internet? Do you not know how to send an email? Do you know how to use Excel? No, I know how to use all this stuff. Okay, boom, underneath that, do you not know where the data is that you need to extract this from? No, I know where the data is. Okay, got it. Then...

Then once you have the data, do you not know how to format it? Yeah, I don't know how to format it. Got it. So now instead of being like, oh, this guy's an idiot. It's just like he knew how to do eight of the nine steps. He just couldn't do the last step. So now I could say, cool, let me show you how to format it. Done. And from here on out, when I ask you for a TPS report, this is what I'm looking for. Make sense? Yes. Real quick, guys, I have a special, special gift for you for being loyal listeners of the podcast.

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Now, let me give you a little pro tip. The higher the general skill and competence of the individual, the greater the expertise of the person in the domain, the more vague you can be with your directions. All right, so let me explain. So if someone comes to me and says, hey, I've got this product, this new marker, and it writes upside down and it's invisible ink, it's amazing. Alex, can you build a business around this? I could just say yes.

because I have all the other skills it takes to build a business. Now, if you go to somebody who might be lesser skilled, you might have to say like, hey, can you make a marketing campaign around this? Now, that person probably might not be able to set up the energy structure in a tax efficient manner or be able to source the materials or be able to set up HR practices and all this other stuff. But they could do the marketing campaign and you might be able to go to a good marketer and say, hey, can you run a good marketing campaign? They say, sure. Now, if you go to a junior marketer, you

You'd be like, hey, can you run a marketing campaign? They'd be like, ah, it's like, okay, can you write some emails about this? Right, we just keep chunking it down. And so the more skilled the person, the vaguer the instructions can be, the less skilled the person, the more specific it has to be. And for anything around trading, I talk about this at length, but basically document, demonstrate, duplicate, which means that I do it in front of you, I write it down, I do it in front of you, you do it in front of me, and then sayonara.

That's how it works, right? So we create the list. It's me doing it. I observe myself or someone observes me doing it, puts the list down. I then do that list in front of the person. They do that list in front of me. And then we have a great day, right?

Right. And so with the TPS report, I say, hey, here are the steps for formatting. I'm going to write them down and then I'm going to do those steps in front of them. And then I'm say, hey, let's do a second TPS report for next week. We can do it together. They do it in front of me following the exact same steps I wrote down. They did it. Skill is transferred. And now next time I ask for the TPS report, it'll be on time.

You guys are amazing. I can't believe you guys keep sharing this. It's like, it's going nuts right now. We've had record once back to back and it's all because of you. And so I just want to thank you guys so much again for sharing the podcast. It's why I keep doing this. And yeah, so if you can text it to a friend or an enemy, Slack it to maybe a work rival.

or just like it to a work friend that works as well or share this on the gram to the many strangers who follow you so that they too can grow enlightened by business principles or just share it because you feel like it anyways love you all and enjoy the rest of the pod all right so slight recap

First, we figure out if they knew even that we wanted them to do it. Second, we made sure that they knew what we wanted them to do. And the third, it's like, okay, if they know those two, then do they even know how to do it? Now, if they do, then did they know, and this is a big one, which happens all the time, is did they know when I wanted it done by? And this sounds so silly, but the reality is that the solution for this is deadlines, right? And so,

But it's not just deadlines. I'm going to give you a little 201 version of this. If I say, hey, Kyle, when can you get me the TPS reports by? He might say Monday. Now, a boss or leader or whatever who doesn't pay as much attention might just say, sure, that sounds good.

I like to push on this and I say, cool, how long do you think it will take you in order to get the TPS report done? The actual work itself, not from now until you can deliver it, but how long will the work take? And usually someone will say something like, I don't know, probably like two hours. I'm like, okay, well, it's Wednesday and it's two o'clock. What are you doing between now and four o'clock?

Now, if they have something that's more important, then they can be like, well, I was have to finish this thing by tomorrow. And then I've got this other thing that I'm going to do. And then that should take a full day. And then after that, I've got this thing. And then after that, I was planning on working on it over the weekend so I could get it to you by Monday. That I'd be like, okay, that makes sense. Now, if I look at all those other things, I might find out a couple of things. Number one is maybe they don't have all these other things, in which case we'll do this now.

And maybe they do have all these other things, but this thing is more important, in which case, do it now. And so the thing is, is that by consistently asking when they can do it, how long it will take, and then what else they have going on, allows you to have a way better idea of everyone else's workload in real time whenever you're asking people. And also, it just makes you a way better boss, in my opinion, because if people are like, oh, I've got these, you're like, oh, no, finish that. That's more important. Do that first. After this, we'll do

We'll do my thing. And this is kind of, I would say, a pervasive mindset that I have. That's... I'll write it down because I think it's cool. But basically...

End of day is better than end of week. I want end of day to be my default. I want everyone's default in my life to be end of day. And think about how impactful this is. If you just assume whenever you ask for anything that it should be done by end of day, your organization will move at seven times the speed. Like some organizations, like their default is end of month.

end of week. It's like an end of month organization will literally work at one 30th the pace of an end of day organization. And you might think, oh my God, that's crazy. But do you think that some companies grow 30 times faster than others? Hell yeah, there are. And this is why the rich get richer and the poor get poor. And there's the great divide between the doers and everyone else is because you really can outwork someone a thousand times. You really can't. I can put out a thousand times more content than you. I really can. I can do that.

We can work that, but we can't work a thousand times faster than you. If it takes you 90 days to get something done and we get it done in two hours, we worked a thousand times faster than you. It's crazy. And so then it shouldn't be as big of a surprise that some people out earn other people by a thousand times.

And so I'm saying this because I'm trying to transfer this to you so that you can go get rich and do whatever you want because I'm going to die and no one's going to go fuck anyways long term. And so like you might as well do something useful. Yeah. And what's interesting about the star system is that it actually creates stars. Because if you tell somebody and they are clear because you wrote it down, they know that they should do it. They understand the what that must be done accurately. Yeah.

They understand how to do the thing because you've done it with them before. They know how to do it your way and you've taught them, you've broken it down. And then they'll be able to do it faster because they have absolute clarity on this point. And this is what starts to really move an organization. And so the other pro tip is that

Jeff Bezos has an amazing one pager that I tweeted about not that long ago. And it was almost like the theme of the month for me. But he basically takes Richard, an excerpt from Richard Dawkins talking about biology that basically biology fights against this environment to stand out, right? On a long enough time horizon, once something dies, it basically merges with this environment. Like it becomes inseparable on a long enough time horizon, like you just become dirt. Like literally you become the same thing.

and the thing is is that it takes energy a tremendous amount of energy to stand out to be different and the thing is is that the world will try to pull you down it will pull

pull you into mediocrity and the same thing happens within companies like the trend line is regression towards the mean that exists for a reason you have to basically be willing to be so potent as a person that a drop of you into an ocean of clear water turns the entire clear water the same color as you and fundamentally that is what disseminating culture is from a leadership perspective like that is how great organizations are built and so you have to hold the line

And so that means that this always happens. That means that like every time I'm on a meeting, if we're driving something, the key word is that we're driving it. Like I was actually talking to one of my leaders in the company earlier today and last week about this. So I was like, I want you to replace the word leader and I want you to switch it with driver in your

in your mind. I was like, cause that's what I need. I need people who drive. And it's not like you're, you're not like you're a slave driver. The point is that you're, you're driving things to get done. It's like, Hey, where is that? What, like, how can we do it faster? What else can I pull off your plate? Right. Which I'm already, I'm already giving you a little bit of a pre pre-framing for the fifth and maybe the most important part of the star, which is if someone knows that they need to do it, they know what they're supposed to do. They know how to do it. They know what is Dubai.

What's the last thing that could stop them? And I'm going to take motivation out of this and I'll tell you why. But the last thing that could stop them is circumstances. Now, what does that mean? It means something else. So if I asked you to do all that stuff, but you're like, but dude, you asked me to do 10 other things.

So something else got in the way, an obstacle, something is blocking them, right? If I ask the best chef in the world, hey, can you make me an omelet? You know how to make an omelet? Or so you know what an omelet is, you know how to make it. And I want you to make it for me right now. That guy might not do it. And I'd be like, why didn't you make me an omelet? He might be like, I don't have any eggs.

What do you want me to do? I don't want to be eggs, right? And to the same degree, in a real business setting, it might be like, I don't have the RAM on my laptop to be able to process this size file and edit this thing on time. I have to get this other thing or I have to move to this other place and that's going to take me time, right? Like there's some things that sometimes block people. Now, the reason this is so important, and this is the one I'll tell you right now, we go through the other four first because as soon as you mention this fifth one, everyone blames this one. Why? Because it is not them.

Right. And so people's egos are protected when they say, oh, I've got this other thing. I got this other work. I got this. I don't have eggs. I don't have a Wi-Fi. I don't have a blah, blah, blah. Now, this is where this is where the real leadership start comes comes in, because this is where we say, like, well, how hard would it have been for you to go get eggs? It's been three days. Like, how hard was it to get eggs? The Wi-Fi was slow. Was there any way to get faster Wi-Fi?

And so this is where I start to make judgments on someone's ability, on someone's agency, their ability to solve problems on their own. Because the thing that we always want to tease out long-term is this. Why?

Right? Because that's the big motivation question. Because you'd assume, why didn't someone do it? Because they weren't motivated. The thing is, is that I can't, me asking someone, hey, were you not motivated to do this? No one's going to say yes. I'm just being real. It's not going to happen. Right? And so we ask these other questions. The first four are what I would consider very standard business practices. But here's the thing that's really clever with this, is that by asking the first four, you basically give many opportunities for it to not be a tackle on the person.

When you have the circumstances one, it also has realistic options where it might not be the person's fault. They might actually have too much stuff on their plate. But this is where the nuance comes in, where you get to judge, are those circumstances really the things that blocked you? Or are you actually not trying? Now with the, hey, I just need an omelet by next Monday on my desk. And the person gets to you next Monday and says, I didn't have any eggs. What are we talking about here?

I mean, you're technically correct. If you have no eggs, you can't make an omelet. But do you lack the other skills of acquiring eggs? If you do, then we ask the larger question is, I know I could train you on how to get eggs, but is it worth the hassle? Like I could train you on how to use a computer, but is it worth the time? And so this is why, this is my fundamental belief about training in general, which is that everything is trainable. It's just not everything's worth training.

some things you expect to have someone have batteries included and that's why there are requisites for jobs that's why when you go to school you have to take english 101 before you take english 201 right notwithstanding the fact that it's all retarded but let's just like pretend it's useful um well english is useful but let's you get my point all right so the reason this is such a powerful frame is that if someone comes back and says something like well i didn't think that was my job well then they probably shouldn't do anything else in your company either

Right? Because fundamentally, like what creates motivation? So motivation is the opposite of deprivation. But somebody who motivates other people is able to temporarily increase the value of an outcome. Fundamentally, that's what motivation is.

And if you think about that, that's also what persuasion is. That's also what sales is. And so there's a lot of words that fundamentally mean the same thing. If I motivate you to buy, that's what a salesman does. If I motivate you to move, I motivate you to change your behavior. I, for a short period of time, change the relative value of an outcome, which then changes your behavior. So if I talk to you and talk about your weight and you haven't done anything about losing weight in a very long time, but in a short period of time, I changed the relative value

value to you about what it might be like to lose weight or said differently, the pain associated with losing weight. You might've always wanted to lose weight, but didn't realize it could be easier.

Right or you might realize it's hard, but I realize I help explain even more value like hey I don't know if you knew this but you'll live 10 years longer Statistically if you lose 50 pounds then all of a sudden you said your daughter's about to get married Don't you want to see your kids right? So my mother side note The only reason she lost weight was because the doctor told her that she wasn't going to see my grandkids And that was the thing try to lose weight her whole life 30 fucking years try to lose weight couldn't do it

That was the line, right? He was able to motivate her because that was the one thing for her. And so sometimes we have to think to ourselves, okay, what other things are we playing with that we can change the relative value of either decreasing the pain or increasing the carrot, right? Decreasing the stick or increasing the carrot associated with getting the stick. You know what I'm saying? I'll give you an example. So sometimes a salesperson will get tired of selling because it's the same conversation over and over again. And they will say they'll get bored. But

There's a huge amount of time between the first time you get bored in sales and when you're exceptional in sales. And so explaining that in and of itself to a salesperson is that your ability to maintain focus is itself a skill that needs to be developed in order for you to become world class, which is what you said you wanted.

And so sometimes just reframing their current struggle as a skill deficiency on their way to getting what they ultimately want is one of the most motivating things that you can do to help someone do the thing that they ultimately probably want to do too. They just haven't been motivated to. And so we knock out all of the peripheral things. They didn't know, you know, that,

we wanted. They didn't know what it was. They didn't know how to do it. They didn't know when we want to do it. They had something that blocked them, but not really. And so the main one is that we can get to the motivation. But if some people just fundamentally don't have enough motivation around this thing, sometimes they just don't need to work for you and that's okay. There's tons of other companies that will employ mediocre people. It just doesn't have to be yours. And if I can give you a fun one, because some of you guys have employed people that you know shouldn't be working for you. It's your sister, it's your sister's husband, it's your cousin,

And you think to yourself, man, if I let them go, no one's going to hire them. It's like, yeah, no one would hire them. And somehow you think it's a good idea that you continue to employ them. That feels max silly, silly, silly game. Silly tier, S tier, S tier silly. Now let me give you a little bonus reframe on this. If you have, if you're trying to look at your business as a business owner, right? From a strategic perspective, there's a lot of things that you could do, right? But we have to ask ourselves, okay,

What are the things that are the most important for us to do? By when would it be the most meaningful? Now, here's where it gets really interesting. You more often than not are going to have how issues. You're not going to know how to do it. And reframing the things that you know you need to do as questions that you don't know the answer to is so much more valuable than there's no one who can sell like me. I don't know how to get someone to sell like me.

No one can market like I can I don't know how to find somebody who can market like I can that's solvable No one can is a statement that you can do anything with and so what I would really really push back on is my kind of like Leaving thought that might be the most powerful thing in this video be incredibly wary about the statements that you make that you believe are facts because those statements exist as truth only in your mind and

And so basically your reality will be influenced by the laws that you choose to create and live by. And so if you want to bend your own reality, you have to be able to change the laws that exist. And so in the matrix, it's like every system is built on rules, right? Some, some rules you can bend, others you can break. And the thing is, is that wouldn't you want to build a business in a world that had the fewest rules possible?

And then what's interesting to me is that the amount of conversations that I have with business owners who tell me rules that limit their business, like, oh, we can't charge more than that because no one else does. That sounds like a terrible reason. We can't pay people that much. Why? Because it's not industry standard. Okay. Well, everybody in your industry makes no money. So why would we do what they're doing? Like the biggest gift that I can give you is that the vast majority of business owners are broke.

The vast majority. The average business owner makes like $50,000 a year, right? I'm not saying that's broke, I want to be clear. But for many people, the aspirations of being a business owner come with significantly higher goals than that reality. And if that's true, then the vast majority of business owners are wildly underperforming their aspirations.

And a big part of that is because they model people like them. Most business owners look around, they see what everyone else is doing and say, oh, I'll do that. And I'll do it a little bit better for a little bit less. But then every other person does that too, until eventually you can't do any more for any less. And so many of these businesses function as essentially nonprofit organizations where the person's barely above water selling a largely commoditized service at a commoditized price with no differentiation in the marketplace whatsoever.

That's a game where if you choose to play like everyone else, you will lose. And so I would encourage you to, if everyone's doing something, it's a great reason not to do it. If anything, that like that alone would be, that would be a reason not to do it. At least it's different.

At least you have an angle. You have something that's different. Well, if everyone else is paying this, maybe if I pay more, I'll be able to suck up the top 10%. One of the things that people will talk about Henry Ford is Henry Ford paid people better than his competitors so that he could scoop up the entirety of the talent at his plants. He's the one who invented the manufacturing line. Yeah, he did. He also paid people better than anyone else so that he could get the top talent. People thought of him as the guy who was just automating humans out. It's like, no, he actually ended up paying the best people to work for him.

But he did something that other people weren't. He did something that other people didn't. And so I would walk through this star system so that you can also think about your own business in that same frame. Why aren't you doing what you know you need to be doing? Do you not know that it needs to be done? Do you not know what it is? Do you don't know how to do it? You don't know when it would be meaningful that it's being done by? Or do you have something that is blocking you? And do you have something that's blocking you? Is it more important than that thing? And if the answer is no, then stop doing it and do the thing instead.

And if you're struggling to be motivated, maybe you need to look at yourself in the mirror. And I don't know what you'd say yourself in the mirror, but like you could look at yourself and then eventually actually just do it because the look at yourself in the mirror is not going to change anything anyways. But you know, maybe you look good. Maybe that'll get you motivated. All right. Love you all. Rock and roll. And use the star system next time you have a hard conversation. Hey, real quick.

Did you not know that I wanted you to do it? Did you not know what I wanted to do? Did you not know how to do it? Did you not know that I wanted you to do it by Tuesday? Or was there something blocking you? There was something blocking you. Is it reasonable that it blocked you for that long? No? Okay, what's the issue? Or you know what? You're right. That did block you. Do that first and then do this after.