The Hardest (and Best) Skill in Business: Subtraction

0:03 What's up guys, welcome back to Build. And today I wanna talk about earning the right to do more in your business. So I was thinking about this, and don't mind me if I'm out of breath because pregnant walk, not the same as pre-pregnant walk. But this was on my mind and I just wanted to capture it while I was walking.

0:22 So there was a few weeks ago where one of our teams essentially sent a proposal to me and said, we want to launch on one of our channels, we want to launch a new format, essentially like a new show style. And, you know, there's all the reasons why it will work. There's all the reasons why it's a great idea, why it can capture so much of what the audience wants right now.

0:49 And all those things were true. The piece that was also true, that was not written in that document, is that that channel, there were other formats that the team is still working on that we're not taking off, that are not working. So I looked at this and I thought to myself, we haven't earned the right to do more here.

1:10 And as I was walking my team through this and giving them my explanation, I'll share it with you guys because I think this applies to not just content, but business in general, which is what I told them is that if we have formats currently that we have not nailed, we have not earned the right to scale another one.

1:31 Because it's very similar to when you're in business and say you have two products that are just like doing mediocre. And then, you know, someone comes in with this idea for a third and it's like, oh my God, that would do so well. It's like, of course, uninformed optimism always will do well, right? And So I explained this to them as well as the fact that it's unlikely that even if we were to do that other format, it's going to do as well as its potential because we have all this energy being put on these other ones.

2:05 So really similar to what I see in business, you know, we have hundreds of people come to our headquarters every week. And so often people are like, I know that I have these three products, but I have this fourth, and I just know it's gonna hit because of X, Y, and Z. And I'm like, okay, well then, you have to get rid of something.

2:23 And they're like, why? I'm like, you have to get rid of something because the amount of energy that that product is gonna steal from these other ones, or that those other ones will steal from this one. It's a trade-off. So if you want more products, you need more energy, more attention to sustain those products.

2:41 If you want to have more media that you put out, you need more energy and attention to sustain that media. So, you know, I walked the team through my logic and we ended up coming to the agreement that for that channel specifically, we were not going to launch another format. Instead, we were going to trade formats.

3:00 So we looked at one and said, even though it's not performing, Do we think that if we were just, if we knew everything we knew today, would we start over with the same format as we have right now? Because there's obviously ways that you can fix it and ways that you can get something to work well. And the answer was no, because it didn't do a few things for the channel that we believe this new format would do.

3:23 Which by the way, if you are a content creator in business and you make business content or you make content to get customers, a lot of people confuse making content that gets views with content that builds authority. So essentially looking at that channel, we said, this content will get views, but it actually places no authority on this person.

3:43 And so because of that, I was like, I don't actually think this is worth doing. So this new format that you guys suggested is a yes if we get rid of these other things. And so that is what they've been working on with the channel. So just a side tip for those of you guys, if you don't have a base of, authority content.

4:03 As a business owner, as somebody who sells to customers, it's difficult to have your content as you create more content, increase your business in any way, because you're lacking in authority. So it's like people just think, oh, they're just an influencer making content about this thing, rather than like, oh no, they've been doing, I don't know, garage doors for 20 years, and so they know their shit.

4:24 I think it's important to have a balance of the two. So that's how I think about my content. I think... There's deeper content. I mean, I guess it's kind of like this video that shows that I do business. And then there's content that is wide where I just talk about my life, talk about myself, talk about, and I talk a lot about mindset, which I do think is a crossover to business, but that's for another time.

4:46 So that being said, you have to earn the right to do more. And this concept of earning the right to do more was really top of mind for me as I was looking through our looking at, okay, what are our growth targets for this next year? Which, yes, I'm looking at them now because I'm going to have a baby.

5:05 And I was like, guess what? We got to set our targets early this year because I'm going to be out for the last part of the year. That being said, as I'm looking at growth targets, I'm looking at essentially this last year, you know, we've grown every year as a company, but our OPEX expenses just skyrocketed.

5:26 And as I was digging in to so many of the places where I say like money leaks, what I realized is it's often because people solve by addition, not subtraction. So this goes with the earlier concept I was saying. And if you notice how I solved the problem, I solved it through subtraction, not addition, which is making trade-offs, removing things in order to make room for things that we believe are a better trade.

5:52 And what I was looking through is all of these things we added Solving through addition is easy. It feels good temporarily. It is never the right answer. The best CEOs, the best business owners, the best operators solve through subtraction. The reason people don't wanna solve through subtraction is because it feels bad, right?

6:13 It's like, we're gonna kill that show that we put all that effort into, that we've been working on it for months though. It's like, yeah, nobody gives a fuck. Guess what? I have worked on businesses for years that didn't work. I mean, Jesus. Nobody knows this even, right? So we did a deliver to you meals business.

6:35 Does anyone know that? Worked on it for a year. Was a complete flop. Absolutely sucked. Not saying it's a bad business, saying I didn't do well at it. And it didn't do well for us. Second business that I would consider a flop. Built two different softwares. One of them, you know, we sold in a stock deal, but like not great.

7:00 The other one, we just didn't end up doing anything with. You know how long those took me? Two years. That was like two years of my life working on them. Building a team, building the product, doing everything. I literally had people operating Gym Launch while I was building the team and the software products.

7:18 Didn't work out. But when I knew that they weren't working out... I was not afraid to make the decision of it's time to cut this. And what I was seeing as I was looking through our OpEx expenses is I was telling my partners and then our president, I said, we're solving through addition, not subtraction.

7:35 We're just adding things to solve problems rather than taking things away. The best way to solve a problem is to eliminate the problem. That sounds interesting, but there's so many times where people add things in that create more problems. I'll give you an example of one. Um, there's, as soon as you add, there's two different departments that as soon as you add, I believe in many ways can create more problems if you do not explain to people how to interact with them.

8:02 And you need these departments, in my opinion, like I think that they serve a great purpose. But technology and HR, why is that? So you add a technology department, and it's like, yeah, we had a few things that we need to automate, or like, there was things, there's too many manual things. And so we're trying to add infrastructure into the business that makes people's work easier and eliminate so much manual labor so we can have people doing more high value things in the business.

8:28 That makes sense, right? Well, the moment that you get in there though, nobody knows how to use the technology department. They don't know how to interact with the technology department. So then all of a sudden they start requesting all these things that like never were problems. And all of a sudden you have people requesting for tech to build them a tool that does something that they do in three hours a week.

8:52 And it takes tech 30 hours of software developer time to build that thing. It's like, great, we have just solved a very small problem that I would consider is not a problem, just part of the job, with something that took much more time and money. So did we actually solve a problem or did we just create something?

9:11 The second one I would say is with HR, people department. As soon as you get a bigger HR department, what you'll see is it's like, okay, five people on the whole team, maybe you've got a hundred people, five people ask about career planning. It's like, well then we should make sure that we get a very formal process in place for everybody.

9:33 So then you announce, we're gonna do career planning. All of a sudden, There's all these people on the team who have not thought about career planning. And suddenly they're saying, I'm really annoyed that I don't have a career path. I'm really annoyed that I don't have career planning. Why don't I have clarity?

9:47 And it creates a problem that didn't need to exist because especially in a smaller company, guess what? The path is not that clear. And the path is changing. I have almost 200 people in my company, and the path is not stagnant whatsoever. The path is actually very personal to each person and should probably be owned by their manager, not HR.

10:08 That's the reality. So both of those situations, you're creating problems that don't need to exist in the business by adding things to the business. That being said, how could we eliminate those things, right? It's like, well, let's look at that three hours of manual work we're doing each week. What would we need to do to make sure that that didn't exist?

10:30 What would need to happen for that not to be a part of our business? Asking a question like that is so much more valuable than, oh, let me build something to fix it. It's like, how do I just make this problem go away? So I think you'll notice the theme, which is the story I started with, which is adding that channel, right?

10:49 You're diluting attention and you are just further reducing the horsepower you have to do anything in the business, which is more likely in that instance that The new show and the old shows wouldn't work, which is why you need to eliminate in order to move forward. And the second example, when it comes to solving problems through addition versus subtraction, it's just reversing how our brains work.

11:15 I think a lot of people, when they see a problem, they immediately assume that they need to solve it. When I see a problem, I think to myself, one, do I even consider this a problem? Two, how can I just make this problem go away rather than solve it with resources, time, and money? So the reason I said you haven't earned the right to do something new is because so much of my time, our time as a team, is spent talking to entrepreneurs who unfortunately are trying to solve problems that they have created for themselves because they have added too much into their business.

11:51 They have diluted their attention and they've taken too much on. And it is such a common thing that it's almost, it's just actually, it's just completely normal, actually, nowadays. It's like, everybody does this. Almost everybody solves through addition rather than subtraction. It's almost become cool.

12:10 It's like, if you don't have a million things going on in your business, like, what are you actually doing? I really believe that humans are very capable of solving simple, hard problems. Business is already hard enough. You do not need to make it harder by adding more to it. When you have a complex problem to solve, I think you get into a completely different ballgame where it's so much harder to run your business because you don't have attention.

12:38 And what you'll see of the theme of all these things is attention, which is, okay, With the first scenario, if you've got three formats, you say you're making content and you have three formats, it's like, how much attention do you have left for the third when you've already got two and maybe they're not working as well as you need them to?

12:57 Like, do you really think that you're gonna be able to hit it out of the park with all of them? It's like, probably not. It's like, probably should get them to a certain success level before even considering or entertaining a third. The same goes for business. If you're looking at all the things that you have in the business, all the problems that you're solving the business.

13:16 When's the last time that you solved a problem through subtraction, not addition? And I think that a lot of the reasons that people hold onto these things is sacred cows, which is like, I don't want to get rid of it because I spent so much time on it, or I have FOMO, or this thing costs so much money, or these people have been here for forever.

13:34 It's like, yeah, business is hard and it requires really hard decisions to be made. And if we're not willing to make those decisions, then we're also not willing to win. And I will say that the one thing I think I do a really good job of is making really hard decisions and deciding not to do things, to stop doing things, and to eliminate things that no longer serve the business.

13:55 It is very difficult to do, but unless you are a business that is operating with insane margins, backed by VCs, and you have a ton of cash to blow, you really can't afford to solve through addition rather than subtraction. It's just not a choice. So I guess I'm making this video because I want you to remember that sometimes the decisions feel really, really bad in the short term, and that is the exact right decision to make.

14:27 Usually the harder it is to make, and the more you don't wanna make it, and the more you want to avoid making it, the more it is the right decision for your business, whether it's killing the product line, letting go of the person, making a pivot, not doing the cool new shiny thing, Like it is just almost always the right call.

14:45 So I hope if you're in business and if you're struggling with this, this gets to you and it resonates because it's just so prevalent everywhere, solving through addition, not through subtraction and not waiting until we've earned the right to do more. If you look at businesses, and I think this is the difficulty when you're small, you compare yourself to the big guys and you think, well, they have 17 products.

15:09 Why don't I? It's like, well, what did they have 10 years ago? You can't compare your path to somebody else's path. Even, you know, watching my stuff, looking at what I have in my business, like, Jesus Christ, don't do that year one. Don't do it year two. Don't you do it year three. You know, I'm on year six, you know, of my third business.

15:25 So it's very different. And you also don't know what, you might see someone that looks outwardly successful. I know there's plenty of companies that people try to copy that outwardly look really successful, but barely are making money, barely are scraping by, are in giant lawsuits, have all sorts of shit going on for them.

15:42 So don't compare yourself to somebody else and allow that to complicate your business, to add more complexity, and to cause you to solve through addition and not subtraction. Be ruthlessly focused, ruthlessly simplify your business, and it is almost impossible not to win if you're willing to work hard.