10X the Profits With Half the COGs: A Step-by-Step Guide That Works

John: 00:00:11

10 exit profits, half the cogs.

John: 00:00:13

What if it were true?

John: 00:00:14

What if you could get 10 times the result and half of the costs?

John: 00:00:18

It is true, and I'm gonna show you how right here, right now.

John: 00:00:21

First of all, we're playing death by PowerPoint.

John: 00:00:23

This is maybe the thing that I'm most proud of professionally.

John: 00:00:25

I've talked about it before on the channel.

John: 00:00:27

I've talked about it before on podcasts, but I will not stop because I feel

John: 00:00:30

like repetition is some other skill.

John: 00:00:31

first I share the thesis.

John: 00:00:33

This is the core thesis of what it is that I'm talking about.

John: 00:00:35

A tiny minority of extremely high performers produce almost all of the

John: 00:00:40

economic outcome of given endeavor.

John: 00:00:42

I'm gonna read it again.

John: 00:00:43

A tiny minority of extremely high performers produce almost all of

John: 00:00:48

the economic outcome of a given endeavor, hunter and shmidt.

John: 00:00:53

Incidentally, this is actually really worth going to school

John: 00:00:54

on because it is mindblowing.

John: 00:00:57

this is true in your business already.

John: 00:00:59

When you're smaller, it's a little less obvious.

John: 00:01:01

But you know what's really funny about that is actually when you're

John: 00:01:03

smaller, it's maybe even more obvious.

John: 00:01:05

You're just not paying attention to it.

John: 00:01:06

So like, if you have three employees, I bet one does 90% of everything the

John: 00:01:10

other two are there to help, right?

John: 00:01:11

And you're, you're probably that one.

John: 00:01:13

But as you grow and as you scale, you start to realize, A handful of people,

John: 00:01:17

a handful of your staff is really responsible for the vast majority

John: 00:01:21

of the value that you're providing, responsible for managing, the higher end

John: 00:01:24

clients, most of the income, et cetera.

John: 00:01:26

Now you can fight that and say, oh, I don't wanna be beholden to those people.

John: 00:01:28

I wanna diversify my resources.

John: 00:01:29

Or you can lean into it, and you lean into it by finding

John: 00:01:33

more of these high performers.

John: 00:01:35

I'm gonna call ' em Here's how we do that.

John: 00:01:37

Step number one, you.

John: 00:01:38

Peaks want more money, and they should want more money because

John: 00:01:42

they're peak performers now.

John: 00:01:43

Every entrepreneur on the planet is like, oh, I wanna pay less and get more.

John: 00:01:46

Right?

John: 00:01:47

We're trying to play arbitrage, and you're a value investor, let's say.

John: 00:01:50

It's flawed thinking.

John: 00:01:50

There's nothing more expensive a cheap employee.

John: 00:01:53

There's nothing more expensive than a cheap employee, and there's

John: 00:01:56

nothing more cost effective than hiring a peak performer.

John: 00:01:58

A peak performer can cost as little 10 to 20% more than their peers, but

John: 00:02:01

they produce 3, 5, 10 times more, sometimes a hundred times more.

John: 00:02:06

So go pay more and, and just try me on this.

John: 00:02:08

It took me years to figure this out.

John: 00:02:10

I was always trying to just, find the bargains out there, and it's

John: 00:02:12

an absolute complete and total nightmare, and it's a flawed model.

John: 00:02:15

It's flawed.

John: 00:02:16

When you start off paying more, you end up getting better submissions.

John: 00:02:19

You end up getting better applicants.

John: 00:02:20

You get people that are excited.

John: 00:02:21

You know what's really funny about this is when you pay more,

John: 00:02:23

the same person becomes better.

John: 00:02:25

They feel valued.

John: 00:02:26

Think about yourself and your own experience in life.

John: 00:02:28

When you feel valued, you perform better.

John: 00:02:30

Now you need to go to the places where you can afford to pay more.

John: 00:02:33

which is really hard, onshore, incidentally, like if you're in Silicon

John: 00:02:36

Valley, and you need a software engineer.

John: 00:02:38

Best of luck to you cuz you're not gonna be able to compete against Google,

John: 00:02:41

Amazon, Facebook, apple, who are just snapping up all of these folks and

John: 00:02:44

paying 'em in same amounts of money.

John: 00:02:45

And even if you could match the salary requirements, you can't match

John: 00:02:48

the ascension opportunities or the benefits, or honestly just the prestige.

John: 00:02:52

A lot of peak performers wanna work for the big company.

John: 00:02:55

So what I like to do is I like to go international and

John: 00:02:57

then know that offends some.

John: 00:02:58

I'm not gonna apologize for it.

John: 00:02:59

It's what's worked for me I've found the most amazing, stellar

John: 00:03:03

staff internationally, and I've hired everywhere, Philippines,

John: 00:03:06

India, Bangladesh, Turkey, Ukraine, all of Latin America, Canada.

John: 00:03:10

Go to where you can afford to compete.

John: 00:03:12

And you know, it's hubris to think that this is the only country producing

John: 00:03:14

intelligent, hardworking people, right?

John: 00:03:16

Like it's the same distribution of intelligent, hardworking people on

John: 00:03:19

a per percentage basis everywhere.

John: 00:03:20

And yet there are more people in a lot of these countries.

John: 00:03:22

And so you expose yourself to a brighter labor market.

John: 00:03:25

And if you've had bad experiences going international, chances are

John: 00:03:28

it's because you've been working.

John: 00:03:29

With, either agencies or, people that you've been giving bullshit work to.

John: 00:03:32

if you had to do data entry, if you had to sit there in line by line,

John: 00:03:36

do a data entry for eight hours a day, how well would you do that job?

John: 00:03:39

Right.

John: 00:03:39

And so you think to yourself, well, yeah, I had a bad

John: 00:03:40

experience when I went off shore.

John: 00:03:41

This because I gave 'em all.

John: 00:03:43

Horrible job.

John: 00:03:43

it was scrubbing or outreach or, call centers.

John: 00:03:46

Like if you pay more than they're, going to have the

John: 00:03:48

opportunity to earn anywhere else.

John: 00:03:50

You're gonna get the triple PhD C level execs that just happened to

John: 00:03:53

have lost the geographic lottery.

John: 00:03:54

Pay more.

John: 00:03:55

That's number one.

John: 00:03:55

Number two is live into the gamification.

John: 00:03:59

Peak performers want to win.

John: 00:04:01

Yeah, they wanna be paid more money because they're worth more money,

John: 00:04:03

but they also wanna win the game.

John: 00:04:05

And money is how we keep score.

John: 00:04:06

And this is gonna be true for everything with a peak performer.

John: 00:04:09

Incidentally, you need to show them the path to winning.

John: 00:04:12

And the minute you don't have one, it doesn't matter what

John: 00:04:14

you're paying them, they leave.

John: 00:04:15

gonna see this on a pretty regular basis.

John: 00:04:16

Incidentally Daniel Pink wrote a phenomenal book called Drive that's

John: 00:04:19

truly worth reading, but in that book, he talks about what really

John: 00:04:22

drives human behavior It's not money.

John: 00:04:23

So if you think a peak performer wants to get paid more just because they're, being

John: 00:04:26

arrogant or selfish, that's not it at all.

John: 00:04:27

It's because they are gamifying life, and that's the first step to

John: 00:04:31

the gamification of the job market.

John: 00:04:33

The second, and third and then infinite step is you making sure you put them in

John: 00:04:37

a position to be continuously winning.

John: 00:04:39

And if you don't know how to do that, by the way, winning very often for

John: 00:04:42

most of us is measured in contribution.

John: 00:04:44

How can they contribute?

John: 00:04:45

How do they give more?

John: 00:04:46

How do they help more?

John: 00:04:46

How do they do more?

John: 00:04:47

They wanna contribute.

John: 00:04:48

They wanna be a part of something bigger than themselves.

John: 00:04:50

Like we all do, like humans do.

John: 00:04:53

Step number three, be wary of bogans.

John: 00:04:55

this is two-sided coin.

John: 00:04:57

Sometimes you just end up luck out, but if somebody's willing to settle,

John: 00:05:02

Anything less than a top tier salary.

John: 00:05:04

And they're not new, you know, newbies are gonna get a pass here

John: 00:05:07

because they just need to be able to earn their hood stripes, let's say.

John: 00:05:09

But I, I'd caution you against people that are, settling cuz you

John: 00:05:13

always kind of wonder like, oh gosh, I wonder what's wrong there.

John: 00:05:15

And it's not a reason not to hire somebody, but it's a reason to

John: 00:05:17

look deeply into, what's happen.

John: 00:05:19

Also just fyi, and this is maybe one of those most important points I can make.

John: 00:05:23

When you're looking for peak performers, you are selling you.

John: 00:05:26

They're not selling them.

John: 00:05:27

You are marketing to them.

John: 00:05:28

and right now, when I read some of these job descriptions, they're

John: 00:05:31

absolutely freaking repulsive.

John: 00:05:33

. It's like you must comply with all very strict and stringent demands and

John: 00:05:35

should you not, you'll be publicly flogged in the eyes of your parents.

John: 00:05:39

It's like, what are you doing?

John: 00:05:40

Who do you think you're trying to attract with that bullshit in this

John: 00:05:42

lame, sterile, black and white HR speak?

John: 00:05:46

Please shoot me in the face if I ever have to work at a place like that.

John: 00:05:49

Be fun, be engaging, be interesting.

John: 00:05:52

Let 'em know that you're actually real humans with, real

John: 00:05:54

work and a mission and values.

John: 00:05:56

Peak performers wanna.

John: 00:05:58

At a place that's, like that a place where you would wanna work, be the

John: 00:06:01

place that you would wanna work, and then put that in your job description.

John: 00:06:03

Make sure they know, have some personality, right?

John: 00:06:05

Like actually put, yourself out there in a way that's, real and authentic and human.

John: 00:06:09

Which leads me to step number five.

John: 00:06:11

You need to market yourself.

John: 00:06:12

You're selling to peak performers, Joe Polish has a new book out

John: 00:06:15

called What's In It For Them.

John: 00:06:16

It's basically, honestly knowing the title, you know most of what

John: 00:06:18

the book's about, although it's absolutely worth reading cuz it's

John: 00:06:21

a true masterclass in empathy.

John: 00:06:22

Figure out how to speak to these peak performers on their term and, and you

John: 00:06:26

probably know how to do that based off of the job description that you're

John: 00:06:28

hiring for, you know, whatever these people are doing on a regular basis.

John: 00:06:31

If this is what they found themselves doing in life, it means

John: 00:06:33

that they're passionate about it.

John: 00:06:34

So how do you speak to them in a way that allows.

John: 00:06:37

For the vision to be properly articulated as to where they could go,

John: 00:06:41

and sometimes you have to go outbound.

John: 00:06:44

And there's a couple of different ways to do that.

John: 00:06:45

I love trolling LinkedIn.

John: 00:06:47

I love trolling LinkedIn.

John: 00:06:48

The gal that's running my agency right now, Leandra, brilliant, brilliant person.

John: 00:06:51

I'm so blessed to have her.

John: 00:06:52

I found her by stalking her on LinkedIn.

John: 00:06:55

Or what you can do is you can build funnels for employees.

John: 00:06:58

That's what this YouTube channel is.

John: 00:06:59

By the way I thought when we launched this YouTube channel, I

John: 00:07:01

was gonna use it to get clients.

John: 00:07:02

And we do, but it's more for finding employees, really amazing

John: 00:07:06

people, and also strategic partners.

John: 00:07:08

And it's been unbelievable at that.

John: 00:07:09

you know, I mean, can you post a job board?

John: 00:07:11

Yes.

John: 00:07:11

Do I still do it?

John: 00:07:12

Absolutely.

John: 00:07:12

But you also want to get creative because here's the interesting thing

John: 00:07:15

about peak performers is peak performers generally are not desperate for a job.

John: 00:07:18

These are the highest performing people in the world.

John: 00:07:20

sometimes you gotta go steal somebody else's peak performer.

John: 00:07:23

Which incidentally I'm gonna give you one of my pro tips and

John: 00:07:25

hopefully it doesn't get me sued.

John: 00:07:27

Pay very close attention to women in middle manage.

John: 00:07:29

There's a interesting study that says that women will apply for a job as soon

John: 00:07:33

as they feel 100% qualified men apply for a job when they feel 60% qualified.

John: 00:07:39

So, first of all, feel some shame fells or maybe not, maybe it's like, Hey,

John: 00:07:43

good for you for reaching for the stars.

John: 00:07:45

But what it means is there is.

John: 00:07:47

An unreasonable number of women out there that have been overlooked,

John: 00:07:51

stagnating in middle management positions and having found a glass ceiling.

John: 00:07:54

And there's a whole bunch of other reasons too that that might be happening.

John: 00:07:57

So pay very close attention to women in middle management because, because they're

John: 00:08:01

usually more adept than their peers.

John: 00:08:04

Statistically speaking.

John: 00:08:05

And I'm not auditioning for this season's episode of Woke Savior.

John: 00:08:09

I'm just letting you know that this has been my experience.

John: 00:08:11

It's an interesting filter.

John: 00:08:13

Women also have stronger retention, so I'm pretty sure that everything I just

John: 00:08:16

said is illegal from an HR perspective.

John: 00:08:19

These views do not reflect the opinions of the organization and are hypothetical

John: 00:08:22

and actually fictional and construct.

John: 00:08:24

this is a screenplay that I'm writing or whatever asterisk gets me out of that.

John: 00:08:28

Go international.

John: 00:08:29

We already talked about this.

John: 00:08:30

I've got a hundred employees and almost all of them are

John: 00:08:32

outside of the United States.

John: 00:08:33

I'm not bashing US staff.

John: 00:08:36

What I'm saying though is if you're in this country, you've been

John: 00:08:39

blessed with the opportunity to.

John: 00:08:40

Start your own business, which is what a lot of peak performers do.

John: 00:08:43

Or you are inside of a labor pool that is very heavily sought after.

John: 00:08:47

And there are some folks that are in other countries where that's just not the case.

John: 00:08:50

obviously, if you're like, dude, I've got a pool cleaning company.

John: 00:08:53

I need somebody to show up to people's backyard and clean pools.

John: 00:08:55

All right, well, you're pretty restricted from a geo geographic

John: 00:08:57

perspective, but you'd be surprised at how many jobs can be done remotely.

John: 00:09:00

And I've proven that in my business.

John: 00:09:02

Go international.

John: 00:09:03

There is some stellar people, like truly just stellar people available and

John: 00:09:07

accessible to you if you're willing to get over that limiting belief higher, slowly.

John: 00:09:11

Because you're paying more, you can ask people to jump through hoops.

John: 00:09:13

I call them fly traps.

John: 00:09:14

As a matter of fact, remember they like gamified systems.

John: 00:09:16

So those hoops are them playing the game.

John: 00:09:18

And what I've found to be really funny is I've actually ended up on interviews

John: 00:09:21

with people that were like, yeah, I actually didn't really want the job,

John: 00:09:24

but I wanted to see how far I could get.

John: 00:09:25

And I like that.

John: 00:09:26

I think that's pretty cool.

John: 00:09:27

Hire slowly, fire quickly.

John: 00:09:29

Don't put yourself in a position where you are putting up.

John: 00:09:33

Somebody who poisons the well.

John: 00:09:34

As a matter of fact, the best way to piss off and alienate a peak performer

John: 00:09:38

is to put up with a crappy employee.

John: 00:09:39

And incidentally, if you don't know who your crappy employees

John: 00:09:42

are, your peaks will tell you.

John: 00:09:43

Just ask.

John: 00:09:44

With peak performers especially, this might be the most important

John: 00:09:46

note that I have for you.

John: 00:09:47

Do not micromanage.

John: 00:09:49

You can't, and there's all these little things that you might have

John: 00:09:52

gotten romantic about that a peak performer's not gonna wanna do.

John: 00:09:55

And it's going to influence the way that your company is structured as to

John: 00:09:59

whether or not you're willing to be flexible or if you're gonna be qu soic.

John: 00:10:02

If you have a quicksodic dedication to the rules, you're gonna have

John: 00:10:05

a hard time with peak performers.

John: 00:10:06

Cuz these are people that don't do stuff that they're like, yeah, that

John: 00:10:08

doesn't make sense, doesn't make sense, I'm not gonna do that's all I got.

John: 00:10:10

Hope y'all like this video.

John: 00:10:11

This is part of a new series that I'm doing.

John: 00:10:13

We're we're taking our Twitter threads and we're shooting videos about 'em, so

John: 00:10:15

I'd love your feedback on them if they're valuable and helpful and important.

John: 00:10:18

Or if you're just like, dude, you suck.

John: 00:10:20

I'm gonna stop watching.

John: 00:10:21

Unless you start doing things that are just more Google ADSD related.

John: 00:10:23

That's all I got.

John: 00:10:24

Appreciate you watching.