00:00:00I want to show you how I became number one in different fields, industries,
00:00:03and even broke a world record, and how you can apply the same process
00:00:06to winning or getting whatever it is that you want.
00:00:08My name is Joshua Muzzi.
00:00:09I'm a portfolio of companies at acquisition.com
00:00:11that generates 250 million dollars per year in aggregate revenue.
00:00:14I did a book launch that did 106 million dollars in a weekend
00:00:17and broke the Guinness World Record
00:00:18for the fastest selling nonfiction book of all time.
00:00:21And so there's my kind of proof behind that.
00:00:23So in this video, I'm going to explain a core shift in my understanding
00:00:25of getting what I wanted and specifically in business.
00:00:28So this will be a belief breaker for you guys.
00:00:29So I talked to business owners for a living every single day,
00:00:32like literally every week, and I have for, you know, a decade plus.
00:00:35And one of the things that drives me absolutely nuts
00:00:37is the idea of industry standards.
00:00:40So you've probably heard this.
00:00:40People are like, oh, this is industry standard.
00:00:42That's industry standard.
00:00:42And I'll tell you a real conversation that might shift this for you.
00:00:46So there was a company that I recently met with about a 500 million dollar company.
00:00:50So I have a billion dollar company, right?
00:00:52And, you know, they were efficient, but it's an old school model.
00:00:55So I met with the chiefs of that business and I met with the leaders, right?
00:00:58And the entrepreneur who runs the business wanted me to look at certain components
00:01:02of how they do things in terms of acquisition and things like that.
00:01:04And when I walk them through their acquisition process, I was like, hey,
00:01:09these are some things that need to change.
00:01:10And there was a lady who was there who was in charge of probably maybe half of it.
00:01:15And at least, you know, it fell under her purview.
00:01:17And as I would, you know, point out things that were bad
00:01:20or like needed improvement, she kept repeating the same thing,
00:01:24which is like, well, you know, we're industry standard.
00:01:26And she'd be like, we're meeting industry standards.
00:01:29And she would get really kind of flustered.
00:01:31And she kind of, I would say, maybe to a degree, got offended because I was saying, well,
00:01:35you know, this sucks and this sucks and these numbers aren't good.
00:01:37And they kept repeating, we're meeting industry standards.
00:01:40And so I paused and I was like, do you wake up in the morning and just say,
00:01:45I want to be an average company, right?
00:01:49We are average.
00:01:50Half the people are better than us and half are worse.
00:01:54We are average.
00:01:56Who gives a shit, right?
00:01:58I don't know about you, but like I didn't get in the game,
00:02:00whatever game you're playing, to be average.
00:02:02Like the average business is average.
00:02:03The average American is overweight, they're in debt, they're divorced, they're depressed.
00:02:07And so the average business makes almost no money.
00:02:09Why would I use industry standards, industry averages, anything like that at all?
00:02:14And I say this because I have people who will push back on some of the things that I talk
00:02:18about with regards to margin, when I think things I talk about in terms of timeline,
00:02:21when I talk in terms of pricing, right?
00:02:23And they'll say something like, well, you know, in HVAC, it's different.
00:02:26Or, you know, in SCO, it's a little bit different.
00:02:28Or, you know, we've got XYZ issue in trucking and it's different.
00:02:33It's logistics, it's different.
00:02:34No, it's not.
00:02:36You get what you tolerate.
00:02:38You get what you accept and deem good enough.
00:02:41You are the standard setter.
00:02:44It is the highest and most important job in the company.
00:02:47And it is why some companies prevail and some companies fail.
00:02:50It's the reason that Jobs was so important for Apple.
00:02:53Elon was so important for Tesla and XAI and all the other things that he does.
00:02:57And like at a certain point, you cannot actually do anything in the company except
00:03:02for hold the fucking line.
00:03:06And the person who should run every department or every division should be the
00:03:11person with the highest standards, right?
00:03:13And this applies to everything, right?
00:03:15Sales rates, closing percentages, profit margins, cash flow, the people you date, the
00:03:19body fat percentage you hold, how fast you expect something to get done.
00:03:23Literally everything.
00:03:24Real quick, I'm going to show you the exact 10 stage roadmap from zero to a hundred
00:03:29million plus that less than 1% of companies finish.
00:03:32I've now done multiple times.
00:03:33And so I can say with a lot of confidence that these are the stages as headcount
00:03:36increases that you need to get through.
00:03:39And I broke each of these down by eight different functions of the business, what
00:03:42the constraint feels like, like what are the symptoms of it when you're going
00:03:45through it, and then what steps we actually took to graduate.
00:03:48And we've done this across software, physical products, service businesses,
00:03:52brick and mortar, all of this, and it works.
00:03:55And it's my gift to you.
00:03:56It's absolutely free.
00:03:57And so the link's in the description, but you just go acquisition.com/roadmap.
00:04:00Just enter your info and it'll spit it right back to you all free.
00:04:02So let me tell you a story about a billionaire mentor of mine.
00:04:05Again, had a conversation many years ago.
00:04:07And he said this thing to me that I'll never forget.
00:04:09He said, profit is unnatural.
00:04:13And I was like, what does he really mean by that?
00:04:15He said, it's common and normal for people when money is in a bank account to spend it.
00:04:22And that's why most people don't have money.
00:04:24He said, so if you have a company and it makes money and it actually starts to
00:04:28succeed, that success has this constant pressure of normalcy that fights against it.
00:04:33And so there has to be someone who holds the line and is like, no, we will not
00:04:39spend more, but we will keep making more.
00:04:41We will get more customers and we will not hire more people.
00:04:43We will find a way to service these customers better than we did our last customers
00:04:46without adding headcount.
00:04:48And we're going to do it even better, even faster with less.
00:04:51And so let me tell you another example of something that just happened in one of our
00:04:55portfolio companies. So they needed to add 15 sales reps to hit their Q1 goals.
00:05:00And so the leader was saying how his plan was to hire five reps a month every single
00:05:04month. And doing it this way, he said, would stretch the team, but it would still kind
00:05:08of ensure quality, make sure the culture wasn't too stressed, etc.
00:05:12And honestly, it was a fair plan, right?
00:05:14But for this business, the extra sales guys were going to add about four million in
00:05:18profit that quarter.
00:05:21That's how much extra he was going to add, just that quarter.
00:05:23So I pushed back and I said, why can't we do it in a month?
00:05:27He had a lot of different reasons of, you know, like it'll be cultural, I think we'll
00:05:31stretch the team, we might lose other sales in other places.
00:05:33And I kept pushing and pushing, but he had some reasons to come back.
00:05:36And thankfully, he's a stud.
00:05:38And then after the meeting, he messaged me back and said, two of our guys have bandwidth
00:05:42who are more senior. They can assist the new manager and onboard three to five guys each.
00:05:45If we do that, we can actually do it in a month.
00:05:47And boom, four million dollars more potential next year in Q1 because of one thing, a
00:05:55higher standard. Just saying like, why does it need to take that long?
00:05:59Why can't we like if we were if we were doing a billion in sales in this business, we
00:06:04probably wouldn't say we need to hire five guys a month.
00:06:07No way. Right. We'd be like, we need to start with 50 and maybe add 50 every other week.
00:06:11Right. The it's just this minimum standard of of something that you decide is enough or
00:06:17acceptable. And the crazy part about it is like we're the ones who decide this and then
00:06:21we're upset that we don't get or that we're upset that we got the fruit of our very low
00:06:25standards. And so the way that you can kind of know kind of what your standards are, what
00:06:30the standards of somebody else on your team is, is how many attack vectors you use to
00:06:35approach or solve a problem.
00:06:36Right. So it's not about doing the same thing 100 times.
00:06:39That's not smart. Right.
00:06:40It's about trying to accomplish the same goal with a hundred different iterations and
00:06:44angles until one finally gets through till you pass the goalie till you till you chop down
00:06:50the tree. Right. It's like, well, I'm hitting it this way and I'm getting rock.
00:06:52It's like, OK, well, then let's try from another angle.
00:06:54Let's try underneath. Let's see if we can poison the tree like whatever we need to do.
00:06:57Like, can we reach out to our network and give a hundred thousand dollar bounty for another
00:07:01SDR? Is there a company with a largest your team that doesn't make as much as that we can
00:07:05buy? Can we can we hire five recruiters to speed up the process?
00:07:09Can we fly all of the SDRs in person to get them trained up faster so we don't lose
00:07:14cultural issues and we can get them on ramped in in three days rather than in 30 days?
00:07:19Right. In the top two, you know, most experienced guys who have some blank space have
00:07:23them sub in. Bingo.
00:07:24Right. All of these have costs, obviously, but of the costs, they're still worth it.
00:07:30So you're not getting what you want because you're not attacking the problems you have
00:07:34enough times in enough ways.
00:07:35So you're trying one or two things and then saying, like, I tried that and it didn't
00:07:38work. I tried Facebook ads.
00:07:40You know, I tried making content.
00:07:41I tried hiring a salesman and it didn't work.
00:07:43It's like, no, it's not that it didn't work.
00:07:46It's that you weren't skilled enough to make it work.
00:07:48Very big difference.
00:07:50And so you're going to tell me that no one on Earth has ever had the same problem that
00:07:54you have right now. And of those many people on Earth without it, no one solved it.
00:07:59You have somehow come across the Gordian knot of problems.
00:08:02No one has hired more than five SDRs in this period of time for a company of this size.
00:08:07Of course they have.
00:08:08And that's why those people won.
00:08:10And they didn't just accept that it wasn't possible within this timeline.
00:08:14And so the rules that I would encourage you to live by is that unless the laws of physics
00:08:18prevent it, consider it mental handicaps that your competition gets to live by and measure
00:08:22themselves by. Not a suggestion, a recommendation and certainly not a fucking law.
00:08:27Right. Industry standards are a handicap that you like your competitors use and think
00:08:31they're doing well. That is the gift that we get as soon as you get out of this belief,
00:08:36because if you want to be average, use industry averages.
00:08:39And most industry average businesses suck.
00:08:41Right. Why would we look at them to judge ourselves by like, oh, this guy's completely
00:08:46broken, distracted, has no idea what he's doing.
00:08:48I should look what his numbers are and say, oh, we're about the same.
00:08:50Is that an accomplishment? Should we be looking forward to something like that happen?
00:08:54Like if you want to be the best, use physics and math and then work backwards.
00:08:58And so I think something that'd be really good to finish on is this great piece by Jeff
00:09:03Bezos. And I want to read it to you because I think it just really drives this point home.
00:09:06Differentiation is survival and the universe wants you to be typical.
00:09:10This is my last annual shareholder letter as CEO of Amazon.
00:09:15And I have one last thing of utmost importance.
00:09:17I feel compelled to teach.
00:09:18I hope all Amazonians take it to heart.
00:09:21So here's a passage from Richard Dawkins' extraordinary book, The Blind Watchmaker.
00:09:25It's about the basic fact of biology.
00:09:27Staving off death is a thing that you have to work at, left to itself.
00:09:33And that is what it is when it dies.
00:09:34The body tends to revert to the state of equilibrium within its environment.
00:09:39If you measure some quantity, such as temperature, the acidity, the water content or
00:09:44the electrical potential in a living body, you'll typically find that it's markedly
00:09:47different from the corresponding measure in the surroundings.
00:09:50Our bodies, for instance, are usually hotter than the surroundings.
00:09:53And in cold climates, they have to work hard to maintain that differential.
00:09:57When we die, the work stops.
00:10:00The temperature differential starts to dissipate and we end up the same
00:10:04temperature as our surroundings.
00:10:05Not all animals work so hard to avoid coming into equilibrium with their
00:10:10surrounding temperature, but all animals do some comparable work.
00:10:14For instance, in a dry country, animals and plants work to maintain the fluid
00:10:19content of their cells, work against a natural tendency for water to flow from
00:10:24them into the dry outside world.
00:10:27If they fail, they die.
00:10:30More generally, if living things didn't work actively to prevent it, they would
00:10:34eventually merge into their surroundings and cease to exist as autonomous beings.
00:10:38This is what happens when they die.
00:10:40While the passage is not intended as a metaphor, it's nevertheless a fantastic
00:10:43one and very relevant to Amazon.
00:10:45I would argue it's relevant to all companies and all institutions and to each
00:10:48of our individual lives too.
00:10:49In what ways does the world pull at you in an attempt to make you normal?
00:10:53How much work does it take to maintain your distinctiveness, to keep alive the
00:10:57thing or things that make you special?
00:10:58I know a happily married couple who have a running joke in their relationship.
00:11:02Not infrequently, the husband looks at his wife with faux distress and says to her,
00:11:06can't you just be normal?
00:11:07They both smile and laugh.
00:11:09And of course the deep truth is that her distinctiveness is something that he loves
00:11:12about her.
00:11:13But at the same time, it's also true that things would be often easier, take less
00:11:16energy if they were a little more normal, right?
00:11:19This is, this phenomenon happens at scale at all levels.
00:11:23Democracies are not normal.
00:11:24Tyranny is this historical norm.
00:11:26If we stopped doing all of the continuous work that is needed to maintain our
00:11:30distinctiveness in that regard, we would quickly come into equilibrium with tyranny.
00:11:34We all know that distinctiveness, originality is valuable.
00:11:38We're all taught to be yourself.
00:11:40What I'm really asking you to do is to embrace and be realistic about how much
00:11:44energy it takes to maintain that distinctiveness.
00:11:46The world wants you to be typical in a thousand ways it pulls at you.
00:11:49Don't let it happen.
00:11:50You have to pay a price for your distinctiveness and it's worth it.
00:11:54The fairytale version of be yourself is that all your pain stops as soon as you
00:11:57allow distinctiveness to shine.
00:11:58That version is misleading.
00:12:00Being yourself is worth it, but don't expect to be easy or free.
00:12:04You'll have to put energy into it continuously.
00:12:07The world will always try to make Amazon more typical, to bring us into equilibrium
00:12:11with our environment.
00:12:12It will take continuous effort, but we can and we must be better than that.
00:12:16You have to hold the fucking line.
00:12:17Like this is the last letter that Jeff Bezos wrote.
00:12:21And can you think about like all the things that he wanted to say, the thing that he
00:12:25chose to leave on was the line, was this is the standard.
00:12:29This is what makes us different.
00:12:30And of course, it's going to take work.
00:12:32Of course, it's going to take more ways to solve the problem.
00:12:34It might cost millions more in order to do the better solution than the easy solution.
00:12:40But like I, if I could just transfer this one thing, like you can tell how good
00:12:47someone will be as an entrepreneur by the standards they keep for themselves.
00:12:51They continue to push back and say, like, why can't it be faster?
00:12:54Why can't it be easier?
00:12:55And there's famous stories of Steve Jobs putting the phone book on the desk and saying
00:12:59it has to fit in there.
00:13:00As people say, like, it's never been done before.
00:13:02Right.
00:13:02And you've got Elon Musk going on, you know, on the manufacturing line saying this could
00:13:06have two bolts.
00:13:07And like, there's no way no one's done it before.
00:13:08And he's like, break it down to physics.
00:13:10Why can't we do this?
00:13:11Right.
00:13:12And so when someone pushes back on you and says like, you know, we can't hire that fast.
00:13:16It's like, why?
00:13:16What physical law is preventing us from hiring that fast?
00:13:18If another company who's 20 times their size can hire 100 people a day, why is it taking
00:13:23us a year to do it?
00:13:23Right.
00:13:24What choice are we choosing or what cost are we not choosing to bear that we could bear to
00:13:28make the investment to pull our future forward?
00:13:29And I think it's like that push, that relentless energy, the drive to choose to be
00:13:36different, right?
00:13:37To choose to hold a value, the perfect value that you have as the ideal, and then to
00:13:43strive continuously and though imperfectly to try and live that out.
00:13:48And I think of that as like the reason you win or you don't win.
00:13:52And again, I'm not talking table stakes.
00:13:53If you want to be average, then just look at industry averages, right?
00:13:56Look at industry norms, industry standards.
00:13:58But most businesses, if you looked at the average business in the U.S., they break even.
00:14:04The median business owner almost makes no money.
00:14:05Right.
00:14:06And so it's like, why would we measure ourselves by that?
00:14:08We have to, by very definition, reject the vast majority of what other people do in order
00:14:13to achieve what other people can't.
00:14:15And I think that that is like, like I would I would encourage you to be less reasonable.
00:14:20And I would say that it has been a skill that has served me well.
00:14:23I mean, you can imagine having saying, hey, I want to break the world record that every
00:14:28other person who has had a book has had massive media empires.
00:14:32They've had big deals.
00:14:33They had national media behind them for presidents and monarchs who released books.
00:14:38And I'm saying I'm just some guy in America saying like, let's see if we can do more than
00:14:43all of them. And we did.
00:14:46We fucking did. Right.
00:14:47We outsold Prince Harry Obama combined within 24 hours.
00:14:53And please don't kill me for having some point of disrespect for whatever secret nations
00:14:58exist. Right. But I'm only saying this to make the point, which is like when I when I set
00:15:02that goal originally, can you imagine the amount of people who are like, I don't know if
00:15:05that's realistic, man, like, hey, that's a really big number.
00:15:07Like, I've really thought I mean, like, but what if it doesn't happen?
00:15:09I had someone ask me that. They said, well, what if we don't hit the goal?
00:15:12And I said, we dare greatly, motherfucker.
00:15:15That's the point. Like, so what if we don't hit the goal?
00:15:18It doesn't mean we don't we give ourselves an excuse to not try, but like try in earnest,
00:15:23not say like, oh, we're going to do this and we hope this happens.
00:15:26It's like, no, we want to have five different versions of this thing going wrong and it's
00:15:30still hitting the goal.
00:15:31And so I say this because like the goals that I have and probably the goals that you have
00:15:36never apologize for them.
00:15:38They're there. It's normal for them to be unreasonable, but you don't need to be
00:15:42reasonable. The world wants you to be reasonable.
00:15:43It's like you need to be unreasonable.
00:15:45You need to stick your feet in the mud and the certain amount of stubbornness that's
00:15:48required. And I think part of the reason that Peter Thiel and some of these great
00:15:51investors talk about phenomenal entrepreneurs is that they have sometimes they don't have
00:15:55super high agreeableness is that they don't need consensus.
00:15:57They don't need everyone else to like them because they they believe what they believe.
00:16:01Right. And the thing is, is that in order to have an outsized return at anything, you have
00:16:04to bet against conventional wisdom.
00:16:06Right. And conventional wisdom can be right.
00:16:09And so that means that fundamentally either you're an idiot or you're right and you're
00:16:12early and that's where you get rewarded.
00:16:14And so you have to think like at least the process I come down to is always like what
00:16:18physical law of reality prevents us from selling this many books.
00:16:21And that's why it came down to like, all right, we'll have multiple generators like we
00:16:24don't have power. We can't sell books.
00:16:25We have to make sure that we have backups for Internet.
00:16:28We don't have Internet. We can't sell books.
00:16:29OK. Do we have enough books?
00:16:30So we got to print them. OK, great.
00:16:32We have to have logistics that we have hundreds and hundreds of people ready to actually
00:16:34ship those books out. OK. If we have each of these things, then all that it really takes is
00:16:38enough people to see it and an offer enough that is compelling.
00:16:41That makes sense for a big enough audience to say yes, that's it.
00:16:45And so you have these problems in your business.
00:16:49You're not cash flowing enough. You're not hiring fast enough.
00:16:51You're not your price isn't what you want it to be.
00:16:53If you believe and you could reason it say like what prevents us from doing this.
00:16:57I think that that's where you can get these special outsized returns.
00:17:02I think that's where you can have the unreasonable accomplishments.
00:17:04But it comes first from having unreasonable conviction that you will hold the line, that
00:17:09this will be the standard that you have.
00:17:10And the fact that no one else has ever done it before means absolutely nothing to you
00:17:14because there's no reason that they couldn't have done it.
00:17:16And good on you for ignoring the fact of their mediocrity.