From: alexhormozi
Many businesses can achieve significant success by consistently executing fundamental tasks, as competitors often fail to do so 00:00:01. While business growth can be challenging due to unexpected complexities, the singularity of focus is paramount 00:00:11.
The Distraction Trap
Opportunities can be a major distraction, and as a business grows, these opportunities become larger and harder to decline 00:00:17. This phenomenon can be likened to the “woman in the red dress” from The Matrix, an analogy for shiny new objects or tempting opportunities 00:00:25. At every stage of business, these distractions become more attractive, requiring entrepreneurs to repeatedly learn how to say no 00:01:00.
Innovation vs. Execution
While innovation is important to a small degree, the vast majority of business success stems from diligently performing the tasks you already know you should be doing, but often neglect 00:01:18. A friend with 60 businesses making eight figures annually illustrates this; when asked how easy it would be to grow just one business, he admitted it would be effortless to scale it to $30-50 million 00:01:26. This realization led him to shut down multiple ventures to focus on the largest opportunity 00:01:57.
Mark Zuckerberg, for instance, did not have side hustles 00:02:02. Success often comes from doing one thing exceptionally well and pursuing it fully without distraction 00:02:05. As Neil Strauss observed, success is about “doing the obvious thing for an uncommonly long period of time without convincing yourself you’re smarter than you are” 00:02:22. It’s the depth and nuance of understanding how to do something that pays dividends 00:02:28.
Before seeking new ventures or “exciting add-ons,” entrepreneurs should ensure they are mastering the basics, such as 00:02:40:
- Being present on all relevant platforms 00:02:40
- Consistent email marketing and providing value 00:02:44
- Building out website SEO 00:02:48
- Developing sales training for high execution 00:02:52
Being “advanced” in business means never neglecting the basics 00:03:06. Big businesses perform the same basic functions as small businesses, but they execute them better and “fill the holes in the bucket” 00:03:17.
Prioritizing “Better,” “More,” Then “New”
Think of a business as a bucket with water flowing in (traffic/eyeballs) 00:03:23. To grow, the logical steps are:
- Fix the holes in your existing bucket 00:03:37.
- Increase the flow to that bucket 00:03:41.
- Only once those are maximized, add new flows or new buckets 00:03:45.
The guiding principle should be “better, more, new” 00:03:51. Always prioritize “better” because it carries the lowest risk 00:04:04. This means:
- Doing what you’re currently doing, but better 00:04:07
- Following up faster and more 00:04:08
- Creating better copy and creative 00:04:10
- Optimizing your site 00:04:11
- Hiring and training better people 00:04:12
- Implementing superior management and incentive systems 00:04:14
This process may sound “boring,” but it is how large businesses are built by filling all known deficiencies 00:04:18. Instead of pursuing new ventures, entrepreneurs should make a list of the 25 obvious actions that would generate more revenue and execute those first 00:04:27.
The Spiritual Difficulty of Focusing
Entrepreneurs often fall into the trap of constantly starting new things because initial success with a “new” idea (like finding product-market fit) positively reinforces that behavior 00:04:58. However, this lesson must be unlearned: starting new things can lead to punishment rather than reward as the business scales 00:05:11. Once product-market fit is achieved, the focus should shift from “new” to “better” and “more” 00:05:21.
Consequences of Diversion
Businesses grow by default and outcompete others by executing everything their rivals do, but better 00:05:45. When entrepreneurs divert resources from their core operations to new ventures, the existing business suffers from atrophy 00:05:51. Costs for media and talent rise, and if the core business isn’t continually improved, it deteriorates relative to the market 00:06:23. This leads to having multiple “buckets” (businesses) filled with holes, lacking the capacity to fix any of them 00:06:36.
Execution is Harder than Strategy
Strategy is often easy and exciting, leading people to allocate too much attention and time to new ideas rather than executing obvious truths 00:07:07. For instance, a dry cleaning business that always delivers clean clothes on time will be exceptional 00:07:12. The difficulty lies in consistent execution, not in conceptualizing the strategy 00:07:18.
When growing a business, focus on what you “need to believe” will remain constant over time 00:07:40. For example, people will always want things fast, good products, and good service 00:07:43. In “boring” industries like dry cleaning or lawn care, you often aren’t competing with the “smartest people in the world” who are focused on building the “next platform” in Silicon Valley 00:08:00. This presents an opportunity to dominate by simply mastering the basics 00:08:11.
The true “advanced” skill is not understanding the basics, but how well you execute them 00:08:18. It’s about training, recruiting, incentivizing, and continually reviewing performance 00:08:27.
The “Don’t Be Cute” Principle
A seasoned mercenary CEO emphasized “simple backyard football” over “super fancy trick plays” 00:09:34. Consistent yardage is more effective than risky, complicated maneuvers 00:09:50. This means focusing on core needs like clean clothes, fast service, and good quality 00:10:07. If you execute these fundamentals for ten years, filling every hole, your business will grow by default because competitors won’t maintain that focus 00:10:11. Business is not complicated; it’s difficult because people struggle to stay focused on the same thing for extended periods 00:10:20.
The Compounding Clock
Those who achieve significant wealth often do so by committing to and doing the same thing for a very long time 00:10:40. Ben Francis, founder of Gymshark, built a billion-dollar company by focusing on one venture for over a decade 00:10:52. The “compounding clock” starts when you commit to doing one thing better and more 00:11:09. It is arrogant to believe you can outperform fully focused competitors when your efforts are split across multiple ventures 00:11:41.
Many entrepreneurs try to juggle multiple businesses, hoping one “takes off” 00:12:41. However, none will take off if focus is divided, as any could succeed with dedicated attention 00:12:44. A roofing business owner, for example, might also operate in real estate, general contracting, and windows, believing they are “vertically integrated” 00:13:00. In reality, they are simply distracted, while the biggest roofing companies are billion-dollar enterprises built on scaling one core service 00:13:19.
Scaling and earning significant money comes from the depth and detail gained by repeatedly doing the same thing, leading to compounding returns and expertise 00:13:29. A person with split focus will never become truly proficient at any single thing, leading to “barely good enough” results and income 00:13:36. If you’re not making money, it’s often because you don’t understand your business well enough compared to top performers in your industry 00:13:41. The path to success is to rapidly eliminate ignorance in one area, rather than spreading it across many 00:13:50.