The Tesla Way: How to Simplify Your Business & Build a Better Team

Full transcript

Welcome back, guys. The Anthony Amen Show. Today we're going to talk about this book right here, The Algorithm by John McNeil. So, John, if you're watching, please come on the podcast. Come on a show. We'd love to have you. But I thought this would be a really cool segment because I do listen to a lot of books, read a lot of books, and I learned a lot of important lessons from them. And this one stood out to me specifically, so it was a really good place to start. As like a segment going forward, we can break down different topics about things you need to do. So maybe you guys could pick up a copy and learn. The algorithm, John McNeil. So I already already. Yeah, what was the biggest takeaway you had from the book?

Well, first and foremost, I think people that achieve magnificent things or unprecedented things are not these mythical beings. They're just people that find a void and create systems in order to achieve them. That was it. I think Elon Musk hitting the trillion dollars and just all throughout his career, people always looked at him as like this supernatural guy that has the science down to a path. And it's not, it's just systems. And he's very, very simplistic and he doubles down on that. That's what I took away from the book. That was the big takeaway that you don't have to be overly complicated and uh uh come up with this equation that no one ever thought of and be Albert. You just have to find a void, find what the problem is, and find a very simplistic way to like the cutting the manufacturer fees, like just simple things like he was able to double down on, and you find a rooted problem solve it.

Yeah.

And I love that.

For those that don't know, John McNeil worked as this temporary CEO for Tesla between I think it was 2013 and 2018. 18, yeah. Yeah. So I thought that was really cool. But things he picked up from working with Musk as like inside information and came up with this, what he called the algorithm. So, what is the algorithm in simplistic terms?

A formula to success.

And what is that formula?

And let me tell you.

I got it. So we got it. I got it, man. So I can read it word for word. Put in the inside cover. So five steps. Step one, question every requirement. Correct. Step two, delete every possible step in a process.

Well, let me say one of them. Step three. Step three. Simplify and optimize. Step four, accelerate, cycle time.

And then step five, automate the system. Automate last. Yeah. And that thought it really got me thinking. And before we even get into this, I want to question a term, and the term is learning. What does it mean to learn in this most simplistic function of the term? How do you break down something that's simple?

Um how do you how do you I don't know how to explain that? To learn is to acquire knowledge on how to do something. What would you say? How would you answer that? How to what to learn? Great question. Yeah, how do you what would you do?

How would you so you have an input and an output, right? So something, a stimulus comes, you reference that stimulus, and then you do something about it. To learn, you learn something, right? So a stimulus comes in, but now you have a different output. Okay. New information, new output.

Okay.

Because you can say, you can regurgitate things, right? You can have old stimulus come in, same output. Did you really learn? Okay. If you didn't change. So the real definition of learning is you have that same stimulus coming, but now you have a different output because you learned something. You learned how to process, do whatever exactly. You're applying that knowledge, basically.

Applying the knowledge.

So taking a book like this, it's great. And I feel like a lot of people do this. They they, oh, I read this great book and got these cool things, but they don't do the application portion of it. Correct. Which is what you did. Which is what I did day one.

Yep, which is what I did. I'll get to that. But yeah.

So I want to talk about what I did and think this helped open up a lot of people's minds.

And then I'll do you.

The biggest thing is you look at your bottleneck of your company. And right now we're facing a bottleneck for our sales process. So I'm gonna explain a little bit about what our sales process is because it's very traditional. Okay. So if you're a gym owner and you're watching this, I'm sure your sales process is exactly the same. So we have paid ads, right? So paid ads go out on Meta. A client will see that paid ad, will have to click that paid ad, answer questions. Those questions then go into a CRM, which we use go high level, right? Go high level then triggers an auto text. On top of that, lets my lead nurturist know they have to call the person in under five minutes. Speed to lead is king. Yep. So they're double dialing and then following what we call the nurture process of that, right? Yep. With the idea of that lead nurturist, the goal is to get them to book a fitness consultation. Correct. So they get them to book a fitness consultation. We try to do it under 48 hours. Now that lead, once they get that booked, has to get auto-replies and constant confirmations. So they show for that fitness consultation, right? So that's that now we have our lead-to-book ratio, then we have a book to show ratio. Then once they show for that fitness consultation, we have a salesperson. Yep. That salesperson then has to sell them on a program, which then you're implying if they showed, did they close? And then how much money did they close for and you get kicked? So after all of that, that's our sales process. The next step for our client, because it is relevant to the conversation, is going to be booking what we called an onboarding, or we also have called it our biometric analysis and movement screening. So that's basically 20 minutes of getting on our apps and 40 minutes of entire movement screening. We do body fat, muscle mass, all that, all that stuff, generalized to then build a program. And then after they show for that, then they come for their first official session. Wow.

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to. But it's going towards a book.

Go ahead. Go ahead. So I'm looking at this, and we we've been trying to for years, like our bottleneck's been our book rate. Our book rate's been sitting at between 20 and 25%.

Wow.

So we constantly trying to like get people to book more, book more, book more. And then we get hit summer. And then summer we struggle with our show rates. And I don't know struggle with a book rate, now we start struggling with our show rate because people have priorities outside. And of course. It's like you're trying to spend so much time. How can I send more confirmation messages than we would do? We said a shit done. How can I reach out more than we would do? We reach out a lot. So how do we create more? It's just I'm looking at this and I'm getting so confused because I'm like, there's so many variables. Now, what if we cut out as many variables as possible? But Anthony, gyms don't do it that way. Well, very it's very gym-like, and I dare you go look at any gym online. They don't have the pricing on their website. Yeah, I remember that transparency. Yeah, they are very hidden by things because they want you to go through that process. Correct. And then talking to people, they just want to know what they're getting and sign up for it. And it's like, why, why, why? Like, why is this the standard? Like the big boxes, they all do this. So I was thinking, I was like, what if we flip it? What if I take the entire process and just flip it on his head? Flipping cut out as many single steps as possible. So this is what I created. So now it's very simple. Ad goes out. Okay. Client clicks the ad. They have two options.

Okay.

Option A, they do name, email, phone number, and it goes into our CRM early nurturing who then reaches out to them. Or they book directly with a remote salesperson on a calendar on there. That's fine. So now they're direct booking or they're reaching out. Instead of having a book show close, what they're what they're booking is a 15-minute phone call with a salesperson. So no more lead nurturing process. That salesperson direct sells them right there at that point. Now make it simple for how what if you were able to, because you already sold, you already know who we are. You're not a cold leader, more of a woman leader. Those people can go directly on our website and just buy your program.

I get you. I get it, makes a lot of sense. Same thing with Elon Musk, the click, and then it went to 12 clicks instead of the 60 pages. Makes a lot of sense. The only thing is, don't you think that your close rate is higher when you have that personal connection is face to face. And I'm assuming that's why you did that. When you come in, the probability of them closing is higher versus on the phone.

Let's talk about that. All right. Because obviously I've thought of this. We're gonna use really simple numbers. Okay. So we're gonna assume we get 100 leads. This is the simplest way to think about it. We're gonna round up some numbers just to everyone could follow along. But our book rate's generally 25%.

Okay.

So that means out of the 100 leads, 25 of those are booking. Out of the 25 that book, our show rate is roughly 50%. So that means 12 and a half slash we'll round up 13, right? 13 people are showing for the appointment. Our close rate is really good. 86, yeah. It's upwards of 80. So if we assume 80%, now we're looking at that and we're saying that would bring us 10 of those people sign up. So out of the original 100 people, 10 are signing up. So it's 10%. So our lead funnel in, 10% are signing up. And look at this, right? And you're like, yeah, you everything looks great. Could we, if we dropped the variables, how much would it spy on? Do that. So basically, simply sp simplistically speaking, lead comes in. If they direct buy, can I sell 10% of those people? Can I close 10% on a 15-minute phone call? You think so? That's what I'm saying, though. Yes. Okay, why why? But this 10 is so easy. Why can't I close 10% of people like just direct phone call instead of losing them through book show close? Because now it's so much fun. You know, they were talking about cash flow because this is relevant. That whole process, I originally described out in the beginning. The average person doesn't start their first session from the day they click that ad for 10 days. Oh wow. So we are 10 days behind that lead coming in from them starting. Oh wow. That's gone. Yeah, that's so far break down. I need to shorten that as much as possible. 100%. Yeah. So really easy now for a prospect coming in. Uh even like take it a step further. Our website leads, we're way better on our stats.

Okay.

So even previous to switching, we have roughly uh 80% book rate for website leads. Oh. An 80% show rate and an 80% close rate. It's like very, it's a lot higher. Of course, of course. Because those people going on to the website are seeing our pricing.

They already, yeah. The interest is there.

The interest in there, they're seeing the price in there what they want. Yeah, exactly. So these are warmer audiences. Correct. And when I talk to these people, I get the same thing. I would have just signed up. The referrals, the this, the that. So why not just have the capability of just signing up instead of dragging the cash flow out?

So, but then so my question becomes why were you doing that? Which part? The long process. Why was it? Because that's how everyone did it. So you there's no athletes, you're just following it. Like that's how it's supposed to be.

The came from the gym industry. That's what everyone did. Because everyone's afraid of being compared. And I'm looking at like Tesla. I'm reading this book, right? You can buy a car online. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Put that into perspective. Crazy. How much is a car, yeah?

How much is a Tesla, roughly? I think 70 something thousand. 70?

You're spending $70,000 without talking to a single person booking online. He got a Tesla. Yes. You can buy car fans from Amazon now. You can buy cars from Cardana. You're not talking to anybody. That's crazy. You're spending that amount of money without talking to a single human being. Why can't I sell a $5,000 program without talking to a single being if they're selling $70,000 cars? It's true. Damn, if you put it that way, you're right. It's all about flipping your branding. Yes. Right? So what becomes important now? And because of the question, things that get worried about, it's well, I need to explain people what we do. That's what we're doing. I need to make sure they have trust in the brand. That's what I'm saying. So why not put that first? Why not put brand first?

I think that puts the everything we do first. I think it's just a matter. Well, I don't know if you will just find I think for me it is a matter of fear.

I think because people never understand your product as much as you do.

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. So I know if I can get you face to face.

So take that and break that down into your marketing, into a science. How can you get every human being out there to understand your product as well as you do? Huh? Put the brand first. Take the education first. That's dope, bro.

I really like that. I'm not gonna lie to you. That's dope. And that's what Tesla did. All the information, you don't have to come in. Who goes to a Tesla dealer? I remember my friend bought a Tesla, Jeffy's watching. He did it online.

You know why people hate talking to people? They hate being hatefully sold, they hate feeling that they're not getting a deal. This is a sleazy car salesman.

Also, also convenience. Just like the movie theaters in Netflix. Yes.

Just like just convenience. It's everything's related. Correct. So why can't I make it more convenient for my clients? I'm not trying to hide anything. I'm not trying to, like, I know we're worth what we charge.

So you have, therefore, there's no shame in posting your price and having price transparency. Yeah, I don't think there's shame at all. Do you think do you think for those that don't, there's a certain level of shame? What do you think about that? Or trying to get over on people?

I think they don't believe in what they do.

That's what I'm saying.

Yeah.

I don't think you really believe for anyone that doesn't put their price online, you believe that. Where some would argue, no, it's just premium, and those that put their price online come across as cheap.

It disagree. Because I so believe in what I do. That you're not afraid to just, this is what it costs. I know we're different. I know you can't compare us. I know that our company is so unique, not one person out there can do what we do. And I know for the client side, they will get results, they will feel better, they will move more. Like it, there's just so much guaranteed inside of it. So, yeah, to kind of talk about those on-the-edge clients, what I did was said, okay, our people aren't showing. I'm paying a salesperson a ridiculous amount of money, right? To sit in a studio and try to talk to people, sell these people, it's just a lot. So they have a lot more, like they're constantly being interrupted, whatever. It's hard to focus just on sales. Cut all that out. Let's just get rid of it. Just get rid of it. Now, if I have a remote salesperson that sits behind a computer all day and just how many more contacts can they reach out to in a day? Way more. And how much easier can they simplify their sales process to sell these people just over the phone?

It's way more. What step was it that he said? Simplify and optimize. Or make it even better. Yeah.

For those that don't know our local area, Long Island, I saw this crazy stat, which was mind-boggling, just to give reference. In order to afford living here, as a single adult, you need to make $133,000 at a minimum year to afford living here. That's how expensive this area is. Yeah. Yeah. So now put a job posting up, right? I'm trying to hire a salesperson. I had a $150,000 a year job for Long Island, which is a lot of money for a company like this, right? And I can't get a good salesperson. Nope. Because it's not a lot of sales. Yep. It needs to be a quarter of a million. And I can't afford that. But how much is $150,000 if someone lives in the Midwest? Bingo. But but that's well, I mean, don't argue. That's why most companies outsource price cutting. But there's really outsourcing. Now I can outsource how much can the killer salesperson can I get? Oh, come on now. That is making 150k. Not even that.

No, less than that. Iowa. Yeah.

Yeah. Come on. Who's it? Advertise the richest one in the already. It's killing it. And the applications have been so much better. What? So you've you already applied this? Oh, yeah.

Since this book. Yeah. So you're so Anthony, tell people when you read the book. I finished it. Let me hold on. This is bringing up to my next point. Last week. You finished it last week. And when did you apply it? There's all these changes. The next day. And that, but that's what I'm saying. A lot of people get knowledge, and it the whole point I'm trying to make is fear is what holds people back. From make once you apply the knowledge, like you said, the output. Once you apply the knowledge and actually take action, things change immediately. So you you already outsourced somebody in the Midwest?

We're in the midst of hiring right now. We've done 15 interviews already.

15 interviews in one week, just due to one book.

Yeah.

So, Anthony, what else did you learn about this book? Because I got a couple of things I wanted to talk about. I'm gonna give more stories. No, no, hold on, hold on. Let me um well, I think it's a better one. What was your favorite chapter? I think the chapter you learned the most from. I'll tell you mine. Let me just a specific chapter.

Okay. It was a concept. Okay. He was talking about working for Tesla.

Okay.

They had a problem with fixing the cars.

Yes, I remember that.

So the problem was they had to build these big centers, it cost them millions, and they didn't have the budget for it. Manufacturing so he thought outside the box and sent people to their homes, which customers appreciated and loved more. And now they didn't just spend millions of dollars on these big shots of people need to come to them. Convenience. And they became more than just a car company. Correct. They started and developed becoming a bigger brand and owning more part of everyday people's lives. Like same thing that Apple does, right? It was just a computer and then it became a phone, and then it became headphones, everything, everything. Everything. So like, how do you own more of the process?

That was yes. Yes, that was one of my favorite parts. Like what do you give the example with GM versus what they do? Buying, financing, servicing, everything where GM just does one part of it and sends people out and Tesla does everything. And that's what I'm saying. It's just convenience. The same thing with Netflix and the block, I'm not blockbuster, yeah, Netflix and Blockbuster. Videos being sold, people want to watch it from home. So how do you how do you become more how do you make it more convenient for your customers? And that's the whole point of cutting all that out of the junk out, doing the sales right there, letting your website speak for you, the marketing speak for you. So once you come to them, they're the warmest leads you ever met, my friend. The close is right there on the phone.

I mean, it confirms the model I was going for anyway. Okay, which is we're gonna become a medical company.

Yes, that's true.

So in New York, there's a lot of like really strict with what you can and can't do. So I have to become a PLLC, which means I have to now partner with the doctor. And then if once I do that, I can then hire a physical therapist. Well, does the NP count? No, the NP is outsourced. Okay, okay, okay. She doesn't look at individual client programs. Oh, okay. So then I could hire a physical therapist, and then I could have my direct in. Wow. But you're doing that now, I'm assuming. I'm gonna start doing this next year.

Okay.

And then after that, it's gonna be more I'm gonna hire a doctor. And the doctor's gonna prescribe PT or prescribe dietitian.

And you don't gotta go nowhere.

You don't have to go on here.

But this is the same testament, same thing Nick Neil was talking about, end-to-end. And that's and that's where you see the changes. Another thing that I wanted to touch on this before, because I know you probably have a lot of stories, Anthony. When they dug through the paperwork of why customers have to sign 50 pages of paperwork, they cut down 50 to 60 pages to 12 clicks. You go to the car dealership, man. You gotta sign 60 pages, sign here, sign here. You don't have to do that anymore with Tesla. 12 clicks, name, email, address, everything else, 12 clicks, and your car is purchased. That's it. It's finding a way to be convenient for people, man. I think for me, yeah, I'm not thinking it was. Yeah, it's just it's just a matter of fear. You're right. It's just following what everyone else did and not wanting to, no, being afraid of being different and saying, I'm gonna try this and flip it. And and that's what I admire about Elon Musk. Now, the thing that I dis I don't know how you feel about this. Do you feel that John McNeil kind of used Elon Musk? In what aspect? Took all this information from him, left the job because his wife said his personality is changing, and then outed everything, his method and everything. What do you think of that? That kind of rubbed me the wrong way.

I'm gonna be honest. He said in his memoir, he asked Musk.

Oh, he did?

Yeah.

Oh, I didn't see that. Okay, John, you're a good guy. I don't know. That rubbed me the because he he quit the job because his wife said personality is changing.

City can make a book about it. Was in the uh forward? Okay, all right, yeah. Because I was like, I don't really, I don't know. Maybe you skip the forward, you listen to an audible.

All right, yeah. All right, that's why I was like, no, what so here's another thing that John, I think, in my opinion, still would have been in the company. He was phenomenal. Elon him got along, he he took the company to different heights, the deal in China, 14 months. He did all these phenomenal things for Tesla. But, and this is no shout to his wife, but the people around you can influence you to make the wrong decision sometimes just as much as the right. Do you think he should, in your opinion, looking at you know everything he wrote and his experience with Tesla with Tesla and Elon Musk, do you think he made the right decision on leaving that company based on his personality changing from his wife's perspective? Would that be something you would do? He literally said, I left 2018 because my wife said my personality is changing. This guy, he and Elon Musk must revolutionized the world. Really, they're not gonna be able to do that.

That becomes a question when we talk about priorities. Correct. That's what I'm going to here. Right? So did he himself want that as an individual? That's the first gate. That's the most important gate. Right? First one, yeah. And so if he didn't feel like he was like 50-50 or wasn't aligned to him himself, then maybe he went and asked his wife. And then he's like, I don't really care. Let me ask my wife. And then your wife is gate number two.

Yeah.

So the point being, like, you do things for yourself first. Correct. But you yourself are a priority, but your wife is just right about theirs equal to you. You and your wife, when you get married, become one, and therefore you should prioritize that person above all us. Now if a friend said a different story, but your wife and it depends. Like they don't know his ins and outs of true. But and the point I'm trying to get.

Maybe we can get him on here and interview and ask him. And the read the point that I'm trying to drive home is when he was getting hired at Tesla, he asked Elon, why not go for, you know, you look for a president, why not go for like a big car, you know, car salesman or someone that had experience with car companies and stuff. Now, Elon's, you don't remember Elon's response? He said, No, I want an entrepreneur, right? That understands the struggles of entrepreneurship and the ins and outs of things that he chose him. So my whole point is when building a business and you and you have to rely, because you, Anthony, rely on your CLO to a certain extent, correct?

Which, by the way, was an entrepreneur first. What? Say it again. Amanda owned a gym. Correct. No, I know, I know. Prior to this, it kind of confirms his point. Which is what? Musk's point, you should hire a couple of things.

Oh, Musk's point, yeah. I thought you meant yes, correct. You go for someone that understands. So the point I'm trying to say is how, as a CEO, do you rely on someone that you're building an extraordinary company with, you're accomplishing great things, but quits because his wife says his personality changes. You can't rely on anyone at that point. Do you understand what I'm saying?

But you can rely on the person for that specific situation, and that's why you learn to create redundancies.

Bingo. Because you can't rely on just like the guy's.

I quit these fail saves, but like we've talked about the same thing with employees. Like, I have fail safes for myself. Okay. What if I quit? What happens? How many times have I mentioned I will replace myself? Yeah, 100%.

I just want to. He never he never spoke about Elon. I that's it's hard. I want to it's funny. I want to ask Elon once. I wonder how he felt when he put in his resignation. My wife says, My personality changes, I'm done. It's just out of the blue. I'm sure you had people quit on you before. What happens? How does Elon feel like how much trust did Elon put in this guy? That's the question I want. How much trust did he put in your? How did you feel, Elon, when he walked away one day?

I mean, at that point, when you're such a big company and it happens all the time, you just get numb to it. I think these are trivial questions that people ask themselves and struggle with in the beginning of owning a company. Like what I mean by that is me personally, I used to get so hurt when people left, but you go through a hundred people and you're just like, it is what it is, but you don't hold it against them. Just because someone, like I said, just because someone's a bad employee doesn't make them a bad person. Correct.

I agree with that. Yeah, that's that's dope.

Yeah, that's huge. But they have to just put the right people in the right vehicles, they're not the right vehicle, go do something else that makes you happy. That's fine. Just it's totally fine. Don't sit here and mope mope over losing people or getting hurt. And I keep falling to that I'm human, but at the end of the day, I get it becomes less and less and less and less. I just you just move, you just go, you pivot, you've been through worse.

And speaking of that, so now, like you said, redundancies, keeping things simplistic. Said something. The more choices you give a customer, kills the deal. Correct. The less. You knew that already, though. Which is why you had what 50-something programs at one point and then cut down to three.

And then I'm actually taking it even further. We have four CRMs. So I'm cutting one. Simplicity for employees. Because now the employee four platforms is a lot.

Yeah.

So why not just get rid of a software? The one that doesn't just cut. And then I'm looking at our a la carte options, and I'm currently cutting those right now, too. Why do we have all these extra offerings as a la carte? No. Let's cut them and simplify them.

Let me ask you a question. Talking about that's step three simplicity. Do you think you ever go down to one program? Just one. Probably not. Why? Because you you do need a price anchor. Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay. So two is what you'd most likely go do eventually.

Two, uh, I think three is the sweet spot, but three, period. Like three including a la card options, like all the above together.

Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay. That's what you're gonna do.

So instead of spending paying for a membership for training and then a membership for dietitian and then stretching, get it down to just three periods.

That's it. That's three, yeah. Yeah.

Like there's nothing else you can do on top of that.

So Anthony, what I learned from the book is I was trying to automate a system that was broken. That's it. I was skipping step, I was skipping step two and three and jumping to five. And then finding out there's it's broken, have to fix it, go back to five, and everything just keeps you. You have to conquer each step before you get to five. You automate the system after all four steps are done. Yeah, that's right.

So that was that was delete test to put speed to it. Correct. Right? And you pressure it to find where the bottleneck is, and then you fix that bottleneck. And then once it's perfect, then you automate it.

And I kept jumping to five because I wanted to be lois of your hands off. I gotta move on and make more money and close more clients. But I didn't, I didn't, it wasn't structured correctly. All five steps.

I mean, even take this to I had a conversation with Skylar yesterday. I had, and just for reference, I had my managers read this book. You say it again? I had my managers read this book.

Oh, okay. So Skylar read it, my manager read it, yeah.

And then you read it, and my CFO is reading it. Dope. I wanted them to think like an entrepreneur and look at their specific markets of what they can do. So Skylar called me to hire this remote salesperson, and you know, we sit there, we we only have the capacity for one salesperson. We it takes me 20 days to get them ramped and to get their programs systemized out, and then they start, and then we don't know how good they are, and then we end up being here for four months, and it's harder to fire thanks to be four months, and they end up sucking. I'm like, so how many steps can we cut? Exactly. It's like what do you mean? I was like, let's cut it, let's trim the whole ones. Oh, he's being musk. Let's cut the entire sales process, like the entire like employee onboarding process down. Yep. He's like, Well, I don't know how to do that. And I was like, Well, let's let's break it down. You said the biggest struggle takes you hours to build out on one of our CRMs a profile. And we know that you can roughly get a good idea of how someone is within 14 days.

Okay.

So what if we make one parent account already built out? It's our test onboarding account, and then everyone uses that test onboarding account that's a new employee, do the onboarding process. They do not get the individualized one until they pass the 14 days. It's like, well, how do we tell who's doing what then? Because it's not labeled by name. Give them time blocks. Shh. So now you optimize things by time blocks. So you're saying you're 7 to 11, you're 11 to 3, and now you know inside those time blocks who's doing what.

Yes.

I was like, look at the onboarding process for an employee because people forget, they look at leads of how to do nurture cell clothes, but they don't do that for employees. It's the same thing nurture cell clothes. So we have an indeed ad out, right? People are gonna click and fill out that indeed ad. Let's automate first round interview bookings, right? We can we can do that. We can have a little system screening process. They booked the first round uh booking for an interview. You have a specific script that you're doing within that 15 minutes. Do you need a round two? Like, is this someone done that you need to do a round two for person?

Exactly.

He's like, well, not really, because they've got the 14 days. Okay, and it doesn't cost us that much money either. Yes. So let's cut round two. Yep. That's step one. So now we have round one. Now they've tell these people you're gonna be booked into a 14-day process. Here's your checklist. You give them a checklist. You need to do your employee onboarding, your sales onboarding, and learn these systems, uh, these softwares that we have, and hit this sales goal. And you give it to them, and then they go through and they do it, and they have to present you the specification, certification. So you have everything onboarding is built out. They're just clicking and going through, watching videos, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then our softwares, they all have pre-programmed videos.

Uh yeah, that's the easiest way to do it.

Yeah, have them just follow those. Why don't we make them on our own? It's already done. No. So then they're following those and they get those done. And then they have a sales. You want a killer, right? You want someone that's going to take the initiative. This is your time block. There's how many sales you got, and then when they finish those 14 days and they graduate, then you move them on as an employee. Now, you need once you get this, you speed test it. So, how do you speed test this? Let's do onboarding blocks. Meaning every 14 days, there's a new block that goes live for employees.

Okay.

So, any app we keep applications keep coming in, so we're not waiting to restarting the job post. Exactly. So then waiting for people to apply, yeah. We backlog the entire thing. So we take four people at a time that go through the 14-day process. And every 14-day process, we give get four people going. So they're always blocking and getting through. His question, as an employee, how am I gonna know if I'm gonna stay here? Well, they have that checklist. If they finish the checklist, hit the requirements, they stay and we lock them in. And we just keep going, keep going, and we keep funding. We never stop doing it. I mean, like, we're hiring both a W-2 and a 1099. I was like, W2 is a little harder, you're paying them hourly. Correct. Right? Given these specific blocks, but 1099s, why can't we hire a bunch of them? They cost us nothing. Nothing. It's all upside. So if they keep going this 14-day window, I'm sure we're gonna self-filter out out of 100, maybe one will stay. So why not just do 1099s? Because I want people to answer specific windows of phone calls. So I would have a Monday to Friday 9 to 5 W-2 and all hours outside of that attending. Which though they're taking over the old leads. Oh they're the old lead nurturing, right? Because I can't tell them to work between 9 and 12. No, so they can just they're all be self-motivated, hitting those phone calls. Of course, yes. And you're easily gonna be able to tell who's good and who's not good. And that's the specific thing. Yeah, if they're closing like crazy and they keep going, then you just have monthly competitions to see who stay and who doesn't. Correct.

And that's how you know who's the best. How much quicker would our business accelerate? A lot more. Cutting the steps. So is that the big so that's the biggest lesson you learned out of it? It's just simple and simple simplify out of it.

Well, this book specifically, and I loved this, and I'm trying to think how to get to that for our company. Do you remember their sales onboarding process they talked about for Tesla?

Uh, so it's very vigorous. I can't remember. Yes.

It's one sentence.

No, what? Yeah. What what was it?

It's one sentence.

They're say how they hire people.

Musk got pissed off about how long it took to onboard people and go through the training and all this bullshit of courses that take it. He said it doesn't make a freaking difference. So they simplified it their entire onboarding process to one sentence. To what? What was it? Be so good.

Oh, they talk about you at dinner. That people talk to you about dinner. Now I remember, yes, at dinner. That was that's funny. I wrote that down. Y'all was walking around the kitchen warming up food thing. Like, how do I get so good? They talk about me at dinner, they don't forget you. Yes.

You talked about specifically when you walked in today that you don't like hiring new employees because then you got to reteach them everything.

Yeah, it's annoying. Yeah.

It's annoying. And it's time consuming, and you don't know if they're gonna be good, and you're spending all this hours into it.

Correct. Yeah.

Imagine if you shorten your onboarding to one sentence. And then it would force you to think about how to get everything else done without Yao. Think about that sentence. Be so good, people talk to you about dinner, right? So there was a story specifically in here there was a hurricane hitting Florida. Oh, yeah, yeah. And all the Tesla drivers got stuck in desktop traffic and worried the betters are gonna die. Yes, yes. One of the managers of a Tesla store drove, met someone on the highway, like gave them charge and drove home and like didn't say anything, and then like musket. I sure'm convoluted in the story and cutting it.

Another one used to be more.

But basically, being like, this manager did all this, like gave them a car like out of the hours.

Like above and beyond Chick-fil-A treatment, man.

Right? Way above and beyond. Like, why did you do that? He said, because I wanted them to talk to me about dinner. I was like, You know the families who talk about that guy after dinner for the rest of their lives? Can you believe this store manager came all the way out, met me, gave me your car, took an Uber home, whatever the case may be? Like, that's how do you teach that?

Well, there has to be incentives to want to have them talk about you at dinner. What do you think those are at Tesla, anything? I think the biggest no one does it for just to do it. It has to be something.

Incentives is a fun, funny word. Because when you hear the word incentives, people jump to money and penny. I disagree.

Okay.

People need money to live. Correct. But we all know there's a certain extent that you could be getting paid 20 times more at a job, but you'll take the cheaper job because they treat you better as a human being.

Yeah, that's true.

So people want recognition at the end of the day. They want to that's true, too. They want to go home and take John McNeil as an example, and his wife just say, Wow, you come home such a happy person at the end of the day at work. Ah. So maybe that, okay. So it's more that like that guy that did that good deed, I'm sure he felt really good about it.

100%, yeah.

Like he's like, Wow, I got to do this for my job, and they praised me.

But I think it has to be more than that. It has to be a driving force, not just great job, pat on the back. There has to be something.

It's the recognition behind it. Correct. Like, take John how he got his job. Do you remember how he got his T-Real job?

Uh by the friend that referred him something. What did he do? I don't I can't remember off the top.

It was the best thing I've ever heard.

I can't, what was what was it? Remind me?

All right. So I want everyone, if you're watching this, to go back and watch the video about how to get a job. What did he do? Because this guy took it to the extreme. What did he do? I can't remember. Yeah, let me see. Took it to the extreme of how to get a job. Everything Anthony said. Okay. But just to the extreme. This is way that was way before he read this book. His friend told him about the CEO job. He had a conversation with Musk.

Yep, I remember. Yeah.

Did not get hired, but he's had his first conversation. Yep. Flew out. I remember that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Himself on his own dime. Yeah, but I'm afraid that was that's.

Started talking to the sales managers. Yeah. Figured out they weren't following up with people. Yes, 5,000 people. Told them the sales manager, start following up immediately. Fire. Sales went up. Yes. Musk ended up calling him. He's like, sorry I did all that. I just took the initiative. He goes, You're gonna thick right here in tied one spot. But stayed quiet for one minute.

How scary. Because he didn't know whether it was gonna be a good thing or bad thing. Yes, the free, essentially the free, the free route. He went the free route and got the job. Um, damn, I've I lost my thought. What was it? What was it? What were you saying right before that, Anthony? Before the guy got the job. What the heck was it?

What incentives people want?

Yes. Okay. I think I don't know what they do with Tesla, I don't know what it is. But I think the the knowing that you can accelerate, you can excel here.

You can become you can excel here. I don't mean to cut you up, but I think it's so important. You can excel here, you love what you do, and the mission is more important than anything else.

That's how you get them to talk to you about your data.

That's how you create that culture.

Tell with the mission. What have you been doing differently in your business specifically? That that's not that's not driving that home with your employees. Do you feel that you that you can change?

It's that Skillworthville phenomenon again. Okay. Yeah. I need people with will.

And you do that by, in my opinion, firing people and getting the right people in.

But hiring people who fully encompass our mission.

But also it's it goes hand in hand. You have to fire the people that are cancers.

Because if you have people that are a company is going to always do that for the end of time. Yeah. You're always going to end up firing people that end up becoming cancers and don't succeed. And it's hard to have a mission that people find you and come out because it's not pushed. Like when you're a new company, you don't do marketing, you don't do whatever, no one knows who you are. It's hard to find people that align with your mission because they don't know what you want.

Exactly.

So you need to push that mission out. This is what we do, this is what you want, and then you recruit those people. And wouldn't that be increasing marketing? Yeah.

Am I right?

Right? People know the mission. What was their marketing budget? Do you remember? Did that number stand out to you? No, what number was it? Between 2013 and 2018, what was Tesla's marketing budget overall to go total together aligned?

What was it?

Come on, yeah. You, Mr. Marketing, didn't stand out to you.

What was it? What was it? Was it zero bucks? Oh, yes. He said something negative about marketing.

He said, we don't bus told them to grow this company without spending a diamond marketing.

Yeah.

How do you build organic? How do you push organically? The mission of Tesla. People wanted to buy electric vehicles. One for the different subcategories of it. You had people that wanted it for the speed, people that wanted it for the environment.

Economics and racing and all that other shit.

Right? So there were different categories of people that really loved these cars. But how much would people think about the referrals that they got from it? That was all built upon.

That's the organic growth.

Because they were built in for the mission. The employees went above and beyond. So when that guy drove to dinner, it all trickled. Because that company who did that for that guy, what are they going to do for me? That company believes in something. It's not a clock-in-clock out kind of job.

So essentially, to get people to talk about your employees at dinner, your employees and the people and the clients that you have, you have to go as a CEO, make sure everyone is going above and beyond for the current clients you have. Everyone. And anyone that's not willing to do that, you have to get rid of them and hire. There's a filtering system. You have to keep doing it. And naturally, I mean, marketing dollars should decrease tremendously because organically, in word of mouth, everything else should increase. And that's going to take, yeah, my job. And that's going to take finding people. And then I think I used to have this problem. I don't have it anymore. It's tough still, just because we're humans, but it becomes increasingly difficult to let go of people that have been with you for a long time because you build a personal connection with them. When you know in your heart you have to in order for your company to excel. It's just, it's just human, it's just hard. It's hard to do it. Recently, you don't really know what happened with you. It was difficult. You made a decision, you said, you know, I should have let this person go. But I think because of the culture where everyone's having fun, it becomes very family-oriented. And it's hard to say you gotta go. You're not part of this family anymore. You give multiple chances.

If anyone says that you have a family business, run. Wait, say it again. If anyone says we treat our employees like family, run. I disagree with that. Why would why you do not want a family business, you do not want to treat your employees like family. Family means I take advantage of you. Family means I don't. Well, yeah, I want a winning sports team.

Yeah, but family can still hold each other accountable. So what?

Yeah, 100%.

Well, it depends on the kind of family.

We will do a whole episode on uh if you want family. Okay, we gotta do that type culture because I tell you there's a fact. Every successful entrepreneur I watch it, I agree with it fullheartedly. Family, a family employee like run business is the worst kind of business to be a part of. Because families don't have that accountability aspect. To them, because you they said because we are family.

Yeah, but no, let me give let me give some clarity. And what I meant by family is just caring about you beyond just the job as an employee or a robot. That's what I meant. Not not taking accountability and all this, that's a must. That that's that that goes without saying yes.

I would say you better have going watching like Remember the Titans. I don't want a bat team.

Yes, okay. Sports more so. But do you you care about you said it in one episode? If I have an employee that works on it that goes above and beyond, I go above and beyond for my employee. Remember, you go above and beyond. That's family audience.

No, that's a winning sports team mentality.

So, what does a coach do for a player that goes above and beyond? If you're already starting, what does he do?

What can you what can you do? Let's flip it. Okay. The person that is winning and doing XYZ, do you want the person that scores the most baskets, gets the most goals, but doesn't pass the ball to his teammates? Ah, I see. Or do you want the person that maybe scores slightly less but constantly gets his team around and involves everyone up? You get it's like you scored 90 baskets. I'm making numbers up, but to score 91 baskets is so much extra work. And when your team's scoring 10 baskets a piece, what if you just got your team to score two extra baskets and you score no extra baskets? All of a sudden, two times five is 10 more baskets you're scoring a game, as opposed to you scoring one more basket a game.

That makes sense. I see what you're saying.

I want that high-end employer that's gonna level up everybody else.

Everyone else, yeah. It's a good point. I think we still need to elaborate a little more and expand on that, but I get what you're saying.

Anyway, yeah, thank you for reading this book. Guys, go check this out. We get nothing from this. John McNeil. The algorithm, John McNeil, John. If you're watching, come on down. Come on the show. We have questions. Don't forget, like, subscribe, share. Until next time. Peace.