Great Talent Is The Ultimate Growth Hack

I spent the whole week with executive management in a conference room, mapping out how we’re going to scale disproportionately over the next five years.

I listened attentively. Contributed deliberately. Absorbed everything like a sponge. And I left that room as a wiser, more motivated version of myself.

We were hugging, laughing, and wishing each other well by the end of the week, despite some hard conversations. Some of us had only ever met over Zoom so meeting in person was special. For me I could get a feel for who each leader was, how they worked, and why they are the way they are.

Nothing beats the magic of in-person connection.

The Conversation Around Talent

I was in a discussion with one of our VPs about what will make or break our next phase. I said:

“Talent is the only limiter to us becoming a billion-dollar company. And for talent to join us on this journey, they need to want to work with their manager and the company.”

A few days later, I heard Alex Hormozi say the exact same thing:

As you scale a business you realise that manpower is always the limitor. (minute 13.35). It’s talent. Which is why you see the billionaires on stage say: “Guys you just got to get a good team, find good people and get out of their way.”

But the issue is that good people don’t want to work for you.

That’s why you got to go through this bootstrapped phase to prove that you can earn the right to get true A-level talent. Because if you could get the best AI person in the world you can have a multibillion dollar company within six months. But the problem is that that guy doesn’t want to work for you.

And so the question becomes - who do I need to become and what do I need to build in order for that level of talent to come with me.

A lot of the entrepreneurial journey is creating the proof that allows you to attract the talent that is required to build the next thing. The level of talent we were able to attract after we sold GymLaunch versus when we were scaling GymLaunch was night and day.

At the beginning of your career you have No-Stars.
You are the only Star. Maybe a Half-Star. But eventually you’ll get one Star and you’ll say “oh my god, if only I had ten of these people I would be twenty times bigger!”

Most entrepreneurs who have scaled more than one business, have scaled their recent businesses faster than the previous ones. Why is that? It’s because your pattern recognition improves. In order to get the pattern recognition, you just have to get punched in the face a bunch of times by shitty people.

Eventually you end up becoming a collector of talent.
If you do right by the people throughout the process then the Stars stay around and they come with you. The bench of Stars keeps getting bigger and bigger. They don’t want to work with other people because they have a great team and a great culture.

Fundamentally every level is like laying bricks.
The problem is that sometimes just one of those bricks prevents you to scale, sometimes for years. And you don’t know what right looks like. That is one of the big issues.

The difference between where you are and where you want to be are the number of hard conversations you are willing to endure.
The hard part is that we don’t like having hard conversations. We don’t want to fire people we like, but may not be right for the job and replace them with somebody that’s good.

Do The Best In The World Want To Work With You?

The answer to that question will determine how successful you will be because winners only want to work with other winners.

Useful Ideas

• Talent is the primary growth limiter. Scaling depends not just on strategy, but on who is executing it.

• Great talent doesn’t want to work with you unless you’ve earned it. You must become someone worth working for.

• Pattern recognition takes reps. Once you identify what a “Star” looks like, finding them becomes easier.

• Hard conversations are the price of progress. Replacing non-performers, even likable ones, is the cost of scale.

• In-person matters. Trust and energy build much faster when people connect physically.

See you next Sunday.

P.S. I have started re-reading High Output Management to go back to learning from one of the best.

👋 I’m Harsh. I collect useful ideas to win in business and life.

Here’s where I spend most of my time:

• iDeals Virtual Data Rooms – building a $1B business by helping dealmakers close deals faster

• M&A Community – uncovering personal stories and strategies of M&A, private equity, and investment banking leaders

• Happy Ratio – growing a food company the hard way: profit-first, purpose-led

• Marcellus Investment Managers – evangelizing long-term investing to build financial independence

Harsh Batra
(LinkedIn)