Hala: [00:00:00] What's up, young and profiters? Last week, I played part one of my interview with Laila Hormozy, and we heard her incredible story of how she went from being a rebellious teen in trouble with the law to a multi millionaire mogul by her late 20s. It was an epic story. If you haven't heard that episode yet, I would recommend you go back to part one, check it out first, and then come back when you're done.

Hala: Today, we're going to be listening to part two of this episode on management and hiring. Now this episode went live back in 2022 originally, but trust me, Layla's advice on management and hiring is some of the best I've ever heard. And it is still relevant as ever. I especially found her thoughts on accountability to be truly invaluable.

Hala: Transcribed Layla believes that accountability is critical to the operation [00:01:00] of a business. She calls it the glue between action and result, and even calls herself the Chief Accountability Officer. As the leader of your business, you have a responsibility to hold your team accountable, to be the Chief Accountability Officer.

Hala: And Layla has some great tips for how to do this. including how to shape expectations, measure performance better, and give more productive feedback. Okay, well, here's part two with Laila Hormozi. Let's jump right into it.

Hala: You've got a lot of management philosophies. You are such a rock star in this area. You've led numerous teams. You found huge amounts of success. And everyone can technically be a manager, but not everyone is a leader, even if they are in a management role. So first of all, what do you think the qualities are of a world class leader?

Leila: Three very important qualities, in my opinion. One is industriousness, your ability to work hard on the right work when the time comes. Second is enthusiasm, which is being able to, [00:02:00] to seek out and. Pursue hard challenges without losing face, without losing energy. And then the third is competitive greatness.

Leila: Competitive greatness is the love of a hard challenge. When the hard challenge comes, it's not, you run away from it. It's that you run towards it because you understand what it will do for you. Those are the three aspects that when I'm like, I actually use these when I'm hiring, when I'm looking at leadership, I'm like, are they industrious?

Leila: Are they enthusiastic? Do they have competitive greatness? Because here's the thing, if you work really hard on the right stuff, but you lack any energy or enthusiasm, it's hard for me to be able to be around you. They're like, oh, he's great, but you know, he's tough. If you're very energetic and enthusiastic, but you never get anything done, you don't really set a good example for other people in the organization.

Leila: You're not going to be able to move things forward fast enough. And then lastly, competitive greatness is what are you motivated by? And I think that the best leaders are not motivated by money. They're motivated by a better version of the world themselves or others that they're constantly trying to pursue because they know it's, it means something to them [00:03:00] and that everyone has a different reason or meaning for that thing, but they all have that thing that they're chasing and they know that through leadership is how they can get there.

Leila: And so that's how I would define a good leader. 

Hala: So, I found something really interesting when I was studying you and it was about hiring and you said you can't hire anyone who is a better person than you if you're the boss. And from my understanding, you've essentially turned down working with companies because you believe that top talent wouldn't actually work for the leader.

Hala: Could you shed some color on that? 

Leila: I'll put it this way. There are situations in which top talent will go work for that person, but how long they stay is what I'm concerned with. Mm 

Hala: hmm. Mm hmm. 

Leila: Think about this, right? Like I have a certain level of character. I would never work for somebody who had worse character than me.

Leila: And if I did, it would probably be for a very short amount of time and I wouldn't be loyal to that person. And so when we're looking at companies, that is 1000 percent the biggest issue that I see, which is there are so many young entrepreneurs that have these insane opportunities, these insane companies, and [00:04:00] they lack the integrity.

Leila: Maybe they lack the discipline, they lack the trust. That I don't think that top true top talent would be easy to recruit for them. And so I don't want to work with them. 

Hala: What are the signs of that? Like, how do you tell like, Oh, this person doesn't have integrity or like, I'm assuming you meet them just a few times.

Hala: That's 

Leila: a tough one because I think that you might feel this, but it's like, you can feel someone's intention when you're having a conversation. So like, there's a lot of people that I talk to in business, for example, it's like when I'm at like an event and I talk to them, I'm like, this motherfucker wants to suck the blood out of my brain.

Leila: Like they just want all the information I talked to somebody else. I'm like, they just want me to like, talk about them on social, like you can feel someone's intention and there's a lot of people I've gotten on the phone with not an overwhelmingly amount, but enough that have success. But I can tell that the success is self fulfilling.

Leila: It's not for others, it's for themselves. They're not in it for others. They're not in it for their clients. They're not in it for their team because they don't talk about that. You know what they talk about? I, I, I, me, me, me. That doesn't create loyalty. [00:05:00] That doesn't create an environment in which top talent wants to work for you, being selfishly driven.

Leila: One could argue that you are selfishly driven to help other people because it feels good to yourself. But I would take that over being selfishly driven to have more money, have more status, have more power. And I can feel when I talk to somebody by the language that they're using, What they really want and a lot of that comes from even asking them like what's the point of the business?

Leila: Why does the business exist a lot of them will say well, you know I wanted to make some money and then this and you know, uh, and then it's always about them It's like, you know, I really like this house. I like this car. I like this. I like this lifestyle I like the lifestyle right? Whereas I think The best leaders in the world are not building a company to pursue a lifestyle.

Leila: They're building a company to pursue a purpose 

Hala: and 

Leila: they're building a company to pursue impact, because that's what I think about the question I ask myself every day when I wake up is my team supported, do they have clarity? Are my portfolio companies supported? Do they have clarity? Those are the two questions that I think of in the morning.[00:06:00] 

Leila: I don't ask myself, how does Layla gain more status and influence? I could give a fuck. Like I do this because I want people to know who I am because I hope that my true character shows through and they can see I'm not like an asshole boss. I really want to build a place where people love working and I want to teach other companies to do the same.

Leila: Because I, too, used to have a shitty boss, so I know what it's like to work in an environment where I wanted to shoot myself every day. It sucked. Yeah. And so, that's really how you sense it, is the language somebody uses. Are they talking about themselves more? Are they talking about the why, the people, the team, the clients?

Hala: Yeah. 

Leila: It's just a little nuance, but you can tell when you're in the conversation. 

Hala: Yeah, 100%. So let's talk about the hiring process and dive deep into that. You have a YouTube video called a hundred million dollar hiring process. And according to your video, the first step in the hiring funnel is the application generation.

Hala: So I know a lot of my listeners are entrepreneurs. A lot of people are struggling with hiring right now, so I thought we could spend a little time on it. So, first of all, you say the job title in the [00:07:00] application is sort of like a headline. So what are your top tips to, to attract the right clients with your job title?

Leila: Yeah, so a lot of people get the job title wrong because one, they don't know what right looks like. They don't have mentorship. They don't have advisors, and they also don't do research. So what I did when I was first starting out to understand what kind of job title I need is I would put in keywords just into Google of like, what's a job for somebody that does?

Leila: And I would like, say the top three things I'm not even kidding you. And then I would look at all the titles that would come up and then I would Google those titles and read the job descriptions of each one. And then I would find out the one that had the most similar description to the job that I need somebody to do.

Leila: And so I think that the reason is a lot of people don't put in the time, the effort. They don't have the experience. But you can easily do that with literally using Google. So it's like, if you went and you read, you're like, okay, I don't know what this role is called, but you read 17 job descriptions on, and then took the top three that you think it could be and compare them on six other websites, you're going to figure out probably the best name for the job.[00:08:00] 

Leila: I think it's just that most people aren't diligent about that because they don't understand why it's important. If you understand why it's important, it's a task worth doing. When you don't understand the importance, it's not a task worth doing. But the reality is that most of the time when someone can't recruit, the number one thing that I'll change is the job title.

Leila: I'm like, Oh, it's not the right job title. So I'll give an example. I'm hiring for, I'll say an administrative assistant to help my EA team. So I put it out as administrative assistant and the people I was getting were like, they had like one year of experience. So I was like, shit, like I need someone with more experience than that.

Leila: So then I made it senior administrative assistant. I started getting people with five, six years of experience. Just the tiniest change in job title. But if you look at salary. com, payscale. com, what's the difference between an administrative assistant and a senior? There's a difference in pay and in experience.

Leila: And so it's going to attract a different type of person. I think for a lot of people out there that are struggling with this, it's the exact same thing as a marketing funnel, as a client acquisition funnel, it's just a talent acquisition funnel. And that's the reason so many people don't succeed in businesses.

Leila: They don't see the [00:09:00] similarities between those two things, or they don't believe they haven't accumulated the evidence to show them like this really works. I've just had enough at bats and I think that I got lucky in the beginning of believing it was important to try it enough times and see it work.

Hala: Yeah. And I think that a lot of people don't realize that when there's a top talent person searching, like they're searching for the job title that they know about. They're not going to read every single job post and research, like just find you, right? You need to be able to be searchable for them. A 

Leila: hundred percent.

Leila: They're looking for the name that resonates with who they identify with. 

Hala: Okay. So second part of the hiring funnel is nurturing. So talk to us about how we can have a frictionless candidate experience and what the indirect and direct experiences are during that process. 

Leila: Yeah. So there's really two things during the, the hiring lead nurture process that I would like to call our candidate or candidate nurture process, which is.

Leila: Indirect communication, which is if I search a company, what am I going to find online? Is it good? Is it bad? Cause what candidates do is [00:10:00] they go look at your reviews on Google. They go look at your client reviews. They go look at Facebook group reviews. They go look at last door, all of it, not just employee reviews, lots of customer reviews.

Leila: You have to understand like, cause that's usually what pops up first. So that's the first thing I'm asking is. What does it look like when they search your name? That's the indirect part of the funnel. And you can have a lot of say in that in terms of what kind of press you're putting out there, what your website looks like.

Leila: Like you can control the narrative. A lot of people are just too lazy to do it. And so the narrative is controlled by customers, by ex employees, et cetera. But if you take control by controlling the narrative by putting out content for your company, then you are going to control the narrative and most likely have a better indirect experience for that candidate.

Leila: The other side is the direct communication, which is What I see as a huge pattern is people think I need to have so many tests and so many complicated things to make this candidate go through for this nurture process, because I want to make sure I only get the smart ones that the smart people have unlimited opportunity and don't give a fuck about your funnel and don't want to take your 30 point test.

Leila: [00:11:00] That's just reality because guess what? They have five other jobs that are going to pay them the same. If not more that don't have that test. And a lot of people would say, I just want the person with the character though. I'm like, you don't understand. This is opportunity costs. 

Hala: Yeah. Or they're going to get poached on LinkedIn.

Hala: Like they're not even going through an application. 

Leila: This is opportunity costs for them. I mean, they have so many opportunities. You have to understand they don't give a shit about that. And so a lot of people try to make it very complicated. They try to make it very. They try to think of it like the candidate should be coming to me versus how could I create a better experience for the candidate.

Leila: And so I've just taken the same principles from customer experience and I put them into candidate experience, which is if I was trying to nurture a lead, how would I be talking to them? I do the same thing with people. If I think they're going to hire, like I want to hire them, I'm like, I will be reaching out to them.

Leila: I will be talking to them. I will be complimenting them. I'm not going to expect them to just always come to me. That's the first thing. And it does take somebody who doesn't have, who has a good amount of humility, because I think a lot of people think my shit don't stink. They should be coming to me. I'm like, nobody knows who the fuck you are.

Leila: So let's just get [00:12:00] over ourselves. 

Hala: Yeah. Can you talk to us about the importance of speed and hiring? 

Leila: The average top candidate gets a job in eight days. The biggest reason that any of our portfolio companies have lost a candidate is time. It'll interview someone on Monday. And then I get like a, you know, a slack on like Thursday.

Leila: And it's like, Hey, I've got a candidate. I want you to interview. I'm like, Oh, did you speak with them? Like, what, how was it? Like, yeah, yeah. No, I met with her on Monday and I'm like, It is just the same way that you would nurture a lead that was a hundred thousand dollar customer is how you would want to nurture an employee because often you're paying someone 50 to 200, 000, right?

Leila: Say you're a small business. How would you nurture a lead that was worth that much money, let alone an employee who's going to stay for a long period of time. And so I think that we look at it the wrong way. We think that it's different than that, but it's actually the same. And candidates right now, especially, you know, I think it's going to change a little bit in the next coming months.

Leila: But right now, you know, the ball's still in a lot of people's courts, but they have unlimited opportunity. And so the companies that are out there that are getting the top [00:13:00] talent are the ones that have more robust infrastructure and are able to go faster. But if a small company is equipped with this and they understand, because like when we first started, it was me and my assistant hiring.

Leila: And I still was like day up. We send rejection day up. We send follow up day up. We schedule. We schedule a meeting from a meeting. So it's like, we'd get done with an interview and be like, cool. We want to do the next interview. Let's schedule it right now while we're on the call, because we understood the importance of speed.

Leila: And I think that anybody can do that. It's just a matter of understanding the importance, which is if you're waiting more than eight days to hire somebody, you're getting worse candidates. 

Hala: Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors.

Hala: So I heard you say something really cool, which was, we're buying people's brains when we're hiring. So I'd love to understand how we assess people's brains for culture fit, for skills. Is it really them taking a test or is it more of like a conversation that we have with them? 

Leila: Different people do it different ways.

Leila: I tend to err more on the side of conversations and situational interviewing than I do hard [00:14:00] testing. If you look at a lot of the practical tests people put together, those are typically the same format of questions that you would have for an interview anyways. So, what I do is I think of, okay, What are situations in which somebody would exhibit the values that we have in the company?

Leila: And then I will take those apart and I will break them down into questions. So competitive greatness, for example, if I wanted to figure out if somebody has competitive greatness, I would ask them, why do you want to work? What motivates you? Why do you come to work every day? And if somebody says money, it's not competitive greatness to me.

Leila: And if a portfolio company, and I say, why do you have your company? And they say, well, I want to make 10 million. I'm like, it's not competitive greatness to me. Competitive greatness is an unending process, right? It's a continuous cycle of self improvement knowing that the challenge itself is what creates who you want to be.

Leila: Another example would be sincere candor, which would be, tell me, I'll get this one, you would think it's like easy and people can fake it, but nobody ever does. I say, tell me the last hard conversation you had and tell me how it went. And I swear, most of the time, nobody can think of it. [00:15:00] I could tell you what I had a day ago.

Leila: I could tell you one from yesterday. I had a hard conversation last night. You know what I mean? So it's, if I'm looking for someone who is sincerely candorous, I'm going to ask that and you're going to be able to tell by their reaction, not just what they say, but their reaction in terms of like, do they actually have that?

Hala: Yeah. 

Leila: And then in terms of the skill side of it and their experience, I'm It's asking people to recall how they drove results. You know, I think it's, you can talk about the actions you took on a daily basis, but I don't really care about that. I want to know, tell me about results. You drove for a company that are similar to the results.

Leila: I'm asking you to drive here and tell me how you did it. How did you go about it? Give me a summary of that. And that's typically what I'll ask. So if I have somebody I'm hiring for director of customer success, and I need them to reduce churn for a customer base, I'm going to say, tell me about a time that you reduced churn, how much did you reduce it by and how did you go about doing that?

Leila: And you can tell when someone's answering those questions if somebody doesn't know how to do that and you have any, as the CEO of course, like I feel like I have to have knowledge of every department, like I have enough to know if somebody's bullshitting me or if like the answer they're giving is [00:16:00] mediocre.

Leila: What I'm looking for most of the time is that I learn something from that interview. One, I want to feel like the values are true to them. The other side of the experiential piece in the education is I want to feel like they're able to teach me something on the interview. And so I leave being better for it.

Leila: Does that make sense? Yeah, total 

Hala: sense. So I know that the end of the process is that you believe, as long as you're a relatively small company, A thousand employees or less, it should end with a CEO interview. And I know that a lot of small entrepreneurs, even if they have 20 employees, they do not do every single interview.

Hala: This was one of the biggest mistakes I made as a young entrepreneur. My, my business scaled to 60 employees and it started to have. Lower level employees hiring my employees. And then it was like a mess. I had really bad talent for a little bit and I had to let go a lot of my team and it was really hard.

Hala: And so I learned that lesson first year in business, like I will never do that again. Talk to us about why that's so important. 

Leila: I believe that if you are truly a people first company, if you really believe that your [00:17:00] employees and your team are the most important to the business, which I would argue in any sense of the way they are, they are the business.

Leila: Then you would think that the CEO would show with the most valuable resource they have, which is time, not money, time, how important those people are to them. And I don't think there's a more important way or a more impressive way than having the last interview. And basically what I do on that interview is I show them that I'm not just here for you with this job, but you as a person, which is what are your personal goals?

Leila: Do they align with the opportunity that we have within this business? And that's what I'm trying to figure out. And so I come on there and I want to set the tone for what their relationship is going to be like with us and be like with the business, which is, it's not, you're just a number here. It's not this it's person first, human first.

Leila: I want to show you why you're important. And I'm showing you right now with my time, just like a parent. If they have a kid, it's like, cool. You can pay for them to like, go get ice cream with the kids. And. Go to this really cool amusement park, but like, there's nothing more meaningful than it being their time.[00:18:00] 

Hala: 100%. Okay. So like we mentioned, a lot of people are having a little bit of trouble hiring right now. There's more opportunities to start businesses. It's easier than ever to kind of be a freelancer. And so people have a lot of options. So I heard you say something that was really interesting to me, which was that we really need to create a bigger vision so that people actually feel they can fit within that if we really want them to work for us because they could just really work for themselves now.

Hala: Could you talk to us about that? 

Leila: So I read the book by the CEO of Blackstone where he talks about it's just as easy to create a big company as it is to create a small company. And that really resonated with me because I think that the way he explained is that It is easier to recruit talent if you have a big vision than to recruit talent if you have a small vision because big talent doesn't want to work for a small vision.

Leila: And so that really hit home with me. And it showed me that you can't have one without the other. It's almost, I cannot even get top talent without a big vision. And you can't create the thing that [00:19:00] creates the vision or, or, um, fulfills that vision without the top talent. And so that really hit home with me.

Leila: And I realized that, um, you have to have a vision big enough that other people's visions for their own lives can fit inside of it. And to the degree of which somebody's vision for themselves fits inside the company is how long you'll keep them. Once they see that they've hit a point where their personal trajectory of their life has, say the business is here and they're here, and then they go up here.

Leila: Now, there's a deficit. They're feeling like they're lacking something in the workplace because there's some kind of experience that they're not getting from the workplace that they're getting outside. And so I think the most important thing that we can do is be very explicit about the vision, be very explicit about where we're going and very diligent in making sure that when you bring people in, you understand how much runway they have.

Leila: I will never tell somebody that they have a long runway if I know they don't. If somebody doesn't have a long runway, I will absolutely tell them. If somebody comes on to be an EA for me, I'm like, I don't really want you to go anywhere. Like, I'd like you to just want to be an EA for forever because like [00:20:00] anyone that's on our administrative team, like there's not a ton of upward trajectory, obviously promotions and raises in like small amounts.

Leila: Becoming a director of operations or director of HR, that's going to create a huge hole for me to fill. And so I'm not really looking for that. Versus if I bring somebody into a new department and I put them as head of business development and there's one person in there, I'm like, Hey, one day I'd like you to be VP of revenue or, you know, CRO.

Leila: And so I hire according to that, which is what is their personal vision for themselves? What's my vision for the role? And I want to make sure that the two match. And I think that a lot of times when we're recruiting, the reason a lot of people can't get good talent is because they think that they're, they're like, Oh, it's just money.

Leila: I just can't afford to pay top talent. Okay. Well, when we had gym launch, I was able to get some really big talent that wouldn't have otherwise worked for us because we had enthusiasm, we had vision, and we had an ability to show those people how they would be able to grow within our organization. And so we didn't have the biggest opportunity, but we could show them that their opportunity could at least fit inside what we did have in that company.

Leila: And I think that a lot of people are just so focused [00:21:00] on money and thinking about the competition that's trying to recruit people. I'm like, people want opportunity. That's what they really want. They want to see, it's almost like in the relationship, right? When you get with a guy or a girl or whatever, right, you get a new relationship.

Leila: You're going to treat it differently. If you think that you're going to be in that relationship for a long time, then you would, if you think you're only going to be there for a few weeks, a few months, or even a year, it's the same way it goes for employment. And so it's reciprocated because if I feel that somebody really can feel like I can tell that they think their vision fits within the company.

Leila: I see how they act, they see how I act, it's a much more trusting relationship and you have a lot more loyalty with each other than you would otherwise. And I think a lot of people just don't use it to their advantage because one, they're probably scared to think too big. They're worried that they'll fail.

Leila: The reality is you'll for sure fail if you don't think big enough that you can't attract the right talent to build something. 

Hala: So smart. And I heard you say before that basically people hop from job to job so they can level up in their career. They need to be able to hop in your company too from job title to job title.

Hala: Is there a certain way that you kind [00:22:00] of show that to your employees or something that you do to show them the trajectory, or do you just give them new projects all the time? Like, is it obvious? 

Leila: I think for executive level, it's a little bit different. Executive level, it's often showing the business, like I have the business projected for the next 10 years along with like an org chart for the next three.

Leila: And so people can see what kind of. Responsibility. They'll continue to assimilate as an executive team for people under the executive team, there's two things that we're working on right now, because you have to remember acquisition. com is pretty new competency maps. So competency map is basically showing you here's the levels in our organization.

Leila: So say there's six core levels. Here's the skills and the traits needed for each level. And so if you want to get from one level to the next, here's the skills and the traits required to do so. And here's what the pay raise looks like as well. Here's what the opportunity looks like. Here's what your relationship with management looks like.

Leila: And so I try to do that within one, the organization as a whole. And then within each department that makes sense. So two that are very typical would be media. So if you have a large media team, like we're building out one for our media team right now to show everyone, like, here's the [00:23:00] levels needed to build out the media team.

Leila: And here's all the room you have upward, like upward trajectory wise. Same with a sales team. That's a very traditional one is to show people. Based on their experience, how much, what their close rate is, all those things. Here's all the levels that you can get to, and here's how much you can make along with the opportunity that you'll have in the company.

Leila: And so it's called a competency map. If you look it up, you can find them for other companies. And for a small company, the thing is it's actually easier to make because you have less people. And so you could even just show, like, if you don't even know, break it down to like three levels, individual contributor, manager, leader, individual contributor, manager, executive, whatever it may be.

Leila: And I think that if you can just start by showing people, it shows them that you give a shit. And I think that a lot of people are like, well, it's not going to be perfect. It's not going to be as good as Layla's that she's describing. Okay. Well, the point is that you give a shit. And that's what people want to see is that you're thinking about their future.

Leila: Most bosses don't even think about the future of an employee. 

Hala: It's so true. Let's say we've used all your guidance, we've [00:24:00] hired a great team, but if you have a great team and no accountability, then, you know, you're at risk of not getting much done. So you talk about your accountability framework. You even go as far to say that instead of CEO, you call yourself the chief accountability officer.

Hala: Could you talk to us about your accountability formula? 

Leila: Yeah. It's understanding that accountability doesn't exist. Without measurement, without feedback, and in a timely manner. And so a lot of the times, the two things that are missing is the measurement, which is, are you showing someone where they fit on a spectrum?

Leila: You know, on a scale of 1 to 10, how well are they doing their job? Are you letting them know that they're only at a 7 and what they have to do to get to a 10? That's one of the first things required for accountability. It's just like if we were a weight scale. So if I go and weigh myself, right, the scale is basically the accountability officer, as I would say, which is the scale gives them a number, it gives them feedback.

Leila: Now, the way that we can amplify accountability, the only way that we can actually multiply it is by giving the [00:25:00] person feedback of the measurement. So it's like, there's the measurement, which is telling them how good they're doing. And then it's how many times are you telling them in how many ways, how good they're doing?

Leila: Are you doing quarterly reviews? Are you doing one on ones? Are you having conversations with them? Are you slacking them feedback? So like, for example, we just did a kickoff with a new partner company. And the first thing I did this morning was I wrote feedback to the person that conducts the kickoffs. I said, here's all my feedback for you.

Leila: Here's how well I think you did. I actually thought this was the best one you ever did yet. Right. And so I'm telling him where he's at in terms of my expectations. And so the best thing that we can do as CEOs, entrepreneurs, people that employ other people is really just the feedback, like if there's one thing that you could do, because especially if you're a small business, the.

Leila: The crux is always, Hey, I don't have measurement. I don't have things in place yet. Well, you can at least tell someone verbally in a qualitative manner how they're doing. And you can do it more than mumbling it on a call with them when they're not really paying attention in a way that doesn't even sound direct or like it makes any sense, right?

Leila: Because that's what a lot of people do. The way that they give feedback is, [00:26:00] Oh yeah. And then, you know, next time you, you know, do that presentation, maybe, maybe we just do it a little bit differently. And it's like, they, they say it in a way that's very non direct. But I think. The best way to give people feedback and to hold them accountable is to be as clear as possible.

Leila: It's like when you measure yourself on the scale, it's not like it says, like, it's not like blurred. You're not like having to like lean in and really wonder what's saying. You're like, is it say one 50 or one 55? Like you would be like, I don't know what the feedback is. Did my weight go up or down? Five pounds is a lot is a big difference.

Leila: That could have been up. It could have been down. And so when people are vague with their feedback to employees, it's the same as the scale being that way and being vague. It's like a small amount of nuance makes a big difference. And so you have to be very clear in your communication because a lot of the times if someone's delivering critical feedback, the employee actually thinks that it's positive feedback because the way that they're delivering it is so poor.

Leila: And so I think it's being explicit and being able to find your voice is a really important piece of that. And you don't do that unless you have at bats. And so. In the beginning, you're going to suck at doing it and you just have to get better and better over time. 

Hala: We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.[00:27:00] 

Hala: Would you say that feedback should be continual and not just like once a quarter or once a year performance review? 

Leila: 100%. It's the only thing that can amplify and multiply accountability. It's the only thing that really strengthens it to a high degree is giving that feedback. And it's just, The more you can normalize feedback, the easier people can take it.

Leila: The more likely they are to act on it, but a lot of people avoid giving feedback and they create a culture of secrecy and of, you know, whispers and gossip when the reality, if you give feedback on a regular basis, everyone gets used to it and then it doesn't feel bad. It's just like discomfort. It's something that's uncomfortable.

Leila: Do it enough times. It's not uncomfortable anymore. 

Hala: Yeah. And it's so important so that your employees actually get better at their jobs and continue to learn and improve instead of making the same mistakes over and over again. 

Leila: 100%. 

Hala: Okay. Let's take it from the employee perspective. Let's take it from, you know, a lot of my listeners are entrepreneurs, but at the same time, a lot [00:28:00] of them are corporate professionals.

Hala: They want to level up in their jobs. They want to be seen by their boss. It's taken up for promotions. So what can somebody do as an employee to really stand out? 

Leila: I get a lot of shit for this, but I believe in it, which is the only way to stand out truly is to exceed expectations. Humans, when expectations match reality, we are neutral.

Leila: We feel nothing. We feel that was how it's supposed to go. So if somebody does their job exactly how it's laid out, I think to myself, that was how it's supposed to go. Yeah. Now, if somebody does their job worse than the job is laid out, I feel disappointed. I feel frustrated. I feel angry. The only time somebody will really stand out in a job is if they exceed expectations.

Leila: Meeting expectations is not enough. You don't stand out. Nobody feels anything from that. Like truly, your nervous system does not get excited by that. But the moment that somebody does beyond the job description and exceeds expectations is when the boss will feel like truly, like [00:29:00] actually feel excited, feel elated, feel encouraged.

Leila: And so I think that a lot of employees say, you know, doing my job is enough doing beyond my job takes too much effort. It's not always about the amount of work you're doing. It's how you do the work. Yes. You can exceed expectations in the way you do something, not even just there's doing something and completing a mission, which is expected, but how you do it is also what's going to make a difference.

Leila: So if you're told to make a presentation to train a team, you can make a presentation that can train a team and it could be sufficient. Or it could have animations. You could bring in a guest speaker. You could think about it like that to the degree at which you do every of your daily tasks is the degree at which you will impress the person, whether you exceed expectations on a consistent basis in the tasks you're doing, or whether you're not meeting expectations.

Leila: Because just meeting them, you'll just blend in. 

Hala: I totally agree. There's this trend of quiet quitting I was talking about. Basically what it is, is a lot of people have just decided I'm going to do the bare minimum. And to your point, they feel like I should just do what I get paid for and that's it. But if you [00:30:00] do that, no one's going to, like, as a boss, it's like you, nobody wants an employee like that.

Hala: You want an employee who's going to be worth 10 times What you pay them, right? And that's why you're going to promote them and let them lead and become a manager. So I feel like that's just a recipe for not moving in your job. It is. And 

Leila: I think, here's the thing. I talked about this and I got a lot of backlash in terms of people saying, well, Layla, these people treat me like shit.

Leila: They don't give me promotions. They don't give me raises. I'm not recognized. I understand that, but I just don't think that acting in despite of someone else's actions is going to help anybody because at the end of the day, for me, I had plenty of jobs before I had my own company. How I acted was more important to me for who I was for my integrity with myself.

Leila: And it was for the person I was working for, because it's not about them. It's about me, who I am, how I work, how I show up when nobody else gives a shit. And so for me, it's not even about either of these things. It's about who are you? Because you're not defined by how you think and feel. You are defined by the actions you take.[00:31:00] 

Leila: And so if you act like a lazy person and you don't work, you are a lazy person. It's like when people say, you know, if you feel it, nobody cares how you feel. They just care how you behave. And that is what you are identified with. You are identified with your actions. So people are like, Oh, he had good intentions.

Leila: I'm going to fuck intention. Doesn't equal impact. So it's like, well, you know, this boss is gonna be approachable. I'm like, that says a lot about you because I can tell you that I worked my fucking ass off for years in jobs that I never got a raise. And I never got a promotion. I did it because that's who I am.

Leila: And I do everything with excellence. And so to me, it's the employees are shooting themselves in the foot because they are degrading their own character. I don't care about the boss piece. I'm just talking to you as a human, which is like, why are you doing that to yourself? You're literally fucking yourself by doing that.

Hala: Yeah, not to mention that, like, your vibe and your energy is that of a lazy person. You're gonna attract lazy opportunities. You're not gonna be even be able to attract the things that you want in your life because you're not doing them. So I, I totally agree with that. Okay, so closing this out, Leila, what a great interview.

Hala: Thank you. I heard you on Brooke Castillo's show and you teased [00:32:00] possibly starting a podcast. So do you want to tell us about your possible new podcast? 

Leila: Yeah. If anyone out there is a podcast producer, that's the only reason I haven't launched it yet. 

Hala: Oh, I, just so you know, we have a whole media company over here.

Leila: Oh, okay. Yeah, I, truthfully, that's all it is. I want to start a podcast. I want to call it build with Layla, build your business, build your life, build yourself, build your company. I think just talking about building in general, and I liked that word. So hopefully it's to come by next quarter. I'm not sure yet, but it'll be, it'll A little different than the YouTube channel, but a lot of the same kind of content.

Hala: Awesome. Well, let me know when it comes out so I can tell my listeners to tune in. All right. So we close out this interview with two questions that we ask and then we round them out and summarize them at the end of the year. So the first one is what is one actionable thing that our young and profitors can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

Leila: Make a list of five things that you can do tomorrow. That you've been avoiding because they're [00:33:00] uncomfortable and do them. Despite how you feel, despite how you rest tonight, despite how, you know, your mood is tomorrow, commit to five things tomorrow that you've been avoiding, write them down and do them.

Hala: Get uncomfortable, right? And what is your secret to profiting in life? 

Leila: The ability to take action quickly after failure. So I think that a lot of the times when we're getting uncomfortable and we're doing things that are uncomfortable, we fail, we stumble. I do not let that, I don't dwell on my failure. I don't find that to be productive.

Leila: I can, I just get up and I go and I try it again immediately, not the next day, not a week later. I tried to do it immediately. And so I think that there's nothing wrong with failing. It's the fact that most people dwell on their failure for so long that that becomes their life when you could have just gotten up the next day and done it again.

Hala: I love that. And where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do? 

Leila: You can go to acquisition. com. We have some free courses on there for business. And you can opt in, uh, for our email list and we email out, like, different interesting nuggets. Uh, [00:34:00] you could also go to at Laila Hormozy on Instagram, Laila Hormozy on YouTube, and Laila Hormozy on Twitter.

Leila: And I am pretty active on those three platforms. 

Hala: Awesome. And I'm going to stick all those links in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time today. 

Leila: Thank you for having me.