biggest or best

Summary

do you want to be the biggest or do you want to be the best. years ago I would have said both. now I think that’s the wrong answer. you usually have to pick.

1. with Garage Gym Athlete and PT Biz I was lucky to be first on the scene. that meant for a while we were both the biggest and the best. then the competition flooded in, and you have to choose.

2. biggest looks like a software company. user counts up and to the right, profit secondary, exits eventually. it’s a speed and volume game where people become data points. I’ve operated like that and it makes business genuinely unfun.

3. best looks like word of mouth, retention, referrals, a community that actually trusts you. it grows slower than biggest at the top of the curve, but it compounds longer and doesn’t burn the team out.

4. do the exercise. make two lists. how do I become the biggest. how do I become the best. they will look very different. the biggest list will involve watering down the product, opening up to everyone, growing for growth’s sake. the best list will involve sharper focus, fewer customers, higher quality.

5. you still grow with best. that’s the surprise. focus on better, the company gets bigger anyway, just not as fast as the all-out biggest play. and you actually like running it.

I want my programming to be a little intimidating for the people who’ve coasted. I don’t want to be everything to everyone. I want to serve a specific community really well. that’s a choice. make yours, and try harder.

Transcript

the lazy answer is both

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. This is the better human business podcast. I’m Jerred Moon. And my question for you today is, do you want to be the biggest or do you want to be the best? Now, if you asked me that question a long time ago, I would have just said both.

I want to be the biggest and I want to be the best. And for me, I’ve had a very fortunate opportunity to be the first on the scene in the businesses I’m a part of. With Garage Gym Athlete and online programming, I was doing that stuff before it was a thing. Before people did those things, before there were software companies that you could put programming into.

I was doing online programming for fitness and nutrition stuff, online coaching before people would hurt. I used to have to explain it to people. How does an online coach work? What are you talking about? What is programming? Why would you pay for a monthly service? I was doing that so early on, we were first.

biggest is a data-point game

And so a lot of ways, towards the beginning, we were the biggest and we were the best. But then a lot of competition flooded in, a lot of competition for Garage Gym Athlete. And you have to decide at a certain point, are we going to continue to chase being the biggest? Because the biggest looks different than the best.

The biggest is simply that. It’s the biggest. It doesn’t mean anything, you have to be the biggest. And I’ve talked about this in other podcasts, maybe that’s opening up a supplement line, maybe that’s dumbing down my programming so I can be everything to everyone. But I’m not doing that. I don’t want to be everything to everyone.

I want my programming to be a little bit intimidating for people who have sat on their asses for too long. I want to have ways to which you can get involved with our programming and provide a lot of free things that you could be a part of, like the podcast and other programs that we have that cost people nothing.

But once you get into Garage Gym Athlete training, I want it to be what it is. I don’t want to water it down, so I had to make that decision. I want to be the best. I don’t want to be the biggest. And you could also look at that as an excuse to, hey, you don’t want to try hard in all the different areas.

best is a people game

I try to call me on my own BS all the time, but I don’t truly feel like that’s what it is. I don’t want to be everything to everyone and I don’t want to water down what I think is the most effective. The same thing has happened at PT Biz. We were first on the scene, at least one of the first couple on the scene when we started many years ago with this, you know, mastermind and everything else and what we were doing.

And so in a lot of ways, after two, three years, we were the biggest and we were the best. But now we have a lot of competition and we still might be the biggest and the best right now, but we’re at that point where we have to decide, do we want to be everything to everyone? Do we want to open it up to all these other niches that we don’t truly know and understand?

Maybe we can’t serve? And the answer is no. We don’t want to go down that path. We want to be the best. We don’t want to be the biggest. And that’s something that you should definitely be thinking about in your business. Because if you sat down and just did a brainstorming session, and I recommend you do this on what does it look like if I want to be the biggest I could possibly be versus you sit down and you brainstorm, what does it look like if I want to be the best I could possibly be?

They’re going to be very different. They both lead to growth is what you should know though. They both lead to growth. So when you go down to how do I be the biggest, profit might not be as much of a factor there. In fact, that’s how a lot of software companies grow. They don’t grow with profitability in mind.

the two lists

They just grow with a user base in mind so they can eventually sell their companies. The biggest and the best are very different things. So when you’re chasing the biggest, it’s a lot about speed. It’s a lot about numbers. Not treating people as people, treating people as data points. And I’ve been in those situations and it’s not fun.

It makes business very unfun when you forget to realize that on the end of every interaction you have, every email, every podcast that I record, there’s a person on the end of that listening. There’s a person on the end of that email reading. I can’t forget those things. You can’t forget those things as you’re running through business.

But when I get into the I want to be the biggest mentality, it throws me in that category of looking at people as data points and I don’t like it. I prefer to be the best. When I’m operating wanting to be the best, now I start to put people first. What do they need? How can we be better? I don’t have to focus on how do we grow bigger as much when I’m answering that question.

But the funny thing that happens though when you focus on being the best and you focus on being better, you will still grow the company. You won’t grow your company as fast if you just focus on all of the efforts like the top 1% of the efforts that grow a company. You won’t grow as fast if you just focused on bigger.

you grow either way

But when you focus on better and being the best that you can possibly be, you will grow. You absolutely will grow. That’s where you start to see word of mouth kick in, referrals, people sticking around for longer periods of time. So these are the things that you want to keep in mind as you are looking to grow your business.

And you can say, hey, I want to be the biggest and I want to be the best. But I highly recommend you make that two different lists. How do I be the biggest and how do I be the best? And see how congruent they are or are not on your list. And then see if you realistically think that you could do both.

Because this will affect the culture of your company. How you treat your employees, how your employees think of you, how the company runs. So you have to decide if you want to be the best or you just want to be the biggest. I used to think that you could be both. I don’t really think that anymore. If I have to pick any day of the week, I want to be the best.

I want to serve the people I want to serve, stand true to the community that I’ve built and just be the best. Have the best resources, the best customer service, the best everything that I can and be the best for the communities I’ve built as opposed to trying to be the biggest. So something for you to think about, do you want to be the best or do you want to be the biggest?

Whichever one you choose, you’re not wrong, but whichever one you do decide to pursue, make sure you try harder in the effort of that pursuit.