The Game with Alex Hormozi
The 5 Reasons Your Team Isn’t Following Through | Ep 882
Thu, 08 May 2025
In this episode, Alex (@AlexHormozi) shares a 5-step framework he calls the STAR system, designed to help leaders and entrepreneurs solve underperformance issues without creating defensiveness, conflict, or confusion.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast, you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned and will learn on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Wanna scale your business? Click here.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition Mentioned in this episode:Get access to the free $100M Scaling Roadmap at www.acquisition.com/roadmap
Chapter 1: What is the STAR system and how can it help my team?
All right, so let's face it, getting other people to do what you want is arguably the most important skill because if you have that one skill, it unlocks every other skill that every other person potentially has. The problem is other people don't always do what you want them to do.
So I'm going to share a five-step framework that I call the star system that you can use whether you're a business owner or you work within a business to influence other people. So let's dive into it.
what's going on everyone welcome back to the game uh where we talk about making mo money so that we can eventually question the meaning of life to begin with and today i've got a fun little star system very tactical um fundamentally the thing that separates your business's growth from happening is people doing stuff that you want them to do.
And I have a little five-star system that has worked very well for me to have very direct conversations that in no way feel direct and have really, really helped a ton. And I would show this framework to every one of the people who works for you so that they know what you're going to be going through.
And then it just becomes almost like a, it's just, it's just a, it's almost like an unspoken language of performance management. And so when you walk through all five of these, you can remember them very easily. And you can run through it in five seconds with a teammate who's not performing the way you want to. So with that being said, enjoy.
So I want to read you a real exchange I had with an employee that wasn't performing the way I wanted him to. I said, hey, what are you doing today? And then he gave me his little rundown. And I said, I asked because I haven't felt like I've seen a lot of production from you compared to what I think you're capable of.
So I'm curious whether it's not knowing what to do, that I want you to do it, how to do it, or that something's preventing you. Or if you're not motivated to do the above. And by framing it that way, it completely shifts the whole vibe of the conversation.
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Chapter 2: How can I have effective conversations with underperforming employees?
And by adding the piece, and I think this is really key in terms of how it was framed, it's just like compared to what I believe you're capable of. So I'm basically weaving in a compliment saying, I think you're capable of more. I think your potential is significantly higher.
Rather than saying, hey, you suck, I'm actually saying, hey, I think you're awesome, and I think your performance, which is separate from you as a human being, is below what I believe you're capable of. So what do we think the gap is? Is that you know that, how, what, when, or something's blocking you, or you're just not motivated. Help me help you.
And from this perspective, both of you are basically attacking the problem on the same side of the table, trying to figure out how to get the person to their potential, which both of you are aligned to have happened. And I'm telling you, it's just like, imagine if I had started that being like, Hey man, you're, uh, you're, you're at your, your subpar right now. You're, you're under expectations.
Like that sounds pretty bad. Right. And that everyone's going to be defensive. They're going to be thinking it's attack on their character when it couldn't be further from the truth. And so having little frameworks like this, I've just like made life so much easier for getting people back to where you want them to be. So let's paint the scene.
You say, hey, Kyle, I need you to make me that TPS report by Monday. Okay, fine. You said that. Monday comes, Kyle doesn't have the TPS report. What do you do? Now, normally it could be like, I could yell at Kyle. You'd be like, what the hell, Kyle? Whatever, right? But the thing is, is a lot of people don't confront people who work for them because they're afraid of losing influence.
Like, hey, if I bring it up, I don't want things to be weird. And so being able to have these kind of confrontational conversations and having a framework around it has made it so much easier for me to have really good conversations that don't in any way attack the other person. All right. And so thinking through this framework is how I do it.
And so I'm going to make this really simple because it has to be simple or else you're never going to use it. All right. And so it's called a star because there's five points to the star. And there's really a five points that you work through when you're figuring out why they didn't do something. And so the first thing is, hey, Kyle, and I set this frame.
So the people who work for me already know that I have this frame. So I don't think you need to keep this a secret. I mean, listen, there's only five reasons someone doesn't do anything. It's either number one, you didn't know that I wanted you to do it. So did you know that I wanted you to give me that TPS report? Um, and he might be like, oh, I thought we were just talking.
Now you might hear that and think, wow, Kyle, how, what an insignificant or what a, what an arrogant ass, right? No, but like, let's be real for a second. Like you probably don't follow up on a lot of stuff that you tell people to do. And what do you think people learn?
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Chapter 3: What are the five reasons someone might not complete a task?
But then did you not know what I wanted you to do? Because he did send me something. Okay, what's the that versus the what? Let me explain. So two things don't always mean the same things. And it's like, what does that even mean? Well, you want to define what you're asking someone to do in terms of behavior or outcomes. So if I wanted that TPS report right now, that's a really simple example.
Um, I would probably be like, well, when I say like, give me that, I was like, does that mean it's going to be printed out? Does that mean I want to print it on my desk? Does that mean it's an email? Does that mean it's going to be like, like verbally given to me? Is it gonna mean it's a presentation in what format?
And the thing is, is like, you might hear this and be like, oh, that sounds like such a pain, but it's like, it probably takes like two or three extra minutes for you to be like very clear. And then someone's going to take that two or three extra minutes and then save themselves like two or three extra hours. And so it's high leverage, like clarity is high leverage work. Right.
And so, like, I would say that if this is something that makes you uncomfortable, you need to break that habit for real. And let me explain why. How do you think AI works? Why do you think prompt engineering is such a high leverage skill right now? Because the problem is no one even knows how to communicate. Like you have this ultimate being or whatever you want to call it, right?
You've got this thing of ultimate intelligence that can do things incredibly quickly, has access to the world's information. And yet you can't get AI to do stuff for you. It's not because AI is dumb. It's because you don't want to talk to AI. And if you can't talk to AI, you can't talk to a human. Right.
AI honestly has more context and more like tries to ways to figure out what you're trying to say because we communicate like monkeys. Right. The thing is, is we're communicating with other monkeys. We got to be as crystal clear as humanly possible. Now, what's interesting is that the bigger the organization gets, the more this banana phone issue becomes a problem.
And so this little five system, the star system, I run through it in my head all the time, right? Did they not know that I wanted them to do it? Did they not know what I wanted them to do, which I defined in terms of behaviors or outcomes, and I need this thing on my desk by Monday printed out with that nice paper. Or it's, I need you to, when someone says this, say this instead next time, right?
Not... be less of a dick or, you know, you know, stop harassing Courtney. It's like, well, what does harassing Courtney look like? He obviously isn't trying to harass Courtney. She might describe his behavior as harassing. He might describe his behavior as being cordial. So now what happens until you actually break down the behavior that they are both labeling differently.
He's saying, Hey, I said good morning to her. She's saying, Hey, he's hitting on me. And you're like, well, what the hell? Like what's going on? But until you figure out, wait, Courtney, when you say he's hitting on you, what exactly did he do? It was just like, we always like smiles at me in waves when he comes in. It's like, I don't think he's hitting on you, Courtney. I think he's being polite.
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Chapter 4: How do I ensure my team knows what is expected of them?
And so number one, they didn't know that they want to do it. If they did know that you're like, Hey, you know, be nice to Courtney. He did. He grabbed Courtney's ass rather than saying hello. Right. He didn't know what to do. Right. So if he did know those two things, well, what's the third thing that could be the issue? Okay. Well they do that.
They wanted the TPS report and they knew how to deliver it. Okay. They knew that, uh, I wanted the TPS report and they knew exactly what it was. Well then why didn't, why didn't it happen? Well, Did they know how to do it? So I told you to do that, but I was like, honestly, you asked me to, but I don't know how to put a TPS report together.
And I'm like, wait, I didn't, like you didn't get that in onboarding? It's like, honestly, no. It's like, oh, okay. Well, the solution to this is training. And all you do, by the way, if you're like, man, and this drives me absolutely insane, is that I will hear people say, you know, these things aren't trainable. Everything is trainable. How do you think a baby learns how to do anything?
How do you think humans learn things to begin with? It's just that some things are more trainable, take longer to train than others. And it's not even that a specific thing takes longer to train. It's just that that term has more skills underneath of it that ladder up to the larger thing. Meaning if I say be kind, be kind has like 500 behaviors underneath of it.
And so, yeah, it's harder to train aptitude than attitude because attitude is 500 behaviors, aptitude might be 20. And so, yes, it is easier to train this than that, but it's not that something isn't trainable. And this is why specificity is so important. And so what we have to do is like, okay, if you don't know how to do it, what part do you not know how to do?
Do you not know how to turn on a computer? Do you not know how to turn on the internet? Do you not know how to send an email? Do you know how to use Excel? No, I know how to use all this stuff. Okay, boom, underneath that, do you not know where the data is that you need to extract this from? No, I know where the data is. Okay, got it. Then once you have the data, do you not know how to format it?
Yeah, I don't know how to format it. Got it. So now instead of being like, oh, this guy's an idiot, it's just like he knew how to do eight of the nine steps. He just couldn't do the last step. So now I could say, cool, let me show you how to format it. Done. And from here on out, when I ask you for a TPS report, this is what I'm looking for. Make sense? Yes.
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So you've got marketing, you've got sales, you've got product, you've got customer success, you've got IT, you've got recruiting, you've got HR, you've got finance. And we show the problems that emerge at every level of scale and how to graduate to the next level. It's all free and you can get it personalized to you. So it's about 30-ish pages for each of the stages.
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Chapter 5: Why is clarity important in communication?
Once you answer the questions, it will tell you exactly where you're at and what you need to do to grow. It's about 14 hours of stuff, but it's narrowed down so that you only have to watch the part that's relevant to you, which will probably be about 90 minutes. And so if that's at all interesting, you can go to acquisition.com forward slash roadmap, R-O-A-D map, roadmap.
Now, let me give you a little pro tip. The higher the general skill and competence of the individual, the greater the expertise of the person in the domain, the more vague you can be with your directions. All right, so let me explain. So if someone comes to me and says, hey, I've got this product, this new marker, and it writes upside down and it's invisible ink, it's amazing.
Alex, can you build a business around this? I could just say yes, because I have all the other skills it takes to build a business. Now, if you go to somebody who might be lesser skilled, you might have to say like, hey, can you make a marketing campaign around this?
Now that person probably might not be able to like set up the energy structure in a tax efficient manner or be able to source the materials or be able to, you know, set up, you know, HR practices and all this other stuff. But like they could do the marketing campaign and you might be able to go to a good marketer and say, hey, can you run a good marketing campaign? They say, sure.
Now, if you go to a junior marketer, you'd be like, hey, can you run a marketing campaign? They'd be like, it's like, okay, can you write some emails about this? We just keep chunking it down. And so the more skilled the person, the vaguer the instructions can be, the less skilled the person, the more specific it has to be.
And for anything around trading, I talk about this at length, but basically document, demonstrate, duplicate, which means that I do it in front of you. I write it down. I do it in front of you. You do it in front of me and then sign on. That's how it works, right? So we create the list is me doing it. I observe myself or someone observes me doing it, puts the list down.
I then do that list in front of the person. They do that list in front of me. And then we have a great day, right? And so with the TPS report, I say, hey, here are the steps for formatting. I'm going to write them down and then I'm going to do those steps in front of them. And then I'm say, hey, let's do a second TPS report for next week. We can do it together.
They do it in front of me following the exact same steps I wrote down. They did it. Skill is transferred. And now next time I asked for the TPS report, it'll be on time. You guys are amazing. I can't believe you guys keep sharing this. It's like, it's going nuts right now. Um, we've had record once back to back. Um, and it's, it's all because of you.
And so I just want to thank you guys so much again for sharing the podcast. Um, it's why I keep doing this and, uh, Yeah, so if you can text it to a friend or an enemy, slack it to maybe a work rival or slack it to a work friend, that works as well. Or share this on the gram to the many strangers who follow you so that they too can grow enlightened by business principles.
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Chapter 6: What role do deadlines play in team performance?
If you have, if you're trying to look at your business as a business owner, right? From a strategic perspective, there's a lot of things that you could do, right? But we have to ask ourselves, why? What are the things that are the most important for us to do? By when would it be the most meaningful? Now, here's where it gets really interesting. You more often than not are going to have how issues.
You're not going to know how to do it. And reframing the things that you know you need to do as questions that you don't know the answer to is so much more valuable than there's no one who can sell like me. I don't know how to get someone to sell like me. No one can market like I can. I don't know how to find someone who can market like I can. That's solvable.
No one can is a statement that you can do anything with. And so what I would really, really push back on is my kind of like leaving thought that might be the most powerful thing in this video. Be incredibly wary about the statements that you make that you believe are facts. because those statements exist as truth only in your mind.
And so basically your reality will be influenced by the laws that you choose to create and live by. And so if you want to bend your own reality, you have to be able to change the laws that exist. And so in the matrix, It's like every system is built on rules, right? Some rules you can bend, others you can break.
And the thing is, is that wouldn't you want to build a business in a world that had the fewest rules possible? And then what's interesting to me is that the amount of conversations that I have with business owners who tell me rules that limit their business, like, oh, we can't charge more than that. Because no one else does. That sounds like a terrible reason. We can't pay people that much. Why?
Because it's not industry standard. Okay. Well, everybody in your industry makes no money. So why would we do what they're doing? Like the biggest gift that I can give you is that the vast majority of business owners are broke. The vast majority. The average business owner makes like $50,000 a year, right? I'm not saying that's broke. It would be clear.
But for many people, the aspirations of being a business owner come with significantly higher goals than that reality. And if that's true, then the vast majority of business owners are wildly underperforming their aspirations. And a big part of that is because they model people like them. Most business owners look around, they see what everyone else is doing and say, oh, I'll do that.
And I'll do it a little bit better for a little bit less. But then every other person does that too until eventually you can't do any more for any less. And so many of these businesses function as essentially nonprofit organizations where the person's barely above water selling a largely commoditized service at a commoditized price with no differentiation in the marketplace whatsoever.
That's a game where if you choose to play like everyone else, you will lose. And so I would encourage you to, if everyone's doing something, it's a great reason not to do it. If anything, that like that alone would be, that would be a reason not to do it. At least it's different, right? At least you have an angle. You have something that's different.
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