Learn 97% of How to Get Rich in 11 Mins | Ep 1009

Book Your Spot at the 2-Day, Interactive Scaling Workshop in Las Vegas: https://www.acquisition.com/o-vegas Most bad business bets start as emotional discomfort disguised as strategy. In this episode, Alex shares the three questions he uses to pressure-test every decision. He explains why distraction is often intellectual laziness, how asking the right questions unlocks stalled projects, and why doing nothing is so often the right call. In this episode 00:00 The 3 questions Alex uses to make better bets 00:23 Question #1: What problem are you trying to solve? 02:45 Question #2: What would it take? 05:16 Question #3: What do you want to have happen? 10:24 Why “do nothing” is often the correct answer More Value: Get your free personalized $100M scaling roadmap: https://www.acquisition.com/roadmap?el=yt-alex-486r&htrafficsource=youtube Get the $100M Book Bundle: https://shop.acquisition.com/pages/100m-book-bundle Watch My Latest Episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AlexHormozi/featured Learn How to Scale Your Business to Millions in Revenue: https://www.acquisition.com/ Discover The Easiest Business I Can Help You Start (Free Trial): https://www.skool.com/hormozi Additional Free Books and Video Courses: https://www.acquisition.com/training DISCLOSURE: Information shared here is for educational purposes only. Individuals and business owners should evaluate their own business strategies and identify any potential risks. The information shared here is not a guarantee of success. Your results may vary. Copyright © 2026.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Hormozi?

  I'm going to give you my three favorite questions that I ask when I'm making bets in the business to make the most money. And I have these as almost like my treasured prized possessions because of how useful and how valuable the thinking frames they provide are. And so I'll give you conditions for each using each of these three.

• 0:24Alex Hormozi?

  So the first is when someone wants me to do something or they want me to approve of an action. I will almost always respond with what problem are you trying to solve? And what's really interesting about that question is that a lot of times people have this emotional discomfort. There's a problem that happens or they just don't feel good, which they determine is a problem. And then as a result, their actions skew all over the place. They're like, hey, I think we should do this employee engagement program. I'm like, okay, what problem are you trying to solve? Well, I just thought it'd be good for the employees. I'm like, well, do we have a retention issue? Do we have an attraction issue? Are we unable to attract talent? Like, let me know, that's very important.

• 1:06Alex Hormozi?

  And like, no, no, we don't have any retention issues or we don't have any attraction issues. And it's like, okay, then why aren't we doing this? Well, I think it's good. What problem are we trying to solve? And so I would say that I've learned this, this, this problem question because there's people, people are erratic. They want to do stuff. And so what ends up happening is well-intentioned people, nothing wrong with that.

• 1:38Alex Hormozi?

  They will just take action on things that they know how to do when they are confronted with things that they do not know how to do. And so a lot of lack of focus is actually intellectual laziness. So what I mean is I think most people in their business know on some level what needs to happen. But because they don't know how to solve that thing, they then just find something they can solve because that makes them feel better and more competent. Even though it makes no difference. And so like, I would encourage you to think if I am being distracted, it means I'm being intellectually lazy because I can't stay on this task that I don't know how to accomplish.

• 2:19Alex Hormozi?

  And be incompetent for extended period in order to get what I want, right? And so it's a, it's a great sus out of the thinking diligence that the person is asking you to do something or a bet you're willing to make. Or they're asking you to make or take. Whether they actually really thought of throw. So number one, someone asks me to do something, what problem are we trying to solve? If I'm asking someone to do something, so I want something now. I ask the question instead of giving the statement, I'll say, what would it take?

• 2:53Alex Hormozi?

  And so I almost always wrap my questions with what would it take? Because it assumes success. And what happens is when I used to ask, and this is something I did earlier in my career, can we, could we? I would get no's from people. And they would do a calculus in their mind of what they thought something was worth without complete context on my business like I have. Or complete context for the plans that I have long-term for the business. And then they would basically make a decision on my behalf by saying no. So I actually have, I'm actually working off of incorrect data. Like this is really important shit, even though I like, I'm, you know, just making a webcam version here, but like

• 3:38Alex Hormozi?

  really, really important, this is half the process, just got a conversation about this. If I asked, what would it take? Someone can then just tell me what it would take and then I can make the decision of whether I think it's worth it. And so that the amount of things that have been unlocked in my business of me just saying like, someone says, no, I'm like, stop. What would it take for us to do it? Obviously invite a billion dollars, can I do it? They're like, well, yeah, I'm like, okay, does it take a billion dollars like, no, okay, does it take a million dollars? Okay, no, what does it actually take? We probably need to hire somebody. Okay, well, it's going to make us an extra million dollars this year and it's, it's, you know, whatever, a hundred grand for this person. Okay, then let's do that. So you're just saying that we can't do with our existing infrastructure.

• 4:19Alex Hormozi?

  Or more specifically that the existing structure is prioritized against other things, which I can then say, let's deprioritize those and prioritize this. Right? So if someone asks me, let's do this thing, I like to ask, what problem are we solving? If I want something, I ask other people, what would it take? What would it take for us to do this in half the time? What would it take for us to deliver this in 24 hours instead of 30 days? What would it take for us to buy this company? What would it take for us to, to do this deal? What would it take for you to get started today? What would it take for me to get you to believe that you should shut down one of your businesses and go all in on the other? What would it take for me or what would it take for you to, to take our content from 10 things a day to 20 things a day? What would it take?

• 5:04Alex Hormozi?

  It is the, one of the most powerful questions in entrepreneurship.

• 5:09Alex Hormozi?

  Now,

• 5:11Alex Hormozi?

  the third question that I'll give you is related to question number one, which is when people ask me, you know, like, hey, I think we should do this thing. I would say my first follow-up to whatever their response is, because sometimes people don't know the problem they're trying to solve. Is I just ask.

• 5:28Alex Hormozi?

  So this is question three, what do you want to have happen? And I'm saying these questions, I feel like my team, you know, will be listening to this and be like, oh, he says those persons a lot. What do you want to have happen? Because it just gets around all of the like emotional hollow below to just what do you want to see? And the reason this is important, you know, like, let's say, let's use a different example. Someone says, hey, I think we should start doing our quarterly's in person. Okay, let's say you're a remote company. Someone says, I think we start doing a quarterly's in person. I say, okay, what do you want to have happen?

• 6:04Alex Hormozi?

  Well, I mean, I, I want, you know, the quarterly's be person. Yeah, but like, as a result of these quarterly's in person, what do you want to have happen? What different outcome will occur as a result of in-person versus remote quarterly's?

• 6:20Alex Hormozi?

  Well, I think, you know, I think it'll, it'll be, it'll be more fun. Okay. So the argument would be that you think that people will be more engaged in person versus online. Okay, no argument there. Do we think that their engagement in terms of how much fun they're having has anything to do with their outputs afterwards? Again, I ask these questions, not because I, they're loaded or because I disagree with them. I'm curious because I want to hear the other person's thinking. And so when I'm questioning this, these lines of thinking, I will typically ask three in succession, which is what does that mean? How do you know that? And so what? So if I say, hey, uh, you want to get, you know, the employees to be more engaged, I'm like, okay, what is engaged me? What is that?

• 7:03Alex Hormozi?

  Like, oh, well, I just, you know, I think, I think they'll be happier at work. Okay, what does that mean? Okay, like, tell me, like, like, what is that, what does that even mean? Like, we're going to, their subjective well-being scores are going to go up? Okay. Question two, how do you know that?

• 7:20Alex Hormozi?

  Do we want to give them a subjective well-being test that they rate their happiness before and then we have them rate their happiness afterwards? And then we see if this made a demonstrable difference? Yeah, okay, I understand. You want them to be happier and you want this? Okay, question three. So what? Let's say we do this, then what happens?

• 7:41Alex Hormozi?

  Do we think that it'll have like, it'll diminish once, once they leave? Maybe? Do we think this is going to have something on worker output? Okay, I have this research that suggests that worker output goes up by X, Y, and Z. And so it's like, okay. Now, the final question for me would be like, what else could we do with this time and energy that would yield a higher return to the business? And to be clear, I obviously want my people to be happy. I don't think that these one-off things are actually what make people happy. I think that having an ongoing work environment that rewards high effort and removes people who suck is a much more effective way of getting people to enjoy their work than kind of, you know, kumbaya bullshit. But I say this as, as just to equip you, because I see, I see questions like weapons.

• 8:24Alex Hormozi?

  Like, it's like, it shows, it shows how sharp your thinking is on both sides. It's like, if someone asks me these questions, it's just funny because I've had some, some people in my team. Ask me like, well, what do you mean by that? And they're, they're trying to use my weapons at me. And I'm like, bro, I can tell you what I mean because I thought about it. And so like, these questions, though they appear difficult, allow you to sus out or determine the quality or depth of someone's thinking around a problem or solution set.

• 9:01Alex Hormozi?

  And I would say that I use these on a regular basis when making bets in the business where I think we will get high returns. And if I want this to happen and then I say, what would it take for this to happen? I get a very different set of answers from people that tends to create more divergent thinking processes. As in, they try to solve for success and reverse engineer it. And when I open up the blue ocean of like, let's say we had unlimited money and unlimited time, what would it take? And then all of a sudden you go from unlimited time to unlimited money. And then what it actually would take is, you know, well, unlimited is unlimited, right? But like, small percentages in relation to that.

• 9:45Alex Hormozi?

  And so anyways, this was top of mind because I had a handful of conversations yesterday that were, that were in relation to this, where people would say, I want to do this thing. It's like, what problem are we trying to solve? What do you want to have happen? What does that mean? How do you know that's going to happen when you do that? And even if we do, so what? Who cares? What, what is this effect? How does this connect to a business outcome? And what you'll find is a lot of these questions lead to, maybe we shouldn't do this. And that's usually the right answer. And so one of my internal jokes that I have is the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world is do nothing. Like when I have like three doors of action, do it, you know, you know, do A, do B, and then do nothing. Do nothing so commonly is the correct answer.

• 10:30Alex Hormozi?

  As in, nope, continue to, you know, continue to allocate resources towards the things that are getting us the highest return. This is a thing that might get us a return, but we have this other thing that we know will get us a return. And the return that we get here might be as good, but this one certainly will be. And so we should just do more of that. So right now, when you're contemplating, uh, you know, should I, should I do this thing? This, you know, somebody in my team or I'm the one who's suggesting these things. You might have suggested it because you are emotionally uncomfortable with your existing moment. And just want something to do rather than the thing that you know is going to work. So anyways, uh, those are a handful of questions that I use like weapons that have helped me make better bets. I hope they help you.

• 11:15Alex Hormozi?

  If you like this video and you're a business owner who wants to break through your current revenue ceiling. I distilled every lesson from scaling 10 businesses past 10 million and three businesses past 100 million into a completely free scaling roadmap that I've used to go from zero to one, zero to 10, and zero to 100 plus. And so you can click here and you can check it out again, absolutely free. And since you're a business owner, appreciate you and enjoy.