My Blueprint For Setting Goals | Ep 799

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

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

• 0:00Alex Hormozi?

  So a lot of you guys are are setting goals, you know, we're coming on the new year. And so as somebody who has set many goals in my life and achieved at least some of them, I figured I would maybe give you a different take than you might consistently hear across social media. So this will not be your mama's, you know, smart goals, you know, specific, measurable, actionable, something timely, whatever they are. Not that at all. I actually, I think I'll give you how I've thought about goals. And for some of you, maybe it'll be useful. And for those of you who it isn't useful, I apologize. So big thing number one

• 0:44Alex Hormozi?

  is I think that people think about goal setting the wrong way. So the first issue I see with goal setting has to do with time. And so there's the time to begin and the time to achieve, right? And so there's, I think there's actually fallacies and misconceptions along both of those components of it. And so let's start with starting. So around beginning the goal, a lot of times people have goals, there's typically two times of year that goals occur, and they typically are anniversaries. So there's anniversary for everybody, which is a new year. And then there's your personal anniversary, which is a birthday. And so

• 1:25Alex Hormozi?

  most people make their biggest goals around when they turn a certain age, or the world turns a certain age, right? And so what's interesting about that is that I, I think you become more aware of it. But I have always taken the belief, and I remember thinking about this, is that I used to set a lot of goals when I was younger, and I would not get started on them. And one day, I realized that if the benefit of the goal that I have is not good enough in the immediate moment today to begin working on it, then it will be the same immediate benefit in a month. It'll just be today, a month from now. And so fundamentally, I have to be able to start working on the goal, or the benefit of working

• 2:08Alex Hormozi?

  on the goal must exceed my action threshold today, or it will never happen. And so I think even just walking through that logic for yourself, pretty much from that point going forward, if I have a goal, I begin immediately working on it the moment it becomes clear that it is a priority. And so I would like right now, if you're, if you have a new year's resolution goal, start now, right? Like actually start on the 30th, you know, start on the 31st even. Just start a little ahead and I, and I'll just say like, the, the more you do this, the more I'll start noticing that you're, you're in October and you're like, man, I, I really want to do this next year. It's like, well, if it's going to make sense for you next year, it'll make sense today. So then just start doing it now. And so like, why would you not want to enjoy the benefits sooner?

• 2:52Alex Hormozi?

  Think about it like, why would you not want to begin the process to get you close to your benefits today? So you can get those benefits that much faster, right? And if there is, and this is the key part. If the benefits are not good enough to begin working on them, you either need to change the dynamics of how you want to achieve the goal so that you can remove latency. So is there a way that I can pull up some element of reward from this goal? That makes it beneficial for me to work on it today? Or is maybe this goal, just like the equivalent of a complaint? Which is, it'd be nice, it'd be nice to have a six pack. But if it's not, if it's, if the benefit of beginning that work today is not worth it for you, it's not going to be worth it in a month.

• 3:35Alex Hormozi?

  And so some goal, like the reality is you're not going to be able to achieve all your goals because it takes five seconds to set a goal and sometimes five years to achieve it. And so your goal to achievement ratio is always going to be, you're going to have more goals than you have achieved. And so, so it's normal. And so I think that what, what can be helpful is deciding which goals you are not going to do. What fires am I going to let burn? I have wanted to start working out. Well, I've also wanted to start doing these other things. Well, which of these goals is most important? Because goals have a cost, which is the second element of time

• 4:14Alex Hormozi?

  that I think goals have misconceptions around, which is that you, everybody here who's listening to this or watching this has the same time, right? We all have the same 24 hours, right? Everyone's hurt that. What's interesting though, is that people will set goals. But they will not remove anything from their, from their calendar. So you're saying, I have 24 hours. I'm going to achieve these four things. These four things will probably take me an extra four hours a day in order to accomplish. And I'm going to add that into my existing 24 hour schedule. So I will do 28 hours worth of work in 24. And then, of course, you're shocked when it doesn't end up happening.

• 4:55Alex Hormozi?

  And so what I would recommend doing is not only listing out the goal, number one. Number two, listing out the approximate time you think it will take. And then number three, multiplying that by three and creating a sacrifice for that goal. That is equivalent to three times the time duration of what you believe it will be. And I can't remember what razor it is, but there's some razor that's like, everything takes three times longer than you think it will. And even knowing this razor doesn't change the fact that it'll take three times longer than you think it will. Elon Musk talks about it, but the reason that I say it this way is that you think that the goal will take you this long. There was somebody in, uh, who's a friend of mine in March, and I was making fun of him for being fat.

• 5:40Alex Hormozi?

  Um, it's fine. We're guys. I can do it. He's my friend. And if he's not your friend and you don't know who he is, then get over it. All right. Anyways, so I was poking him about being pudgy. Now he's in the fitness world, so I had double reason to do that, right? It'd be like a dentist having bad teeth. Like I had to poke him a little bit. I'm like, hey, man. You're trying to help people lose weight and you look like you barely work out, right? And so of course, you know, uh, we were, we were joking around, but he took it seriously. And so he said, my goal is to get a six pack by the end of this year. And I said, you're not going to do it. And he was like, what do you mean? Why don't you believe me? I was like, no, no, it's just like, you're too far away. Like you're not going to do it. You can't do it. Like it's, it's, it's super unlikely.

• 6:21Alex Hormozi?

  And so as the months kept going forward, I was like, where's my six pack? Where's my six pack? Where's my six pack? Yeah, I'm a great friend. Um, and I will say, being real, he said, I always appreciate the fact that you're real with me. And that actually ended up helping him change. I define good friends as people who make us better. All right. Not as people who are nice to us. Anyways. So here we are, December 30th, he does not have a six pack, but he's way closer. But the big thing is that it took him significantly longer than he expected, and he's a professional in the space. And so I say this again to say that you probably, your goal that you have will probably take three times longer than you think. Like really, now you have how long you want it to take, how long you think it's going to take, and then how long it will actually take. Right. And the actually take, because like on some level, you know that what you hope happens versus what you think will happen are two different things.

• 7:07Alex Hormozi?

  Right. Well, the thing will happen is still one third less than will actually happen. All right. And so I say this to set expectations properly in terms of the time commitment required to achieve almost any goal worth achieving. And so, uh, there's a third component which I'll get into, but I'm going to, I'm going to hammer to the second one because I think it's important.

• 7:24Alex Hormozi?

  I, I love the thought that achieving goals is like doing or practicing magic. Now, I don't believe in magic, but if you watch any magic movie, almost all of them have a price to magic, right? There's like magic isn't free. You have to sacrifice some life. You have to crumple a flower in your hand so that you can do the thing, whatever it is, right? If you don't, it like takes it out of your flesh or some crazy stuff, right? But the point is, is that I see goal achievement much the same way. You can't practice magic and just get magic for free. You can't, you can't just get goals for free. All goals have price tags. And so this is the big thing that I think everyone misses is that it, they look at value

• 8:08Alex Hormozi?

  completely, uh, disassociated from price. And so price to value is a, is a relationship between both variables. And I think this, honestly, this perspective is the reason that many people stay poor. The reason many business owners stay small and the reason, I don't know, I don't have a third one there for the rhetorical device, but I don't have one. But those two, right? The point is, is that

• 8:34Alex Hormozi?

  You have to analyze them together because fundamentally you have a risk adjusted return on your time and effort and energy. There's a hundred million things you could do with your life. You have very finite resources and the people who get the furthest in life or the furthest towards their goals are the ones who allocate that time and effort and energy towards the things that get them the highest returns. Right? And so it's not just value. There's a million things that you like. It's like, I will, I want to spend all my time on marriage. I also want a six pack. I also want to be a gazillionaire. I also want to be a monk. Right? Like, there's all these things that you want to do, but there's huge price tags that we're just saying like, yeah, yeah, you know what? I'll have, I'll take them all. I'll take them all.

• 9:15Alex Hormozi?

  But you can't take them all without, without running up the bill. Right? And so a lot of you guys are, are, are trying, are putting things on your platter. But when you're getting to the checkout line, you're like, oh, I, I don't have enough money for this. Right? And so the first kind of realization that I think is worth having is what's your budget?

• 9:32Alex Hormozi?

  What's your goal budget? How much time and money do you actually have available to dedicate to achieving the goal you have? Things super real. And like the goal, like, I also don't think it's, it's likely that you'll conquer multiple domains in the same year. Right? Like my, I remember the first year I wanted to get a six pack. I got a six pack. That was like my whole year and I got a six pack. And then like, and then maintaining is a lot easier. Maintaining that, I maintain a six pack for the rest of my life. But maintaining it is, is the, is much easier than achieving it. Getting, learning how to do business and making your first dollar and making sales and marketing and scale. All of those things really tough. Once you know how to advertise and learn how to sell and learn how to deliver something.

• 10:16Alex Hormozi?

  It's easier to maintain your business level and you're maintaining your current level of income versus growing it. All right? And that's why a lot of people also stay there, to be fair.

• 10:25Alex Hormozi?

  But right now, I think if you're real with yourself, and this would be the exercise, like probably the first tactical exercise that I would give you if as you're going into the new year is, what are the goals? How long do I want it to take? How long do I think it'll take? Multiply that by three. These are the value. These are the things I want on the shelf, things at the buffet. And then the other side has to be our budget, which is you look at everything you spend your time on, right? There's two big investments that you can make that are usually pretty well documented. The first is your money. Look at your credit card statement. What you vote with your dollars is what you care about. Like you can say you care about these things. How you spend your money is how you actually care.

• 11:09Alex Hormozi?

  And a lot of you might be surprised. You care about being healthy, but you spend a huge percentage of your income on cheap food, fast food, whatever else, right?

• 11:20Alex Hormozi?

  You care about, you care about your personal development, but you spend a huge amount of your time and energy on junk consumption, on Netflix, on social media. You're just consuming junk, right? Care about this brain, but you're feeding the junk all day, right? And so you're going to have all of the things you currently spend your money, you currently spend your time on. Now, the well documented part has two components to it. Documented in terms of like your, your devices, almost all the devices we have nowadays have like screen recordings. They tell you how your time will split up. If you don't have them, they're free apps that you can get online for computers, but your phone tracks it. And then if you are a little bit more organized, then if you live on a calendar, your calendar will tell you what you, what your priorities are in terms of your time.

• 12:03Alex Hormozi?

  And so between your screens and your calendar and your wallet, your credit card statement, you, like if I just saw that about somebody, I could probably tell you what their life is like.

• 12:16Alex Hormozi?

  So really fun fact, they did a, a research study where they had men and women pick their mates by going into their rooms, not meeting the person. There's no pictures removed and they just got to pick them off of the rooms and their living situation. Interestingly, they had better matches and predictive power about the people by just looking at their environment and not meeting them than meeting them.

• 12:48Alex Hormozi?

  We think like we're very good at deceiving people. But these things are the facts, right? Like what you spend your time, what you spend your money on, how you how you consume your attention, that's what you that's that's your budget, right? And so we have our goals, that's what we want, and we have our budget. And so when you look at the all of your expenses, right? Now we have to look at which ones of these am I willing to give up? Number one. And then secondly, and this is the one that's ugly, which ones of these am I likely to give up?

• 13:19Alex Hormozi?

  Now, I would recommend it's easier to swap things. So for example, if you're like, you know, I watch a lot of Netflix and I wish I didn't. Well, I'll tell you something that worked really well for me. I just listen to audiobooks before I go to bed rather than watching TV. It's a very easy swap in terms of habit. But I sleep better, I'm not looking at a screen, I could use my imagination, I can read nonfiction if I want to, I can read fiction. And so just a very small, little small tweak, little tweak. And so it's much harder to stop something than it is to replace something. All right. And so if you think about this in terms of human behavior, right? You have a reinforcing stimulus, you have something that that rewards you for doing it, that's why you keep doing it, right? That's why, for example, like in a relationship and people may disagree with me and that's amazing.

• 14:03Alex Hormozi?

  It's isn't it cool to be in a free country where we can disagree? All right. I have the belief that if you're in a relationship, doesn't matter how long it is. If you get out of that relationship, you're going to have a a reinforcing stimulus that's going to be gone. Whether you broke up them or they broke up you. Either way, there's going to be some positive aspect of your life that's gone, right? And so people are like, well, you need to spend time to heal and trauma, blah, whatever. You have to get over that person. What that translates into behavior is you need to find an alternative reinforcing stimulus. And so there's basically two ways to think about it. One is that you can find something in your environment, so you can start gardening, you can start working out more. You find something else that has a positive reinforcement that takes up the place of this person. Now, if you spend a very long time being single after that, you find hobbies, you find friends, you find other things that fill that gap, right?

• 14:48Alex Hormozi?

  The alternative is that you just find another person.

• 14:52Alex Hormozi?

  Now, people don't like that, but also the same people who don't like that, this happens all the time. This is, you're like, you're like, that's not, why is that not good? Like, what czar of how to live decrees that this is not good? To get over one person, you just date somebody else afterwards. Right? Now, some people are like, well, there's rebounders. Well, I just think that that's just the likelihood of regression to the mean. You think the likelihood that you're just the next person you date is going to be the one? Is probably the same likelihood of you dating anybody after that person is going to be the one. And so there's this misconception around rebounding. When in reality, it's like, now rebounding, maybe you low your bar for getting some reinforcement, right? If you want to get really technical on it. But in terms of the likelihood that this person's going to be the one.

• 15:35Alex Hormozi?

  I mean, I got out of a really low relationship, met Leyland, was like, hey, I'm not into anything serious. And here we are, right? And so I bring this up to say, like, I just don't think a lot of these things are planned. Now, zooming back out to goals. We have the stuff we want. We have what it's going to cost. We have what we're willing to give up and what we're likely to give up. So I would start with the things that you are likely to give up. That you're like, I think I want to get rid of these things and I believe I can get rid of these things. Now, then you have to look at that, that value list, that goal list and think, okay. Of these, which is the most important? Which of these will, will bring me closest or furthest along on my path? Closest to the ideal version of me that I want? Now, some of you may have the question of like, well, should I prioritize a health goal?

• 16:19Alex Hormozi?

  Or should I prioritize a relationship goal? Should I prioritize a monetary goal? I think that's honest, like some choices in life you just have to make. Like, I, I'll say it differently.

• 16:31Alex Hormozi?

  If you prioritize your monetary goal, and let's say you achieve it, right? Well, prioritizing the monetary goal might help you with your relationship goal. Cause you can go on better dates, you can attract better people, whatever, right? You can dress nicer, you can, if you're a girl, you can inject your face with all the stuff, whatever. You know, like whatever it is, okay? You have more resources. That's not a bad thing. If you prioritized relationships and love, maybe at the end of the year, you don't have the monetary thing yet. And you don't have the, the health thing yet, but you actually found somebody who's really improved your subjective wellbeing. And right now, by the way, if you didn't know this, the strongest correlation by a mile for subjective wellbeing. How happy you are, how content you are with your life? Has to do with the strength of your relationship with your significant other. It's a point seven one correlation, like nothing else is even close, like not even close.

• 17:15Alex Hormozi?

  And so you might get to the end of the year, but like this was a W, right? Now, let's say the third path, let's say that you get to the end of the year and you have your six pack. You're in way better shape, you look good, you feel good, you have way more energy. Well, what do you think that's gonna do? It's probably gonna attract better mates. It's gonna help you do better in business. And so we have this either or perspective on goals, but almost all goals help achieve one another. The problem is that most people start on none of them in the attempt to achieve all of them. And so if you just think about it as like, I'm just going to chip away and attack one and know that by just focusing on this one, I'm still gonna get a half step up on the other tip. But I want to actually achieve it. And so I think a lot of people are very unskilled in making trade offs. And life is about trade offs, right?

• 17:58Alex Hormozi?

  As I say, me as my, as my very young man self, but it's about making bets. Like we have to make trades, like nothing's free. Everything costs time, it costs money, it costs opportunity, it costs the paths not taken. Everything has a price. And so I think the people who do much better understand the price that they're paying for the thing that they want more. So much so that they actually pick more appropriately and are more selective. Because when you really, I think when you really appropriately see or assess how expensive a goal really is, all of a sudden you realize that you can achieve far fewer than you think.

• 18:39Alex Hormozi?

  And so when you set your goal, think about this big sacrifice like the magic. What are you gonna put on the altar? What are you gonna sacrifice on the altar to achieve it? And I remember when I was, I had six locations and I wanted to scale to 10. But on my gyms, and I made this live, I'll see if I can find it. Where I was beat, I was beat, I was doing, you know, 20 plus consults a day. I'm launching my sixth gym at that time. And I had spotted out my like seventh, eighth, ninth, 10th locations. I knew where I wanted to open them. And I'm looking at my calendar and being like, I don't know I'm gonna do this like I spend all my time and so that was when I made a live and I was like

• 19:22Alex Hormozi?

  I'm giving up Netflix and football and fantasy football. That's what I'm giving up, which was a lot of stuff and I liked a lot of it. But when I was honest with myself. At the end of the year, I can't really remember anything meaningful about the Netflix shows that I watched. And I couldn't really remember anything like, do I really care about the fantasy league that I'm in now? Some people, if that's like your biggest thing of joy, then do it. All right, I'm not talking to you. But for everyone else who just does it as a pastime, just recreationally. If if the outcome of that a year from now versus the outcome of the goal a year from now. If that goal means more to you looking back. Then then do that, right? And be willing to pay that price. And I think there's a lot of like, but what about smelling the flowers? What about enjoying life?

• 20:08Alex Hormozi?

  I think that the more you work towards your goals, the more you start enjoying working towards your goals. And so you end up smelling the flowers along the way regardless. And so that's just been my personal experience. Um, that that that I share around that and I work a lot. I work a lot. I work more now than I did when I had less money, which is hard to imagine because I just work all the time and I'm just better at working. I remember in college, a twenty page paper was like a semester long project and now I can bang out twenty pages in a day. You know what I mean? And so it's like you just get better, like your output just goes up. So I said there was three components of time with relation to goal. So the first was the start, right? Is that people delay the start for some arbitrary reason, when in the reality is we have to figure out

• 20:53Alex Hormozi?

  whatever way to make the benefits beneficial enough today, right now to begin now. Because otherwise, if they don't work in the future, they're not going to work now, right? When the future is new. The second is that we have to understand the difference between the price of our goals and the value of our goals. And we have to appropriately judge those so that we can actually make a trade off and say, I can't achieve. I cannot achieve all of these goals. But one of these goals is more important than the others. And if you can't make that decision, guess what your number one goal is? Learning how to pick. I'm being super real. If if you can't pick and commit to one of your goals. Then your number one goal is to learn how to pick and commit. And I define commitment as the elimination of alternatives. It's like when you're married, you make the ultimate commitment.

• 21:36Alex Hormozi?

  And so you eliminate all other people than the spouse that you have. As long as you have what I would consider a traditional marriage. I don't know what these new age kids are doing. All right, but that's how it normally works. Right. And so if think about you getting married to your goal. Like you're getting married to the goal and you're eliminating any alternatives to that goal. And I can promise you, if you eliminate everything but something, you tend to do it. So Jerry Seinfeld had a writing process that I that I really liked. And this is actually really common with writers. Um, because I study a lot of writers, obviously, because I've read a lot. Um, and many of them have these dedicated periods at the beginning of the day where they say, I'm going to start a clock. I'm, I don't have to write, but I can't do anything else.

• 22:19Alex Hormozi?

  And so it's like an empty room and a keyboard or a yellow, like Jerry Seinfeld uses yellow, yellow scratch pads. And he just has to sit there. And he's like, and you know what? When nothing else to do is like, I get bored enough that I'm like, hell, why not? I'll just start writing. And so I think a lot of, a lot of us and myself included. In the beginning, I thought a lot about focus was like, ah, like gritting my teeth and like just trying to zone everything out. I don't think that way at all about it anymore. It's just, I would eliminate all potentialities of things that could disrupt the one thing. Like focus, if said differently, focus is the quality and quantity of things that you say no to. And so the more things you say no to, the better the things you say no to, the more focused you are.

• 23:02Alex Hormozi?

  And so take it to, again, the natural extreme. If you said nothing, said no to literally everything, except for one thing, then you would be 100% focused. And so again, it's not, are you focused or you're not focused? It's how focused are you? And so for many of you, I think you're like 5% focused on your goal. And then you're surprised that you don't really get that far. So if you made, if you were 100% focused, you didn't sleep, you didn't eat. Now, of course, you start adding some of those things in because you're like, oh, long term, I do need to sleep. I need to eat. Okay, cool. But I would start at zero, like be as extreme as that. I mean, do whatever you want. I'm, I'm trying to lean a little bit away from, from telling people what to do. I will just share like, that's what's worked for me. If that's extreme for you, then do whatever you want. All right. Um, third part of goals, time.

• 23:48Alex Hormozi?

  The time to achieve. So there's the time to start, what we're willing to pay, what we're willing to sacrifice, and how long we expect. And so really, it's the, it's the expectations of the goal achievement that I see as the third big bucket of goal problems. And so what's crazy about this is that almost everyone on here, whatever goal you put in the chat, I would bet you is achievable. Just not on your timeline.

• 24:19Alex Hormozi?

  And so like,

• 24:21Alex Hormozi?

  you might have amazing goals, but a really shitty timeline. And so what happens is, is that you expect a 10-year outcome in 12 months, and then every 12 months you keep restarting, and 10 years from now you're still at ground zero.

• 24:35Alex Hormozi?

  And that's what I want to help you avoid. And so the, like,

• 24:41Alex Hormozi?

  the more big things that I've set out to accomplish that ended up working out, the more I've just realized it takes years, plural, to do big stuff, like, like years. Right? I started building this, my personal brand in 2019. Content-wise, like you guys now see my stuff, but 2019 is not, I mean, like, we're 2025, six years. But then I still, I mean, like, I still see all the road ahead of where I want to go, right? And same thing with acquisition.com and, and the portfolio companies in school, right? Like, all of these things are like, like, if you were to ask Sam or I, like, well, you know, where is school going to be in a year? I was like, I don't think, I don't think either of us are even thinking like a year. We're like, we know where we want to go. And it's more like, you set where you want to go, and then you just start walking.

• 25:27Alex Hormozi?

  And it takes what it takes. Right? Like, you see some of these big companies, like, you want to see, hear something crazy? Facebook is like 25 years old. Like, it's a new hot, it's old, it's not new at all. I think it's 20 years. But like, you look at Amazon, 35 years old. Old, right? These businesses take time. Microsoft is like a hu- a thousand years old, right? It's older than Gandalf. It's I bring this up because we, we have these big aspirations. We have these heroes, we have Elon Musk, right? Elon's like fifty-five and also the smartest person on the fucking planet. But besides that, he's super, he's, he's, this is his third season. Think about that. This is his third entrepreneurial season.

• 26:10Alex Hormozi?

  His first season, he sold Zip2, which was like a, a little website thing. Then, then he did PayPal and that was many years. And then from PayPal, they started his next season, which is the season he's in now. And like, I don't even, I'll look it up right now. Let's see Tesla, no, let's do, let's do SpaceX. SpaceX founded 2002, twenty-three years old.

• 26:36Alex Hormozi?

  So again, it's like, I just, I, I say this because like, everyone's so green. And there's always gonna be more people who are green. There's always be more people behind the starting line that haven't stepped up to the plate yet. And it's because they, because they're like, how am I gonna run this marathon in twenty-six minutes? It's like, no, bro, it's twenty-six miles, not minutes. It's like, oh, but can, can I just run it in twenty-six minutes? It's like, no.

• 27:01Alex Hormozi?

  No, you can't. And so I think, I think the vast majority of goals are not achieved because of a incorrect expectation. And a lot of that is because when you're new, you just don't know any better. You just think things should happen fast because all we see is the finish line, right? All we see is Elon now. And so we see Elon now and the moment you see him is like, okay, well, I've known him for ten seconds. And so he's really successful and I've only known him for ten seconds. Therefore, it takes ten seconds to be successful, right? We reason that way. It's wrong, obviously, right? But like, that's how our brains work. And so I think this is probably one of the, the root reasons of the misconceptions that most people have

• 27:45Alex Hormozi?

  around the goals that they set out to achieve is that the people they see who achieve them, they meet them after they achieve them. They just don't meet them during the many years it took to get there.

• 27:56Alex Hormozi?

  And so, uh, when I said the triple your timeline thing, I meant it. Like, even if you know to triple your timeline, you still have to triple it again. Right? Like, it still happens that way. It still takes longer. And so like, I, I, I'll tell you a, a fun one to make this very real for you. It took me, it took me years. I mean, technically I lost everything again at like year five or six. So like, if you want to see like back to zero, right? Um, but like, it took years, right? To, to, to get back to where I was as a consultant in terms of my income.

• 28:33Alex Hormozi?

  And so like, you just make, you just make mistakes. I mean, like, I would say like, when I really started making the same income again, it was like, four years in or five years, it was, it was a lot, right? And so, um, and I'll say sustainably, obviously I had some big months and things like that. But like, really, you know, reliably. And I think that if you had told me when I quit my,

• 28:56Alex Hormozi?

  my job, I was going to take yours. I don't know if I would have quit.

• 29:03Alex Hormozi?

  Because I had expectations. And so maybe it's good to have the unrealistic expectations because it gets you to start. But I don't want you to stop because it's not achieved by the time that you thought it would be. I don't want you to grow to this heart. Because I will say this is that a lot more of my, so let me, let me give you a definition that'll be helpful. The difference between a beginner and expert in a given domain is the number of ways they can mark progress.

• 29:31Alex Hormozi?

  So, I'll give you an example. If you've never run ads before and you start running ads, you are only going to know, uh, outcome-based thinking, which is like, did they work or not? An expert can think in nuance. There's a hundred steps that have to occur between when we start running the ad and when they're profitable. And what they care about is whether we're making progress towards that. And so, I mean, there's the whole progress, not perfection, and as much as it is a little aphorism. I agree with it, right, which is that we just need to make sure we're moving forward. That's it. And so if you have your goal, and my friend who's trying to get a six pack, as long as he's getting leaner, he will get there eventually.

• 30:14Alex Hormozi?

  As long as you close more people over time, you'll get there eventually. As long as you just continue to decrease churn, you'll get there eventually. Right? As long as you keep making content and you just keep getting a little better every time, you will eventually get good at making content. And so, the, the big, the big misnomer is the amount of volume that's required in order to be proficient or even very good or competent at a skill is a lot of times like, not like two or three times what you thought, so different than the other kind of expectations. A lot of times it's like 50 times or 100 times bigger than you thought. And volume negates luck. And that's what I tell all the sales guys who enter any of the portfolio companies. I, I almost always weave it in, is that volume negates luck.

• 30:59Alex Hormozi?

  Right, like if you don't want to be lucky, do more. And so, here's the, here's the big, the big asterisk on it, that, that people, people forget about. In order to really do 50 or 100 times more than someone else does, you can't, it's, you often can't do 50 times more than someone does, 100 times more than someone does in a day. You just can't. And so that's where the, that's where the sticking with it comes into play. It's still a volume game. You can pull the future forward by doing more reps faster. Like 10,000 hours of work can absolutely happen in five years instead of 15, but you still can't get around the hours. Now, the price for the person who does the 10,000 hours in five years versus 15 years

• 31:43Alex Hormozi?

  is that they gave up more of the other stuff on that calendar.

• 31:48Alex Hormozi?

  When they looked at their time block, it's 16 hours a day they're awake, okay? They had to give up twice as much, sorry, three times as much as the guy who does it in 15. So will both of them get there eventually? Yes, and I think that big picture, that's what's important. But even the idea of annual goals, I almost find silly because like, nothing that I want to accomplish now, I can do in a year anyways.

• 32:11Alex Hormozi?

  That's real. Like, think about that for a second. And, and I think, I think society's annual thinking, like Bill Gates says this, a lot of like, people underestimate what they can accomplish in a decade and overestimate what they can accomplish in a year.

• 32:27Alex Hormozi?

  And so like, a lot of goals are really like two, three, four year goals. Like, big picture, you get your business to where you want it to be to get you financially. Most people, that's a life goal. Right? Not a year goal. It's just because society tells us that these are how goals need to be made. But the time component, I think, is the reason that most people don't hit their goals. And it's because of the three components that I want. Is that they, they, they push off starting because they don't know how to see the benefit immediately. And if you can't see it immediately, it's always going to be immediately when you start. No matter how far in the future you're going to kick it off to. And so you might as well figure out how to make it worth it now. The second is that people don't understand the trade off, that you can't accomplish all your goals. You cannot do it. And you only have a certain amount of budget.

• 33:12Alex Hormozi?

  And you have to then be selective, strategic, you have to prioritize the things that matter most. And do that understanding that when you fully accomplish one goal, you will still partially accomplish some of the others. But by trying to accomplish all three, you will accomplish none.

• 33:30Alex Hormozi?

  And then the third part is that the expectations of how long it will take to get to where you want to go is typically three times longer or more than you expect. Even knowing that will take three times longer, it is again, three times longer.

• 33:42Alex Hormozi?

  And so I think that if, if we, if we put those together. Start today, you're willing to sacrifice a lot. You eliminate the alternatives, you commit fully. And you kick out the timeline to say, I'm just going to keep walking. And I, I know where I'm headed. I know the direction I'm going. I may adjust along the way, but I'm just going to keep walking and I'm going to keep getting better. And so the only commitment you have is to progress, is to feedback, is to improvement. Make that commitment. Make that the goal. And then the outcome based goal will just take care of itself.

• 34:17Alex Hormozi?

  Because like, imagine if I said I have to make a billion dollars by next year, right?

• 34:22Alex Hormozi?

  Well, it forced me to do all sorts of stupid stuff. But if I said, I want to get a billion dollars eventually, then I know that these things will eventually get me there. And whether it takes 10 years or it takes 20 years, whatever, right? Whatever.