Alex Hormozi: This Is EXACTLY How to Make Your First MILLION (Follow THIS 4-Step Framework to Turn Your Ideas into REAL Money FAST!)

Have you ever thought about starting a business? What would you do if money wasn’t a problem? Today, Jay sits down with bestselling author, entrepreneur, and investor Alex Hormozi for a practical and eye-opening conversation about money, business, and what it really takes to succeed. Alex has built and sold multiple companies and now runs Acquisition.com, where he helps scale businesses to over $10 million in revenue. In this episode, Alex breaks down why so many people feel stuck when trying to grow a business. Alex and Jay dive into the common mistakes that hold people back, like chasing passive income too early, mistaking passion for a plan, or seeking freedom without first building discipline. Alex shares the real steps you need to take to start making money now. He explains how to create active income by offering your time and skills, how to craft offers people can’t refuse, and why direct feedback is the fastest path to growth. Jay and Alex also explore the mindset traps that stop people from moving forward, including fear of judgment, comparison, and the pressure to get it perfect the first time. Together Jay and Alex highlight the importance of showing up consistently, being willing to fail, and choosing long-term growth over short-term comfort. In this interview, you'll learn: How to Start a Business with Zero Capital How to Create an Offer People Can’t Refuse How to Increase Your Income by Trading Your Time Intentionally How to Sell Without Feeling Manipulative How to Get Unstuck from the Passive Income Trap If you're ready to stop guessing and start building something real, this episode gives you the clarity, structure, and confidence to move forward. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty Join over 750,000 people to receive my most transformative wisdom directly in your inbox every single week with my free newsletter. Subscribe here. What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 00:40 Get Clear on the Exact Actions That Drive Success 02:10 Why Most People Misunderstand How to Build a Business 04:26 Is the ‘Get Rich Quick’ Model Really Possible? 07:41 The Five Emotional Stages Every Entrepreneur Goes Through 10:52 Start Here to Learn the Skills That Actually Make Money 13:36 Should You Follow Your Passion for Income? 23:30 How to Make Your First Dollar from Nothing 27:57 The 10 by 10 Strategy to Build Proof and Confidence 32:27 Your Product Must Solve a Real Problem 35:37 What No One Tells You About the Trade-Offs of Business 39:40 How to Turn Your Job Experience into a Business 52:27 Redefining Success: It’s Not About the Outcome 56:07 Listen to People Who Are Where You Want to Be 01:02:18 Overcoming the Fear of Selling Ourselves 01:04:23 How to Influence Without Manipulating 01:10:17 The Difference Between Criticism and Insults 01:17:28 How to Break Repetitive Negative Behavior 01:26:15 When to Keep Pushing and When to Pivot 01:28:46 The Four Ingredients of an Irresistible Offer 01:37:02 Focus on Who You Want to Become Not Just What You Want 01:38:40 What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid? 01:42:46 The Simple Formula Everybody Has But Nobody is Doing 01:45:53 The Most Important Step Is Just Start 01:47:05 Is Work Life Balance Really Achievable? 01:50:35 Be More Productive by Eliminating Everything Unnecessary 01:55:17 Alex on Final Five Episode Resources: Alex Hormozi | Website Alex Hormozi | Instagram Alex Hormozi | Facebook Alex Hormozi | YouTube Alex Hormozi | LinkedIn Alex Hormozi | X Alex Hormozi | Books See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1. Are you feeling September reset too? Shorter days, longer to-do lists, earlier alarms, all those routines you promised yourself you'd pick back up. It can feel like your whole life is recalibrating. And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on. AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet,

• 0:44Jay Shetty?

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• 1:28Jay Shetty?

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• 2:13Jay Shetty?

  it helps to have a few things you can rely on. AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet, AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose.

• 2:59Jay Shetty?

  That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose.

• 3:04Alex Hormozi?

  You can build something very big in about five to seven years. And the problem is, most people spend that same five to seven years reliving the same 30 days over and over again. You have to stay in that painful place. Staying in the pain is what gives you the catalyst to learn how to get out of pain.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Please welcome a serial entrepreneur, bestselling author, and the mind behind a $100 million business portfolio, Alex Hormozi.

• 3:31Jay Shetty?

  What's that number one misconception you hear when people are thinking about building a business? And you go, that's the issue?

• 3:36Alex Hormozi?

  I think they conflate sequence. A lot of people who are wanting to make money believe that the making money comes from investing. Investing is the last thing you do, not the first thing you do.

• 3:47Jay Shetty?

  How do you get over the block of, I don't want to work for free?

• 3:49Alex Hormozi?

  I actually think it's entitlement. You're not working for free. You're learning and then you're earning.

• 3:54Jay Shetty?

  Should you do what you love for money and love what you do?

• 3:58Alex Hormozi?

  I think this is big myth number two.

• 4:00Jay Shetty?

  People fail not because there's some magical list nobody has. They fail because it's an obvious list nobody does.

• 4:08Alex Hormozi?

  It's the obvious list. If you're trying to get in shape, you know you should eat less and you should move more. You already know what you're supposed to do. Question is why you aren't doing it.

• 4:16Jay Shetty?

  What do you think is the number one emotion that people don't know how to control that leads to failure?

• 4:23Alex Hormozi?

  Fear.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  The number one health and wellness podcast.

• 4:27Speaker 04

  Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty. The one, the only Jay Shetty.

• 4:33Jay Shetty?

  Alex Omerzi, I've been looking forward to this interview for a long, long time. My friends are fans, I'm a fan. And I know we were in touch, like maybe even a couple of years ago now it's been. But I'm so happy to be at the holy grail of acquisition.com. I saw the big logo when I walked in. Congratulations on everything you've been up to. And I'm so glad to introduce you to my audience, some of who I'm sure follow you already and love your work. And then I'm hoping you get a ton of new fans and a ton of new people being impacted through this as well. So thank you so much for doing this.

• 5:04Alex Hormozi?

  Well, thank you so much for having me. And I've been, I'd say I mirror it right back. We've been, I've been looking forward to talking because I think there's so much good stuff that I think is going to happen. So I'm very excited.

• 5:13Jay Shetty?

  I love it. Alex, I want to start with asking you something that I've been thinking about a lot when I'm talking to people today. And it's when I think about my community, my audience who's listening right now. What are you going to unblock for them? When you, if someone read all your books, listen to your podcast, listen to today's podcast. What are they going to unblock that's been tripping them up, keeping them behind or holding them back?

• 5:38Alex Hormozi?

  I think they would have clarity on what actions were required to get what they wanted. And then at that point, they would only have to think like, why am I not doing it? Which is a separate conversation. But there's a lot of confusion, I would say around like, what are the things that are required in order to create a business? In order to create an income? I would say that I'm an objectivist. And so I just look at what are the things that are observable? And I think a lot of time people spend inside their heads trying to think about manifesting and energy and all of this stuff. When it's like, we got to let people know about the stuff we have. We got to have something to sell and we got to make sure that what we're charging costs less than it costs to deliver it. And we try and do that as many times as we can. And so each of those pieces, obviously has frameworks behind them, but they're all tied to one thing, which is just what actions are required.

• 6:22Alex Hormozi?

  And that's been this single pervasive frame in my life that has made. Navigating reality significantly easier for me because I was very confused coming up. And I was like, I don't know what any of this is. And I read all these self-help books and and I felt more confused after the 10th book than I did in the first book. And then it was just like, okay, what do I have to do? And then that is kind of what has started this journey for me.

• 6:42Jay Shetty?

  What's that number one misconception you hear? When people are thinking about building a business, making money, changing their financial situation? What's the number one thing you hear and you go, that's the issue?

• 6:53Alex Hormozi?

  I think the conflated sequence is probably the first and biggest thing. Because a lot of people who are wanting to make money believe that the making money comes from investing. And investing is the last thing you do, not the first thing you do. And so one of the things is they'll look at people who are at the end of their careers and say, okay, well, these guys are making all these, you know, these bets, right? If I, if I just bought this meme coin or I just bought Bitcoin in 2013, I'd be super rich. But it actually doesn't take into consideration what a decision-making process like that would create, which is if you took a swing at every type of Bitcoin, because you can't just say, I would only pick this one. You'd have to say, I pick every single super long shot. It's like, we probably would have lost on 99 of the other bets. And so it's like, we have to take it in aggregate. And so I would say making active income cool again,

• 7:36Alex Hormozi?

  rather than the passive bet and really just gambling, is probably the first thing that that people mess up is that they're, they somehow think that working or active income is not scalable. When in reality, the people who have the most money typically have tremendously high incomes. And it's because of the excess of cash flow from that income are they able now to make big swings with riskier bets that sometimes pay off and sometimes don't. But you can't take those swings unless you have more cash flow that's coming in from the things you do every day.

• 8:04Jay Shetty?

  You know what? No one's ever said it that well, like from everyone I've spoken to. And I'm so glad you pointed it out because I completely agree. I have so many friends who, when they saw the rise of crypto or whatever it was, jumped in with a large sum of their life savings. Because they heard of a friend of a friend of a friend who'd made a killing. Put it all in there. A week later, it dropped by like 10K. They pulled it all out. The next week it went up double like, and, and it was just a mess. And so many of them lost like 10, 20, 30, 40,000 pounds, dollars. And it's all because you're thinking that's the way to get there.

• 8:45Alex Hormozi?

  Right.

• 8:45Jay Shetty?

  And it's cooler and it's smarter and like you're a genius.

• 8:48Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, right.

• 8:48Jay Shetty?

  And you're right. Actually, everyone I know that's made. Amazing money on any of that. Already had tons of money and it was play money for them.

• 8:56Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 8:56Jay Shetty?

  So it just changed into this. So what's happening there? Why is it that we've been led down this thought process? And how do we get out of it?

• 9:04Alex Hormozi?

  I mean, I think it's fundamentally the something for nothing fallacy of like, how can I get rich quick? How can I do it really easily? And basically, the more it feels like luck is usually where you should have your first red flag. If you, I mean, I have a belief that if you control all the variables, then you can predict the outcome. Now, we don't always control all the variables in any given situation, but the greater number of variables we control, the greater influence we have over the outcome. And if you're getting into something like this and you're like, I actually don't even know what the variables are. Then it's like you are, you are 100% gambling. And so this is your life savings. Would you put it on black at the casino? Probably not. This is really not that different than that. Except at the casino, you have no odds at least. Right here, it's like you have no idea. And typically, by the time, especially gen pop, kind of retail investors,

• 9:48Alex Hormozi?

  find out about something, it is the peak and it is too late. And so you have to be at the very beginning of these if you want to be speculative, which I wholeheartedly am not a big fan of speculative investments in general, because it's basically the greater fool theory, which is what they call in the investment world, which is just like, we just keep selling to the greater and greater fool until sometimes somebody is the greatest fool of all and then it drops. Right? And so I prefer to think about, instead of thinking of investments and active income, I think of it just money per unit of time. And that kind of takes out this binary, or what I would consider a false binary of active and passive. And think, well, and I feel like I can prove this pretty clearly, which is we live in time and we collect money in that period of time. And so fundamentally, all we want to do if we want to increase our income is just think, what are we earning per unit?

• 10:33Alex Hormozi?

  And this is where, again, bad piece of advice is like, never sell your time. It's like, okay, well, if someone gave you a billion dollars for an hour, would you not sell that? I would. Right? So it's a question of how much is your time worth? And then that creates a much more actionable decision-making framework of, is this worth it or not? And to ladder up to the active versus passive, it's How active is it versus how passive is it? And it's my belief that nothing is passive because there's always going to be a certain amount of, if you're doing it right. Let's say if you made one passive investment. If you're doing it the right way, you probably should have looked at a hundred deals. And all of that took time and all of that takes diligence. And then after doing all this analysis, then you decide to make this investment. And so to say that it's passive, it's like it doesn't take into account all of the research

• 11:18Alex Hormozi?

  that goes into ahead of time, which is absolutely still work. Now, after the investment, sure, but there's still time that you're trading. By first breaking that idea of like, if in order for me to get rich, it must be something that I don't trade my time for, I think is like big myth number one. So if we assume that, then we say, okay, I have to trade my time for money because money comes in over time. What are the things that I can trade my time for that will get me more than I'm currently getting, which is a much more solvable problem that also is significantly less risky. And so especially when you're trading time, we have some. And so we don't, we really just risk the time and be like, I would, I never want to, I don't want to sell, I'm not a, I'm not a slave. It's like, calm down, we're, it's a voluntary exchange. And if it's, and here's the thing is if you don't think the price is worth it, then don't make the trade. And that's one of the beauties of capitalism is it's two parties, both saying they'll be better off.

• 12:03Alex Hormozi?

  And so fundamentally, I would say the focus of the content, the stuff that I put out is how can I equip people with the skills so that when they trade that time, they get more for it and then continue to trade up and up and up for the rest of their careers?

• 12:14Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. I mean, that is, that's actually such counterintuitive advice to what I feel has been spreading on the internet for the last two decades of every conversations around passive income.

• 12:26Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 12:26Jay Shetty?

  I feel like every one of my friends is addicted to figuring out how they can make passive income. And those are the same people that are not making any more money than they already were. But it's this addiction and obsession with if I figure this out, then I won't have, I can quit my day job and whatever it may be.

• 12:45Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, I've had influence. So the my neighbor is is he owns Panda Express. And so last time I checked, they did $3.7 billion in revenue and they have about a 27% net margin. So he took home $935 million in personal income, not investment, income. And so people see his investment portfolio, which is impressive, as you can imagine, he's been doing it for 45 years. And so that starts to add up, right? But the thing is, is you can only take these kind of bigger swings or bigger bets because he has this very regular cash that he spent 45 years building. And I would say that what's interesting is that you can build something very big in about five to seven years. And the problem is that I think most people spend that same five to seven years reliving the same 30 days over and over again,

• 13:30Alex Hormozi?

  jumping from thing to thing to thing and never actually getting the roots set so that they can pay down their ignorance tax of not knowing enough. Basically, there's, I would say there's five stages that most newer entrepreneurs or people who want to pursue income go through. So the first is what I call uninformed optimism. So your friend tells you about this thing they made 10 grand on and you're like, that sounds amazing. You're uninformed, but you're optimistic, right? And so then you get into it and then all of a sudden you get to informed pessimism. So you get in and then you put your money in and then it drops and you're like, wow, this sucks. And then, you know, people are like, buy the dip. And so you're like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put more money in. And so then you get to kind of stage three, which is the value of despair, where you're like, oh, my God, I've lost so much money. I have no idea what's what's going on right now. And at stage three, there's kind of a fork.

• 14:14Alex Hormozi?

  And so either people then go, well, my other friend told me about this other thing. And they jump back to step one and go to uninformed optimism. And then they just, they funnel through that loop over and over again. Now, to break through that that dip, you have to basically get to stage four, which is informed optimism. So now you understand the rules of the game, you understand the variables at play, and it's not as good as you thought it was, but you at least get it. And so from there, then you can get to achievement, which is the fifth step. But the thing is, is that you have to stay in that third painful place because staying in the pain is what gives you the catalyst to learn how to get out of pain. And so rather than trying to pull your parachute, it's like, I have to trudge through this so that it forces me to learn the individual skills,

• 14:58Alex Hormozi?

  the individual variables that affect this outcome. And that means I might have to take 20 more lashings to finally get it. And then at that point, It starts to tick up and then that's when you start to become more of an expert, more of a master at something.

• 15:09Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. And if you don't see in that pain, you're going to keep repeating that cycle with something new. So it's crypto, then it was NFTs, then it was whatever else just keeps going around and around and around. Is that system in this new book?

• 15:18Alex Hormozi?

  So this is probably for one chunk above that.

• 15:21Jay Shetty?

  Okay, got it. Got it, got it, got it. No, because I was, I love the way you break down the journey that we go through in our mind. And you do that with multiple things because I think we don't even see it. Like that pattern you just explained is a pattern you could live for three decades. You've just saved people three decades of pain by pointing it out and saying, well, this is what you're doing. And here's how to shift that. And I think people make the mistake where we go, I don't have time to learn.

• 15:47Alex Hormozi?

  Right.

• 15:47Jay Shetty?

  So I'm going to learn from someone who makes me feel like I can learn it in an hour.

• 15:51Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 15:51Jay Shetty?

  And then I'm going to do it, which still is uninformed optimism. So how do we learn? Where do we go? How do you build that time to say, how many hours do I need to even learn about this? I'm going to put money in it. How would you calculate that? If someone was like, I'm going to put in a thousand, I'm going to put in a $10,000. How much time should they put to value that amount of money?

• 16:14Alex Hormozi?

  So, great question. I would reframe the premise, which would be, we'd still be operating under this as I'm going to put money into something. And so I would reject the original premise and say, well, if you want to get really good at something, then why don't we start with skills that generate income? And so if we follow kind of the three elements of a business at its most basic form is you have some element of promotion. So we got to let people know about our stuff. The second element is we got to have a way to convert them. So we have to be able to sell some sort of exchange mechanism. And then finally we have to deliver, right? So track, convert, deliver. Very easy. Well, easy to, easy to say, harder to do, right? Within each of those things, it's like, okay, well, how do I let people know about my stuff? Or even before that, what stuff do I sell? Right?

• 16:55Alex Hormozi?

  And so that's where I like to think about it as people try to think, man, there's so many people and try to boil the ocean. Like it's impossible to try and like, try and think what business could I possibly start? Because you're trying to address the world when it's much easier to say, what are the problems that exist in my life? And I kind of think about it as the three Ps, like most businesses come out of a passion. So something that you're just inherently interested in, they come out of a profession. So you currently exchange, right now you have a job, whatever it is. And you get paid, maybe not as much as you want, but you do get paid for exchanging some sort of value with the business. And the third is P, which is pain, right? So there's some deep pain that sometimes you went through. So maybe it's a mom who had to figure out how to create non-allergenic food for their kids, right? It'd be something as small as that.

• 17:39Alex Hormozi?

  And so from that, those three kind of buckets is, I think, the best starting point for most people who want to start making an income. It's like, okay, well, if you're inherently interested in this topic, it's like, can we make, can we let people know about stuff around that topic? Can we create solutions around that stuff? Can we create services, which is where I prefer most people start, which, to be fair, in the United States, 78% of businesses are service-based businesses. And I think it's because they're the easiest to start. You just trade time for money, very low risk. You either get richer or you don't, but like your base, your base is zero.

• 18:10Jay Shetty?

  Have you seen any metrics in success rates between passion, profession and pain?

• 18:15Alex Hormozi?

  No, I haven't. I that would, I really want to know now.

• 18:20Jay Shetty?

  The reason why I ask it is because I've been thinking about this for so long and I want to go through each of those because I think they're really, I think it's really sound advice.

• 18:29Jay Shetty?

  I used to really believe that everyone should try to do what they love and love what they do.

• 18:34Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 18:35Jay Shetty?

  And I've changed my mind about that. And I used to believe it very strongly, probably like 10 years ago, only to then realize that that works great for the one to 10%.

• 18:48Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 18:49Jay Shetty?

  But for the majority of people, that's going to be really, really hard. And recently I was giving the Princeton commencement speech for their graduation. And I was thinking about it a lot before I gave that speech because it's like, wait a minute, these are like the most talented, smartest people in the country who have everything at their disposal. And I know that even some of these people may not get a job they love or may never ever build something they love. But guess what? Everyone needs money to survive. So the question is, and I want to hear your take on it, and I'll reflect back is, should you do what you love for money and love what you do?

• 19:26Alex Hormozi?

  I think this is big myth number two. So if we have, we start with passive versus active is big problem. Number one, number two is follow your passion. I think the reason that this is so espoused, I'll start where I think the idea comes from and then kind of break down from there. I think it's because most of those commitment speeches are billionaires or very successful people and they say follow your passion. But if we think through what other advice could they give that would be socially acceptable? They can't say, you know, I got lucky. They can't say, I worked, you know, super hard to be real like sure, you know, like, and so then it's like, okay, well, they're never going to get attacked for saying follow your passion. But the problem with that is it also assumes that your passion or your interests will never change. And I mean, anybody who's listening to this,

• 20:09Alex Hormozi?

  just think about what you were really interested in 10 years ago. It's probably different than it is now. And if you extrapolate that another 10 years, it'll probably be different again. And so if we can think about the hypothetical extreme of a really successful person is someone who sticks with the same thing for an extended period of time, which is something that I believe, because you learn all the lessons you possibly can in a very narrow field, right? And that you basically try and make as many mistakes as you can. And if you basically, you know, pay off all the, all the ignorance debt you can, it's like you end up just succeeding by default if you just fail every other way. But if you try and if you try to do too many things, you never actually get to, to push the road all the way, you know, trudge through the mud and get there because you're only learning one or two mistakes in many fields and not many in one. And so the follow your passion

• 20:50Alex Hormozi?

  issue is that, yeah, number one, the passions will change. Number two is that sometimes you're passionate about things that people don't value. And the thing is, is there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that it'll be very hard to make an income that way. The third thing is that I think that it creates an emotionality around business or income, which is that the moment it doesn't feel good, that you believe the myth that you should stop. When I think that if you and I were to talk about, you know, the business side of anything, there are elements that I love and there are elements that I hate. And I see them as Both required. You know, I would love to maximize one versus the other, but it's just the cost of doing business, literally. But I try to reframe that pain that comes from doing the things that I don't want to do to do the things that I do want to do as

• 21:34Alex Hormozi?

  the price tag required to become the person that I want to become. And so if we think about the traits of any person, so it's like if I want to be patient, then I can't expect things to happen faster, right? Like if we were to go to the end of our lives and say, hey, I want these character traits. It's like, well, if you had to play a character, you know, in a video game and make them that way, it's like, well, what would you have to put them through in order to get those traits? It's like, well, if you want patience, then you're not going to get things quickly. If you want to have endurance, it's like you have to be able to tolerate suffering, right? If you, if you want to be wise, it's like you're gonna have to get burnt and you're gonna have to learn the value of judgment. And sometimes that means you're gonna get betrayed in order to learn that pattern. And so it's like, we lament the price tag for the things that we want. And I think that at least for me, my ultimate, you know, long-term goal is just to become the person

• 22:19Alex Hormozi?

  that I, the best version of me, right? And I think that in order for that to happen, I will have to go through pain. And so the follow your passion, you know, moniker also creates this emotionality that gets you to quit when you really are on the right path. And it's just, this is just part of it. And so I think those are probably the big three that I think about when it comes to why follow your passion doesn't serve most people. And the other, I'll say bonus fourth, might be that you might be really good at something and people are very willing to exchange money for that thing. And it doesn't mean that you actually have to do the thing that you work on, that you make money on all the hours of the day, right? Like, you can work for 20 or 30 hours a week and then have the other 120 to do whatever you want, 130 to do whatever you want. And that's, I mean,

• 23:04Alex Hormozi?

  not a bad, not a bad thing, in my opinion.

• 23:06Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I, I'm, that's, that's the reason I asked. And I think even the advice, follow your passion, doesn't mean focus on your passion, right? Like, there's this confusion with like time. So even when I think about it in my life, when I left the monastery and went to work as a consultant, because I needed to pay the bills.

• 23:22Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, right.

• 23:22Jay Shetty?

  Again, a very real decision.

• 23:24Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 23:25Jay Shetty?

  Because I was 25 years old, living in my Loft room in my parents' house again. And that couldn't last very long. When I went into that work, I was teaching meditation by lunch. Like in my lunch breaks in the evenings, I would teach meditation to my colleagues. There was no demand for it. Two people would show up. Twenty thirteen this was, meditation and mindfulness were not this global movement. And I was just enjoying it because I was following my passion. But I was making money by being a consultant, which was trading my time for money. As I followed that passion more, I got more confidence in it. The market changed. We're in a very different landscape today, twelve years on, for there being

• 24:08Jay Shetty?

  business opportunities in wellness and health that didn't exist twelve years ago. And so now, following my passion for all of that time, meant there was a time when I could focus on it. But let's say I had another passion that wasn't monetizable, people weren't interested in it at all. I could follow it for years and bring it into my work and bring it into my life and it'd be beautiful and I'd be more fulfilled. But it didn't need to be my thing, right? And so I really, really like that advice and it's something that I, I almost wanna propagate so hard right now because I, I feel just responsible that for so long, we've been telling people to, you know, just do what you love and chase what you love. And it's like, yeah, in your private time and personal time, you should.

• 24:49Jay Shetty?

  But, but don't think that that has to be the thing you make money from, especially if you have a really obscure gift.

• 24:55Alex Hormozi?

  I a hundred percent agree. I mean, I'm a utilitarian. I, I tend to be very, I've probably edged too much on pragmatic. And maybe that's just the immigrant upbringing of just like, how are you gonna pay your bills? That's all anyone cared about.

• 25:07Jay Shetty?

  Well, the funny thing is I had that too.

• 25:08Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, no, for sure.

• 25:09Jay Shetty?

  My parents immigrants too, but I, I think that there's a, I think I got really lucky to figure out what I loved really early.

• 25:16Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 25:17Jay Shetty?

  And I got really lucky that I got to get really good at it really early.

• 25:20Alex Hormozi?

  I had this mentor really early on in my career who said, Never do what you love because then it becomes work. And so just a completely counter take and this guy was a guy who just had a normal, he had three or four stores that he ran. And he retired at age 28 and not as a gazillionaire. I think he made something in the neighborhood, probably like 30, $40,000 a month, you know, take home. And for 20 years, he did nothing besides collect his money once a month. And then he played golf five days a week and he got to hang out and basically be there for the entirety of his kids. And he loved that. And that was that he accomplished, he used to tell me, he's like, I slayed the dragon of life. And so what's interesting is that now that his girls are out of the house, he now is going back and he's back in the door. He's like, well, what am I going to do now? Right?

• 26:04Alex Hormozi?

  I wholeheartedly agree with the, the not following your passion piece. The, the practical translation might be, or at least my, my, my third myth that I would probably tack on to this as we're building these is over belief in idea and under belief in execution.

• 26:19Jay Shetty?

  Oh yeah, so true.

• 26:20Alex Hormozi?

  And so there's two elements to this. So one is that I think many people who are intimidated to start believe that they have to start the next Facebook. And, you know, the Zuckerbergs and the basis of a world are so incredibly rare. The vast majority of people who've gotten into business have many, many failed and many, many failures, many, many failed businesses. That, that led them to fail into success. Right? And so, uh, one is that the idea has to be this big, amazing thing. And the second is that you shouldn't, that the idea itself is, is the success. Right? Cause they'll share with as many people as they can and they almost scratch the itch of starting when you haven't done anything. I say there's basically four steps to starting a business. It's like, you have to get an LLC, you take the LLC to a bank and then you get a bank account.

• 27:06Alex Hormozi?

  And then you connect that bank account to a payment processor. And then you go ask a stranger if you can do something in exchange for money. And if you do all four of those things, you have a business. That's it. Right? And so a lot of people like spend. Years being like, I'm gonna start a business one day. It's like, you can do it tomorrow. You literally do all of this tomorrow. And then it's like, okay, well, then how do I get the person to exchange money? It's like, well, you reach out to the people you know, right? You open your phone, you look at the 400 contacts you have there. You open up your Facebook profile, you have 300 friends. You you look at those friends and then you just say, hey, you send a personal video, send a personal text and say, hey, I am starting this thing. This is what we're doing. This is what I'm solving. Do you know anybody? That's it. And so it's not even like you're asking your friends to buy something from you. What's interesting, though, is that 90% of the time, the person who responds is,

• 27:51Alex Hormozi?

  oh, you know, you could do that for me if you want. But that just gives you the easiest way that costs $0. And because we're all connected with the internet and phones, it's like the barrier to entry has never been lower than it is now. It's just the problem is that the barrier to distraction is even lower.

• 28:04Jay Shetty?

  What stood out to me there is the personal text, the video and the email. And then the fact that you're asking your friends to introduce to the people who may want to, not asking them directly. That first part, the amount of emails I get, and I'm sure you get as well, of people pitching their services to you, but none of them are personalized.

• 28:21Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 28:22Jay Shetty?

  Walk me through the difference of that personal video, that personally, because it's it's it's life changing, like when it's done right.

• 28:29Alex Hormozi?

  So, I mean, these are your friends, or at least your contacts that you've met at some point in your life. And so trying to recall when you met that person, literally just stating their name and asking that it's, hey, I'm gonna be doing this. And I would say consistency is the currency of credibility. So what people don't want to do is refer a friend to somebody who's fly by night. But if you can actually just demonstrate that, hey, he's still doing that, the likely that they're going to refer someone goes way up because the relational capital is not nearly a risk. Because if I'm gonna introduce somebody to somebody else, I'm risking my social capital on the hope that the third party, or whoever's sending this original text, is actually gonna do a good job. And so you can also include a little bit of risk reversal in that, which is like, hey, I'm doing the first 10 for free. And the reason I'm doing it is because I just want to get some testimonials,

• 29:12Alex Hormozi?

  get some reviews, and also just so that I can learn too. And I think just being really upfront and really being really honest about it makes the stakes feel a lot easier. And so then those first 10 people, you do exactly that. And the thing is, is that you're gonna be better off than they will. For those who are like, I don't want to work for free. It's like, you're not working for free. You're earning and then you're sorry, you're learning and then you're earning. And so we got to go through the learn phase first. And the best way to do it is people who aren't direct connections of yours, maybe one step step removed. And then at that point, they're going to give you very real feedback. And if you do a good job, then after a certain point, my goal is to get people to basically shift supply to men in their favor. Like I'd say the two, the two laws of business that I am the most moved by are supply and demand, which is this X right here. And then leverage. So that's a fulcrum for leverage.

• 29:56Alex Hormozi?

  And so I see those as the two biggest forces in business. And so I want to create artificial demand for somebody who's starting out. I just say, we'll do a lot of stuff for free. And then what happens is when you have no more time to give. And if people still want you to do stuff, then you say, hey, I can't take any more people. If you want, you can pay. And if you're like, yeah, that's fine. And then boom, and then you make your first sale. And so, and you'll have confidence because you're like, well, I just did it 20 other times and look at the results from those people. And but and the first one, you'll be embarrassed about the 19th one. You're like, wow, you're going to already pay down 60, 70% of all the mess ups that you were going to do. And then at that point, you're going to start feeling good. And then from there, my way of doing it is just you just keep bumping the price by 20% every five people. Until eventually people start to stop saying yes. And then after like, okay, this is the price I can do for now.

• 30:41Alex Hormozi?

  And that's basically a very seamless transition into how do I go from nothing to making my first dollar?

• 30:47Jay Shetty?

  How do you get over the block of I don't want to work for free?

• 30:51Alex Hormozi?

  I actually think it's entitlement. I think it's believing that you deserve something for nothing. Like to flip the flip the roles in reverse. Imagine somebody comes to you, they've never done anything ever in this particular space. And they say, hey, will you pay me to do this thing? Would you immediately now, maybe some people will be like, sure. Then it's a charity thing, which is different. But would you be like, you know what? I really believe that this guy is the best person that I can get this problem solved from probably not. And so to carry some of that risk for yourself, you say, I'm going to front this. But if you want to not do it for free, thing number one is that you're getting educated. So like you're, you're getting free education, which I see is absolutely valuable. The second thing is that you can make terms that don't necessarily mean that it's free.

• 31:34Alex Hormozi?

  Like there's the price and then there's the terms, the terms of the agreement can be. If you do this with me, you have to give me feedback throughout the entire process. And at the end, if I do a good job, you leave a review, right? And on three different formats and leave me a video and leave me, you know, a text version of it. That's now absolute, like, I'll say it differently. A business owner, they do illegally and so therefore they're very willing to pay people to leave them testimonials. And so if you'd be willing to pay $500 to get an amazing testimonial, then they're basically, they've paid you that $500. But I promise you, those first five, 10 reviews will make you so much more than they could ever have paid you and not given you a testimonial.

• 32:13Alex Hormozi?

  So if we flip it and say, hey, would you rather get a thousand dollars from this person and have them not leave a review versus free and a glowing review? I promise you, you will make so much more from one glowing review than you will from the thousand dollars long term. So you're just building up the stockpile, the foundation to then build whatever you want to build on top of it.

• 32:30Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it's really, it's really strong advice. It's, I, I hope everyone who's listening, watching right now is like, go ahead. This is what I'm going to do right now, like 10 hours for free, because that's where we're blocking ourselves. We don't have the experience and therefore we don't feel comfortable selling more because we don't even know how the service will look.

• 32:46Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 32:47Jay Shetty?

  Right? So you're trying to sell a service and maybe you sold one, but you haven't been through the full life cycle of what it feels like to deliver that service. Now you don't know how many website revisions or edits there's going to be. You don't know how many app updates they're going to be. You have no idea. And now you're actually less likely to go sell another one because you're scared that you don't even know if you can do it. And I feel under that entitlement is an insecurity.

• 33:10Alex Hormozi?

  Totally.

• 33:10Jay Shetty?

  Of, I don't actually even know how to do this. I've got a lot of friends who are like really talented, really skilled. They, they actually would do a great job, but because they've never just done 10 clients for free, they don't know how it's going to be if they went and got 100 clients tomorrow. So they're scared of getting 100 clients, not because they're not capable, but because they haven't taken 10 clients through the process.

• 33:31Alex Hormozi?

  So I want to give you something super tactical for the audience.

• 33:33Jay Shetty?

  Please.

• 33:34Alex Hormozi?

  Just 10 by 10. So give 10 people 10 hours. And so you can say, hey, I'm going to do 10 hours of work for free. That is a really compelling offer and you're going to do it one-on-one and ideally with them. And so if you want to build the website, build it in front of them for the 10 hours so they can give you real-time feedback. If you want to, you know, write email copy, you still meet with them once a week or not ideally multiple times a week during that, so you can pay down that 10 hours faster. If you're worried, you can do, you can do five people for five hours. That matters less, but it's more that one-on-one. So the least scalable thing possible and it's free labor that they can track. The reason that's such a compelling offer is that everyone, even in every country, even minimum wage has value. Anybody can understand that five hours of work is a material amount of work that you're

• 34:18Alex Hormozi?

  choosing to give away for free. And so even if you have no expertise, labor at base price is still worth something. And so if you add on expertise, it becomes a very compelling offer. But the beauty of that setup of having five or 10 hours that you choose to spend is that there's basically, if you're doing it one-on-one, there's almost no technical, you know, component to it. You don't have to like build all these calendaring and schedule. It's just like, you're just going to text those five people, "Hey, you want to do same time tomorrow?" Very simple. And then for each of those, you know, calls that you'll take with them, by the, in the very first call, you just say, "Hey, I want to just be clear. What's the problem? What do you want to, you know, what do you want to solve? And do you mind at the end of the five hours we spend together, if this was good, if I can tell you about what I do?" If you just set that, that pre-frame up front and then you do the hours on the fifth call or the fifth hour or the 10th hour, you can say, "Hey, remember

• 35:02Alex Hormozi?

  I said at the beginning, I was like, "Has this been good so far?" It's like, "Awesome. Let me just recap what we've done, what we've covered and the progress we've made. Do you feel happy about that? Great." So this is what I think it would look like. Cause also you spent those five or 10 hours getting as much information or ammunition from them of all the other problems that you could potentially solve. And then at that point it says, "Hey, I think that I can solve problem one, two, and three. It'll take me maybe six months, but this is what kind of an engagement would look like. How does that sound to you?" That's all you have to do. And the thing is, is that after you give someone five or 10 hours, there's so much reciprocity that's built up. They're like, "Well, shoot. I mean, sure." Now, if somebody on the first call says, "No, I don't want to," then it's like, you don't, you don't even need to like continue. And so one of the big things that I, I'm a big proponent of is absolutely give stuff away for free to people who are qualified.

• 35:44Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 35:45Alex Hormozi?

  And so we're like, "I don't want a lot of tire kickers." It's like, "For sure. Neither do I." But if I had a room of 100 of the most qualified people, which if you're like, what are a qualified person? It's Bance. So IBM made this, figured this out like 70 years ago and it's really never changed. So Bance is budget authority, need, timing. They have the money to spend, the ability to make the decision, they need the thing right now and is now, is it now a priority? And so if we had a room of 100 people who met all four of those criteria, wouldn't you want to do something and spend five or 10 hours for free? I mean, my God, like if you had, if you could, like the reason they sell time shares over six hour blocks of time is because it just takes time to build trust for a higher ticket sale. So if anything, it's like you're choosing to say that I'm going to give you five hours,

• 36:28Alex Hormozi?

  but they're giving you five hours to influence them to ultimately prove that you're good at whatever you do. Yeah. And so I think that is the easiest way to get started. You can make that your front end offer. You can put that in the video. And I think the beauty of that specific offer is that you don't need to even figure out what you're going to sell because you'll figure it out during the time you spend with them. And so you can figure out the offer in real time with them. And also because you're doing it one-on-one, you can basically, you can, you can permeate it. You can, you can tweak it every single time you, you pitch it to somebody on the fifth or eighth call or whatever. That ultimately gets you so many faster iterations that are low risk. Yeah.

• 37:00Jay Shetty?

  Before we dive into the next moment, let's hear from our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Mazda. The best habits are the ones we hardly notice, the ones that quietly shape the way we move through life, giving us the confidence to focus on what really matters. That's Mazda's approach to safety. Every Mazda is designed with proactive safety features that help keep you more aware, more connected and more engaged with your drive so you can stay present behind the wheel. That commitment has earned Mazda recognition as Consumer Reports' safest new car brand. And as of July 2026, Mazda has won more 2026 IIHS Top Safety Pick Plus awards than any other car brand. Visit www.iihs.org to learn more.

• 37:43Jay Shetty?

  A lot can happen when an accident doesn't. Mazda, more of what matters to you. Visit MazdaUSA.com to learn more. Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services.

• 37:56Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. I know how important every hire is for a business. If you need to make the right hire, this is a job for sponsored jobs. Indeed sponsored jobs helps find quality candidates when you need them most. You can reach who you need based on whatever criteria you're looking for, like skills, certifications, or location. In fact, people are finding quality hires on Indeed right now. In the minute I've been talking to you, companies like yours made 27 hires on Indeed, according to Indeed data worldwide. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast.

• 38:39Jay Shetty?

  That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. This episode is brought to you by Amtrak. You know that feeling when you're already tired and you haven't even gotten there yet? That's where Amtrak comes in. Leave the driving behind and settle into a comfortable seat with plenty of room to stretch out. Catch up on work with wifi, grab a snack at the cafe car, or just sit back and enjoy your favorite podcast. Choose a seller or Northeast Regional and get there without the stress of getting there. Visit amtrak.com to plan your next trip. Sponsors. Thanks for taking a moment for that. Now, back to the discussion.

• 39:22Jay Shetty?

  You know, talking to you today, and Alex, I watch your stuff all the time. The thing that's standing out to me is you're super tactical. There's all these methods, there's all these systems. But then when you were talking about your life, you were like, it's all about who I want to become. Is there a number that you stop at? Or is actually who you want to become, that's your north star?

• 39:43Alex Hormozi?

  I see entrepreneurship as the single greatest path for personal development. Because if we define, you know, learning as fast feedback loops, there are very few other professions that give you that much feedback, that brutally honest, brutally honest feedback as the market will do. And so at every point where I get stuck in a business, I think to myself like, what skill do I lack? And I define Everything by skill, so even traits, which is just a colloquial term, which is really just a bucket of many skills. I just think, okay, well, in order for me to appear confident or be confident, it's really like thirty eight things that I have to learn. And all of these things, if I break them down easier, I can do them. So it's like, okay, when I shake hands, I make sure that I web the the middle of my hand and I squeeze firmly and I look at the person in the eye. It's like, that's thing one.

• 40:26Alex Hormozi?

  Thing two is that when we're talking, like you nod, because you've been doing this for so long. But some people who don't know how to have conversations just stand like this. But somebody who's an active listener will nod, they'll say, oh, that's a great point, whatever. And so it's like, that's the second thing. When I walk into a room, I'm gonna call people by name. It's a third thing. And so when I try and think about these traits of who I want to become, it's like, can I break these down into actions that I can actually do? And so I think that is, there's been a large part of the the growth that I've hopefully, you know, been able to achieve. But in terms of the ultimate goal, for me, it's always just been to be useful. And if I think I just do that, then I like that it's such a simplified goal, because being useful has, it actually includes multiple parties. Because you cannot be useful unless there's someone else you're being useful to.

• 41:08Alex Hormozi?

  And so it gives you something controllable, which is that I have to learn skills so that I can serve someone else. And that is how I can ultimately be useful. And so even when we're, you know, we're making content or whatever it is that we're putting out, I always try to think like, is this useful? Like, can someone actually, will this change someone's behavior? I'll be like, I want to educate. It's like, what is education? It just means same condition, new behavior. So if someone has it their same day over and over again, then they're not learning. So if your day looks the same every single day, you have learned nothing. And so that means that if you listen to this podcast and then nothing changes about your behavior as a result, this was just entertainment, not education. And so that has been just, it's a very sobering point, because you realize, oh, I have to change my behavior in order to demonstrate that I have learned. Now, the second component of this is like, okay, well, what's intelligence then? So intelligence, as I define it, is rate of learning.

• 41:53Alex Hormozi?

  So how quickly do I change my behavior in the same condition, based on some stimulus? And so if you, in a very real way, you can influence your intelligence by being willing to change faster. And so if you've heard ten podcasts and then you eventually change versus somebody who listens to one and then changes, that person is more intelligent than you are. And so I see that as actually really encouraging, because it means like, oh, my God, I have an active control on how quickly I can learn, simply by changing my behavior. And so that has been kind of my my modus operandi for how I how I how I live life.

• 42:23Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I want to dive into that, but as an aside, my, no, no, no, the reason why you'll, you'll get it in a second. As an aside, I've been really embarrassed of my handshake lately. It's because I've got a really bad case of tennis elbow. I've been playing a lot of pickleball. And so my elbow is destroyed. And so every time I've been, I was on tour for the last month. And every time I shook someone's hand in a meet and greet, my hand was just like, just like, literally, and I felt so embarrassed. But every time, every time I did a proper handshake, my elbow would hurt. Anyway, um, but so you just, you just brought back all that trauma. I really appreciate that mindset because it's what you said earlier, that it actually sets you up for long-term success, even when things are not going your way, when the results may not

• 43:04Jay Shetty?

  go your way, when you're having to do the things you hate. Like, it's only when that's your north star that you can do all of that. Whereas if your north star is just a number, or just an exit, or whatever it may be, it's really, really hard when you feel like that exit is just further and further away, and that number's further and further away.

• 43:24Alex Hormozi?

  And I'm sure that you've met, I mean, so many entrepreneurs that they have their exit, and everyone almost has invariably the same story. I went to a beach, I drank Mai Tais for a month, and then realized that this wasn't for me. And so, so one of the refrains that I have in my head all the time is, uh, you are the problem. Like, me talking to me. But like, we are the problem. And so, we have this issue where we fundamentally just always want what we, what we can't have. Single people want to get married, married people want to be single. And so, it's more that we just want something different almost all the time. And so, it's that, that desire, and you're, you're the monk here, so you know more about this than I do. That's the issue. Like, that's the core problem. Um, and so even everyone right now who, who doesn't have a business is like, man, I would like to start a business someday. And then all the people who start businesses are like, my God, I can't wait to get out of this thing. Right? And so, it's just, there are pros

• 44:07Alex Hormozi?

  and cons on both sides. There are trade-offs. And I would say that if there was a fourth myth that we were, we were, we would tackle, it's that people want the benefits of multiple paths without the trade-offs of each.

• 44:20Alex Hormozi?

  And so I think one of the reasons, so there's lots of, you know, content of like, you know, talk to 80 year olds and they'll tell you, you know, their biggest life regrets. But what I find really interesting is that typically what they will do is they will assume all of the benefits of their current life and say, I also wish I had the benefits of this other path. Yes. Without the costs of that other path that are unknown. And also they don't, they forget to subtract all the benefits of their existing path. And so I like to play it out. It's like, okay, well, if I were to do this other path and make that trade, would I be, would I be better off? And most times it ends up just being like, I'd probably be about as happy as I am now.

• 44:56Alex Hormozi?

  It's like, oh man, the, the one that got away. It's like, you'd probably be about just as happy as you are now. As soon as you played out a couple of years, it's like, you'd probably be about the same. And so that's actually dramatically reduced my kind of regret analysis from, from a living perspective. But I think the trade off part is so important because especially when you're starting out or even when you're more advanced in business, there's a, what I call the fallacy of the perfect pick, which is that we overanalyze things because we think that we have to get it just right. Because we think that if we pick just perfectly, we'll find a way to get only benefits and no costs and it doesn't exist. And so instead people just stay stuck thinking that there is some pick that they're not seeing, but it's just not true. And so I think the faster you're willing to make the trade offs and actually spell them out, like, these are the things I'm willing to trade. Because I think a lot of people, when they want to like pursue any endeavor, they, they

• 45:41Alex Hormozi?

  immediately think, and I think this is a little bit more Western, is that they think about addition. They think about how can, how many more things can I do? How many more things can I add to my calendar? But most, like right now, you currently have a quote, you live 24 hours a day and you do stuff. And so I think it's more valuable to think, what am I willing to give up? What am I willing to sacrifice? And, because we have to create space, we have to create this vacuum so that we can put this other thing in. And so those are the trades. And I think in the beginning, the trades are sometimes, you know, more emotional. Because in the beginning, it's more, you know, my friends will think this is weird. They don't want to get this text. What if someone says, oh yeah, you're starting your business. I forgot, or oh, you're not, not coming out with us. Are you really doing that thing again? Dude, it's not gonna, I mean, hey, man, I love you, man. Like, I'm supporting you, right? Or your, your mom's like, are you really gonna pursue podcasting as a thing?

• 46:26Alex Hormozi?

  Right. I think like the, you know, the first rule of entrepreneurship is use what you got. Right. It's not waiting for some perfect condition because um starting is the perfect condition.

• 46:35Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. That's where the profession part comes in, going back to where you are, like going back to passion, profession, pain. With profession, that's use what you got. Like you actually understand this industry. Maybe you even worked really hard to get a degree in it if you went to college. Or you've had work experience since you were sixteen. But you kind of want to disregard that because you think there's the perfect pick.

• 46:55Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 46:55Jay Shetty?

  Over here and potentially the passionate pick.

• 46:58Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 46:58Jay Shetty?

  Over here. How do you turn that profession into a service aside us or a real business? What is, what does that look like?

• 47:06Alex Hormozi?

  So what's, what's really nice from the, the profession of the three is by far the fastest angle.

• 47:10Jay Shetty?

  I agree.

• 47:11Alex Hormozi?

  For sure. Because you already have the thing that's valuable because you already do exchange it for money. And so the only thing you actually have to add at that point is promotion and conversion. So you have to say, how do I let people know about this thing that I'm doing? And secondarily, how do I get these people, once they find out, to give me money? Right. And so from a letting people know about it, I gave one of eight ways of letting people know. So there's warm outreach. So that's letting people know one on one about your stuff. There's cold outreach, which is one on one to strangers. You've got paid ads, right, which you can run um on any platform. Or you've got posting content. Those are the only four things that one person can do. Now.

• 47:43Jay Shetty?

  That's a great breakdown. There's only four things.

• 47:46Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 47:46Jay Shetty?

  Because you start thinking, there's a million things I have to do.

• 47:48Alex Hormozi?

  You've got strangers and people you know, and you've got one on one and one to many.

• 47:51Jay Shetty?

  So good.

• 47:51Alex Hormozi?

  That's the four box.

• 47:52Jay Shetty?

  So good.

• 47:53Alex Hormozi?

  Now, from those core four, you then unlock four others. Which is that I can do one on one outbound, or I can do, or I can post content, or I can run ads to get customers who then get me more customers, to get affiliates or partners who get me more customers, to get employees who will then do these things on my behalf to get me more customers, or to get agencies who will then do it as, you know, as a vendor on my behalf. And so the first is the, everyone must start with the core four. Even if you get, you know, a bunch of, you know, partners who then promote on your behalf, you still started with a message that you sent to somebody. Right. And so the core four is the first activity that you must do in order to promote. These other things are higher leverage. That makes sense. But this is the core four that you start with. Once you have someone who's responding to you and say, hey, I'm interested in your.

• 48:36Alex Hormozi?

  Stuff which takes someone from a contact to an engaged lead, right? They've shown interest. Then we basically have to take them from engaged to ideally, somebody who's going to buy. Right. And so that process at the most basic level is going to be a conversation that leads to a conversion. Right. And so I have a very simple framework that I that I encourage people who are starting out to follow, which I call closer. And so it's an acronym, so it's easy to remember. So C stands for clarify, which you begin the conversation like, hey, why'd you respond to my thing? Right. And the nice thing is that whenever you promote, you only are really going to have a conversation with someone who engages back. Right. So you always have the reason why right at the front. So what made you, what made you comment on my post? What made you DM me after that? What made you respond to my ad? What made you even respond to my, my original message or call?

• 49:21Alex Hormozi?

  Right. So that you have that reason. So what made you do that clarify? Then you have L, which is you label them with a problem. So, okay, so what I'm hearing is this is problem and this is what you're trying to solve. Is that sound about right? Okay, cool. Then we go to O, which is overview their past experiences. And so here we're simply asking them more or less the same four questions, which is, okay, what have you done so far? How did that work for you? What was good, what was bad? And then we try and tie that to our solution, the pieces that we can solve. It's like, oh, I think you might like this because we have this other element. I'll get to that later, but okay, this is great. What else have you done? What else have you done? And so that's kind of a pain cycle. And the reason the pain cycle is important is because in order to increase motivation in the short term, we have to basically expand the deprivation around the thing that they want. And so we have to, we have to increase its priority in the short term to get them to take action.

• 50:06Alex Hormozi?

  And that's why that that cycle is so important. The fourth is S, which is we sell the vacation. And so we want to talk about the outcomes of what the experience is going to be like once the problem solved, rather than just having some long-winded pitch. And what's very interesting about the sell portion is that most people talk way too much. We try and get it to under 320 words. So it does like people, if you can, if you can very accurately describe someone's existing condition to them and say, so it sounds like you're struggling with this and it sounds like you're struggling with this and it sounds like you're struggling with this. And if we solve this one, this is what unlocks. We solve this one, this is one locks and we solve this, this one locks. Is that about right? They're like, yeah, it's like, we can totally help you. A lot of times you actually don't need to say, if you nail the, the pain part, the pitch is very easy. And so I am a big believer in having three points in whatever pitch you have.

• 50:50Alex Hormozi?

  So you can always chunk it up, you know, like I have our attract, convert, deliver. You have, okay, how do we get people to find out? How do we convert them and how do we give them the stuff, right? Having three elements of whatever it is. I mean, I used to do sales scripts for, you know, different companies back in the day. So it was like, I had a mortgage lead company and they're like, okay, well, the, the leads are, you know, timely. You want them to be qualified and you want to be exclusive. Okay, great. If you're in fitness, it's like you need, you need, you need to work out, you need to eat right. I need to have accountability. If you have all three, then you can't fail, right? And so there's always three. And then with each of those three, I have kind of in the back pocket, a little anecdote that to give an example of that. So that way it makes it more real for the person rather than explaining all those sets and reps and all that stuff. No one cares. That's why it's selling the vacation, not the plane flight. We're not going to sell how we're going to get there. We're going to sell where we're going to go. And so once we do S, then we go to E. So at that point, we ask for the sale.

• 51:34Alex Hormozi?

  If they say no, then E and R coming to, coming to, uh, coming to play. E is explain away their concerns. There's only five, right? They're going to have a timing issue. I've got a lot going on right now. They have a money issue. I don't think it's worth it. They have a decision maker problem, which is I don't have the authority to make the decision. I need someone else's permission. They're going to have a stall issue, which is let me think about it. And then there's fifth is preferences. So I don't like this particular thing about your product or solution, um, which is just saying that they want your results a different way. And so basically, once you understand how to overcome each of those five issues, which they are all actually just, uh, fallacies in decision making. So if it's a timing issue, it's not really a time thing. It's priorities thing. If it's a money thing, it's not really a money thing. It's a value thing. If it's a decision maker thing, it's really that they need support, not permission.

• 52:19Alex Hormozi?

  And then we rely on past agreements in order to say, hey, well, your husband knows that you're overweight, right? Do you think he wants you to stay overweight? No, then why would he be against you doing something to change that, right? So just walking through those. And I go through all of them, but that's.

• 52:31Jay Shetty?

  No, I love it. Yeah, this is a masterclass, man.

• 52:36Alex Hormozi?

  And then, and then from a stalling perspective, it's actually helping someone make a decision because a lot of people don't know how to decide because you will have this conversation far more than every person you talk to. People maybe only have five, 10 sales conversations a year. If you are selling for a business, you'll have four or five a day. And so you should absolutely always be more equipped than they are to solve the problem. The one that I skipped was preferences, which is, you know, I like, hey, I really want, you know, my, my friend Charlotte, she lost 30 pounds doing your thing. But can I just keep eating the food that I'm currently eating? And so they want their results your way. And so the easiest way to explain around that is if you change the variables, change the outcome. Do you like the outcome? Yeah, well then don't change the variables. And this is the only thing that I can give you confidence in. And the question is, is you eating the food you want more important than you looking the way you want to look? And that's a real question.

• 53:21Alex Hormozi?

  And if the person says, yes, it is, and it's like, okay, well then nothing's going to change if you don't change.

• 53:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:26Alex Hormozi?

  And so then you get to have a real conversation. But each of those, those are the fundamental kind of ways of getting over them. And so, once you explain away the concerns, after each explanation, you always ask again. So does like, does that, does that help that, does that, does that solve that for you? Great, so ready to move forward? You ready to do whatever the next thing is? And then finally is R. And the R actually happens after the sale and is something that I added years later in my career. It used to just be close. But the R is reinforce the decision. So in the 24 hours post purchase is when the vast majority of either have, you know, cold feet or they regret, or you can reinforce it and it becomes a super positive, right? And so people, believe it or not, there's tons of research that supports this, is that they will make a decision about your business based on the first 24 hours post purchase.

• 54:10Alex Hormozi?

  So it's this huge moment where you can make a first impression that pre-frames the remainder of the, of the relationship that you have with them. And so being incredibly diet of like, hey, so you bought, let me tell you what the next steps are going to be. We're going to take these steps and we're going to tie that to goal. Right, so you said you wanted these three things. The way that we're going to solve these three things is these three steps. These are the actions you take. We're going to meet tomorrow at this time. I'll see you there. Or if you have an onboarding rep, then you'd go from there. But that fundamentally is how you'd have the conversion conversation. And so to loop back to, if I'm a professional, how do I do this? It's like, well, you're going to use the core four. You're going to reach out to people. Once they respond, you'll initiate the conversation. Will you go through? Closer framework and then you make them an offer to do your stuff, which will be the moonlighting or, you know, in the morning. And what's really interesting is that people think that their nine to

• 54:53Alex Hormozi?

  five is getting in the way of their dreams when it's really their five to nine. And so 5am to 9am, it's like you're, it's four prime hours and then 5pm to 9pm, it's another four prime hours. So it's like you've got eight, you've got a full workday that you can work, which I strongly recommend. I think a lot of people are big on the burn the boats thing and I think there's a time and a place for that. But if you have a family and you've got a mortgage, I would recommend you keep your job and then supplement your income. And then at the point where your supplemental income in your off time surpasses your, your full-time income, that is when I say make the jump. And for me, because I actually believe in tend to be relatively risk averse person, I would say if you do that for six months, because there's going to be volatility in the

• 55:35Alex Hormozi?

  business and I'll also just play out the next problem they're going to have, if that's all right. Go for it. So much value, so much value. So volatility is a symptom of insufficient volume. And so if you feel like you're like, man, you know, I got a couple of customers and then, you know, the, the lead stopped coming in. It's like, well, you're doing insufficient volume. You're not doing enough of the core four. We have to post more content. We have to post more ads. We have to do more reach outs. Right? That's what we have to do. And so if you think, okay, well, I've been doing these reach outs and, you know, no one's responding or things like that. One, we need to make sure that the offer that we have is good, which I think we started with the five hour thing. I think it's a great first offer. But, you know, under that assumption, if we do this, I have a rule of 100, which is that you do 100 per day. So that means you're doing either 100 minutes that

• 56:18Alex Hormozi?

  you're putting into posting content and you post and you post, to be very clear, and you post, you, you spend a hundred dollars a day on ads or you do 100 reach outs. And if you want to be crazy, you can do all three. And so in those, in those, in those scenarios, the key is that you have to keep going. And so if you get, let's say you do the rule of 100 and you get one sale a week. Okay. Then if you want to, that would give you four sales a month roughly. If you're like, man, I want to go from four sales a month to, to 16 sales a month. The nice thing is that you actually have a clear input output equation, which is that, okay, it costs me 700. Primary efforts to get one sale. And so that volatility feels like it's only one, but it's because you're not doing enough.

• 57:01Alex Hormozi?

  If I take that 700 and do 700 per day, then all of a sudden I'll be making one sale a day. And fundamentally, that little compression process is the only thing that separates very small businesses from very large businesses. Most small business owners have no idea how much more volume the guys who are ahead of them put out. I remember at a conversation at the very beginning of me deciding to make content after I sold the company, where I said, hey, you know, I really want to learn this Instagram game and content game. And so I talked to somebody who's a big influencer. And I said, can you analyze my stuff and tell me what I'm doing wrong? And he said, dude, you're not doing anything wrong. You're just doing too little. And so he said, pull up your Instagram. And I pulled it up and I think I was doing like a post every other day or something like that. And he's like, dude, I got four posts a day.

• 57:46Alex Hormozi?

  And I was like, whoa. And then he said, pull up your LinkedIn. And I don't think I posted on LinkedIn. He's like, I got 10 posts today. And he's like, pull up your Twitter at the time. Now X is like, I had nothing, right? So he went side by side. He's like, I'm putting out 70, 80 a day and you're putting out one every other and you're complaining? And I was like, got it. And so the, most people dramatically underestimate the amount of volume that is required. And that volume has a great feedback loop for skill because you do these iterations and you will suck. And that is okay. And as long as you, like the process that I have for improving any part of any system is just do a tremendous amount of volume. Let's say we do 100 whatevers. We look at the top 10% of the ones that got the highest response rate or the ones that got the most views or the ads that got the most clicks. We say, okay, what was different about these top 10% compared to the other 90?

• 58:31Alex Hormozi?

  And so the next 100 we do, we say, let's just try and just do the thing we did in the top 10%. We do it again. And that continual refinement process has been key to all the stuff that we've done. It's just look at what worked, do more of that. And so if you were in the professional bucket, that is more or less kind of the approach that I would take to get that first dollar.

• 58:47Jay Shetty?

  Everyone needs to listen to that 15 minutes every day. I'm not kidding. That was the most amount of value I think has ever been packed in the 15 minutes that I've ever heard in my entire life. And I'm not kidding. That is such brilliant, brilliant advice, totally broken down step by step.

• 59:04Jay Shetty?

  I mean, you could, I mean, you could make like seventy posts off of just the last fifteen minutes. It was so, no, and, and I mean that, I'm not just saying that because right now, as you're speaking, I've got so many friends that I've got in my head that are exactly at that point. And it's either the volume that's messing them up, it's either not having the plan to how do you pitch and convert. Two questions. The first is, how do you stop being scared of sucking? Because a lot of my friends are scared of sucking. And the second one is, why are we so uncomfortable selling and promoting and showing our work?

• 59:41Alex Hormozi?

  So the first one, what's really interesting about the question is that I think that most people are actually very okay with sucking. I think they're very not okay with being judged for sucking. And so I think that at the, that the onset, we have to redefine success as trying and not as succeeding. Uh, or at least getting whatever desired outcome there is, because failure and success are, are salt and pepper. They're married, they're, they're one, one leads to the next. And so the idea is we want to get as many failures out of the way as fast as possible. And so it's like, we want to pay down that failure debt, uh, again, as soon as we can. And so the, the very tactical thing that I would advise is think about, there's, we think, I don't, I don't want people to think that I'm a failure.

• 1:00:23Alex Hormozi?

  It's actually not people, there's like two people that you hear their voice in your head. And so when you actually get really clear on who, whose voice is that? Cause I'll tell you, I'll tell you a real world example. So for me, when I said, this just sounds ridiculous, but just, but just to show you hopefully how ridiculous whatever you think sounds, I'll share one of mine. So when I was, uh, thinking about selling my company, the, the offer was for, for forty six point two million. And I, I was afraid that it wasn't enough to impress the people that I wanted to impress. And so, and I had to figure that out. I was like, I don't know. I mean, is it worth it? Maybe I should hold on to it longer and grow more. And I went, you know, back and forth. And when I thought more, more about it, I was like, actually, there's only one person whose opinion I'm concerned about.

• 1:01:06Alex Hormozi?

  And then when I named it, when I was like, oh, it's Tom? Tom's the person, like, I'm not even that close with Tom. But Tom, my envision of Tom judging my, my, my, my exit is not good enough for their approval. I was like, wait, I'm letting Tom have this much influence over my life? That's absurd. And so one of the big reframes that I have in my head is that if you don't know why you believe what you believe, it's not your belief, it's someone else's. And so if you can't explain, like, why am I not doing this? If you can't actually explain it, it's because there's someone else's voice that is influencing you that you're not aware of. And so I try and

• 1:01:40Jay Shetty?

  Name it.

• 1:01:41Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, the naming is the key part because as soon as you see that, you're like, Tom? You're like, screw Tom. We're like, I want to, it's like, is, is Tom's approval worth more than the dream that you want to pursue? And as soon as you get that, you're like, well, hell no. And then you move forward. And I can tell you just from, from the other side of this, and I want to, I want to be really clear. I understand how scary it is. It took me six months to quit my job and I talked to my friend every single day saying, this is the day, this is the day, this is the day. And when I did finally quit my job, I drove across the country and I only called people from home when I was already halfway across. I didn't tell anyone I was leaving because I was so afraid of what they would say. So I say this as somebody who absolutely gets it. But I just want to tell you from the other side of it, it's, you know, this is a Leila quote, not me, but it, you know,

• 1:02:26Alex Hormozi?

  fear is a mile wide and an inch deep. And so it looks like this vast ocean of, of like, I'm going to drown. But as soon as you take the first step, you're like, oh, this is a puddle. And there's a quote from Jaco Willink that I love that's recent, it's been top of mind for me, which is, besides death, all failure is psychological. It's just when you, the, the longer you think about it, the more you're like, wait, all failure is just me drawing an arbitrary line in the sand that I say, anything that does not meet the standard will force me to be upset.

• 1:02:56Alex Hormozi?

  And so it's like, okay, well, if I don't die, then I can keep going. And if I don't die, then it means I can't stand it.

• 1:03:02Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. And I, and I think a big part of it, when I'm listening to you is because it's psychological, let me know that it will happen.

• 1:03:08Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:09Jay Shetty?

  So I remember when I put out my first video, which I didn't tell anyone I was going to do, I spent two years watching videos before I made one and put one out. And when I put out my first video, I remember my friend saying to me, you talk too fast. The music is too loud, it's edited badly. Cool. Like it wasn't received with praise. Now, I didn't Think about that too much.

• 1:03:33Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:33Jay Shetty?

  And now, if I go back to advise someone, I'd say anticipate that.

• 1:03:36Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:37Jay Shetty?

  Because if you anticipate it, then it's okay, then it's inch deep.

• 1:03:42Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Jay Shetty?

  Right? You're like, oh, okay. Well, yeah, they're probably gonna tell me that the editing wasn't great or whatever.

• 1:03:46Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:47Jay Shetty?

  But if I followed Alex's advice, maybe I have sent it to a couple of people. You know, not friends, but people who actually know what they're doing.

• 1:03:53Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:54Jay Shetty?

  I've got some insight.

• 1:03:55Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:55Jay Shetty?

  I've studied it well enough and maybe I'll avoid some of them, but guess what? I won't avoid all of them. There'll still be someone who criticizes the tone, what I'm wearing, how I look, whatever it is. And as soon as you know that.

• 1:04:05Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:05Jay Shetty?

  You go, oh, that's all it is. Someone's gonna look at it and be like, yeah, I'm not sure. And it's like, oh, wait, their reaction doesn't change my reality.

• 1:04:14Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:14Jay Shetty?

  Like, their reaction will always be there. And I think what we're trying to do, going to your earlier point as well, is we're trying to avoid the reaction.

• 1:04:21Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:21Jay Shetty?

  We wanna create something.

• 1:04:22Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:23Jay Shetty?

  That has no negative reaction.

• 1:04:25Alex Hormozi?

  Right.

• 1:04:26Jay Shetty?

  And there is not a single person on planet Earth that has created a song, a movie, a podcast, or whatever it may be, that has had no negative reaction, so.

• 1:04:35Alex Hormozi?

  I have so, so many quick thoughts on this.

• 1:04:37Jay Shetty?

  Me?

• 1:04:37Alex Hormozi?

  So, number one is that if you do nothing, people will criticize you. If you do something, people will criticize you. So criticism is a fixed cost, period. Number two, it takes about twenty hours to become proficient in just about anything. You wanna play guitar, like proficient in just about anything. It just takes people ten years to get the first twenty hours. And that's a huge, a huge issue. The third is that when you're thinking about feedback, is, one, not all feedback is created equal. You don't wanna listen to the people who are closest to you. You wanna listen to the people who are closest to your goals. And so, listen to the people who are already at your goals, who already have achieved those goals, and listen to their feedback. Because I'll say, for example, for me, like, if I, if I, I mean, I rarely do, but if I post anything of me at the gym,

• 1:05:21Alex Hormozi?

  the only people who comment are people who are smaller than me. No guy who is bigger than me ever has talked about my fitness stuff. And so to the same degree, anybody who's a real entrepreneur is gonna be like, hell yeah, man. You got out there. Oh, of course you failed. Obviously you failed, but that's okay. Right? Everyone falls the first time, right? From the matrix. And so expect failure. And I think that if you can play it out, there's a really wonderful framework on this, which is the frame of the veteran. Which is if you were to imagine whatever bad experience occurs, happening a thousand times more in a row. How would you feel on the thousandth time? And if that's how you're gonna feel in a thousandth time with the exact same condition, you might as well feel that way today. And there's just been a really, like, if you're like, man, I hate traffic, it's a Google.

• 1:06:06Alex Hormozi?

  Let's assume traffic is a constant and it happens for the next thousand days. You'd probably be like, well, it's just how it is. Right? And so this is just how it is. That's the feedback that you're gonna get from the videos and it's gonna keep happening and it's okay.

• 1:06:15Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. Your point just now of the problem is it takes us 10 years to get the first 20 hours is so true. I know something that I've, because people are often like that to me, like Jay, how do you solve a problem? I'm like, if I think something's a big problem to solve or a skill to learn, I will cancel every evening plan this week. And I will cancel my entire weekend and all I'm doing this weekend is figuring out that skill. I'll get a coach, I'll commit to the time and I'll be around that community of people. Those are my three practices or things to develop a skill. And then this weekend is dedicated to getting good at X. And it's like, if I don't get enough hours in this weekend, the next four weekends are dedicated to that thing.

• 1:06:58Jay Shetty?

  And all of a sudden in a month, I've solved a problem that could have taken me six years. And so I love that piece of advice because I think it's the same advice when you give people like, hey, just try three things out. And then they're like, okay, I'll try three things out, one a year. And also when you give it 12 months to try one thing out, you actually never know. Whereas if you did something for a whole day, like I remember when me and my wife were in Hawaii, we both grew up in London. We never went surfing or skiing and things like this, right? We're in Hawaii, we try surfing. We do it the whole day. I knew I was never gonna be a surfer and it's the last thing I wanna do. And I don't care at all about surfing. It looks good, but it is not fun to do. Like, I didn't enjoy the process. And I'm like, but if I went like for thirty minutes one day,

• 1:07:43Jay Shetty?

  then I'd be like, oh, well, maybe I just didn't do it right. And then you're like, okay, I'll go thirty minutes next year. I'll do an hour next year. And so we just keep elongating the kind of failure rate or knowing how quickly something's important or not.

• 1:07:56Alex Hormozi?

  I think it's getting completely immersed and just soaked in whatever the thing that you're trying to pursue. So I'll tell you a comparable story. So when I was, when I had my first business, I was, I've never been a tech-oriented person. Now, I try not to speak that over myself, but like, I'm working on it. And so I was, I have to learn how to build webpages. I hate relying on these IT guys. They're slow, they don't build it the right way. And so this is right as some of the early kind of software say come out. And I had put it off and then I finally said, both days this weekend, I'm locking the doors, I'm closing the frames, I'm turning off my phone. And I just had a simple page. I said, I'm just gonna copy this page. I just wanna see if I can figure it out. And I set two full days aside and I finished it by noon.

• 1:08:37Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:38Alex Hormozi?

  But I had put it off for weeks. And so most times, it's almost like fear is a mile wide and an inch deep. So is ignorance. It's like, it's more than you expect, but less than you think.

• 1:08:47Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:47Alex Hormozi?

  Right? You get in and then you're like, oh, there's only four parts to this. Okay, I think, okay, now I can, you wanna wrap your arms around it. And I think that's why having these kind of longer intense sessions, you kind of drink all of it up. Because if you did multiple thirty minute sessions, for example, it's like, it'll take you the first fifteen minutes to get back into, what did I just learn last time? And then it just, it takes very, it's very hard to get, make progress. And so I'm a, I'm a massive advocate of full shutdown days. I mean, drink your coffee, get your good night's sleep and then put your earplugs in and then like lock in.

• 1:09:14Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely. Before we dive into the next moment, let's hear from our sponsor.

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• 1:09:49Jay Shetty?

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• 1:10:32Jay Shetty?

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• 1:11:15Alex Hormozi?

  So I would put this two separate buckets. So one is the promotion, which is kind of public embarrassment, public harassment, you know, that stuff, right? Yeah. The second one is, why am I scared to ask this person for money? Right? And so I think on some level, it comes down to, some people feel like imposters. They're like, I don't deserve this and things like that. But I think that there's a very tactical way to overcome that, which is you outwork your self doubt. And so if you, if you've done those 20, and I think it's people who haven't done the 20, who feel like imposters, but if you've done it 20 times and you're like, I know what's going to happen next, and I know what your problem is, and I also know I can solve it. And so your conviction goes up because you're not, you're not exaggerating anything. You're not puffing your chest. You're just, one of my big rules of persuasion is state

• 1:12:00Alex Hormozi?

  the facts and tell the truth. And so you're like, listen, I've done 20 of these. You have the same issues as these people. This is what I did for them. I think I could do the same thing for you. We're not exaggerating. We're not claiming anything. We're just saying like, this is, this is what's happened. And so I think that that will dramatically decrease the anxiety around the conversation. The second piece is the fear of like rejection in the micro. And so it's, it's always overstated because the worst thing they can say is no. And then you say, okay, fine. No worries. Like, not a big deal. I'll just ask somebody else, right? Like, if anything, sales is like dating. It's a numbers game. Like, you have to be willing to say, I would, and this is why I like rule of 100 a lot is have 100 conversations. And I promise you, your anxiety will go down because you'll just habituate.

• 1:12:43Alex Hormozi?

  And so everyone like, and this is the psychological way of actually curing phobias. If you're afraid of spiders, the fastest way to cure spiders is lock you in a room with spiders. You'll have a couple panic attacks. You'll, you'll, you'll pass out. You'll wake back up and the spider's still there. You wait, pass out, wake back up. And eventually you're just like, all right, I'm used to it. And so that's also one of the telltale signs of an experienced salesman is that in the close, when the stakes are high, their pulse is the same. It's because they've done this before. And so we just have to get you to the, we've done this before part as fast as we can.

• 1:13:10Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. What about people who feel like the approaches are manipulative?

• 1:13:14Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 1:13:15Jay Shetty?

  Or these tactics are like, you're preying on someone's vulnerabilities and insecurities. And of course that person wants to lose weight for their partner and you're playing to that. Like, what about someone who feels that way? And that's what gets in their head. Like, oh, I know I have a valuable service. I know I want to help people, but actually like, they should want to do it themselves. I'm not going to convince them.

• 1:13:36Alex Hormozi?

  So I'm gonna, I'll define two things. So one, I see the process of selling as arranging the variables to increase the likelihood a sale occurs. That is a selling process. And so we want to use all the variables we can, because if we can control the variables, we control the outcome. And so I see then underneath of that, the difference between help, manipulation is intention. And so you use the exact same variables to influence someone's purchasing decision. But if your intention is to scam them out of money and not help them, then for sure you should. I hope you feel all the feelings that you have right now. But on the flip side, if you're, if you know that you're going to do your absolute best and, and you've not misrepresented something. And I think this is the key part where people feel the imposter syndrome is because they misrepresent. If you state the facts and tell the truth, most of your anxiety goes away. And I have this conversation sometimes with entrepreneurs, even at a million dollars a year, $5 million a year.

• 1:14:20Alex Hormozi?

  And they're like, I just feel this imposter syndrome with my business. And I'll say, are you stating anything that's not true? And then they'll kind of look at me and they're like, well, you know, I teach agencies how to, you know, grow their customer base. And I'm like, okay, and why do you feel like an imposter? They're like, well, you know, I had an agency and it just, it really wasn't that successful. I'm like, okay, are your clients successful? And they're like, no, the clients are successful. I'm like, okay, so what do you teach them that you were not able to do for yourself? And they're like, well, I was actually just really good at the sales side. I was really bad at the delivery side. I said, if you just say, hey, I had an agency. I was really good at selling customers, really bad at delivering on them. But if you're good at delivering on them and you need a sales process, I can help you. I was like, would you feel like you're being an imposter? He's like, no. I was like, and believe it or not, that's actually more compelling because you have a damaging admission, which actually makes you, is one of the components of persuasion, right?

• 1:15:05Alex Hormozi?

  Like you just, just tell people all the things that are not good. Because when you tell them the good things, they'll actually believe them more. And so I would tell, you know, I was in the gym space for a while. And so, you know, a gym owner would have, you know, a bad location and bad parking. And they're like, you know, I don't, I don't, it's embarrassing. And I say, included in the ad, just say, hey, by the way, we have the, we don't have the newest equipment. Uh, our parking is terrible. We have a tiny location, but we have the best workouts on this side of the Mississippi. Right? And if you say that, then it's like, people are like, I love that guy, right? Cause he told the truth. And so you'll be significantly more persuasive and have less anxiety by just stating the facts and tell the truth. And if the facts aren't compelling enough, do the free work so the facts are compelling.

• 1:15:45Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. Oh, I love that so much because I'm thinking of a friend right now who has a service he offers. And he's always scared that he's a one man band.

• 1:15:53Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:53Jay Shetty?

  And he's scared that companies are gonna ask for a service.

• 1:15:55Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:56Jay Shetty?

  And he's almost embarrassed of saying, well, I'm just one guy.

• 1:15:58Alex Hormozi?

  Oh.

• 1:15:59Jay Shetty?

  And he wants to present himself as a company.

• 1:16:01Alex Hormozi?

  Yes.

• 1:16:02Jay Shetty?

  And I'm always saying to him, well, no, tell them because you're one guy.

• 1:16:05Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:05Jay Shetty?

  You can actually be there. You're present. You're doing all the work yourself. You're committed.

• 1:16:09Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:09Jay Shetty?

  You're not just rolling out something that everyone else is doing.

• 1:16:12Alex Hormozi?

  So I have, I have an awesome frame for this. So when we had our software company, Allen, which we sold in 21, uh, it was a software that helped, uh, agencies kind of manage schedules. It did automated texting stuff back before all the new stuff now, right? And so, um, I actually had agencies that sold to gym owners. And I obviously also owned Gym Launch at the time too, which was, which is the category, you know, king in that space, right? It's the biggest company there. And so they were like, how do we, how do we compete against you? And I said, every position has an advantage. And so you are gonna say, man, Alex, Alex isn't gonna be the one take, you know, he's not the one taking your calls. He's just gonna, you're gonna be client number 77. He's not even gonna know your name. You're gonna be assigned to some account rep that he pays, you know, nothing to, and of course we paid well, but like I've, like, I don't know.

• 1:16:55Alex Hormozi?

  You know, he just pays way less, um, that he on boarded in two days. Uh, and like, that's the level of service you're gonna get. Whereas with me, you get the highest person, you get the CEO and you call me, I'll respond immediately. I'm the one working your account. So don't compare gym, the size of Gym Launch, the size of my company. Compare the person you're actually gonna work with and am I gonna be better than his rep number seven? Yes. That's a compelling pitch. Now, if I'm flipping the table, I'm gonna say, listen, this guy's in his mom's basement. He hasn't proven any track record. We've been here for 10 years and the reason we've been here for 10 years and we've gotten so big is because we're actually good at what we do. And if we work at what we do, we wouldn't be this big and we wouldn't have been doing it for this long. This guy has no process. He might be gone tomorrow. We both have advantages that we can cater. So there's no position on the board that doesn't have advantage. You just gotta play what you got. Again, rule number one, right?

• 1:17:40Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. And, and, and the idea of pointing it out.

• 1:17:42Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:43Jay Shetty?

  Is just so masterful because that's what's blocking us. It takes away. We're all trying to be everything to everyone.

• 1:17:48Alex Hormozi?

  Right.

• 1:17:49Jay Shetty?

  And we wanna portray that we've thought about every part of the puzzle and we're the one stop shop. And I feel like whenever anyone says they're the one stop shop. There's nothing there, right? Because it's like, well, wait a minute. There's no way you could have figured out this and this and this and this and this.

• 1:18:06Alex Hormozi?

  With just you.

• 1:18:06Jay Shetty?

  With just you, and you've been in the business for two years, right? Like, it's, it's just not possible. And so, and that's so freeing. Like, I'm hoping people hear that and just feel so much lighter and go, tell the truth, state the facts, and, and that's it.

• 1:18:20Alex Hormozi?

  And if they say no, that's okay. Because honestly, if they say no, then they weren't going to be a fit.

• 1:18:25Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:26Alex Hormozi?

  And so I can promise you some of the best deals are the ones you never do. Because right now, any business owner can tell you this, like, there are customers that are like, I wish we did not ever talk to this person. Right? And so like, you're just avoiding some of these things that are going to be calamities later. So you might as well just get it upfront. And the thing is, is that when you set those expectations, it just, it creates such a clean relationship from there on. It's like, these are the expectations you can set. This is what I will do. Anything outside of that, I'm not going to pretend like I have done it. Now, if we want to figure this out, I'll be figuring it out with you. And if you, if you like the stuff I've here, I can apply some of those principles, but I haven't done it. I want to be upfront about that. And so where's the imposter syndrome? Where's the fear? It's like, there shouldn't be any. And it's all about the deception piece. And I think that's where, that's where people get in trouble.

• 1:19:05Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. The other thing I've learned about that is that I feel like people who win watch winners.

• 1:19:10Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:10Jay Shetty?

  And people who fail watch losers.

• 1:19:12Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:13Jay Shetty?

  And so when I look online, or even if I talk to people, that I get a lot of this where people will be like, I can't believe this guy has like a hundred thousand followers. Like, have you seen his stuff? Like, it just sucks. Like, oh, I can't believe that this guy like has a business making a million dollars. Like, I mean, he hasn't even got, you know? And so there's a lot of this where you find people who are not winning are constantly, whereas like, I'm sure if me and you were talking about something or something, we'd be like, dude, did you see what this guy did? It's amazing. Like, you see what, you know, whatever. And, and so I feel like there's that ideology that we get stuck in where we're like, I know I'm better than that guy.

• 1:19:46Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:47Jay Shetty?

  Or whoever, that girl, whatever it is. I know I'm better, but I'm not doing anything about it. And that hurts me even more.

• 1:19:53Alex Hormozi?

  Can I tell you a story about this?

• 1:19:54Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:55Alex Hormozi?

  So I know you, I think you've had Kylie Jenner on this.

• 1:19:59Jay Shetty?

  Not Kylie, I've had.

• 1:20:00Alex Hormozi?

  You've a Kendall, you've had Kendall.

• 1:20:02Jay Shetty?

  I've had Kendall, Kendall's a dear friend.

• 1:20:03Alex Hormozi?

  Well, I'll then, I'll, I'll tell you the story. So.

• 1:20:05Jay Shetty?

  Oh, I know the Kylie story from you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right. When she became a billionaire. Yeah, yeah. I've watched the video, man. I'm in, man. I'm in your content. I'm there.

• 1:20:13Alex Hormozi?

  So Kylie became a billionaire. I'm 27 ish at the time and I'm making, I'd say very good money. And I thought I was, I was, you know, the, the man, right? And then here comes this girl who's seven, eight years younger than me. And she's crushing, you know, she crushed it and she was better, she was better than I was. And I, and I, you know, my first response was ego being like, hey, Kris Jenner's her mom. She's had her life set up since day one. She's been on reality TV for, you know, I had all that, all that narrative. And then underneath of that, I was like, chill. What can I learn from her? Right? And so I have the fundamental belief that if someone makes more money than you, they know something that you don't know and in that you can learn of them. And I think that that allows every single person in the world's success to serve you.

• 1:20:58Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:59Alex Hormozi?

  Literally, you just flip the world into like, these are all the different lessons I can learn from all these people. And I think one of my, it's the sword of Gryffindor, but I love this quote that was on it.

• 1:21:08Jay Shetty?

  I love Harry Potter.

• 1:21:08Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. But it was made of, you know, Goblin steel or dwarven steel and it was, it only took in that which made it stronger. And so you, you know, hating on somebody in no way makes you stronger. And you're trying to point out all the deficiencies. It's like you're, you are the thing that you are afraid of for yourself. Like you're, you're going to point out all this person's deficiencies and your big fear is about the fact that other people want to do that to you. So first start by stop doing it to other people and start trying to find what are the things that they're, because the thing is, is it is a fact. They are better than you at something. And I think like you have to accept that as much as you're like, that guy's got a hundred thousand followers. Well, and he only had one viral video. It's like, well, he's got one more than you do.

• 1:21:43Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:43Alex Hormozi?

  What was it about that video? Now let's start tackling that. And so like from Kylie, the thing that I learned was brand. I was like, she's got a big brand. And then I was like, okay, I need to start looking at that. And that's what, that's what kicked off this entire journey for me, even making all this content stuff was that Forbes cover.

• 1:21:57Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:58Alex Hormozi?

  That was like, that was the thing for me. And so, you know, Kylie, if you ever watched this, like you were a huge influence in my life.

• 1:22:03Jay Shetty?

  I love that. We'll get it. We'll get it. We'll get it to Kylie. I love that. And and what I like about that is that criticism doesn't cure envy.

• 1:22:11Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:11Jay Shetty?

  And also, success doesn't cure envy.

• 1:22:14Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:14Jay Shetty?

  It's only study that cures envy.

• 1:22:16Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:16Jay Shetty?

  Like that appreciation, that admiration, that's the only thing. And envy is that thing that when I coach people and I've been fortunate enough to coach musicians and actors and whatever. And the two questions I always ask people is, the first thing is, who do you envy? And there is no person on the planet, even in the zero point zero zero one percent, who doesn't envy someone.

• 1:22:35Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:35Jay Shetty?

  That I've that I've met at least.

• 1:22:36Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:37Jay Shetty?

  And then the second one is, who's your god or what is your god? Whether it's money, time, energy, whatever it is. And and those two questions sum it up for people. And what I've found is that success just doesn't take away envy. So even if you had become a billionaire in the next 12 months.

• 1:22:52Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:53Jay Shetty?

  That still wouldn't have taken it away because she did it 21 and you did it younger.

• 1:22:57Alex Hormozi?

  I can already tell you.

• 1:22:58Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, exactly. And so it's like that. That's what's so fascinating about it is that we just you become successful by what you get, but you become fulfilled by what you lose. And losing envy and losing comparison and losing criticism leads to happiness. So when people say money doesn't buy happiness, it's not that money's not important. Money makes you successful and it's great. You should get it. Happiness was never in the equation with money. That wasn't the point of it. Like, I love having awards and accolades, but they were never in the equation of happiness. They were in the equation of success. And the equation of happiness was envy, ego, illusion, lust, anger, all of this stuff. And so it's funny how the equations get like, you know, crossed over.

• 1:23:37Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. I just I loved everything that you said.

• 1:23:40Jay Shetty?

  No, I just it really resonates hearing about it from your story and also just like breaking it down for people and making it really simple and going like, let's stop demonizing people who are selling well or making money and doing this thing because it leads to a certain part of the puzzle. But then let's also remember

• 1:23:56Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:56Jay Shetty?

  that you wouldn't be who you are today if you hadn't got over that envy right at the beginning.

• 1:24:01Alex Hormozi?

  So let me toss this in that I think might be helpful.

• 1:24:03Jay Shetty?

  Please.

• 1:24:03Alex Hormozi?

  So one of the quotes that I don't like is comparison is the thief of joy. And I'll explain why. Because I, so I think comparison is incredibly valuable feedback tool. Now, what we want to be clear is the differentiation between criticism and insults. And so insults are attack on someone's character saying, and I'll give you an example. And a criticism is the difference between expected and reality, right? Or desired and actual. So I expect you to be on time and you are five minutes late. Okay, cool. So I say, hey, you were five minutes late. This was the expectation. This is what happened. That is criticism, right? Insult and you're lazy. And so if we can pull those things apart, we can take the good of, because I, I think our brains are comparison brains.

• 1:24:48Alex Hormozi?

  Like it's how we, how we orient ourselves in the world. Where am I? And very tough, maybe years and years of, of monk study can maybe get you out of it. But I think for the vast majority of people, comparison is, is going to be fixed in their brain. And so it's like, we want to use that. We want to use that skill of learning to, to point out the discrepancy between where they are and where I am, so that I can create steps so that I can get better. I want to completely eliminate and erase insults. And also on the flip side, if someone insults me, um, this is a, a side note, but like if the big fear that many people have on promoting or selling is that someone's going to say something bad about them. And so that they're going to get insulted. And the biggest reframe that's been helpful for me is simply translating all hate or insults

• 1:25:30Alex Hormozi?

  into he lives his life in a way that I would not prefer. And it just comes down to that. I can't believe he's, he's married to this person. He makes this kind of, why does he think he like? He lives his life in a way that I would not prefer. And that is just, it has really boiled a lot of the, the hatred down to like, oh, well, I mean, you live your life in a way that I would not prefer. And that's fine. That's why you have your life and I have my life and hey, more power to you, man.

• 1:25:50Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:50Alex Hormozi?

  Uh, and that is just like really quelled a lot of the concern because I'm sure like you, I, I get an unending, you know, the deluge of, of, of hate comments. Just because if you put yourself out there.

• 1:26:01Jay Shetty?

  Totally.

• 1:26:01Alex Hormozi?

  Like if, again, if you do nothing, you will get criticized for doing nothing. If you do something, you'll get criticized. So criticism is fact. It is a fixed cost.

• 1:26:07Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. And then, yeah, and that's why I like, I, I agree with you on the comparison point. And that's why I look at. Comparison has two kind of brothers, study and envy. And so that's, that's the choice you have. Like, we have to compare. Comparison is a fixed, like, you're gonna compare because the brain is wired that way. And it's either I compare myself with envy or study. And those are my two choices. I'm gonna compare. And so this idea of never comparing yourself to anyone is actually a lie and a myth in and of itself. Because if you never compared yourself to anyone, you wouldn't have goals, you wouldn't aspire for anything, you wouldn't become better.

• 1:26:40Alex Hormozi?

  There's no feedback.

• 1:26:41Jay Shetty?

  There's no feedback.

• 1:26:42Alex Hormozi?

  Because you can't say, well, this is where I was and this is what hap- like, that is a comparison. And so I would, I say that because one of the things we have is feedback is fuel, right? And so it's like, I want as much fuel as I can.

• 1:26:51Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's, that's such a, you know, you've said the word feedback's come up so many times today. Where you mentioned it so many times and to, to see feedback as fuel is the only way to have an iterative, constantly evolving process. And I find that, you know, there's the famous quote from Albert Einstein where he said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. And feedback is the way you don't do the same thing over and over again. You can change it every time. But so many of us keep doing something even when it doesn't work, hoping for that different outcome. Why?

• 1:27:31Jay Shetty?

  We don't change the email copy. We don't post at a different cadence. We don't up the volume. We, it's just like, we're just, you know, I, I've got so many friends who'll upload a video, delete a video, upload, you know, it's like, we don't change that and then we're still going, wait a minute, what's going on here?

• 1:27:45Alex Hormozi?

  So my worldview on why anyone does anything is that they've been rewarded for doing that in the past. And so, you know, one of the, one of the really difficult things with language in general is that there's descriptive and explanatory language. And so for example, I'll give the simplest example, you know, Timmy stole a bike because he is dishonest. Okay, well, if we define dishonest, we would say, well, dishonest people steal things. But that's a circular definition. It doesn't actually help. The explanation of why did he actually steal it is because he's been rewarded for stealing in the past. And so he repeated that, that action because it got him something good. And same thing goes for lying, same thing goes for cheating, all of these things, like, why does someone do it? It's like, because they've been rewarded for doing so in the past. They've been reinforced.

• 1:28:26Alex Hormozi?

  And so why do people, yeah, why do people do anything? That is, and- And you know, my worldview is somewhat different than I think of many people's because I come from everything from a behaviorist perspective. But it has made me significantly better at business because I get better at predicting behavior. And so I'll give you a simple example. So, you know, there was an exec at one of the companies and I was talking to one of the other owners and they were like, hey, you know, I, I, this guy said that he would leave if we changed his title or whatever. And I said, okay, well, how many times have you changed his title historically? And he said, plenty of times. And I said, okay, has he ever left? And the answer was no. I said, so based on his history of behavior, I would say that he says these things to decrease the likelihood that you do it because that's his preference. The likelihood that he quits as a result is low.

• 1:29:09Alex Hormozi?

  And so it's like those kind of deconstructions, some people just take things at face value. It's like, well, if we look, if we actually try and find the explanation rather than the description of the event, we can get way better at predicting behavior, including our own. And I think that's where like, people are like, I want to get back to the, the, the trauma of whatever. It's like, maybe like, can I go into this? Cause I think this, this might be helpful. Yeah. So. I love the direction you gave. Okay. So many people will, will use trauma or some event and they will create a narrative around why, why haven't I started? It's because my dad didn't hug me enough as a kid and I don't have this confidence. So they just create this big story. And then they're like, I need to go see a therapist so that I can, you know, untangle all of this. But if I were to say, hey, I'm going to teach you how to, how to serve in pickleball.

• 1:29:54Alex Hormozi?

  Right? We wouldn't have the first session be, hey, do a serve and then you would serve, not ideally if I'm a pickleball coach, right? And then I'd say, okay, so for the next, you know, few weeks, what we're going to do is we're going to try and go back in the past. We're going to try and figure out why your serve is so bad. And no, we're just going to say, change your wrist like this. This is how you do it. And so it's so much more productive to just focus on what do we need to do instead, rather than trying to figure out why you did it. Cause the reality is you're never going to know. It's a convenient narrative and it might make sense, but at the same time, it could just be that you were rewarded for doing something like this in the past, period. Now, there might've been conditions that created that reward and you can lament the person, but at the end of the day, the only thing you can do about it is change behavior.

• 1:30:33Alex Hormozi?

  And so, um, trauma, which is tossed around a lot, um, I define as a permanent change in behavior from an aversive stimulus, some bad thing. So you permanently change how you act because of something bad that happened. Now, the question is, is trauma bad? Well, did the change in behavior result in increase or decrease in likelihood of achieving whatever goal we have? And so if a kid touches a hot stove and they say ouch, and then they never touched hot stoves again, then that was a traumatic event by that definition, and it's probably good trauma, because they never touched hot stoves again. So decrease the likelihood they die in a fire. Great. And so, sometimes it's like, well, then maybe we can be grateful for some of the quote traumas that we've had, because it permanently changed my behavior in a good way. Now, if we have quote, trauma that, that permanently changed my behavior in a negative way. So I had, you know, bombs and saw somebody die

• 1:31:16Alex Hormozi?

  in front of me, and the next time I hear a loud noise, I, you know, I freak out and I can't, you know, perform my job, then that would be something that decreases the likelihood. But then at that point, rather than trying to figure out the triggering event in the past, we just think, okay, how can we recondition this person under similar conditions, so that they can act this way instead? And so, trauma, what ends up happening is it becomes an accelerated learning event. And so something bad happens, your brain's like, pay attention, because it's like, I'm going to learn, and you're, I'm going to permanently change our behavior to make sure this doesn't happen again. And so it's not this, and I hear this because a lot of people anthropomorphize, uh, you know, make human, or, you know, try and biologize, um, that's a word, go for it. Um, something that occurs, it's like, it's stored in your body, and I was like, we're not computers, right? It's just that you

• 1:32:01Alex Hormozi?

  have a behavior set, and all we have to do is change these behaviors, and then it eliminates. And so, um, the reason, so this all started with feedback. And so, the reason feedback is fuel, and what makes feedback good versus bad, or rather, useful versus non-useful, is the latency of the feedback. How quickly do you get it? And how specific is it? And so, if you say, hey, that sucked in the moment, not helpful. I will be less, what it will do is make me less likely to do the thing in front of you, right? If you said that. On the flip side, if you were to say, immediately, hey, real quick, when you do your intro, raise your tone a little bit at the end, because I think it'll actually create more curiosity, and people want to stay longer. Okay, do the intro again. There, I have a very specific piece of feedback, and I did it immediately, so that the likelihood that you change behavior is really high, and maybe that it sticks. And so, the reason feedback is fuel, and ideally, if you're trying to change someone else's behavior, or even your

• 1:32:46Alex Hormozi?

  own, it's like, I want to seek out very fast feedback that's as specific as possible to the behaviors. And so, um, I tell the story a lot, because it's a, it's a story that we tell inside of our company, because it's almost become lore. But we had a, a director. Super proficient, very competent in his role, really high performer. The problem was that everyone said, he's such a dick. And the thing is, is that I really liked, I liked his performance and I want to decrease the likelihood that I get complained to about him. And so he had four different people in the company have like one on ones with him being like, hey, I need you to stop being a dick. And the thing is, his behavior didn't change. And so I was supposed to be like final boss in this situation and be like, all right, let's, let's, let's have this sit down. And so I said, hey, I, I don't care if you're a dick on the inside. I would like to decrease the likelihood that other people describe you as one. And so I want to be clear, I have no judgment.

• 1:33:31Alex Hormozi?

  I just want to change this likelihood, this outcome. And so that kind of took the personal attacks out of the conversation. And then it was like, okay, so what are the behaviors you do skill wise, as minutely as possible, that get people to say this about you? So it turned out it was you interrupt people on calls, you tell people how to do their jobs. And it was two other things, whatever it was. And so I said, so next time you have the, you know, desire to tell someone what to do about their job, you have two options, either say nothing or say, hey, I, I heard this thing that might help. Do you mind if I share it? If you just say that first, and if they say no, then just be like, okay, no worries. Or they say yes, then now you have permission to share it. And when you share it, share it in terms of behaviors, criticism, not insult. And so I just had to change a couple of those things. And then within a week, people were like, oh my God, he's had, he's a night and day.

• 1:34:16Alex Hormozi?

  He's a different person. They create all these narratives. Maybe it was because his mom did hug him, she called him, or because we told him what to do instead. And so I, I bring this up because I think many people do not take action around pursuing their dreams because of narratives that they create about their past. But the reality is that none of that matters because all we have to do is just say, what do we need to do instead under these conditions? And if we, if we take that premise, then you need to learn. And learning means same condition, new behavior. And so if every day is the same for you, to your point of insanity, then you have the same conditions. And if your behavior has not changed, then maybe you are insane. Or at least for, at least for expecting a different outcome.

• 1:34:55Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:56Alex Hormozi?

  And so that I think makes it significantly more palatable of like, just change this one thing and then run it again.

• 1:35:01Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. How does someone who's taken that feedback, trying to get better and the results just not changing? They're not getting closer to the outcome.

• 1:35:09Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:10Jay Shetty?

  Two questions. The first is, How do you know when it's time to give up? And how do you keep going when things are not working?

• 1:35:19Alex Hormozi?

  So this is, there's a handful of what I call like eternal questions that I don't think, they're more dichotopes to be managed than problems to solve. And so how much should I consume today versus invest into tomorrow? How much, how much risk am I willing to take? Which is the classic, should I push or should I pivot for an entrepreneur? And the answer that no one's gonna like is that it's actually up to you. So there's kind of like good failure and bad failure. So good failure is like, I tried something and I, I saw that it didn't work and I realized what I need to do instead. And I'm going to iterate continuously. Bad failure is where I have a, an assumption that the world or the conditions were going to be this way. And my assumption was false.

• 1:36:02Alex Hormozi?

  And so if I believed that people really wanted to have dog Zoom calls or whatever, right? Zoom made for dogs. Let's just take a ridiculous example. Well, then I would have to take a couple of need to believes of like, in order for this to be successful, these four things would have to be true. If I find out after starting some iterations, that one of my three or four assumptions that underpin this being successful long-term is not true, then I should not keep trying to pursue this. And that is where I would say, we need to pivot. In a situation where none of the conditions that I, or none of the, the need to beliefs have changed. All of those conditions are still the same. And it's a, it's a, it's a deficiency in skill. And that is where I would push. Now, how long will it take is going to be completely predicated on how quickly you can learn and the quality of that feedback. And so to your point, I think you said coach, community and what was the other one?

• 1:36:46Jay Shetty?

  Commitment.

• 1:36:47Alex Hormozi?

  Commitment.

• 1:36:47Jay Shetty?

  Some sort of consistency.

• 1:36:48Alex Hormozi?

  Yes. And so the, the commitment part, if you want to increase your commitment in anything, so I define commitment by the elimination of alternatives. Right? So marriage is the ultimate commitment. You eliminate all alternatives, right? And so it's like, we want to get married to this opportunity. We get married to this business. We have to eliminate all alternatives, which means when your friend says, hey, I made 10 grand during this thing. You say, that's amazing. I don't know anything about that. And I know, I know two months of suffering from this one and I'm going to start at zero there. So I'd rather be two months in on this one.

• 1:37:14Alex Hormozi?

  But the- But with that push or pivot, we have to just take things to the natural extreme, which is how I like to do it, which is, okay, well, if I do this for 10 years and I keep getting better, do I think it's likely that I'll succeed? And the answer is usually yes. And so it's like, well, then I just keep need to keep paying down those iterations. And I think Naval said, it's not 10,000 hours, it's 10,000 iterations. And I tend to believe that.

• 1:37:32Jay Shetty?

  Your new book's called A Hundred Million Dollar Money Models. It's like, you know, I think there'll be people listening who like, I just want to make a hundred K a year. There'll be people saying, I want to make a hundred K a month. And then there'll be people saying, we want to make a hundred million dollar business. What's the difference at each of those levels? And what are you sharing here that you haven't shared in the hundred million dollar series before?

• 1:37:57Alex Hormozi?

  So I'll take those questions one at a time. So I'll start with the second question, which is, what's different about this book? So offers answer the question, what do I sell? And so is an offer so good, people feel stupid saying no. So basically broke down the components of an offer. So we gave a little example of one, five hours for free. It's a very simple offer, right? But there are offers that you can include guarantees, you can include scarcity, you can include urgency, you can include bonuses. And then the actual core value of itself, there's a way to increase the value of anything. So we use something called the value equation, which is probably the most known framework I have, which is there are four, people say like, create value. But when you say, how do I operationalize that? If I say to a five year old, create value, they're like, I don't know what that means. And so how do we break that down in behaviors? So one is that some dream outcomes are going to be more valuable to somebody than something else. So if I go to a guy and say, hey, I can make you rich, or some, or I say, hey, I can make you good looking.

• 1:38:42Alex Hormozi?

  Most men in general will say, I'd rather be rich. If you go to women, it flips the other way. But for them, that means that the outcome itself is going to be, some outcomes are worth more than others. That's one element of value. The second element of value is perceived likelihood of achievement. How risky is it? How likely is it to occur? So if I said, hey, I can make you rich and it's guaranteed, it's going to be significantly more valuable than if it's, you have to take a huge amount of risk. The third variable is going to be speed. So from the time you make the decision to the time you get what you want, hey, I can guarantee that you're going to get rich, but it's going to take 20 years. Plenty of people make that, but a lot of people are like, whoa, but not this 20 years. I want to get rich tomorrow, right? So time is going to be a component of it. And then the fourth component is, is effort and sacrifice, which is two sides of the same coin. Effort is all the things that you must do, that you don't want to do as a result of this decision. And on the flip side, sacrifice is all the things you have to give up that you would prefer to do,

• 1:39:28Alex Hormozi?

  but you can no longer do as a result of the decision. And so if we want to make the most valuable offer, then we want to create something that is a huge dream outcome, that happens guaranteed, that is immediate, and that they don't have to do anything for. Now, no offer is that good. But those are the hypothetical extremes, the ideals that we strive towards. And I think that's a beautiful thing for entrepreneurs is that all we try to do is just get closer and closer to all four of those pillars. So that is the core of the offers book. The Leeds book is the core four. So we went over earlier. So how do you promote anything? And so that book takes all eight of the components, core four you do, and then the core for the other people do on your behalf, and breaks down in nitty gritty details, step by step, how to do them. This book answers the question, how do I make money? Right? And so it's like, okay, well, I know what to sell and I know how to advertise it. But how do I turn that process into making money?

• 1:40:14Alex Hormozi?

  And so most people, like the thing that separates when I look back on all the companies that I've owned, advised, sold. The thing that separated the businesses that were moderately successful from the ones that were exceptionally successful is that they had a better money model. And a money model is the core economic unit of the business. So it's a deliberate sequence of offers that is ideally tailored to do one financial outcome, which is you collect enough cash from one customer in the first 30 days to get and service two more customers. And so when you have that amount of cash upfront, then it unlocks cash flow for the business to grow as much as it wants, or at least until the next train of the business. And so when I looked at all the money models that I created, there's basically four, four different objectives to make that happen. So one is how do I get more people interested?

• 1:40:59Alex Hormozi?

  So that's going to be the nature of the offer, you know, buy X, get Y free giveaways, things like that, that like, okay, I can structure this thing in a way that makes way more people interested than just saying, hey, buy my thing. The second element is, okay, how do I get those people to spend more money than they otherwise would? So there's different money models around that. The third is going to be, how do I make them spend their money faster? How do I pull that cash flow forward? And then the fourth element of good money is a money model is how do I get them to do it again and again and again, which can either be recurring in a membership or reoccurring like Coca-Cola. You still buy it again and again, it's just not on subscription. And so if you have all four of those things, then you have a business that can create tons and tons of demand, get lots and lots of money upfront and get people to buy again and again, which then creates stability and cash flow for the business long term.

• 1:41:39Alex Hormozi?

  And so that is basically the four pillars of the book, and it's broken down into those four steps of these are the, these are the front end offers that do this. These are the, the transition points to how do I get someone to take the next thing that's going to be more expensive? Or how do I get to take the bottom thing? Or how to create payment points, how to create All of those components which ultimately make businesses significantly more successful. And I started writing this in 2019. It was the first book that I started. So it was actually called, Lead Generation and Monetization Structures, which, you know, very, very sexy name. But this was, I had a mentor who told me, hey, you're in the sale process right now. You should document all the artifacts, kind of crystallized knowledge at that point. And so that is what started that book. Now, offers and leads were basically, that book was like this thick. And I was like, this is, I can't.

• 1:42:22Alex Hormozi?

  So I actually peeled off offers and then finished that first and then peeled off leads and finished that second. And then finally, I can get to the money models, which is actually what I started six years ago. And so I have not publicly talked about any of the structures in this book. And I feel like I'm giving birth. I've been, I've been pregnant for six years, until you're conceptually pregnant. And I want to give birth to this thing because I think that this will make the largest impact on business owners' bottom line of anything that I've ever made. And it's been the source of the vast majority of my material success is being able to do this because when you have a superior money model, it gives you padding to be bad at everything else. Because you finally make more money per customer than anyone else does in your space, which means your advertising doesn't have to be as good.

• 1:43:03Alex Hormozi?

  You don't have to be as good at sales. You're, you're, you're, like, the offer itself might not necessarily be as good. But when you sequence these things together properly, the right way, then you can unlock scale in the business. And then with that cash flow, buy down that ignorance debt and then get, give yourself time to get good at all the other stuff.

• 1:43:18Jay Shetty?

  And what starting point would you say this book's aimed at? Like, where is someone at in their journey?

• 1:43:22Alex Hormozi?

  You can start at zero because you could start at, so what's interesting about those four things is that you don't need all four. You just need one. And over time, because if you were trying to do a business that had all four, you had a recurring, you have upfront, like, you would be completely inundated. So we would start with the first thing, which is some sort of attraction offer. How do we get something that's, that's more designed to get more customers or more people to engage in your original reach out, your paid ad, your content, whatever it is. And so I have the five most successful structures that I have used and detailed step by step exactly how to execute them. And what's interesting is that this is the stuff that

• 1:43:55Alex Hormozi?

  So the offers book, when it came out, there wasn't a single other book about offers, which is interesting. And then it became kind of a household name, which is it was this massive gap in the space. But as soon as you see it, you're like, this is everything. You know, like, this is how all of it works. I think that money models will be that same thing, where there's not a single book that ties those concepts together. And as soon as it, I think it will, it will exist in that, that huge gap that once you see it, you can analyze any business in that same way, and specifically your own.

• 1:44:21Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I love it. Alex, I'm, I'm honestly listening to you today, and I've consumed your content for a long time now. Listening to you in person consistently for this long around the models that you've built is, is a real treat, man. It's, it's, it's so well thought through. It's so systematic. I love the way you think, the way you've been able to train yourself to realize that everything's built on behaviors. And the ability, even something that you said to me that's really going to stay with me, because I think about it in such a similar way, but it's so obscure. Like, we have a lot of similarities in, in our beliefs, and, but some of them are a bit more-

• 1:44:53Alex Hormozi?

  From different angles, which I, which I love.

• 1:44:55Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, from different angles, but some of them are a bit more, they're from different angles, but some of them are a bit more widespread held. But your one thing you talked about today about how when you watch people say what they regret, and I think about that all the time. I'm like, of course you regret you didn't spend enough time with your family, but you're totally taking away from all the benefits you just got right now. And I'm not saying people shouldn't spend time with their family. It's just, when you said that today, that was one thing that I was like, I can't, like, to have the ability to think it through to that level, to not just take something at face value. And I think that's, that's the skill I see you have. Like, that's the expert you're at, is that you don't take anything at face value.

• 1:45:37Alex Hormozi?

  I appreciate it.

• 1:45:37Jay Shetty?

  And, and that's hard, because it requires you to dig deep to figure out, well, what is the behavioral science here? What is the, what is the exchange here? Like, what emotions are we talking about? I picked out some of my favorite Alex Onmose quotes, because I had to, because there's so many. But first, here's a quick word from the brands that support the- This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. If you're talking about quality food, you can't forget Whole Foods Market, who've been holding themselves to the highest standards since they opened in 1980.

• 1:46:11Jay Shetty?

  That means you'll see thousands of organic products across their stores, from the produce department to the aisles. It also means you'll never see certain ingredients. They've banned artificial sweeteners and colours, high fructose corn syrup and more, so you can shop with peace of mind. Shop Whole Foods Market in-store or online. This episode is brought to you by Wayfair. Home should be a place that feels like a sanctuary, a space that truly reflects who you are. But it can be challenging to balance style, budget and endless options. I was looking to create a dedicated calm space for my morning meditation and reading, but I was struggling to find pieces that felt grounding but could also stand up to daily use.

• 1:46:53Jay Shetty?

  I went on Wayfair and found a beautiful, solid wood accent chair and a bookshelf. Now that corner is my favourite place to anchor my day. The quality is incredible, it's built to last and it completely shifted the energy of the room. Plus, you can shop with Wayfair Verified, where product specialists carefully vet items for quality and functionality, so you can shop with more confidence. And if putting it all together sounds like a headache, Wayfair can handle delivery, installation and assembly. Join Wayfair Rewards today to get 5% back on every purchase and start saving on your next home upgrade. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home.

• 1:47:36Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. We talk a lot about intentional decision-making, and that extends to the practical stuff too, like making sure your coverage actually works for your life. State Farm is there to meet you where you are and they know how sweet it is to feel good about your decisions. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbour, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state, coverage options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. Show. All right, thank you to our sponsors. Now let's dive back in. All right, we've touched on some of this, but it'll be good to get your reaction to them again.

• 1:48:19Jay Shetty?

  All right, so this one I love because I think it's so true. Most people want to become millionaires because of what being a millionaire allows you to do, not because of what you have to do to become a millionaire.

• 1:48:33Jay Shetty?

  What do we do about that mindset?

• 1:48:35Alex Hormozi?

  It's wanting the view without the climb. It's Jimmy Carr has a great quote on this. It's everyone wants what you have, but not what you did to get it. I think that if we make who we become the goal, rather than the thing we achieve, instead of winning once a decade, we can win every day. Because you can continually get better at being who you are. And then the achievement is just one milestone along the path. But at least in my experiences, as I've actually approached milestones, when it becomes increasingly likely that I'm going to achieve it, it matters less and less. When I was in the lifting world, if I thought whatever my lift was and added 100 pounds, I'd be like, oh, my God, man, if I lifted that, that would be insane. But by the time you actually do lift that, you also lifted five pounds less than that before. And you lifted 10 pounds less than that before.

• 1:49:20Alex Hormozi?

  So you're like, well, it's really not that big of a stretch anymore. And so it actually, in some ways, it's not even nearly as fulfilling as you think it is. Because by the time it happens, you're so close to it, it seems obvious. And so shifting from who I become rather than what I achieve, or who I become as the achievement, has been a wonderful reframe for like, sure, you want to be a millionaire, but what you really want to do is become the person who can become a millionaire. And that you can win every day. And then that takes away the, I don't want to do the things that.

• 1:49:48Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. And that comes to, one of the things you talk about a lot that I love is sense control. Like that, to me, I think one of the earliest clips I saw of yours was, someone had asked you something like, you know, what's a trait you see in successful people? And I think you'd said three things. And I loved hearing that third one. The first one was, I think you said something like, you know, they're all people who have high standards, so they want, they expect a lot from themselves. The second was, but at the same time, they're good at not being that hard on themselves when they don't get there.

• 1:50:21Alex Hormozi?

  Emotional control.

• 1:50:21Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. And then the third thing was like, sense control, if I'm not wrong.

• 1:50:24Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, the other one was, so it's this.

• 1:50:26Jay Shetty?

  Which one did I get wrong?

• 1:50:27Alex Hormozi?

  No, no, it's like, you have this inflated sense of self, so you believe you can achieve great things.

• 1:50:32Jay Shetty?

  That's it.

• 1:50:33Alex Hormozi?

  You have this crippling insecurity that pushes you away. Yeah. And then the third is that you can control your emotions.

• 1:50:38Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. And that, and I've always thought it's the high standards, high grace. That's been my language around it. But the third one of that self mastery, what do you think is the number one emotion that people don't know how to control? That leads to failure.

• 1:50:58Alex Hormozi?

  That is such a good question. Fear.

• 1:51:03Alex Hormozi?

  Because I think one of the one of the most

• 1:51:06Alex Hormozi?

  one of the wildest questions that I read that you know kind of stuck with me was like,

• 1:51:12Alex Hormozi?

  what would you do if you weren't afraid? And I think that's just such a such a powerful question to ask because every person has the the fear is the thing that gives you the hundred reasons. And what's really interesting about this is that we are our brains are exceptionally good at finding problems, which is why I'm a big fan of inverted thinking. So how can I think about all the ways to kill my business and then do the opposite? Your your brain is so much better at spotting problems than spotting opportunities. And so it's like, use that problem, that problem finding thing and then just flip it. And it sounds like, oh, well, I would just think of the opportunities that way. It's like, it doesn't actually work. You actually have to think for the threats and then flip them.

• 1:51:45Jay Shetty?

  That's genius. I love that.

• 1:51:47Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, it's Charlie Munger. So that's, you know, you know, rest in peace. But from a from a fear perspective, it's, I think it's playing it out. It's like, what am I actually most afraid of? And so fear typically only lives in the vague, not in the specific. We tend to catastrophize to death. So if I make this post and people laugh at me, I'll get shunned and then I'll eventually go alone and then die. Right? So it's like, everything just goes to like death. Right? And so playing it out into the specific is like, okay, well, I make this post. Some people will like it and some people won't. And maybe I'll get some negative comments. If I get negative comments, I'll get more reach. So maybe it's not a terrible thing. And then and then that night I will have dinner.

• 1:52:22Alex Hormozi?

  Right? And that night I will go to bed. Right? And so making making it really, really specific. And then just to add one more thing on that. The other really big downside of being human from an opportunity money making perspective is that we underestimate the upside and we overestimate the downside. And that has been incredibly valuable for us to stay alive and not very valuable for us to make money. And so when you, if you're in the developed world, the the absolute worst case scenario is that You still have, I say fortress, you still have, you still have a cover and you still have food and you still have air and you still have water. Because in the developed world, all those things are available to anyone. And so it's like, okay, so the worst case scenario is that I live and I'm completely free and no one bothers me. It's like, you know, that actually sounds not so bad.

• 1:53:08Alex Hormozi?

  When you actually play it all the way out. And so I think playing it out and actually really thinking, what would I then do? Well, I'd probably reach out to Sarah and she would let me sleep on her couch. Okay, so, and I would, I would ask her, if you can play, I'd be like, hey Sarah, if I were to do something and I were to fail, how long would you let me sleep on your couch? She was like, I'd give you six months. And you're like, okay. So it all of a sudden becomes concrete. And I think that, that starts to really evaporate fear rather than like, oh, I will die.

• 1:53:32Jay Shetty?

  Totally. Yeah, I remember that when I, when I made the leap, I was like, and, and of course I was in a position to be able to say this, but I was like, okay, well, I'll just go back to what I was doing. Like if this didn't work, I would just go back, like I'll figure out a way.

• 1:53:44Alex Hormozi?

  Get the job back.

• 1:53:45Jay Shetty?

  And I'll get the job back and I'll, and I'll, and I'll go back to do it. And, and that was the reality. And of course, it was still at the time when I felt this was taking up all of them. All right, another one that I love. This, this one really, really hit me and, and I feel like it's going to resonate with a lot of people if you haven't heard it yet. People fail not because there's some magical list nobody has. They fail because it's an obvious list nobody does.

• 1:54:08Alex Hormozi?

  I'm so happy you liked that one. It didn't, like I, I just, just, just to give kudos to Jay here. You picked out tweets that were not like super banger, high performers, but like I wrote these and I was like, this is, like this is a thing.

• 1:54:20Jay Shetty?

  I picked ones that really, I didn't pick them based on performance. I picked them based on like, I was like, I read this, I was like, yes, like.

• 1:54:27Alex Hormozi?

  I, like that, so just kudos to you for that, cause I, it makes me feel good. But yeah, so, I mean, this is a super known one, but like the magic isn't the work that we're not doing, right? It's the obvious list. If you were trying to get in shape, you know, you should eat less and you should move more. You know that. And so I used to even do these with, when I would have a weight loss customer who'd come in the door and they'd be like, so tell me more about the, and I would just say like, Do we really need to get into it? Like, you already know what you're supposed to do. The question is why you aren't doing it? That's what I'm here for. And so, in a lot of these situations, like, you probably know that if you're gonna invest, you should, you know, wait 10 years. And if you're not willing to wait 10 years, then you shouldn't buy it. Which means that if you're like, "Well, I don't have the time to do that research", then don't invest, increase your active income, right? And so, and all these things like, "Hey, well, how do I increase my active income?"

• 1:55:11Alex Hormozi?

  Well, I know I need to do more than I currently am. I know I need to put my stuff out there. And so, one of my favorite frames around this is, it's the Solomon paradox, right? And so, for those who don't know, in the Bible, Solomon, wise man. But it's called Solomon paradox because he gave amazing advice, but his life was in shambles. And so, the thing is, is that we're exceptionally good at giving advice, and very good and very bad at following it for ourselves. And so, what's interesting is that you, they actually did studies on this where they had people, they whitewashed someone's existing circumstances and their conditions, and had the same people, not knowing they were criticizing themselves, give critiques to this person on what to do to improve their lives. And the thing is, is that none of the people were actually doing it. And so, the thing is, I like that frame because if you parachute your, sorry, protect yourself in the future and look back and say, "Okay, what would 80-year-old

• 1:55:56Alex Hormozi?

  version of me tell me to do?", for some reason, it kind of like disembodies yourself a little bit, and you can get back and say, "Well, I would tell myself to do this, this, and this." And the thing is, is that you have complete context on your situation. And so, sometimes, it's some of the best advice you can get. And I know this is kind of like the inverted thing, where you're like, "Oh, well, I could..." Just actually go through the process and say, "I'm gonna write down a conversation with myself that's 80 years old, what would he or she tell me to do?" And it probably is that obvious list that no one does, not the magical list that no one knows. Because the thing is, is that like, the clues of success are in plain sight. It's just that the sweat that's required, the price tag associated with them is the one that people don't want to pay. So, people don't really give up on their dreams.

• 1:56:37Alex Hormozi?

  They give up, they see what it takes to get their dreams, and then decide it's too expensive. And I think that's the big thing, is, is they think it's mispriced. And maybe it is, and I think that's okay. But my preference would be that many people say, "You know what? That's not worth it to me." And then be like, "Great, you've won." Like, "You've won, you don't need to get anywhere, you've already won where you're at." So, that's at least my, my thought on it.

• 1:57:00Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I love that. How does it, how does someone who listens to this episode versus someone who applies this episode live differently today or tomorrow?

• 1:57:11Alex Hormozi?

  Well, if someone just listens to the episode, tomorrow will be the same for you. So that's, that's an easy one. This was just entertainment for you. Just define in terms of actions, what you are going to do. I mean, that is really it. And so like, you can prove to yourself that you learned something from this podcast, rather than just being entertained by this podcast, by simply doing something different, taking an action. And so maybe it is just recording that selfie video and texting it to a hundred people. That's it. You could just do that and you would have, I mean, you would be so much further ahead than, than you were yesterday. And what's crazy is that the amount of progress that you make in that first 20 hours is greater than any amount of progress that you will likely make over the remainder of your career. Because going from absolutely terrible to proficient happens so fast.

• 1:57:54Alex Hormozi?

  Now, to be clear, all of the gains come from going from proficient to master, which take a huge amount of time. But it's, it's one of the most exciting times because like, oh my, look, I can build an app now. Oh, look, I can build a webpage or look, I can, I can, I can show other people how to sell stuff, whatever it is. And I think I would, I would just want to get to that. Like get to that fast learning curve as fast as you can. And the only way you can do that is starting.

• 1:58:13Jay Shetty?

  Love it. All right. Here's another one. I don't know if it's a popular one or not, but deleting work-life balance for a season nets you more work-life balance over a lifetime.

• 1:58:22Alex Hormozi?

  So I, I love this frame shift, which is everyone talks about work-life balance, but no one talks about it over what timeline? Paul Graham said this from my commentator, he said, in order to make a million dollars, you have to endure a million dollars worth of pain. And so you might be able to endure a million dollars worth of pain over 40 years, or you can crunch it into four crazy years. And then after that, you can have whatever you want to have afterwards. And so I, I think about life in seasons rather than in, you know, on, on microcosms of days and even weeks. And I think that shifting that perspective will really only solve one core problem for people, which is that they feel like they are doing something wrong by making a sacrifice today. And there's always going, and again, it's an eternal question. How much do I, how much do I risk?

• 1:59:06Alex Hormozi?

  How much do I consume versus invest? These are classic human problems that will never have a correct answer. And it's more, what's the correct answer for you in your season right now, based on the goals you have? And so I think if anything, I would want that quote to give some people permission. To work a weekend every once in a while, to take the five to nine on both sides of the day and say, you know what, I am going to be unbalanced and that's okay. Because at least in my observation and probably yours, I have yet to see a hyper-successful person who doesn't have a wildly unbalanced life, or at least for a significant period of time. And we want to just make sure that we're not looking at someone, once they are a billionaire, and saying, what are they doing now? Because they might be in a different season now. And so, don't look at what Warren Buffett's doing now, when he says, if I make two good decisions a year, I've had a good year. Well, if you make two good decisions a year, you're still probably not gonna be Warren Buffett,

• 1:59:51Alex Hormozi?

  right? And so, I think about that as my frame.

• 1:59:55Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, don't read someone's chapter 20 when you're writing your chapter one. It doesn't make any sense.

• 2:00:00Alex Hormozi?

  Love it.

• 2:00:00Jay Shetty?

  I remember growing up, not growing up, I remember a few years ago, when Gary's version that I loved, which was like, in his words, and so I'll say, eat shit for two years and then eat caviar for the rest of your life. And it was so interesting to me how much you could do in two years, if you just went all in. As opposed to this idea of like, I'm gonna be really balanced for 10 years. And I was thinking about the other day, and you said seasons, and I was saying this the other day when I was on tour, I was talking to Jesse Itzler. And I said this to Jesse, we were talking about something similar, and I was just like, I would never want a day, a perfect day is not a day where it rains, snows, sun, and fall, right? Like, that's not a perfect day.

• 2:00:39Alex Hormozi?

  Right.

• 2:00:40Jay Shetty?

  You wouldn't say that. You wouldn't say, I hope it rains today, I hope it snows today, I hope it's sunny, and I hope the leaves shed. Like, that's not a perfect day, but that's what you want every day. And nature's already showing you the cycles that work. But we're trying to go against nature by saying, I want everything to happen today.

• 2:00:55Alex Hormozi?

  And I want all my days to be over the halfway line.

• 2:00:58Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:59Alex Hormozi?

  And so, I think about this from a law of large numbers perspective, which is, let's say you have 365 days in a year, and there's going to be, if you change nothing, the bottom 10% of days, you're gonna have 36 days in the year that are bottom 10% days, that are, there's nothing wrong with a day, it's just that this happens to be a bottom 10% day. And so, I think a lot of suffering comes from just the normal volatility or variation that exists in life, and then somehow ascribing meaning to it and saying, oh, and because this is the bottom 10%, it is bad. Rather than, it is sunny, it is rainy, and I need rain in order to appreciate sun. Right? And so, it's like, we can't have just upside, it's the trade-offs. Like, I want all the good without the bad, but the bad is what makes the good good.

• 2:01:39Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah. And the bad is what sometimes what keeps you going.

• 2:01:42Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:43Jay Shetty?

  Because if it was just good, maybe you'd stop, maybe you'd give up. Last one of these that I wanted to pick out, which I think is going to help a lot of people because I've been doing it a lot. I'm writing my third book right now, and this has changed my life. It's amazing how much you can get done if you work for 12 hours without your phone.

• 2:01:59Alex Hormozi?

  So, I mean.

• 2:02:00Jay Shetty?

  So simple, yet so profound.

• 2:02:02Alex Hormozi?

  So I defined, so here's the number one, the highest value productivity hack that I can give anyone. So this is the hack of productivity. Do nothing except for the task you set out to achieve. That's it. So everything that people do in order to increase productivity that is not working on the task at hand is by very definition, making them less productive.

• 2:02:22Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:23Alex Hormozi?

  Like, period. And so I think people have these very long routines. I think they have these like, I gotta get in the mood. I got in this. But it's like, what if you could start taking action despite your mood? And then get into the mood faster through taking the action. And so all of the things that have made me more productive in life have been through elimination, not addition. And so it is eliminating outside stimulus besides the one task that I'm working on. And so if we take the hypothetical ideal or hypothetical extreme of the most focused person in the world is that that person would do literally nothing besides that one thing, which means they wouldn't eat, they wouldn't sleep. Now, at some point, you're like, okay, well, in order for, he has to eat and he has to sleep. Okay. So every other hour is just this one thing. And so if we take that as the hypothetical extreme, we want to approximate that or get as close as possible to that extreme as humanly possible. And so for me, it's good night's sleep, knowing what I'm going to start on the day before, caffeinate, earplugs.

• 2:03:08Alex Hormozi?

  I double earplug. I put the plugs and then I put the things on. And I work in a room that has no windows. Now, some people are like, that's depressing for me. But for me, it allows me to lose myself in my work, not get distracted by something that's going on outside.

• 2:03:18Jay Shetty?

  Well, I was just about to say, I'm glad you brought up environment.

• 2:03:20Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:21Jay Shetty?

  Because everyone has an environment they thrive in. So I'm the same. I need, I need instrumental music. I don't, can't have music with lyrics when I'm thinking. Like, I just, I just can't do it. So I have some artists that I'm happy to listen to instrumentals of. It also can't be songs that I know. It has to be music that's totally unpredictable and totally random because it helps me with creativity.

• 2:03:36Alex Hormozi?

  Interesting.

• 2:03:37Jay Shetty?

  Then I do need windows. I need natural light.

• 2:03:39Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:39Jay Shetty?

  But I need to not see anything real happening.

• 2:03:42Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:03:42Jay Shetty?

  So it's like, sky, tree, it's like, it's nondescript and there's not like.

• 2:03:47Alex Hormozi?

  Not a mall.

• 2:03:48Jay Shetty?

  All right. Yeah, not people. It can't be people. And I, I can't work in noisy coffee shop, like, I can't work in environments like that. And to me, the environment is more important than this whole mood builder thing. Because that's like deep work, like you're in the cave doing the thing.

• 2:04:04Alex Hormozi?

  Can I tell a wild example?

• 2:04:05Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:05Alex Hormozi?

  So. I believe if you control the conditions, you can control the outcome, right? If you know all the variables. And so if we want to be productive, we want to control as many of those conditions as possible. And so to take up a hypothetical extreme power to say, hey, I guarantee that everybody who's listening to this, if we were all in one room, I could get everyone naked without saying a word. People would hear that and be like, oh, my God, that's insane. What I would do is I would lock all the doors and I would turn up the the heat to 200 and then just wait. And eventually everyone would get naked. And the point to that is that we can reconstruct the environment to get the desired outcome. If we control as many of those variables as possible. And so you, if you don't feel as productive as you want, you get distracted easily. You might not have even given yourself a shot. Right? If you're trying to work while having your notifications on, while letting people text you and call you.

• 2:04:49Alex Hormozi?

  And you're at, you know, in a, in an area where people are coming by like, is this, is this chair free? Is this table free? And you're constantly getting pulled. It's like, you haven't even gotten a chance. And maybe you have a roommate who who walks in and out, and maybe they listen to music. I'm like, and the thing is, is that many people are in those conditions and they're like, man, I think I have, I think I have a medical condition. I think I need to get medicated. It's like, dude, do you give yourself a shot? Like Jerry Seinfeld talks about how his, his writing condition is he has a desk in a room that has nothing else. And he's got a pad and he's got a pen. And he's, he doesn't have to write, but he can't do anything else. And so if we define commitment as the elimination of of alternative, then we need to commit to the work.

• 2:05:25Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:25Alex Hormozi?

  Right? If focus is anything that is not the work is not the work, then that's it. And so I think that we get there through elimination, not through addition.

• 2:05:34Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I felt that. I felt that. I think it's going to help a lot of people. And I, I, you're so right, like even, it's so funny you say that. Up until six months ago, I started to think, I was like, has my brain just been rewired by TikTok? Like, I was like, have I really lost my ability for deep work? And I was having this thought probably like six, maybe 12 months ago, because I was racking my brain about my new book. And it wasn't as clear as it used to be and whatever. And I just started to do what I always used to do.

• 2:06:02Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:02Jay Shetty?

  And all of a sudden, it's all gone away. And I was like, I'm writing like for eight hours a day, Saturday and Sunday on my new book, every week, because I love it. I'm in the zone, I'm in the room that I write in. And I was like, oh, it's, it's, it's right there.

• 2:06:14Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:14Jay Shetty?

  It's just I didn't give myself the opportunity because I was trying to do it with the other distractions.

• 2:06:19Alex Hormozi?

  Trying to squeeze it in. It's like you can't squeeze in focus.

• 2:06:22Jay Shetty?

  It's not gonna work.

• 2:06:22Alex Hormozi?

  It's a jealous mistress.

• 2:06:24Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:24Alex Hormozi?

  It requires all your attention. Yeah.

• 2:06:26Jay Shetty?

  Love it. Alex, we end every episode with a final five. These questions get asked to everyone. Um, and so these are your final five. They have to be answered in one word, to one sentence maximum.

• 2:06:36Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 2:06:36Jay Shetty?

  So question number one, Alex, what is the best advice you've ever heard or received?

• 2:06:42Alex Hormozi?

  Do so much work, it would be unreasonable for you not to be successful.

• 2:06:47Jay Shetty?

  Second question, what is the worst advice you've ever had or received?

• 2:06:51Alex Hormozi?

  Follow your passion.

• 2:06:52Jay Shetty?

  Question number three, a piece of advice you wish you received sooner.

• 2:06:58Alex Hormozi?

  Find people better than you and do whatever you can to get them to help you, including helping them first without expectation.

• 2:07:06Jay Shetty?

  Question number four, a lesson that took you far too many times to learn.

• 2:07:10Alex Hormozi?

  Focus. One thing, all in.

• 2:07:13Jay Shetty?

  And fifth and final question, we ask this to every guest who's ever been on the show. If you could create one law that everyone had to follow, what would it be?

• 2:07:21Alex Hormozi?

  Everyone has to give all their wealth away at the end of their life.

• 2:07:24Jay Shetty?

  I love that one. But not to your kids.

• 2:07:27Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, but it has to, yeah, exactly. It has to be given away.

• 2:07:30Jay Shetty?

  To kids or every, or it doesn't matter?

• 2:07:32Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. Not to your kid, like.

• 2:07:33Jay Shetty?

  Not to kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're saying beyond your kids. Yeah, my friend just told me the other day that his dad just took him out the will. And his dad's giving all his money away to charity and all the kids are not getting anything. He was heartbroken. He was like, oh God, I thought I was gonna pay off the mortgage on my house.

• 2:07:48Alex Hormozi?

  It's so funny. There's a Sanskrit saying around that, which is, um. If you have a good son, there's no need to accumulate wealth. If you have a bad son, there's no point to accumulate wealth. And so at the end of the day, that's, I mean, that's my worldview, which is the reason that I want, the reason that I would want the game to be structured so that everybody has to give all their stuff away at the end is because if you look at second and third order consequences of that, the people who are the best allocating, or sorry, aggregating capital, the people who are the best at making money, would be the ones who are also the best at allocating it. And so you'd actually have the best tools and the people who are best skilled to use them. And so if you know you have to give it away, then at some point near the later part of your life, you would stop trying to amass and start trying to, you'd focus on giving.

• 2:08:33Alex Hormozi?

  And I think most people who do give, get addicted to giving because they realize that actually it fills a hole that the wealth never did. Right? And so what ends up happening though, is that from a societal perspective, is that if all the best allocators of capital then tried to solve all the world's problems with the capital they had, so many fewer problems would exist that would, the whole world would get better. The other downstream effect of that is that it would get rid of a huge amount of kind of the cronyism, the nepotism, the things where, you know, these, these seventh generation massive, you know, wealth, trust fund, you know, kids who like, it doesn't serve the kids either. You look at those families, they're a mess.

• 2:09:06Jay Shetty?

  A lot of depression.

• 2:09:07Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, on so many reasons. And so I'm a big believer in equal opportunity, not equal outcomes. And so if everybody's slate was clean day one, because no one got daddy's inheritance, then everyone starts at zero as close as possible. Obviously genetics, you know, can play a factor there. But I think that's as, as equal of a start as we can get. And then everyone starts at zero and, and the ones who super win then turn into super givers. And I like that.

• 2:09:35Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. And if you don't, one thing I've learned about that as well is if you don't give now, you won't give later. This feeling of like, when I get a million dollars, I'll give more. It doesn't work that way. It's a proportion, like it will hurt 10% at a million dollars, it will hurt 10% at 100K. Like it's not, that's not going to change. And another phrase that we'd always hear in the monastery was, God doesn't see how much you give. God sees how much you hold back. And so that's why I like your law a lot, because it's that feeling of like, Hey, you know, at the end of it, I gave it all. The book is called A Hundred Million Dollar Money Models, part of the Hundred Million Dollar series. Alex, I hope this is the first of many, many conversations we have online and offline.

• 2:10:16Jay Shetty?

  Truly loved our time together and honestly, I've become a bigger fan spending this time with you. And this was a masterclass for so many. I'm going to be sending this to a lot of people I know who need to. There's some podcasts that you do and you're just like, yeah, I'm going to send this personally to people in my life, who I think this is going to change for us. So thank you so much, man.

• 2:10:36Alex Hormozi?

  I'm super humbled and very honored. So thank you so much for having me.

• 2:10:38Jay Shetty?

  Thank you. If this is the year that you're trying to get creative, you're trying to build more, I need you to listen to this episode with Rick Rubin, on how to break into your most creative self, how to use unconventional methods that lead to success, and the secret to genuinely loving what you do. If you're trying to find your passion and your lane, Rick Rubin's episode is the one for you.

• 2:11:02Speaker 05

  Just because I like it, that doesn't give it any value. Like, as an artist, if you like it, that's all of the value. That's the success comes when you say, I like this enough for other people to see it.

• 2:11:14Speaker 07

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• 2:11:43Speaker 08

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• 2:11:50Jay Shetty?

  They all heap the blame on me.

• 2:11:52Speaker 08

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• 2:12:00Speaker 09

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• 2:12:04Speaker 08

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• 2:12:07Speaker 09

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• 2:12:37Speaker 08

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