Welcome to The Game w/ Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned and will learn on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Wanna scale your business? Click here.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition Mentioned in this episode:Get access to the free $100M Scaling Roadmap at www.acquisition.com/roadmap
Chapter 1: What is the price of making money?
What you complain about is the price, the price tag. No one says, hey, I don't want to make money. They say, hey, I don't like the price of making money. Hey, I don't like the price of this influence that I want to have. I don't like the price of gaining this subscriber base. I don't like the price of running ads profitably, making $5 every dollar I put in.
I don't like the price of learning how to do that. But the price is the suffering that you go through not knowing and embracing the uncertainty of not knowing how long you'll have to suffer. It's not about not suffering. I think it's about finding something worthy of suffering. My number one tweet of all time happened in the last month. It was November, I think.
And it was, you must first become consistent before you can become exceptional. And I thought I would start with that because I feel in reading some of the comments and posts inside of the community that I don't think this is understood. And so I wanted to break both of those pieces apart. So first is, what is commitment? And the second is, what is exceptional?
Chapter 2: How can commitment lead to exceptional success?
From the commitment perspective, I define commitment as the elimination of alternatives. For example, if you get married, you commit by saying that you will not be with anyone else. So you eliminate alternatives. So it's the ultimate commitment. There's a story that I really like of a young lad who was talking to his grandfather and he said he wanted to make the football team.
And so they're out to breakfast and they're just a normal diner. You know, he's got some bacon, he's got some eggs, right? And he says, I wanna make varsity this year. And his grandfather looks at him and he's like, I mean, are you interested or are you committed? And he's like, I'm committed.
He's like, well, this chicken that laid the eggs on your plate that you're eating right now, he said, that chicken was interested, right? He's like, but that pig that gave the bacon, the pig's committed. And I just love that as just a great visual representation of what it means to be committed.
I think many of you, and to be clear, I'm not saying you shouldn't put food on the table if this is something that's brand new for you, right? If starting a business is brand new, then I'm not saying that. That's not my point here.
My point here is that there's other things, there are other alternatives that you're either entertaining mentally or that you're actually entertaining that are not this thing. And the difficulty is that there's an inherent fallacy in that belief set, which is that I will work on many things and I will see which one works when the reality is all of them can work if you do. And
The second part of it is that none of them will work if you try to pursue them all. And so you may have heard the saying, you can have everything you want in life, just not at the same time. And I tend to be a believer in this, in that people have an unwillingness to make trade-offs and they try and speak in absolutes.
And I think a lot of the content that I make, for example, snippets will be taken out of context and that's the nature of the internet and decried or people will get upset about it. Because I will speak of a trade-off, and they will say, I am not willing to make that trade. And I'm saying, don't. Don't make that trade if you don't want to make that trade.
But there is a price tag that is associated with the things that we want. And I think my biggest pet peeve is when people say, I want the thing, but I don't want to pay the price. And so the price in the beginning is commitment. It's consistency. You must first become consistent before you become exceptional.
Consistency is one of those, as Charlie Munger put it in one of his seminal talks on, it was a graduation speech that he gave. And he talked about inverting success. He said, so how would I guarantee failure? And among the rules of guaranteeing failure is to be inconsistent. He said, it's very difficult to be unsuccessful if you are consistent.
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Chapter 3: What is the importance of consistency in business?
Because they are draining the resources that you have to hit sufficient volume. And the big part about hitting sufficient volume isn't intensity of one day, right? Like you can work out as hard as you want one day every three weeks and you're not going to look different. And you can do that for years. That's the thing that's crazy is you can do it for years. You can say that I work out.
I've been working out for years. And I look the same. My genetics suck. My workout regimen sucks. But you could do 10 minutes, seven days a week and get significantly better results. And you would have results that would improve. And as crazy as that sounds, it's also true. And the thing is, it's also true in business.
And so the question comes down to what are the things that we're doing instead? Every person has the same time allotments. The only thing that we have is the great equalizer. We all have the same amount of time right now. We don't know how long we all have. But in terms of one second for me is one second for you and is one second for somebody across the world. And so it's not that you lack time.
It's that you have priorities that are mismatched. And I think if I had one objective for this little podcast, whatever you want to call it, is for you to really look at the things that you're doing and determine whether they are actually reflections of your priorities. If you were to show me your schedule and your bank account, I can tell you what your priorities are.
Because I can see what you vote with in terms of your dollars and your seconds. And those will be the things that you truly care about. And so the thing is, it's very easy to say, I am committed. It's very hard to be committed. Because being committed has to happen every single day. You have to continue to keep the alternatives at bay. you have to eliminate the boats of rowing home.
And so many of you, it could be your jobs is the boat that is right there. It could be the next shiny object that you're considering. But each of these are boats that you kind of keep one foot on shore, one foot on the boat, and then you're kind of trying to throw rocks a little bit at these cities thinking you're going to sack them. But you're not.
And your rocks aren't even hitting the city because you're not even getting close enough because you're so afraid of commitment. And the thing is, is like, we have to make bets. Like, you got to take risk. The amount of risk that you need to take to win is honestly very little. But Jeff Bezos recently said this, and I like this from an interview, and he doesn't do many of them.
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Chapter 4: How does FOMO affect entrepreneurs?
He said that, I think as humans, we systematically overestimate risk and underestimate upside. or potential or opportunity. And I think that that is very true in entrepreneurship. That bias that we have is what has kept us alive, but it does not serve you to help you get to the next level. I think it would behoove you to look at what worst case scenario actually is.
Worst case scenario might just be like, I mean, are you really gonna be homeless? Probably not. And when I see homeless people, it's really that they are friendless.
so they have no one who wants to help them and so many of you i would consider are socially normal people and i say that in this very rare instance not as an insult right like you have a social circle you have people who care about you and the likelihood that you actually become homeless if you are hard working and just have a bad you know a bet that goes wrong is very unlikely but
And I've never said I was, quote, homeless in my life. But when I made the bet on the gym, I slept at the gym. Some people would be like, I slept out of my car. It's like, I mean, I didn't really. I never slept in my car. I just slept at my gym, right? Now, did I have a home? Technically, no.
And to the same degree, there was a period of time when I was launching the gyms and we lost everything where I went back to Layla's parents' house. Was I homeless? No, I was just staying at someone else's place. And so these are like the true worst case scenarios. And so let me tell you a story. So my father, I think when he was 17, he left Iran on a student visa.
So they had a program before the fall of the Shah, which is when the revolution in Iran happened, when it went from Western to super fundamental religious. where they would pay for you to go to school as long as you came back and took the learnings back to Iran. And so that was basically the plan that he was on.
Now, while he was away, the revolution occurred, and then obviously that deal was no longer valid. And so he went to Paris to study medicine. Now, wrinkle number one in this plan, he didn't speak French. And so medical system in Europe, if you're not familiar with it, is everyone is accepted and few people pass.
It's kind of the opposite of the American system where almost no one gets in and then everyone passes once you're in, right? The hardest part about most colleges, at least in the US or universities or medical schools is getting in. The hard part is not passing. There it's inverted. Anyone can start, but few people graduate.
And so I think in the first year, it was something like, it's something like 70% of people fail the first year. My father was in that first 70%. It's because he didn't speak French. And so imagine trying to take organic chemistry in Chinese, like hard, because he's a persevering guy. He started again the next year at zero again, and he took the grade again.
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Chapter 5: What are the true worst-case scenarios in business?
By definition, you will have to be an exception, especially if you're the first person in your family that's made any kind of wealth or wants to make any kind of wealth. You want to kind of break the generational tree that you have and plant anew, start anew. In order to do that, your self-worth has to come from the work that you do, from who you are.
And the who you are only comes from the actions you take. For many of you, I think that you treat this opportunity the life you have, the time we have. Like the chicken, you're interested, but you're not committed. And I think if you were just committed and you were consistent, you eliminated the alternatives and you showed up every day, it would happen significantly faster.
But I think a large part of the entrepreneurial journey in the beginning is learning what commitment even means, is learning exactly how much volume it takes in order to get that first ding, that first dollar, and how much more it takes to get the next one. I say this because I think there's this mismatch of expectations. And I want you to win. I think that the world does enough coddling.
I try not to coddle. I just try to tell the truth. It's tough. It's hard. You're not going to know the answers. And battling the unknown is par for course for entrepreneurship. This is entrepreneurship. And one of my favorite stories, which I'll tell you right now. So years later, right, my father had me. And then I ended up going to college and I ended up, you know, joining a fraternity.
And then they ended up electing me president, which I was very grateful for. And every year, every pledge class would have a revolt. And the thing is, is that every pledge class thought they were unique in revolting at some point. But every single class, every time, would have this moment where they would say, this isn't what I signed up for. This is not fun. I can't talk to girls. I can't drink.
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Chapter 6: How did Alex Hormozi's father overcome challenges?
You guys are just having me clean up all the time. You're driving me all over the place. I'm just mopping floors and doing errands. This sucks. When I was president, unsurprisingly, the pledge class that we had, 20-something guys, revolted. And they said, we don't want to do this anymore. We're out. I said, OK. Um, and they said, we, we want to negotiate the terms of our, of our like settlement.
And so they asked me to meet them in the freshman campus. So I was, I was on the other side of campus. I came over to the freshman dorms and all the guys are in one dorm and these dorms are not big. All right. So like they're, they're climbed, they're all others. There's a four, four bedroom bunk at four bucks. There's guys all over the place. Right. And it's me. And I took my VP with me.
And it's like, you can imagine the setting, right? A ton of dudes and then just like me, right? And I walk in. You could cut the tension. Everyone's, you know, angry and riled up. And, you know, they all kind of, you know, their pledge class president said his bid of like, this isn't fair, blah, blah, blah.
And I remember just like taking all of it and just taking a deep breath once they were kind of done airing their grievances. And I paused and I was like, raise your hand if you thought this was going to be easy. No one raised their hands. I said, okay. I said, everything you just described, the feeling you have right now. I said, this is what hard feels like.
And they all kind of like internalized that. I said, the complaints that you have are not new. They're very old. And I'll ask you the next question, which is, if this were easy, would it have been worth it? And they said, no. And I said, would you respect all the guys in this house if they hadn't gone through something in order to earn these letters, this brand, this logo? They said, no.
I said, okay. So wouldn't it be befitting that a very great achievement would be worthy of sacrifice? And they were like, yeah. And I was like, then this is the sacrifice you make. And in that setting, I said, you got to give eight weeks, give eight weeks, and then you have three and a half years of enjoying the benefits of pledges.
You give eight, you give eight, you give one semester and you get seven. It's a pretty good trade. And so, of course, the guys all got back in and everything was fine and it went forward. But I think that many of you, when I see the comments and the complaints, honestly, the gripes, the grievances, What you complain about is the price, the price tag. No one says, hey, I don't want to make money.
They say, hey, I don't like the price of making money. Hey, I don't like the price of this influence that I want to have. I don't like the price of gaining this subscriber base. I don't like the price of running ads profitably, making $5 every dollar I put in. I don't like the price of learning how to do that. But the price is the suffering that you go through not knowing.
and embracing the uncertainty of not knowing how long you'll have to suffer. It's not about not suffering. I think it's about finding something worthy of suffering for. And I think many of you have dreams that I would hope you believe are worth suffering for.
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