The Game with Alex Hormozi
The Ultimate Guide To Making 2025 Your Best Year Ever | Ep 815
Fri, 27 Dec 2024
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 key changes did Alex Hormozi make in 2020?
in 2020 my life changed forever it was the year that i started acquisition.com and since then four of my companies in our portfolio have crossed the 100 million dollar enterprise value barrier but none of that would have been possible without the changes i made that year and so no matter what your goals are whether it's to make more money you know find the relationship or whatever here's my brutally honest advice to make this year the best year of your life so there's four steps the
Chapter 2: How can you create space for growth?
The first thing we have to do is we have to create space. We have to eliminate the things that are preventing you from taking the action you want. The second step is actually to begin taking that action. The third is that once those actions begin to improve the efficiency of those actions.
And then finally, fourth, to make sure that you unlock compounding by not stopping the actions that are continuously improving. So number one, elimination of the things that are distracting you. So right now, election distraction is over. back to work because no president is going to make you rich. You got to do that for yourself, no matter what side of the aisle that you actually backed.
Chapter 3: What are the four essential steps to improve your efficiency?
And so now we're back to the realization that this doesn't really matter, right? You need to eliminate everything. That isn't the one thing that matters. And so if we define focus as the number and quality of things that you say no to, then to be focused, it means that in a hypothetical extreme, you would only do one thing.
Chapter 4: Why is focus crucial for success?
So if someone was extremely focused at video games, then they would do nothing but play video games. They wouldn't eat, they wouldn't sleep, they wouldn't talk to people, they would only play video games. And so if you think about that as your hypothetical ideal of what focus looks like,
Everything else is simply a detraction from that, which is why the first step is about eliminating everything else. And so by default, what remains is your focus. And something that I don't talk about often, but during COVID, 100% of the businesses that I served, gyms, were not legally allowed to do business.
And in that year, we did $31 million in sales to customers who could not legally transact. And so I bring this up as a testament that after that point happened for me, I decided that I would never give outside circumstances any weight on their outcome in my life. Now, did they affect the business? Yes, our sales reduced from the year before. But how much of that could I control? Zero.
And so all I could do was look at the things that I could control. And so within that context, thinking, oh, interest rates are up by 2%. Well, 100% of your customers are allowed to do business. So that's at least better than that. Oh, inflation is getting out of control. Are you allowed to do business? There's this great quote by Phil Knight.
Chapter 5: How can you identify and eliminate distractions?
who talks about in Shoe Dog, he said, you're not out of business until they have put padlocks on your door and no one lets you into the building. And so what happens is there's so many steps before that where people think they failed when it's really like they get rejected or they get rejected 100 times in a row or there's some issue.
He's like, basically, until you physically are prevented from doing work, You're still in the game. When I was young, my father gave me this advice. Rich people buy time. Poor people buy stuff. Ambitious people buy skills. Lazy people buy distraction. I can give you the first and easiest 2025 prediction. Look at what you spend money on,
Look at your calendar and wherever you invest is what you will get more of. And so, so many people are surprised when they look at their bank account next year and it's lower than they want it to be. They look at their accomplishments from that year and it's not the things they set out to do.
But when you look at their calendar and their credit card expenses, it's very obvious why those things didn't happen. Because we vote with our dollars about the things that we care about. We vote about the type of person that we want to become. And so I'll give you this story. So I remember when I was a few years back, I was walking with Layla and we went to Sephora, which is like a makeup store.
And so we walked inside and I remember, you know, I'm sitting, you know, standing there awkwardly because I'm like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do here. And there's this lady with the smock who like helps out. And she had these two girls who were young. They must've been maybe, well, about this old. And so I'm guessing between nine and 40, who knows? Anyways, I think they were young.
And so she's leaning over and she has these two paint brushes in her hands and she says, okay girls, now that you guys are women, you need to start budgeting for this stuff because you're going to be spending money on this every single month to do your makeup. And so the girls grabbed them, they were super excited and they went to go check out.
And I saw that exchange as actually a really beautiful lesson when it comes to identity, which is,
our priorities we dictate by what we spend not by what we say and so these girls because they wanted to step into this new identity had to match it with new priorities so they had money or they had saved up their shekels or whatever they do for chores or babysitting or whatever and by doing that they had to start prioritizing some of that money towards their new identity from girls to women
And so with that, they decided to say, oh, I'm gonna spend this amount of money every month for the rest of my life because I am now a woman. But the thing is is that many people who wanna start next year think, okay, well, I'm just gonna see if this happens. But it doesn't work that way.
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Chapter 6: What role do your relationships play in achieving your goals?
Now, I want to take it a step further because I think to myself, what are the things that affect our behavior? And so it's really about the people that you want to impress, not necessarily even who you compare yourself to, because it's the people whose voices you hear when you're about to make a big life decision.
And so when you make a big life decision, you don't listen to the people closest to you. You should listen to the people closest to your goals. And some of them may not be in your neighborhood or your city or your state or your high school or your college. They might just be people you follow on the internet. And you have to abstract, what would that person think about this decision?
Not my mom, not my homie, not my uncle, or that person at church. And so I think this is a great transition of thinking through, instead of necessarily even having mentors, having heroes. and transposing what you think their decision-making calculus would be onto your life.
And so what's interesting is that I will have conversations with entrepreneurs and they'll say, hey, here's my current condition. This is my desired state. This is what I perceive my obstacle to be. And I say, okay, well, what do you think? And they're like, well, I think you're gonna say I should do X, Y, and Z. And I'm like, you're right. Why aren't you? They're like,
Well, and the thing is, is that basically what they answer with after that well is, in essence, other people's opinion who aren't at the place they want to be. Here's the uncomfortable truth, which is that winners focus on winning. Losers focus on winners and you never receive hate from above, always below, because winners have their eyes on the goal, not on other people.
And so you have to decide whether you want to be a loser or a winner. And I'm just being real with you, because if you have your eyes on the goal, you won't have time for anyone else. What this looks like in reality and maybe for you in 2025 will be like this. First, you look like an idiot to everyone else while you try to figure it out.
then everyone else looks like an idiot for ever doubting you. And so everyone takes a different amount of years to stop giving a fuck about what everyone else thinks. And if you're going to get there eventually, you might as well start today and enjoy the benefits longer. So if I'm 85 years old, I think about what that man cares about. And that man cares about very, very little.
all you have to do is talk to an elderly person or a grandparent and be like, what do you think about this? A lot of them are like, ah, who cares? Like, it doesn't matter. Life is literally too short. They literally don't have time for it.
And so I think to myself, if that's the ultimate version of me, if I'm going to get there eventually, and that's what the wisest people think after having the most life experience, then why would I not try to cheat code that into today? and then not have to go looking back from 85 and think, man, I wish I knew then what I know now.
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Chapter 7: How can understanding failure benefit your success?
Because the fewer skills that you have, the more labor or volume you have to compensate with in order to make up for the ineffectiveness per unit of time you work. And so in the beginning is when you actually have to work the most. But in the end is when you want to work the most because of how much more you're getting for it.
So my team wanted me to make this point because they've obviously seen me work and they're like, I don't think this is coming through in this video, which is that I have an obsession with speed. And so this seems kind of weird in juxtaposition with patience, but this is the very classic micro speed, macro patience, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever ism you prefer.
The idea is, though, that you want to pull reality forward. And so I always like to break things down, whether it's me or my team, into how many hours and minutes something's going to take. And then I like to stack those things back and forth. And rather than using arbitrary deadlines of, OK, let's get this done by next week, you use actual deadlines based on how long it should take.
And then when you find out how long something takes, you then ask the next question, which is, how can I make this take less time? How can I automate this thing? How can I automate portions of this work? How can I give away chunks of this? How can I deem some of this unnecessary?
And so that continuous cutting and pulling forward of tasks is how you can move so much faster through life and towards your goals. And so in 2025, by the end of the year, you absolutely could go from zero to making a million dollars a year. The way that you would do that would be doing five years of work in one.
And so I have this weird mental belief that there's like this big path in front of me that I have all these skills that I have to achieve to hit these milestones. And the thing is is that that is laid out on this time span. And so I reject the timeline, but I accept the skills.
And so the idea is like, okay, it's like I'm a Pac-Man of like eating those little dots and each of those dots is a skill. It's like I want to pull it towards me as fast as I can so I can ingest the skills and basically power up myself faster. Because I know that these skills are requisites. I can't move on to calculus without knowing arithmetic.
I can't move on to calculus without knowing algebra. There's no way around it. But I can choose to learn algebra faster. And so then it's like, okay, what is required to learn algebra? Oh, and if I do more problems faster than the standard person, then I'll get there faster.
And so if the class says, okay, I need you to do these 10 problem sets and they're due next week, well then how long does it take for me to do those problems? Maybe 30 minutes. Then why can't I do my second lesson 30 minutes later and then do another 10 problems and do my third lesson 30 minutes after that and do another 10 problems?
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Chapter 8: What mindset shifts are necessary for long-term success?
It's asking reality to meet you where you're at rather than meeting reality where it is. And I think that too many people do this. Why can't the world, insert, be more convenient for me? Well, the world is uncaring and doesn't care about you at all. And underpinning that statement is the entitlement, is the expectation that it somehow should. And I think that is a poverty lens.
And so the wealthy accept the world for what it is and then choose to maximize and adapt. Everyone else tries to stomp their feet and throw tantrums and say how it's not fair. And they're right. And so what? So I want to read you this quote by Sun Tzu, which I think applies to what I'm kind of working on right now personally.
which is, the skillful leader does not rely on the quantity of troops or resources, but instead on the quality of his strategies. Just as one skilled worker is worth 10 unskilled men, a good plan, well executed, will outperform a larger disorganized effort. When troops are well trained, disciplined, and their energy is channeled efficiently, their effectiveness increases exponentially.
The strength of one can equal the strength of 10, not by numbers, but by mastery and discipline. And so that is fundamentally what I'm trying to transfer into the organization and the organizations within the portfolio. I want to transfer that energy efficiency. And I would define all of that as another and higher form of leverage, which is getting more for what you put in.
And so I believe that leverage and supply and demand are the two most powerful forces in business. And so this is what we try to consistently reinvest with and think through as our lenses for making decisions in business. There's a Haitian proverb, which is, behind mountains are more mountains. Goals aren't finish lines, they're mile markers.
And I think that's a great mental frame, which is that you think that your goal is to get to $10,000 a month, or $100,000 a month, or a million a month, or 10 million a month, whatever your goal is. And I can promise you, having hit those, you just move it again. The mist lifts when you get there and you realize there's another mountaintop.
But where people lose their way is when they start listening to people at the bottom of the mountain who see them at the subhead and say, you weren't happy last time when you got to the last peak. Why are you going to be happy the next time? But that's under their assumption in their poverty lens that you did it to get to the mountaintop. You did it for the climb.
they'll never understand that and don't expect them to I remember I was trying to understand this person who had made this really irrational decision and I kept thinking like how does this decision make sense and I was I was talking to my father actually and he said you're trying to apply logic to someone who's illogical and that itself is illogical And I remember thinking about that.
There are these people in our lives that say these things that you're like, I don't understand why they'd say that. And then you try and make sense of it. But the effort of trying to make sense of somebody who doesn't make sense is nonsensical. And so if it doesn't make sense to you, ignore it. Because they're going to disappear anyways.
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