How to See Reality More Clearly Than 99% of People | 1 Hour of Alex Hormozi on Mindset

0:00I sell dreams and I built an ecosystem to make it happen essentially. So >> [laughter] >> I start off flipping homes. >> Okay. Thank you. >> And then uh >> [laughter] >> Okay. >> I start off flipping homes and it got to a point where [snorts] >> hope and opportunity. >> And it works. >> [laughter] >> I flip houses, got to a certain point where I got about 30, 40 consecutively every year in the same market. >> Revenue is about 4 mil. >> Okay. >> Just an outline itself, but then it got to a point there's too much competition and had a hard time being profitable per flip.

0:29>> Yeah. >> So then developed a model where we convert competition to collaboration, started a contracting company instead of buying the product, becoming the product. And then started a coaching channel where I feed this ecosystem. Vertically integrated HVAC company, roofing company, uh dumpster company, contracting, the whole nine yards. So I teach people how to do it and I'm giving them the process and how to do it. All that is different revenue drips for me.

0:54Uh what's stopping me? I got too busy too fast and uh owner operated for a long time up until about 3 months ago. Hired a CEO, now transitioning a lot of the operation stuff onto her. Really, I don't know what the [ __ ] I'm doing cuz like I'm trying to transition myself out. I don't know how to run a CEO. >> Why are you trying to transition out of the role or out of the company? >> A little bit of both. So out of the role because to be honest, I don't really care about the revenue uh growth factor. I care more about the impact. So a promise I made myself is that I want to impact at least five like 1 million lives before I die. So how do I do that?

1:29I'm not going to be doing that flipping homes at a small scale, but I built a company that's so based in locality that I'm trapped within it. Because it's so local, my team is there, my resources, my companies. The coaching program only makes sense because it's local, but because of my market size, there's only so many people I can get consecutively every time unless I keep dropping prices, the opposite of increasing price. >> Uh-huh. >> So what does that mean? I have to go to a national stage. It's how to how do I take this coaching at a massive And that's where I'm stuck at cuz I'm too busy in the operations.

2:01And that's where Amy came in as a COO to kind of help me get out of it. And focus on the next phase of, you know, the Origin story. >> [snorts] >> So, you're not trying to get out of the business. You're just trying to expand the business from local to national. >> Exactly. >> Okay. I want to make sure I understand this well. So, I'm guessing you run some sort of local workshops. You sell people on you helping them find homes that they can flip. And then you have local contractors, etc., that you own?

2:31>> I literally give them my entire team that I use to flip my own homes. >> Uh-huh. >> I give them that discounted pricing. So, essentially creating a community and as each class goes on, the community gets bigger. We exchange deals within it. So, everyone benefits. They get access to my pricing from Lowe's that they don't get anywhere else because of my volume pricing. >> Uh-huh. >> [snorts] >> Same thing goes for my subcontractors and the crews that I do own and manage on payroll. So, they get the benefits of all of that. Um for the sake of price.

2:58And they get the education of exactly how I do it. Kind of like what you're doing, but at a much smaller scale. >> Very different than what I'm doing. Um Okay. So, you have contractors. So, do you own these contractors or not? >> I do. >> Okay. So, you own the electrician and you own the HVAC and all the other [ __ ] Okay. >> It was cheaper to integrate them as opposed to paying a GC or general contracting fee. So, I kind of just

3:26>> Okay. Um what's So, revenue is four? >> Roughly about 4 million right now. >> Including everything? >> No. Not the HVAC company, roofing company is fairly new. I don't have those numbers yet. But they're roughly about 200K each. >> And you feel like you've ran out of your local market? >> Not yet. >> Okay. >> Right now I'm doing every 3 months. So, I'm not doing that. in? >> What's that? >> What market? >> Uh Fayetteville, North Carolina.

3:53>> Where in North Carolina? >> Fayetteville, Fort Bragg. >> Fayetteville? >> Fayetteville. Yeah. >> Oh, Fayetteville. Or you'd say it correctly. I've Okay, got it. Okay. I've read it, not heard it. Yeah, keep going. Yeah, yeah, okay. >> It's about an hour from Raleigh. >> Okay. >> That's like the next big market. >> that one. Yeah. Um okay. Gosh, so much. Um >> Hence my problem. >> have like seven businesses? >> I lost count. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> They're all like kind of interrelated.

4:20They all feed off of each other in some way. >> Yeah, [snorts] it's a platform. >> [laughter] >> Um God, man. Uh >> I know I was The only reason I did it is because like you you say you increase pricing. I can't increase pricing on a home that's based on that's regulated by appraisals, right? There's [snorts] a There's a cap there. Uh that's what makes my little market a little different than sales. >> sell So are you selling the houses?

4:46>> I was. And I still am. I still am. But I'm focusing more on the real estate. >> license to make sure you don't pay the percentage? >> What's that? >> I'm just kidding. Wouldn't leave money on the table. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Um damn, dude. What did you guys say? Oh, man. Okay. Um Dude, this is a lot, man. Uh You like It's stressful. Um I'm stressed. I feel stressed. For you.

5:22So Jesus. Uh I like I don't even like where do you go from here? I mean I You probably are demand constrained within your existing local market cuz $4 million for the type of business and the average ticket that I'm guessing you charge for this. What are you charging right now? >> We start off the first class as a guinea pig for like 10K. Really not enough. Like the value that we're getting is just stupid. >> Yeah. >> And I was essentially training my own competition. Hence why I did the whole vertical integration thing to maximize on that to compensate for

5:51>> To use all these words and it's like dude you're doing 4 million bucks a year. Like Like it's like there's so there's so much. You know what I mean? Cuz like you need to sell 400 people at 10k and you'd make 4 million dollars and do none of this [ __ ] Um or you could sell 100 people at 40k which is two people a week. >> It's at 15k right now and it's getting filled every time without any like paid marketing. So like the word of mouth is pretty strong. The proof is strong enough. >> no >> paid marketing. Not for the coaching program now. I do like little seminars every 3 months.

6:19>> And how do you fill those? >> Uh just they know. It's just I I don't know how else to say it. Like you become like the industry guy in this small little town. It's like big fish small pond kind of scenario. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Um Jeez. What's the what's the population of Fayetteville? [snorts] >> Uh Roughly around 300,000. It's transient because of Fort Bragg, one of the largest army installations. So it's kind of going but >> Yeah.

6:45>> It's about 3 to 400,000. But Raleigh is about an hour and a half. I'm trying to pull from that market. Much larger demographic. >> Yeah. But I mean you you haven't capped the 3 to 400,000 people in your market to be very clear. >> No, I haven't. >> Right. And so you're selling how many units a month? >> In homes? >> Or whatever. >> Yeah. I don't even know. Of yeah. >> Of of the thing. Of the thing. >> For the coaching program I got I got I got about 10 students right now. Every 3 months.

7:12>> Okay. So dude like I I I appreciate the national scale vision. I think you could probably get to given the ticket size and how you can monetize the customer in all these hundreds of ways. Like the the reason you would do that setup is so that you could dominate a local market. You're not dominating a local market right now. You're barely getting started. And so you could probably realistically get between Fayetteville um and Raleigh you could probably get to 100 million a year.

7:43>> Just in my market alone. >> Yeah, and I think if you just take your eyes off of like I want to conquer the entire world, it's like maybe, but like in order to conquer the world you have to conquer a country first. Right? And before you conquer a country you got to conquer a city. And right now you haven't conquered a city. And so what happens is when armies over expand they collapse. And so you need to fortify your base better. >> Cuz 10 dude 10 a 10 a month is nothing. So what do you recommend? Do I try to automate what I have?

8:08>> Or do I just put myself more into it and double down? >> Yeah, I think you should just ignore the national thing. >> Yeah. >> And let me just ask the simple question. Can you could you sell 20 people a week right now? Not like let me say it differently. Can you handle 20 people a week? >> We will be soon. My CEO has kind of taken over. >> could have an 8x increase in sales within your current infrastructure. So that would take you from four to 32.

8:40>> This is a revenue problem, not the impact problem. >> [snorts] >> Do you make content? >> I don't have time. Hence why I'm Yeah, if you couldn't tell, yeah. But that's where I'm slacking the most. It's Yeah, it's the content. >> Um it would be far easier for you to just make content about the stuff you're doing and impact millions of people that way

9:05>> Yeah. >> than try and get every single person in America to be a home flipper. >> And that's not achievable anyway. >> I agree. >> It's more about the financial education, like selling the the dream of like you could be something more than just what you think you are and where you came from. >> And you can make content about that and you can distribute it for free with leverage. It's a beautiful thing. And so like you can be legit because you have a legitimate business and then you can talk about it and help all these other people.

9:32And then you just keep growing this thing. >> Okay. So double down locally. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> You already have all the like you went through whatever the hell you did to go through and build all that stuff. It's like you just built it and you're like, "You know what? I'm going to leave it now and I'm going to do another thing." It's like, no. Like, I'm glad you brought the COO in, but it's probably so that she can do some of the stuff you're doing now so you can do the stuff you know you should be doing but you're not. And so it's like you wanted the impact cuz you don't have time. You have the COO. Go make some content. It's not going to take that long anyways. That way you can scratch your impact itch.

10:00And then for everything else it's like you need to learn how to run paid ads and sell [ __ ] Cuz like you for sure can sell 20, 50, 100 people a week in a local market no problem for the offer that you have. >> Should I increase pricing to make it better or should I keep it where it's at given that it does feed my other channels? Like a face value is 15K, but the lifetime value of that student for as long as they stay in my market cuz they're going to be flipping multiple homes in one year. >> Sure. What's LTV? >> Uh the what?

10:25>> What's LTV right now? >> Uh It's fairly new. So, I'll I'll I'll have a better idea in about a year when I have a full cohort going through. But right now one student, 15K. I let's say they do one flip. I make about another 5 to 10K on the contracting. I make about a K in the dumpsters. Uh what else? The HVAC, maybe make 3K. Um What else? >> Dude, I'm exhausted listening to this business.

10:52>> Yeah. But >> Yeah. >> multiply that across maybe 10 flips they're doing a year if they're a good student. >> Yeah. >> The first year, the stragglers maybe they'll do like one flip. >> have a better time just like charging a hundred grand and saying you'll do that stuff for free or at cost. >> Yeah. >> Um but yeah, I mean, can you raise prices? It's just like can you sell and can you like yes, you could. Typically an offer like this is a hundred grand. >> Yeah.

11:19>> So, usually they have a done with you style offer that's between 15 and 25 and then there's a uh total turnkey offer which is a hundred thousand dollars. >> No one in my market can afford that. That's the problem. >> That is just not true. >> If I'll I'll do you an example. >> one in your market that has heard of you through word of mouth of you emanating your presence into the the the workshops that you run once a quarter or whatever have can afford it. If you run ads, yes. It's just that like how many people show up to your thing?

11:46>> The venue that holds 55 is packed out every time. >> Yeah, 55. So you have 55 people a month that come in the doors. >> Every 3 months, yeah. >> Every 3 months. Right, dude. So it's like the way this looks in reality is you'll bring 100 people in the room and you'll do three of those in a day. And you'll pitch and you'll close 10, 15. You'll close three or five at the you know like the 100k and you'll close a handful at the you know call it 15 to 25k and that's that's the business.

12:17So you're like you're you're you're like you see 200 people a year and you're like my market can't afford it. It's like well those 200 can. It's like look at 2,000. I'm sure there are some. Let me give you a stat. 9% of people in America have a million dollars. In terms of their net worth. So if you include the asset like value of their home and like 9%. It's significantly higher than you think it is. They just look older. Real. >> Okay. What do you think about a tiered structure?

12:44>> Uh what? >> Like instead of just having one program like have different pathways. >> Yeah, I think you could have a done with you and you could do it the turnkey thing which is much higher. >> Yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you. >> Dude, that was insane. >> It's just >> [laughter] >> Thank you. In the beginning we have to start defining terms of like what's the what's the meta concept that I kind of operate off of and the biggest one is fundamentally that.

13:11Like what is learning, right? Like what is learning? >> Adaptation. >> So it's it's same condition new behavior. That's fundamentally from a from a behavioral science perspective. It's like if you were so if you're a you know person is condition A and then we teach them something when they re-enter condition A they change their behavior. So, it's observable. So, same condition, new behavior. If you the phone rings and you say XYZ, and I say, "Hey, don't say XYZ, say ZYW." The phone rings again, you say XYZ, you haven't learned. If you say ZYW, you have learned. If you say something else, you've learned but the wrong thing.

13:41Right? But fundamentally, it's a change in behavior within the same condition. And so, it's like, okay, if we say that is as kind of like tenant number one, the next tenant is like, okay, then what is intelligence? So, intelligence is going to be rate of learning. So, if I have to do that, you know, example 10 times with, you know, Jack and five times with Graham, then Jack has less intelligence than Graham does in this context. This is a hypothetical Jack and a hypothetical Graham. These names are completely taken at at random. >> [laughter] >> But then it's like that but but the reason I think that's important is because then it allows people to have direct influence on their own intelligence. So, if you learn faster, you change your behavior faster than somebody else, then you can in a very real way be more intelligent than them.

14:16And so, when we asked originally like, you know, do you have to have real intelligence? I think it depends on what type of intelligence you're talking about. When it comes to to learning behaviors, this is how I define it. But beyond that, it's like, okay, well, then uh like a lot of words like, so what's an excuse? So, like an excuse is a statement to avoid punishment. It's very simple. It's like, okay, that's what It's a statement that like someone says something like, "What's an excuse?" Like, show me when an excuse has occurred. And by by looking at like, you know, patience, I've defined this plenty times cuz I had to use it all the time, which is figuring out what to do in the meantime. So, if you say to a young kid, "Be patient." They don't know what that means. It's a bundled term. It means nothing. "Be patient." It means nothing.

14:48So, how do I give someone directions on how to be patient? Figure out something else to do. That's all you have to do. We are all being patient right now for our S&P 500 accounts. We're being pa- We're doing something else. That's all we have to do is just something else. And so, it makes patience operationalized. Right? Like, how can I do patience? I have a very >> just kind of redefining all of these words or at least simplifying >> that are important and and by defining them, it's more putting them into a context that >> we're all talking on the same plane. >> Well, it's it's it's it's it's it's defining them within the observable universe.

15:17>> Oh. >> So, that way we can all agree. These are the things that we see. When someone has exhibited resiliency. It means that they've returned to a baseline of behavior. And how resilient they are depends on how quickly they do that. If someone's not very resilient, it means that they extend the the change in behavior for a long period of time. If they're permanently quote traumatized, it means they never change their behavior. Right? So, it's like, what's trauma? Right? Trauma is a permanent change of behavior based on an aversive stimulus, a negative stimulus, right? But then the question is, okay, if we have this trauma, right? And then people are like, I store trauma in my spine. It's like, what? Where is there Is there a hard drive in here? It's like, where what cell is this being People just say things. And so, it's just It's a permanent change of behavior from something bad happening. Okay. Now, if you're a little baby and you touch a stove and it burns your hand, and that's an aversive stimulus, and you change your behavior, you don't touch hot stoves again, was trauma bad?

16:07>> I love that. I actually like once you said that you're redefining everything into terms of the observable universe, I think that that I I I think it'll be more successful. >> my most I think it'll be my most successful book by far. >> though, for something as I would say like >> Like, what's courage? What's courage, right? So, the interval of time a potentially bad thing affects whether you do it. >> What about something that's so like like like purpose or meaning? Those I feel like are really like I can't imagine how to define those.

16:35>> know. I think they're they're definable. It just takes a long time to really think like The the the question you have to answer is, what would someone do for me to say purpose has occurred? >> I guess maybe you could abstract something. >> That's why it's You have to cuz you have to completely shift how you're seeing things and be able to observe them kind of like first hand. And so, it's like, what's authenticity? It's how you behave when you have no risk of punishment. >> And someone that obeys all of the terms that you've outlaid in that book. >> It's not about obeying. It's just like, this is tip like I have to define these terms in order to talk about them because they're all so amorphous and if I never define them, then I would just be making face noise and other people would be perceiving my face noise in whatever way they think it means, which they haven't defined anyways, and so then there'd be a lack of communication.

17:12I think fundamentally like good communicators are able to transfer ideas efficiently because they use language that everyone understands and ideally things that everyone can observe with their own two eyes. And so that's I try and stick to everything being observable. And so as a result, it's made persuasion way easier. It's being The most important one is that like if I want to train, which is happens a lot in a business setting, it's like how do you train someone and you're like be more confident. What does that mean? Tell a 6-year-old be confident, means nothing.

17:40It means nothing. They might just say like that means talk louder. I don't know what that means. Right? So it's a bundled term. So we have to break the term down. It's like, "Okay, well this is actually a series of many behaviors underneath of confidence that when done taken in aggregate, we then describe that person as confident." So maybe they look at you in the eyes when they talk. Maybe they nod their head when they're listening. Maybe they repeat back the last thing that you said. Um maybe when um when there's [snorts] a when there's something that has potential risk or downside, they're willing to do it. Like these are all things that we can observe. And then say, "Okay, well if you have these these you exhibit these traits, these skills in this setting, people describe you as confident."

18:15Does that make sense? And so being able to break things down like that has allowed me to um help my team when I'm like, "Hey, you know, I've told the story before but basically I had I had a guy who um you know, a lot of people were saying, 'Hey, this guy's acting like a dick.' But he was a star performer. So we're like, 'Okay, well let's see if we can save him, you know?" And so you talked to three or four of the leaders in the company and he was still a dick. And so I was like, "What did you tell him?" We're like, "Oh, we told him to stop being a dick." I was like, "Okay. Well, so I ended up meeting with him and I was like, 'I want to be clear. I don't really care if you're a dick or not. Um I do care if people describe you as a dick. Um and I want to like the purpose of this meeting is to decrease the likelihood that anyone talks to me about you again in a negative context. Cool?

18:52Great." So that was the you know agenda. It's like, "All right. So in order for that to occur, um let's talk about the things that when you do them, people don't like them and they call you a dick. So it's like when you interrupt people during a meeting, they they think you're a dick and they call you a dick later. Uh when you tell someone how to do their job, uh they call you a dick and you try and force your agenda, whatever. It was two or three examples. And he was like, "So that's all I have to do?" He was like, "Yep, that's all you have to do." He was like, "But what if uh you know, I present this thing and then they they don't execute on it." I was like, "Then that's not on you. That's on the manager, and I'll talk to the manager and make sure that they're executing. But that's not on you. That's not your role."

19:26And so, um once that got clear, all of a sudden he just stopped doing the three things that everyone the three behaviors that people then laddered up to saying he's a dick. And then they stopped calling him a dick. And then everyone was like, "Oh, he's like night and day, totally different." But it was just like no one specific with their language, and so no one knows what anyone was talking about. And I think the vast majority of people don't communicate well with one another cuz both people are saying words that neither person understands, and no one has to define anything. And that's why most people can't communicate at all, and that's why most people are dissatisfied with their life, and that's why they can't manage their relationships cuz they like both people get upset, no one knows how to communicate, and then that's it. They just like they want the other person to guess what behavior they don't like. And so, it's like even if I said, "Oh, you know, John's lazy."

20:04You have to think, and this is why most people don't do is cuz it takes work. You have to think, "Okay, I think John's lazy. Why do I think John's lazy? What what occurred? What did I observe that then made me think that?" Now, you might find out it's like, "You know what? He's actually just slow to respond." Okay. Is there anything else? There was one meeting he came ill-prepared. Is there anything else? No, I think that was actually it. Okay. So, when I go to John, instead of being like, "Hey, you're lazy." I'm going to say, "Hey, I need you to speed up your responses to under 5 minutes, and when you come to a meeting, have your notes ahead of time. Just send them to me."

20:34All of a sudden, John's not lazy anymore. But it's because it was this very micro thing that we then laddered up to this amorphous term that no one can understand. And so, this is this has been uh a huge area of interest for me um in defining reality. And I think that honestly, it's helped me navigate reality really well um and make higher quality decisions. >> If someone reads his book, how would it be actionable for them to get those ideas across with somebody else who hasn't read the book and is trying to apply the ideas?

21:02>> They have to define the terms. >> That's it's it's it's getting a a complicated word and then simplifying it into the layman's >> Right. So, then we don't have Well, they're not They're currently not communicating with that person. So, like, how would they talk to somebody who hasn't read the book? The way they always do, which is nothing. Which The thing is is the point that you hit on underpins the fact that most people can't communicate well at all. >> Right. >> And so, if a lot of people want to be different than they are.

21:26And I am, you know, first in line on that. There are many things that I I've wanted to be different about myself for a very long period of time, and this book and these ideas have been the culmination of trying to change these things about myself. I would say I want to be more authentic. I'm like, well, what's authenticity? How do I be more authentic? What do I do? Well, it's like, okay, well, authenticity is how you behave when there's no risk of punishment. And so, if there's no risk of punishment, how you behave basically, if you're alone and no one can find out about what you do, that's you authentically. Now, the problem is that in society we also have rules that govern other people's uh behavior, right? Which means that the only truly authentic person is someone who behaves the exact same way alone as they do in public.

22:07Which will probably have something to do with your preferences. And so, can you be truly authentic? Only in that subset of people who act with complete freedom, and when they act with complete freedom, act within the rules of the law. Anyone else who has any inclinations to do anything that's outside of society's preferences or the rules that govern um how we interact with each other, uh or the laws, right? Has to, by their very definition, not be authentic or be less than 100% authentic. And I see many of these traits as not binaries, are you authentic or not authentic, but how authentic are you? And also, in this setting. And if it's like, man, this sounds like it's a little bit more complex, it's like, yeah, welcome to reality.

22:42>> So, how have you been holding yourself back in terms of authenticity? >> Well, it's also the question of uh is being 100% authentic something that is I should be. >> I mean, realistically, probably not. >> Right. And so, again, but but but thing is is once we define the term, we actually can have a discussion about it, because now we're all talking the same language. And it's much more productive. It's also way less charged from a like if we had never defined the term, then you would have maybe been like, "What do you mean?

23:09You like you don't think you're authentic?" I'd be like, "Well, not 100% of the time." It's like, "Wait, so you're lying to people?" Right? And it's like we don't define the term and then all of a sudden we're attacking each other rather than just saying like, "Well, no, I I act differently in private than I do in public." To a certain degree. I walk around naked. >> [laughter] >> Like if I walk if I walk around naked in public, that would probably be I'm being a little bit inauthentic right now. I'm I'm wearing clothing. I normally wouldn't wear clothing, right? You know what [laughter] I'm saying? Like and so again, that what it does is it adds nuance.

23:37But B.F. Skinner, who's a famous behavioral scientist, said um if many variables exist, many variables must be studied. And so a lot of people want a very neat box with clean lines and say like this is the way it is and um I don't think reality is that way. Like it's not is this person honest or dishonest? It's how honest are they? How loyal are they? >> I'm curious, you take a blank slate person, they read and apply everything that you write in this book. What does their life look like a year down the road, five years down the road?

24:04>> Great question. So, it the book will by no means be a here is how to live life because that assumes that I know and that I think they should do something. I think it's more if you want these things, these are the recipes for achieving them. So, if you want to be perceived as patient, figure out things to do in the meantime. If you want to be perceived as authentic, behave more in a way that you were that you do in private and public. If you want to um you know, be perceived as more courageous, then decrease the time between when you perceive something as risky and when you take action on it.

24:35Like all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, so I want these traits." And so this would in my opinion be the first way that at least the first place I've seen where there's like a recipe. Like do this. How would you explain it to a child who doesn't know what the words mean? And I think that's what allows Well, I mean it's it's what allowed me it's what has allowed me to exhibit more traits that I that I wanted to have versus traits that I didn't want to have. And until I had that, I just was like, why do people describe me this way? And it's cuz I couldn't break down what I had to change about what I did to change basically reality.

25:08>> You're in a great position to talk about it, too. It's interesting because I've you've mentioned this years ago that you had an issue I think it was with anger. And you also had the patience thing. But it does appear as though you've made pretty significant strides in applying corrective behavior to those >> More on patience, less on anger, but better. >> And And how does anger [clears throat] affect negatively maybe your business or your life? Like, what have you noticed? >> Um Okay, well, I'll tell you that the negative effects of anger for me have probably just come in in almost entirely from the way that people treat me.

25:42Not in terms of negative outcomes business-wise. I think the reason that I still have anger is because it has served me. So, I think we repeat things that have served us in the past. And so, I think one of the reasons that people misunderstand why they do things is because people ask the question, what triggered that? You ever heard that? It's like, oh, something triggered this behavior. But it's not about what happened before, it's about what happened after. The last time you did it. So, I'll give you I'll give you a real example. So, if Layla gets upset, and this is something that I've I've really actively worked a lot on.

26:12If Layla gets upset and she gets like she cries if we're having some, you know, whatever. I had a tendency to try and comfort comfort for a short period, and then if that didn't work, I would get angry. When I would get angry, she would get scared. When she would get scared, she would stop crying. And so, when I got angry, she stopped crying. And so, I learned that if I got angry, I got my wife to stop crying. And so, it was a very reinforce I only I only figured that out later.

26:39And so, it's a very reinforcing thing. It's like, oh, if I can I can this gets Layla to stop crying, right? Um and so, to the same degree, so I've been rewarded in that setting, but obviously she's like long-term and so you know, and so then I have to work on that, right? Um if I value the relationship, which I do. Um but the same context with uh my team, right? If I am quick to anger, or be cold, or sharp with someone, and it doesn't even have to happen often. Like if you do it once, or twice, or even if you do it in front of someone not directed towards them, they're like, "Well, I never want" because modeling is a great way that people learn. If someone shows up late and I yell at that person, then that everyone else is still afraid of me and doesn't want to show up late either, right? And so, what happens is the flow of communication from other people to me slows down because they're afraid of getting punished by me.

27:24And so, I see that as not positive for the business is me not having the information. Now, how do I cover for that? Well, I have somebody like Leila who always gets all the information, and that's why she's CEO and doesn't have to write reports, and so we've been able to manage that um within the business operationally, but in terms of me personally, like I want to be better about that. And so, that's like an example of something that I'm working on. >> What's interesting is I I kind of have a similar thing in terms of like if I if someone's emotional to me, I have very, very little patience, unfortunately for it. And it's one of my shortcomings.

27:53>> Yeah. >> Since you fixed that, how have you noticed >> you know, better. >> Sure. Okay. Since you uh try to improve upon that, how have you noticed that that change in in real observable ways? >> Well, I mean, Leila has now also cuz she understands how this stuff works too cuz we talk about it all the time, like she has tried to reinforce whenever I'm not angry and she's upset. And so, either in the moment or immediately afterwards, she's like, "Thank you for not getting upset and thank you for being there for me and thank you for just hugging me and you know, just waiting it out essentially." Um and so, I just have to remember that when I'm in those settings, and the more time she reinforces it, the less strong the other reinforcer is, the stronger the the the new one is. A lot of this stuff has has come from suffering. Like, being like, "Why can't I be this way?" Like I want to be this way and I can't. Like why can't I?" And it's like cuz I don't know how. Why don't I know how? Because I have no words to describe how to do it well. So, how do I change this in reality? And so, it's been it's been the result of of of a lot of seeking and a lot of pain. And that's So, I don't I don't see it as logical. I see this as just descriptive. Like this is this is how it works.

28:58>> But but you're able to to to assign a new timeline in terms of when you learn something >> Mhm. >> to to to a longer period of time rather than most people which assess things over a shorter period of time. For example, like you know, when you would get angry at Leila, like she would quiet >> Yeah. >> like okay, like this works. But then you're able to then see way deeper into the future and then make decisions based off of that. >> Even though this isn't going to work long-term? >> Yeah. Like >> Well, yeah, I'll get feedback and I mean, to be fair, I'll get feedback immediately afterwards where you know, she might not be happy that I got angry.

29:27You know what I mean? And so, um I think it like it comes down to what are the things that we want to change and then how do we change them? And ideally, we want to have some sort of reward cycle as fast as possible with that new behavior. And that's I think that's how fundamentally you can change. >> Charlie Munger in one of his seminal speeches, he talks about how to guarantee failure. How to make sure that you are a failure. And he inverts the the concept of success. It's like, what could you do to make sure that you were a failure? It's like, well, you would definitely get involved in drugs, drinking. He says, was it leverage, liquor, and women?

30:00That's you know, the Charlie's Charlie's big one, right? >> [laughter] >> But one of the ones that he has, I think he has seven in his in his in his speech, is consistency. He's like, you have to make sure that you're inconsistent. He's like, because if you are consistent and you have none of the other attributes, he's like, it's you still might be successful. He's like, it's it's very tough for people who are consistent to not be successful.

30:24And he makes an especially pointed point about consistency because in my opinion, it's one of the most difficult of the virtues for humans to do because we're so attracted to novelty. And so, like I mean, I used to do with this with, you know, people on their diets all the time. I remember I ran gyms. And so, someone would come in and I would always ask the question, "So, have you been following the meal plan?" And then they would say, "Yes." And so, then I started changing the way I asked the question. So, I'd say, "Out of the 21 meals that you were supposed to eat, how many of the 21 did you have exactly the way it was on the meal plan?" And then they would be like, "Oh, I mean, at least half."

30:56And they would say it as though that was a mark of success. And right now, the meal plan could be your content plan. It could be your It could be your showing up to work on time plan. It could be the time that you want to put towards your side hustle. It doesn't really matter. But, if there's one muscle that you can flex, it's learning to do the same thing over and over again. Like, one of the one of the values that we had at Gym Launch is do the boring work. Because boring is what makes you rich, right? It's It's It's It's writing the follow-up sequence to your to the purchase page that you don't feel like doing, but you know you should do. It's running the split test for the 10th time. It's It's actually going through and prepping for 20 minutes before you have the meeting.

31:36Because it's amazing how much smarter you can appear with 20 minutes of preparation. Like, you can appear 50 IQ points smarter if you just prepare for meetings for 20 minutes. I remember I did a consulting day, which I've only done three in my entire life. And when I showed up uh to the day, cuz I always want to make sure that everyone always gets more from me than I than they give me. Um I had taken I don't know, 4 hours. Not a long time, but a long time for I think some people.

32:03But, for me, 4 hours is nothing. I count in hundreds, so this was irrelevant. And so, I put like 4 hours in and actually took the time and put it in to do research on the individual. So, I looked at every single page they had, every landing page, every offer, every everything. And I had seven pages of things that I thought would make them more money. And so, when I started, I was like, "This is what we're going to go through today, and I'll walk you through line by line, and you'll have this as a take-home line, so you can execute it with your team." It was a bigger company.

32:27And the guy was shocked. He was like, "Never in my entire life has anyone had this much preparation." And that's when it goes back to like, you need 20 podcasts to be in the top 1%. The the bar for excellence like I have this timer that I have on my desk which it's it's the easiest purchase you can make. I think it was like seven bucks on Amazon. It's a little twist kitchen timer. It's very easy. And it's been probably my biggest focus hack you know to date which is I turn it when I want to start working and part of it allows me to think how long I I get better at predicting how long it's going to take me to do something. So I think I think this will take me 35 minutes. So I turn the clock to 35 and I click on. And then I start working on the thing. And the moment my phone rings or I look at Slack or whatever, I stop the timer. And so you actually see that your time on task is usually significantly less than you think it is. And I think that in my early days I would spend a very long time in front of a computer telling myself that I was working with very few minutes actually on task. And that's why I think that most things are actually significantly easier than people think they are. They just don't know how to try hard.

33:31Because the harder that you try, the easier it gets. And so it's like if you can just learn to love what trying hard feels like, then all of a sudden it becomes unreasonable that you can't win. So like for the presentation that I'm giving, I explained a little bit earlier about what my process looks like. If you were to say, "What would it take for somebody to be unreasonably good that it would be impossible for them to not be a top 1% salesman or top 1% content creator?" And you said, "What would that person need to do?" Irrelevant from outcome. What would be the actions or evidence that they would have to do prior to that thing that would make it unreasonable that they couldn't succeed?

34:04And then you do those things, what happens is you realize that it's actually not that hard because you put so much work into it and the bar from other people working is so embarrassingly low that they then ask you how you did it and it must be easy. >> Consistency doesn't guarantee that you'll be successful. But not being consistent will guarantee that you won't reach success.

34:28You have a productivity hack, an easy productivity hack. Instead of spending time getting in the mood to work, just start working. Confront the work. People think they need perfect conditions to start, when in reality, starting is the perfect condition. >> I'm married to that. I love that. Because if you think like I you know, I obviously am somebody who always wants to optimize how much work I do per unit of time. And so I I was you know, there was definitely times earlier in my life I was really romanticized by these like very extensive morning routines and supplement rituals and like all this stuff of mental masturbation around the work that needed to be done. But when I looked at two hours later and nothing had actually gotten done, the moment you begin working is when your output per unit of time goes up.

35:17And so that makes beginning the single greatest hack that you can have for everything else that you do in work. Because thing is when you start working, you start getting in the mood to work. Right? Like everything else is procrastinating around the work that you think you should do. But like I have noticed for me at least, I have these I have some big mental tasks. You know what I mean? Like big content piece or big thing that you need like you know it's going to take real mental effort. It takes me like five minutes of actually being in it to then get a a little bit of a lay of the land to then get into it. But I used to take hours to delay to start the first five minutes.

35:51And so my time compression of when I thought I should start doing something and when I started doing it, over time it's just compressed to the point where it's like the moment I think that I need to start doing it, sometimes I just start it because then what happens I get this open loop. And so rather than complete work at like because a lot of people are like, I want to complete at this really nice clean point. Stop halfway through the sentence cuz it'll drive you mad. >> It's always harder, takes longer, and costs more than you think it will. That is a reflection of poor expectations, not that that reality is bad. And so it makes sense that it would be harder, take longer, and cost more because if it didn't, then everyone would have it. If everyone had it, then it wouldn't be worthwhile. And so literally the difficulty of the task that you embark on is proportional to the reward that you ultimately get because you are the asset that you build more than the achievement. And so if it's hard, that's amazing because it will make you that much harder once you conquer it. And it will also make it harder for anybody else who wants to follow in your footsteps. And so the higher up the mountain you climb, the thinner the air gets and the rarer the climber or explorer must be in order to get there.

36:56And so I don't know about you, but I would so much rather climb a mountain that so few people been able to climb so that I can see a view that other people haven't seen. And so speaking of expectations, let me talk about the worst expectation of all, which is entitlement, which is the expectation of life or other people to give you something without earning it. And I think that this is is a is a virus in today's culture right now. And so there's the famous quote, "Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men and weak men create hard times." It makes sense that right now we have a lot of weak men because it's been pretty good times. The good news about that is that it's so easy to beat them. You just have to show up, be on time, prepare the night before, remember people's names, actually follow up when you say you were going to, and try like you mean it rather than trying like you want to get credit for trying. And I see this is this this thing that's that that's pervasive right now is that people will comment or they'll DM me and they're like, "Hey, I'm trying really hard." As though I'm supposed to give them credit for trying. The world doesn't work that way. It gives you credit for achieving.

38:09And the reason that you want credit for trying is because you want it to cost less, take shorter time period, and be easier. And so if you restate your complaint about the difficulty as, "Oh, I have false expectations about the ease or the price tag of this goal, then all of a sudden you realize that the only real problem was that you expected it cost less. It's like going to the store and being like, oh, I've got these Jordans that I really want to buy. I got $50. I'm so excited to buy them. You go to the store and see that they're $300.

38:40At that point, you can just say Jordans aren't for me, or you can say, oh, I will have to keep working and keep saving so that I can afford this. And so it's a lot about affording the goals that you want to achieve. And a lot of things that we have to spend in order to get them is the time and the rejection of not achieving what we want on the timeline we originally thought. Like what makes success hard is that the expectation that society puts because we only see the highlight reel. You actually only see people after they finish the race. People think success is like watching a marathon, not running a marathon. When you watch a marathon, you look at the beginning and you look at the end. And it only takes you a couple of seconds to see both of those. But running a marathon is four, five, six straight hours of breathing heavy, wondering when it's going to end, counting, starting to play games in your mind of like, okay, I'm I'm two-thirds of the way there. I'm two two more quarters of that. I'm only 1/5 of the of 1/8 of the way there. And you keep doing this to play tricks on your mind to keep going. But the thing is is that in a mile marker race, it's very clear to know how you're going to get to the finish line and how long it's going to take. The only difference with success is that you just have to keep running and you don't know where the finish line is. And people will only cheer you on at that finish line that they don't know where it is either, which means you have to get used to running alone. And so the difficulty is you have to start running and you have to keep running, but you just don't know whether you're running for a mile or 300. And so this is where the pacing is important. So a lot of people will run really hard. They'll they'll think because they only saw the beginning of the marathon on TV and the finish of the marathon on TV that they can just sprint because both of those clips only lasted a couple of seconds. So, they start their marathon of success of whatever it is they're going after by sprinting as hard as they can. And then, they realize that there's no one around, and there's just a bunch of open road ahead of them.

40:33And they're like, "How long is this going to take?" And that's when reality sets in. And so, I make these videos to say that a lot of times it's going to take >> Right now, there's the person you are, and there's probably, hopefully, the person you want to be, and there's a gap, right? You agree on that? Okay. So, that person that you want to be has traits and has skills that you don't have, right?

40:55And I think that traits have been a word that we use as shorthand for bucket of skills. And when I say it that way, it I think it'll help make more sense. And so, we might make the argument that if you were more charismatic, you would make more money. Let's say that that was That was the argument we're going to do. And like, "Okay, for whatever profession I'm in, that would be true to me. Okay, fantastic." Be charismatic.

41:22What does that mean? And so, right now, if So, the more skilled you are, the more general a command can be given to you, and you can still be effective. So, someone can, at this point, say, "Hey Alex, can you start this business?" And I would say, "Sure." That's a very general command. Now, one level below that, it might be like, "Can you advertise this product?" And I would say, "Yeah, I can do that." One level below that would be, "Do you think you can make a post that people would click on to buy this thing?" And I would say, "Yes." And we can keep going down, but the point is is that if you have a skill set that you want to attain, and you don't know how to attain it, it's because you're using a bucketed word that represents many smaller skills. And so, I'll use charisma as the example. So, if we say, "This guy is so charismatic," you have to ask yourself, at least I ask myself, why?

42:15Well, I describe him as charismatic because when he walks in the room, he greets everyone immediately. He uses people's names. He shakes their hand and he makes eye contact. When someone's talking to him, he makes eye contact and he nods his head. When he talks, he looks there and he looks at them and he bounces back and forth. Um he asks questions up to the other person about themselves when he's talking. Now, that's like seven things.

42:43If I said, "Do you think you can nod your head when someone else is talking and keep eye contact?" You'd probably say, "Yeah, I can do that." It's a great. That's one of seven skills that it takes to master until eventually people will describe you as charismatic. And so, if you don't understand how to do something, you just need to break it into a smaller chunk. Because like we teach toddlers how to speak by approximating sound. It's like, "Mm."

43:10"Mm." And then they they're like, "They've Mm." And they're like, "Ah." And clap clap clap clap clap clap. And they're like, "Ah." And then we keep doing until eventually they're like, "Mm." And you're like, "Yeah." Right? And so, that's their first word. And then you start comparing things between what they know and what they don't know and making an association. You say, "Bottle." Right? And then they're like, "Bottle." Right? And so, they like they can see with their eyes something they know and then they don't know the word. And so, that's how we teach things. And so, if we consider I I like to think of myself as a toddler from a learning perspective because it allows you to take your ego away from a skill. So, a lot of times, the skills that we need to learn are on the other side of just kind of like humbling ourselves and saying, "You know what?

43:47If someone said to go advertise, I don't think I would be able to do it." It's like, "Okay. Well, let's break it down into six things. Do you think you can message someone?" "I can do that." Well, that's that's a component of advertising. "Do you think you could make a post that talks about something that's interesting?" "Maybe." Okay. Well, do you think that you could ask a question in the beginning of a video that someone would find interesting? Yeah, I can do that. Okay. Well, then after that question, we then would make some sort of explanation around why we asked that. Okay, I think I can do that. All right, okay, then at the end, we want to reward them for what the ultimate thing that we asked them to begin with. Great. Well, great. If you record that and you post it, that's a piece of content. Okay, I can do that.

44:25And so, the reason that like I write the books that I do and I try to try to try to make the content in that way is that if you can if there's something that a trait you want or skill you want and you don't understand how to get it, it means you just need to break it into smaller pieces. Because if you break it down low enough, you'll be able to do it. And then when you have that, this is I'm I'm going to go full 180 here. So, remember when I talked about the beginning about you just need to figure out how much money you want to make every day, right? I need to make $3,000 a day. Okay, that means I need to sell this many units.

44:52Well, then you connect that and you sell this many units to whatever activity or input you have to do. Because if you look at your calendar in terms of the things that you actually have to do with your time, then it gets a lot easier to plan and allocate. Cuz your time is your only resource, especially if you're starting out. And so, it's like I need to make 100 DMs because that will get me one customer. And one customer is worth $200. Great. That means that if I do this every day, I'll make $6,000 this month. Okay.

45:23Based on the economics, would would those people buy again next month? If so, then great. The next month I do 12, next month I do 18. At that month, I hire somebody who who's going to do it for $3,000 a month and then I can keep stacking and then now I've got one person doing the same thing and the business keeps stacking. I'm like, "Wow, I'm a businessman, right?" But that's the idea is that like I I believe in in breaking things down to the absolute lowest level so that you can make it manageable. And then the more skilled you become, the more you can bucket all of those activities. Like if someone's going to say, "Hey, Alex or advertiser, if I was like, hey, I want to do this this thing with you, this new supplement."

45:59Do you think you could write an email and this is the headline for the email and this I'd be like, I got it. Like I'm good. You know what I mean? Like understood. Um but if he was talking to somebody who was super junior, that's probably how he would describe it. But the only instance is that you are the person who's junior in this conversation, and you are the one talking to yourself. And that's that's the gap. What is this person that I want to become have in terms of skills and traits? Can I break those things down into individuals, and then can I break that into activities that I can do on a daily basis, and does that ladder up to the amount of money that I ultimately want to make?

46:30If so, great. What's stopping? >> Let's go. >> What's a belief or maybe a behavior that you had, let's say, 10 or 15 years ago that you now see as misguided? >> Um not committing. >> Not committing. Interesting. Tell me more about Say more about that. >> So, I mean, I I define commitment as the elimination of alternatives, which was I had the misconception that I will work on multiple things and see which one works, when the reality any of them would have worked if I had worked on them.

47:00And so, I would just never get past the point of critical mass. And so, the easiest easiest analogy I have for this is imagine you uh want to start a party, right? It's very hard to start a good party. Like you have to invite a lot of people, you have to prepare, you have to do all the stuff. Um but if you are successful enough to get enough people to the party, the party can eventually take off on its own and kind of become its own thing. Now, to the same degree, imagine you try to start four parties on the same night at the same time. It's almost impossible. Because you only have you only have the same resource.

47:27You have the same number of people you know, you have the same amount of money. It's very, very hard to do that. And so, this is what I see the vast majority of, you know, smaller entrepreneurs doing is that they're trying to start four parties and say, well, whatever party takes off is the one that I'm going to I'm going to invest more in, but none of them will take off. That's why in the beginning it feels very manual, very like push. You're like, I promise the party's going to be great. It's going to be awesome. But who else is coming? No, you. No one, right? But if you just put all of You're like, if you're like, I'll be there. I'm not doing anything else. This is all I'm going to be doing is trying to make sure this party is amazing. The likelihood that party one is good, and then two, gets good enough that you don't have to push to keep growing it is good. It's just kind of a microcosm for a business just on a much, you know, shrunken time scale. But I think for that reason that's that is probably the number one reason that people don't get what they want is because they spread themselves too thin.

48:09You have such limited resources in the beginning that's like I think this is a piece of people misunderstand like you have functionally no money. If you're an individual you have basically no money when it comes to a corporate scale, right? You have almost no money and you have almost no time. Uh again compared to 100 people. Right. You have no no money no time and so you have such such such limited resources that the actual skill that's missing is strategy. And so strategy is prioritization of resources. So said simply like what do we do and more importantly what do we not do with the few things that we can do out of the few things that we can do. And so just being able to just say, you know what? All four of these parties could be good. It could be a pirate theme, it could be a it could be a Greek theme, it could be a you know, whatever theme. But I'm just going to try and make this pirate theme one good. That's all I'm going to do. And the thing is is that we then think, oh well this succeeded because it was a pirate theme. No, it just succeeded because that was the one that you worked on. So as long as fundamentally like you let people know about your stuff you have a conversion mechanism and you have and the thing that you sell cost significantly less than the thing you sell at the price you sell it for you'll probably be okay.

49:07But people just spend forever trying to figure out which party theme is going to be the best theme. And you just don't need to do that because as soon as you pick you eliminate the alternatives, you commit and then you're good to go. >> How did you figure out that that was the problem that was keeping you from success or did you something just eventually take off through sheer brute force and you realized that you wasted your time on the other initiatives? >> No, nothing took off. >> Yeah. >> I um I and people may be surprised by this but I was probably making a few million dollars a year not income, revenue. Uh between like nine different businesses.

49:37>> Yeah, woof. That's stressing me out just thinking about it. >> I was 20 26 yeah at the time. Uh and I like to tell people I you know, nine businesses but like that's because I thought that's what successful entrepreneurs did when the reality it's It's no, you make one business extremely successful and then you just make investments in your in your time. You can only be CEO of one thing. And so, I was CEO of nine businesses and almost I almost died. Um got DUI, head-on collision, whole thing. Like I Like yeah, and then I had somebody uh thankfully say, "Hey, uh you are stressed to death. This stress will kill you quite literally, and you need to make decisions." The difficulty was for me, I was the rainmaker in all the businesses. And so, I basically was killing myself to generate income for all of them. Um and almost nothing was left over every month because I had to pay people to do everything else because that was the only thing that I was doing. And so, uh Leila obviously came into my life Not obviously. Leila came into my life. Um and she said, "Hey, you know, genius, wouldn't it be cool if there's this one thing that you do that seems to work better than the others, but we haven't given it a chance because you're only giving 2 hours a week to it."

50:36>> Yeah. >> what if you spent all your time on that? And so, um I thought that logic made sense. >> Yeah. >> And I clearly what I was doing was not working. And so, I um I had to have all the hard conversations and I lined them up over 48 hours. I literally called every partner that I had with all the other businesses and said, "I'm out. And you can have everything and you know, when I when I made that call, you know, the people that were in my life were like, "You worked for years to build these businesses and like what are you thinking? Like why don't you Why don't you sell them for more money?" Um and I >> And why don't I just sell it tomorrow, right?

51:03>> Yeah, cuz I Yeah, exactly. So, cuz I fire sold fire sold it all. What was really interesting is that over the next 6 months I made more money than I would have made from the sale of all those businesses um put together by just focusing on one thing, which is why I've been such an advocate of it. And I repeat that theme because the thing is is that focus never gets easier. It's kind of like an addiction. >> There is a lot of judgment online about how people choose to work, what fuels them, which fundamentally is it reward or punishment? Are they Are they going away from an aversive stimulus or towards, you know, a positive one?

51:36The answer, in my opinion, doesn't matter. And what I mean by that is I think the first rule of all entrepreneurship is use what you have. Because that's not going to change. Today, you have what you have. Those are the only resources you have available to you. You must become more resourceful. And that means that if you have shame, and people tell you shame is bad, in what world could shame be good? If the shame you have creates this amazingly positive thing in your life, was it bad? If your dad not hugging you enough created the catalyst for you to go to the gym and live 20 years longer because you work out regularly, was it bad? Do we need to label it at all?

52:17All we know is that it happened. And so what? There are these actions that increase the likelihood that you get what you want. Whether you do them because you had some negative thing or because you're going towards some positive thing, I think for the vast majority of people is narrative. They only They create the story. If I said, "Hey, why did you do this thing?" We are trained to give an answer. But that answer may have zero grounding in the truth. Not because you lied, but because you have no idea. Cuz most people don't know why they do what they do. They just do it and then they ascribe a reason afterwards. We know that it's mostly BS and you're not going to have a double-blind controlled placebo study on your life to be able to determine what the true root cause of was this the dependent variable? If you're not going to be able to do that anyways, who cares? Use whatever you've got to get whatever you want. Give you a behavioral, you know, thing for this.

53:07It's like you might be going through something difficult or a hard season or a bad day or a bad moment, right? And I've heard this saying that drives me absolutely bananas, which is that bad things come in threes. Anyone heard this before? Right? I so hardly disagree, but I will explain why I believe that saying is a saying. Bad things do not come in threes. Bad things occur. People do not know how to cope. They allow one bad thing to snowball into more bad things. And bad stuff sucks. And the only thing worse than letting one bad thing be a bad thing is to let one bad thing ruin many good things. If you think about a bad thing as a cancer, it's like, well, we want to isolate that cancer as fast as possible and not let that cancer of you losing your job affect your marriage and then let you affecting your marriage affect how you're you know a parent and let you know how you're a parent affect how you were going to pursue this new endeavor.

53:52People just basically give themselves an excuse for misbehaving. I had a bad day therefore I now have a legitimate excuse for being a bad husband or not being nice to my wife. They use it as an excuse to not exercise self-control. And that is when things snowball. This is why resilience is so important. Can something bad happen and I recover before I talk to somebody else. When things get bad it looks like this. Something bad happens, something else bad happens, something else bad happens and it keeps going down.

54:22Until eventually everyone in your life that is good has removed themselves and then you slowly recover or you don't recover at all and you've seen these people. He lost his job, he gained weight and man he's just never been the same. Pull your head out of your ass. Like this has just been a very hard lesson learned for me is that what you think should take you six weeks often times six takes six months sometimes a year. And so what what you realize the longer you do business is that there are just far fewer things, fewer new things that you can take on than you really think.

54:52And so there's always going to be an issue with translating these things to your team so that they can actually execute and forget about new people coming in who haven't even gone through this process. They're just adopting this final solution but they don't know how you got here and how you derived it. And so being more patient about the idea and I'll I'll give you a I'll give you a pro tip. There's a little side quest for you. So in any given function let's say that this is your baseline of performance. All right. Now whenever you change anything in my experience you get about a 20% decrease in performance immediately. All right. So if you change a sales script you get a decrease in performance. You change your your ad copy you're going to decrease in performance. Often times you change your landing page most times the page that you had probably was working it's just something that's not that has a lower likelihood of succeeding than something that is more of that. Right. So a lot of times when you make a change and this is especially operational changes, more so than anything else, often times you get a decrease or decrement in performance.

55:41And so, if I know that I'm guaranteed to have this 20% decrease, then it means that I need to make changes that I have a very strong idea that they're going to have at least a 20% increase effect. And so, the result of this line of thinking, which has made me a significantly better entrepreneur, this is a huge breakthrough for me, is that number one, some things will never get fixed. And that means that some things you're like, "Man, this could be 5% better." The cost of the change, if you are constantly changing things, cuz here's the thing, is you're like, "Well, it's still I would I'd be willing to give the 20 to 4 months from now have that, you know, return to baseline and then get the 5% improvement." Yeah, but that assumes that you're going to change nothing else in that 4-month period. But, you might be an ADD entrepreneur and you might just change it. Which means that you're actually permanently kind of sitting at this 20% decrease in performance, cuz you've never given anyone a chance to get good at their job. You're always changing [ __ ] And so, I traditionally will over index now on stability, because we get consistent improvements in performance across the team, because people just get better at their job, right? And then, if I really think that something's worth changing, it better be north of 20%. And so, it's like, "Man, I'm keep doing the math, like I think this is like a 30 to 50% boost for us."

56:53If that's the case, then it's probably worth the bet. But, most of the small changes that I used to mess around with my company, where I'd be like, "I know I'm Steve Jobs, every detail has to be there." Like, if you're building a physical product that is manufactured, that's different. If you're building software, one-time change, different. In a service business, if you're changing process that people have to execute, very tough. Make sure that it's worth it. I end these podcasts with a challenge, ask the guest for a challenge of the audience to do something and take the action from the hour and a half we've spoke. Does a challenge come to mind?

57:26Mhm? Define the input-output equation that gets you closer to where you want to go. And then 10x the input. >> [snorts] >> So, whatever your thing is, like if you're like I want to be an editor, I want to be an agency owner, I want to be a whatever whatever the thing is, the first thing you have to do is figure out the input output equation, which is what do I have to do that will get me closer to where I want to go.

57:51Step one. If you can't define your input output equation, then you need to define your input output equation because otherwise you're working for no goal. Once you define that, then do 10 times more. This is the flyer story. Like you probably you might be doing the right stuff. You might be working out, but you're working out 5 minutes a week and being like, I don't know why I'm not losing weight. It's like you're not even close. You're like, "No, I think I need to double it to 10 minutes a week." It's like, "No, you're not even close."

58:16The thing is this, in fitness we have some context, right? But in business you have no idea. And that's the big disconnect. Is that people might be doing the wrong the right stuff, but doing the wrong amount. They're doing way too little of it, and they think you they think in doubles, not in orders of magnitude, as in 10x, 100x. But like the out like you want to make 100 times more money than you are, you need 100 times more input. Like hold on, I'm I'm going to hit this home real quick cuz this is this is this is important.

58:45I have right now 10,000 times the input that I used to used to have when I was running my gyms. I just have leverage on my input. And so, for example, I could do 200 cold calls a day. I could double that to get to 400 400 cold calls a day. I could also do 200 cold calls a day to get someone to recruit for me.

59:13And then that person starts Sorry, I I'm going to rewind real quick. So, I could do 200 cold calls a day and get a certain amount of sales. The next level is I could go get somebody to do those 200 phone calls for me and then I make the same amount of sales, but I don't do anything. More leverage. Another leverage above that is I go call, do 200 phone calls a day until I get a recruiter and then that recruiter brings me a new person every week. And then every week I get another added 200 phone calls per day that keeps stacking and the number of customers that comes from that. But what did I do there? I made calls for a week to get one recruiter and then from that point going forward every single month I get more and more sales.

59:54And so that's three levels of leverage. There are more than that. And so what you unlock in the game of entrepreneurship is leverage. And the way that you unlock leverage is to relinquishing control. And so the tough part about the entrepreneurial journey is that the thing that got you to quit your job is the very thing that you have to stop doing. And so what happened is you felt out of control and so you quit your job so you could take complete control of your life. And when you're self-employed, you take complete control. You are you hunt, you kill, you produce, you do everything, right?

1:00:29And then the thing that you got the big massive reward for because you quit your job, you started making money, living life on your terms, you now have to unlearn that. And you have to say, "Now I'm going to give up control again." And then the rest of the journey is unlearning the control that you so hardcore rewarded for in that first action. Because in the beginning you have to give up doing production or doing delivery, right, on the back end. And then you have to give up doing admin work. And then you have to give up doing sales.

1:00:58And then you have to give up doing marketing. Then you have to give up doing management. Then you have to give up doing leadership. Then you have to give up doing financing. Then you have to do Like you have to give up all these things until eventually you're like, "But I'm not needed." And then you have to give up the desire to be needed by your business. Because many people make their business to to fulfill personal desires. But the business doesn't need to do that. It doesn't exist for you. It exists for the customer.

1:01:23You're not required. You think you are because it makes you feel more important. And so, that's the unlearning experience, and that's where leverage comes from. And so, right now, to answer the question, the challenge for the people is figure out what the input-output equation is, and do 10 times more. And if you can figure out how to do 10 times more, figure out how to do 100 times more. And the secret is that if you're trying to do 100 times more, it's probably not just you.

1:01:48>> Here's something that's taken me way too long to learn. Staying focused is like beating addiction. It's not a one-time victory. You have to fight it all day, every day. Then, wake up and do it again tomorrow. Because the thing that's going to distract you is going to change every day. The thing that's going to trigger your addiction to distraction is going to keep morphing and changing its form so that it can steal or rob you of your future. And so, you have to be adaptable in knowing that you have to fight it every day. And so, it's not good enough to just say I was focused for this week.

1:02:19You've got to wake up on the eighth day and the ninth day and do it again. And so, you remember that guy who got rich dropshipping and day trading and buying crypto and wholesaling all at the same time? Yeah, me neither. Focus. To win in business, you need to be able to say no without remorse and hear no without a loss of enthusiasm.

1:02:41Which means that you have to keep feeling rejection, keep failing, and keep going while being willing to reject basically everyone else. And that seems so counter because you're right there and you're like, "Man, I don't want to reject this person because I know what it feels like to be rejected." You need to be able to maintain this discrepancy so that you can create the space to do the work that needs doing. So, there have been a couple of lessons that I have learned over and over again in my career. I've had to relearn. So, it's a lot like a like a fine wine. It's like it it it better with age and there's more nuance to the flavor. So, I think focus is not a are you focused or not, it's how focused are you. And you can measure someone's focus by again the quality and quantity of things that they say no to, which means that as you get better, more opportunities will emerge, which is interesting because people who start out can't see opportunity anywhere. And it's because they have so few skills, and so there's very few opportunities for them.

1:03:39When you have a lot of skills, there are so many opportunities that are in front of you that you feel like you're missing out. But the real opportunity is actually in solving the problems in front of you. I was able to, in my opinion, become another order of magnitude greater in terms of entrepreneurship, which I would just measure measure by wealth, once I was able to learn to say no and accept that I would not be able to pursue the many things that I know I could crush.

1:04:09Because once you realize how much actual work it takes to make something good, you realize how few things you're actually going to be able to do in your entire life. And so this is why picking becomes so important. Right now, the things that you're going to have to say no to are really the distractions and a kind of in some ways easy. Say no to a fantasy football, say no to drinking beers with the boys, going out with the club, whatever. But in a year from now, once you have more skills, there will be more opportunities. You're going to have multiple $10,000 a month income opportunities that you're going to have to say no to to stick with the one that you have. And then once that thing becomes a $100,000 a month thing that you're doing, you're going to have to start saying no to multiple $100,000 a month opportunities. And here's the thing with opportunities that come up.

1:04:50They only show you the upside and not the downside. You have to know where the skeletons are buried. You have to know where the bodies are. If you don't know, and I've gone through this this this visual because I think about it every single time I have to walk through not doing something. You are here. You see this new opportunity here. Then you understand the downsides here. Then you live the downsides. Then you experience the upside. Then you achieve your goal. And so this is the starting point. This is called uninformed optimism. This is now informed pessimism. This is the valley of despair. And this is where most people quit. But what they do is they don't even quit because they don't want to say they quit. What they do is they start another one of these things and they say, "Oh, this is now my uninformed optimism." And then up, now I understand this more. But the thing is is that they never actually get through to this upside. And so they just keep jumping from thing to thing to thing over and over again. And so the reason it takes so long is because you're in a rush. Big things don't happen on small timelines.

1:05:54Because you have to start from zero over and over again. And if you actually stick with it, it's actually the shortest way to get to where you want to go. It just takes longer than you think. "Must be easy for you to say" is probably something that you might think while watching this or listening to this. And I like to tell the story because in July of 2017 is when I started my podcast. It was 90 days after I lost everything the last time.

1:06:19And from that point until now, it's taken that period of time to get to over a million downloads a month. And for the first 3 years, and I was making multiple podcasts. We're talking 3 400 episodes. For the first few years, I never really cracked 3,000 downloads a month. And so I could say, "Man, why is this taking so long?" But the real real is that it took me that long to get good. It also, being extra real, took me that long to have proof on the outside that what I was saying was true on the inside. And right now, no one who listens to my podcast cares that it took me 7 years to get here.

1:06:56They just care that it's good today. And so people quit here when things get hard because the thought of something being hard forever is unbearable. They think that this line is just going to keep going this way forever. But it's not, because once you fully understand all the bodies, where the skeletons are hidden, then you can actually start solving them one by one. The thing is is that that distraction only is distracting because you don't know what sucks about it. You might think you know what sucks about it, but you don't know what sucks about it. And so the big difference is you have something called declarative versus procedural knowledge. And so there's two types of learning, and this is actually formal. This is uh this is from academia. So you have declarative knowledge, which is knowing about something.

1:07:42So if you go memorize a fact or you you you learn how private equity works, right? This is knowing about. The other type of knowledge is procedural, which is knowing how to. And so a lot of people mistake declarative knowledge for procedural. And so they mistakenly think that if they watch 10 videos on doing a private equity deal, that it means they understand how to do a private equity deal. Or they watch 10 videos on cold outbound, and they think it means they understand how to do cold outbound, or 10 videos on sales, and so forth. But you're never really going to learn how to do it until you do it.

1:08:20And so you're going to learn more from your first 100 cold calls, your 100 cold knock on doors, than you will from 100 books or videos that you watch. But I have good news. Nothing hard lasts forever. There's only three things that can happen. You either quit, it gets easier, or you get better. So no matter what, it always ends. You only lose when you quit before you see it all the way through.

1:08:46And I think that's incredibly encouraging. So no matter how hard whatever it is that you're doing is, which by the way just means that your expectation doesn't match reality. But no matter how hard it is, you either quit, it gets easier because something changes externally, or you get harder, something changes internally. But no matter what, it will end. Think about it like you're you're mining for gold, right? You're you're chiseling away underground and you've got this pile of gold. You don't know how far away it is, but it's underground and you're digging towards it. This difficulty of swinging the the the pickaxe can end when one, you walk out of the mine and say, there's you know what? Marketing doesn't work. Sure.

1:09:23The second is that all of a sudden you hit a soft patch and then you're like, oh my god, I'm digging so much faster now. This is great. And then you get to the gold. Or you just start swinging the axe harder because you get more muscled, you get more efficient with your movements, and you just keep chiseling away even if it goes from dirt to rock. You just keep chiseling away at a slower pace, but you eventually break through and get there. If you like this video and you're business owner who wants to break through your current revenue ceiling, I distilled every lesson from scaling 10 businesses past 10 million and three businesses past 100 million into a completely free scaling road map that I've used to go from zero to one, zero to 10, and zero to 100 plus. And so you can click here and you can check it out.

1:10:01Again, absolutely free. And since you're business owner, appreciate you and enjoy.