You Can Have Everything You Want in 90 Days | Alex Hormozi Compilation

0:00You 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 2 hours later and nothing had actually gotten done, the moment you begin working is when your output per unit of time goes up.

0:49And 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 and 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 it at this really nice clean point. Stop halfway through the sentence cuz it'll drive you mad.

1:42>> That's the zygic effect in full work. Do you know this story? Zygonic. Oh wow. This is way more than I do. >> That's what you shut up. That's what you're leveraging here. So, um, the zyagonic effect was a study originally done on servers in restaurants, >> okay? >> And they realized, you've ever been at a restaurant and a server comes up and stands with their hands behind the back and go, "What would you like tonight, sir?" And you say, "I'll have the lobster roll and a glass of red wine and a blah blah," and you're like, "This [ __ ] is not, he hasn't got a pen or a pad of paper. He's crazy." And then they go off. And what they realized was servers in restaurants were unbelievably good at being able to recall exactly what a table's order was while that table's order was still open. So, uh, guys in table 16, uh, they want to swap the peas out for a little bit of extra rice and they're doing this thing. As soon as the table was closed, they couldn't remember anything. So, this is an openloop closed loop system and it's built into the brain. The brain abhors an open loop. It's the same reason why Netflix cliffhers at the end of every episode guarantee that you'll watch the next one because you can't bear the fact. There's even novels in the dark romance genre that make guarantees that there won't be cliffhers. They make they put it on the front or the back of the book and they say no cliffhers guaranteed, which is people have so much distaste for it that it's a selling point that you get the closure at the end of it. And finishing halfway through a sentence reduces the activation energy required to begin that sentence the next day and it keeps it in your mind too overnight.

3:16So I think yeah whether you've stumbled on it or whether you knew about it, you've managed to leverage a pretty powerful piece of psychology there. >> Sick. >> Going back to the work thing, uh another one from you that I absolutely adore. It just takes work. Shitloads and shitloads of work. Every time I try and dress it up or cut a corner, I get brutally reminded, the work just needs doing. The work doesn't care who you are. It just cares that it gets done.

3:45[sighs and gasps] I'm actually going to reverse quote David Gogggins on this one, but uh I love this quote that he has, which he says, "There's no shortcuts for you, David." Or, "There's no shortcuts for you, Gogggins." I heard him say that and I just love that as a refrain which is that a lot of people look for a shortcut. But the idea that you say like they're not for you. You don't get to use them. You are immune to shortcuts. I just love it because then it it just further shortcuts the path to the work that needs to get done. And I wrote that tweet on my I don't know 11th run of this presentation that I'm doing because that's a recent one. Yeah. And so I was it was like 11 o'clock at night. And so right now I'm working triple shifts which is not common for me. I usually do two not three. Um so for me in normal workday is like I wake up uh I start working at you know 6 or 7 and then I go until about 6ish. So it's like 10 to 12 really concentrated hours work and that I can do six and a half days a week. I usually take Saturday afternoons off.

4:44Um, and it's really just because at that point I c I can't work anymore and my brain's stew and then I I get my one half day and then I'm good to go and I'm rearing a kick on, you know, to work on Sundays. My triple shift is I get I go to dinner and I come back at 7:30 and then I work from 7:30 until 11:30 or 1 or whatever, right? And when I'm putting in triple shifts is when I know I'm like really gassing it. Um, and that's that's when I'm like repeatedly doing 16 17 a day of actual productive work. And I I hear the same thoughts that everyone does, which is like it's not going to matter. Like it's fine. You've like it's good enough.

5:20Like I hate that. Like it it makes me sick to even say that, right? Because the thing that I like David Gogggins, right? He's got like there's no shortcuts for you. I would say the one that I have two that are like my internal ones. One that is probably the most common is I will do what is required and this work needs doing and there's just no way around it and it's just it's just looking at the face of the work and it's like smiling back at me like no one else is going to do it. Um and like I love that one. like when we're recording content in the early days, we were doing like a hundred shorts every time we did it and it was direct to camera and it was the only time I could fit it in with all the portfolio stuff that we're doing. And so I was it was always like I will do what's required and that's been a really helpful refrain for me when I'm confronted with especially when you know what needs to get done. And the second one is but I'll know.

6:19And so like even if it does go well and even if everyone else says it's great, but I'll know and it'll then rob me of all of the joy of all of those moments in that experience because I'll know that I could have done better. And the thing is is like to to quote myself from earlier like I've never regretted working harder ever. Not once. And some people are like on your deathbed you're going to like no cuz I lived every moment of my day doing what I wanted to do. And I remember I had a boss when I um my first boss after college. She said this thing. I had had a a particularly good weekend and she said, "I'm pretty sure happiness is stringing as many of those days in a row as you possibly can." And although I hated the job, that piece of advice has actually been probably what I has been my blueprint for how to live, which is like my birthday looks the same as my Tuesdays, which looks the same as my Sundays. You know what the original name pool for this podcast was? It's the only time in history I've done branding my entire adult life. And with Club Nights, all you're doing is coming up with brands.

7:31Paradiso. Oh, it's it's tropical. There'll be a flamingo. Skint. Oh, it's a cheap night. It's for people to get fingered in the corner. Like is we all I did was branding, right? I was the branding guy. I'm pretty good at copywriting. All I did was branding. The one time I've had divine inspiration 3 in the morning wake up with the name was Modern Wisdom. The one time out of every business, every night, every brand I've ever come up with, that was the one time. But on the list of the others, mind and matter was one of them. The other one was a quote from Tim Ferrris.

8:02It's called Crushing a Tuesday. And he said that what you should aim for in life is for your average Tuesday. Not the spectacular one-time private jet with the friends to go for the whatever whatever. Not the UFC power slap launch party [laughter] with staring at the back of Dan Bilzerian's dirty mullet. Like not that. You want your average Tuesday to look the way that you want most of your life to do. And when I think about the days that I look back on at the end of my day and think like today was a good day, invariably it's the same few things. It's I worked very hard on something that I felt was worth doing. I worked out and I spent time with people that I enjoy being around.

8:47If I do those three things, I had a good day. And so that's been my, you know, Alex's simple blueprint for doing things. And I think the point that you were making earlier, I think it's worth hitting on again, which is just that like most people's definition of work is a negative one, which is why they abhore it, which is also why they misunderstand so many people who quote, I'll say quote here, are successful or ahead of them or whatever, is that both people, one person says the word work and the other person hears the word pain. And so the first step to like becoming more successful is understanding the language that the people who are successful are using. They're actually defining the word differently. And so whatever that thing is that you actually enjoy doing where you lose track of time when you're in it, even if it's challenging, but usually it is challenging, right? Like it's not easy because then it's boring, right? Which is also why the uncertainty thing is so key, right? To not knowing if it's going to if it's going to work or not. You are going to work though either way. Um is that the people who are quote addicted to work make it easy to be addicted to work because they do things worth doing. And I think a lot of it is coming down to making sure that you take the few precious seconds that we have to do the few things that are worth doing for the rest of your life.

9:59How to avoid tons of problems in life. Go to bed on time. >> So I love these. I want to find single behaviors that have many positive outcomes. So if you think about leverage as what you get for the effort you put in. If you have lots of leverage, then it means you can do one thing and get many big outcomes, right? Or one very big outcome, that's high leverage. If you put a lot of work in and get a very little bit out of it, you have low leverage. And so the highest form of leverage I think of are what's one behavior or one skill that I can learn that then has many many downstream impacts. And so for, and this is specifically, I'll say for the the 20-ish year old, so 20 to 30, 20 to 35, if you can simply go to bed on time, you avoid drinking and getting in a DUI, you avoid early pregnancies, you avoid missing messing up your work because you don't sleep well, because uh you show up hung over the next day, and then you don't get the career advancement that you want, or you get the judgments from your co-workers from the fact that you're responsible. because you drink, even though it might have been responsible drinking, but you still smell like booze because it's in your system. If you go to bed on time, it's less likely that you'll get mugged.

11:16It's less likely you'll be in a car accident. Like, there's there's all of these downstream impacts from one single behavior. And you also have better quality sleep in general if you go to sleep at the same time every day over and over again. So, that means that you have life extension things that happen. You look younger. And so now 5 years, 10 years later, people are like, "Wow, you look so good for your eight." There's all of these things from one central behavior, which is just [ __ ] go to bed on time. And so if you want the action for this, you set your alarm for when you go to bed, not for when you wake up. If you set your alarm for when you go to bed, you will always be able to wake up naturally at whatever time you wake up. And it's very difficult to oversleep when you go to bed at 9:00 because you can get 8 hours of sleep and still be up by 5. Charlie Mer in one of his seinal 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? That'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."

12:28He'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." And 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 deal with this with, you know, people on their diets all the 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." And 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 because it's amazing how much smarter you can appear with 20 minutes of preparation.

13:57Like 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, because I always want to make sure that everyone always gets more for 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, but for me four hours is nothing. I counted hundreds, so this was irrelevant. And so I put took four hours 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 behind so you can execute it with your team." It was a bigger company and 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.

15:02I 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.

15:29And 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. Because 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 a 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?

16:19And then you do those things. What happens is you realize that it's actually not that hard because you've 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. You have a productivity hack, an easy productivity hack. Instead of spending time getting in the mood to work, just start working.

16:51Confront 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 2 hours later and nothing had actually gotten done, the moment you begin working is when your output per unit of time goes up.

17:32And 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 and 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 cuz a lot of people are like, "I want to complete it at this really nice clean point." Stop halfway through the sentence cuz it'll drive you mad. If you can't sit still, ignore notifications, and focus on one task for eight hours straight. Never expect to build anything great. And as uncomfortable as that is, it's also the truth. Like I I don't know a single incredibly successful entrepreneur that can't sit down and have hyperfocused periods of time, sometimes weekends, weeks at a time where they don't talk to anyone and they just hammer away. And it's whether they're coding for software or they're making some insane marketing campaign and all the email follow-ups and all the text follow-ups and and the affiliate uh you know, promotions and incentives or someone who's creating a product that they're designing and they're in the shop and they keep tweaking at it. Or there's somebody who's who's hypers scaling a company and saying, "I'm going to sit in 20 interviews a day for for seven days straight so I can hire 20 people this week because I need to get going."

19:13Right? Like if you can't sit still and ignore notifications and focus for a day, nothing great will get accomplished because it's not about what you want, it's about what's required. And it's and whether that's your best or not is irrelevant. It's just there's a price tag and you got to be willing to pay for it or you don't get the thing. And a lot of times it's not what you want. And I I I I spend a lot of time trying to dispel the concept of like follow your passion because I think it leads more people astray than it helps because it's very easy for someone who's successful who's already delegated tons of things to only then focus on their area of genius and then say here for my seat do what I do.

19:52But there's a very big difference between doing what someone does and doing what they did to get there. And I think this is what's lost in a lot of the content that I see in the entrepreneurial space. And to be clear, whenever I'm trying to get to the next level, I often have to take on things that I don't know how to do and I have to learn how to do them, which means I have to suck for a period of time. And sucking sucks. But the thing is is you have to be able to embrace that period of time and say like this is the cost of greatness. And so I'll give you something very tactical. So I have timers in a lot of my offices and my team has adopted this too, which is I like to time block, which is essentially saying how long do I think this is going to take? And you can do this on a week scale, you can do it on a daily level.

20:29It depends on the level of project you're tackling. But for me, even on the most micro level, I say, "Okay, how long should this take?" I'll then crank this thing. Boop. I think this should take 20 minutes. And then I hit start and I let the timer go. And if for whatever reason something distracts me, I pause it so that I know that I didn't actually work that period of time. And so what happens is it will give you a very real look at how long you're actually working versus how long you think you're working. and you tell other people working and you Instagram how long you're working. And as I've become more efficient at work, meaning my output per unit of time has gone up, I've realized that there's just been a significant decrease in the distractions that I allow to interrupt me. Again, if you want to stay focused, staying focused is not like zeroing in and saying, "I'm going to do it just like I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to just zoom in on this thing." It's more that focus occurs when you remove everything else. what's left is focus.

21:27And so Jerry Seinfeld has this uh this famous process that he talks about with writing and I think writers are also wonderful people for talking to for deep work because it's the nature of the work they do. One of the things that he did and he has done for years for his standup so he can script it out is that he locks himself in a room that has no windows and has nothing but a yellow notepad and a pen. And he tells himself that he has to go in that room and he doesn't have to write but he can't do anything else. And so what ends up happening is that writing occurs as a default. And so focus kind of works the same way. You eliminate everything else by to create focus. You don't try and push harder while also having these disruptions. So there's three easy ways that I make my phone less distracting.

22:10The first is I switch it to grayscale. And so grayscale decreases consumption across all people by 30%ish. And that's researchbacked. It's pretty cool. The second thing is turning off all notifications across all apps on your phone because you never want your app to be dictating when it's convenient for the app to disrupt you. Like, how ridiculous is that? But we let apps have that permission. Most phones and people want to push notifications to you. I want to pull them when it's convenient for me. The third thing is other people.

22:43And so I have a mode on my phone where no one can get through. And when I do that, then I can reach out to them when it's convenient for me. Because if it's actually an emergency, call 911. And if it's not a true emergency, then it can wait. And my team wanted to remind me that I don't email. I heard in uh I think it was like 2016 that Bill Clinton didn't use email. And I was like, if he's the president, he doesn't use email, I cannot use email. And so uh my team doesn't contact me via email. And so if you can eliminate entire channels, that's also an easier way to concentrate uh fewer flows of communication. You want to achieve a goal, you're either going to have to accept boredom or pain.

23:24And the bigger the goal, the more of both you'll get. When I started my gym, I actually lived with six other people in one house. This is like off of beach town. Think like sand everywhere, people everywhere, dirty dishes everywhere, not enough room and refrigerator for food. Cooking was an absolute mess. Almost all of them had dogs. So, a couple had two dogs, another couple had one dog, another guy had a dog. Four different dogs in the house. And they were like all marking territory. It was horrendous. And I was splitting one room with a guy with a like two beds. My bed was on the floor. His bed was, you know, elevated cuz he uh he could afford that at the time. And I would sleep with a fan on my face. I couldn't hear anything. That was my secret. Like is the fan like you there's like the wind over like that's all I could hear. The thing is is like I was doing that when I was making like 20 grand a month take home. There's always trade-offs and the trade-off for me of living in that condition was that I could invest in the dream and build the business that I had at the time. Now I could look back cuz I ended up losing everything, you know, a few years later. You know, you get this negative cycle of like all of that suffering was for nothing. But it wasn't for nothing because I learned all these skills along the way. You also can't operate from the perspective of like I might lose it all in the future which means everything I do today is not worth anything because like you're going to lose 100% of everything the moment you die. So trying to say that you might lose something in the future is a reason not to do something is ridiculous.

24:45You're going to lose everything at some point. You cannot wish for both strong character and an easy life because the price of one is the other. When I think about pain, I think about what thing am I paying for right now? And is that thing something that I want? And if so, it reframes the pain as the price of the thing that I want. This is super interesting is they've done research on this where they have somebody who like accepts like shocks. They can like opt out at any point. If you have the same man who's getting shocked and then you tell that man in the other room, every shock he takes, his family doesn't have to take. his threshold of pain like quadruples. This may seem like some quote mindset whatever. But the thing is is like the bigger your goals, the more pain you're going to endure. Whether you want to or not, it's the price. And if you can endure four times more pain than someone else, I don't actually think that it feels four times more painful. I think it feels the same level of pain, but you have this padding that makes it feel worth it. Give a man a purpose and the ability to achieve it and he will crawl over broken glass with a smile.

25:51That broken glass, like how can you have a smile during the pain, it's because of what the pain itself represents. Now, I'm going to get get a little bit into behavior because I think it's it's valuable. I talk a lot about reward and punishment, but those are kind of more colloquial terms. When it comes down to behavior, it's actually reinforcers. A reinforcer can be negative, meaning it can be something that's aversive. So, for example, if I know that every time I hit my hand with a hammer, I'm going to grow muscle, hitting my hand with a hammer or taking the shock for my family means something positive, which is that I'm protecting my family, I'm helping my country, I'm I'm doing something that I deem meaningful. The pain itself can become a positive reinforcer because, you know, you're making progress towards the thing you want. Now, you might think of that and be like, well, I don't want to have the pain. The thing is is that when you're going through it, if you have this frame, it isn't as painful. In a lot of ways, it's like we are our own sculpture that we are working on. And as we chisel away, we also get to reveal the type of person that we want to become, the traits and the behaviors and the belief sets that go with the man or woman that we're trying to trying to grow into. And so, I wrote this story, I want to say a year ago, maybe two years ago, that related to this that I just want to share with you. So, imagine you're talking to the creator of the universe about the person that you want to become. And so you say, you know, I want to be courageous. And the creator replies, then I will give you monsters that terrify you. That way you can conquer them. And you say, well, I want to be patient. And the creator replies, then I will make you work harder and longer and nothing will come easy to you. That way you can learn to wait. Or like, okay, well, I want to be wise. And so the creator says, then I will give you failures that will crush your spirit. That way you can learn the value of judgment. Then you say, that sounds like a hard life. Can you give me a good life? And the critter replies, "Just like we measure the quality of a blacksmith by the strength of his steel, I measure you by what you are at the end, not the fire and the hammer that it took to make you. A good life isn't an easy life. A good life makes you into a good person. And that, my child, is a hard life. It's about who we become doing the work more than the outcome from the work itself." And I love this, and this is a reframing of Proverbs, but the works on you more than you work on it. Like in all labor, there is profit.

27:59Meaning we always benefit from work. Even if the thing that we work on gets destroyed, even if you went bankrupt, even if you know that relationship didn't work out, even if that partnership falls apart, the work you did is eternal because it changes you. For those of you who don't know who are new to my channel, I lost everything five years into my entrepreneurial journey and then I made a little bit more and then I lost it all again. But the thing is is that I had this idea that, oh, I have to start from scratch again. But that's not true because you can only start from scratch once. Every time after that, you start with an experience. A man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an opinion. And you transition from the second to the first, the moment you begin working because you're no longer somebody who has an opinion. And as soon as you know what that truth is, because you've been there and you've actually done it and you have the scars to show for it, then their opinions matter significantly less. I'll give you a different reframe that I've had for redefining pain as it relates to other people, which is you can summarize just about every hateful comment on the internet into one thing. He lives his life in a way that I would not prefer.

29:14That's it. Everything is he lives his life in a way that I would not prefer. To which I respond, yes, I do live my life in a way that most people would not prefer and they live their life in a way that I would not prefer. And that is why it is their life and they can live their life the way that they want to live their life, the way they prefer it. And I will live my life the way that I prefer it. They cast these stones at you as though it matters. My dad told me this when he was going through his divorce. He said he went through this like divorce conference and the the speaker on stage said to somebody in the audience, he said, "Hey, here's a ball." and he threw it to him and he said, "Okay, throw it back to me." So he caught the ball. He said, "Now I want you to imagine that this ball is a steaming hot pile of and he threw it to the person again and the person caught it." He said, "Why would you catch it?" And so the lesson of that is just because someone hurls at you doesn't mean you need to catch it. You don't need to choose to participate. And I thought that was a really interesting frame. People can hurl whatever they want. It doesn't mean that they have justified a response or that you need to accept it. and that little reframe of, oh, I live my life in a way that other people would not prefer. Well, that makes sense. I'm not trying to live the same life as them, [laughter] so of course. And then they say, he made trade-offs that I would not make. And I say, of course, of course I did. Why is this why is this somehow an insult? When I was making those trades in the earlier days, I didn't know when I would be successful or if I would be successful.

30:33The only thing that I knew for sure was that I wasn't going to stop. And that was it. I know I can just not stop. And that's something that I can commit to and that's controllable. I think a lot of the big gift of hardship is that it doesn't define you, it reveals you. The benefit is that you get to see who you really are and you make that decision yourself every day. I have this perspective on loyalty which is that like you cannot say that you are loyal until your loyalty is tested. You cannot say you're patient until your patience is tested. Otherwise, it's an opinion, not an experience. You can't say that you handle hardship and that you are emotionally resilient until you've had something to be emotionally resilient about. The gift of the hard time is to give you proof of who you are so that the rest of your life you get to know that you did that and you get to tell that story and relive that story to yourself for the rest [snorts] of your life. And to me that gives the hardship memory dividends that pay forever until the day you die. I'll tell you a story.

31:30So I went to a school in the SEC and you know some of the SEC schools are renowned for hazing and and and aggressive stuff and so I I was you know going to join a fraternity and you know obviously they uh they you know build up how hard you know pledging is going to be and all this stuff right and I called my dad to to talk about it and he just said remember there is nothing that they can do to you that is harder than what you've already been through and it was a great reframe because I remember the times you know like when you know things would be quote hard during that that season of pledging and I would just think about the things that I had already survived the things that I had already been through at that point and it made what they believed to be suffering appear childish. I was like this is cute. But for the people who were present in the moment rather than being able to relive through their memory dividends using it as a shield for my emotional affect during the moment was like all right I have these eight weeks where I have to stand here before you apparently give me a stamp of approval. Fine then I will do that. I live my life in ways that you would not prefer. [laughter] And that carried me a pretty long way.

32:34You know, a fun frame with that is when someone says, "Must be nice." You can just say, "Yeah, it is." Or someone says, "Man, you must have exceptional genetics to have the body you have." And it just happens so easily for you. And you're like, "Yeah, it's sweet." And the thing is is that if we think if we were to just say like if we lean into it, right, to some degree, by leaning into it, you also eliminate a competitor. if you want to hear my my ugly side because if I just affirm the fact that they think it happened overnight or that it was genetic or whatever

33:10>> makes it more out of reach, >> right? >> Yeah. I've thought, dude, I've thought about this. So, this is such a good point. Such a good point that somebody telling you going David Gogggins mode and somebody saying, "This is how hard I had to work to achieve this thing. Look at how hard I had to go through and look at all of the setbacks I had and look at just how in the red I was before I got to the black before I got to the green. Just look at all of these things. People see that as a threat. People see that as a humble brag. But what it is is a treasure map.

33:44This is where I was and this is where I went. And me with all of my inefficiencies and deficiencies and setbacks got from there to here. You aren't even as far into the red as I was. So all of the talk I I understand why Hustle Pawn kind of gets a cringe push back from the world, but what it actually should be is an unbelievably empowering message that anybody can get from wherever they are to wherever you are.

34:11The much more disempowering one was, "Yeah, man. It, you know, it just comes to me easily." So yeah, if you really want to [ __ ] somebody up, tell them that it's ineffable. tell them that it's ethereal and astral and you can't get here. >> One of my favorite ways to help someone overcome an excuse or a limiting belief is to tell them I believe them. And so if I'm like, "Hey, why don't you double your prices?" And then they give four reasons why they can't double your their prices. And then I'll say, "Then you'll fail forever."

34:48And then they're like, "Well, no, because X, Y, and Z." And it's like, "Great. Glad we got there." [laughter] >> That's like your thing about only one person can be in the angry boat. One person can only be in the negative boat. >> Yeah. It work. It's unbelievable how powerful that is. Um what's interesting about a lot of the discontent that we have around how people judge our success or achievement is that we have this unspoken demand that they have a visceral understanding of everything that we went through without having been there. And the problem with that is that if they understood everything, then they would have a complete understanding of how to do it themselves. And so it's making an impossible demand of strangers to somehow be successful already so that they can appreciate our success.

35:44>> Also removing your competitive advantage. [laughter] And so it's interesting, this is just for everyone who's listening, is that Chris, you can probably attest to this, is that um of the people that I've met in my life who've been extremely successful at any endeavor, there's this kind of and I want to make a video about this, but it's what people say in the back room. And there are these common things that we say to one another that other people wouldn't believe. So, we're like, they just don't get how much actual work it is to do a podcast like this. PE like you don't actually get that what 100 hours of preparation for one 1-hour event looks like. you you can understand it conceptually, but when you actually set a timer and you only use that timer and you pause it when you stop working and you do 100 hours of work, all of a sudden by the end of that 100 hours, you have a very different understanding to the very granular level of what it takes to be great at anything.

36:50And that's a 100 hours, not 10,000 hours, but 100 hours with feedback. And so everyone's like in the back room. They want this magic pill. They want to they want to know the secret. But there is no secret. It's just hard work. But I think the thing that everyone who's who's listening lacks is the context on how hard hard work is. Not in that it's complex, but just in that it's a continuous and unending focus on one thing and noticing the details that separate mediocrity from greatness. And if you're like, I don't know what the difference between those two things is, that is the opportunity that hard work reveals. Is that it takes watching 10 hours of you presenting and then taking notes at every time that you say um or that a transition between slides is unclean or that the audience kind of gets lost there because I can see that there's no reactions to that. I should probably add a visual there. And then when you go slide by slide realizing that, okay, I can put a thousand slides together for 90 minutes of presenting if I really put one thought with one visual per slide. And every one of them, and I love this description, is like a coat of paint. It's like you just put another coat of paint on the skill set or the achievement that you're working towards.

38:06And most people expect that the pencil wireframe that they do on their first shot is hard work because that's the hardest they've worked, not the amount of hard work that is required in order to get the level of outcome that they say they want or that they expect. And so there's a divorce in reality because they don't have the context from which to make a judgment because they've never been great at anything. And until you get great because as soon as you get great at one thing, you realize just the tremendous amount of hours and work that it takes to be great at one thing and then there's this oh [ __ ] moment that I can express personally which is you realize that there's so few things that you can be great at and then the discipline comes down to saying what are the two or three things that I can be really good at in my life because it will take me five to seven years to be exceptional at this one thing. And so like even like making content, a lot of people see my stuff now, but I just had a friend send me a video that he interviewed me before I made any other videos and I showed I sent it to my team and uh he was like, "Dude, I I watched it and he was like and it was you but then I like I covered the face and it he was like I mean it's your voice but he's like your clarity of thinking wasn't there and the way that you articulated and the thing is is it's it's uh if to the untrained guy to a beginner. They look at that video and they look at my current videos and say, "I don't get why he blew up because it's the same dude."

39:38But the master or the expert level can say, "I can give you a hundred different things that could have been better about his now or his old videos compared to his now videos." And it's the granularity of that feedback that allows you to see the discrepancy between your current and your desired. And I think that once you actually give yourself the reality glasses, not the wo is me glasses, but think, "No, really, if I had to do this, what are what are all of the things that I would have to improve?" Then you see how incredibly long that list is? And then you take this deep breath and that list is the hard work. It's starting at the top and then wanting to cross the first one off after your first day, but then realizing you still haven't done it well enough to cross it off and you're like, "Wait, I have to do another day and I still haven't quote made a dent in this list." And then you do it another day and a third day and a fifth day and a fifth week. And then all of a sudden you're like, "Okay, I think I've got the first one done." And then you still look at this list, but along the way of doing that first one, you realize 20 other things that you could add to that list.

40:44For every one that you cross off, you create 10 more because you start to win in the weeds. You start to look at a higher resolution. And that's the neverending cycle of excellence. I I remember in a lot of excruciating detail what it took me to get here. Um, but I will say that I had a ruthless focus on dollars per hour. And so, and I'm just giving tactical advice right now, but everything that I could trade away for more time doing the thing that made me money was what I did. And so, I remember the first time I made a $500 sale and it took me 30 minutes. And I was like, every hour of every day, this is what I am going to do. And anything that is not talking to someone in exchange for them giving me a credit card so that I can charge it and make $500. Anything that makes me less than $250 per hour or per per 30 minutes, I'm giving to somebody else. And so after that first sale, I was like, I'm never cooking again. I'm never going grocery shopping again. I'm not cleaning again.

41:52Cuz I knew that in one sale, I could pay for that person for the month. And so like as like the ruthless focus on what can I do that creates an input to output being money equation and me at least for me it was pouring everything I possibly could into the input and eliminating everything else. I made this video on Facebook before I was quote Alex Ramoszi years ago when I still had six gyms before I even did the turnarounds and I I made this video almost as documentation but I said so I want to open up my 7th 8th 9th and 10th location and I have the spots picked out and I'm already working all of the hours that I'm awake and I've already given up Saturdays. So the only thing that I have left is like Sundays and evenings.

42:42And so I am no longer going to be watching any football and I'm no longer going to have Netflix at all and that is what I'm giving up for 7 8 9 and 10. And I remember just making this video of like that's what I'm sacrificing. And I think a lot of people create these to-do lists when in my experience, it's been so much more useful to write down all the things that I'm willing to sacrifice. Because if you sacrifice everything, there's nothing left than to do the one thing that matters. And I think Jerry Seinfeld talks about this from a writing perspective. He says that every day, no matter what, he sits down and he writes for two hours. Now, he doesn't have to write, but he's not allowed to do anything else. And so he can sit there, but there's nothing else to do except for write jokes.

43:30And so I think a lot about that from the climb perspective, which is like most of everyone who's listening to this who isn't achieving what they want is [ __ ] with their time. They think that they're spending all their time working. But your output, like you don't even know how to work. I'm being really real with you. Like you think you know how to work. You don't know how to work. Like the amount of output like and I I'll measure this by like what is your output? It's probably not as high as you think. And so rather than trying to learn all these productivity hacks, the ultimate productivity hack is no.

43:59N O is you stop doing [ __ ] And then when you create space, then you can fill it with the thing that matters. But trying to add on more to your schedule of all the things that you're not willing to sacrifice is the very reason that you're not doing what you need to do. If you can't sit still, ignore notifications, and focus on one task for 8 hours straight, never expect to build anything great. And as uncomfortable as that is, it's also the truth. Like I I don't know a single incredibly successful entrepreneur that can't sit down and have hyperfocused periods of time, sometimes weekends, weeks at a time, where they don't talk to anyone and they just hammer away. And it's whether they're coding for software or they're making some insane marketing campaign and all the email follow-ups and all the text follow-ups and and the affiliate uh you know promotions and incentives or someone who's creating a product that they're designing and they're in the shop and they keep tweaking at it. Or there's somebody who's who's hypers scaling a company and saying I'm going to sit in 20 interviews a day for for seven days straight so I can hire 20 people this week because I need to get going. Right? Like if you can't sit still and ignore notifications and focus for a day, nothing great will get accomplished because it's not about what you want, it's about what's required. And it's and whether that's your best or not is irrelevant. It's just there's a price tag and you got to be willing to pay for it or you don't get the thing. And a lot of times it's not what you want. And I I I I spend a lot of time trying to dispel the concept of like follow your passion because I think it leads more people astray than it helps because it's very easy for someone who's successful who's already delegated tons of things to only then focus on their area of genius and then say here for my seat do what I do. But there's a very big difference between doing what someone does and doing what they did to get there. And I think this is what's lost in a lot of the content that I see in the entrepreneurial space.

45:49And to be clear, whenever I'm trying to get to the next level, I often have to take on things that I don't know how to do and I have to learn how to do them, which means I have to suck for a period of time. And sucking sucks. But the thing is is you have to be able to embrace that period of time and say like this is the cost of greatness. And so I'll give you something very tactical. So I have timers in a lot of my offices and my team has adopted this too, which is I like to time block, which is essentially saying how long do I think this is going to take? And you can do this on a week scale, you can do it on a daily level. It depends on the level of project you're tackling, but for me, even on the most micro level, I say, "Okay, how long should this take?" I'll then crank this thing. Boop. I think this should take 20 minutes. And then I hit start and I let the timer go. And if for whatever reason something distracts me, I pause it so that I know that I didn't actually work that period of time. And so what happens is it will give you a very real look at how long you're actually working versus how long you think you're working. and you tell other people working and you Instagram how long you're working. And as I've become more efficient at work, meaning my output per unit of time has gone up, I've realized that there's just been a significant decrease in the distractions that I allow to interrupt me. Again, if you want to stay focused, staying focused is not like zeroing in and saying, "I'm going to do it just like I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to just zoom in on this thing." It's more that focus occurs when you remove everything else. what's left is focus.

47:15And so Jerry Seinfeld has this uh this famous process that he talks about with writing and I think writers are also wonderful people for talking to for deep work because it's the nature of the work they do. One of the things that he did and he has done for years for his standup so he can script it out is that he locks himself in a room that has no windows and has nothing but a yellow notepad and a pen. And he tells himself that he has to go in that room and he doesn't have to write but he can't do anything else. And so what ends up happening is that writing occurs as a default. And so focus kind of works the same way. You eliminate everything else by to create focus. You don't try and push harder while also having these disruptions. So there's three easy ways that I make my phone less distracting.

47:58The first is I switch it to grayscale. And so grayscale decreases consumption across all people by 30%ish. And that's researchbacked. It's pretty cool. The second thing is turning off all notifications across all apps on your phone because you never want your app to be dictating when it's convenient for the app to disrupt you. Like how ridiculous is that? But we let apps have that permission. Most phones and people want to push notifications to you. I want to pull them when it's convenient for me. The third thing is other people.

48:31And so I have a mode on my phone where no one can get through. And when I do that, then I can reach out to them when it's convenient for me. Because if it's actually an emergency, call 911. And if it's not a true emergency, then it can wait. And my team wanted to remind me that I don't email. I heard in uh I think it was like 2016 that Bill Clinton didn't use email. And I was like, if he's the president, he doesn't use email, I cannot use email. And so uh my team doesn't contact me via email. And so if you can eliminate entire channels, that's also an easier way to concentrate uh fewer flows of communication.

49:08>> I own uh three gyms in Los Angeles. We're working on our fourth gym. >> Okay. >> We do 2 million bucks in revenue. Um I'd love to be at 4 million bucks in the next three years. Um, I think what's stopping me is just like patience and staying in the game long enough and continuing to just keep the faith. Like if I've learned anything from here, we're all going to have like bottlenecks and constraints that unique to our business that we need to fix and we know it. And also just in the round tables like listening to the folks that you have here, like it was never like, oh, we hired this person and they solved it.

49:47at least at like my revenue number, it was always like they like they figured it out like it's in here or it's like it's in here. Um, and I think back to like when you were talking about yesterday with gym launch and being in a dark place wanted to get out of the business, but then you guys, you know, what ended up becoming the the valley ex accelerator model, but in your darkest days, you figured out like what that was going to be and like look where that set you up to now. But like in those darker moments or when you just didn't want to do the work, like how did you keep the faith and then like do you just constantly keep moving the goalpost or does that feeling just never go away?

50:24>> Um I think the honest truth of it is I don't have many alternatives that I enjoy more than business. And so I've kind of I have a relatively bleak perspective. And so if you have a a worldview that's working for you, ignore what I'm about to say. Um, but for me, I kind of just take the the the the premise of life is that life is suffering. And so suffering is a constant. And so if I don't do anything, which I did take a year off during the sale, um, I was miserable. And when I'm growing a business, I'm also miserable.

51:01It's just different. And when a business is plateauing and we can't move forward because we're constrained for whatever reason, I'm also miserable. And so whether we're shrinking, I'm doing nothing, we're growing, we're plateauing, misery is just a constant. And so I'm being real. And so then um I mean the frame that I had has always been, and I'm being crude on purpose, so I apologize, but like I was 19 years old when I decided that [ __ ] happiness was my was kind of going to be my mantra. Um because I was so dissatisfied with the fact that I could never feel like I was happy. And so then I was like I shifted to like, well, I'll just be useful. And that has served me really well in my life is like if I can just be useful.

51:39It's an interesting um goal because when you're useful, it's inherently a serviceoriented goal because you have to be useful to someone, but it also gives you something to do because in order to be useful to someone, you have to learn stuff. And so for me, continuing to play the game has just gotten me better at playing the game. And whenever I get sad or whenever I'm, you know, going through a hard time, like right now, this is the hardest year I've had in the last eight years. So, this is a local minimum for me. Um, I actually ranked my last 13 years and this is, uh, the fifth worst year I've had. Um, but the worst year out of the last eight. So, you know, haven't had it this bad in a minute. Um, but it is helpful to remember that like, you know, when I lost everything one year twice, that was my second worst year. The worst year was the first year I started my business. And so, like everything's relative. I have problems now. They are better problems than I used to have, but they are problems nonetheless.

52:31>> And so the um the perspective that I have is what else am I going to do? And if there's a day that I find out that there's something that I could do that I enjoy more than what I do now, then I will do that immediately. But there's um there's a really interesting thing. It's kind of a Buddhist philosophy, which is that um in all suffering there is you have suffering because there is capacity for joy.

52:57So, one can't exist without the other because the opposite of joy is apathy, not suffering. It's a thin line. It's like when you love someone and you hate them, it can happen really fast. But you don't go from love to apathy overnight. And so, um, I have suffered in the game because I also have great moments, you know, that occur within it. And so, um, for me, everything always gets boiled down to behavior, which is kind of my overarching frame for understanding reality. is that boiling everything down to what will I do and how does this affect what I do. And so what I found is that a lot of the the suffering that that I experience is actually entirely in my mind. And so for example, let's say I make a bad business decision and I lose $17 million in cash, which I just did. Um which sucked. And when that happened, I was like, "Okay, that sucked. Um what does this change about my life? I eat the same food. I'm married to the same girl. I work the same job. I have the same team. I come to the same building. I live in the same city. Nothing has changed about my life besides the idea that there was a number that no longer is there. And so that means that all the suffering is optional. It's voluntary. I'm choosing to decide that I'm going to suffer with this. But in terms of how my life has changed, it has changed zero. And what's interesting is that the more or rather the less you change your lifestyle in accordance with your business success, the more resilient you are because it means that fewer things ever change anything about your life.

54:26>> Can you say that again? >> So if you don't change your lifestyle as your business becomes more successful and makes more money, then if it becomes less successful momentarily or you have some sort of volatility in the business, if your baseline is here, the volatility up here doesn't change anything. So, it's almost like making your anchor hundred 100 feet below the surface of the water. And so, the choppiness of the waves doesn't matter. But, if it's really important for you to get these tiny blips that happen with the waves at the top of the surface, you do get higher highs, but you also will experience the crashing of the waves.

54:57But if you're just always at the bottom of the ocean, then you're like, you can barely hear it. And so, that is kind of how I focus my attention, which is number one, what does this change about my life? And then number two, what am I going to do instead? And so the answer to that question has almost never been change what I'm doing. It's always like well I will learn and I will get better. And the thing is is that like knowing that suffering has been a constant at every chapter of business for me. Um you guys cool with me talking about this? All right.

55:29>> So what's really weird about humans is that we have you probably have heard of like hyonic adaptation, right? So like you you can only eat so much cake. you'd only, you know, enjoy so much pleasure before you get used to it really quickly, right? What's really interesting about that is we actually have the same thing in reverse, which is that we actually adapt to suffering as well. But then why does suffering still hurt? And so just like pleasure, if you want to make someone suffer or if you want to punish someone effectively, then you need to change the intensity and variety of punishment, just like you need to change the intensity and variety of pleasure in order to keep the kind of the hyonic cycle going. And so what's nasty about business is that it's very good at changing the intensity and variety of punishment. It's like there I didn't know I could [ __ ] up that way.

56:14[laughter] Wow, what an experience. I'm so grateful for this. Because the thing is the second time you get screwed by an employee, it doesn't hurt as much. The second time you get sued, you're like, "Okay, it's another one of these." Um, and so what's difficult about business is that if you stay in the same vein, it does become less painful because there are fewer things that are outside of the realm that you haven't already experienced. But you also don't get the hedonic pleasures of the novelty of growth. And so you miss out on both sides. And that's why there's both joy and suffering and growth.

56:44>> Do you feel like in the mentors that you've had and the people that you've talked to that are further along the way that they have that same operating perspective or is this unique to you? >> I think everyone has whatever whatever whatever their motus operandum is. So for me, this is what has worked. And so this is by no means, you know, like my content is never is never a sermon. It's always just a documentary. This is what worked for me. If you have something that works for you, by all means do it. Um, but I would say like I've never I've never strove striven um to win the award for happiest guy. I've never claimed to have that title. I I think if anything I've struggled a lot more on nihilism of why bother? Um I would say that that's the thing that I struggle the most with in my life is like I don't need to do any of this. I really don't. And some people say that I really don't need to do this. Um, and I do it because um, I want to be useful and so like that gives me some inkling of meaning and so I chase that. But I definitely have bad days. Um, and I'm definitely in a season right now where it's tougher for me. But [snorts]

57:45>> it's just a game. >> Yeah. Well, I speak on behalf of everybody here. You made a big difference for all of our lives. So, >> go for it. >> Yeah. I'm curious since your conversation with Tony Robbins, what's one if if you have one, what's one behavior that you've changed in your own life since that talk? >> I would say that the the big goal that I stated at the end is something that my behavior has already been aligned with for a long time. Um, but I thought three things that I think it was missing. So, one is that I have to have a way to measure it. Not saying, oh, 100,000 guys or whatever, that's obvious, but more like a how do you know you've succeeded? So, for example, with Tony's goal, he talks about feeding x amount of people, but he measures that and I have delivered this food. Very easy to quantify. Much more difficult for me to have a guy text me and say, I now have $100,000 in my bank account.

58:31And so, I've been thinking through ways to have a feedback loop from that perspective. Now, obviously, school, we can see people's revenue. So, I do have a component of that that's there. That's one. The second was how can I um and I and I think I asked this on the on the pod and he gave some some answer around it but was um how can I increase my emotional tie to the outcome. Right now I have my my own history of like I remember going from 0 to $100,000 and that being the most significant moment for me. I still to this day have never felt richer than I did in that moment.

59:02Um and so it's like I would like to live to deliver that moment for a lot of guys because I think that's you know good. Um, but trying to machine that in a way and I I don't actually have an answer for this, but my my stated objective is that I would like to figure out more ways to drive an emotional connection to the outcome, right? I mean, a handful of you guys have already come up today being like, "Hey, um, you know, my man from Hungary uh was like, "Hey, uh, I watched your stuff and it's changed my life and I've now been able to make an income and it's like everything's awesome." Um, and I don't know how that mixes with the hedonic adaptation wheel. I don't know.

59:41He seems to be okay with it or he says he is and that he feels every one of them. I don't know. I'm not inside of Tony. Um, that sounded worse than I thought it did. Um, >> what the [ __ ] is a heonic epipure? If you do anything like you get used to anything, you adapt. >> Okay. Okay. >> Yeah. A hedonist is someone who's like likes pleasure and if you do enough of a pleasurable thing eventually get used to it. It stops being cool. If you have a fivestar dinner once a month, it's important. If you do it every night, it stops being interesting. You adapt.

1:00:08>> I see. Okay. Yeah. So getting bored kind of. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Like the stimulus basically stops being >> a big a big peak, right? >> Got it. >> So I don't know the answer to that one, but that's the second thing that I think was missing. Um, and then the third and this is just something that I discovered with the launch is that I am the most motivated and I don't really lack motivation but the the thing where I feel like the whole team was motivated too uh was when there was big stakes, right? So when everybody knew internally that we were trying to do $100 million launch and do it in the weekend and break the record, there was just this very there's just this huge amount of energy towards that goal. Now you can't do that forever because you unlock discretionary effort past a certain point. people do experience burnout and so it has to be waxes and wes you have to you know ramp up and then kind of cool down for a minute. Um but I think if I I'm trying to think about how I can how I can tie stakes to it. So the most tactically relevant one that's closest is like the measurable component and that's something that I'm working I encourage people to do something called the 12 by30. All right so it's it's very simple and it's actually not as unsustainable as people would think. You work 12 hours a day for 30 days straight no weekends. By the last day you realize one you aren't made of glass. two, how much more you could be [music] working.

1:01:17Three, how much faster you could be achieving your goals. Four, how much you could be getting better every single day. Five, [music] you don't need to work like this forever. But if you need to do it for a season or for a reason sometime in the future, you've got that gear in you. And six, there are people who are working more than you, who are beating you. And you get all of those lessons for the low price of getting more done in a month than you probably did last quarter. And so everyone and like of course you've got one you know one side of people who are like I work more than this now and of course they don't. They obviously don't. And the thing is is that people are like well I work like that but I take a couple days off right that's the point is that you have to push through it. Now can you work 16 by 30? Sure if you want to you're welcome to work more than that cuz I've found that working 6 to 6 is kind of like what I do every day anyways. I'm on 12 by 100 you know in terms of how I think about working.

1:02:04There's plenty of days that I work 15, 16 hour days cuz I get here at 5 or 6 and then sometimes we have an event, there's some dinner, things like that afterwards and ends at 9:00. And that's where you have to be on, not just at the office, not just in front of your computer, but people actually demanding things of you on a regular basis all the time, being on camera. And I'll tell you that there are levels to this. Like working alone for a full day is not as exhausting as being on stage for a full day, being on camera for a full day. Because every second that you are not peak, you are losing. You can take a break while you're working alone. You can't take a break when you're on stage, when you're meeting customers, when you're making content, like right like every m minute that is not recorded is basically a minute wasted. There's a whole team here behind this camera, right? That is making this stuff for you and I'm costing them every second I'm not showing up. I remember there was a period, a season of my life where I think I had like nine straight uh months of this and it was not 12, it was 15, 16 because I had to wake up at 4 to get to the gym where I was at the gym, but I'd wake up at 4:00 and then I would get the the class ready. I'd open the gym doors at 4:30, would start the classes at 5:00, and the last class at night would end. It would be a 7:00 class. It would end at 8:00. And then at 8, I would then do billing. I'd reach out to old customers. I would confirm lead appointments for the next day. all that sometimes until 10, 11 at night and then I'd wake up again at 4:00. And so I don't know what the hours are there, but it's more than 12. And I did that for 9 months straight. And I used to describe it as the kind of tired a good night's sleep couldn't fix. It was like it was tired. It was deeper than like a one sleep. I needed like weeks to like basically come back to normal. And the thing is is that I think it is valuable because you have to learn that you have that gear. I think that that gives you supreme confidence when you're entering any new endeavor because you know that you have acquired the trade of being relentless that you do not relent. You do not let up. You do not stop until you get what you want. And you know that you can push through being tired or being underslept or being overwhelmed because you realize that you didn't die and that you've done this before. And so the difference between the newbie and the veteran is that the veteran looks on something and looks back on what they have done to get to that point and says, "I've seen this before. This is another one of those." And that's why they don't have the anxiety. That's why they don't have the stress. That's so when they get on stage, they crush it. That's when they the high pressure situation, they still breathe normally. Their heartbeat doesn't go up because they have done it before. And the only way that you can get to the point where you can say you've done it before is to do it now.

1:04:22Entrepreneurship is far more a war of the heart than it is a war of the mind. Like we can understand what we should do. We just don't do it. And I think that's why um we are so much better at giving advice than we are at following it. So most people if they just followed their own advice they'd be successful, [laughter] right? And so um with this kind of valley of despair, I call it um niche slapping. It's like don't make me niche slap you, [laughter] which is like when you have three things going on, it's like let me like slap you into just picking one. Because the thing is is that any of them can work, but none of them will work unless you pick only one. M

1:05:00>> because it's actually in my opinion an exercise in arrogance to assume that you doing three things is somehow going to beat somebody who's doing one and I can promise you the competitor who is going to beat you is only doing that one thing and you think a third of your time is going to beat theirs. No, it's not going to I think it's arrogant. And so there's actually like an under there's like an underpinning of ego underneath of this. And I say this as somebody who did this. So like when I had the launch business, I also had my six gyms. I also had a chiropractor agency and I also had a dental agency. And so I would introduce myself and like, "Oh, I own lots of companies." But I think one of the biggest misconceptions when you're an entrepreneur is not understanding the difference between being an owner and being the CEO. And so they might hear that you have a portfolio. They might hear that I have a portfolio and be like, "Okay, well, they have a portfolio, so I must model that. That guy's tall. I should play basketball."

1:05:49Doesn't work that way, right? I should be So if I want to be rich, I should fly private. Doesn't work that way, right? Um it's conflating order. And so we must do these things in order uh to get the outcome. We have to concentrate on only one thing in order to get the outsized return. And that spreading of attention, especially when you're newer in the entrepreneurial career, it's like you already don't know so many things. How do you now want to have three sets of unknowns that you want to try and conquer at the same time? And the the fallacy of thinking is that I'm going to try all of them and see which one works, but none of them will work because you're waiting to see which one will work. Because you can force in my opinion, you can force one thing to work. Provided like I'm just I'm going to just assume basics like you're selling you're not selling $5 bills for $4. Like you know the normal economics of a business like if if if a real estate business exists, there are other people making money. There are hair salon businesses where people are making money. There are lawn mowing business where people are making money. You can make money in all of them. You just can't make money in all of them.

1:06:52>> Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. At the same And it's when you walked in today and you sat down on the chair, I said like what's going on with you professionally? I remember what you said. You said more of the same and better, >> which clearly comes from your wisdom. [laughter] My infinite wisdom, right? >> Well, it's just from from from from suffering. Um the the the woes of this like the biggest entrepreneurial mistakes I've made in my career have all come from splitting my attention. Every one of them. Like every single one of them.

1:07:22Like I talked about how I had the e-commerce business that I bolted onto my to my licensing company. I should not have done that. As soon as I did that, my my revenue started slowing down in its growth. >> Why did you? because I was add like I just I was like, "Oh my, I don't want to leave money on the table and I want to I want to be so violent about this." You are always going to leave money on the table. That is the result of focus. But you're you're leaving a small amount of money on the table to pursue the much larger money that's on another table of just sticking with the thing that you're on right now. Because compounding, if I were to show a chart here, it's like if you're at year three of your thing and you want to think about moving to year zero of a new thing, you have to compare maybe year zero of a new thing grows faster, but it has to grow faster than year 3 to four of the thing that you're on right now. And I think that's the people will compare year 0 to year zero, but not year four to year zero. And the thing is is you actually we have a linear life.

1:08:21And so we that is it's an unfair but true comparison of the opportunity cost. And every exceptionally um successful entrepreneur that I know has just stuck with one thing for such an inordinate amount of time. And I think there's a quote by um I want to say Shane Parish, but he said um success is doing the obvious thing for an extraordinary period of time without believing that you're smarter than you are. [laughter] Yeah. And it's just like you we we know what we need to do and comp so we don't need to make our lives more complex. Complexity will come with scale. I promise. And so just simply trying to do more of what you're already doing well is already hard enough. Don't add anything else. And so like if you need to write some sort of commitment of like I'm just going to stick with this then do that. But the what happens is when we were talking about the levels earlier about like beating the bosses. So what happens is you know how to beat boss one through three of of the game. And so then you just say, "Okay, well I'm just going to start the game over and beat boss I this time it's going to be different." But then you just get to level three again and then you're stuck again. And so people will just keep getting up to level three and new and new and and new endeavors over and over again because they never learn how to get past that boss. And so you just have to confront the uncertainty of knowing that you don't know how to do it, but that you will figure it out if you keep doing enough repetitions. And that's where you talk to as many people as you can. You see what they said, you consolidate it all. You say, "I think this is the highest likely path. It might not work."

1:10:01But I do believe fundamentally that if we cut people's hair well and we do it for a long period of time, we will have a thriving business. And if we have a really good model from that thing, we might be able to open up another location. And if we keep our cost down, we might be able to have an actual model that we could either invest our own capital or bring somebody else and take it national, right? Like all of these like I have yet to find a business that can't get to $100 million a year that has a permutation of it that exists.

1:10:26You're a dry cleaner. Fine. Well, cool. we'll build the model and either we can license the model, we can franchise the model out, we can get outside investors, we can scale it nationally, we can do it. But the crazy goals are only crazy because people have crazy timelines. They're actually very sane goals if you extend the timeline out. If you have a a true 10-year goal or true 20-year goal, almost anything is accomplishable. I mean, almost every multi-billion dollar company is about, you know, they get it's usually between like year six and 10 when companies get to kind of like those big numbers. And most people who are listening to this are 5 years into entrepreneurship, but you're six months into the thing that you've been working on right now. And you keep restarting the clock for getting to year 10 every time you start over. And I think that's the part that it took me a very long time to figure out. And I think it takes a lot of entrepreneurs like everyone messes around with a lot of stuff in the beginning because you just don't know what you're doing.

1:11:14>> And so in my experience, it takes about five years for most entrepreneurs that I know to just like find something that works. [laughter] Yeah. Like it takes about 5 years to figure out which way is north. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And then it takes like another 5 years. And a lot of people that's it. Like they they restart. They they they go off crash and burn. Um >> and it takes another 5 years to build something that can can create generational wealth. So it's about a 10ear slug. And here's the really hard truth about it. If you have a job right now, for almost all of that five years, you quit your job because you don't want to work as hard as you are and you want to make more money. And as soon as you quit, you will realize that you are now going to work way harder than you were and you're going to make less money for an extended period of time. The one benefit is that you get to claim all responsibility for how little you make and how much you work because you're like, "My boss is an idiot and it's me."

1:12:08[laughter] But it's the truth. And I think that in some ways having that um optimistic ignorance is actually one of the really redeeming traits of entrepreneurs. And one of the really hard parts is that the biggest jump you have to make gets so immediately reinforced from the freedom you have from being able to, you know, chart your own path. But that big success of quitting one thing and starting another, you need to immediately forget. And I think that fundamentally that is why so many entrepreneurs keep doing it is because the first time you do it, it's the biggest rush ever. You quit your job, you do the business, and and you get some some first traction. And that that first dollar that you make when the new business, it's like the best dollar ever, right? But it's such a strong reinforcer that what does it reinforce?

1:13:03It reinforces stopping what you're doing and starting something else. And so I think one of the fundamental errors of entrepreneurship is that sometimes the jumping ship to start this thing is the lesson that you need to immediately unlearn because after that you have to just stick with it for a very long period of time. If you like this video and you're a 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 0 to 1, 0 to 10, and 0 to 100 plus. And so you can click here and you can check it out.

1:13:36Again, absolutely free. And since you're a business owner, appreciate you and uh enjoy.