Next Level Pros - #142: Alex Hormozi: Why you're still broke // Next Level Pros Podcast

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

Welcome to a new episode of Next Level Pros! In this episode, Chris, Daryl and Levi discuss the principle of taking decisive action and addressing pain now versus later. They explore insights from Alex Hormozi about business growth, commitment, and the power of making quick, focused decisions that can transform both personal and professional life.Highlights:"The most successful people that I know are decisive; the moment they measure out the information, they make a decision, they move forward.""If you're hesitating, all you're doing is prolonging pain, prolonging suffering.""There's so much power in just being decisive.""If you make a bad decision, and you're decisive in that decision, your ability to make other decisions to get out of it is a lot easier."Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:52 Business Pain: Different Strategies for Different Ventures05:00 Avoiding Revenue Generation: Common Entrepreneurial Pitfalls10:00 The Power of Being Decisive: Transforming Business Mindset15:00 Pivoting During COVID: Staying Decisive Under Pressure17:22 Alex Hormozi's Mastermind Revelation19:44 Partnership Dynamics: Supporting Decisiveness20:46 The Importance of Having Hard Conversations21:52 Overcoming Mental Barriers25:00 ConclusionWant me to teach you how to grow your business? Text me! 509-374-7554Want access to more of my content? Click the link below for all of our latest updates and events!https://linktr.ee/nextlevelprosWant to be a guest on our show? Apply here!https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1YlkVBSluEKMTg4gehyUOHYvBratcxHV5rt3kiWTXNC4/viewform?edit_requested=trueWatch my latest PodcastApple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/next-level-pros/id1687030281Spotify- https://open.spotify.com/show/1e0cL2vI1JAtQrojSOA7D2?si=95980cd4e55a437aYouTube- https://www.youtube.com/@NextLevelPros

This one action is keeping you broke. In today's discussion, we're throwing it back to a interview that I did with Alex Hermosy. Alex shares with us a little known secret that actually changed the trajectory of his career. Have you ever been focused on a certain aspect of your business but found yourself distracted looking at other opportunities and the way you can make money? Don't worry, this is what every single entrepreneur goes through. In this episode, we'll talk about the principle that launched Alex into his personal brand and the success that you

know him as and what made a huge difference in our two nine figure exits. All this and more on today's episode. Growth that your company had in the last year is probably more than it did in the first five years. Right? And so that's the thing. Yeah. And it's a tough year shift.

I mean, this is me just sharing. I know you're in the process of this too. When you go from comparing your year seven to year eight growth of a business that you owned to your two to year three growth of a business that you owned to your two to year three growth of a newer thing that you're doing. It's like we can't compare the two. I'm just telling this is what's been hard for me that I've had to wrap my head around. Is that like, I'm like, God, it'd be so easy for me to add another 10 million in EBITDA to the solar business, right? Versus like, or in gym-loss, like add another like six

or add another 10, whatever it is, right? Like adding that kind of like, even like that can happen pretty quickly, right? Whereas, you know, when you're in the new thing, like you have to think in percentages rather than in absolute amounts because otherwise you'll just get way too bogged down. Like you'll get way too sad about

things aren't working as fast as you want them to. And so that's been helped to. It's a shifting from absolutes to percentages to relative changes. And also just, at least for me, thinking that different businesses have different pain at different times. And so I'll give you a quick extreme example. On one extreme, you got info businesses. There's lots of people who have those. The pain that you experience is when you want

to get past a million a month, 2 million a month, 3 million a month. So you basically pick a vehicle that's easy to start, easy to make money fast for, but you're not going to make massive money, right? It's very hard to do it. Not that you can't, it's very, very hard. On the flip side, you start a software company and like if you do it the right way, you're probably not gonna make any money at all for a long period of time.

And so all your pain is front loaded. But once you achieve critical mass, then the thing just starts compounding on its own month over month over month and at no incremental cost to you. And the thing becomes a profit monster, right? And so it's like, those are completely opposite sides of the spectrum.

And it's really just like, where do you want your pain? And if you know, if you know ahead of time, this is where the pain is going to happen. Not being surprised when the pain comes. Let's dive in, Chris. So Levi, pain now versus pain later. How have you experienced that in your life? When have you when have you tried to avoid pain now just to experience it later? Oh, I mean, I think the easiest thing that I can relate to just fitness, like fitness

and nutrition, like it's so easy for me to like, I want to wake up in the morning and work out now, but I can always go later. But then when I wait to go later, I can always say I could go tomorrow or the next day and whatnot and I think a lot of times we like I'm 27 years old. Yep. I'm still pretty young I'm taking advantage of my youth by not setting myself up for the future of when I could be experiencing more pain of like Joints or whatnot by not being in shape and doing what I should be doing now to prepare myself the future so Chris actually ask you differently because we work with a lot of business owners and you see companies at all different levels who've been there for different period of times, timeframes.

What do you see as like a business owner? What are some of the short term avoidances that people do so they don't have to go through the pain now but they pay it later. I mean so the the pain matrix is is pretty simple right like you experience pain regardless pain now pain later there's no choice in in in experiencing pain now the cool thing about like anything that we choose now will be only for a very little time. It's not a long duration.

So we have a choice of, do I want the fake fruit now or do I want the short paint or do I want the short paint now? And both are short, right? So like the fake fruit is I got out of the work. I got out. So like to answer your question, like a lot of guys, when they need to get sales in the door or Revenue isn't hitting the road. They're going to convince themselves that they need to spend time bookkeeping. They need to spend time

Cleaning up their offer. They need to spend time working on their management team everything to avoid the pain of going out and generate revenue or generating the actual issue that is causing like the financial. And so what they get in that little time, they get a nice little fake fruit, little dopamine hit of like, oh, I liked what I was doing, right? Like I enjoyed doing the bookkeeping, I enjoyed doing this and I avoided that. But obviously the long term pain of that is what shows up in the financial statement or ultimately hits the bank account versus the opposite where it's like door knocking. Door knocking is a painful activity that most people want to do everything to avoid.

And really the initial pain is getting out to an area, getting out of your door and actually making that first knock, whether you're going business to business, business to consumer, to home to home. These are all just very short term pains that you're going to experience because the second you're in that conversation with the customer, all of a sudden it's rewarding. You're starting to see the benefit, you close down a customer, you at least have conversations, you make some progress towards that thing. I think the important thing to understand wherever you're at is the thing now is very temporary and later is always going to be lasting. So like waking up at 5 a.m. going to the gym

that took five minutes of pain and then you show up to the gym you get your two-hour workout in and you get that longevity of being in shape versus I got an extra 10 minutes of sleep I put it off or whatever and it felt good in the moment, but now I've got a 400 pound waistline. You know? Hey guys, it's Chris. If you're finding value in what you're hearing, go ahead and like and subscribe. That way people just like you can find this content for free here on YouTube.

Now let's dive back into the show. One of the things I noticed is like it's the amount of hesitation that you allow, the harder it is to build that discipline. And so people that are like, all right, let's go do it. Just go do it, just go do it. It's like, if you've ever done cliff jumping, the longer you stand up there, the more impossible it is to jump.

And so that's where it's like, decide what you're gonna do and then just take the action. Have you heard the analogy of like eating a frog? So it's like, if you are told that analogy of like eating a frog? So it's like if you are told that you need to eat a frog today, a whole frog, you can eat at any point of the day, but your day can't be completed until you eat the frog. When are you going to eat the frog? And a lot of people, you know, they'll say, we'll eat the frog first thing in the morning. But if you don't eat the frog first thing in the morning, you got two frogs, you

got to eat that day, you got the frog frogs you got to eat that day you get the frog that you got to eat later that day and the frog you're thinking about all day long I have no idea what it's like to eat a frog so I'm struggling the concept but yeah to your point it's it's the pain right like if I know I need to go out and knock doors I'm thinking about it all the time it's in the back of my mind it's causing me energy suck while I'm trying to focus on all these other things instead of just going and biting the bullet, doing the thing now

and then moving on and taking advantage of the next activity. And going back to hesitation, how many people, I see this all the time where it's like people who are like wanting to improve their business, for example, like our courses or our community, the people that hesitate to join our community are the ones that are stuck and never change. And then you see people who join our community, they're like, yep, this is what I want.

They go and you see them, they're able to make change way faster. And then you see them have results that the other guy wants, but won't make the changes to do. And so I think if you realize, like if you're're hesitating all you're doing is you're prolonging pain, you're prolonging like suffering and you're probably putting more energy into that than it would take to just have the success you're looking for. Yeah, so it's actually the just like the power of decisiveness. In fact, we were at Funnel Hacking Live a couple weeks ago and we were sitting down with a guy that was considering joining

our program and he was like, man, I just really need to think about it and you do this, this and this. And then I explained to him this principle. I said, look, you don't need to buy our course. You don't need to join our community. You don't need to do any of these things. Just learn this one principle from me. And I explained to him the power of being decisive, right?

And like when you make a decision, you can move on. You don't gotta continue to think about it. You're not going through this pain. And like, and the thing I've seen over the years is like the most successful people that I know are decisive in the moment. They measure out the information, they make a decision, they move forward and they no longer think about it. They no longer have to dwell on that pain.

And the crazy thing is, is like after I taught him that principle, he immediately switched and is like, all right, let's do it. I'm in. And then later remarks how much that has changed just the way that he has improved his business making decisions. And so not only has he gotten a ton just from being a part of our community, but just that mental switch of being decisive. And I think it will actually be cool. Let's just switch over to a little clip from him. My name is Paul Ace.

I've got a company called Amplify Secon. And we help high ticket coaches, scales are eight figures. And I am based in the UK in Leicester. I'm at Levi. And when I'm at Levi, like we talk for like half an hour, just like shooting the stuff right and talking about every kind of thing. And I was like, Hey, we're at a part in our business where we want to scale. And I know we need something different to help us get us there.

And the easiest way to find that next level of growth is to find someone who's already done what you want to do and instead of finding you know a coach or a mentor that's like well in theory this is what you should do these guys have actually done it right they built two nine-figure exits and then I got introduced to him and I have never ever ever bought a high-ticket product on the spot ever in my life And I spoke to Chris and the way Chris was with me I was like, you know what this guy's got so much cross belief and certainty in what he does

I believe in it too And then you get that moment afterwards where you're like, did I make the right thing? Right, and then the guy these guys took me out for dinner. You might have introductions I've had in the first 24 hours is probably already paid for the program and more, probably 10 bowls. And that's where I am. Yeah, so that's what I see too. I see people that when they decide to make a decision

and take action, like everything changes. What's one story just popped in my head were when you were in Vegas and you actually married that couple that have been dating for years, right? Right. And you just made them like you, you, you convinced them that they already wanted to do this. Let's do it. Uh, tell us, tell us a little bit about that.

That was wild. So I was speaking at an event back in November and uh, with Kyle Malian, he has an incredible group. They teach people how to go and acquire businesses and whatnot. And so I run into a friend of mine that I hadn't seen in years I met at a previous an event we stayed in contact via social media. He had recently had a baby and different things. And so they invited me to go to dinner after I speak and I'm like, yeah, dude, let's do it.

And so we jump in the car and there in the backseat is his girlfriend. And, and I'm like, cool man. So you guys just had a kid, right? Yeah, we do. And I'm like, so when's the big day? When you guys get married? And they're like, oh, you know, I don't know. Like, we're committed to each other and, you know, all these different things. Like he gave me all these reasons of why he's committed without being committed which which was just interesting and so then we went through and we just talked about like dude marriage is like the ultimate form of commitment why wouldn't you give the woman that you love and you say you want to be with forever and everything else and you already have a

child with like why would you not do some level of commitment and like we had this discussion for like two or three hours to ultimately he's like, why would you not do some level of commitment? And like, we had this discussion for like two or three hours to ultimately, he's like, dude, I said, look, I'm an ordained minister. Let's get you married. We're in Vegas. We are in the city of marriage. In fact, fun fact that I learned that night,

Vegas will process up to a thousand marriage certificates a day. That's incredible. Pretty wild, pretty wild. And so, dude, we go, we get to like one of the casinos at like 830 or nine, we go to a jewelry store, he gets a ring, we go to dinner, he proposes that dinner, he makes the decision, acts on it, proposes, they get engaged, we dial up

everything to get the marriage license and it's closing at midnight, one of the only places in the world where the marriage certificates closes at midnight from the city government building. We head over there, we get the certificate, we go to a local chapel, get married, do all this stuff, dude. It was like one of the craziest nights. I think we wrapped it up about 2am, no alcohol, no anything like, like nothing's going on. And so, so with this is the, this is the stuff we are going on. But the

crazy thing was, is like how much their lives have changed since being decisive. I went and visit him. So that was in November, I just visited him last month down in Arizona. And his wife comes up to me and she's like, I just want to thank you so much. Like our lives have completely changed like since we have become decisive. Basically that's what she was saying, right? We've become decisive, we've become committed to each other and I think there's just so much power in commitment. Well the reality is if you make a bad decision and you're decisive in that decision, your ability to

make the other decisions to get out of it are a lot easier. Right. And so there's really like so much power just being decisive because it can get you in a really good situation. You can also get you in a bad situation, but you can get out of it a lot easier, which just teaches you the next time how to do it better and better. This goes back to back in COVID, right? So like when COVID hit, that was obviously a big deal over at our solar business.

And I don't know if you guys remember the words that we're using, like we're prevailing with everybody, the word pivot. Remember we would say, hey, we need to pivot, not panic. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so because like, dude, that was a time of panic. A lot of people were scared. They had no idea what was going to be going on with their business. And so we had to just be decisive to be able to get out of that negative

situation that hey, look, we're going to pivot, we're going to make some changes in the business, and we're not going to panic about it. And so yeah, it works for both good, you know, the good things, the bad things, the ugly gets you out of good situations keeps you in the good, you know, the good things, the bad things, the ugly, get you out of good situations, keeps you in the good situations. It's funny, I think the only thing that can cause an issue is if you are decisive, you make a bad decision and then you go back to old habits of I'm not going to be as decisive anymore. Then you're in a worse position.

But I think if you stay decisive, you always work yourself in the best situation possible because you're taking action. Yeah, amen, amen. You know, Alex has just so many good takes. I mean, obviously 3.2 million subscribers now on YouTube. This guy's got some really good takes. It's fun to like look back on our experience with Alex. Obviously you guys remember when we had him up to the cabin. That was a good time. It's cool because in in the

podcast he references at the beginning like this how he was just a big fish in a pond when he needed to be playing in the ocean. Right. And the catalyst for him selling Jim Launch was at our mastermind a few years ago. Yeah so for those you guys don't know we had this mastermind a few years ago. Yeah, so for those of you guys don't know, we had this mastermind. We'll actually pop up the little picture right here. I had Russell Brunson, Alex, Layla, Brooke Castillo, Ruben Chen,

a few just amazing, amazing people that were at that event. And yeah, Alex referenced in our podcast right here where that was a big change for him. Tell you a story that you may you may not know this. So when I went to we had that little meetup, it was like you mean like, six other people at your cabin, right. And so some of my audience was like, when I talked about that meetup, that was actually with Chris. And together, it was like the eight

of us were doing half a billion a year in revenue, which I thought was pretty cool. You know what I mean? If you just added up all the business, it might even been higher than that. But it was at least half a billion a year in revenue. And it was interesting from an experience for me, because that that meeting was actually one of the reasons I decided to sell Gem launch. And the big takeaway for me, like, even though we talked about lots of stuff, yeah, we talked

about lots of strategies, tactics, hiring people, scaling, blah, blah, blah, that kind of jazz. But the biggest takeaway I had was I looked at everybody in the room who was doing more revenue than I was. And I was like, okay, is it their skill set that I'm lacking? What am I missing? And the biggest thing that I saw as my takeaway was I was just in a pond and everyone else was going after an ocean.

And I think if I hadn't sold, then I could have continued to go down that path, but I didn't want to be known as the fitness guy. I already had felt kind of tired of being known as the gym guy. And you can make an argument that that would have been a better move because I've known the space and you just get deeper and deeper knowledge and that becomes your competitive advantage. But in September of 19, I started making general business content, I stopped making content about gyms. And so it was actually almost at that time that things started growing for me. And so like my podcast, I went from talking about only gyms to talking about business

and then it started growing, even though I'd been doing it for like two or three years at that point. And then, and then I think a year later after that, I started making my first YouTube videos. So you guys have learned this principle and you know, I would argue even master this principle of taking massive action, being decisive and committing to it. Was there ever a catalyst for you guys that actually caused you to learn this principle? Because I'm sure at some point you probably Weren't taking decisions seriously and putting off your painful later so one one thing you're actually brought up was how do you how to do that in a partnership and

And what we had to learn in a partnership was if someone was like super into Making a certain decision the other person wasn't You had to decide like who who was going to charge it and if the Person who wanted that decision was going to charge Ford with that the other person had fully be behind them And so we had to make a decision of like, okay, I disagree with you But it's your decision and I'll fully back you and that's the end of it You never go back and say I told you so or anything like that. It was like a hundred percent

the end of it. You never go back and say, I told you so or anything like that. It was like 100% support go forward. And so I think in partnerships, actually, what's really important is to support decisiveness, because it can create so much power in a relationship, versus trying to like, I told you so or gotcha or, you know, I should have done what I said. I think that just goes back to having an established culture of trust, right? That we have the same goals, the same vision and

direction for where we're going in the relationship in the business or whatnot. And so that even when you are misaligned, right? You're willing to take the corrective feedback or support somebody that you don't necessarily understand the exact decision, right? It's just like, hey, we're in this together. And so, and to even answer your question a little bit further, like when was that? I think it did, it's like over so many years of experience and different things that have taken place. But I think one of the most key principles along with this of the addressing pain now is the ability to have hard conversations. Right? Because that is a painful thing in

business partnerships, in business, is like when somebody does something wrong or does you wrong or like there's something that you really don't agree with rather than putting it off and allowing it to fester going and addressing the situation in the moment. Like that is the most quick and painful thing that you can do in business. And so like when you disagree about it, you go and a lot of times you create this anxiety and the stress around it. Like, Oh man, what are they going to think? What are they going to say? Instead of stress around it. Like, oh man, what are they gonna think? What are they gonna say? Instead of like pondering on that,

you go, you address it. And I cannot tell you how many times I have just panicked over a potential hard conversation I was gonna have. And then five minutes into it, I'm like, oh, this isn't as bad as I thought. Hey guys, it's Chris. Hey, a lot of you leave comments asking for help.

Do me a real quick favor. Shoot me a text at 509 nine three seven four seven five five four that's five zero nine three seven four seven five five four shoot me a text I'll answer and help you with whatever you need don't worry I got you back let's go back to the show baby we always tell me times if we had the conversation of like all right that's just a monster in your head right we've had that had that over the years, over and over again. And it's kind of like the David and Goliath story where it's like, you build up this monster,

it's like undefeatable, and yet you have this guy come in and it doesn't take that much effort, it just takes focus. And that's really what it comes down to. Anything that sounds painful with focus, you can bust through it and like pass, and move past it so easily. We've talked a lot about like on the micro level these decisions you know working out having these hard conversations or whatnot but in this Alex Formosy clip he references in the podcast

too is being willing to say no to fast money now for big money later. Absolutely. And I think as entrepreneurs and business owners we've worked with so many that they'll get like the classic entrepreneurial squirrel like, oh well we can add this on to our offer and and package it this way and then we could add this vertical and partner up with this guy and whatnot. I think it also relates to this ability to make decisions and committing all the way through that decision to be willing to say no and decide no on things that might Sound good in the moment. So I think two things there one like yes saying no to opportunities that because yeah We can always find ways to make money, right? But the second one is saying no to

Fulfilling my own personal desires outside of the business, robbing the business to satisfy my cars, my watches, my house or whatever, instead of biting the bullet and playing the long game, right? Taking that money, reinvesting in marketing, reinvesting in growth, because I mean, dude, there were years, two, three years, where all the money that we were making at Solgen was just getting rolled right back into it. And that's the way that we were making at SolGen was just getting rolled right back

into it. And that's the way that we were able to build the long term money that ultimately allowed us to be able to go and exit a private equity because we were investing into that growth. And I think the way we looked at that was, you know, we wanted to live off of what we needed, right? Essentials were taken care of. But what was crazy was how exponentially it changed the business. And I think that's a hard principle for people to learn because most people look at it as,

I got the money now, take it and run, versus, okay, now that I got money, how can I make this business thrive even more? And there's a lot of challenges with that, but if you have the right mindset, it's a powerful thing challenges with that. But if you have the right mindset, it's it's a powerful It's a powerful thing to do in a business. I love it So I mean what we're talking about here is the eighth pillar of growth

Which is the leadership pillar where is housed under having the hard conversation Doing the painful things in the moment the self-development everything like that And so a lot of you guys have heard about the eight pillars. If you haven't, go ahead and drop a comment down below. Ask us any questions that you have. Also make sure that you like and subscribe to the channel. We're gonna continue to roll out and help teach these different eight pillars for growth.

I mean, fundamentally to be able to scale any business, you have to implement these eight pillars across the board. And so many business owners as we know in our community, they struggle with these different type of pillars. But hopefully you gained a ton of value from today's conversation until next time.