The Game with Alex Hormozi - 6 Levels Of The Money Ladder And How They Effect Your Business | Ep 832

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

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The wealth or money ladder. There's six levels to this and I'm going to break it down. This fundamentally changed how I saw how I priced my payment terms and fundamentally how I saw money flowing through a business. Welcome back to the game. I have an old concept that has reemerged. This is something that I thought a lot about in the year that Layla and I were selling Jim Launch. and it's basically just how the flow of money is prioritized. And so I think if there were like a wealth principle or like a woo-woo idea that I have

ever subscribed to, this would be it. I don't really know what would make it woo-woo, but, you know, wealth principle certainly has that ring. But it's actually that there is some mechanics behind how money flows within the economy. and the privileges that certain types of businesses or agreements set in motion cause a disproportionate amount of money to stick to those entities that follow this structure. And so I see this more as a continuum than I do a specific rule. And I'll break it down.

But it's basically the relationship between payment and work. there are kind of six varying degrees along this continuum that I've, you know, kind of identified. I have noticed that as I have become wealthier, I've moved up kind of the continuum here towards the ultimate extreme. Let me take this out of the theoretical and put it into the actual or real, real life. So at the lowest end of this continuum, you would have somebody who works now, takes on tremendous personal risk, and gets the... paid later. All right? Now, normally you think, oh, wait, isn't that, you know, the results of, like, isn't that, you know, delayed gratification? Well, not when it comes to the flow of money within an

economy. And so I'll kind of explain. And so what's the word for somebody who falls into this category of rules? Well, the answer is an employee, right? They will front, you know, two weeks of work, sometimes a month of work. They'll work up front, and then they'll get paid later, right? And that's a pretty standard agreement that's existed for a very long time. As I walk up this ladder, think about both of those variables, the payment and the work, and you'll see how they shift. And obviously the goal or the ideal is to go as high up the ladder as you can. And so the level above that would be an independent contractor. So this is somebody who functions like an employee. They do work and they get paid. But sometimes the nature of the payment and the timing of that payment can be altered. And so, you know,

a common setup might be half now, half later, right? And so you can see how this works. So they get paid half now, they work, and then they complete work, and then they get paid the other half. And so it's a little bit more smoothed up compared to the employee situation. Now, that would be the second lowest on our rug of wealth. Ah, the plot thickens. And so what are these remaining, you know, tiles above this? So above that, I would consider the in-demand professional. And so what what happens in this situation? So this would be a specialist of some sort, or you go to a heart surgeon, or you just go to a doctor in general, whatever. You pay first, and then they do services. And sometimes, depending on the leverage, you pay now and get services later. You know,

if you have a surgery, just to use that to keep that example going, you might pay today and your surgery might be for three months, you know, from now. And so from a cash perspective, that business is advantage compared to one where they have to, you know, work first and get paid after, right? So we're plotting along here. Now, hopefully, the goal isn't to really like think, oh, I need to, like, I need to, like, I need to jump to this next rung. It's more like, how can I alter how I ask for money within the business that I exist or the services that I sell so that I can make my money flow more advantageous. And ideally, have more of that money stick to me within the economy. So now we go what I call above the line.

So those are kind of like the three levels as I see it for an individual, right? But as you go up the ladder, you have the leverage of organizations, right? And so I would say the level above that is banks. So let me, let's play it out. So a bank gets paid immediately and they always get paid first, meaning if there's something called a capital stack, but essentially, if you buy a house, you don't really buy a house. The bank buys it for you and they get the house. And if you're a good banker, typically the rule of banks, if you didn't know this, is that you should be able to recoup your money in at least three ways. And so that creates collateral for the bank to do lending. And that's typically how they do it. They'll be like, you have a personal guarantee. We also can,

we also have the house, which is payment. And if they can, they'll get a third way. Right. there it's like they kind of cover their downside and they will get paid no matter what and they take on some risk at a later date right and so you can see how work shifts it's like how much work is there well less than in some of the other the first three scenarios i gave right and you continue to pay for that thing you know every single month and they get more than the money they put in now what level is above banks ah i think there's two and so i will i will break them down the next highest up or second if you will on our money ladder or continuum is insurance. So the reason I think this is interesting is because banks, insurance, and the final example that I'll give you are establishments that

are hundreds of years old. And when I see something that's lasted for a very long time, I think that they must have some superior setup or agreement implied or explicit for how money should flow to them. And like this is just stuff that I think about on this. Sunday afternoons. But insurance, if you think about what it is, is like, let's say I buy insurance, right? So I, you know, I buy insurance. I pay today. And I may or may not receive something back in the future based on the agreed upon terms. To use the simplest example for insurance is like, if I buy life insurance today, I'm literally just going to give money for a 100% margin box of air that may or may not be redeemed at some point in the future. If I do this,

for 20 years and then I stopped, they literally just got out of the money for nothing. Like, wild. And in the unfortunate circumstance where something does occur and some of the terms of the agreement for some reason were broken, they still get all that money for nothing and all of the compounding and growth that occurred as a result of that. And not to mention, insurance, the float that they generate is tax free, which means that all the money that they have to keep, which insurance companies basically act like, you know, investing accounts, except they don't pay taxes because they predate the tax code. This is why I look at very, very old businesses because, like, they have survived wars. They have survived different, you know, leadership, you know, within the world.

And when I see that, I'm like, they must have a robust system for getting paid, right? Otherwise, these things wouldn't exist. And so you're like, okay, well, what, what's even better than getting paid now and getting paid for a long time and maybe or maybe not even have to pay anything back. Well, I think the final is, I would say, three categories, government, God, and franchisors. And what do these companies get? What do these establishments get? They get, which is a term that is more commonly used, royalties. And the reason I think they're called royalties, I'm going to make a bet here, is that they were given to royalty. They were given to the kings of the kingdom, right? The nature of a royalty is kind of interesting, because you get paid

always and you get paid off the top and your work is questionable. So what does what does the government do for us right now this is not intended to be some sort of political point but I just like to see how money works right what do we get for what we give to the same degree. Religious establishments right you tithe off the top right God gets paid first again not a statement for or against religion just noticing how the money flows. and then you have setups like franchisers, where they set up some sort of royalty agreement and they get paid off the top, right?

And so when we're looking through this lens of this money ladder, this wealth ladder, whatever you want to call it, right? At the very lowest levels, you work now and get paid later. A level above that is you work now and you get half now and then you work later and get the other half later. You've got the in-demand professionals

who get paid now and then they work later. You've got banks who get paid now and then maybe they take some risk later. You've got insurance that gets paid now and maybe pays money later or doesn't. And then finally, you've got government and royalties that get paid always off the top and first and maybe never work at all.

And so when we think about how we set a borrow agreement for services, for products, for how we do business, the goal is obviously to keep these two things in mind. And the work really, you know, functions as the vehicle for risk, right? So when you have, when you have time, you risk time in the, in the, in the, in the vehicle of work in order to get paid later. But it's fundamentally just money versus risk and how that gets shifted over time to the ultimate expression, which is you take no risk and you get paid up front versus you take lots of risk and get paid later. And everything in

between is just little my markers that I like to use as examples. But for us, as entrepreneurs, I would love to see how can we model the companies and establishments that have been here for millennia for hundreds of years or thousands of years? And how can we apply that to our businesses? Because they've clearly been able to stay around for a significantly longer time than the vast majority of businesses do. Like as crazy as it says, if you look at the S&P 500, I think there's two companies that have been around 100 years.

I think it's GE and Ford. Right? That's it. That's it. Everything else. Booms and then busts. It disappears. And what's fascinating about the U.S. is that we look at fastest growth. We look at biggest

as metrics. But if you look at different countries like Japan, for example, their determination of what a valuable company is is all about endurance. It's about outlasting. They brag about companies that have been around for 50 years, for 100 years, et cetera. And they do have many companies that have been around for very, very, very long time, third, fourth, six, eighth generation type businesses. And it's because they think about business differently. And I think that, and typically they have a significantly different view on growth and risk, which is is if there's the possibility of going to zero, they will not do it. Right. Whereas in an American company, we tend to value kind of rapid growth significantly at a higher premium than other places.

Now, notwithstanding, our economy grows faster than theirs does, and they also have population dropping issues. So I won't even get into that. But the takeaway for me is that I want to, at all times, position myself like the royalty of old, like the insurance companies, like the government whenever I can so that I can take as little risk as possible, get paid up front off the top and do that as fast as I can. And ideally, do it as many times as possible. And if there's a way to guarantee those things, all the better, aka collateral. The collateral for government is that they throw you in jail because they have a monopoly on violence. The collateral for banks is they take your stuff. The collateral for insurance, really interesting on this one, is actually the

money you already gave them and the risk that they're able to calculate. So kind of fascinating there. But anyways, this was just a Sunday thinking chain that I thought to me was worthy of sharing with y'all because I think every business could improve by simply saying, how can I shift from where I'm at to the other side a little bit more? Even just a nudge could have a dramatic shift on how durable the business is. And at the end of the day, I think the point of the business is to stay alive and fight another day. And so the more we can do that, the more we win.

Appreciate you all. And I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye.