The Game with Alex Hormozi - A Billionaire Taught Me How To Think Like A Billionaire | Ep 327

Episode Date: September 2, 2021

Change the way you think! Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) talks about the different thinking frameworks that billionaires do that can help you and your business grow!Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Timestamps:(2:04) - Find middle ground between handling and managing problems.(6:21) - Concept of continuum vs. binary - extent of action.(9:30) - Mistake: using psychological binary for judgments, limit questions.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

And instead of thinking of it as a problem to be solved, it is instead a dichotomy to be managed. Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers, how to make more per customer, and how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons we have learned along the way. I hope you enjoy and subscribe. When I was in the beginning of my entrepreneurial career, I would read a book on delegation, right? And as soon as I read the book, I was like, okay, this is how you delegate. And then I would come back to the team and be like, all right, delegate, delegate, delegate, right? And I'd be like, all right, y'all are good.

And then I would dip out. And then, you know, we all kind of know how this story is probably going to go. Me being super excited about business and thinking that things are going to, you know, things are going to run themselves. Right now that I've delegated everything, I'm a big boss man. And then, of course, I would check in a few weeks later. And then things weren't done the way I wanted to. And then, of course, you know, I read super, you know, a bunch of books on management, et cetera.

And then I dive super far in and start micromanaging. Everyone can try to control everything. And then yet again, the problem would arise where people were not doing what I wanted them to do, but for different reasons, because they felt completely stifled, they wouldn't take initiative because they felt like they needed my sign-off and everything. And then I'm basically a huge bottom-knock in the business yet again, but in a different way. And so I say that to illustrate one of the thinking frameworks that has served me well, and I'm actually really excited to talk about this because when I talk to people,

I think a lot of people think that, I'm told that sometimes I communicate some idea as well. And so what I wanted to do was provide you the frameworks for thinking through thoughts. And I know that sounds crazy, but I'm going to give you four different frameworks that work really well for me. And I'll try to give you examples of each one of them. So the example just started with that little story, right, is an example of something where most people try and solve how much management versus, you know, should I delegate or should I manage, right? And instead of thinking of it as a problem to be solved, it is instead a dichotomy to be made. managed, as in micromanaging is not good on this extreme, and complete delegation on this side is not good either way, right, abdication. And so there's a middle ground. And so what's

interesting about this is that there are a lot of different things that come up in the business world where I will see people conflate or mistake what thing they are solving, right? And most times when I'm talking to a newer entrepreneur or even a more established entrepreneur and they reach out for help or guidance or whatever, right? Or it's one of our portfolio companies. Most times they'll start talking, right? Really fast about all this stuff to try and provide context. And I'll just usually pause them and be like, what problem are we solving?

And it usually gets them to stop, right? And I would highly advise you, if you're dealing with, if you have subordinates or you have direct reports who roll into you and they have a whole bunch of decisions, a lot of times it can get caught. And sometimes ourselves, too, we can get caught in the day-to-day, the minutiae and just simply pause and say, what problem are we solving? All right? And there's so many pieces of this that I want to impact

that I think are going to be really interesting for you. But the first one is when you define what problems you are solving, you might even have to ask the question, is there a problem? When some people are like, well, hey, we're getting customer service complaints. It's like, okay, understood. Is this something that we believe that we can reasonably eliminate? Is this something that is catastrophic to the business or is this something that we can kind of try and improve over time,

you know, through systems and process, right? And so a lot of times people misprioritized problems because they perceive them as as threats to existence when in reality they are a course of doing business and things that we can constantly improve, right? Especially if you're newer. You're starting out. Of course your product's not going to be perfect yet, right? You're just getting going.

But you improve these things rather than thinking, I have to stop everything to fix this problem. Right. And so the first frame shift is that most people think in terms of like, I have a problem to solve rather than a dichotomy to be managed, as in these are two things that will always exist. All right. I'll give you a different example of this. Actually, this will be a fun one. The reason we will probably never have people who are all happy about a tax code

is because you cannot have both fairness and equality. Equality means everyone pays 10%. Fairness means the rich people pay more than the poor people. That's fair. This is equal. Both are ideals. And yet, somehow, they're not the same thing. And yet both are right.

And so because of that, we will always have this conflict. It's the same thing between justice, and mercy. Both of them are ideals, both of them are right, and yet somehow they're conflicting. And so we see these situations, and this is why I'm trying to hopefully give this to you, because the more I started to recognize these patterns, the more quickly I could recognize them and then identify them and then either dismiss them or say, oh, it's another one of those, right? It's a pattern recognition. It's like, oh, you guys are spending all this effort trying to solve a problem that is unsolvable. This is a dichotomy that must be managed and will never be eliminated.

And so I think what my goal with this video is if I can help you get out of these little mental hamster wheels, it's been incredibly valuable for me. All right. So that's the dichotomy. That's like one of the one of the things that people will mistake. They'll mistake a dichotomy for a problem that needs to be solved. All right. Hey guys, real quick for those of you guys who are $100 million offers fans. I love you. I added in a lost chapter that has never been released. I'm releasing it now. Transparently, I'm doing that to build hype for $100 million leads. But you will have the unreleased chapter. It talks about your first avatar and how to segment customers to make more money. You can get it by going to acquisition.com forward slash leads. It's so free in exchange for your email so that I can email you when we launch $100 million leads and so that you cannot miss out on it because last time I sold out for like eight straight weeks really fast. So that is my way of making sure that y'all get first dips. Another framework that I find immensely valuable is the concept of a continuum.

versus a binary. All right? This is probably one of the biggest mental errors that people make when they're trying to identify things. All right. And this is what I mean by that. So for example, I might say, I'll use a weight loss example. So people will say something like I am off my diet or I'm on my diet, right? It's a very simple thing. And that's because psychologically we like to be binary. We like to label things as yes or no. But biology and reality exists on continuums as in to what extent did you go off of your diet, right? Did you go 200 calories over? Do you go 500 calories over? And as even though it is quote, more difficult to think in this way, it is also more accurate. And so our brain uses binaries as placeholders for decision making to store data, right? When in reality, when you start storing all these binary decisions, they start adding up and you start getting more and more inaccurate, that's a word, on your decision making process because you're actually basing your decisions, not on facts, but based on binary shorthand that your brain saves. all right and so that is one of the biggest mistakes that I see all the time in thinking in

entrepreneurs and really in anything in general because we like to have that shorthand it is easier right it's easier to say I fell off my diet or I am diabetic when the reality is it's not whether you are diabetic it's how diabetic are you right kind of interesting I stole that from Dr. Cashew but I just love that who's my close to phrytysoprhyst and we talk about this stuff all the time but point being if you can think about this within I'll give you I'll give you a business example, right? So if we have a binary where people are saying yes or no, which is, let's say Facebook doesn't work, right? Marketing doesn't work. I hear these statements all the time, and you may laugh at this, right, but I get DMs like this all the time. Facebook doesn't work for me.

Marketing doesn't work for me. Like you can't sell this way in my business, right? And so people want to shorten a problem into yes, it works, no, it doesn't work, when so much of business and problem solving is understanding the nuance between where we're starting and where we're going. And it's to what extent has Facebook not worked, right? Where is the fall off? Right? It is not that it doesn't work. It is just we only got it to work this percent. Right. Now we need to get all the way over the hump to get there, but it's to what extent. And I think that when I, when if you, if you can ask the right questions, if you can see the problems as they truly are, they become far more solvable. And so this has been probably, I just give you two of my, my best frames that I think.

think with all the time. All right. So I'll say these again. So the first mental lapse I'll say that I see all the time is mistaking a dichotomy that needs to be managed for a problem that needs to be solved. All right? People do this in their marriages as well, right? So you look at your wife, right? You look at your wife and you're like, I need more variety. Right. But later, you're like, I need more consistency. And you're like, we have to figure this out. We need variety. We need consistency. It's like, yes, you need both. Right? And so it's not a problem to be solved. It's the dichotomy to be managed, right? So that's framework number one. The second framework between two things that I see as a problem that most people make is that they use a psychological binary to make a judgment and say, yes,

this works, no, this doesn't work, or yes, this is this way or no, this not this way, so that I can apply this arbitrary label that was made up when instead it is to what extent, right? It is a continuum, right? I did not go off my diet or stay on my diet. diet, it is how far off did I go? And a lot of times when we do that, we also can stop the mental judgment of being terrible people because we can actually approach reality, which is, I was 10% over yesterday. So I can go 10% under today and be fine and be on track with my goal, rather than, oh, I was off, I might as well eat 19 pizzas because I'm off, because that's the psychological shorthand, the psychological binary of yes or no. And so those two understandings

have underpinned a lot of the breakthroughs in terms of how I think through things that have served me well. And also when talking to entrepreneurs and they're trying to figure out what is wrong, quote, wrong with their business when in reality, even naming it as a problem might actually not be the case when it is actually a dichotomy that needs to be managed or they're labeling a binary when it really is a continuum. All right. And so if you look at the problems that come up in your life, whether they're personal, whether they're physical, whether they're business wise, if you look at just with those two lenses first and me sharing this, like, Like these are the things that like Charlie Munger talks about having a lattice work of mental models.

Like how are the, you know, any checks through decisions with mental models. And so I want to share as many of those as I possibly can with you guys because I think if we can think, if we can be precise with our language, we can prove precise with our thinking. If we can ask the right questions, we will get the right answers. If you ask stupid questions, you get stupid answers. If you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. And so my goal for everyone here in Mosey Nation is that we do not play stupid games and not win stupid prizes, but instead get exactly. what we desire so that we can then ask the bigger questions of life. And so anyways, my name is Alex Ramosey.

I ownacquisition.com. We do $85 million a year in portfolio revenue. If you enjoyed this video, hit the subscribe button. If you didn't, I still love you either way. Lots of love. And I'll see in the next video. Bye.