The Game with Alex Hormozi - Accepting the Truth: The Reality of Success (with Andy Frisella) Pt.3 - Mar. ‘23 | Ep 563

Episode Date: July 15, 2023

“You have to gain leverage over other people because of how much better you are at the thing.” Today, join Alex (@AlexHormozi) as he guests on Andy Frisella’s Podcast REAL AF to talk about how to succeed in business by becoming so good that people can't ignore you, gaining leverage over others through superior skills, and accepting critical feedback as a means for personal and professional growth. They also touch on the importance of disassociating personal identity from business outcomes, developing a skillset that adds value to the market, and the role of implementation in achieving success. This is part 3 of the interview.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.Check out the episode on Andy Frisella’s YouTube Channel!Timestamps:(1:16) - The market can be harsh, slapping you with reality. Learn and adapt.(8:54) - Meeting players who exceed your standards reveals new levels of performance.(14:12) - Accepting reality is the first step towards becoming who you want to be.(21:43) - Learn from the lessons poverty teaches and take responsibility.(31:07) - Gratitude arises when you realize success is not deserved.(46:30) - Appreciate the present, as they may be your last moments.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

You have to be so good that they can't ignore you. And when someone can't ignore you, then everyone then acquiesces. They just comply. They're like, you have to gain leverage over other people because of how much better you are at the thing. And then when you have the leverage, you can do whatever you want. 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. I love talking about business. I mean, I love talking about business because it's like, I think if you can see, if you can see the business world clearly, then it applies to every other aspect in life because, like, I think entrepreneurship is the single greatest pass for personal development. Because it's the fastest feedback loop. Like, there are very few other situations where you don't have, like, the market will just slap you.

Yeah, dude, that's what I'm saying. You go around and talk to your friends about your good idea. They're all going to tell you it's fucking good. Now launch the shit and now we'll find out if it's really good. See if they get their credit card. Yeah, because people, yeah, that's right. That's right, dude. And the feedback, dude, that's so good. Because like it's so true. Like, it's, it's such a you learn so much about yourself you learn so much about people and the real reality behind people um i actually believe that you're paying customers are some of the most honest people that will give you the real shit like sometimes i just ask random customers like what they think about like how i'm doing or what this is that because i'm like all right well

this person feels strongly enough that they're willing to trade me my shit for their shit yeah like the minute that i don't do it they're not going to do that anymore that's a hard thing for people to really process too, man, because like you said, the market will fucking punch you right in the face. They will tell you that thing that you spent two years on, giving your absolute fucking best. They will tell you in one day that it sucks.

And then you have to deal with it. Like, there's no arguing with the market. Like, it's not like, oh, you guys are being- good.

No, but that's where people fuck their shit up. They get fucking so frustrated with the reality that they really, refuse to look at it. Instead, if you would just look at it and say, okay, well, this is what it says. I'm going to make my adjustments. I'm going to go again, which is the whole game of business. The whole game of business is develop shit, put it out. Find out what's wrong. Okay, that's wrong. Fix it. Put it out again. Find out what's wrong again. Dude, the defeat, you get defeated a thousand

fucking times before you get that fucking first victory. It's just the way it is. And you might get, and I'm talking about a victory. I'm not talking about, I'm talking about, I'm talking, I'm talking talking about $46 million. I'm not talking about you sold one thing to that guy that one time. I'm talking about a victory. I'm not talking about a fucking win in the war. It's just a, it's just the way it is. It's the way it fucking is, dude.

And like people think it's glamorous. They think it's like all these wins and all this shit. And like, bro, it really isn't. You got to be built for the fucking game. And the game is get your balls kicked in every fucking day. And then figure out how to get him kicked in a little less. next day and then maybe like move to the left a little bit so it doesn't get both of them. You know what I'm saying? Like you start figuring out all the little tricks like to not get the

fucking kick, right? So this is really interesting from a from a topical perspective because one of the things that's benefited me as an investor now because that's technically my full-time job. Is that you start to see businesses assets and your identity becomes divorced from them. And so like I'm looking at businesses and like if I imagine I buy a business. Now I have and 100% of it. If something happens, I'm not but heard about it. The problem is that when you're starting out, your identity is wrapped into the business. And so when you get feedback, you call it failure. And so then you think, I'm a failure. And so it just, it's like transitive property from like, you know, high school, whatever. I take it as like a personal. Well, this is your thing. This is my thing.

I spent all my, my limited skill set and all of my effort on savings account. Yeah, but see, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that your skill set. Your skill set is limited. It just is. That's what it is. You're not there yet, bro. Like this is part of the process. You're going to, the skills are going to pay your bills, bro. That's the reality. And if we don't develop a skill set by being willing to be open to hearing the critical feedback, how do you ever get better? And this is why most people don't get better. Most people don't get better because they can't hear the truth. If you redefine the work you're doing, doing, this is just something that's been helpful for me. If you redefine the work you're doing as the job title that it falls under, because in the beginning, when you're a small business owner,

you are all the jobs, right? You wear all the hats. And that's a, that's a figurative term, but like, hear me out here. If you're not getting customers in the door, it might just mean, like, you're like, oh, my marketing director sucks. That's me. Yeah. Right. You're like, but my, dude, my customer success guy is amazing. That's also me. Yeah. And so if you can start thinking in terms, like, and I know this is like, I'm trying to go big, small business, but like, if you start thinking about it in terms of like departments within your business, even though you are the head of all of the departments, then you can start disassociating. Because what's going to happen is if you are successful, if you keep listening to stuff, if you keep doing the stuff, you will gain enough success that

you will actually have somebody who's going to fill that role for you. And then all of a sudden, if they feel, you wouldn't be as butt hurt about it, right? But it's still your business. And even when you get into the CEO hat, right? Eventually, I mean, we hire CEOs for, you know, the companies that we own. Like, you're just the owner. Like, if Apple fucks up and you own stock. of Apple, you're not like, oh my God, I suck. It's like, well, no, that product sucked or that messaging sucked. The story wasn't there, whatever it is. And so if you can, if you can start drawing the line and saying, these are the functions of a business. And I am not good at this function. The person who does this job is not good at this function. Maybe I need somebody who is good

at that function. But then what happens is, in my opinion, for me, at least, it's given me some buffer between the failure and me as a failure. I do the same shit. I do it a little differently. Yeah. So how I do this is still to this day I do this. When I have to do when I, I, I pretend that I work for Andy Fricela. Yeah. I pretend that when I show up here or wherever I go, I work for this dude, Andy over there. Right there he is right there in the picture.

Right. And I'm just a dude that works for that dude. And so when I get feedback on the business, I'm like, okay, well, I got to fix that. I don't take it like, oh, this is an. attack on me because I work for that. Right? It's not that you'll just let Andy know. Yeah, that's it. Like I'm just going to say, hey, we're fixing this, bro. It's a weird, it's a weird thing, but I do that too. And especially when I have to make hard decisions, like when I have to make hard decisions. Like, when I have to make hard decisions, and most of the time, the hard decisions

revolve around personnel. Totally. Because you care about people and you give a fuck. It's, it's, it's, it's, I have to answer to this person. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And that person is not me, even though it is actually. You know what I mean? Totally. Like, it's such a weird. thing. That's so weird. Yeah. Different hats. Dude. Dude. That's how I describe it. I describe it. And you guys have heard me talk about this on the show. I come in. I fucking hang my my hat of, you know, being Andy, right? I hang that on the wall and I put on my work uniform that I work for Andy. Yeah. Right. And like, I'm walking around and make decisions that I think he would want to make, right? It's so fucking weird that you do the same shit, dude. I feel like if you, if you look at enough

people who end up doing whatever you want to do, I think the things you have to do to get there are surprisingly similar. And so people have different names for them. And if you listen to different podcasts or whatever it is, like wherever your sources information are, look for the commonalities. Because like the end of the day, all of that just came down to for both of us disassociating the work from the identity. And being able to step into the identity of the person who's required to do the job, whatever that job is. And to your point about personnel, because I think this is a one of the things that I struggled with really early on was that my tolerance for mediocrity was extremely high, very high tolerance to mediocrity when I started out because what happens

is like you can write this, you can write this in your journal. Like the best talent has yet to come. You don't even know the talent that is in the future of the people who are going to work for you. And you have to, you have to be the leader that's worthy of that person. Because like right now you're one higher away from your entire business being transformed. Like if you look at, like, because we can see this across the portfolio. We can see huge inflection points in a business up or down based on key hires. So we put a key hire in, huge inflection point. There's very rarely a massive inflection point that happens without a key personnel

change, hire or fire or promote. And so the thing is that that tolerance, and this is, again, from the players. Like in that little, we're giving the, open the kimono of the players room of how those people think is like, it's all about, it's all about the people. and your tolerance and your expectations of their performance. And you think you have high standards until you've met a player who's 10 times bigger than you're like, oh my God, I didn't know that level of performance was possible. Because I remember my first $50,000 all-year employees because all my trainers were like 30

or 20 right in year. And I was like, whoa. I was like, this is the shit. This is what I'm talking about. And then I had my first $70,000 all-year employee. I was like, all right. Now we're talking. And then I'm my first $100,000.

And then $250,000 a year. And my first million-dollar-year employee. And I was like, each time, and I can't wait to hire my first $10 million year employee. I don't even know. They're out there and we're going to find him. And you listen to Stephen Schwartzman, who's worth $36 billion who started Blackstone. He says the biggest regret to ever had was letting Larry Fink go. Larry Fink owns Black Rock.

Right. And he let him go, even though he called him an 11 out of 10 in terms of his skill set. And so like the only way, and if Steve Schwartzman, I'm just paraphrasing him, he's way richer than I am, if he had been the leader that he is today when Larry Fink came to renegotiate that contract he would have been the person that Larry Fink would have continued to work for and so like that's where the whole becoming aspect because like very quickly like your amount of time that you can do with your hands

is tapped out like as long as you have some level of work ethic and you work all the hours a day like there's not that many hours so that you have to work through other people and that's where the influence in the sales skill now we're going like full circle in this but like if you have that skill the world unlocks to you because whatever problem you have there's a person who can fucking solve it. I think there's a lesson there too, bro, for employees. Like what you're talking about.

Like, you're like, I think a lot of employees believe that if they, they still believe this old shit that their parents taught them. If you stick around long enough, eventually you move through and you get a raise and you do this. Listen, motherfucker. Let me tell you the whole thing. It's real simple. Learn some fucking skills. Real simple.

And then go execute them. Whatever your role is, whatever it is you do, however much money you're getting paid, it's about giving first. Okay. So if you can, in your own time, I'm giving you the fucking exact hack. Like all you motherfuckers think there's a hack. This is the only hack. Okay, this is it.

Skills pay to fucking bills. All right. If you're making 30 fucking grand a year and you want to make 100 grand a year, you have to become skilled and offer value to make the company or whoever it is you work for say, fuck, that dude's worth 100 grand. I'm not letting them fucking go. And your job as an employee is to drive so much, fucking value that you can literally extort your fucking boss. You can walk into the office.

You can say, hey, motherfucker, I'm leaving or you got to pay me. And that's the fucking game. Like, that's the game. And if you can figure out, like you're, like I said, you're making 38 grand right now. And you're like, fuck, dude, I'm getting underpaid. I'm blah, blah, blah, you're not underpaid. You're fucking not underpaid. You're paid exactly what the fucking value that you're offered is. Now, if you think it should be 70 grand or you think it should be 700 grand, then you have to learn the skills of the $700,000 employee. And then after you learn the skills, you've got to prove that they actually produce in a real world environment.

Then you go in and you say, fucking pay me. This is how the fuck it works. Okay. So many people, especially you young motherfuckers, have a wrong idea about how the fuck this works. You are not going to sit there.

You will rot. You will rot your life away. You will not sit there and go from 38 to 55. to 75 to 150 to your fucking dream life being here or there or anywhere. That's existing. Dude. And that's the fucking mentality that is, I think it comes from parents who try to instill the proper values into these kids, not because, but they can't because they don't

understand. They don't understand themselves because they never fucking did it. Right. So they're like, oh, stay loyal. Just keep showing up. keep doing no that's that's good that ain't good enough what's good enough is i i want to be here what does a skill set of this person up here have what is that surround yourself with people and learning and fuck do we got fucking youtube dude you can fucking look up how to change the o rings on a

fucking washing machine or you could spend it to look at uh you know bullshit fucking people Oh, this guy destroyed his Lamborghini Euris. Or you can watch really fucking wealthy people teach you how to fucking have skills. And then you could take those skills and you can go to your place of business and you can display those skills and be a fucking superstar. Like those are your choices. Like either watch the bullshit or watch shit that actually helps. It's free, dude. There's so much free game on the fucking internet.

Like for somebody like me who started with no internet, no social, this is like a point of like super frustration because I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with you guys? Like what the fuck is wrong with the generation from 30 to fucking 20 right now? You motherfuckers have all this free game in your fucking face all fucking day long and you want to watch someone drop a fucking wrecking ball on a fucking Lamborghini. Like what the fuck is wrong with you? And then you want to complain that you don't get paid enough and you're underpaid. And this is I'm underpaid.

You're not underpaid. Where to fuck? That's the market. You're underskilled. Dude, That's it, dude. That's it.

You're underpaid. And it's so, dude, it goes into the 99%. You don't want to see the reality because you don't want to fucking admit that this is the truth. Yeah. But the quicker that you can admit the truth,

the faster you can be who it is you want to be. And that's the reality of success. Like, dude, it's very simple. It's just you have to accept what it is. And so many people want to look around and they want to say, oh, you know,

they don't like me because I'm this, or they don't want to do this because I'm that, or these fuckers, they blah, blah, blah. And bro, this is a common thing on the internet. I see this on the internet all over to fucking place now. People jump from thing to thing to thing to other thing to overhear this thing. How the fuck can you learn any skills doing that? Real talk. How can you learn?

You can't. You know, we have to have this understanding that to get paid, I've got to have the skill set. And it seems like people have gotten away. from like even understanding that basic, basic reality, dude, basic reality. Are you good or are you great? Are you great or are you undeniable?

Because I can tell you the only motherfuckers that get rich are the undeniable. That's it. And you can get rich inside of a company or outside of a company. But it's not good is not the standard. Great isn't even the standard. No motherfucker that owns a company is going to say,

hey, you know what? That guy's great. I'm going to fucking pay them a, million bucks to do this. That's not what they're going to do. They're going to fucking pay you a little bit more for being a little bit more extra than everybody else. But when you're undeniable, that's when you get to name your fucking price. That's when you get to say, no, dude, because you guys need this. And if you don't have this, it costs this much. And that's what it is. Like, to me, it's very fucking clear. And it's so rare that people can even understand this

concept. Can I put something out to you guys? Let's talk to that demographic of 20 to 30, right? Because I feel like one could argue that part of that issue and what we just got done talking about is information overload. It's too much information out there. So like, do you guys have any tips or advice for that demographic, right? Because like, yeah, there's plenty of wealthy people out there or the gurus, the coaches. But is it information overload? How do you siphon through that? Like, who should they be listening to?

How do you vet those people if you don't, you don't know what you don't know, right? So do you guys have some tips on that? where do you want to start I mean I think we're going to say same thing I don't think it's information overload I think it's implementation under load people don't do anything

I'm going to consume consume consume consume consume consume never execute yeah so this is an interesting one that might be worth for the audience I remember reading many many many self-help books when I was like in my path before I quit my job

And I realized that after like the 10th book, I was like, my life's the same. And so it shifted the way I saw things. I actually never consumed a piece of sales training until I had, after I'd already built a massive sales team. Like I was like, oh yeah, we should get some other training besides just me. Because I was like, I'm sure other people have done. But I was so like confident at that thing. And so like if you want to learn a skill, read, okay, I'm going to say something that might be, sound a little contrarian. I don't think you should read books. I think you should do it and then read. Because if you read a book, on sales and you've never done a sale, you will have no context from which to actually understand the information. It's just going to float around in your brain, but it won't have, like, Matt, think of it like ornaments on a Christmas tree. And let's try it before you start reading. Right. You just need to have, yeah, absolutely for education. You have to have a point of reference. Yes, exactly. Because otherwise, you can't hang the knowledge on anything. Yeah. So you're just reading all these chapters. Oh, yeah, I've got to build rapport. That's a fair. That's a fair take. So I, because every school I've, like, I think one of the things that's undervalued is one-on tutoring.

So I've done a lot of different things for learning skills, but one of them, I wanted to learn how to do national retargeting for Facebook ads. This is years ago. This is me when I was still running them. I was like, where do you learn this? And so I got on the phone with an agency owner, and he was like, I don't sell my time.

And I was like, it's America. Everybody sells their time. And he was like, fine, for $7.50 an hour. I was like, and this is, I did not have a lot of money at this point. And so I showed up one hour once a week. And I was like, deal is, I have to use the mouse. I have to click. And I'm going to do it.

But you have to explain what you. thinking and why you'd make the adjustments. It only took me eight sessions with the guy to learn how to do the thing. Cost me six grand. That skill made me millions. And so it's like, if you do the thing, you'll have point of reference to hang the thing on. And I make this point because, and I'm a little bit extreme on it, because everyone always has another reason to feel like they need to be more prepared. And they think that reading more information or watching more videos is going to make them more prepared. But you will learn more in your first 100 cold calls than you will from every single book you have read. I like what you're saying, dude. And I think that's an important point. I actually

agree with it. People are probably surprised that that I would agree with that because I talk about reading so much because I've learned a shit ton from reading. Huge you have to get a read just to be clear here. But the thing that you pointed out that I haven't communicated is that I was also doing while I was reading. Right. And that's a huge deal. I'm not just reading. No, no. But see, I took that for granted because I've been doing this thing since I was 19. Right. So I've always been doing. You're in the game. Right. Yeah. And every, so that's a important, important point of, of context for, for something that I never realized. Like, a lot of people do kind of sit there and they're not doing at all. And they're just consuming, consuming, consuming, consuming, consuming, consuming,

go and consume at the same time and you'll get exponentially better. There was a TED talk on this, but it takes, that's a fucking great point. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. There was a TED talk and the guy talked about how to learn most to become proficient in most skills it takes 20 hours so like you want to learn the guitar it's like the 80 like you'll learn 80% of what you need to learn the guitar in the first 20 hours the last to be clear though the mastery comes from the next 20 but for everyone who's intimidated by it it takes 20 hours to learn to get proficient when I wanted to learn to build a landing page like a website I put it off for four years like I hired IT guys I got so frustrated one day. I was like, I'm going to fucking learn how to do this. And so I sat down

on a Sunday and took me four hours to build a page. And you spent four years fucking with it. Not doing it. Yeah. And so it's like, I've, and the thing is, it's like, we don't even fear feeling. feeling, feeling, at least for me. Yeah. I just like, I don't want to feel like fucking or looking stupid. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Feeling or looking stupid. And so like, if, for me, just knowing that, that stat, that I'm like, I'm 20 hours away from learning something. That made it way, not this like amorphous, like, how am I going to learn how to build? I was like, in 20 hours, I could look at a week and be like, here's four or five hour chunks. I'll learn it. Yeah. I'll become proficient. Yeah. And with YouTube, there are literally our step-by-step

tutorials. You didn't have to pay, nowadays, I could have just Googled how to retarget, blah, blah, blah, but like, I didn't have that, so I had to hire a guy to do it. But like, we could, you could Google it, just do it. And so there were two points I wanted to make when you were making the employee thing, not to go like. Yeah. But you stay in poverty until you learn all the lessons that poverty has to teach you. And the first lesson of poverty is my fault. It's it. Like, it's my fault that I'm here. The second point that I wanted to make was with regards to employees leveling up. We talked about how, like, you want to network with people above you. You do all the work before the meeting. You do it as though it were a paid project

that someone had hired you to do. If you start doing the job that you want while also doing the job that you're paid for, it will become inevitable that you will get that job because you're already doing it. And so if you front the work, if somebody on Andy's team's like, dude, I think we should get on Snapchat.

I don't know if you're on Snapchat. Whatever, I'm just making this up, right? And it's like, dude, already cut up the next 30 days worth of stuff, already did this thing, already did it. There's two things that'll happen. One, I can virtually guarantee you

that he'd be like, if you can run it, run it. Either he will give you a, like, dude, because of the increase in responsibility, I'll give you the pay bump. Sure. But the smart ones of you'd be like, no, I'm just here for the brand.

Like you can deny, like if you're smart, you'll deny the short-term pay bump and you'll gain the long-term goodwill because he will recognize you as a player. And I'm telling you, this is what the people in the room, like, they see each other like, he's a winner. Yeah. Like, I already know it. Yeah. Like, this is how you do it. This is how you move up. And that's, I love the way you said undeniable because like one of the other rules of poverty is that no one wants you to be rich.

And no one's going to give you their rich. No one wants you to be rich. Like you have to want to be rich and you have to make it. I mean, this is Steve Martin thing. It's like you have to be so good that they can't ignore you. That's it. And when someone can't ignore you, then everyone then acquiesces. They just comply. They're like, you've got you have to gain leverage over other people because of how much better you are at the thing. And then when you have the leverage, you can do whatever you want. Dude, it's, by the way, I want to clarify. I love my fucking employees. These guys get it here. We promote from within. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a,

These guys get it. So, but, but like, I'm talking about what I observe in general. And, you know, what you said, dude, like, it's, uh, poverty. It's, there's very few people on earth, contrary to the social fucking environment that we live in. And this is, this is the dose of reality that a lot of people don't like to hear. There's very few people that aren't exactly where they deserve to fucking be. Very fucking few.

Very fucking few. few. Except if you look on the internet, everybody deserves to be better. Everybody deserves this. Nobody deserves to be where they have. Listen, bro, you deserve what the fuck you got. And because what you've done has produced what you have. Now, if you want something else, you're going to have to do the things that produce the other thing. And then that will become what you deserve. And so stop thinking of it that you deserve anything because the reality is there's nobody out there that thinks you deserve fucking anything except you. That's a big problem in the culture, dude. We can't. We can't fucking sit here and say, oh, I deserve, I deserve, I deserve. Look around you, dude. Look at the car

you drive. Look at your bank account. Look at the person you're with. Look at where you live. Look out of the shit. That's what you fucking deserve because that's the actions. That's the result of the actions that you've taken to produce this. And the great thing is we live in this three dimensional. Well, it's more than three dimensional if we want to actually talk about it. That's the other episode. Well, yeah, we talk about it whole, that's a whole different thing. we live in this multi-dimensional world that is a blank canvas for us to create in. And so like when you sit there and you say,

I deserve better, but you're angry about what you have. Now you've created a situation where you are not even capable of producing any better because you think you're getting fucked on what you actually deserve, which isn't even the truth. The truth is it's inputs and fucking outputs. It's one plus one equals motherfucking two. And there's nothing that can change that.

There's not an opinion. There's not a temper tantrum. There's not a social movement. There's not a fucking hashtag. There's nothing that can fucking change that. And if you want a different result, then you must acknowledge it is my decision and my fault as to why I'm here. And you could blame your fucking parents if you're young. You could be 20 years old and listen to this.

Be like, well, I didn't have my. Listen, bro, you may not have had much opportunity yet. But take what I'm saying now and apply it. because it may not apply to you at 20 years old because maybe you are the circumstances of an unhealthy environment. Maybe you were born into a shit situation. There's lots of people that were a whole lot of people. In fact, most people, okay? But the reality and what separates people from staying there and people who escape that is not defining their identity as someone who's being screwed saying I deserve better.

you don't deserve better. You can create better, but you don't deserve it. And by the way, once you create it, you still don't deserve it. You're just producing a result from the actions that you take. If you plant a fucking seed and you go out and water it, some shit's going to grow. Real quick, guys, you guys already know that I don't run any ads on this and I don't sell anything. And so the only ask that I can ever have of you guys is that you help me spread the words. We can out more entrepreneurs, make more money, feed their families, make better products,

and have better experiences for their employees and customers. And the only way we do that is if you can rate and review and share this podcast. So the single thing that I ask you do is you can just leave a review, but take you 10 seconds or one type of the thumb, it would mean the absolute world to me. And more importantly, it may change the world with someone else. It's that simple. And that's how we have to look at reality because that's actually how it works.

There's very few people out there that have been born into such a shitty situation or have such shitty circumstances that they cannot move forward. I'll say this in America, maybe other places, but here in United States. We have a scenario where we have a culture that feels entitled to literally every luxury on the fucking planet for breathing. And that is not how it works at all. And if you're going to live your life like that, if you're going to continue to go down the path of life thinking that because you're born, you're special. you, because you breathe, you deserve to have all these things that these other people have, you're going to be disappointed and you're going to be bitter and you're going to be

frustrated and guess what? You ain't going to have shit ever. That's how it works. So, you know, it's hard for me because I understood this from the beginning. Like when I, this was not something I had to learn. This was something I understood in the beginning. When I was 19 years old and I was broke as fuck and I spent my fucking only $12,000 that I had to start supplement super stores, which turned into fucking all kinds of different

shit over the course of time, I did not expect anybody to fucking do anything for me. I expected that, okay, I expected to be rich in fucking a year because I was a stupid kid. Okay. But after that year went by and I wasn't rich, in fact, I still hadn't gotten paid. Here's how I looked at it. I said, well, I got a year into this. I don't want to throw away that year. All right.

So I do another year. did another year still didn't get fucking paid all right I looked at the same well now I got two years in this I know a little bit still didn't get paid I got paid after my third year and I said okay well I got three years there I'm starting to get paid I don't want throw that away so I just kept fucking going and that's how I ended up here and like when I say we're going to do X and you guys think I'm full of shit I already know it's going to happen because I know how it works I know the game. I know this is fucking chess, not checkers. I know how to play fucking chess very well at this point in time. You know how I learned to play chess, bro? By getting my ass kick

by other motherfuckers to play chess better than me. All right? And we go. And we keep going. We go and going. And like now I consider like, yes, there's days, of course, where I'm like, dude, fuck this. I don't want to do this shit. But you know what I say? Bro, you got 24 years in this. Why the fuck would you throw that away? You learned all this shit. You got all this opportunity. Now you have an opportunity to build something iconic. You've built a successful company. Now you can build something iconic. Who has that opportunity?

Not very many. Not very many people ever get to that. So like I just continue to roll it over, roll it over, roll it over over. But to say I deserve it because I've been doing it for 24 years is an absurd statement. It's fucking absurdity. I don't deserve shit. I deserve exactly what produces from the inputs I put in. And that is fucking it.

And like, dude, if the whole world, And like if you guys could understand this right now and operate this way for the rest of your life, you're going to have a successful fulfilling fucking life. But this idea of deserving because you breathe or earning because you put your time in, those are those are those do not compute in reality. Distortions. Yeah, they are. It's time in does not equal result.

Skills equal result and applied skills equal result. Not actually not even skills equal result. Applied skills equal result. I'm super pumped that you said all the stuff about deserving because it's probably my least favorite word

in the English language like I fucking hate it and I love that you clarified the point at the end there which is like I've been doing this like because a lot of people like they say like you deserve it I was like I did it

and they're like well you earned it I'm like no I did these activities and this is the outcome and I used to tell that to people because I was like I don't think I deserve a success

and I was like and that's not like a mental limitation in terms of like I've got sabotaging thoughts or limiting beliefs it's like no I don't think I don't think anyone deserves success, but what you can do is you can still do the stuff

that gets it. Yeah. It's like, you don't deserve the super hot girl that you want. I was like, you can still do the stuff that gets her. Yeah. By the way, when you eliminate the idea of deserving it, it actually creates more gratitude for it. Yeah.

Okay? So like when you, when you don't deserve the success and you realize you don't deserve it and you realize that it's a result of what you did here, right? Now all of a sudden you're like, okay, well, I did this. it created this, I definitely don't deserve it, but I'm very glad it's here. It's easy to be grateful. I want to talk about blaming power real. Yeah, let's do it. So I said the first lesson of poverty is two words. It's my fault, right? Now, I'm sure that there's, there's some people spinning their tops right now. Oh yeah. On that idea. And I want to, I want to lean into this for a second,

because you may have suffered racial inequality. You may have suffered gender inequality. You may have been born in Bangladesh. You may have been born, you know, I mean, like, you've been, had your uncle rape you every single day as a child. That's fucked up. I am not denying it. But where you place the blame is where the power goes. And so I had this realization when I was 19 years old, I was a very angry kid. And I blamed my parents for who I was, where I was, et cetera. And I resented both of my parents at that time my life, pretty hardcore, did not like them. And I had this realization that I was blaming them for my life. And then what that meant was, because I translated, because I had to hit my own ego on this, I was like, then that means that they're the

ones who have power over me, these people at the time that I don't like. I'm giving them the power over me not being successful. And so wherever you point the finger of blame is where the power goes, until eventually it points at your chest, that's when the first day of your like real life begins because you're like, you know what? All these things happen. I had all of these things that were unequal or unfair or whatever you want to call it. The terrible uncle thing, horrible, comma, I'm still here. You're still there. You're still here. And first real entrepreneurship, use what you got. Right. And so if you can accept that it is your fault, it's an off way of saying it's your responsibility. Because like, if you blame the parent, you blame the uncle, you blame your

race. And I know I'm going to get a lot of heat on that because I'm not here. I'm a white guy. It's written all that. That's real shit. But the thing is, is that, like, if you blame that, then it means that that's where you put the power. Yeah. And so it's like that 100% I acknowledge it 100% may be true. So what? So what now what? You have no, yeah.

You have no. Now what? Okay. We all acknowledge it. Now what? It's as simple as it gets, dude. And like, what are you going to do? Spend your whole fucking life telling that fucking sad story.

Right. That honestly, all your friends and family are fucking tired of hearing anyway. Like, they really are. Like, I've been talking about my shoulder. and fucked up for fucking two years now, 18 months. And it's a legitimate thing. I have my shoulder completely reconstructed. I fucking lost my entire physique. I've been working my fucking ass off. And I had thing after thing after thing happened to me in a row. And it's a fucking terrible shit story. But you know what? I'm not 350 pounds like I fucking used to be. I'm in pretty good fucking shape.

And I consider that a massive test pass. What am I going to do now for the rest of time? Am I going to, so am I going to quit training and am I going to quit lifting? and I'm going to say, on my shoulder. Yeah, like, what are you going to do? Like,

that's some weak-ass shit, dude. Like, that's why I haven't even been talking about it on my fucking stories. Like, because I'm like,

God, I'm fucking tired of it. You know what I'm saying? Like, and dude, the truth of the matter is, too, Alex is like,

all of you guys listening, that you guys have these excuse. And yeah, the mountain's going to be big. It's going to fucking take some time to climb. But there's people who have, like, not only like people.

There's not like one or two people. there's fucking thousands, probably millions of people who have faced the same exact adversity, if not worse, that have become what it is that you were looking to become. So if they can fucking do that after going through all the same exact shit, even worse shit,

then what the fuck are we talking about? That means it's possible. That means it's actually a very real thing. What one man can do, another can do. It's a real fucking thing. And the disadvantages that you have right now, now, if you think about yourself as the hero of your own story, right? What creates the strength

of the hero? The obstacle, the monster. The bigger the monster, the bigger the hero. And so I remember in the early days when I was really going through it, I used to tell myself that this was going me part of the story I would tell. And so like the the many disadvantages that you have become advantages to the story that you have because sure, if you allow them to. White guy born to well off dad. You know what I mean? He's a doctor. You know, cool. That was my life. And I had so here's a story I will never be able to tell. I'll never be able to say that I was a black man born in Africa who made it all the, like I can't who got who was, you know, an orphan and had been raped and some in kid, I can never tell that story. But there is a guy who can. And so,

like, if you have those disadvantages to you, you become, you can become the hero of that story and you become a bigger hero than I am or Andy could be because of the things that you are, that you had the opportunity to overcome. And so, like, that becomes the part of the story that you can tell. And those becomes the monsters that you slay and also pave the path for everybody behind you who doesn't think it's possible. That's the key. The key is that last part. why not work to be the example of the person who overcomes the shit so that other people who are in your scenario will see you as a guide through the fucking forest of how to get from where you are to where you want to be like bro what's more noble than that i do i just i don't think

i don't think there's much more noble than that like by creating a life that guides other people out of their fucking shit into the life they want to live through your own story not your made-up shit, not the fucking fake. I'm standing in front of my fucking Huracon and this is my story bullshit. I'm talking about your real fucking story. Your real shit. Dave Stewart here in St. Louis.

Black man. You know what Dave Stewart is? Grew up. Black man, grew up probably the richest dude in this in this city. I mean, I would say in the Midwest for sure. Dude grew up in fucking North St. Louis and Ferguson, one of the fucking shittiest parts of the entire. You all know Ferguson. You all heard of it before because we've had

fucking riots here. Great area, actually, great people in that area, but it has been known to be a very rough area historically, and it was a rough area for that man. During that time. And this dude has come through. Now he's a little bit older now, but he's built worldwide technologies. He's overcome all kinds of shit. And this dude has, with his life experience, painted a real fucking path for other black

men who come from those neighborhoods to believe that they can actually do similar things. What is more noble than that? What the fuck is more noble than that? And he's also paid at the same time. Like he's fucking loaded. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? No, I think he's the wealthiest student St. Louis.

By a lot. Yeah. But I mean, dude, like your obstacles and you're overcoming is the nobility. Like there is nobility in victimhood, bro. There's a tension in victimhood. There's shares in victimhood. There's fake comments in victimhood. That's only online.

That's not even the real world. Let me tell you something, dude. Like when you start telling that sad ass story on Instagram, dude, and you get those likes and those comments, those aren't the likes and comments that you actually want. In fact, most of those people probably wish you shut up. I'm being real. Because I know I do.

When I see them there over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. About the same fucking shit over and over and over and over and over. Like, I'm like, shut the fuck up, dude. What did you do about? about it. Like, and, and I'm not the, I'm just the one telling you that. Like, everybody else thinks it. You know, you guys are all like, oh, you says what everybody's thinking. Well, I'm telling you right now. That's what the fuck people think. And then they think when you like,

want to hang out and you want to fuck, they're like, I'm not fucking hanging out with that person. That person's a drag. They suck the energy right out of me. Like, dude, there's no ability in that. There's no no ability staying a victim. There's no ability. And, and me telling a story of how I got stabbed a fucking 20 years ago, which actually is coming up 20 years this year, and talking about how it ruined my life for 20 fucking years. I could have chosen and said, oh, dude, you know, this dude fucking stabbed me and this shit happened. And I could say it fucked up my life.

It gave me PTSD, gave me Kentucky Cucion syndrome, which you fucking did. I got white lesions all over my fucking brain because of it. I got to live with that shit my whole life. Okay. I can fucking tell that story. And every single person would be. justified. He'd be like, fuck, that's some fucked up shit. Right. But what the fuck else would it do? I'd be the person, I'd be the old man now who doesn't have shit, who doesn't have

fucking anything, who's not out here, you know, hopefully, you know, some of you guys have been inspired by me. I'm not doing that shit because I believe my own story and I stay in that spot. You can't stay in that spot, dude. It's a bad fucking spot to be. And there's no nobility in it. The only nobility comes. And there's nobility in fucking pacifying it either. comes in overcoming. The nobility comes in creating such, it's what you said. Success is the only revenge. It's not the ultimate revenge.

It's the only fucking revenge. The path that you're on that you're trying to create, you getting to that point where it's undeniable that you have achieved that to where every single human being that has ever fucked with you whatsoever that thought, there's no way. It's not going to happen. There's no way they're going to do that. Which, by the way, I've been told all of it, my whole fucking life. I don't have to say a motherfucking word anymore.

I don't have to say anything. I don't have to talk shit. I don't have to say, hey, watch what I do, or this is day one, or wait until you see me. Motherfuckers just know. They know, okay? And because they know and because that story is undeniable, other people that come from the same fucking hood I came from over here in South St. Louis,

those people look at that and they say, fuck dude, if that dude did it, I can fucking do it. And that's the whole point. That's the whole point of the journey. we're on, dude, because stories are passed down generationally. They're not, it's not just about us. It's not just about what's going on today. It's not just about your Instagram following.

It's about what fucking life are you actually living and what message does that life send? And how does it actually affect the people coming behind you? Because, dude, to me, you know, I'm a little bit older than you and a little bit older than probably a lot of you guys listening. Like, that's all I really think about anymore. Like, I don't think about, like, what can you? I get what can I do? I think about like all right fuck dude how can I make this so great that people fucking are inspired by it not not in a little way but in a massive way how can it

change people's lives by just living that story and like dude you guys all every single human being listening to this right now has that opportunity bro you have a blank canvas you have a blank canvas in front of your fucking face that you get to create with and a lot of you motherfuckers are ruining it because you're sitting there saying I deserve better well then do better. It's that simple. You can spend the same energy justifying your victimhood as justifying your success. Man, you ain't right. You ain't wrong about that or any other shit you said today. So anyway, dude, we're going on three hours, man. This is like a record for us. Any closing thoughts, man? I really appreciate you making the time to come out and be on the show, dude. I was looking. I was texting

Andy like a little kid I was like 14 days yeah like I was I was reciprocating those texts because I was just excited in fact I told DJ that today I said dude I I'm excited to do this show with Alex because I truly believe bro um out of all the people I've come across that you have one of the best entrepreneur brains going out there and uh you know that I I mean that shit like it's very obvious like it's from an operator to an operator right like like there's guys that have put out content. You're like, yeah, that's true. That's good stuff.

Like, that's good. Then there's guys and there's people to put out content that most people are like, what the fuck does that mean? And you can only really understand it if you're actually operating. And you're one of those guys, man. I appreciate everything you do and all the content you put out. And I think it's what you've done is fucking amazing. And it's cool as fuck to like be your friend and like just hear all the shit, dude.

Because like it's very, it's very parallel to my journey. Like very, very parallel. It's fucking cool, dude. cool. I'm incredibly honored to be here. I was looking forward to it a ton. I mean, you're an inspiration in terms of what you have built. You will build the iconic company because you won't stop. I don't know how to do anything else. Right. And I think, you know, for the audience, on a long enough time horizon, if you gain the repetitions, you can't. So I'm going to redefine success real quick. So if you think about any worthwhile endeavor, they're actually not finite

games, they're infinite games. And so a finite game, Simon Sineck popularized us a little bit, but I'll just recap it real quick. A finite game is where you have known players, agreed upon rules, and agreed upon way of winning. An infinite game is a game where there are known and unknown players, there are no rules, and the only point of the game is to keep the game going. And so where people fail is that they apply a finite construct to an infinite game. So like the U.S. lost in Vietnam because Vietnam was just trying to stay alive. That was all they were trying to do. They weren't going to stop trying to stay alive. Exactly. And so we tried to have a finite outcome to an infinite game. That's why we lost. And so people try, like most games worth playing,

you can't win. You can only play. So marriage, for example, you're not going to win marriage. the point of the marriage is to keep the marriage going. At health, you don't win health. The point of getting healthy being in shape is to stay in shape. And you don't win at business. The point is to stay in business and to stay in the game and to keep playing. And I think when I redefine that, all of a sudden I realized that by being in the arena, I was a success. And so I was able to enjoy the fact that by that definition of success, I was winning. And so I think if we are able to, anyone who's listening is able to remove the expectation of some finite outcome that's going to happen. Because I promise you, all of us here in this room have achieved some goal,

and then we just move the goalpost, right? And it's more just a game you play with yourself, just like you, when you're on the cardio machine and you're like, okay, 30 minutes is three tens. And you're like, okay, it's five sixes. You play the game. But the thing is, is like, with all of the games that are worth playing, the fact that you can play them is what makes them worth, the effort. And so I think that if you can redefine that, then it means you can't lose.

and if you have a fear of failure, making your games, infinite games, guarantees victory. I love that, dude. It's fucking true, too. I spent the first 18 years being in business not realizing that I could have enjoyed that entire process. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Because I lacked that perspective that you just said. I could have enjoyed that entire process because I'm still going to get there.

Can I throw something else in real quick? Yeah. So old person said this. What you don't realize when you're young is it, it's always the good old days. Yeah. That like, for some reason, that like hit me because I was like, I think, you know, I talk about the time when I was sleeping on the gym floor. And at that point, I was like, this does not feel like the good old days.

But when I was a little bit more successful, I was like, man, I remember when I was sleeping on the floor, when I had like six gyms before I lost it all again, right? And then going through all the shit that happened that you heard, you know, the beginning of this podcast, like, I was like, man, this is horrible. I can't breathe. Right? But I look back on that, I'm like, man, those are the good old days. Like, I was forging me at that time.

And so it's trying to put on my hat of saying, like, right now, I'm in the good old days of future me. And that's been like a really helpful frame in terms of thinking, like, how to enjoy it a little bit more. And the other way I've tried to think through this, I'm going to give you a couple things that I've helped the audience or help me a lot. But I'm a, I struggle with gratitude. I'm not good at it. And so I've had to come with these things. I have to focus on it too. Yeah.

One of them was whatever we're doing right now, many times, it might be the last time you do it. Like, my last sleepover, I think I was 11 years old or something with a friend. If I had known that that was the last sleepover I was ever going to have, probably would appreciate it more. But there's a lot of lasts that we do before we die. We think that when we die, like, that's it. But the last time you might go to Europe and backpack might be in your 20s. Yeah. And like, I'm never going to backpack in Europe.

Like, I accepted that. It's never going to happen. I'm just at a point of it. It's not going to happen. And so I was like, wow. I miss that. Like that's, it's never going to happen. And if you're in that, whatever your phase is, there's these things that will be your last. And if you can appreciate them for that, they just taste a little bit sweeter. And the last frame that's helped me out is I call it the grandfather

frame. But try this out one time. Even like if you're driving or you're working out right now, imagine you're your 85 year old self, like you're really old and that you woke up today in your body as it currently is. It's a weird, it's like it's kind of trippy to think about it. But like, you're 85 years old and I'm actually here, like I zoomed into this moment, dude, this fucking awesome. No, I'd be like, Andy's so young. Yeah. Because I remember, because I'm 85.

Yeah. And I know what you look like in your 85. It's like, man, my knees don't hurt. You know what I mean? Yeah. My shoulders are hurt. Right? And I look at Layla, I remember when we were this young, right?

Man, we were just building acquisition of how we were just in our first or second year. Like, this is so cool. Like, and all of a sudden, my morning coffee becomes this reliving of a moment that I have when I'm 85 years old. And it's just been something that. It's like I try and practice these things because I think they're like muscles. Like you just try and keep remembering those frames.

And so like I think that if you can practice those while you're in the game and in the arena, it makes it a little sweeter even the very painful losses. Well, I love that, dude. That's an awesome perspective. I've never even thought about like that. I struggle with that shit too. I think when you're ambitious, bro, it's hard to, it's, you struggle with gratitude. Yeah.

It's hard to be satisfied when you want more. well brother thank you so much for sharing everything today it's awesome to have you on the show i'd love to have you back sometime for sure i know we'll do that um guys i appreciate you guys tuning in Alex where can they follow you where are you doing most of your stuff uh the deepest stuff is the podcast so the game um just type in my name Alex fromose the game um wherever you listen that's the one i have a youtube channel that's i'm pretty active on um so that's a lot a lot of my like my longest stuff is youtube and podcast but if you just want to like check out some of the short stuff

Instagram, Twitter. I'm super active on Twitter. Me personally. Like I tweet all the time. Just because I think I'm fancy and I write words. So yeah, if you're on Twitter, which knows. Words are fancy. Yeah. But yeah, I'm on most of the major platforms. But if you like the longer, deeper stuff, YouTube and podcasts are the place to go. And I have the $100,000 offers book, which right now I think has 12,000 five stars on Amazon. That's awesome. It's 99 cents. So that's not like, and Amazon keeps 66. of it. It's not my, you know, my get rich on there. But like, hopefully it'll help, it's helped a lot of

people make more money with their business. Well, guys, if you're unfamiliar with Alex, you are now a little bit more familiar. And I believe 100% that you'll find value in the things that he does. Bro, again, thank you so much for making the trip out. Guys, that's the show. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys.