The Game with Alex Hormozi - Be. Do. Have. | Ep 375

Episode Date: March 17, 2022

“What would Jesus do?” Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) talks about how your behaviors, activities, and mindset lay out the path to your goal and the person you want to become.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:(3:26) - Winners and losers differ in behaviors and activities for goals.(5:24) - Ask yourself, "What would this person do?" to become them.(8:20) - Actions of desired self reinforce thoughts and create evidence.(12:34) - Leveling up changes the person you compare yourself to.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

that he did significantly better than me and then just from a financial perspective and then I ended up passing him and 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 hope you enjoy and subscribe the hardest respect to earn is one's own and over the years my wife and I created acquisition.com which is portfolio of companies does about $85 million a year and I get questions all the time in terms of like how do you create these businesses how do you self-send? stuff, how do you live your life, all of those kinds of things. And I was talking to a good friend who'd come back into my life briefly that we'd known for many years. And we actually started at the same

time together. And ironically, there was a period of time, not ironically, that he did significantly better than me. And then just from a financial perspective, and then I ended up passing him. And we met back up a few years later. And he was a little bit down. And the conversation that that we had was really enlightening for me and the conversations we've had since. And so I wanted to share that with you. And the main purpose for this video, as I'm getting to it, is to underline how do you actually do this stuff that creates the wealth, the empire, the status, all that stuff. And I think that this is where people get really tripped up.

And the reason I say that is there's kind of three elements to the goal, right? So you have the external result that you're. looking for, which might be make more money, get a six-pack, whatever. You've got the processes, behaviors, activities that result in that goal, right, being achieved, which would be like doing the work. And then the third aspect is being the type of person who does those things. So basically identifying with those types of behaviors or being the type of person who does those types of activities, which then creates the reward, right? And so I think James Clear talks about this in his book, Atomic Habits, but there's a lot of

a lot of behavior psychologists who've touched on this point, and you probably have heard B do have at some point in your personal development journey. And if you haven't, welcome to the game. And so one of the things, and this is what I wanted to give to you in this video, is a keystone habit that has served me very well. And it's only been in retrospect explaining it to someone else that I kind of had more clarity on it, which is why I'm sharing it with you. Which is when I have something that I want that I do not have. So I have a desire, which is, I have a desire, means I've made a contract with myself to be unhappy until I get what I want, right? And so I have this thing that I want externally.

And I think I've had enough experience with this to know that simply writing down the goal means nothing. And so I think this is contrary to common belief or practice, which is like people write down their goals are more likely to succeed. Sure. I mean, having a direction is more likely to achieve than than not having a direction. So I'm not going to disagree with that. But here's an interesting statement that may hit you, which is that winners and losers have the same goals, right? everybody in Olympics has the same goal. Everybody who's in business has the same goal, right?

They want to increase how much money they're making, you sell more products, get more customers, etc. So the goals are actually not that unique. And so the fact that we're writing them down, sure, it's a first step because we have to have a direction in terms of what are we trying to accomplish, sure. But I think that what you'll see that is different, because if you look at two people with the same goals

and one person achieves them and the other person hasn't, then it can't be having the goal that is the main driver of success, right? Right. And so then you get, you know, do you dive a step underneath that? and you look at what are the behaviors that created that goal. And now we get much closer to the things that are actually driving the progress. What gets more interesting, at least to me, is if we know the activities that are going to generate the result we want, so maybe it's we want to get more customers, which means we need to advertise more.

And I use advertised by the definition of what the word actually means, which is to make known. And so if we do activities that make our products and services known, like doing more private communications, which would be 101 reachouts, 101 cold calls, 101 DMs, 101 emails, et cetera, prospecting, or one to many, so public communication, which would be broadcasting across different platforms for media, right? So you have radio, you have, you have, you could have an email list, you could have, actually that would be an example of a high version of scale of the original. So I apologize there, but like making posts on social media, things that are public forum where people can find out about it. If you do more of those things, more people will find out. And that would be the activity that's associated with getting more customers, right?

But the thing is, is that people will know what that activity is. right? They will know that inherently they should be doing more of it and yet they don't. And so that is kind of the purpose that I wanted to drill down in this short video today is why not and what is the way that we can try and correct that or fix that. And so I wanted to give you the simplest single hack that I have used inadvertently and seen a tremendous amount of success. And that is asking myself the question, what would a person who does this type of thing do in this instance? And so the one that I'll tell you that I've repeated a lot to myself over the years, probably over the last five or ten years, has been the repeated chorus of what would a wise man do? And I think it's because I did not

consider myself to be very wise and I acted many ways that were unwise earlier on in my life. And I still continue to do so, but I try to do less of it. Right. And I think that it, and I'll borrow this again from James Clear's book, but like your identity is much more of a weighing system. Actually, this is not from his book, but like it's much more of a voting system where you cast votes on either direction based on your activities of what type of person you want to become. And I think the simplest distillation of that concept is simply asking the question, what would this type of person do? And so if you can use that as the refrain that you come back to over and over again, the chorus of your day that gets repeated over and over again, I think it's much easier than trying

to remember the 50-point checklist of all the activities that you need to do to achieve the goal, right? And so in the friend that came back in my life, we were having this conversation, you know, I just distilled it down to like, what would a billionaire do? And so when we're confronted with these crossroads, right, you wake up in the morning and you're like, I don't know what I should start it? It's like, what would a billionaire do? And so basically what you can do is have, a certain refrain or chorus that you ask yourself, what would this type of person do? And that type of person, when you ask that question is who you will eventually become as you continue to cast votes that reinforce the stories that we tell ourselves about who we are.

And those are the things that create long-lasting, deep change. And what's more about this is that these changes, when they become internal, when they become ingrained in our behavior, they become effortless, but it takes time. And so I think that the mental cue that I have given myself inadvertently over the years, I don't have a lot of choruses that I refrain to or that I come back to over and over again. And so I tweeted about one and it got shared a zillion times with it is, what would someone 10 times smarter than me do in this situation, right? And a different way of saying that is what would a billionaire do?

And word it in whatever way that resonates with you, right? But I think rather than having that big checklist, you can put just a little posted on your computer or wherever you work, that's a reminder to yourself that this is the type of person I want to become. Hey guys, love that you're listening to the podcast. If you ever want to have the video version of this, which usually has more effects, more visuals, more graphs, you know, drawn out stuff. Sometimes it can help hit the brain centers in different ways. You can check on my YouTube channel.

It's absolutely free. Go check that out if that's what you are into. And if not, keep enjoying the show. And in order to become this type of person, I need to do these things because those actions, will reinforce the thoughts that I say about myself. Because the whole concept behind affirmations that I do not like, which is I am a, you know, I'm a lion, I'm a tiger, I'm a whatever, right? Is that just saying them doesn't make them true unless you're a crazy person.

And most of us are not crazy, I think, right? There's plenty of crazy, but you don't know me wrong, but if you're probably watching this, you're probably at least semi-same, right? And so if we have this degree of sanity that's on our side, then what we have to do is create something else, which is evidence, Right? We have to give ourselves evidence that we are this type of person in order to become that. But how do you have evidence that you are going to be this person when you have none? Well, it starts with activity. It starts with doing the stuff.

And so once we know who we want to become, then that can direct the types of activities that will be in accordance with that. And the reason I like this better too is that if we're trying to reinforce an identity or an identity trait about ourselves, and I just learned this. And this is a really good habit, I think, that I've picked over the years. but breaking down the etymology of words is really, really cool. And I think really teaches us a lot about the words we say. And words matter a lot because they are the things that encapsulate thoughts. And so if you change the way you speak, the change the way you think. Right.

And so a classic one, which is like, I didn't really like the word philosopher because I thought it sounded really fluffy. But when I found out the etymology behind the word, which is filet, which is to love or to like. And then Sophos, which is knowledge or wisdom, it's lover of wisdom. And I was like, well, shoot, I am a lover of wisdom. And so now I actually have a very positive association with the word philosophy or philosopher. And to the same degree, identity comes from like, I don't know, remember the actual Latin word, but entity is being, right, like just beingness in and of itself, an identical, which is repeated. So repeated beingness is what your identity is.

So what your actions, what you do literally becomes who you are, which means that we can actively change who we are by changing what we do. but it is a reinforcing secular path of like, I am this type of person and therefore I do these things. And because they do these types of things, I am this type of person, right? And so it's the chicken or the A, but at some point we need to take action in order to do that. And so I think the simple and easiest cue that we can use to change who we are, to change character traits that we find undesirable is to simply ask ourselves when we're confronted with the decision, what would this type of person do?

And then act in accordance to that. And I find it much simpler than having the lists and having the daily routines and the things like that. Because if you are this type of person, you will do the types of things that that type of person would do. And that also comes down to the many decisions we haven't accounted for yet. You're going to be confronted with situations that you have not predicted. In fact, the vast majority of us don't predict things well. In general, it's because there's far more variables than we can possibly comprehend. And so I think it's much more useful for us to think about our.

ourselves in terms of if I were to encompass all of the things that I would like to be, right? And that's why I think the, the, what would Jesus do was such a powerful statement in the Christian community overall. And candidly, people outside of the Christian community could use that same exact thing, which what would Jesus do in this instance and probably get the right activity and become more like Jesus, right? Which is the entire goal of the Christian faith. And this is not a religious video. That's not my point here. But it's more so that what we repeatedly choose to ourselves, which creates our identity, which then creates the tasks that we do in the activities we spend our time on, reinforces the story that we tell ourselves about who we are, right? Or what type

of person we are? And so what I shared with this individual? I said, you know, what do you want to be common? If it's like a billionaire, it's like, cool, then what would a billionaire do? And always asking ourselves that question. And the reason that this was important when I was talking this individual, I'll read you the text that I had said to him because they got shared all over Instagram when I when I tweeted them or whatever is that after he left I said here's a thought for you so I was just like thinking about the conversation we had and he had felt kind of shitty and what's interesting about this is like as an aside as you level up in your life and this is just an observation that I've had is that like you will simply change who you compare yourself to and I think

Jordan Peterson talks about this in some talk he had but I find it very true which is you you you just change who you compare yourself to and so you always find a way to make yourself feel terrible. And even if you're the best in the world and stuff, you'll just look at people who are better at other things than you and compare yourself to them to make yourself feel bad. Right. And so this is what I said to him and I'll share it with you. I said, every winner and every loser have the same goals. What separates them are the activities they commit to. Committing to the activities, that is the goal. So commit to the activities. That is the goal. So when you make a lot of money one month, you've achieved,

I'll say that again. When you make a lot of money one month, you've achieved nothing. because the goal is the activities. And then later I said, do me a favor. Instead of writing down your goals, just write down, what would a billionaire who lost it all do? Or what would a billionaire do to keep it simple? Or whatever version of herself you want to be, the doing and the outcomes will happen as a result of the main internal identity shift,

which you can reinforce many times a day by asking yourself that question at each crossroad. And so I think that was relatively, you know, I think it's a good point to end off on, which is the only tactical ask that I have for you is to simply write down what type of person do I wish to become and then make that the chorus that you recite to yourself when you're at your crossroads, when you're at your decision points that are going to create who you are on a repeated basis every single day. And I think going back to that refrain will be all encompassing in terms of what would Jesus do applies to a zillion scenarios, but everyone, at least in the Christian faith,

and I use it because it's a very simple catch-all, would want to become more Christ-like. And so whatever the Christ version is for you, we can steal from that concept and continually reinforce it by asking ourselves those questions. And so if you knew the channel, by the way, welcome. My name's Alex, like I said earlier, my wife and I own Acquisition.com. It's a company that buys minority interests in service-based info, coaching, digital products-type businesses, and then helps them scale to like 30, 50 million and beyond. And that's what we do full-time. But I do this stuff just because I struggled a lot on the way up and I don't want other people. struggle and I don't want my pain to be in vain and so that is why I make these videos.

So welcome to Mosy Nation, lots of love and I'll see you guys the next video. Bye.