The Game with Alex Hormozi - Building Success on Your Own Terms (on The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk) | Ep 672

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

"The real is that the longer I wait for things to happen, the more rewarded I am for waiting." Today, join Alex (@AlexHormozi) as he guests on The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk to share his unconventional success strategies, emphasizing the role of honesty in sales, the importance of character building over wealth, and the transformative power of challenges. He also talks about his journey as an entrepreneur, from owning gyms to facing losses, achieving remarkable success, insights on long-term thinking, consistency, and the essence of strategic patience in personal and professional endeavors.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.Follow Ryan Hawk on:➤ Instagram | Spotify | Apple | LinkedIn | Twitter➤ Check out full episode on YouTube!Timestamps:(0:33) - From Persian royalty to modern success(1:32) - The philosophy of wealth and hardship(3:44) - The path to genuine confidence(7:22) - From failure to fortune(14:16) - Honesty, trust, and long-term thinking(16:47) - Playing the long game(22:11) - The evolution of a podcast(25:59) - The power of packagingFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

And honestly, what I have found in most of my selling experience is that the more honest you are, the more you still end up selling. Because it's so counter what salespeople do that people are like, wow, I can trust this guy. 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. Alex Ramosey, it's great to have you here on the Learning Leaders Show. Welcome, man. Nice to be here.

I heard a stat and I just need to confirm if this is true, man. Your great, great grandfather had 400 children. Is that correct? That is correct. Wow. Can you share a little more about your background and where you come from and what your great grandfather did? Yeah, so he was from the Qajar dynasty, which was the one that preceded the Shah in Iran.

And so he, mind you, that was not with one woman, obviously. And he had the means to support 400 kids. Good for him. But yeah, I'm Iranian. And he was one of the last Persian, Persian bros, who was leading the place. And then he had a kid, one of those 400, and one of those 400 had 19 kids. And one of those 19 kids was my grandfather. And one of, and then that guy had two kids.

And one of those was my dad. And then there's me. I know you don't have children yet. And I think that's still up in the air. Although you've made lots and lots of money, you do not want to give any of that to your potential future kids. Is that correct? Yeah. Why is that? Well, I didn't get anything from the emperor of the Qatari dynasty. So I mean, like, why should they?

No, I mean, I just think that on any, okay, so you played out like micro macro, right? So like on a, from a macro perspective, you multiply out generations and like, it doesn't matter how much wealth you have, it's going to get, it's going to get spread in almost nothing, which is the situation I'm in direct correlation with that. And the other is on the micro level, I think wealth that is given is not a gift. I think it's a curse. And I think it. ends up hurting more people than it does helping. Because a lot of meaning in life comes from struggle and work and who would become in the face of stress and hardship. I mean, one of my favorite quotes is the work works on you more than you work on it. And so like to rob someone of the ability to have struggle on their life might rob them from becoming the person they ultimately should or would want to become.

And so I think if I have the desire to have my kids become certain types of people, then I want to set up the conditions so that they become that. If you have a kid, you don't want, like, no one's like, man, I just want my kid to be rich. Like, no one thinks that. They want their kids to be good people. And so it's like, if you want kids to be good people, then set up the conditions that create a good person. And that doesn't come from easy times, not necessarily. Are you guys going to have kids?

Don't know. Not yes, not no. Yeah. Just, I mean, Layla's young. I'm 33. Like, we got plenty of time. Yeah. I think it's just a fascinating way.

to view it and I think it's a really mature way when it comes to because you're so right. I mean, you think about how you've built what you've built. It didn't come from easy times. It comes from being willing to grind through it and that is actually a gift even though it doesn't always feel like it in the moment. And I think reframing reality and having more of those is basically tools in your skill set to go through hard times and reframing them as times that make you harder. And if that's the ultimate goal, then like why would it be upset about it? It's like a hard hard workout being like, man, this workout's hard. It's like, yeah, but it's making me harder as a person. And so that's what I want. And so then it's like, I don't resent the workout anymore.

I think it is just a requisite for where I want to go. You have one of my favorite quotes ever when it comes to confidence. And I use it a lot when people ask me about imposter syndrome. Perhaps they've gotten promoted early or earlier than they think, even though they went for a job. And the quote, and I'd love for you to expand is you don't become confident by shouting affirmation. in the mirror, but by having a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are, outwork yourself, doubt. When someone comes to you with imposter syndrome or not fully sure of themselves, what do you say to them?

It's really reasonable that you would feel this way. Maybe you shouldn't be confident. Because that's the thing is, it's like, if we were to assume it, like, what does the word confidence mean? Like, let's look at statistics, right? People are like, what is our confidence in this statistic? And so they have evidence. they have data to support how confident they are in whatever the stat is, right?

And so if we are confident in something, that it means that we believe we have a high probability of achieving whatever the prediction is. Right. So like, how strong is the prediction we have? Well, how do you make predictions? You usually use a basis of data. And so if our past is the data set that we have, then we can be like, if I've worked out every day for four years and then somebody comes up to me and is like, dude, you're just

so confident about working out or it just seems like you're so certain like how are you so motivated all this stuff it's like I'm pretty confident I'm going to go to the gym because I have gone to the gym every year for four years I think confidence if you're wearing it doesn't feel like confidence it feels obvious and I think that's the big difference because I remember that tweet got taken from multiple different instances and then glued together so the outwork yourself out came from a small speaking event that Layla and I did. And someone said, how are you guys? Because I just presented all the stuff on sales and building sales teams. And they were like, how are you so confident? Like, you seem so certain about this stuff. And I was like,

and it was weird because I like, I don't come from the personal development world. So this was like, all new to me. And I kind of like, I was like, I don't know. This is just what it is. This is how you build and scale sales teams. I know this because I've done it. Like, this is it. I don't need to beat my chest and look in the mirror and be like, really like, I'm going to crush the speech today. It was just because I was talking about stuff I knew. And I knew it because I had done it. And so if someone isn't confident, they might be, it might be right for them to be unconfident. Now, the flip side is, and this is what I would add to answer that person, not tongue and cheek, if somebody actually did come to me. I would say, what would you require someone to have done

for you to say it would be reasonable for them to talk about this subject? And if they listed out, these stats. And then I said, okay, do you match that or do you exceed that? Now, if they said, I do kind of match that and exceed that, then I'm like, then just get out of your own way, man, just talk about what you know. And if you feel like you don't know it, that don't say it. And on the flip side, if they're like, no, I don't match that, then I'm like, then get off the fucking stage. Go back in the trenches, go do the reps. And then when you come back, you will feel confident because you will have, quote, outworked yourself out, which is really giving yourself undenial proof because, like, I don't like the chest beating thing. And

If you are confident without data, you're a delusional. Like, you're a faker. Yeah. I just think it's fake. You're either faking it or you're copy pasting someone else's experience. Because otherwise, where would you get the data from? Like what you're saying, where would you get it from? You get it from somebody else that you heard, which means you're irrelevant.

Like, they probably said it better because they did it. So just like stop and go do your own thing. How was it for you at the beginning? So before, because I've seen all the stories of when you were poor, had nothing meet your wife right you're living with her parents all this stuff so there was a time that wasn't that long ago actually where you had none of this stuff none of this fame and fortune what were you like at the beginning of that well to give the full context there i had six gyms when i met later okay so i was reasonably successful i then lost it off okay so you messed

it up key point so i lost it all but i still have the skills which is where i'm a big opponent of having skills. And so I sold the gym successfully and then I, and I wanted to do this new model. The new model didn't work or I had to have some tweaks on it. And so the evidence that I had that like, did I have evidence that I knew how to generate leads? Yes. That evidence I knew how to sell. Yes. Did I know evidence that like I knew that this promotion would work? Yes. Did I know that I tested in multiple markets? Yes. And so I was relatively confident despite the fact that it was an insane risk, which I mean like people see my stuff now. And believe me, it still took all that I had from a ball's perspective to put a hundred grand on a credit card when I had a thousand dollars

with my bank account. But it was also because I was used to making a hundred grand a month. And I was very confident that we would make it again. And so like it was a risk, but I'm not a moron. You know what I mean? And so it makes a dramatic story. But at the same degree like the month before that, I'd done a hundred grand in sales too. I just hadn't been able to collect on it because the processor didn't process the money.

And so that's the thing. It's like, if I, I had put a hundred grand on a credit card having a thousand dollars my bank count, having never done whatever this new business was, needing to make a hundred grand in the first month of a brand new thing with no experience, that would be stupid. Like to such a large degree that like the likelihood of success would be really low. I had evidence that I had six figure months, multiple many months before that. It was just that I had lost everything.

And then I had gone all in on this next launch, crushed the line. launch and then not gotten the money for it. And then because I was supposed to have had that extra hundred grant to float this next one, six guys had already quit their jobs to start. So I was confident enough to launch six gyms the next month, but I didn't have the money. So that was where the risk came from. But I would say that like a lot of the stuff that's happened, and I'm going to go on a little tangent here, but I think it'll maybe be useful. Most of the quote status and asking to speak on stuff has come always after the fact. So I got asked to speak about launching gyms after I already launched a bunch of gyms.

And I was just talking to somebody. He's like, dude, you should speak in my event. He's like, I don't ever do this, but like, you would be great. And I was like, I don't. I was like, dude, I'm just a gym owner, man. And he was like, no, I want to have some brick and mortar. This is mostly on lines. It would be cool to show that.

I was like, all right. And so I just, and it was weird because I do remember this. And this might be like, might be an interesting point. It's like, when I'd always been nervous to speak when I was. I was in school. Like you have like a presentation or a project or whatever. I was always like really nervous to talk. But for the first time in my life, when I got up in front of a, it was like a 1,500

person audience. Like I was nervous in high school. And this is the first time I talked was 1500 people. And I remember not being nervous at all. And I was like, why is that? And I was like, I'm just talking about what I did. And so that was it. And so like the slides that I had, I was like, well, this is the ad I ran.

And this was the lead cost. And this is how we follow up with leads. And this is how many people scheduled. This how many people showed. This is how many sales we made. And this is how I launched the last however many gyms that I've done. And then everyone went fucking nuts. And I was like, this is so weird.

And so it was like, it was very, it was weird for me. And so a lot of times I prefer to be on the opposite side of it, which is like, I don't want to talk about hitting a billion until we're out of billion. I had someone comment being like, oh, you, you don't know how to hit a billion. like, well, I have a pretty decent idea of what I'm going to do. I was like, but I'm not going to say I know it until I've been there. I can talk about crossing nine figures because I know because I've been there. And so it's just like I prefer to talk about that way, mostly because maybe I'm just a big pansy and I can't front anything. And I feel so insecure about anything unless I have

absolute proof that I can stand by it. Because I call like my closest friend Dr. Cashie, we call it the podcast test, which is like if someone drills down on this in a podcast, what are you going to say? And so for me, the easiest thing to always have is just a big fucking stack of proof. They're like, I don't think you're good at sales. I'm like, okay. Like, I don't know what good at sales means. Closed 4,000 of them. I was like, I don't know if that makes me good or bad. I've done a lot of it. And I'll say, this is what's worked for me. And if it helps you awesome, if it doesn't, no worries. Because it's not going to change the data. 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. So for that person that hasn't done it, do you just have to act and do your way into gaining the confidence?

So when in doubt, take action, start before you're ready, get going to get good, all of those types of things. Is that where you're thinking? So I actually think you need to chunk down. So what it is is like, you're not going to, so if you're like, I want to get started in sales, right? Let's say that's the thing. Well, there are lots of things that are required to be successful in sales that you might have

evidence that you be good at. Are you going to communicate it? Can you show up on time? Are you good at doing repetitive tasks? How can you handle rejection? These are all things that you could test before you get into sales. And so you'd say, I think I'm going to be good at sales because I have this data. And so I think this is a good match for me as a career path.

Now, if you're like, I hate rejection, I can't show up on time. I'm super like, I hate talking to people every day. and rejection crushes my soul, sales might not be the career for you. And so it's just like, what are the micro things that are like, again, if you were to make the perfect salesperson who had zero experience, but you thought you'd have a really high prediction that they would be good at sales, what would you make them do? I'd make them do all these things.

Cool, then do that. Speaking of sales, I was a college athlete, played a little bit after college football. And then a lot of guys who have no idea, no plan because I only wanted to play sports, got a job in sales. and I never sold a thing in my life. But luckily, had a guy take a chance on me, and then it went extremely well for 12 years, and now I do this full time. But that, I just, I love talking sales because that was my first real job, and it felt not exactly like playing football in front of a lot of people. But there are some elements that felt pretty good when you get wins.

I'm curious, Alex, to hear about, like, your overall philosophy when it comes to the profession and the art of selling. At a high level before we drill down, how do you feel and what do you think about selling? I mean, I love selling. And as a side note, to your point, like, if it felt a lot like football and like the sports that you were playing, and then it's like, I had a lot of transferable skills. And so although you had never, quote, sold before it, you had done maybe 80% of the things that are required to be successful in sales. And then you just had to learn the 20% mechanics.

Yeah. And then that made you a good sales. Right. And so for me, I think sales comes down to clear communication. Yeah. And conviction. Because fundamentally, like, if you really believe in the thing, then you don't have an issue with rejection because you feel like you're trying to help the person.

Right. Now, a lot of times, and this is like, let's talk real. A lot of times people are in, they get a job and they were promised things great. And then they get in. And then they find out that there's actually like other problems with the thing. Right. Well, what do you do? Like, you still need to eat.

Right. And so as a salesperson, you have to set clear expectations. And honestly, what I have found in most of my selling experience is that the more honest you are, the more you still end up selling because it's so counter what salespeople do that people are like, wow, I can trust this guy. One of the biggest things I found out on accident was how to sell supplements. And it happened when I ran out of product one day. So I ran out of fish oil.

And so somebody was coming in and I had sold her friend fish oil. And then she was next later in the day because I would do weigh-ins. I would stack them all. And I was like, okay, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she was like, what about the fish oil? My friend got fish oil. And I was like, oh, I don't have any fish oil. And she was like, okay.

And I wrote it down. I was like, this is the one you should get. Go to this store. It's not ideal, but this will be great. And she was like, okay. And then she was like, well, what else do I need? And I was like, whoa. Because I referred business away, she was like, oh, I'll take all of your

recommendations now. And so then I learned that I was like, oh, this whole fear I had around like just like trying to help keeping the customer at the center of the conversation, keeping the relationship first long term is ultimately how you saw the most people. All you have to do is just measure on a longer time. And so I think that big kind of awakening. And I stumbled into a lot of these things. You don't know what I mean? Like I didn't find out on purpose. I didn't go to any sales training stuff until I already had six gyms. I didn't even know that sales training exists. You mentioned a lot that you're playing the long game with a hundred million dollars offers your book one of your books you priced the kindle version very low and i've heard and read that you've done this because it's not about the short term

money from the book it's about the long term maybe five years from now somebody who reads that it's a business that you acquire or you work with that person i just love the thought of being a long game player i feel like the people who sustain excellence over time think this way what's your overall thought process on playing the long game i think it's being better at being greedy Like you get more. You just measure over a longer time horizon. It's funny because even like even the whole like givers thing, it's like givers have just learned a better way to be greedy.

You get more by giving first. It's literally like having a loss leader in business. It's just having a loss leader in life. Is that you choose to give to everybody. And a certain percentage of those people will give you something back. And the thing that you can't quantify is how valuable the thing to give back to it's. But you can quantify what you give to them.

And so more times than not, you get more back than you get. And even if you got back fewer times, you will still get more back. So we're talking about frequency versus intensity. You know what I mean in terms of how much you get. So like for the book thing, for example, me getting 30 cents or 70 cents from Amazon when, you know, an ebook sells, I would have to sell a tremendous amount of books in order to make any money from it. Right. But the thing is that one good deal that comes from the book makes more than 99.999% of books. So like, why would I play that game? You know what I mean?

And so. Different purpose. Like it feels like though you have developed the skill, which a lot of people have not of delayed gratification. And maybe like we could go back to like maybe in fitness it's delayed gratification. But then again, I also know tons of short-term thinkers in fitness. So, like, I don't know how much that transfers and I'm just maybe ascribing a reason to it. But I think the real is that the longer I wait for things to happen, the more rewarded I am for waiting. And so that behavior has been positively reinforced over and over again. And the longer I wait, the more I am reinforced for doing so.

And so then what happens, it becomes this kind of like delayed game because what happens, you start winning along the way, right? And so I think a really helpful thing to define, and this like changed my life, was defining patience. So I am not a patient person by my character, like at least how I feel. Like I constantly want things to happen faster. I constantly compare my progress to where I think I should be based on an arbitrary thing, which will always be 25% further than wherever I am right now. I should be there. I must. I need to. Why are we not? But when I define patience not as how I felt by simply what you do in the meantime, like if you say, hey, be patient. That's not helpful for someone because it means nothing. Like right now, you and I are being patient for the stock market investments

that you've made right now for some deals that you have in the pipeline that you're not pushing, but you think they might come to fruition for a split test that you're running on one of your websites, like you're being patient while we're on this podcast right now. But like, you're not really being patient. You're just keeping busy. You're doing something in the meantime. And so when I defined patients that way, it made it operational for me. So when I like I know, or I feel very confident that we're going to be able to hit a billion on some time. And so between now and then, it's just figuring out what to do in the meantime. And part of that is like, I love writing. I like writing is a terrible way to make money in general.

I got a writing scholarship in college. So I've liked it for a long time. And so this almost just gives me an excuse to write and draw about the thing that I like, which is business. And I almost justify it or rationalize it because I just say, okay, cool, we'll put this out there and then like maybe we'll get a deal from it. And it'll make it all back. But the real thing is kind of like software programmers.

If you talk to them like, what do you want out of the software? They just say one thing. They just say, I just want people to use it. And it's kind of the same thing with the book. like, I just want people to read it. I just want people to use it and get better from it. Because I'm going to die. No one's going to remember me.

My great grandfather was emperor of whatever. And no one here has ever heard of him. And he fucking killed life. So what? And I'm like, he's related to me. And I barely know anything about it. And that's like what, five generations? It's nothing.

So whatever I do is going to amount to nothing. And so I just think of it as everything that we have is because of some human in the past that figured something out for us. And like, we don't know their names, but they helped us. And so, like, for me, that is a noble pursuit that I'm willing to dedicate a life to, at least my life. Consistency is another big word. You published work online, a podcast, right? Everything that you've done.

And there was a big portion of the beginning of that where I don't think anyone ever heard of you or listened to it or watched it or very little. And then all of a sudden, at least to the outside world, not to you, but all of a sudden, you're everywhere. everyone's seeing you everywhere. What was that like at the beginning stages and then the transition point? And it's still, I guess, technically happening, but the transition point to where, is that? Yeah. But very early, though, I think you said for years from a video as I watched, years and years, you did it. And like, nobody listened.

Nobody paid attention. Yet you kept at it. You stayed consistent, kept going. And then all of a sudden, for whatever reason, there's probably a variety of reasons, you're everywhere. Can you walk me through your stages of being will? willing to be consistent and then seeing it how it's paying off for you now. Yeah. So I'll give three maybe insights off of six years of podcasts.

So I started July of 16 was my first podcast. And I think it was called like the Jim Secrets podcast because that's what it was called then. And this is right as I was starting gym lunch. And I had gym owners who were in my world. And so I wanted to just kind of create this is my lattice work of thinking about how we grow gyms. Right. Now, at that point, I already had six gyms and had sold them and had done 30 turnarounds. So, like, I had evidence that I knew what I was talking about, just for context.

And so I talked about just very, like, here's how you fix turn. Here's how you sell membership. Here's how you deal with, like, the spouses and their objection. Here's how you can get someone to commit to three days a week on your off hour so that you can increase the capacity. Like, here's how to arrange your lobby so that you can increase your sales percentage. Like, here's how you can weave in reviews and test. like, I mean, just all the shit that you do to run a business. So number one, the reason I was able to say consistent with it was because it was easy

for me to do because I always tried to interweave it in my normal work schedule. And so for me, it was like twice a week, I would go live in a Facebook group. And I'd get questions from all the licensees of like whatever the issue was. And if I saw a recurring issue, that would be the topic that I would talk about. So I just, it was very responsive for me. And I already knew the answer to the question. And I just would dive deep on it for X period of time. And sometimes I'd get riled up and I would do one impromptu because someone was like,

man, all these leads are broke. And then I would just lose my shit on camera about how they were selling out of their own wallet and they should be trying to help people, blah, blah. And so that was insight one, is that it had to be natural and easy for me to do to work within my current kind of constraints. That's kind of what led to the consistency. The two things that led to the breakthrough at year four and a half was number one as I rebranded the podcast to the game.

Because you can imagine how many people are like, oh, you got to listen to this podcast called Jim Secrets. It doesn't matter what the episode's about. You're not going to listen to unless you own a gym. Like, why would you listen to it? And the second one, or the, I guess this is insight. This is the third insight, but the second of the breakthroughs was that I started asking people to share it. That was it. There's the three things that changed. But the actual format itself

has not really changed. I stopped talking about gym specific, gym only in September of 19. So that was when I said, I'm not going to talk about Jim stuff anymore. I'm just going to talk about general business. And then literally that month, like the next month it grew, and the next month it grew, the next month it grew, and then when I started saying, hey, if you're enjoying this podcast, like, I don't run ads. I don't do anything. like just share it with a friend, that was like the next increment of growth. But that was it. You know what I mean?

I mean, I didn't make content anywhere else besides my podcast. And I stayed for four to half of whatever it was, four and a half years at $2,000 a month. Wow. And I feel really confident that the content in there is still good. But I didn't package it for mass consumption. And that's probably one of the biggest lessons I had our last two years growing my quote, personal brand, whatever you want to call it, is that I've learned. a lot about packaging. And so like when you're making like a short, are you making a tweet,

or making an ad, like the first three seconds is 80, 90% of it. Like I want to tell the story because I think it like it'll hit it'll help somebody in the audience. So good friend of mine, huge marketer back in the infomercial days, television. And he had done two or three home run infomercials and he recorded one with Larry King. All right. And so He flew Larry King out. He was going to interview him about his book. So it was like a big ego moment for him. He was like, hey, and tonight you're live with Larry King.

And he just did it just like an episode of Larry King. And he ran the ad and it bombed. And he was like, I know this is a killer. Like he's like, I've done this. I know this is a killer ad. Like, why isn't this working? So he went back. He watched all his best infomercials.

And he realized that he just missed the hook. So he flew back the entire production crew, flew Larry King back to re-record the first minute. He re-recorded the first minute with the new script did $100 million the next year. How people perceive the information matters almost more than the information itself. And this is what like zooming out a chunk. The reason I'm so big on this evidence shit is because that's the frame that people consume your message in. If I have a book that says how to market a book and it has 10 reviews on Amazon, do I need to consume the book? No, I already know the book sucks because I have evidence that the book sucks.

I have visual proof that everything you're saying is not true or that you aren't even doing it. It's just like the teacher who says, I'm giving financial advice to people and they're like, my advice is better than Warren Buffett. It's like, yeah, sure, you just forgot to build an $800 billion company. No big deal. That's it. And so it's the lens, right? It's the lens that everyone's going to perceive everything you say through. And so like, I want people to have the evidence so that when they speak about something, they can be confident about it. Confident because they have a high degree of probability that it is true because they've experienced it.