The Game with Alex Hormozi - Crash Course On Learning Sh*t Fast | Ep 236

Episode Date: September 15, 2020

Most of being an expert is never not doing the basics so many times. Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) talks about a very simple but effective way how you can learn things fast without having to place too much time and effort and how this method will ultimately force growth. Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Timestamps:(2:30) - Learn faster: read and listen to audiobook simultaneously.(3:43) - Hearing and visual memory: words as you read.(5:48) - Read multiple books at once, find better ones.(8:20) - Test understanding: explain or say "just read book."Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

If you don't have a regimented process around learning and acquiring skills, then I can guarantee that you're not going to get As far or as fast as you'd like to be 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 What's going on everyone happy Tuesday? I wanted to counter My podcast yesterday with something hypertactical that can't immediately provide value to you and so So what I wanted to kind of go over is a crash course on learning shit fast. So I think it's no mystery to many of us in the entrepreneurial space that in order to move

ahead, we need to acquire skills, right? And so creating a process of our own skill acquisition, I think, is one of the most deliberate ways that you can force growth, right? If there's two people who are the same age and one person is far ahead of the other, then it's simply because that person has acquired more skills than the other. Right. And so if you don't have a regimented process around learning and acquiring skills, then I can guarantee that you're not going to get as far or as fast as you'd like to be. What's interesting is that a lot of things that you need to learn go from skills to character traits to beliefs.

And so some of those require deep work, which is what I was sharing about yesterday. But many of you were not right there. Some of you guys need some of the basics. and I don't say basics with, you know, tongue in cheek, most of being an expert is never not doing the basics. So many times people, I remember when I was earlier on in my career,

I'd watch guys get on stage and talk about what they were doing and I was like, there's just, there's no way it's that easy. And as I was saying it, I was not even doing the stuff that they were saying to do, right? I was like, no way,

it's not just, you know, simple ads and retargeting. It's like, I wasn't even running ads, right? And so anyways, over time, I've kind of developed a process for learning skills quickly. And this, you know, applying this enabled me to get 99th percentile on the GMAT,

really having no, you know, test-taking experience going into it, which is above Harvard's mid-score. And so this really works, all right? This is like about as hyper-tax goes and get, and one of these taxes I got from Russell Brunson at the mastermind that I was just at, right? And he said it offhandedly, and I was like, that is really good. All right. So the first one I'll give you is his.

and then I'll give you what I've done. So what he explained to me is that he's always taught me that he always likes audibles. He likes listening to books. Like that's how he learns, et cetera. But when we were at the event, he talked to me about how he actually does both. So he reads and listens to the book. Now, some of us have done both, right? We've read a book and then we're like, I'm going to listen to the audible, or you listen to

audibon and then you read the book. But it turns out you can actually do both at the same time. And so what that means is you put on your headphones, right? You turn on your audible. What's nice about this is that Amazon, especially, they sync up. So if you listen further, if you never bought two things on Amazon, I'd recommend it. But you can listen to an audiobook. And then where you pause, you can open up your Kindle and it will take you to the part in the book that you left off.

Now, the reason I think this is so powerful is a couple reasons. One is I'm super 80D. Right. So like I'll be reading. And I think I can read fairly quickly, but I get pulled off track really quickly too. So like I might power through like four pages and just. do it in a few minutes and then all of a sudden five minutes goes by because I think about something that was on the page and then I'm like wait where was I again and then I have to kind of start

over and so there's kind of the start and stop and so for me that's actually one of the biggest things that takes away from my reading speed so what you can do and this is what I got from him is listen to the audible at 3x 3 and a half x speed so it's about as fast as it goes now if you're just listening it feels kind of weird but if you're reading and listening you pretty much read much faster than you talk out loud or most people read fast than they talk out loud But when you hear the words as you're reading them, you get both the hearing memory and your visual memory. And so they kind of pair up. So you're actually storing the information in two places.

So it's just like an absolute learning hack. But realistically, the reason that I found it so beneficial is it actually just kept me on track. And so very regularly, I'll want to stop reading. But the thing is, is still dragging me on. And it keeps my pace for me because I don't want to lose track with the audible. 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 has to do is you can just leave a review. They'll 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. And so by doing this, I think it just, it also gives me an exact amount of time that I know that each book will take. So for me, I like to have it quantified.

I'm like, okay, if I'm going to take on this book, you know, this is the one that Russell recommended it's American Kingpin. It's a cool story. But it's kind of a thick book. Like, this is a serious book. And what I, but by doing this, I knew that this book was going to take me exactly three hours and 15 minutes to read, right? Because the audible based on the speed was going to take that long, right? And so then it allows me to just be like, cool, I'll do an hour 45 today and hour 45 tomorrow and I've knocked this out. All right.

So just really, really cool. And I've been using it and it's been awesome. So I already read a book and a half since the event, which I never, I really don't read that many books in general. Which leads me to my next point. I'm a huge, huge proponent of not reading lots of books, but reading a few books many times. Right. And so I can't tell you the amount of times that I go to entrepreneur events or we speak at something. and someone comes up and I'm like, oh, well, have you read this? Have you read this? And they're like,

oh, yeah, I've read all those books. I'm like, well, yeah, you're not doing it. Well, tell me about this and then they can barely even talk about what the book was about, right? They have no, they have no comprehension, right? They have no, it doesn't stick, right? And so if there's no notch on the belt for how many books you read, it's about how much stuff you retain and how much you can ultimately apply, right? Of course. So, my two kind of rules around this is if in the first section of a book, I don't feel like I've gotten value, I stopped reading the book. And it's because I used to have this thing where it's like, if I start a book, I can't read any other book until I finish it.

But the reality is that there's some books that just aren't worth reading. You know what I mean? If you read a blog article and you're like, this is just not interesting, you just skip off, right? And books are really no different. They're just written by authors, right? They just might not be good. It's possible. People publish stuff all the time.

It's not good. Right? And so giving yourself permission to stop reading a book. And then on the converse of that, if you read a book and you're like, man, this is so good. read it and then turn it back over to the beginning and read it again and turn it back over to the beginning and read it again like the second edition of Expert Secrets I think I've read eight or nine times right the second edition of dot-com secrets now mind you I've already read the first edition five times right But reading the second edition was entirely new by the way if you didn't know that it's totally new book Which I highly recommend you getting you can go to russell's book.com. I'll put the link in the thing But it's r-us-s-E-L-S book.com.

Anyways, you can get that stuff there. But by doing this, my goal is that if the book disappears tomorrow, that I will know everything that's in that book, right? Because if you don't know what's in the book, there's no point in you reading another book that may or may or may not be good, may or may not be good when you have a beautiful, amazing book in front of you. So when you do find one of those gems, right? And for some of you, if you're in the gym business, Jim Wants, I highly recommend you

reading it. It's ridiculously tactical and we'll make you money. Which can go to Alex's book.com. There's my shameless plug. But the point is, is that reading it over and over again with the objective of mastering the information so much so that if there's a framework

or there's a model or there's a math or there's a script that's inside of the book, if you cannot bring it out on command, if you don't know the information, if you can't explain it to someone else and you just have to say, you just got to read the book, then you don't know it.

And there's no point to you reading another book, right? And what's interesting to me is that so many people in the religious community will read the Bible over and over and over and over again, right? Because they find it to be the source of knowledge, right? It's just this continuous knowledge. And at different times in your life, you pull out different lessons, right? Whereas a really good book, you can do the same thing. And so I think that many of us need to read fewer books, but find the absolute best books

and read them over and over again until you absolutely have mastered them. And so those are my two greatest learning hacks that I've acquired in my life. And the latest one was just recently from Russell, which was awesome. Doing both of those together, it will pull you forward. You'll be able to quantify how long it takes. And you'll be able to remember it much, much better because you store it in two places of your memory. And then for me, to add on to that, just do it over and over again because repetition is the mother of skill. And for most of us, what we're trying to acquire is skills.

And that takes repetition. In the beginning, its reputation so that you understand the information so that you can apply it without need to constantly reference the book. All right. So anyways, hope that was value before you. If you're looking to acquire skills, which many people are, then I'd recommend doing that. And go forth, conquer the world. Don't get you guys on the flip side. Bye!