The Game with Alex Hormozi - Finding Mentorship, Business & Marriage, and More! - Fireside Chat Pt.2 | Ep 400

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

Finding the right mentors, Business & Marriage, decision-making processes, etc. Today, join Alex (@AlexHormozi) and his wife Leila (@LeilaHormozi) as they guest speak at Fireside Chat Las Vegas to answer some Q&As on business, and give really awesome insights & advice. This is part 2 of the chat.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:(0:40) - View on spending time and money on mentorship, coaching, education(4:44) - Alex and Leila's marriage backstory, life balance, etc.(15:27) - People you look up to as avid learners, mental frameworks(22:10) - Incorrect advice: fast-tracking skills, cultivating patience as entrepreneur(37:48) - Principles, learnings, decision-making in personal brandingFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

Moza Nation, what's going on? Continuing the VIP special edition behind the scenes, fireside chat from Grow With Video from people who paid lots of money to be in the room and answer their questions live. And so you will have the second half and we're starting now. 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 know that you guys spent a lot of money on coaching and learning, and I don't want to say masterminds necessarily, but education, furthering your education constantly. We talk about that a lot on social media as well. What's the best way to go about finding the right coaching, the right mentors, the right ways to continue your education? I mean, I'm just to start off because I'm sure Alex is thinking it too, which is just like there is no one mentor or person or program. Like there, you're going to have to do 10, 20, 30, 40.

And so I actually think it's the fact that everyone has this unrealistic expectation that one mentor or one coach or one whatever is going to solve all their problems. Perfect solutions don't exist. And so there's not one, there's no one silver bullet. It's like a thousand lead bullets to help you become the kind of person you want to be or help you build the business that you want to have. And so I think that, you know, putting all of the pressure on like some coach who, you know, they are a human who is faulty as well to help you achieve what you want to achieve.

I think is unrealistic. And so I would just say erasing that and not even thinking, how do I find the right coach? But it's what are the skills that I need to acquire right now? And then probably putting together a group of people that can help me achieve them. Yeah. It was so much better when I could just take credit for everything. So I'll give you a quick hack and then I'll maybe rephrase a question.

So the quick hack is when I want to acquire a skill, I pay whatever is required to get the skill. And so I remember when I needed to learn Facebook ads. And this is like 2013. And I didn't know how to do it. And I didn't want to buy a course. I wanted someone to teach me how to run it for my specific business. And so I reached out to a guy who had a course. He's like, well, I don't sell my time.

And I was like, it's America. I was like, everyone sells your time. I was like, just say a number. You don't know what you. And like, you sell your time. he made the time for the course anyways so he's like i mean it would have to be like seven hundred fifty dollars an hour i was like okay and so uh and i didn't have that much money like i really like this was not like when i had a ton of money um it was a lot to me and so every week

he would show up for an hour and he would try and run ads for my business and i would be like don't click anything tell me why you're why why you turn this off or what you would do and why you're like give me the thinking process behind it and then by eight weeks, which was eight hours, I learned how to run Facebook ads. And so it ended up costing me whatever 750 times eight is, so $5,600 or whatever. And it was such a better ROI for me than anything else. And so I feel like we've done that a lot of times, which is like, how can I pay to get access to someone, even if it's unreasonable? Because I believe that I would get enough leverage to have a personalized solution for me. And it was worth the 10 times the cost or 100

times compared to like a Udeme course for that thing. And so that's kind of like the hack. From a larger perspective, I think that a lot of people look for like what Layla said, the silver bullet, when I think it's much more of a directional question, which is do I think that this will get me closer to my goal than what I'm currently doing? And so I think if we think in those terms of am I getting closer, am I getting further, then this is kind of what I was alluding to earlier about like you don't have the perspective from which to make the judgment on, is this person going to be the one that I'm missing? Right. You make the best bet you can. And so if let's say you need to get here. you might go this way and then like this way and this way. But as long as you're directionally

funneling towards that point, your vision, your wisdom, your ability to perceive and make judgments will improve as you gain more insight from the education and experience that you're going through. And so I've said this publicly. I think that everyone should invest as much of the money that they have available to them after their living expenses into buying as much information and skills as possible until your income is so overwhelming that you cannot spend it trying to get more information. And that's because skills are the ultimate hedge against inflation. It doesn't matter whether we're trading Bitcoin or Seychelles. If you are valuable, people will pay you. Yeah, good stuff. Kind of a little bit of a segue into your guys' relationship, your marriage.

you guys have a unique story where you kind of started off as business partners technically technically you started out on a date but it immediately turned into a business partner relationship and then kind of turned into a marriage a literal proposition yeah

so walk me through like how do you prioritize your marriage now while being business partners well that's an interesting question if you like take one step back a lot of people ask how do you prioritize your marriage because they assume that work and life are separate. Sure.

And so, and I know that's like the cheesy, whatever. But we don't look at it like we're working together. We look at it like we are on this mission with what we want to do with our lives together. And so like doing this and being on meetings and then having to, like it's all one. Like team.

Yeah, there's no separation. And so it doesn't feel like there's a need to, prioritize the marriage when the marriage is always the cornerstone of all of it. Does that make sense? Yeah. Everything is built upon the foundation that we have together in terms of like in our life because that's what we wanted to build. That's how we wanted to do things.

And so doing it justice by doing what we do every day well is kind of prioritizing marriage because that's what we both said we wanted for our lives together. You probably could say something more helpful. No, I agree. I have a fundamental belief that there are no rules. And I don't believe any single relational dynamic is, sorry, any relational dynamic is unique in its own way.

Like my relationship with you is different than your relation with any other person in this room because we're too unique people. And so in that way, I think every marriage is unique. And so one of the things that I do not like, rather than talking about what I do like about our marriage, one of the things I don't like that I see in the space overall is a lot of people talking sheds, you should do this, you shouldn't do this. this is how it should be blah blah blah blah and um like fuck that you know what i mean like this is this is our

marriage and we do it the way we want to do it and if someone doesn't like that fuck them they're not getting married to us you know what i mean and so and i remember when i was i remember when i was i remember when when i was uh dating before leila um which i only did it via zoom the whole time i know um And I was, I am still. And I ended up ending things with someone. And I was like, you know, this is, you know, I'm just looking for more of something like this. And I ended up being probably not socially adept and telling her all the things that I was looking for that she was not. Which went over swimmingly.

And she said something that was supposed to be an insult, but I didn't take it that way. She said, well, she was like, well, good luck finding that. And I was like, well, I only have to find one. So, like, I was on this podcast and somebody was like, I believe marriage is a compromise. And I was like, I believe that's a belief. So, like, I don't think, like, I think you, you want to make sure that, and we've talked about this publicly, but there's three things that, in my opinion, create the dynamic for a successful marriage.

Number one is that you have a shared mission, which is what do we want to do with our lives. Number two is, what are our values? How do we want to get there? So we may have really similar missions with our lives, but maybe the values in terms of like how we want to get there might be somewhat different. I think Gary V and, well, now that's a bad example. Okay, but you, I love Gary.

That's not the one. But he probably is a similar mission, right, in terms of what he wants to do, impact entrepreneurs, et cetera, as we do. But the values that he's going to do are unique to Gary. And we have slightly different values, which makes it unique to us. And then the third is lifestyle, right, or similar interests.

And so I think if you find someone who wants to do the shit that you want to do in terms of big shit, epic shit. And then they want to get there the same way you want to get there. And what you're doing in the in between time is stuff that you both enjoy, then I think that it stacks the chips in your favor to have what we would consider an easy marriage. And again, people are like, marriage is hard. Like, I also think that's a belief. Yeah, I would ask that, I think a lot of it is just the shoulds, right? Which is like, when we first got married, I think it was actually the first couple of years were harder because of a lot of the projections that we accepted from other people onto us,

which is, oh, well, you guys work together. You need to have one date night a week. You, I mean, they had some really interesting opinions on lots of things. And, you know, you have to not talk about work at date night. And you need to make time to do these things and you need friends that are like this and you need all this to make a successful marriage. And you need to talk to each other this way. And the more that I got away from believing any of that, and the more that I just accepted that our marriage is going to be whatever we design it to be, and whatever we like, and that we should be more, people should listen to their, it's almost like listening to your intuition and carving your own path rather than listening

to the one that somebody else is trying to project onto you, the more that you can do that, the happier will be, and who gives a fuck what it looks like? And so, like, I don't know the last time that we, like, our anniversary was last week, you know what we did on that day? We onboarded Caleb and had dinner with him. And you know why? we had an anniversary dinner plan. We were both like, no, let's do that, though.

Like, and there's no upset. People like, you must be so secretly. No. Like, that is genuinely what we both wanted to do. We're like, we have so much time together. And every day, I mean, is amazing together. And we tell each other that all the time. We're like, I'm so lucky to have you.

And so I think that you just can't judge yourself and also don't put judgment on others what their marriage looks like. That's the one thing. I would never judge somebody else's marriage because they do do date nights. And they do want to do things. festival for the anniversary and they do want to have a big wedding that's great for that i'm genuinely so happy for them that's just not what we want to do yeah you can't answer it better than that so

all right so i feel like that's kind of there there's elements in there that were uh maybe like about time management to some extent i know a lot of people in here run multiple businesses and they maybe also have families or whatever but i could talk about time management particularly with running multiple businesses because that was a question that we got a lot of as well. I think if I were to like zoom out a little bit, I wonder if Alex, you're thinking the same thing,

which is just, it's very hard to be the CEO of multiple businesses. That was where I was going to go. Like, it's, I mean, I've tried, and it's, it's very hard. So I just, I mean, I would first ask myself, why? Why do you need to be the CEO of multiple businesses? I agree. I don't know. I mean, like, there's tradeoffs. You know what I mean? And so I was talking to Caleb about this earlier, but like,

if there's a pair of shoes and they're $500 and I want the shoes and I pay the $500, and I have the shoes, people are like, are you upset that you pay the $500? I'm like, no, I wanted the shoes. And so people look at a price tag on the things they want to achieve in life and the goals they have and they have a price tag attached to them. And if you're willing to pay the price to get the thing, then why would I be upset about, a trade off. I made the trade because I thought that the trade that I made was what I wanted. Now you can reassess the trade that you make and think, okay, I need to course correct. But like, if you want to work 12 hours a day, then fucking work 12 hours a day. And I think there is where

you need to find a spouse, but you say, this is how I want to live my life. Is that the kind of life you want to live? And so I think a lot of people do this kind of like trying to meet in the middle thing and then both people are unhappy. And I think it's much better to just be, this is kind of like picking with companies. It's like you only need to pick one. I mean, more so with us, we get to pick more than one company, but you only get to pick one spouse.

And so it's like you want to be the most unreasonable about all the things that you want to do and turn as many people away as humanly possible because if you can imagine somebody who would accept you exactly as you are. And so I think one of the things that I love the most about Layla is that she has never tried to change me. And that is only her.

You know what I mean? Like everyone else had like, you know it'd be really great if you you know if you dress like in all of these types of little itty bitty things trying to make these little mini concessions right and one of the things that she's she said publicly she's like i never tried to change Alex it's like good luck but at the same time like a lot of us make these concessions because we believe we should or we have to or it's a part of marriage or a part of life and i just don't i don't believe that and i think that if you want to live an exceptional life then that means that you well will live as an exception and if you want to

live an uncommon life, you cannot have common views. I think that when I think about the marriages that I see where people laugh, like the longest lasting marriages, something I've observed is that they accelerate each other's growth and they amplify who the other person is. They don't condemn it. They don't degrade it. They don't try to change it.

They amplify more of each other. And they help the other person expand into more of who they are. And like I know that I knew that it made sense without. Alex, because when I met him, he only encouraged me to be a better version of myself and a bigger version of myself, which for a man to do that for a woman is not common nowadays. And it wasn't what a lot of guys that I had dated done. And so I think like when it comes back to like the time management thing, I think a lot of times, it's unfortunate. People are constantly trying to fit the expectations of others. And that is why their time is limited. They're trying to fit the

expectations that their spouse has what life should look like, but they have different expectations. So it feels like a compromise, and it feels like they have to manage their time. When it's like maybe the expectations weren't set correctly in the first place for what this marriage should look like or what I want life to look like. And so it feels like this constant battle.

And so I think that if we could relinquish expectations, and then neither, I think almost in those situations, right, where you're in it and you're married and you're already there, it's relinquishing expectations of the other person. Because I don't think it's fair to put expectations on the other. Just like, you know, Alex's I don't try to change them,

It's really, I don't put expectations on him. Yeah, it's almost like if you have shared mission values, and then if you live in a way that other people might not agree with, it doesn't matter because you both agree with each other. They're not on the ride with us. They don't have to buy a ticket. Awesome. So this is one of my favorite questions.

You guys speak, nonstop in frameworks and mental models. And I believe personally that that's a big reason for your guys' success on social media. Can you talk to me about why that is where you find a lot of the frameworks and mental models? And I know that you're both avid learners, but who are the people that you look up to most in that? Where are you gathering these from? How much of them are your own creations versus others? Just talk about that for a little bit.

I just learned from Alex. So I create mental models to organize the world because the world stresses me out. And so I want to understand it better. And I feel like, I mean, the mission, like my or our personal mission is to document each other the best practice of building world class companies. And it's what I think about all day long. The moment I got into business, it became my first love and everything else became second. It's like I draw pictures of business.

I write all my words are written about business. I make videos about business. I talk on stages about business. I literally do business all day. It's just what I love. And so the frameworks were an effort to seek to understand. And in terms of understanding, it's trying to break down things into their foundational units

and strip off what a lot of people put the lipstick and the makeup and the wrappers around to say, like, what does this mean? And Socrates said that wisdom begins with the definition of terms. And so a lot of times we use words that we don't understand. And so if I were to say, what is the lead? A lot of people are like, I need to get more leads. I'm like, what is that? I'm like, you know, like a person.

I'm like, no, I don't understand. Explain more. Is a subscriber and YouTube a lead? Is it an Instagram follower lead? What makes an Instagram follower lead and not a YouTube subscriber? And so we're to ask these questions and I'm like, huh, I don't know. And so all of a sudden we start realizing that we use these words that we never begin to understand. And so how can we try and put a goal on something we can't even define?

And so all of these were processes to try and understand how we're going to do things better. And so the things that I try and seek with a framework is that there's really only two foundational unix to make a framework what I would say, you know, good. One is that it is valid, meaning there's a high number of circumstances where it is correct, where it will predict. And number two is that it is useful. And so an example of something that is just valid, but not useful would be if I said something's work and some things don't.

That is valid. It is not useful, right? And so it's not a very good model. And so on the flip side, a lot of marketers, a lot of you guys in this room, create models where you're like, here's the seven Cs of awareness. And these are all the things that a prospect is thinking before they buy. First, they have to be agitated, and then they have to seek, and then they have an information. And what you're doing is you're projecting a thought process into someone that you have no idea what they're thinking about. There's no way to measure that.

And so it's basically made up. And so a lot of us teach, or a lot of people, I would say, in general, teach their audiences false models. And so it really just confuses people because they use words that people don't understand. They talk without defining the terms. And then they say things that have no way to measure. And so in that instance, if I was like, here are the seven Cs of awareness or blah, blah, blah, blah, maybe it's useful because someone's going to follow these steps. But I can show you an example of like, what if I just buy this thing with one click? Oh, it's not valid. Done. And so the idea is how can I create a model that is both valid in as many circumstances as humanly possible and useful in all of the

circumstances to create a result. And so, like, for example, the book that I'm writing right now, which is $100 million leads, I have 58 different models, 508 different versions of the single model that is now going to be the central model of the book. And so there was the value equation, the $100 million offers, which took me a really long time to develop. And like, you know, I'm not comparing the two. I want to be very clear. But, you know, if you listen to Richard Feynman or Einstein, when they talk about formulas, they say they're like, they're elegantly simple. And so, you know, E equals MC squared is a really simple equation, but it took all of this math to get down to this one thing.

And so I think that a lot of people just throw shit up on a board and say, oh, that's what it is. But they haven't thought, like, can I break this? And so when I try and make models, and I think the reason that they gain more mass appeal is that people are like, that applies to my circumstance. That applies to my circumstance. Whereas if someone can easily break it, then it just limits the utility of the model overall or the validity of the model depending on the thing that we broke. And so, you know, in the leads, for example, it started with, what is advertising?

Right? We talk about advertising. Like, what does that mean? What's the difference in advertising and marketing? What's the between marketing and promotion? Hmm. Right? And so if we define these terms, then we get really clear on what we're trying to solve.

And then we can actually begin to, I think, gain wisdom. And that's because, you know, to end it with Socrates again, wisdom begins with the definition of terms. And so I think if we define what we're trying to accomplish, we're going to We define the words that we're using, and then we try and break it in as many ways as possible and ask ourselves, is this valid? Is this useful? Then we can begin to make models that everyone else can use. So I'll add some context to that, just my observations, which is, you know, Alex started building out models when we first started to watch. And so, you know, people here might be like, holy crap, how do I build models like Alex? Because when I first started making content,

you know, he was like, you should take all the stuff that you teach the team and have taught the teams internally and turn it into frameworks and models. And I was like, how do that? And I was like, how do I do that? And I really would compare myself. Why do my models look like shit? And yours are great. And he's like, I've been doing this since we started gym launch. And it was because, you know, he started practicing when it was every month or in the beginning every two weeks, he would essentially teach a new framework to the gym owners. And that was where I, like, if you go back and you watch, because I think this is important for everyone because you compare ourselves, right? So like your earliest YouTube videos, your earliest podcasts, right? And you listen to Alex and you watch his content. That was when he was really first doing it. But you've been doing it for six, seven years now,

that he's been breaking things down to models. And so I think just to add like context for people, this isn't something that's going to happen overnight. And it is hard to think through. And like, I'm lucky because I just get to be with him all day and like assimilate it. And so it's become something that I've been really trying to put ever into in terms of teaching people as well.

But I think just for like anyone who's here right now, if you're thinking like, how do I simplify all that and like make those frameworks? Because honestly, if you make good frameworks like Alex does, I mean, he spent like, I want to say, like, five days on your iPad in your office, like really trying to make that framework from the Leeds book. And I was like, fuck, you know, it's a lot of time. It really took five days. Yeah, it really took five days.

So it's just you can't compare yourself when he's put in that many hours. Kind of going back to what you said when you were talking about people just like making up things that sound cool. Like acronyms that aren't a real. word, whatever. What are, what is some incorrect advice that you hear regularly that you want to out for the benefit of everyone listening? There's probably so many. I just recently had this experience and if you are watching this, huh? I know you're going to say. Yeah, and if you are watching this, I love you and I love you to death and even though you said this. But it was terrible. Yeah. And so we were at dinner and it's a couple that we're really good friends with. Logan.

Yeah. there you go. And I know we were chatting, and I was like, you know, I'm thinking about, you know, putting a Discord community together, you know, I was just talking about it. And he's like, because you can, you should. And he was saying it like a truth. You have you, when someone like says like a quote? Extreme certainty.

Right. And I remember listening to that and being like, that's the stupidest thing I ever heard. I was like, what? Because I can't hit Layla, I should. I was like, because I can't drink drive. I should. Like, I was like, well. well, I just broke that model.

You know what I mean? And so I think a lot of us, like, you hear these quotes that sound good, but they're totally like horseshit. And so like, and this, it gets more difficult because you have to audit your mind. You have to audit what you're consuming because a lot of people take things as truth that are not. And it's very hard. And so one of the shortcuts we do is just go to somebody who's maxed out a skill and listen to Warren Buffett and investing because he's probably thought about this enough that we don't have to apply that filter because it's difficult.

And I think Grant Cardone said, don't listen to millionaires. And I think that there's some truth to that because a lot of people, it's like, oh, you've got to do a sell shit to make money. Now, you're not going to make a tremendous amount of money, but you'll be able to live really comfortably and probably be in the top 1%. Because most people just do nothing. You know? But, you know, big picture in terms of other types of advice that is, I feel like I would just say

most advice is wrong. I think most advice is wrong also because it's given out of context. Kind of like bringing it back to earlier, like there's plenty of advice. Any one piece of advice, could be right or wrong depending on the person you're giving it to. And depending on their preferences. So it's like, you know, I'm very cognizant of like, you know, even with the companies that we have in the portfolio, if I'm giving them advice, I take into consideration like, what are their core values? Because there was one company, for example, that, you know, they said, how are we going to

increase volume on our sales team? And we were looking at their sales availability and we're like, oh, well, clearly we need to increase our sales availability. And then we're like, we immediately both went into like, here's what we did at gym launch. And then, because it's a similarish company. And then I said, actually, you know, I don't think that would work at this company because you guys really value something that I don't say, which is work life balance. And so you don't have people work 10 to 12 hours a day. I do that. I do that. I do that.

And that's one of our values more like people are driving really hard. And so I said, I actually think that we should do split shifts. And maybe you could have someone do six hours here, six hours here, you stack them. And they're like, that would be perfect. And so I think it's, you know, it's just taking into consideration the goals of the person that you're giving you advice to. I think most people, I think the quote is, experts will tell you how they did it, or as a master will tell you how you should do it. And I think that a lot of the times we have people who are experts telling people do the steps

one through 10 that I did, right? And I hear that a lot. And I think that people should take everything with a grain of salt. I hope people take everything I say with grand of salt, everything Alex says with a grain of salt, everything they hear, hear it with a grain of salt, because it's just different based on your situation. Hey, guys, real quick, if you're new to the podcast, I have a book on Amazon. It's called $100 million offers that over 8,000 five-star reviews and it has almost a perfect score. You can get it for 99 cents on Kindle. The reason I bring it up

is that I put over 1,000 hours into writing that book. And it's my biggest give to our community. So it's my very shameless way of trying to get you to like me more and ultimately make more dollars so that later on in your business career, I can potentially partner with you. So that's my give. Go check it out, Amazon, and back to the show. So given that context, how do you create content and how do you teach in a one to many format like writing a book or posting on social media knowing that it's... I think that there's one factor which is like if you listen to long form media, especially like I've tried to be very intentional with this in like long form content,

which is I say, if you are in this specific situation and then I'll say, here's some exceptions. this. Like I just made a presentation about meetings, which kill me. I'm sure it's going to blow because nobody wants to hear about meetings, but I love talking about it. But basically, in that, I was saying, you know, like, there are totally exceptions to this. 95% of people that applies to you. There are 5% that you will absolutely fucking crush it, never having a meeting. And so I think it's just important to always give context, because if you don't give context to say, like, there are exceptions to what I'm about to say, then you kind of sound like arrogant or egotistical. It's like, oh, this is the end-all be-all. And I think we've learned that through

gym launch too, because we've had times where we've given advice and then we didn't add nuance to it. We didn't say, hey, it's for these five situations. And if you're in these three situations, don't include yourself. And people have made the wrong decisions for their business. Yeah, I was going to say, one of the things that drives me, you know, nuts in general is, you know, we'll talk to somebody or someone with DM me and be like, hey, my business coach said that, like, I should always be in charge of the sales team until we're over a million dollars a month. And I was like, well, want me to give you examples of companies that that's not true. You know what I mean? And so it's the have-toes and the shoulds and the must that always,

those are the things that drive me just bananas. And so I think a lot of times if you can just take everything as this might work or this might have a higher probability of getting X outcome for people who are in this circumstance who want this thing, which, you know, it's really nice to talk in the masses in generalities or generalizations, because everyone just wants to not think. But if you want to crush it, then you need to do the thinking. And most people don't because thinking was hard. I think something on top of that is just like a tactical piece is actually a piece of advice that Caleb gave me, which was answer the questions in the comments that are asking, like, wait, what about this situation? I think that's powerful because then you can showcase that

and you can even create another piece of content off that comment where you answer that question about that nuanced piece to your content. So when you guys were talking earlier about skills that you're trying to hone, one of those kind of related to what we're just talking about is discernment, wisdom. Obviously, experience, just time can help contribute to that.

How do you fast track that? I know the humor in that. But like, when you say you're focused on honing it, there must be, like, is it just an, an awareness that you have towards that being an objective? I think there are, like, I think there are certain feelings that I start to get in my gut when I know that I'm doing an old pattern.

I'm like, old me really wants to do this, and old me did do this. And so it's just having that extra pause of thinking like, am I making this decision because I want to make the decision or because I think it's the right decision? Let me ask you this for the audience. Have you guys ever had this thing where like,

oh, I want to do that? And you're like, I know I shouldn't. You've had that feeling? it's listening to the other voice. And I think it's just over and over and over again, flexing that muscle. And then being aware enough to reward yourself when that second voice was right.

And I'm grateful because Layla and I kind of sit in Yin and Yang in the business. And so, and we almost purposefully express more polar characteristics within the business because those are the roles that we sit in. And so I was on a call today with, a company that we're thinking about onboarding. And I asked all the questions I had.

And then I thought, I went with my Layla hat on and ask all the Layla questions that I know she would be asking right now. And so I think, like, we have this ability to think, and I've used this before, but like, for me, I talk to my 85-year-old self a lot, which is creepy. But I imagine myself at 85, and I feel like I have a pretty accurate description

to my head of, like, what I will think at that point. And I asked that person questions. And first of all, that guy just makes fun of me all the time. Just asshole. But because most obviously is like, it doesn't matter. I'm like, useless.

But I know that that person has my best intention long term in hand more than any other person on planet Earth. And so I ask that person questions about what I should do in the present. And a lot of times I get a much more even keel answer of like, I think this is what you should do. And I think it's listening more to that person than the person that I am today.

I thought. Yeah. So another one that you had mentioned was patience, which for anybody that's an entrepreneur, that's probably one of the most difficult character traits to develop, right? Especially in a world with so much opportunity. There's so much going on. Every new speaker that comes up tells you something else that you should be doing.

So how do you cultivate patience? I'm probably not the best one to answer the question because honestly, every time I see somebody else zigzag and I see somebody else jump to the next new thing and I see somebody else go from zero to three and zero to three and zero to three, but never take it zero to ten. I'm just sitting there being patient and like knowing that I'm like sitting in my suffering and I'm like fucking winning. Like that's what I think every time. And so I think I've trained myself to think like the more patient I can be, I just know. how hard it is to be patient, how hard it is to wait, and how hard it is to delay gratification. And so I consider it to be a strategic advantage. And so it sounds terrible, but like, I just look at all the people with so much high activity and so much lack of patience, so much, like,

constantly like taking the goodwill out of their audience and immediate gratification, selling like cheap, tacky shit. And I see that. I'm like, you're losing because you're constantly just like cashing in in the short term and you're never going to get that long term, you're never going to hit the long term goal you want. And so I think it's if you can kind of ingrain that into your mindset, you change your perspective on it. Right. And I think that if you want to change, if you want to achieve a goal, you have to change either your perspective or your procedure, right? So it's how you do things and how you see things. I tend to start with how I see things. And so I see it as a weakness. And I see it as something that I feel it is deterring you from your

long-term goal and you're almost putting off your long-term success because of your lack of patience. And so the more I train myself to think that way and see that way, I think the more patient I become and the more I feel it's become a strategic advantage because I do see that most of those people when they're doing those things, then end up never getting the goal that they really, really want because they have these compulsions or these urges that they like can't resist in the short term, right? Which you can resist. It's just you're telling yourself you can't, right? It's just a habit you have to break. And so I think for me, it's shifting the perspective. And then

Alex can probably talk more about procedure. I was going to say people would mistake activity progress. And so if you were to think, you know, I could have just put $100,000 in Bitcoin, for example, 10 years ago, and that would be it. One single, just

as an extreme example, right? And then nothing else would literally nothing else I would have done from a net worth sample would matter. Right? And it doesn't feel fair, but it's also reality. And so 99% of the decisions that we make are irrelevant for the ultimate outcome that we're looking at. And I think it's really trying to figure out where do I have the most leverage and then being very patient on pulling that one lever, that one big move. And most of the people that I see that are

very far in life have very low activity. But when they do take an action, they go all in or they make a very significant bet on that action because they know that they have limited bandwidth. And so they know that in order for that action to be successful and to yield them the result they're looking for, they have to be very strategic with how they place the bet. So they put way more of their time in thinking about the bet, and so they can replace the activity with the thought process. So rather than being frenetic, thinking, you know, it's the sharpening the axe analogy, but most people don't actually do that. And so I think that that fundamental shift, because wealth is a relationship with time. And so people who have tremendous wealth,

have a mastery of time because money is a transactional unit with time. You can trade your time for money. You can take money for time. And so at a micro level, they know how to manage their day-to-day time. And then on macro level, they base their long-term conclusion on assumptions that are very probable. And so I'll give you an example, you know, with Acquisition.com. So Acquisition.com is built on, you know, four or five foundational assumptions. Assumption, One is that Layla and I will be more popular in the future than we are today. Number two is that we can grow businesses in the range that we are looking for in that period of time. Number three is that the marketplace for the businesses that we are serving grows and does not shrink for some reason.

Like e-learning doesn't disappear overnight or service businesses don't magically disappear. It could happen. There was COVID. Who knows? And so if those things are true and the first of, And the fourth one would be that us building a personal brand would correspond with companies that are the type that we'd want to work with. It would translate into that.

And so if those four assumptions are true, then it's simply a matter of time before we get to a billion. And so I'll give you, this is like a real world example. A very close friend of mine is a genius product developer, best product guy I've ever met. And he said, I really think you should turn acquisition.com into a forum. And you'd have tons and tons of SEO. and that would build tons of traffic and you're already huge domain authority because we've got tons of great links and all that stuff.

And it would just totally blow up your traffic. And it really took me a long time to think about. It was going to be a big endeavor. It was going to really turn into a software form rather than use Discord, use the site to do that. And so I thought about it for like two weeks. Like really, it was almost all I talked about for like two weeks. And then I ended up saying, no, I'm not going to do it.

And the reason for that was because the four assumptions that I based us getting to a bill, on are true or I believe them to be true. And I can not do this and still get there. And so I think if we write down, what are the assumptions we're basing this decision on? And if they are true, do I believe that the high likelihood of them being true? And then all I have to do is add the one recipe, the one ingredient that no one else wants to add, which is time. Then we can be patient because we're very dedicated to the high probability bet, but it's difficult because every day new opportunities come up. And I tell the story about the woman in the red dress and the matrix.

Because the thing is that you know, everybody here knows how to, like if you're making $100,000 a year, you know how to turn down a $10,000 opportunity. It's really hard to turn down another $100,000 opportunity. And so the thing is, is that as you level up, the woman in the red dress becomes more and more attractive. Because when you're a $10 million entrepreneur, you get $10 million opportunities. When you're a $100 million entrepreneur, you get $100 million opportunity. So your ability to turn things down also has to level up because you got used to saying no to 10K things. but not 100K things. And so that is a wall

that entrepreneurs will continue to hit. They level up their business, then all of a sudden they get distracted again because they don't know how to say no to this girl as shiny object. And so I see those as like the real world translations of what patients means in action. Awesome.

So I just want to thank you guys for coming. I have one more question for you, which is about personal branding. Obviously, you guys really stepped into personal branding in the last year. and like zero to, you know, all that it is now. And so walk me through that decision process because obviously you guys don't make decisions easily. You don't take them lightly.

And you're very principled in how you go about making your decisions. And so obviously this was a very big deal. I know that you spoke with Grant and you've invested a lot of time and energy and resources and understanding how to build your brand more. And so just kind of walking through what that process was like and what some of, just some of the biggest things you've learned throughout that process. So I saw Kylie Jenner become a billionaire at age 20,

and I felt like I sucked. And I was literally depressed for like a day. And I was like, why do I suck so much? And they say comparison, Thief of Joy. It's also the fuel for greatness. I agree. But I saw that. And I'm just going to do a quick tangent.

And then I think I'll give a good answer. But when we're talking earlier about patience, if you thought a personal brand, if you could wait five years and just did nothing but build the personal brand, would then yield you an audience that would make you a millionaire, a deca millionaire, a centa millionaire, would you do it?

Most people would say yes, but their actions don't match that. And it's because it's just too easy to also do something else. And so they just detracts themselves to that goal rather than saying, if this assumption is true, do I believe it's a high probability that it would be unreasonable that if I did these

activities for five straight years that I would not achieve X. It would be unreasonable that if I did this level of activity, this level of volume, because I have all this evidence that supports that this level of activity and this level of volume with this level of skill would yield this result.

If I did this for five years, I could achieve far more than everybody else who's going to be switching back and forth and having short-term pops that are ahead of me, but long-term slow. And so I think that if we can make decisions like that, it makes patients a little easier. Circling back to why we did the personal brand.

So Kylie was a big influence. Connor McGregor was a big influence. The Rock was a big influence. I saw these people build these huge brands and then overnight have a billion dollar company. And for me, I think, okay, if someone is making more money than me, then they're better at business than I am in some way

and I need to learn what it is. And the common theme for them was that they just built a massive media channel that had, it's free. You know what I mean? It was just free. It's insane to me, even when I really think about it still. Like, we get paid to build a company right now, which is, I still, it's insane. You said the equivalent of $2 million in ad spent.

Right, right now. We get, and it's still continuing to grow up. It's like 80 million impressions a month at $25 a CPM, which we paid twice that when we, were running ads, like $2 million a month for free. And then we get paid by the platforms for doing it, which is like, again, ludicrous. And so I had all that, but I still didn't want to be famous. I talked to Dean Graciosi and he said, if the price that I have to pay to make the impact that I want to have is fame and these downsides, he said I'd pay that price every day.

And that really hit me. And so I was like, shit, okay. And then I didn't know if it worked B2B. And then I found out about nomad capitalist and I found out about Neil Patel and that they had built these brands that drove B to B stuff. And so that kind of checked off all the boxes for me. I was like, okay, we really want to do this because our life's going to change a lot because we went from pretty much being unrecognized, which I really wanted to be rich and anonymous.

and that was, you know, that was the goal. And we achieved that. And it was a conscious decision because it's one thing that you can't go back from. Like once you become famous enough or whatever, you can't go back. Like people don't forget you. And so it's an irreversible decision. And so we did think about it a lot. And then we started, yep, we want to do it because the impact that we want to have at the end of the day is like we want to document each other best practice of building world class companies.

And I wish that Bezos had made. a vlog from 1997 until today documenting everything that he had done. And so I thought, like, wouldn't it be cool? Wouldn't it be a fun life to go for something like that and document the whole thing? And so that's kind of like the big epic shit that Layla and I were like, that's a mission we can both get behind. These are the values that we're going to use to get there. And this is the lifestyle that we want to live along the way.

Really cool. As we were growing the businesses, there was just a really big gap in the kind of content that I wish had been there. And so for myself, like as we were growing gym launch nationally, we were actually exiting it. I kept thinking myself, like, I have put together so many things for our internal teams. And what I realized is that if we wanted to build Acquisition.com, we wanted to actually really have an impact. I wanted to balance out. And I wanted to make content on what I did because Alex would always say, you know, I would say, well, why don't they understand this stuff's important?

He's like, Leila, you don't make any fucking content on that shit. Like, how would they know? They only consume my stuff. And so I think for me, I actually, and maybe speaking to people that aren't necessarily as much on the marketing or the sales side, maybe the other sides of business, which are probably far and few between at this conference. Heather, you know, I think I just see that there's a gap in terms of understanding other pieces of the business that maybe aren't as sexy. And they're very important in terms of how you can scale the business and continue to grow it. And so for me, I personally wanted to put content out there because I wish I had to.

had that when we were going dimlaunch. And just going back to what Alex at the end, I think it's, you know, you get to a point where you say, what's the kind of impact I want to have at the end of my life? And what do I need to do now to get there? And the people that I look up to the most put things out there because they think the world should have it and they think it should exist. And so I know for myself and for Alex, too, a lot of it is like we're making things that we wish that we had had and that we think should be out there in the world. And I know that some of the stuff I make is not going to hit. And it's not going to be massive.

But like, I make it for myself and for the 20 or 30,000 people that see it, and it, like, completely changes the game for them. And so I think that there has to be an element of it that is important to you outside of the business or the money because I think that it would feel very empty if there wasn't. Does that make sense? Yeah. Awesome.

Thank you so much, guys. Everybody give up for Alex and Layla Hermosie.