The Game with Alex Hormozi - From Breaking Sweat To Breaking Norms (Pt.2 - Sept. '23) | Ep 630

Episode Date: December 23, 2023

“When I look back on my life, the things that I enjoyed the most have been the pursuit, not the goal.” Today, join Alex (@AlexHormozi) as he guests on Chad and JT Go Deep to share his perspective on success and the role ego can play in achieving it. They discuss the importance of confidence and how it differs from ego, with Alex explaining how authenticity, interest, and staying genuine to oneself are keys to successful content creation. He also delves into his experience with investing and the role of a personal brand in business success. They explore the limitlessness of personal achievement and touch on motivational aspects of acknowledging inevitable death. This is part 2 of the interview.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Follow Chad and JT Go Deep on:➤ Instagram | Spotify | Apple | X / Twitter➤ Check out full episode on YouTube!Timestamps:(1:54) - The impact of ego on success(3:05) - Role of authenticity in content creation(7:20) - Pitfalls of content creation(12:36) - Role of personal brands in business success(21:19) - The power of effort and determination(29:34) - Role of mentorship and self-reflection(33:37) - Visualizing the ideal future self(42:40) - The impact of death on perspective(49:56) - The gym as a unifying spaceFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

If I'm Timmy and future me is dad, looking back, like, I want to make that man proud. And that man's the only man who knows how hard I could have tried. Only you can compare your effort to what you know you could have tried. And I think that's like, that gap is what I'm trying to close in myself. And that's the, like, that's the journey I'm on right now. And the business is just the outward manifestation of that. 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. Have you seen ego-less successful people? Totally. Interesting. I mean, I don't think any human has no ego, but I think that you absolutely can have. I mean, one of the most successful, actually, the two largest companies in our portfolio, are headed by couples, husband-wife duos, where they both are aware of their deficiencies. They both cover for one another. And I would say that they're the most anxiety-ridden of them of like, am I doing good enough?

Is this right? Like, I feel like we should be doing more, like paranoia around improving the product, the service, the culture of the business overall. Whereas the more ego-driven ones want to reflect more of the greatness of the business onto themselves. They want to take more of the credit. They tend to, like, hog more of the work. They don't delegate well. They can't attract talent at scale because only assholes want to work for assholes. And so it's like, it's just, it's just.

I think I was kind of conflating ego with confidence, too. Because you're talking about self-awareness, right? Yeah. Well, confidence I would define as the percentage likely that what you say will happen will happen. So, like, if he's a confident guy, like, and you can be confident at public speaking and not confident at doing math, because the percentage is likely that the speech goes the way you want it to is high versus the percentage likely that you do the Excel sheet right as low. You can be confident in different arenas versus just confident overall. And so I think that that's like just a segue on that for confidence. I think it's nuanced in terms of like where are we applying it.

It seems like people who run purely on ego, they can get to a high place, but it's kind of like a house of carts. Like they don't have a stable foundation. It can be. It's usually because in general, and this is massive generalizations here. Now, are there super successful people who are super eager driven? Absolutely. But I would say that they, I would make the argument that they succeed despite their ego. Meaning if they did all of the things that they did that are right and they didn't have an ego, they would be more successful.

So it's not that like ego prevents success. It just doesn't, I don't think it causes success. I think that some people who have egos become successful, some people who don't have egos become successful. But the things that need to be done are the things that drive the performance. Like either you advertised or you didn't, either you built the sales team or you didn't. Either you had a good product or you didn't, whether you're an ego driven asshole or a really kind person, irrelevant.

But in terms of how we want to live life and who we want to hang out with on a daily basis, because at the end of the day, like I'm going to die and no one's going to remember me anyways. I'd rather hang out with people with more stuff. Does that fuck you up that people won't remember us anyways? No, I think it's really freeing. Because you just feel like, what's your own life, make it what it is. Yeah, do it for you. When you, so when did you start making content?

26, seven months ago, somewhere in there. And then, so what's your output per week these days? I think right now are about 300 a week, more? 350, 350, 350 pieces, no, pieces of content a week. And so. posts, videos. With your videos,

because I found you through YouTube videos. And so do you do you basically go if you're like speaking to someone an idea pops in your head, that'd be a good video? Or do you have like a brainstorm session where you're like,

I'm going to do a video on this topic. So my brainstorming is Twitter or X now. That's where I do all my brainstorming. So I probably tweet like five times a day. And it's just like as things come to me. And if there's a lot of of traction on it, then I'll make a short about it. And if there's a lot of traction on that,

we'll make longs about it. Right. And are you conscious of your brand while you're tweeting? Like, do you ever have thoughts? And you're like, oh, that's a good thought, but it doesn't really fit into like the kind of culture I'm building around this thing. I think it'd be less than, because if it's from me, it's going to be on brand for me. So you believe it's a wide scope, what works? Because it's all, as long as it's authentic. I'm, I'm, I'm me. So I have lots of different aspects, like was once a frat bro, also management consultant, also a gym bro, also an investor. Like, I have a lot of things that are just like weird to, yeah, exactly. And so like, if it's, if it relates to things that are part of me, then it is on brand for me. If, if I'm

going to say it, then it's on brand. But it might not be contextual to the platform. Right. It's not form fit for where, right. It just might not be a good X piece of content. X as in X.com. So if you're like, trees should be blue. You're like, maybe not on X. Maybe that belongs somewhere else. Yeah. If, if that's, uh, if that record of my brand, which I don't talk about trees much or the color blue. Is there a reason? On the blue kick, I guess. No, no, I hear you. I hear you. Because that's what stuck out to me there. Yeah. Well, no, I'm trying to think, I don't think any of our brands are blue. We can put it. We can circle. Hmm? Well, Leeds is blue. That's right. The book is blow. The book is blow. But so you, you'll put out a tweet and what you get back tells you if that's a

good idea or not. From the market. Yeah. They tell me if they think it's interesting. Like, I say, I think this is interesting. If they like and share it, they tell me. They tell me, me they think it's interesting too I'm with you I worked at a super liberal place and they would complain about like Iggy Azalea doing like appropriating culture and I'd be like well kind of let the market decide and then it would turn them off they were like don't talk like that and I was like well if people like it there must be some kind of utility to it and I don't think she's the best but I think time will settle these things but uh I how do you how do you reconcile that when people feel like taste and even sometimes morality can be

adjudicated through the market adjudicated. Is that the right word? No, I just don't know what it means. Like when people think that stuff should be worked out by the market. Oh, um, I don't touch morality stuff often because I'm like super yeah, right. Like there are if, if I can't say this is true, this isn't true, then I usually don't touch it. So like all of the content that I make, I have two boxes for it.

I just want it to be true and I want it to be useful. And so like if I say something's work and some things don't, then that is true. Is it useful? Not really. If I say, hey, X, Y, Z, when someone walks in the door, you know, give them a checklist and they'll be more likely to buy. It works, but it's not always true. And so what I try to do is find the sweet spots where it says in this context, in a weight loss sale, if you put this checklist in front of people and you don't do anything different in the process, a higher percentage of people buy. That's both true and useful. And so that's kind of where the sweet spot of where I try to make content. And that's what the books are about is like,

If I put something out, I don't want anyone to be able to say like, that's wrong. I mean, they can say that's wrong, but that's their problem. But in terms of like, you know it works. Like, if more people find out about your stuff, more people will buy it, period. Fight me. And so that's really like when I create the arguments that are inside of like the books that I have and the content I put out, it's always based on those types of arguments. It's like, if you do more of this thing, you will make more money, period.

it. What do you think is the biggest mistake content creators make today? Not being them. Yeah. 100%. We'll basically getting taken over by the algorithm and then like talking about blue trees when they don't actually fuck with blue trees. Right.

But they did it because they did one blue tree post and people... So glad you brought that back. Right, dude, had to. And so they got a lot of likes and they're like, maybe I'll start making more stuff on blue trees. But like then they go down that alleyway for six months or a year and then they're like, I'm like the blue tree channel, but like I don't even care about trees. Like that's not like the stuff I like to do.

talking about. And so they can't actually sustain it because the biggest brands are built over decades, not days or weeks or months. And so you have to optimize again, like remember starting at the end, or at least for me, starting at the end and then working your way backwards. It's like the only thing that will persist over my entire life is me. And so for my life. You can always fall back on that being there because it's, I'm going to be. As long as you're as long as I'm alive, I'll be here. Right. And so if everything that I talk about is related to stuff that I fuck with, then it will always be on brand for me. Now, what's cool is that my interests will slowly morph and shift over time, but it usually doesn't happen overnight. And so there's

something called successive approximation, but basically it's like you can, it's like slow boiling frog, right? Like, you like the the bud light Dylan Mulvaney thing was going from like cold water to hot water. Yeah. Now, if they'd done that over 30 years, it probably would have been fine and seamless. Right, but it was too big of a shock too soon. And so it's about having like a hundred tiny iterations that's how you can steer a brand. These are oil tankers. We're moving them slow baby. Yeah, we're titanicking minus the iceberg. They hit an iceberg. Yeah.

They hit an iceberg. They did. So are you saying follow your inspiration? Is that correct? All the things that you're interested. Yeah, sure. I just use it. Inspiration always like scares me as a word because I feel like it means so many things different people. If you're interested in it, then I think talk about it. Yeah, I guess it's like

follow what your sort of creative spark. It's a word? Sure. I'll say there's also two categories of creators that I think is probably worth delineating. So everything I just talked about I would say is more for entertainers. So on the other hand, you've got educators. And I think there's way more mistakes in the education side than there's the entertainment side. The entertainment loop is the algorithm loop where they start making content about stuff they don't actually care about because they think it's going to feed

the algorithm. Right. The educators start trying to teach on stuff that they haven't done. And so they try and pretend they have more authority so that they can get more views but they don't have that and so at some point they feel like a fraud because they are um like that's the like people were like how do you do with imposter syndrome i was like you don't have it if you did what you're talking about yeah yeah like i don't have imposter syndrome about talking my best thing it's what i do every day right so like are suspicious of like academics a little bit in that respect um not suspicious but are you a little bit like because i had that too it's like when you're in film school and you have a teacher but then he doesn't make movies you're like well you're telling me this shit but

but you haven't sold anything more than I have at this point. I think that, I mean, I would say that that is the most legitimate complaint. Like, I think that all content is consumed within the context of the creator's background. So, like, for example, if I tweet on the ivory throne, it might get likes, it might not. If Elon Musk does it, it'll get a zillion shares and likes and whatever, because it's consumed within his context. Right. Which, to be fair, that context for many times is the brand itself. But part of the brand, the things that we've associated with it, right, all.

are the background evidence that the person is who they say they are. And so like I had, you know, just under a $50 million exit. You know, we have a portfolio right now that does plenty of money. And so people have that evidence. So when I say, hey, when I'm buying companies, like if I, so if you'd ask me, what do you look for in companies that you're trying to buy? And I'm a school teacher that doesn't have an investment portfolio. And I give you my answer.

They could say the exact same words as me. But everyone would be like, you're full of shit. No, it's like when I talk about how to win a basketball, it doesn't have the same credence as when MJ does it. Yeah. Which disappoints me because I know what I'm talking about. I think it's valid. Thank you.

Yeah. But like that's like that's like the number one. That's like the biggest was like the entertainers go down the algorithm trap of talking about stuff that they're not actually interested in. Educators go down to the ego and status faking track. The fake it till you make it, which I'm so aggressively against. Right. Like just be real about the stuff that you actually have done. And if you want like in my world, it's the opposite.

It's do crazy shit. and then you can talk about it. Yeah. And then was there a point in your, did you want to get into content creation prior to before you started doing it? Or was there a point where you're like, I think I've earned enough at this point

to where I can legitimately talk about what I want to talk about. So two things. I've made content, but the content was different over whatever season I was in. So when I owned my gyms, I was talking about like intermittent fasting

and like programming and stuff. Is that good by the way? If you stick with it, sure. Okay. Yeah. But from a creation perspective, I just saw the content as just like lead nurture. Like people might click an ad, see some content, and then decide to buy. It wasn't to get customers.

It was just to let people know that I wasn't a total idiot. Like that was it. Once we probably, it was two and change years ago. I saw, I mean, this is ridiculous, but I'll share it anyways. So Kylie Jenner became a billionaire. Or like, she was on the cover of Forbes and she was like 20 and I was 27. and I felt so poor and bad. A little inadequate compared to her.

Of course. Yeah. And so whenever, so I have this rule with business, which is like, if someone's making more money than you, then they're better at the game of business in some way than you are. And you have something to learn from them. It doesn't mean you have to, like, just because you learn from someone doesn't mean you need to become them.

And I think that's a huge one. It's like, I can learn, like, I'm going to take a really extreme example of somebody who has zero stoke. But like, you can look at Hitler and think, there are things we can learn from this. Now, obviously there are things that we should learn from it And the other way, it was like, we'll learn what not to do. But in terms of, like, creating a movement, in terms of oration, rhetoric,

like there's a lot of things that he had that were good, just used for the wrong means, right? Right. And so bringing it back, bringing it back home to content. Kylie Jenner hit the front page. I felt inadequate. And then Connor McGregor, like, months later, had proper 12 sold for 600 million. And then Clooney had just had his the first ever of, you know, what was it? Casamigos.

sold for a billion and then the rock had taramana and then hootabutea beauty was a big influencer and she sold a portion for 600 million as well and so it was like within this this like corridor of like 12 months like all these massive exits happened from all these people had big personal brands and i had this belief i was like i feel like i'm good at business and so like at the time i think i'd taken home that year like some like 17 million in income like that year and i was like i felt like i was hot shit but when i saw that i was like i don't know anything and so that was when I started getting the idea of like maybe I should build a personal brand. Maybe I should start making content.

I still didn't like the idea of like being famous because I kind of like being more like just doing my own thing. But I had a friend of mine who's really big, kind of like celebrity. And I was at, I was at his house talking over the kitchen table. I said, don't you get tired of like the death threats and the letters to your kids and like all the stuff? And he was like, if that's the price I have to pay for the impact I want to have, I would pay it every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Right. And he said that to me. I just felt like such a pansy for like not taking the step. For being afraid of that. Yeah. And so I was like, and literally the week after that, I made my first YouTube video. And that was that was it. And so do you think this is like a specific moment in time where to be a successful

entrepreneur you do have to be like front of the house and kind of publicly facing? Or do you see people who are doing it in discrete ways? I don't think you need to. I do think that increasingly, so if just from a statistic perspective, cost to acquire our customer on paid media has gone up like 100% in a very short period of time. So it's double. Like the cost to get a customer has doubled. And so what that means is, at least how I translate that, is brands will need to have trusted

ambassadors to associate with so that consumers trust whatever they're buying because trust has never been lower. And so you have to create a brand that people trust, associated with the product, and then do it. Now, you can partner with creators. It doesn't have to be you, but it has to be somebody. I think more brands would benefit from it. Now, you know, you have the mega dudes. Like Elon has basically hacked that system and gone public, made one of the biggest personal

brands of all time. and people are like, I like Elon, I will vote for that by buying his shares and buying his cars. And so, like, he has a way to monetize every single person on planet Earth in the most efficient monetization vehicle, which is a public company of shares. Like, the most efficient vehicle to make money if you have a public brand is to go public. Wait, so what do you mean? I'm sorry. You can make the most money if you have a public brand because if you think of-

And by public brand, you mean him being the public brand. Yes, sir, personal brand. Oh, and then people can invest in the brand because it's just called your stock bro. and put shares in it. And if you think about like the size of a business in terms of potential, it's number of potential units sold times potential gross profit per unit. So like if you're, you know, if I wanted to get into banking, for example, like everybody banks.

And so like the tam is huge, right? So that might be a good opportunity. But like does my brand resonate with banking? Maybe. But if I wanted to sell something else, then it might have a much smaller target audience and smaller price tag. Right. If I want to sell golf clubs, one, it's not really my brand.

But if I did, there's a very small percentage of people who do it, but maybe the lifetime values is higher, you know, per person. So that's like the, that's the really hard exercise that a lot of creators have to go through when they're going through because you don't want to start like a hundred companies. You want to be like, what's the one thing that I can slice that hits the most of my audience that has the most long-term value per customer? And that's pretty much like the X mark that you try and find when you're trying to build a brand.

But when you're a public company, the most expensive. thing that someone will buy is all their money to invest in something. Like investment opportunities, which is why they're so heavily regulated because everyone will give their life savings to something because that's an investment, is anyone can invest in anything, which is why you get the most money from the most amount of people. And so that's why a public company, if you have a front-facing founder that is public and like very big and vocal can be a hack to generating the most money. On the flip side, if Elon does something that's egregious, the business

he could destroy the entire business it's like the Uber guy Travis Calliner or whatever but he didn't even have a really he wasn't like he didn't have a profile like Elon I guess that was even more internal to like the Silicon Valley world

but everyone's like oh this guy's hard charging and run through walls and everyone's like dude this guy's reckless he's doing like he's doing too many walls yeah he's doing espionage on like his competitors and shit

he got too stoked yeah he did cool off well ego too he was burning on ego yeah I don't know to be for I don't know I read one book but like but I think we're but I feel confident

he seems like he he's yeah I don't know dude but for sure just a Gordon Levitt pilot he's like you're not super pumped I'm like wrong kind of stoke wrong so yeah he's pushing that the stoke with the I want to just to circle back one thing on the authenticity thing with content creators and chasing like the yeah the Algo do you think part of it is like because they're chasing the trappings of what come with that success bro stoke boulders for shoulders that's what's up dog all right getting warming so so like I feel like sometimes the

way people go the mistake that I mean sometimes I think they're chasing profit but sometimes I think they're chasing other things too like attention or status stuff like that so I guess I was curious what is like your goal and what you're chasing so the mission of the business to make real business successful for everyone and so that's why we put out the books and the courses and the content and everything's free so like my courses are free on my site without any opt-in like you don't have to give me any so you just want to democratize entrepreneurship that is yes and do you think all people are capable of it of being an entrepreneur I think it is like a

a singular skill that just is blessed in certain people. I think if we're defining entrepreneurship as just someone who transacts in a business, I think anyone can do that. That's really sweet. If any kid can start a lemonade stand, then anyone can be an entrepreneur. The question is how good of an entrepreneur can you be? Now, that definitely has, I think, genetic predispositions just like anything else does. And also just nature and nurture side of it.

Like if you grow up in a family of entrepreneurs, likely that you're an entrepreneur is significantly higher than if you grow up in a family of government workers. So what are the muscles of entrepreneurship that you would most recommend people work on? And I know it's probably case by case, but broadly. Delayed gratification. Yeah, baby. Like number one. To be fair, that's probably for everything.

But delay gratification is number one. Being generous first, which is really tough for a lot of people. Like being willing to, A, give more than you get back and give without expectation. And that kind of pairs with the delayed gratification thing, which is like, I'm going to give, I'm going to give them and give. And I also have to accept that some people will burn me. And that shouldn't dissuade me from continuing to give. And so I'd say like, that's probably number one and number two. And then number three is being romantic about the work and not the outcome.

So like I got, I was, I was on this podcast not that long ago. And someone asked me, they're like, so what motivates you now? So we crossed a hundred million dollars in that worth when I was 31. I'm 34 now. And, you know, I publicly say, I'm like, I'm going to document my way to a billion and beyond. And that's kind of all the stuff I'm sharing, you know, to the audience. But like that, that idea doesn't motivate me. It's also like way in the future.

like it would be a one-time thing, we'd cross the line, I'd be like, well, now what, right? The thing that has unlocked more juice for me than anything else is, I'm going to try and say in a way that's not trite, actually seeing what your best looks like. Like, I think there's a little giants in the movie, the football movie. I think it's that movie. When he's like, is that your best? And he gets on the thing, it might be that. Or it's, it's one of the football movies. And, you know, he's doing the push thing where the coach is on the little machine guy and he pushes him. And he says, you can stop when you've done your best. And he's stops at like the 30 yard line and he's like, is that your best? And he like, he pushes

again and he's like, and now he's at the 50. And he's like, is that your best? And he pushes again. And he's like, is that your best? He goes all the way and he pushes it past the end zone, right? And then the kid gets off completely like, I want to leave nothing on the field, but I want to see what nothing on the field actually looks like. And I think the more I do, the more I realize I can do. And that's what gets me stoked. So have you found, sorry. Yeah, was there a moment when you, because you, did you have that big moment like a hundred million? Is that? So you, you reached that milestone, right? Was there sort of like you were like, that's the ungoal?

Was there a part of you like, that's the ungoal? And then you got there and you had that kind of thing where you're like, is this it? Do you know what I'm talking about? I felt nothing with it, but I also expected to feel nothing with it. And so I started Equisors not calm the day after. Right. So I'm not a bit like, I, so I have now realized just from my own self

that the time that I, when I look back on my life, the things that I enjoyed the most have been the pursuit, not the goal. Like when I actually look backwards. Now, looking forward, you think it's the goal. But looking backwards, all my happiest times or like when I was even in the struggle, sleeping in the gym, like when you have a worthy foe

that challenges you to the endth of your ability and forces you get better, like that flow... Get me fired up right now, let's go. That flow is where I feel most alive. A goal worth pursuing. That makes you stronger because you're fortified in that pursuit.

If you don't know what you're going after, anyone can kick your ass, basically. And so that has been like... So I think, I saw this interview from Kobe that I just loved. And they said, so most athletes are either really afraid of losing or they really want to win. I don't know if you saw this club.

Yeah. And he says, I don't think I'm either. And me paraphrasing what his response was, is like, he just wanted to do the absolute best he possibly could divorce the outcome. And I think that a lot of people will say something like, yeah, I just want to try really hard. But then there's like, there's the second part of the sentence

where they're like, so that I can win, so that I can whatever, which means that that's still not the goal. It's just the vehicle. But I think like the thing that I've been working the most on myself that has been yielding me disproportionate returns in terms of my effort and what I'm getting out of myself is cutting the second half of the sentence off and saying like, how hard can I? You just want to know how hard you can try. I want to see how hard I can can try. Have you felt that limit? Have you pushed the tackling dummy as far as it'll go? Have you seen what your limit is and empty in the tank? Or do you think it's like not finite. It could

keep growing. That's what it is. I just think I think that the more you do, the more you realize you can do. You feel big, huh? Like, because you're just like, dude, I could just keep. You proved yourself. You give evidence. You're like, well, I did that. So that gives me evidence that I can probably go a little further. And then you do that and you're like, you just get this never ending momentum of like, because like the first book I wrote has done really, really well,

$100 million offers. It has like 17,000 five stars on Amazon. It's always a top 100 book still like two years later. And when I wrote my second book, $100 million leads, I worked on that book five times harder than I did on the first book. And I think that that book will outsell the first book. over the longevity of its book career. But I had so much enjoyment from seeing how hard it was to really write.

That book is probably the hardest book I ever write because it was literally trying to consolidate advertising into a single book, which is mine so hard to do. But it unlocked a new level of effort, and I know that future books that I write, that will be the new baseline. That'll be the new minimum standard that I know I can do. And so like the idea, because I was thinking about this actually this morning, weirdly.

Like I was fast forwarding to like if I had a kid, and they were playing peewee soccer or whatever, right? I don't want to be the dad who's like, you won high five or you lost high five. I want to be the dad who's completely divorced from the outcome. And like, we won 10 to 0, and I look at little Timmy, and I'm like, you did not try your hardest. And on the flip side, if we lost 10 to 0,

and he left everything on the field, I'd be like, you fucking crushed it. Right. Like, I am proud of you. Yeah. And that's been like, and I, and I want to keep that same perspective for myself if I'm Timmy and future me is dad looking back.

Like I want to make that man proud. And that man's the only man who knows how hard I could have tried but didn't. So like everyone else will give you applause for the stuff that you're already really good at and do well at because they're comparing your outcome to what they think they could achieve. But like only you can compare your effort to what you know you could have tried. And I think that's like that gap is what I'm trying to close in myself. And that's the like that's the journey I'm on right. now and the business is just an outward manifestation of that.

Moza Nation, real quick, if you are a business owner that has a big old business and wants to get to a much bigger business, going to $50 million plus, we would love to talk to you. And if you like that, we would like to hear more about it. Go to acquisition.com. You can apply anywhere on the page and talk to one of our team and see if we can help you get there. What's the main prohibitor in terms of empty in the tank? Is it fear that it won't work out if you do or is it just laziness? You mean why don't people?

Yeah, because I feel like everybody can empty the tank, and I feel like most people don't, or maybe they just have too much responsibility and they don't have like the bandwidth to do it the way they'd want to. I think it's, well, one, there's a lack of comfort because it's usually new, like you push the comfort, you push past the comfort. You're outside of where you're used to. I have a hard time in general, just a side note, answering why questions, because I don't know why anyone does anything. But, and I'm asking you like you should know. Yeah, I have no idea. But do you know? No idea.

But, okay, so in yourself, how do you, how do you, on the days where you, you're, on the days where you, you're, you're, on the days where you, you're, you're, you know, you. you don't empty the tank because they must come. Sure. How do you rationalize that to yourself that you didn't have it that day? So the times that I don't empty my tank now is usually when I don't have clarity on what I should be doing. If I have a really clear goal of what I need to do, that is my, like, that's my shit. Like, if I have a three-day weekend and a blank calendar and a big goal and a lot of coffee, like, you will never find a happier version of me.

Just challenging, like, I call it like, I need a number. another bone like and right now because I just launched the book and I like literally next week we have our big leadership meeting and my my whole talk to the team is like I need another bone and so like let's just figure out what Alex's bone's gonna be and I'm gonna gnaw on it for the next 18 months I feel like a good marker for finding what you really want to do in life is when you don't notice weekends or holidays where you just sort of like I remember because when I started doing comedy it's like I was teaching like surf lessons and there's 4th of July was coming up yeah I didn't even know fourth of July is like my

favorite holiday I didn't even like notice it you know it just doing open mics and like any you just sort of like oh Fourth of July went by and and like then they were like okay now I know I'm really locked into what I want to do you don't experience FOMO if you're doing something better if you're in your go Mo dude nailed it clip it what do you have a what's your biggest vice vice yeah um I mean I drink on occasion. If you want to consider that advice, that's advice. If you want to consider a dessert of ice, you could. But I just eat in my macros.

It doesn't really matter too much. You like ice cream? Yeah. I love ice cream. Yeah, big ice cream fan. I'd say it's tough. I'd say if I had to pick up only one type of dessert, it would be ice cream. Dude, same. Yeah, I like mixed. I like mixed methodologies, though. I like warm cookie ice cream with like crunch. Oh, yeah. Exactly. A little texture. I want temperature contrast. I want texture contrast. Yeah, my brother was talking shit one time on Pizookis. He was like, oh, He's like, he's like, he's like, he's just a cookie with ice cream. I was like, yeah, that's all it is.

It doesn't need to be other. He's like, I guess he didn't like the name, but I'm like, well, they got to call it something. I think Pizuki works, but those two things together, it's kind of undefeated, bro. They didn't need to change it. Pizuki sounds too much like Duky. Right. I think they need to change it to because. Pizuki?

Yeah. They could just go like cookie. Yeah. Pud, not, not Pizuki. This is not Duky. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's people define themselves too much by what they're not, but not by what they are, which I do think is a modern phenomenon that distracts me and bothers me.

Yeah, I think they have more examples to look at to say what they're not. Do you have people like, I'm sorry that I frame it in like a, it's not that I'm looking for like holes in the game, but I'm genuinely curious. Like, do you have a mentor? It's going to sound weird as shit. So, yeah, but it's wildly narcissistic. It's yourself? Sort of.

So basically, all right, we're going to go into it. All right. We're going to go deep. Bro, we're going to go deep. We're going to go with you. All right. You got the light on your head. We're behind you in the cave.

Let's find out. Rollercoaster, let's put the seat. Click in. So there's something called the Solomon Paradox. And so the Solomon Paradox, if you remember King Solomon from the Old Testament, really wise guy. Smart guy. Exactly.

And so the Solomon Paradox simply states that people give better advice to other people than they follow themselves. Absolutely. And so they've actually observed this in psychology exam. They do double pline. they actually whitewash someone's own personal stats from something, and then they have the same person look at themselves from an injective perspective, not knowing it's themselves. And the advice they give that person differs from what they do in reality,

which to me just indicates that there are emotions at play when it's your own stuff, but you can be more logical and impartial when it's from the outside in. And so one of the things, I've struggled to have like therapists and coaches. I've never been able to like do it well because I feel like 90% of the time that I'm talking to them, I'm trying to give them context around a decision so they can help me make a decision, which feels like a big waste of time.

Especially like, it's like, I need you to have lived my whole life so you can have context and why this decision means something. On the flip side is that I also feel like they have misaligned incentives, meaning like they're only incentives for me to come to the next session.

They want you back. They need the money to keep coming in. They don't want you to get too good. I mean like, as shit is sounds kind of, right? And so taking all that in consideration, people are better giving advice to other people. I have to give context to somebody in order to get some advice.

And then their incentives are aligned. I was like, well, what would be the best person to give me advice? And so for me, the best person to give me has been my mental envisionment of 85-year-old me, who's already achieved every goal that I wanted and more and is the man that I would like to be. And then having basically sessions with that man and saying, hey, it's Monday.

This is what I have on my docket this week. What do you think? And then I put my 85-year-old soft hat on. And I'm like, all right, well, you know, what's the goal? What are you trying to work on? I'm like, well, what are your concerns? I'm like, well, this is kind of what I'm worried of is. Well, you know, that's not going to matter. And then I'm like, yeah, yeah, I get it. But this, what about this other thing? So I can skip past the 90% of giving context because future me already has context in the situation. Future me is also

100% aligned with long term me, which is, I think, a big thing because short term me always wants to make, you know, short term decisions. But long term me is like, dude, like, let's do this for us. Right. And the biggest thing that's gotten me through really hard times has been working to gain the approval of that man. And in a lot of ways, it's scary because it's the hardest man's approval to gain because he always knows how much harder I could have pushed. And so it has forced me to pick fewer things to try and excel at because I know for me to get the red, you know, the stamp of approval from FutureMe, who I call Solomon, even though it's Future Me, to get the approval of Solomon. I need to leave it all on the field. And so, like, walking into the book launch, we had like 500,000 people who registered for the launch.

It's like a whole city. It's like Baltimore. Like, it's like all of them. Like, when I walked up, I knew that I had made Solomon proud before I stepped on stage. And so I didn't have a lot of stage fright because I knew I had prepared a ton. I'd done every single day for the weeks leading up to it. I had done, I'd said the presentation out loud.

And then I had done a recording of the presentation. and then I would watch the presentation with my slides up and edit the slides. And I did that every single day for the entire month leading up to it. So I'd already done the speech like a hundred times before I stepped on stage. And so independent of what happened, Solomon was like, you have my approval and that is enough. And I think that that's been it for me. It's like if I can gain that man's approval, then the noise from the outside world and the approval of others has mattered less and less. And that's my continuous, that is my pursuit, is to make that man's opinion the only opinion I listen to.

How jacked is Solomon when you visualize him? The limit does not exist. Bro. He's a mountain. Who's, who's, say you look at like a 75-year-old bodybuilder. Yeah. Which physique? Which bodybuilder who's older now do you look up to the most?

I think Frank Zane has a great physique. He aged extremely well. He stayed in shape. There are more and more examples now because there's all this anti-aging stuff and people take better care. We have more science. We know things now. But yeah, that'd probably be the single example of guys. Do you think he has the most beautiful body in like Olympia kind of history?

Not my favorite body. I think he's aged the best. I think Lee had a great body. My favorite, I really love Flex Wheeler's body. Flex was just like unreal. Look at the black and there's a black and white image of Flex Wheeler. That's just like unbelievable. So he's before Arnold, right?

No, he's after. He's after. Okay. Yeah, he's after Arnold. Damn. Milo Sarchev at his. at his peak time. I loved his body. Mike Menser,

Hugh loved Mike Menser's body. Man, I don't even know these dudes rigs, and I used to follow this. I had a subscription of muscle and fitness. I don't know what happened. Menser's like Arnold's days. Menser's like Arnold's time. I can only remember the chance. Personally, I don't know if you can tell by what I'm going for,

but I'm going for Ronnie. I'm a Coleman head. I almost didn't, I mean, indistinguishable. But I'm going for. Pirani. And I actually really like Flex Wheeler's body.

Sorry enough. Phil Heath's body. Really like Phil Heath's. Yote. They started to get a little bit less gargantuan, right? In his era, they toned it down

from the Coleman like 320 weight kind of stuff. I don't know. I just think there haven't been enough. I mean, Big Ramey was like the biggest bodybuilder who won and he won in the last three years.

Just a black and white of flex. Wow. I mean, yeah, there's not. You know, he keeps the abdomen a little more tight too than a... He's the exceptional. I have a random one, but Laird Hamillard Hamill.

Who? Laird Hamilton? Surfer guy. I'd get along with him. Okay. Yeah, I think he'd be right up your home. Yeah, I could see you guys like slapping hands for sure. Yeah, yeah.

Do you do ice bass? Not really. No. No. He does this workout thing where you lift weights underwater in Malibu. He's like a big wave surfer guy. But I'd check out his documentary on Hulu. He's just kicking ass the whole time.

Dude, I did a peptides recently. Okay. And I had to get off him because I think I did too many out the gates. Got too jack. Yeah. Too fast? I get it. But I was taking CJC 1295, BPC 157.

I don't know what any of these are. No, you haven't delved into that world? Not peptides, no. No, yeah, and it also made me a little bit manic, which I'm a little predisposed to. So I just woke up at three in the morning and my first thought was, you're amazing. And I was like, I need to slow it out of it.

I feel like that stuff, I feel like you should take more of that. Yeah, maybe I should, yeah, I don't know why I was so wary of that thought. It was probably just the volume of it felt a little intense. Yeah, also I was like, you know what? If I was thinking about my Solomon, I was like, I don't know if you've earned that thought right now. so it doesn't feel egocentonic to the moment you're in. And that's why I pushed it out, bro.

Fair. But I appreciate you wanting me to feel that. But are you very adventurous with that stuff, or do you keep it pretty tight? No, I've been on TRT for four years, five years. I was 28 or 29 when I started TRT. I did it when I was 18 for a summer. And I was doing HGH together.

It was most fun summer in my life. But I fucked up my shoulder. I was just doing more overhead lifting than I should have been doing. And then it ultimately resulted five years later in surgery. So the longevity part of it is the thing thing that people don't look out for well it's like I mean I keep it's like if you can't do it

for a decade don't do it for a day like I just love that frame and especially I mean when it comes to anything but especially fitness stuff so everything for me starts with joint pain which is like which of these hurt my joints the least that I can do the most amount of volume on and then those are the ones that I hammer so that I can just accumulate the most fatigue on the muscle and then ultimately drive the most growth and for shoulders which one is that exercises mm-hmm so like over overhead press, for example, doesn't build shoulders a ton. Now, you've built strength for sure.

I mean, you'll get a ton of core strength. You'll get a lot of, there's a lot of tricep in overhead press, especially like from here up is it's all tricep. So oftentimes the limiter isn't your shoulders. So like if you do overhead press, oftentimes, like you could do this and then like at the end you could do these. So it's like your delts are not the limiter, your triceps are. So you can't finish the lift because you still have juice in your in your delts,

but you don't have juice in your triceps, right? So if you actually use perfect form as your compass for when you stop reps, then you always stop shorter when your shoulders are done. And so I do a lot more like lateral raises and things like that to build shoulders because they are the sole focus. I can take them beyond death. So that's giving you more width. Yeah.

And are you strict with the technique or you swinging them? So I train a little. So I'm strict with the technique for all of my first reps. And I will continue to do the same. technique, but with less and less range of motion. So, like, if I'm doing lateral races, like, I'll hit perfect for the first 10 or 12, and then I'll hit three quarters and then I'll hit whatever. Now, I don't do that on every set, but if I want to, like, finish the last two sets off really strong,

I'll do something like that. Like, I want to squeeze everything out of it. To be fair, delts are also muscles that can recover faster. They're smaller. They can take more workload than, like, your back can. Like, if you're doing deadlifts, like, training that way is a terrible idea. I think I messed up my shoulder doing that. Really?

Yeah, over-upress? Yeah, because, you know, I had like a thing where my brother, he's at like a similar build to you, and I saw him over Fourth of July, and you just looked like a tank, so I was like I need to lift more because I've always been more of like a cardio guy. Yeah. And now my shoulder kind of hurts, so I'm back on yoga. Well, like, that's where I like the bodybuilding perspective. Like, in my opinion, bodybuilding is the most functional training.

Hear me out. Because being jacked is functional. Right. Like every time I'm on video, I'm using it. Every time I'm in a picture, I'm using it. Whereas people are like, well, when are you going to... Yeah, when are you going to let... Yeah, and you can't either.

You know what I don't need to? Oh, not you. No, I didn't... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. The utility of it is to appear like you could kill a lion. That's half the... It's like, no one that looks at a peacock with their plumage and they're like, yeah, but that can't stab a rhinoceros.

It's like, well, I don't need to. I got to impress the girl over here. He's crushing it. Yeah. Yeah. Sexy, sexy, dog. Yeah, no one's going to say, like, Peacock's literally invented peacocking. Right.

I know. And then mystery totally stole it from. They're the originators. So with that, with gals, did you always have a pretty good rhythm? Or was that something you worked on similar to your body, similar to your entrepreneurial spirit? I always did okay there. Yeah. Good.

You know what? I like where you're landing it. Just leave it. It's not a good thing to volumeize on. People talk about it. I'm like, what are you doing? Yeah. How do you feel about that, like, all these.

I guess I'll speak for myself. Yeah. All these podcasts where, like, 40-year-old dudes are talking about, like, how to get laid and stuff like that. I'm like, what are you doing? I'm like, shouldn't you have, like, a family and, like, something? Like, he's like, look, man, if I see a girl and she's like, you know, looks at another guy, I'm like, later. I'm like, dude, you're 42, man. Like, what are you doing, bro?

Go home and, like, pet your dog and cook a burger. Put some bengay on, you know? I'm sure those joints are hurting. Yeah. Yeah. I, um... It just speaks to me of, like, a culture that has, like, misaligned values, I guess.

I think it's the polarization of gender roles. So it's just like right now, gender's the hot topic. I don't talk about it because I don't want to get into it. But because there's so much around definition of terms, people are just oscillating on opposite sides of the pendulum. Yeah, it's really like a posturing move. And I'm a big,

do whatever you want guy. But yeah, I haven't, I've probably steered clear of that movement because that's not my message. Like mine is about entrepreneurship and believing that the only, like there are a lot of problems in the world. And I believe that entrepreneurship and business is the most efficient way to solve problems. And so I will not be able to solve all the problems in the world.

I think anyone can. But I can at least help equip the future entrepreneurs who will. And if everyone has a house, we'll be fighting about that stuff less. I do think like there's a lot of efficacy. And if people are, you know, have food security and shelter security, maybe some of these other fights that were having. that are more on the margins won't feel as significant. I, you know, I would actually argue the opposite. Oh, you think that, oh, you think because we have security...

We have to find something else to argue. We have... Yeah. Because the bottom part of the pyramid's taken care of, we're like, let's fight about more nebulous stuff. Yeah, because if you go to Africa, they're not arguing about it, because they want food. People say that, but I went to Africa.

They're fighting. No, I'm kidding. I was like, really? That was insane. I would have been the best counterpoint. JT. Got to try... Throids about this shit, dude. Yeah.

You got to try nagging. Yeah. No, that was great. No, but I think it's, we have so much abundance in everything that we have. Right. We're trying to find. So Layla, my wife, found this really interesting study on this, but basically the number of problems that the brain finds is always the same. Yes.

And so all you do is switch the things that you see are problems. And I just thought that. So then, for me, it helped me think about problems as not problems because they're just a thing that will always. be there. And so the easiest way to solve a problem is to decide it's not a problem to begin with. It's just the mind's function. Yeah. It's supposed to do that because it's trying to keep you alive. Yeah. Yeah. Trying to determine that threats.

Like the really happy monkey probably didn't do as well as the paranoid monkey that was watching out for lines because the happy monkey's like, dude, life is awesome. And they're done. You know what I mean? Right? But the other one that was like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Like this place, did you hear that? Did you hear that? Like stressed out of his mind. Like he's up

in the tree. And the other guy's like, it's fine. It's always the rain, relax. And then done. Yeah, you're always You can make the same level of stressed out. Just have those good problems to focus on. Yeah. Champagne problems. Like, that's the goal. Would you argue that the monkey that was happy but died early had a better life?

Yes. And what really like bends my noodle is when we even use the word early. So I'm going to go dark and then we're going to go light. Perfect. So I had a cat named Bill, nickname Chill Bill. Nice. Awesome dude. Max Stoke.

Yeah. And Bill was always chill. Best cat I ever had. And he was like a dog. He would just like chill. Like he would come up and just like, he would just always be around you. He's like, hey, I'm here. If you need something, I'm here.

And I was like, I appreciate that. And so one day, and Bill was a young cat when I had him. He was a young lad. And then like, I think like 20 months later, he died like he died of like some freak heart thing. His heart was too big, classic, right? Evidence by his chill nature. And it actually, I think we actually found a, it was because it was because like his heart beat differently so he literally was like extra chill

yeah yeah like two chill but so i was really sad yeah and i was like why am i sad like why am i sad about bill and so i thought about it and i was like i'm i'm sad because i think he should have lived longer like it felt unfair that he died at like just under two years old as a cat so then i thought what if all cats only lived six months and bill actually made it like four lifetimes and then i was like that's I was like, I'd probably be really stoked that he lived such a long, amazing life. And so it was only based on my expectation that he should live 10 years or 12 years or something

rather than saying, well, on the scale of 5,000 years, we're all living that short period of time. And so if I die at 30 or I die at 70 on a 5,000 year timeline, who cares? And so that helped me get over, like, did the monkey die too early? It's like the monkey died and he had a good life. Right.

Yeah, it's like someone dies, like of natural causes. died because, you know, they have a painless aneurysm in their sleep, which sounds like a bummer. Next day, whole city floods. Everyone else dies by drowning. Who had it better? Aneurism, bro, with 24 hours less. Yeah. I think thinking about death, too, is such a great, can be a motivator and help you to give less fucks.

It's true. Because we had, like, a show come out and like, yeah. We're going deep. Yeah. No, I mean, I'm going to die. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to die. I'm almost certain.

But, like, it's, it's, uh, it's, uh, Like we had a show come out and it's like you get so consumed in your like ego you know because you're like thinking about yeah how's it gonna perform yeah how's it gonna perform are people gonna think um if it doesn't do well they're gonna think I'm a loser all that kind of stuff then you think well I'm gonna die one day yeah what does it matter yeah so I think it's thinking about I think the stoaks do that they think about death and it's like all the time it's very freeing yeah you just want empty stoke inducing put the clip in that machine gun and just pin that trigger and

yeah just think about dying Violent bullets. Yeah. Think about dying. Chases of love. Yeah. Bullets of love. Think about dying makes me more stoked.

Yeah. To live. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we should end with, we do of the weeks,

but we're trying to mix them up right now. All right. Do you have a song of the week that's really banging for you? Yeah. Can you get him his guitar? I would have said that Oliver song that went super viral. Yeah. I would have said,

said that. But now it's too like... Yeah, I don't want to get... I don't want to get all... I just, I did, I listen that song like 40 times. It's a great song. Yeah. But I'll play you a different song that I've been jamming on this week. Hell yeah. Do you have one doggie? I think of it aren't. There it is. It's like classical. Mm-hmm. Texture. Come on. Oh, dude. This is Jay Z. Rihanna and ES posthumous. Post hummus. And that's the dude who threw it together. Yeah. That's the man. Dude. Um, I'll go, do you, do you have, do you have, I can go. I mean, I'm just really psyched on this artist. Peggy Goo. Okay. You get a Peggy

goo? No. I love Peggy Goo. Peggy Goo. She's a Korean DJ and she's big in Europe right now. I think she's breaking into America. Huge in Germany. Like Hasselhoff. Yeah. Dude. Yeah. That's the dream. He's a god. So I already talked about our one song, nah, nah, nah, on another podcast. But I'll do Starry Night just because I'm psyched on Peggy Goo. Yeah. I'm going to do nine. I'm No, no, no. Yeah, do what's going to get us feeling? You do one of these as you're walking in? People are responding.

People are responding. They're pointing back. They're like, yeah, you got it. Yeah, yeah. He knows. You rip your shirt off. This is my dad. This is going to be my day.

It's very gentle. That's what I like about it. Four children come up to your heels and lift you up, like toddlers. Yeah. Strong toddlers. Yeah, yeah. Four. And toddlers know the truth.

Yeah. Did the strength of body ratio of her toddlers? through the road. They're like hands. They're like clothes and he doesn't need him, dude. This guy looks good. Yeah. All right, I'm going to go with Good Charlotte the River. Oh, yeah. Yeah, epic kind of L.A. song. I love Good Sharlet. Here's the thing about Good Charlotte.

They actually kind of go hard. But people don't know. Because they went soft and then once you go soft, people forget you can go hard. They brand you with, they associate you. They want you to be one thing. Yeah. Is this new? No, this is like 16 years old. So yeah, it's new. Feels new, though. Do the valley of the shadow of that.

listening to this at the gym and I was like dude I'm just a guy in LA going for it. Yeah. Did the people at the gym could see my energy? I was like yeah I'm in it dude I'm in it bro I'm feeling things and you got so at the gym you're just getting up nods like I'm getting a lot of up and you know up nod is way dude that's such a good call that it's an up nod not a down no down. Oh no down. Down nod's a little bit like what's up yeah yeah yeah up nod's like that's what's up yeah yeah. All right you get the chorus that's you went all the way dude I loved it and that's the thing about the gym too

I was going to say this. You must have noticed this. The gym, demographically, it's all races, all ages, all people. When I go to 24 hour in North Hollywood, the spread is insane. You know, it's cool? The iron doesn't care. We're all brothers under the iron. Like 500 pounds and 500 pounds. This is what it is.

That's the title of this podcast. Sweet, man. Well, thank you for coming on. Yeah, it's such a pleasure, man. It's really fun. Appreciate you guys. Thank you. I felt like we really cooked with gasoline. Oh, nice. Okay. I yeah pre-heat and then we switched right to the charcoal maybe a wood wood plank okay tell me about it yeah get a little cedar going some some aromatics let it simmer yeah freaking treger yeah such a pleasure man thank you it's mutual thank you guys for having me awesome sweet