The Game with Alex Hormozi - Gossip is A Gift [3rd Time's The Charm] | Ep 241

Episode Date: October 2, 2020

Have you ever been the topic of gossip? Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) talks about gossip, how this form of communication can actually benefit the person being talked about, and why we need to start being brutally honest with one another rather than speak behind their backs.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:(1:31) - Basic concept of gossip, its relation to communication, and its benefits(2:35) - Gossipers are starved of authentic communication, but capable of it(5:39) - Instead of gossiping, make person aware and suggest improvements(7:03) - As leaders, create environment for honest conversations to happen(8:32) - Gossiping is brutally honest feedback for improvementFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

I think the more we as leaders can consistently practice this trait, the more breakthroughs will be able to help our teammates have. And ultimately, the faster the communication will happen. Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers, how to make more per customer, and how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons we have learned along the way. I hope you enjoy and subscribe. What's going on, everyone?

Happy Saturday. The third time's the charm. We're trying this new podcast set up, hopefully to get you guys some better audio. And so we've got this fancy-ass mic here, which looks nice and fancy. And so hopefully you guys can hear me in deep, rich audio. And so what I wanted this podcast to be about was gossip. And the reason I wanted to talk about gossip is because I actually think it's one of the most powerful forms of communication that humans do, especially people who are not good communicators. And that's why I wanted to talk about it because I think it's one of the ways that you can actually harness and advance as an individual.

both in a team in management and leadership if you are a leader you know in your own company if you're obviously an entrepreneur then you are a leader but even if you're listening to this as an employee this is like this realization for me has been really big and so we just had our strategic meetup this last week and obviously when you have lots of people who get into a room inevitably there's back channels and and side conversations that end up happening about performance about attitude about behavior even about habits right of other people people in the team and you know we had we have a no gossip policy at our at our

company but what's interesting is that if you I think if you flip how you perceive gossip you can actually harness it into one of the most powerful forms of authentic communication and so what I mean by that is like if you think about what gossip is that it's very basic root it's two people being transparent about someone else when that person's not there and typically it's something that is negative or something that they don't want that person to know they're saying about them, right? But if you think about what is actually being said, if you were to wash the intention behind

it and simply extract what is being said about this person, it's like, well, you know, John, dude, John can't delegate anything. Like he just, he holds everything and he slows the whole team down, right? You know, Nancy's so negative, right? Like she's like, she just hops on and sometimes I'm like, geez, like, you know, be nice for once. Gosh, like we're all on the same team, right? You hear these side conversations that end up happening, like the gossip, but those gossip nuggets

are a gift, not for the people having the gossip, but for the person that the gossip is about. And the reason that this type of communication proliferates, in my opinion, is because people are so starved of real authentic communication. Most people suck at communicating. Most people don't have real relationships with their spouses. Most people don't have real relationships with their boyfriends. their girlfriends, most people don't have actual relationships with anyone, which is why so many people feel so lonely is because they are so afraid of saying what they actually think,

right? And so under the guise of gossip, where the two people gossiping don't talk to each other about what they think about one another. They talk to each other about what they think about another person, right? But it shows to me that everyone has the capacity for authentic communication. Everyone has the thoughts of what they really think. They're just afraid to tell the person because they are afraid of what would happen. But within the context of a business, within the context of a marriage, within the context of any relationship, in my opinion, if you can bring that person who you're gossiping about into the fold, everyone gets stronger, right? It doesn't do anyone any good to gossip, which is why we have no gossip policy, but it does everyone a world of good if they

The two people who are gossiping about the third person, bring the third person in, and then you have a dialogue. And you say, Nancy, you're really fucking negative. Holy shit. And then Nancy either gets to say, I've had such a hard week. Like my kids, I just had a newborn kid and it's keeping me up. And I'm so sorry. I didn't know that you felt that way.

Now I feel horrible. Right. And you have this ability to have a genuine conversation, right? Or John, dude, you're bottlenecking everyone. You're holding on to all these tasks and you're not delegating any of them. And John's like, oh my God, I didn't know. I thought you guys were so busy. I didn't want to give anything to you guys.

So I just held on to it for myself because I was trying to be a good teammate. And everyone's like, no, dude, you're not being a good teammate. Like, you're slowing the entire company or the entire department down because you won't delegate stuff off your plate. It's like, oh, I didn't know. Right. And so gossip is a gift to the person who's not there. And so I think if we can learn, and this is something that I think is learned through repetition, is that whenever I'm now seeing people lower their voice or want to go in a walk together,

a little bit further away on the edge on the periphery, right, where they don't want people to hear, where they have their genuine, the genuine real conversations that happen are these bad conversations. But if you bring that person in, and so I had a couple of these that happened over the weekend where someone would be like, hey, you know, I don't think this is. And literally, as this employee was telling me, what they thought that was negative a third employee. I was like, hey, John, come over here. I was like, we think you suck at this.

And he was like, like, I could see the look of shock, but then he was like, oh, wait, it's okay. We're all here. No one's going to die. We're actually to have a real conversation about this and solve it now, right? Make the person aware that you think this. Real quick, guys, if you can think about

how you found this podcast, somebody probably tweeted it, told you about it, shared it on Instagram or something like that. The only way this grows is through word of mouth. And so I don't run ads. I don't do sponsorships. I don't sell anything. My only ask is that you continue to pay it forward to whoever showed you or however you found out about this podcast that you do the exact same thing.

So if it was a review, if it was a post, if you do that, it would mean the world to me and you'll throw some good karma out there for another entrepreneur. Because 90% of the time, they have no idea, right? And we have this fear that they're going to, what, hate you? But it's like, it's, I feel like so many things that I've learned over time in terms of like life have been reversed, right? In order to gain your life, you have to give it away to other people. In order to trust other people, you have to give. There's just so many reverse situations in order to get the most, you have to give the most. And so there's so many things that are so ironic about life.

And so a lot of times I feel like having genuine conversations is giving the thing that you're the most afraid to share. right the thing that you think is going to offend that person the thing that you think that person is going to be angry or upset about and they might be but they might they probably won't be angry upset at you they'll be angry or set at themselves um and i think it's our duty especially as leaders to have and create an environment where those types of conversations can happen and it starts with us right and so um you can tell this when when there's a leader now there's there's a difference between me a dick right and being able to deliver information in a way that is real right um there was there was there was i mean i was like hey uh you know marissa i was like what have you been doing the last two quarters i was

like you haven't grown this this division at all like i was like i was like what like what is what is what is what do you feel you are doing right now that is a higher priority than these actions that you've you've put on uh that you've rolled over two quarters in a up like what are you doing that is like what do I need to take off your plate in order for you to do this because you're you're misprioritizing your objectives and it's in front of the whole team right and it's like shit i can't believe you said that right then i turn to the next person and i'm like hey it's like you and the bottlenecking was an actual a real a real example right and i mean a lot of these are real examples right hey so-and-so you've like a lot of people perceive you as really

negative and i think that you would gain a lot more influence in this company if if you weren't perceived that way. So what can we do to try and remove the things that you were negative about or that you're perceived negative about? Because I ultimately think that you should rise in this company. And I do think you should have lots of influence. I do think you're very smart. Right. And so I think it's literally just being brutally honest, right? Which is why one of our core tendons is don't sugarcoat it.

It's just say it like it is. And I think the more we as leaders can consistently practice this trait, the more breakthroughs will be able to to help our teammates have. And ultimately, the faster the communication will happen, right, because speed is king only happens if people actually know what's going on. And if the person doesn't know where they can improve, doesn't know what people really think, then they'll never get better. And if someone can't handle that, then that's okay. But at least you expose that early and then they can find a company where people don't talk about real things, right? And then they can, you know, be sheltered and whatever. But that, in my opinion, will have no place in a company

that I run and I try to lead by example there. And also, you know, Layla and I will usually give transparent feedback to one another in front of the team. That way they can at least have permission and see what transparent feedback looks like. And a lot of times it's, you know, gut jabs or it feels like a gut punch. But you know that the person who's delivering it to you is doing it because they actually want you to improve and they actually want, because everyone's on the same team. We all want the company to win. Right. And so I think starting with that and realizing why people have authentic communication in gossip is because they don't have it in their normal lives, you can foster that, that repetitive action of bringing the third person to the fold

and delivering the gossip. And then over time, you can do it in larger and larger groups so that eventually it just becomes transparent communication company-wide immediately when someone experiences something that's negative. So I hope that was valuable for you. For me, when talking about team meetups, I think it's really valuable. As we go into Q4, some of you guys are going to have your Q4 meetings. That means like talking about the last, in the last, the end zone, the last quarter of the year, you probably have some goals that you did or did not hit. And so I think having this as the forefront of the lens that you want to have the conversations

might be valuable for you and your teams. So lots of love. I hope you guys have an awesome weekend and I'll get you guys soon. I'm going to be writing some more chapter stuff. And if you like this, drop a comment or like. And if you didn't, you can tell me to fuck off. All right, lots of love. Get you soon.

Bye.