The Game with Alex Hormozi - Grace in Business | Ep 574

Episode Date: August 10, 2023

"Being a d*ck does not make you more money." Alex (@AlexHormozi) talks about the importance of having grace in business and not burning bridges. He shares personal experiences and gives examples of how being a dick does not make you more money, and that approaching situations with patience and perspective can lead to more success in business.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:(1:25) - Burning bridges makes you less money.(4:29) - Business mistakes happen; all are imperfect human-based.(6:36) - Have grace in business; don't burn bridges.(8:29) - Negativity is remembered, not the person or subject.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition(This episode is a re-run. Original airdate was March 13, 2020)

I cannot tell you the amount of times we're biting my lip and not talking smack has made me a lot of money because of deals that I was able to make with people that were one degree connected from someone I did not like. The wealthiest people in the world see business as a game. This podcast, The Game, is my attempt

at documenting the lessons I've learned on my way to building Acquisition.com into a billion dollar portfolio. My hope is that you use the lessons to growing your business and maybe someday soon, partner with us to get to $100 million and beyond. I hope you share and enjoy. I'm making this because it was on my mind and I was like, you know what?

Might as well just get it out rather than keep it in. So grace and business. So over the last, you know, four years, I'm going to talk about a couple of things that I think will be useful for you. There have been a lot of people that have talked shit about me. There have been a lot of people who've taken public stances against me. And a lot of those people, I have helped a tremendous amount and have. beautiful testimonial videos to support them in tears about how we, you know, save their business later coming out and saying those things. So one of the lessons that I've learned is to have

grace in business and not just because of the whole human element. We're going to put that on pause for a second, but just for business reasons. Because one thing that I've learned is that burning bridges makes you no more money. You cannot make any money from a bridge that's burnt. You can make a money from a bridge that's been respectfully, you know, walked away from. And there's even ways to say that you disagree with someone without burning the bridge. You'd be like, I totally understand what they have going on there. We do things differently, but I can appreciate that everyone has their own way. That's how if someone asks me about a different method or system, I'll typically respond.

And you guys have seen me take apart different things that I don't agree with. I'm like, and here's why that I don't think it makes sense, you know, math, just math-wise. you know, independent of the person, it's just trying to separate the idea or the concept from the person when you're making remarks. Because here's what happens when you fast forward. I've had multiple of these people who have been publicly against me, right, talking lots of shit. Now, come ask if they can try and resell my products, right? What do you think, right? Like, what happens now?

Like, like, what kind of position you put yourself? in. Now, if you approach, you know, those types of relationships that you have in your life, like with grace, I'm not saying you're going to agree with everyone. You know what I mean? You're not. Of course you're not. You're human, right? But the way that you do things matters just as much, if not more than what you actually do, right? Like two people can just stop doing business with the business. But one person can make such a huge fuss about it that the person who owns that business never wants to see their face again, right? But no one might not know that depending on how that person carries themselves. And, um,

I was going to give you an example. So let me flip the tables for a moment. Let's say you walk into a restaurant, right? You walk into a restaurant and the hostess has a scowl on her face. She's not looking, you know, she's like, it doesn't look like she's having a good day. She's like, hi, do you want a table? And you're like, yeah, I was just hoping to be seated. And then she doesn't even look or say anything.

He just walks away. And you're like, is she getting us a table or do we need to sit down? and then she comes back and says, and then grabs two menus and just says this way. And you're like, oh, okay, got it. All right. And you sit down and all of a sudden your entire experience has been totally shifted by this first person, right?

And now, you know, you leave and you're like, oh, the food is okay. Staff is really crappy here. Like, you know, two-star review. Now let's replace the word front hostess, right, at that restaurant with your front desk. or your trader at your gym. Up to that point, you're like, yeah, you know what?

That business probably didn't, you know, that business sucked. Now, we all have businesses and we all have employees who don't follow the fucking script, right? You're like, smile, like, say hi, pretend like you want to be here, right? And sometimes you use a business owner right there. And so sometimes your business wrongs people because, the employees that you have are human and they will make mistakes and you are human and you will make mistakes too because all businesses are imperfect because they're based on humans who are also imperfect. 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. And so I always like to have that perspective when doing business with anyone in general, because if I am wronged or I feel like the service that I received was poor, I think to myself, I wonder if the owner of this business had this intention for me. My guess is

probably not. So the strategy was not to be a malicious business in trying to ruin people's day. the strategy was probably to do a good job. It was just poorly executed. And I think if you can approach situations that you might have this initial desire to lash out and say negative things and you remember that it's a human that like you're dealing with and a business is comprised of humans who feed families and have kids and have boyfriends that break up with them and have family issues and also and wake up and have bad days. I think it will give you more patience and I think it will allow you to have more grace. And I've tried to approach a lot of things in our business career. And I cannot tell you the amount of times we're biting my lip and not talking smack has made me a lot of money because of

deals that I was able to make with people that were one degree connected from someone I did not like. Right. Now, if I had smashed this person, right, publicly, they would tell the person that I wanted to make the deal with that I was a douche and then that would have been it. And so, So I can just say that being a dick does not make you more money. And so it is the economical choice to have grace in business in general because those people may come back to you or you may come back to them and need something from them in the future. And if you burn that bridge, you cannot walk across it again. So just something that I thought I would share.

For me, it's kind of funny being on the other side of it. But just for anybody who's in those worlds, like when you get in that kind of negative space, just keep it to yourself. You know what I mean? Just like just take it in and think, did this person mean to do this? Right. Was this experience that I had the intention of the owner?

Right. And I think when you can do that and approach that with everyone's business, now obviously you as a business owner, you always want to correct that because no one's going to give you grace, right? You're going to expect that everyone's going to treat you horribly and make first impressions.

But still, if we can be a little bit more patient and have a little bit more perspective than the average person, and we should because we're, business owners for God's sake. You know what I mean? Like you see waitresses always tip really well to people who ever like waitress like I was in I was in, shoot what is it? Food Services. There's a word for it. Like I always tip all. We're business owners. We should tip well in business, right? By treating other business owners well because every other business going to the same shit you are.

Right? Like employees dealing doing stupid stuff. You know what I mean? Not following instructions. like filing ridiculous claims. You know what I mean? Just all the stuff that we have to deal with on a regular basis. Clients being crazy, right? We all deal with it. And so I guess all of this to say is that like you have the option. One way will make you more money and will probably retain your reputation.

And the other way will only cast you as a person who has negative things to say. And all that people ever remember, and you guys have probably heard this, is no one remembers what the negative person says or even who they're saying it about, but they just remember that what they are saying was negative. And so then you become associated with the negativity. So just figured I'd share. It was on my mind. I hope someone doesn't talk shit about someone else or one of you goes into a restaurant and then leaves a review that's a five-star review that's nice or leaves a five-star review that says, hey, to the owner, this was really messed up. Please feel free, like, respond to me, and then I'll delete this rather than leaving you a one star.

Like, you know, probably doing something like that might actually make a business owner's day. Imagine a business owner do that to you. You're probably pretty, pretty pumped about it. So anyways, I hope that's a little something. It was on my mind and I figured I'd share it before I went to bed because it was just, it was brewing. So don't burn bridges. Do the right thing.