The Game with Alex Hormozi - How Loving the Work Fuels Unstoppable Success | Ep 695

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

“The goal is to have nothing left.” Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) explores the power of setting challenges and striving for excellence in both personal and professional life, emphasizing the importance of dedicated, hard work for continuous improvement. He proposes that true fulfillment and success are achieved through the pursuit of meaningful work and the joy of the process, rather than focusing solely on the outcomes.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:(1:28) - The journey of creating exceptional work(3:50) - Redefining happiness beyond pleasure seeking(5:42) - The endless pursuit of goals and challenges(7:55) - The philosophy of work as the ultimate goal(13:36) - Living fully: leaving nothing in the tank(16:03) - Work as the core of every goalFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

I think that you can win either way. I absolutely think you can win either way. But it definitely changes how long you can play. If you want the challenge, then you basically create goals to create challenges. 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 grow your business and maybe someday soon partner with us to get to $100 million and beyond. I hope you share and enjoy.

If you want to be exceptional at something, it means you have to put a lot of input into it. and you can't be exceptional at very many things because of how many inputs you have and how limited they are. So if time is an input, we all have the same amount of time. And if it takes a huge amount of that time to get good at one thing, then if you take that as the assumption we're basing this on, then there's just not many things you can get very good at. And so then it takes some level of selection to be like, what thing do I want to go good at? You know, it's so funny. I saw the background in my gym. It said that picture that I posted of like one of my first video content, it said the back of the wall. I made this, I made this quote up that I painted it. You can see how

ugly the page is in the back wall. It says, strength doesn't come from doing what you think you can, but doing what you think you can't, is what I think it says, which I don't agree with the word strength. It should be growth. But anyways, I like the idea. And so I think that one of zero is very much like that, which is one of one is doing something that only you can do. One of zero is doing something that you've never done before, and that ideally no one else could do. And so it's an amount of work that most people just don't comprehend. And it's really hard to even describe it. Because, like, I can say I spent six hours a day for 18 months on this one project

and people nod their heads. But spend six fucking hours on one thing once. Then do it 500 times. And then, like, you'll start to see the soul-crushing amount of effort that it takes to stick with it. Now, I've been able to extend how long I work on projects because you can have a short project you get a win. I can work a little longer the next time. I can work a little longer the next time.

Really good books are one of the hardest projects to do because you get almost zero reinforcement. It's very punishing for most of the time until, quote, the end. But the process itself, there is some sort of joy in being the type of person who is able to endure that. I have a lot of entrepreneur friends who are like, oh, I just finished my book. I'm going to write a book just like you did. I was like, no, you won't. No, you won't. They'll like it worked well for him.

I'll do that too. His book was so good. I'll write one too. It doesn't work that way. They've never even written anything. So they're starting at like where I was when I was 15. And I would say the same degree. It's probably like people who look at Mr. Beast now.

They're like, oh, I'll just go make YouTube videos. He started with 13. And he's been spending more than six hours a day trying to make videos since then. And so there's just like so much depth of knowledge that you can get that just takes time. But the thing is, is from the happiness perspective, I find a lot of joy and excellence. And I think that work well done provides dividends forever. So if we were to think about like subjective well-being or like purpose or meaning or utility or usefulness, any of those, whatever one you want to optimize for, I am proud of the first book I wrote. I'm proud of the second book I wrote. I'm proud of the third book I wrote and I'm proud of the book that I'm writing right now.

And when I look back on them, every time I see them and I see people benefit from them, I get a reward for a one-time input, even though it was a year. For the rest of my life, I will get rewarded for that effort. And so it just encourages us. me more and more to do things the right way. And I think people who build exceptional products think about products the same way, which is like, it has to be right. It just has to. It's all the hundred details. It's not the big idea. It's the hundred details that make the difference between it. Like the Mr. Beast videos versus other people who try to be like Mr. Beast. It's a hundred details that make his videos better. It's not just the thumbnail, right? Like, it's not that. It's a hundred things. I see joy a lot as just being present in the moment because I think you can joyfully mourn

Like if someone's, you know, died, I think you can find joy in a morning experience if you're consoling someone else. I think it's just being present and being okay with experiencing life. That's how I see joy. Now, I haven't defined it and I'll probably spend more time defining the words, but I just see it as being present. I experience joy when I am present. Like, I'm enjoying this.

I feel very present right now. As soon as you give up the goal of happiness or even meaning, then it stops being this thing that's outside of you. And so it allows you to be present in the moment and do what you want to do or do what you need to do. And so if you always have this thing that you're measuring against, one, there's always a delta between where you are and where it is. But I think oftentimes it'll optimize for the wrong path. And I think happiness for most people is pleasure seeking. So they call it happiness, but it's really hedonism. And most, I don't like to appeal to religion, but in terms of old ideologies, most people have found, and I'm sure there is some signs that I don't know,

that people who pursue hedonistic lifestyles tend to be the most empty and the least fulfilled. And so I think people have just swapped the word happy or hedonism for happiness, and they think they wouldn't want to say that. But if you look at the actual activities they're pursuing, they're almost purely pleasure-seeking. Most pleasure-based activities are their pleasure now at the sacrifice of goal, or something later. To be fair, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I'm just saying like, know what we're optimizing for. So there was this big philosophy website, and then Naval quoted that site. And it was a desire as a contract we make with ourselves to be unhappy until

we get what we want. And I mean, I fundamentally agree, whenever you want something, it means you don't have it. And you basically create deprivation within yourself to motivate behavior. So if you see motivation is the equal opposite of deprivation. You are hungriest when you haven't eaten for a while. You're, you have a huge motivation to sleep when you're exhausted, right? And so if we want something, we create deprivation within ourselves to motivate ourselves to get it. But by creating deprivation, we basically create. Now, he calls it unhappiness. But I don't know if I necessarily go with that as the, I think we just, we create deprivation. But I mean, I think the way to skirt that is wanting a challenge. And so if you just genuinely want to fight bigger and bigger bosses,

then the fact that you get the gold at the end becomes, like, if anything, the gold at the end is like irrelevant, you just want to find the next boss. And most of the champions that are out there that I've seen, you love the Michael Jordans. I mean, a lot of Olympians have huge depression after they get a gold because now what? And I think you can see how people react to victory tells you what motivated them or rather what they were deprived of. So if the goal was to be exceptional, then that person hits the gold, sees it as a foregone conclusion, and it's just excited to move on to the next thing. If they made their entire life about getting the gold, then they have no idea what to do because they were married to the outcome, not the process. And again, I think that you can

win either way. I absolutely think you can win either way. But it definitely changes how long you can play. If you want the challenge, then you basically create goals to create challenges, create goals to achieve goals. You set new goalposts just so that you can have the trial. And so like, someone's like, what happens when you hit a billion? I was like, I'll make it 10. And when I have 10, I'll hit 100. Like it doesn't matter because I'll die and I'll give it all away. Anyways, it's relevant. But it's just like, I want to, I want to be better. And the only way to be better is to do the work that I know I should do. And so that way, every day I'm doing the work. And at least for me, that has worked. Do whatever you want. That has worked for me. It's this whole fallacy around being done.

It's this whole idea that we can finish. We can work so hard, we never have to work again. We can eat so big. We never have to eat again. We can sleep so well. We never have to sleep again. It's just a fallacy. It's not true. And people lose their lives trying to find that one meal or that one sleep or that one goal. That'll satisfy them for good. And it never does. Hey guys, love that you're listening to the podcast. If you ever want to have the video version of this, which usually has more effects, more visuals, more graphs, you know, drawn out stuff. Sometimes it can help hit the brain centers in different ways. You can check on my YouTube channel. It's absolutely free. Go check that out if that's what you are into. And if not,

keep enjoying the show. So when I was selling Jim Munster, there's basically a year where I couldn't really work. Most because if I worked in the business, then it would look like I was a key end of the business. And I didn't know if we were going to sell. So I didn't want to start another company. So basically just to like subsist. I could even start new endeavors or initiatives within the company. So I just had to do nothing, basically. And so for me, it was the most depressed I've been. If you look at some of the videos during that time period,

a lot of them are me being pretty sad and being like, what the fuck is life about? But it's just that for me, again, I'm not religious, but I do find it interesting that the first thing God gave Adam in the Bible, before giving him a wife was giving him a job. Work. Tend to the garden. Before he gave him a wife.

And I find that really interesting. I don't like, religion aside, we're built to work. And so for me, especially, I'm built to work. And so if I'm working, I'm good. And the days that I enjoy the most are the days that I work the longest. And so I just try and remove everything that stops me from doing that. Most people envision heaven like the one meal that's going to be so good, they're never going to eat again.

They're going to be so elated to just be singing with the angels. It's like, yeah, but play it out. Like, then what? like, okay, got it. We sang with the angels from 9 to 10. Then I had a feast, you know what I mean, from 10 to 11. But I got to keep my idealized body, my, I don't know, glorified physical form. I got to keep that the whole time.

It's like, okay, well, now it's noon. Now what do I do? Well, dogs are all there because all dogs go to heaven. Great. Good to know. But if your wife dies, then it's like you have three wives up there. You're like, I mean, technically we were at different times. I was like, how do we do with that?

Whatever, God's figured it out. But again, I think it's just this fallacy of work-life balance. Like, I think heaven is literally just an extrapolation of work-life balance as a concept, which is I will just be able to do life and no work. But the first thing God fucking does in the Bible is give someone work. And so I think so many people would be helped out if they just stopped labeling it as a bad thing and started seeing it as the way to get what they want. And then eventually to make it the thing they want.

And this is like a little bit of an abstract idea, so it takes a little bit more processing prior to conceptualize this. But there's goals and then there's working to hit the goals. And then there's the idea of love the process, but there's the subscript of so that you can hit the goal. But in my opinion, it's just work. Not so that you can't. It's just work.

And it's like, what do you mean? It means like working is the goal. like working as hard as you can and learning how hard you can work and how well you can work and how right you can make things and how well you can do them like pushing that expanding my capacity to work not so that I can. Like expanding my capacity to work so that I can work more. Like if you can do that, then you have the self-fulfilling loop and then you also become completely divorced from the outcomes, which ironically when you do work that way, you do have outsized

outcomes compared to everybody else. But you do it because you work so fucking hard because you're addicted to working and you like that game. And the goals just happen as a consequence. But I don't even like saying the goals just happen as a consequence because it still gives the idea to the listener. That's the point. And it's not. Because even if your goal is to be the richest man in the world, okay, let's say that's your goal for how long. Every richest man in the world is the richest man in the world for they touch the top. And then boom, something changes the economy, whatever it is. And then another richest man in the world comes up. Like who was the richest man 20 years ago? actually 30 years ago, a bunch of Japanese guys.

And then Japan's economy crashed. No one even knows their guy's names. And so it's like making the goal, even as audacious as those guys' goals were, right? And let's see your number two. But even let's say you're number one for how long. And so that's why I think that the work is the goal. Not so that you can. Just the work is the goal.

And learning how hard you can work and being proud of yourself for how much harder you work today than you did yesterday. you've already hit goals that you said would make you happy. And I might have put years ago or something like that in there. But it's just fun of it. Years ago, you set goals that today you've hit and you said you would be happy and yet you're not. And so it's because the concept of setting these goals presumed, like the ultimate unhappiness equation is, if I get X, I'll be happy.

Right? Like, we all know that one. Because that's the guarantee of it not happening. Because it automatically, the entirety of your existence is outside of yourself. And then the moment you hit it, then what? you said another one and it's outside yourself, right? And so if the goal doesn't change your entire life, then you can basically be achieving it every day. If the goal is to work as hard as you can, every day you can work as hard as you can. The goal is the state of being that you have

when you work exceptionally hard, when you do hard work worth doing. And you know if you left some in the tank. And I love, I think this is Jesse Hitzler says this, but I really love it. There's a handful of like sayings that I've gone from other entrepreneurs that I really love. I'll give you three right now. I'm side questing. but just deal with it. One is Michael Dell says play nice but win. I just love that. The second one is Andy Fricle has 100 to 0, which I really, really like, which is basically like society when you're up in football, let's say you're up 30 to nothing and it's halftime. Society says put in your backups, put in your third strings, like take it easy and play. And he's like, no, fuck that. A hundred to zero.

Step on their throat and fucking kill everyone. And I like that from a perspective. of like, don't let off the gas. Just because they lost doesn't mean that you now have to dilute yourself to lower yourself to their standard. And so it's like, yeah, so what if it takes this much to win? I don't care if it takes this much to win. I want to be here. Because if you then change how you play, because everybody else isn't as good, you lower yourself. You don't raise them up. That society trying to make it appear as though people are better than they are. And I'm a big fan of like, they should know they lost 100 to 0. They should know how much room they have to improve. And also to the same degree, I should know how much further ahead I am. I'm going to

keep playing the way I play. If we happen to finish at 100 to 0, we happen to finish at 100 to 0, but I'm not going to let off because that's who I am. And the third one was Jesse Isler has this thing where he has with his kids, which I really like, was after they do a marathon, because he's really big in endurance sports. And so his kids are too. And so whenever they finish, a lot of them pulled up a zero, which I really like. And it means nothing left in the tank. And he said, I don't care if you win. He's like, I just want you to have nothing left. And I think about that as like the goal.

So the goal is to have nothing left. And I think that on the micro level and on the macro level, like my favorite days are the days that I get into bed and I'm fucking exhausted, but proud of the work that I've done. I have nothing left. I've left it all in the field. And so that's the goal. The other stuff, society chooses to measure me by.

But when I measured myself that way, it distracted me and I didn't enjoy my life. But just living that day as many times in a row as I can until I die is my plan. And at the end, on the macro, they want to hold this up and be like, I got nothing left. I'm used up. But until then, I will continue to try and be useful. And so I like all three of those statements. And they, to me, kind of embody a lot of the values of one of zero, which is not just doing only what you can do but doing things that you didn't know you could yet.

Alex, what if my goal isn't work? The goal is always work. it's just what you're working on. And so whether you're like, I want to have the best marriage, then cool, it takes fucking work. If the goal is to have the best kids, then parenting, is that not fucking,

it's fucking work. If the goal is to have the best physique, it's fucking work. If the goal is to have the best career, it's work. If the goal is to just be the ultimate version of you, it's work in all these arenas. And being mindful of what you want to optimize for

in terms of how many hours you want to allocate to each.