The Game with Alex Hormozi - How to Network with Billionaires | Ep 501

Episode Date: February 21, 2023

It’s all about stacking goodwill. Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) answers the question “how do I get connected with people who are far ahead of me?” and shares with us the exact thing he did to gain the trust of these people and improve his networking skills.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Timestamps:(0:38) - Ignorance is the highest cost in your success(2:49) - Providing value is how you connect with people above you(4:51) - There are two options when it comes to networking with successful people(9:56) - Do the work first. Trade skills for more skills.(11:36) - Rules to remember when providing value or favors(12:58) - People who give move faster in life than takersFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

If you want to get access to people who know more than you, use your base skill to give everything you can to them before you ask for anything. The right people will ask you if they could do anything back. Welcome to the game where we talk about how to sell more stuff to more people in more ways and build businesses worth owning. I'm trying to build a billion dollar thing with Acquisition.com. I always wish Bezos, Musk, and Buffett had documented their journey. So I'm doing it for the rest of us. Please share and enjoy. So one of the most valuable things that you can do to move your career forward is to network.

is to find people who are ahead of you who can give you the steps and say, hey, watch out for that puddle. Hey, watch out for that brick. It's going to fall. And they can help you avoid because the number one cost that you have to pay down in your success is ignorance, is that you do not know what you do not know. And so if you think about this hypothetically, if you're not making a million dollars a year, whatever you make per year, you can subtract from a million dollars per year, and that amount is what it costs you every year not knowing how to make a million dollars. That is the tax, the universe taxes on you for your ignorance. It's the debt you have to pay. And so everyone who is poor pays a debt to the world for not knowing how to make more money.

And one of the fastest way to pay down that debt is to find someone who's ahead of you, because they have already paid it down and they can identify where you're at and the few missing links in the chain. Because what happens is when you're building skill sets, if you think about it like a bridge, You have this bridge that's built of bricks. And what happens is you need every single one of the bricks for the dollar to start coming across. And you might have 20 of 28 bricks. And then you spend all your time reinforcing bricks, but there's still a gap. And so you keep buying courses and watching YouTube videos about copywriting or building landing pages,

but the thing that you don't know how to do is run ads, or the thing that you don't know how to do is sell, or the thing that you don't know how to do is build a product or find something people like. So if you can identify the gaps, which is hard to do because you don't have the perspective from which to make a judgment because you've never been there, then having someone from the outside you can point to the few cracks you have can so quickly drag your future into your present, you can move that much faster because you're always going to pay for the lessons either time or money and you always pay with the thing that you value least. And so if you don't

value your time, you will pay a lot of it to learn the lessons. So one of the top five questions I get is how do I get connected to people who are far ahead of me? All right. And I'm going to tell you how I have networked with people significantly well through than me. And this is probably the first time I've broken this down in this much detail, but I want you to win. And if you don't know who I am, my name's Alex Rameseo on Acquisition.com. It's portfolio that is over $200 million a year. And I make this because I want to be rich as hell and then have a good company

so I can invest in your company and we can get richer together. So once you crash three or five million a year, give me a call. The way that you connect with people ahead of you is that you have to provide them value. So one of the stupidest things you can do is ask someone, how can I provide you value? It means that you did no forethought and you're asking them to do the work on your behalf. So wait a second. Some 19 year old kid text me and says, text me, whatever, DMs or comments, whatever, and says, Alex, I'll do anything. I'll pick up your coffee. I'll do your, you know, laundry or whatever. Like, like, I'm willing to work for free. Well, honestly, it would cost

me more to have the nuisance of somebody always asking me questions every day and thinking that me consulting them every hour of the day is a fair exchange for them getting me coffee. I'd rather just pay someone who doesn't talk to me. Think about it. And if you can't think like that, you're never going to get to that level. So you have to be able to empathize with somebody who's not in your current circumstance and think, well, what does that person want? The thing that I want and the people who might be ahead of you want is time.

They want convenience and they want value first. The same way they probably try to provide you value first in order to build goodwill. And so you reverse what they are doing to you back to them. So one of the first big people who were way ahead of me in business that I was able to come in contact with. You either have to buy your way it and pay an egregious amount of money where it actually makes sense for them. But if you're poor, that's tough to do because they're way wealthier than you and probably don't want to sell their time. So, I mean, I've offered some people like they're speaking fee times two just to hop on the phone with me. And sometimes like $250,000 for like one hour.

The highest we've ever offered for $350,000 is $350,000. The person said no. But just to show you what I'm willing to do to have somebody who sees the world more clearly than I do speak into my life. Because the people who make more money than you have a more accurate view of reality. If you are struggling to make money, it's because you do not see what they see. So you're going through life with really blurry glasses. The reason somebody can be a billionaire, lose it all, and then make it all back again,

is because they see something that you don't. So the way that you network with these people is you have two options. One, you build a platform that is valuable enough to them that they're willing to come on your platform. So, for example, if you've ever seen Ray Dalio, the guy's worth whatever, 20 or 30 billion dollars now, founder of Bridgewater, huge private equity or hedge fund, big thing, anyways, lots of money. He's hopping on podcasts with people who aren't worth a thousandth of his net worth because they have something that he doesn't. They have distribution. They have attention.

they have media, they have a platform. And so you can build a platform of any kind of genre. And if you have enough people, you have enough eyeballs, you will be able to gain access to people far above you by inviting them to exchange with them something that you have that they do not, which is distribution of a message. And so that is one way that you can get someone way out of your league to come into your world. So think about Joe Rogan for a second as like the biggest extreme example of that. Joe Rogan can get presidents. You can get prime ministers. You can get the richest people in the world to drop at the bottom of the hat to come to be on his podcast. Because he's distribution. He doesn't have money. He doesn't pay them in money.

He pays them in attention, which is a different currency. Hey, Mosin, nation, quick break just to let you know that we've been starting to post on LinkedIn and want to connect with you. All right, so send me a connection request and note letting me know that you listen to the show and I will accept it. There's anyone you think that should be connected with, tag them in one of my or layless posts and I will give you all the love in the world. All right. So let's get back to the show. The second vehicle, which me coming up, I didn't have that one. So this is the one I did, is that I developed a base level skill and I bartered with everyone. But the way I bartered was that I would do the work first,

100% as though they were a paid client, and then I would give it to them. And then they would get really uncomfortable. And they would be like, oh my God, I can't believe you do this. So I would offer to hop on a call and have done a ton of work. I'm not saying, saying like 10 minutes of prework. I'm saying a day of prework before I hop on and not only identify problems, but already create the solutions that I think would help them. And then when I would walk them through all the things I'm seeing, you will see their eyes like glaze over in a good way where they're like, holy shit. Like this is so much. Like I can't believe you did this. Like, dude, I feel bad. Like, you know, what can I do to help you out? And that is what will happen when you don't

just give with the intention of exchanging, but give with the intention of blowing their minds. And what happens is you start to stack something that are more valuable than money. IOUs. You start to stack goodwill. And you have this little collection and you keep going and you keep giving. And Lailie used to joke about this, but like every community I would go in, I would get in and I would talk to everyone. I would hop on the phone with them. And I wouldn't just say, hey, let's exchange from value, live to connect some time, 101. shit. You want to be advanced, you're going to be 301 shit. You go in and you give so much more than that person. And the best thing is when you don't prepare them for it. You didn't give any

insight. And one of my favorite ways to do that is make it look like it was nothing. Like don't talk about how long it was, how long it took. Or if you do, make it's like, oh, we didn't spend how much time. We probably spent a day or two. But you discount it because you're not trying to play that game. You're trying to show value. And when I got into my first little mastermind group. That's what I did. And Layla, I said, she used to joke about it. She's like, oh, he's on another favor call. He's like, you do favors for everybody. And I was like, I don't know when I'll need something back. And I would like to have a bunch of goodwill. So if I can call on it, it's there. For most of those, I never called them. And I probably still

haven't called them. And I still have goodwill with those people. But when I did need it, later on, when I was like, dude, I don't know anything about paid ads. What did I do? Rather than pay a consultant, I cashed in one of the things that I had pre-bartered for. Because if you think about the amount of work that you're doing, wouldn't you want that level of work back? Realistically, you'll never get it back. You're not going to get the same level of work because people, most people don't play that way. Now, advanced people do, and they will recognize that game. And then they will immediately like you, I promise you, because they understand how other players play. And so they will try and give even more because they don't want to be out of exchange with somebody.

They don't want to owe anyone anything. And so the givers will over-deliver and you'll get it back in spades. It will create great relationships that'll last your lifetime. But for everyone else, they will give you back half a third, 20% of what you gave them. But if the skill they have is the link you need, it'll be worth far more than the fact that they only gave you 20% of the effort. And even then, you still always have the upper hand because you did give them things and value ahead of time. And so you can see this whatever way you want. You can call it manipulation.

You can call it reciprocity. But I'm just telling you that this is effective if you want to contact people who are above your pay grade, is that you do the work first. You leverage the small skill you have to give as much of that skill you can to somebody else for free. And then when they owe you something, you stack another skill. You say, hey, can you show me how you do that? Hey, can you show me how you do this? I'm struggling with this thing.

Can you show me how you connect those dots? then what happens is that you trade your skill for another skill. Now you have two skills. And so then the next time you get on the phone, you can trade two skills to somebody. And then you get a third skill. And you trade three skills and you get a fourth skill. The way I learned was by going at networking with people, but not just meeting and getting business cards.

Like that's bullshit. It doesn't work. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. No one cares. But you do real work. It would be better for you to give five people that are valuable a significant amount of your time to get some.

something back with the hopes that you can learn a skill from them, than to give 100 people 10 minutes. So go deep with the few that is worth doing. And if you're early on, and you just got to go deep with everybody because you don't have the perspective in which to judge. And you might get deep with somebody who's like, I recognize what you're doing. And I can appreciate it. This is what I think should try doing next time. Do this a little bit different. And those are where you make these huge leaps in your professional career. So if you want to get access to people who know more than you, use your base skill to give everything you can to them before you ask for anything. The right people will ask you if they can do anything back.

And you can either tell them then or you can not and you can hold it. You're like, I don't need anything. I just wanted to provide some value. I hope we can just stay connected, whatever. And then later you can make that ask. And then ask, as you decline in time, we'll be less that you'll be able to ask for. But at the right moment, it'll be worth everything. So once you have an IOU, the number one rule of an IOU is you cannot pretend they owe you something.

you know that they know that it's not acknowledged you don't need to you can be like hey man you owe me one you just lost it's done because now you did it for the wrong reason or at least you publicly acknowledged that you did it for the wrong reason second rule of this is that it's always a question it's like hey man you got a second and you don't need to reference the thing that you did you can you can say like hey man I hope that YouTube stuff like let's say I help somebody with YouTube but like hey man I hope that YouTube stuff's working out well for you by the way comma do you know anything about this? Question mark.

And they're going to say yes. And you're like, awesome. Like, do you have time later today? And then you can just, you know, schedule it from there, whatever. And that is how I probably would redeem most of the IOUs that I have, which is hope that thing that I gave you is working out great. Anything you need there, question mark. And if you really want to be advanced about it, you can follow up with the person on the

favor you did, provide more value on the next time you talk to them. And then in that call, make an ask. You got to ask. And the thing is, if that person's not willing to give you anything back, then cool. You probably stop giving to them. And the thing is, I think it's, I want to say it's the go-giver. I don't remember what book it was. But basically there's game theory with givers, matches, and takers.

Yeah, give and take. There you go. And so givers move faster in life because they get opportunities that matches and takers don't. And that also means that the majority of people are matches and takers. and takers, which means that if you are a giver, it means you will be taking advantage of more times than you will get anything back. But you will still make more from the few times that you do invest in another giver. And so that's why when givers recognize givers, they stay homies for life. And then they go out of their way to always try and out give one another and then both people go up.

That's the kind of community you want. And that's why it takes time to build a network of people that are actually valuable. But in the meantime, you can still do tit for tat with the matchers, right? They'll give you something back. It'll probably be less than what you gave them. That's okay. Because the thing is that every time you get something, you add it to your stack. And so it means you give even more to the next guy, which means they're more indebted to you.

And then they give you something back and then you just add it. So it's like you're a treasure collector of skills, and then you can start wheeling and dealing with anyone because you're a skeleton key of value. Whatever lock you need, I've got you. which means you can provide even more targeted value to people, which means they can give you even something more targeted back. So in the very beginning, I knew how to run a gym. I knew how to do training and fitness stuff.

And so like the skills that I used most commonly were helping people with workout stuff, helping people with the nutrition stuff. But rather than be like, yeah, I can help you out with that. Well, I'll hop on a phone call. I would like make them an entire meal plan, grocery list, food preparation instructions. I would give them everything I did as though they were a full client. And then I would hop on the call. Yeah, yeah, I put this stuff together.

And then they'd be like, holy shit. Same thing with the training. I'd be like, hey, and if you want, I'll walk you through with this entire workout. I'll show you how to do it. And then they come out and I would do that. They're like, dude, how can I? I'm like, we're good, man. I just want to help you out.

And I did. Like, you have to also want to help people out because at the end of the day, you're going to die. It's not going to matter anyways. But that was one of the skill sets I had. And then from a business perspective, like no one really cared about running a gym for all the people who were not in the gym industry. So if I wanted to connect with people outside of the gym industry, well, what was the one

skill I had that transfer? I knew how to run local ads. So I taught some people that because that was one of the things I could barter with. And for most people, I knew how to sell. And that was something that was probably my most commercially viable skill, which was arguably the most valuable skill I had at the time. And so, like, think about it. How much do you pay a personal trainer for a training session?

How much do you pay somebody to help you fix your sales process? A lot more for the guy to help you fix your sales process. So that was usually, that was my most valuable skill that I had developed. And so that was the one I traded with most often. And so I could walk into a company. I already went through your entire funnel. I already saw your follow-up sequences. Like, I hopped on the phone with any of your guys.

I recorded it here. Did you know they were saying that? And they're like, oh, my God. You're like, yeah, don't worry about it. So anyways, I think this would be a better framework for how you could walk through it. If you want, I'm happy to hop on a phone with your team and walk them through it. Do a couple calls after that? Just kind of like make sure they're getting it.

When you do that, do you think the person whose business you did that for will not try and offer to help you in some way? Of course they will. And if you're like, dude, I don't know how to run YouTube ads. I only know how to run Facebook ads. They're like, dude, whatever you need, I've got you. We'll hop on. Like, I'll fly out.

I'll record the ads with you. I'll make sure you get it right. That's how you provide value to people. Like, that's how you get connected to people who are out of you is that you actually have value, which means that step one, get a skill. And then you keep trading that skill until you have more skills. And so eventually you can trade it a more valuable skill to somebody who needs it. And it's the opportunity.

If Joe Rogan, for whatever reason, wanted to reach out to me because he was like, I really want to know how you target low-mig market companies for minority investments in how you run your portfolio. I would jump because at that point, I have a perfectly matched skill for the thing that he needs.