The Game with Alex Hormozi - How to Really Learn Sales and Marketing | Ep 286

Episode Date: March 25, 2021

Actual over theoretical. Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) talks about the importance of growing your experience in sales and marketing rather than just reading books and putting theories to the test.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:(0:56) - Alex's life unchanged after reading books.(2:40) - How did you develop marketing and sales strategies?(4:27) - Most people lack belief in their product and prospects.(7:24) - Practice skills instead of just reading books.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

My conclusion was, I wouldn't read a book unless I executed everything in the book. 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? Whatever day it is that you were watching this? I get messages all the time, all the time, and comments about what are your favorite books. And maybe in another video or podcast, I will do an exploratory, you know what I mean, of the, the book.

books that have been most influential. But if I'm being honest, I didn't really start reading a ton until after I had made a lot of, you know, a relatively high amount of money, right? And I started reading when I had more time, right? So it would be kind of backwards for me to say, hey, these are the things that created my success when in reality I feel like I started reading when I had the time and be like, oh, this is really interesting. And so I think that to kind of make this story full circle. Before I even started my first business, I was definitely a seeker, which is like you're just looking for something, you're searching for something that's, because you just realize something's wrong with your life, right? And that's kind of how I felt

when I had my consulting job, which is what I took after college. And during that time period, I read all the time. And I remember realizing after six or 12 months of just reading book after book after book of self-help and, you know, personal development and like all that kind of stuff, that my life was literally the same. And I remember this was kind of like a jarring moment for me because I just sat there. I finished a book and then I thought to myself and it was like the happiness advantage or whatever, right?

And I was like, my life is not any different than it was before I started reading these books. And so I thought about it for a while. And I also realized that half the books contradicted each other and I was like, man, this is really difficult. And so what I ended up, my conclusion was I wouldn't read a book unless I executed everything in the book. And so what ended up happening next was I became very, very selective about what books I would read

because I wouldn't get another book until I had felt like I had executed that. And so the result of that was instead of reading lots of books, I started reading a handful of books a lot of times. And so that was really transformational for me. I think the first book that I wrote a lot of times was How to Make Friends and Influence People. And I still think to this day if you just did nothing else in business but just practiced what is in that book, you would be phenomenally successful. Like, you don't know what I mean? Like, if you just did the things that are in that book,

you'd be phenomenally successful. But that's kind of more like personal traits and character traits and whatnot, which I think are very important for, you know, growing, developing. But in terms of skills, right? And I would say the number one, you know, number one and number two things that I get asked about are like, hey, how did you develop your skill of marketing

and then how did you develop your scale of sales? And truth be told, I never did a single sales training. I never read a single sales book. before I started selling. And so I wish I had like a really sexy answer for you, but I don't. I just started selling. And I didn't even know that what I was doing was selling. I was just like, how do I get people to sign up for my gym and give me money?

Like I didn't even know the term was sales at the time. I was just like I have to get them to give me money. And so I think a lot of people spend way too much time in the like deliberation stage and like the trying to, you spend all your effort in the, I would say like productive procrastination space of just like thinking you're getting but you would get so much better just doing it right and so only like and people now respect what I have to say about sales because I've sold so much not because of how many books I've read on sales right and so I think that once I was

considered very good at sales I had you know I was managing multiple sales teams and we were doing you know a few hundred thousand dollars a month that is the first time I bought a sales product I think about that and I went through it and I was like oh this is good stuff you know like there's there's stuff in here that way we can use like neat but like I don't think it fundamentally changed how good I was at selling. And I think that that's because so much of selling is about conviction, it's about how much you believe in the product more so than like the judo chops, right? How much you care about the prospect and how much you care about the

product and convince that the product will help them. Because if you truly talk from a space of genuine care, like genuine care about a prospect, you won't convince them to do something that they shouldn't do. And if you genuinely believe that your product or service is going to help people, then making the sales very easy because it's like, I really care about you and I really know that this product works. And so let me just help you connect these two dots. And so that's like ultimately like that is what selling is and should be. The problem is most people don't believe in their product and they don't care about their

prospects. Right. And so because of that, they come into all this cognitive dissonance, meaning like they believe themselves to be good people, but at the same time they need to make money. And then those two things come at odds and that becomes really difficult to sell because now you're faced with a moral obligation to like your family, you know, to try and provide. And then against yourself to be ethical, right?

and that becomes really hard for people. And that's why a lot of sales guys get burned out when they find out more about whatever they're selling. 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 we 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. And so that's why a lot of times sales guys will start out hot and then crash just because they find out that what they were selling,

what they were sold to sell is actually not. what it really is cracked up to be. And then once they find that out, then all of a sudden, that's why, in my belief, there's way more churn in salespeople than would otherwise be necessary if they were all selling something they believed in. So back to the main point, which is, what do I do if I don't, like, if I have no way of, you know, a practicing? Well, I mean, honestly, when I want to do something, what I do is I buy a course

about how to do something and then I follow the course and do it. So if I wanted to make a webinar, then I bought a course or making a webinar. and then I followed the course to make the webinar. And so I learned the skill while I was going through the course. I don't think there's a lot of productive time and usage in learning stuff for the sake of learning. Like it's, and I don't even, I would even make the argument that you don't even truly learn it until you've applied it. And so, like, how do you know if you read six books on sales and they have different strategies, which one is the right one? Because you've never tested it in the battlefield, right?

It doesn't make any sense. And so, like the same thing with marketing. I never bought a copywriting course. I never bought any courses on how build landing pages. I never bought any courses on how to run ads. The only thing I did was I spent money one-on-one to get someone to train me literally how to click to run ads from my gym. But I learned enough on my own.

And so that's the thing is like I think there's definitely a space for one-on training. I think the biggest gains I've made have been from investing in people who are above me to break my beliefs about what was possible. Because the people were above you most of the times are not going to hold your hand and teach you how to write copy. This is not going to happen. You know what I mean?

Like they might edit, you know, copy you have if you have like a one-on-one relationship, something like that. But for the most part, like it's going to be up to you to go acquire those skills. And most of the time acquiring those skills comes from doing them, which means you're going to suck for a while.

And I think just most people just aren't willing to try because they think that if they are perfect, they'll somehow not fail the first time, which is stupid because even when you're really good, you're going to fail. So it's just people like procrastinating and reading books about something that they haven't done is a productive way of feeling accomplished without actually doing anything. And so I say all this to say for the many people who ask me, what are my favorite books on sales and marketing? My favorite book on sales is to get out there and start selling, right?

Because if you start selling and then read a book on sales, it will make far more sense to you than trying to read a book on sales before you start selling. Because you won't even know what they're talking about, right? Same thing with marketing, right? Like, if you want to go and learn about marketing, the best thing to do is start, you know, learn how to run an ad. You run an ad to a landing page, and then start getting some people who give you their contact information and then pick up the phone and call them.

Like, you know what I mean? And the easiest thing to do, in my opinion, is the advice that I got from Ezra Firestone years ago, which is give yourself a slush fund, right? Give yourself a learning budget, which is, how much am I willing to, quote, below this month, on failure, so I can learn the skills faster. And whatever that percentage is,

it might be 10% of what you make, every month. It might be 5%. It might be 25%. It just depends on who you are and how stable your income is. But if you just say, I'm willing to give $500 a month to learning the skill, then you don't have this emotional attachment to whether or not you crush it your first time. Because you're seeing this $500 a month investment is truly that. An investment in your education, your investment in trial and error rather than, you know, like, I bought this course of copyrighting. I'm not a millionaire. What's wrong? Right. When in reality, you just have to get out there and start doing it. So, anyhow, that's my,

that is my two cents. I made most of my money before I started reading a lot of books. I would say seriously, I read maybe 30 books before we, you know, we're decommillioners. You know what I mean? And so I wish I had something better for you. But I focused most of my time on doing and applying. And when I start applying, then I will go read for specific solutions to a bottleneck that I have rather than trying to learn an amorphous topic by reading words for multiple books and trying to get perspectives, different angles on problems I've never even encountered yet. Right? I think it's much better to encounter the problems then start seeking the solutions and

trying to cover every solution to every problem before you've even started the race. So anyways, hopefully found that valuable, how that made sense. Lots of love, keeping awesome. And I'll catch you guys soon. Bye!