The Game with Alex Hormozi - I Don't Read Books... I Study a Few | Ep 446

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

Jack of all trades, master of none… but better than a master of one. Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) talks about why he prefers not to fall into the trap of reading 1 book every week, how he approaches education generally, and why it’s also better to learn as you’re doing the thing rather than read about it.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:(0:55) - Alex's reading approach: Targeted seasons for focused learning.(2:46) - Learning from experience; books, seminars provide context, not solutions.(4:48) - Don't overthink initial steps; take the first step forward.(7:07) - Learning by working for others; applying knowledge in real scenarios.(8:17) - Reading during seasons for context, exposure, and broader thinking.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

99% of the stuff I learned I learned from doing. A lot of times the masterminds will give you the context to learn where you are deficient more than they will solve the deficiency. 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. I get asked all the time, and I want to address this because this is a misconception. A lot of people think that I read books all day, and I don't. I bought a lot of books. I don't read many books. And I was actually kind of insecure about it because I get asked a lot because they're like, you must read lots of books. And honestly, I don't really.

And people are like, you know a lot about stuff, which is, I'm, thank you. Don't feel that way, but appreciate it. It's because I will read in targeted manners around problems that I need to solve. And so if I need to learn about copywriting, I'll read four books on copywriting in a week. But then I won't read anything for a very long time. And then I'll be like, oh, I just encountered a problem that I really need to know more about. And then I'll go really deep on the next topic, which is that little missing brick on my bridge to get me to where I want to go. And so what I don't actually like, and this is going to probably be controversial, is that I don't like the whole like, I read a book a week.

That's what I commit to. Because what happens is you create a really good vehicle for mental masturbation. There's really no difference between that and watching TED Talks every day and watching YouTube videos. Like, it's just another form of media that you're consuming. And so like, I can appreciate the intention behind it. but I don't think it serves most people. The number of people that are like, I'm on book 36 for this year

and they're in the exact same position they were four years ago, mind boggles me. Because I would so much rather the person say I read four books and they were the only four books that I needed to read this year and I don't need to do anything else. I just have to execute the stuff in this book.

And so when we're thinking about education in general, the one thing that you will need is the discernment to determine what thing you need to learn next. That is the one lever on this whole, of education that makes some people move really slowly and some people move really quickly. It's that you have to know what thing to learn next. And so I, like I said earlier, think about it like a pipeline of sequence of like, I got to have something to sell. I got to get people to find out

about it. I got to learn how to sell. Like if you can do those three steps, you will be able to make money. And if you don't know how to do one of those three things, then that's probably why you're not making money besides the obvious of you're just not doing anything. And so people ask me all the time, like what things did you read to learn what you know, right? Can you just give me a list of all the courses that you ever did? All right. So, you know, So for me, I can tell you in sequence every expensive thing that I bought coaching-wise. And I'm going to be really real with you. It's not a lot.

And here's the real. Here's the real. And I love all the people I'm about to share. All right. Homies. Love them all. 99% of the stuff I learned, I learn from doing. All right.

And so a lot of times the masterminds will give you the context to learn where you are deficient more than they will solve the deficiency. And so what we are paying for and what we are buying is perspective. It's context. And that's what most people lack. Real talk. So they might promise whatever. And that's fine.

I'm sure they'll have stuff. And there's networking and things like that. But the real thing that it gives you is the ability to identify what your problems are. And then it's up to you to solve them because basically no one's going to do the work for you. It's just not going to happen. And so you just have to get over that desire that someone's going to just like you can pay money and they're just going to give you money back. It's not going to happen. It's not.

You're going to have to do stuff. but you want to just make sure that you're doing the stuff that's driving towards where you're going and is not you just reinforcing a brick that doesn't need more reinforcing on that bridge, right? If you already have copywriting brick, you don't need to put six more bricks underneath of it. You got that down. You have this big hole here. Fill that hole and you'll be able to get the dollar across the bridge. And I see people who will spend years reinforcing one pillar on their bridge and never make the first dollar across

because they don't have the perspective from which to choose where they are deficient. Okay. So in order, expensive stuff. Besides that, I read targeted books and I read articles and I watched YouTube videos, which I would say is still the vast majority of what I learned. Is the vast majority of what got me started? I learned from doing. Real quick, guys, you guys already know that I don't run any ads on this and I don't sell anything.

And so the only ask that I can ever have of you guys is that you help me spread the words. We can out more entrepreneurs, make more money, feed their families, make better products, and have better experiences for their employees and customers. And the only way we do that is if you can rate. and review and share this podcast. So the single thing that I asked you do is you can just leave a review but take you 10 seconds

or one type of the thumb it would mean the absolute world to me and more importantly, it may change the world with someone else. I was in a mastermind for fitness from Sandback to our rest and peace. I learned what this digital marketing space was.

I didn't even know it existed. And so I learned what the term sales meant. I didn't even know what this, like I didn't know what sales was just for context. Like just no matter where you're starting, I didn't know what it was. I didn't know what copywriting was.

I didn't know what like an email list was. I didn't know what affiliate stuff. I learned that was like my primer to the world, which you probably already know if you're watching this channel, what these words mean. I didn't. And so I went to a mastermind. YouTube barely existed. I went to that mastermind and I learned some of that stuff.

And then I bought a $3,000 workshop on how to run Facebook ads for a weekend. And that was a lot of money for me at the time. It was a lot of money for me at the time. I didn't make any money over the weekend. And that's the thing is that, you know, you can't expect the person to be a savior. But I figured out enough to like understand how it worked conceptually. And then I started running ants. I started doing it.

And then I learned how that worked. And then ClickFunnels came out years ago, and I didn't know how to make landing page. So I was paying a guy to make my pages. And I was like, I got to learn how to do this. And I remember what I did was I sat down on a Sunday. I cleared my whole day. And I had a page that I wanted to copy. I was like, I'm not even going to try.

Again, replicate before you iterate. I was like, I'm just going to clone this page on this builder. And I was like, it's probably going to take me the whole day or more. I finished the whole thing in four hours. And so I'd been delaying confronting how to learn how to build a web page for at this point, almost three years. I didn't want to learn how to build a web page. I was like, I'm not a tech guy. But I was like, I have to learn this. And I sat down. I thought it was going to take the whole week, the whole day for sure. And I was done by noon.

And I was like, oh, my God. And the thing is, is there's so many skills like that that there's all this sphere around it. But if you just start pulling the thread, you start pulling the corner, all of a sudden, your next step gets a lot clear to you after you make the first step. And so most people try and think that they have to figure out the first thousand steps before they take the first one, when in reality, think about yourself in the dark with a flashlight that's pointing a foot in front of you and you take one step and then the next step gets clear. And it's much easier to just pull the threat and get started and take the first step than is to try and figure out every step because you're afraid of failing. Right. So I did the mastermind. Also, with that one, I worked for the guy for free

for three months. And you're like, Alex, I'll work for you for three months. The difference was the skills that I had applied there. I already was really in shape. I already knew a lot about nutrition. I knew a lot of training. And I worked for him at his gym. And so for me, for him, I had value to provide. Right. I get asked all the time like, dude, I'll, I'll get your coffee. I'll do whatever. I'm like, I'll pay someone who's not going to ask me questions to go get me coffee. I'll be real with you. Because you want to just suck up two hours of my day every day and do it for free. Your free is too expensive. It's overpriced. And so that's by the way, exactly what Ben Graham said to Warren Buffett when Warren Buffett asked to work for Ben Graham for free. Ben Graham said,

you're overpriced. Context. So I did the mastermind. I did the workshop. I worked for him. And I showed up when he showed up. I showed up at the gym at 4 a.m. because that's when he showed up, and he worked till 4. So you worked 12 hours a day. And I worked with him. And then after 4, I still kept working at the gym. And I did that. And then from there, I learned how to start a gym. And that's how I started my first gym. I'm trying to think I went to Traffic and Conversion Summit. That's when I learned about ClickFunnels, and that's when I learned about the web page thing. I was like two something years later. And then from there, that got me into the direct marketing world.

And then I read almost all of those, you know this free books people give away? I read all of them, like all of the guy's books, which is why I'm so passionate about books for me. Because books, like, as much as I said, I don't read on a regular basis. I read targeted during seasons of my life. if I'm trying to get context on an industry, I'm only reading in a very specific segment. I'm not reading like a book on the one thing and then like how to make friends and influence people,

which if you're 18, you should totally read that because you need to figure out how to talk to people. But like I needed to learn about direct response. And so I learned I swallowed all that. And then I think the next thing I did was I paid a guy one-on-one, $750 an hour to teach me how to run Facebook ads.

And so I learned that in more depth because I learned like a basic understanding, but he learned, he taught me how to do like pixels and retargeting and audio. and I didn't know how to do any of that stuff. And then from there, I joined Russell's mastermind, and I didn't even have an online business. And that's when I learned about, like, the online world. So I learned about, like, the direct response world.

And then I learned about, like, the online marketing world and, like, digital products and information and education stuff. I learned about that world there. And just for context, like, I never logged in to any of the stuff that I was given access to. I got exposed to people who broadened my thinking and got me to think in bigger increments. and that was the biggest gift and that's hopefully the biggest gift

I can hopefully give anybody on these channels just thinking in larger increments. If you can do that, you can change your life because you stop paying attention to stuff that's small potatoes. And like the biggest difference between rich dads and poor dads is that rich dads teach their kids to think in bigger increments.

They're like, hey man, I got this thing on the weekend that's going to make me like 100 bucks. It's like rich dad kids don't do it because they're going to like, I'm going to wait so I find the thing that makes me 10 grand. It's a choice. It's the decision making like that's the biggest gift of being raised around rich people.

He said they just don't waste their time on things that aren't worth it. That's the gift, right? It's not like some good old boys club. It's the perspective of which they see opportunity and leverage. They're like, oh, dude, I'm not going to open a dry cleaning store. Nothing wrong with that. But they're like, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to get in a real estate.

I'm going to get into sales. I'm going to get into finance because those are bigger leverage opportunities. So that was a misconception I wanted to clear up is that I have not. a tremendous amount of information things that were high ticket, but the ones that I did buy, and that was, I think, the last thing I really bought. That was expensive. I mean, and then I bought, and then I'll buy hours from people. I do that all the time. If I can buy time from somebody, I'll pay whatever. I probably paid 10 different people 10,000 hour or more, and every single one of them is worth. So I recommend.