The Game with Alex Hormozi - I Made Podcasts For 5 Years Before It "Hit" | Ep 431

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

You just have to keep on showing up… Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) talks about his journey in creating this podcast, why consistency is the root of how your presence online will get noticed, how using time horizons in hitting a certain goal greatly helps, and all about the importance of committing.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:(1:41) - Alex's podcast consistency emphasizes communication, teaching, and entertaining skills.(3:14) - Think in decades for meaningful goals and long-term impact.(4:27) - Commit to actions, not just outcomes; show patience and diligence.(7:58) - Atomic Habits insight: Goals don't define uniqueness; actions do.(9:41) - Separate activities from outcomes for focused, emotionally stable actions.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

When you can divorce the activities from the outcome, then you can focus on the doing, which whether your income does this over that period of time, your self-esteem remains the same because you're committing to what you can control. 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 wished Bezos, Musk, and Buffett had documented their journey, so I'm doing it for the rest of us.

Please share and enjoy. I got a DM the other day about somebody who was like, yeah, I mean, it's easy for you to build this brand because, you know, you already have this big audience. And I was like, dude, just start. And he was discouraged by the fact that he had no following. He had no audience, et cetera. Now, obviously, the first rules apply, which is like, do cool shit, talk about the cool shit you did, which is 99% of people who are watching this, do more cool shit.

And then you'll have cool shit to talk about rather than regurgitating other people's stuff. But for everyone who sees the overnight success, right? Everyone's like, oh, man, the Mosey style content's all over the place. And I'm just saying because I see the contents. And if you're new to the channel, then I've heard this. And maybe you don't feel that way because you're new the channel. So welcome. But what I want you to do is go to my podcast and look at the timestamp of my first episode.

It's 2017. We're halfway through 2022 right now. Five and a half, six years ago was when I started first making my first long form piece of content. And here's what's crazy about this. It just now hit the top 10. Six years later. And in that six year period,

I did not miss. Every week, one to three podcasts for six years. And so people are making podcasts and thinking in 90 days, they're somehow going to blow up when the reality is that you're finding your voice for the first year. You're figuring out what way you communicate. You're learning how to teach. You're learning how to entertain.

You're learning how to present. You're learning how to speak and learning about, and you're also learning about the stuff that you're learning meantime, right? Like in that period of time, I might not have had as much stuff that was as cool in the beginning, that applied as many people because the first 150 episodes is just me talking about how to run a gym better, right? But right around 150, I start talking about marketing in general because that's what I was into at the time. And then I start talking about sales. And I start talking about business in general and M&A and things as they've evolved over time. And so the subject matter

as well as my skill in delivering it both improved over that period of time. And now the podcast is top 10 on entrepreneurship and very high ranked in business. And so, and with next to names that I looked up to my whole career. I'm like, holy cow, I'm like, we're, wait, we just went above this guy that I've been looking up to my whole life. And so the thing is, it doesn't take 90 days. It takes years. And if you can think in decades instead of days, you'll be so much further when the decade comes than the people who thought in days the entire 10 years. Like, think about that. If you think in days, the time's going to pass no matter what. But if you can think in decades when you make your goals, when that decade does pass, it'll show that you were thinking that way. Now, I want to tell you

quick story. So there was a guy who started at the first gym with me, same day. All right, and we've been friends since then. And I started my gym, and then he started his gym, and he started a chain of gym. So we went in parallel. All right. And he ended up selling those gyms and he wanted to go online. And he was like, dude, I need to build like a brand. He's like, what should I do? And I was like, dude, you just need to start posting, you know, short form stuff, start like just, you know, making stuff that's valuable. And he posted every day for six months and then one video took off and then the next video took off and the next video took off. And then all of a sudden now he's making $100,000 a month from the content that he was making.

And this, mind you, this is a compressed timeline. He did it in six months. Some people can't, you know, like sometimes it takes longer. Mind you, he'd already been doing business for nine years. All right. Like, remember, nine years. And then all of a sudden it took off. And he messaged me. He was like, dude, I'm so, like, I'm super grateful that that you told me to do that. And I told him, he was getting frustrated. And I was like, dude, commit to the action. I was like, make the action the goal, right? Not the outcome of the goal.

Make the action the goal. If the action is, did I make the post? Did I make the reachouts every day? Then you're a success. You check both boxes. And so he did the post and he did the reachouts. And what ended up happening is that earlier on, he would have videos that would start taking off.

He would start doing reachouts. He started making sales. And then you'd make some money. and then he would slow down. And then all of a sudden you get in scarcity mode once he was like, oh, shoot, there's no money coming in. There's no money coming in. And then you start making content and start doing reachouts again

and then you make money again. And he was like, dude, how do I break the cycle? And what we did was we shifted what he was focusing on because he was focusing on the sales you was making. He was focusing on the money you was making rather than focusing on the process. And so I said, like, the person you are, the character you aspire to have is been built on the activities

that you commit to. And so I was like, you are not successful in my eyes because whenever you see some outcome, you stop the activities, which means you don't have the trait of consistency. It's like the reason you aren't where you want to be is because you can't do things repeatedly. And so most people can't do one thing over and over again. You need to be able to do the doing without seeing the result of your doing.

And you have to keep doing it. And if you can keep doing things independent, and this is both ways, if it goes really well, you keep doing the thing that got you there. And if it's not going well, comma, yet, you keep doing the thing so that you get good enough that one day it will. And that's the shift that most people don't make. And I think that's why most people just stay poor. Is that they do a little bit of the right stuff and either it works and they stop or it doesn't work yet. And either way, they stop doing when the reality is that if you can commit to the actions and the behaviors and the traits that you will grow through doing,

then at the end of this process a decade later, you will be the type of person who can do something for a long period of time and wait. And I promise you that if you have that trait, money will never be a constraint in your life. 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 I'll read you the text that I sent. So he had just told me that there's a long thing about how you're struggling about stuff. I'll just read you the text that I sent back to him. I said, do me a favor. Instead of writing your goals, just write down, what would a billionaire who lost it all do? Or what would a billionaire do? Or whatever version of yourself you want to be. The doing and the outcomes will happen as a result of the main internal identity shift, which you can reinforce many times a day by asking yourself that question at each crossroad. He said, that's exactly what I thought of doing yesterday after you texted me,

but then I got to thinking, well, how do I know what a millionaire or billionaire would do, or even the version that I want to be. I'm just guessing what that person would do. So you responded back with. I said, I disagree. I said, you know what to do. I said, you just aren't doing it. I said, have a six-pack, you know what to do. I said, we need to be reminded more than we need to be taught. He said, you're right. I'm going to do it, man. I said, I mean the exercise, the activity, all of it. I said, I stand by my original response. He said, I'm going to get my mojo back. I said, it never left, my friend. You just had to realize it. Whenever you needed to make more money, you always have. literally. So you've always known how. You're just choosing to be someone who isn't satisfied by an

external outcome, but by becoming a better version of yourself. Additional thought for you. And this is from atomic habits. Every winner and every loser have the same goals. So when you measure yourself by having this external thing and people are like, set goals, everyone wants to be rich. Everyone wants to have a six-pack. Your goals don't make you unique. It's the activities that you do that make you unique. So what separates them are the activities they commit to. If you commit to the activities, that becomes the goal. The goal of the winner is to commit to the activities. The goal of the loser is to commit to the goal. It's to commit to the outcome. Everybody wants the same things, but people don't do the things that make the things. And so when you make a lot of money one month,

I said, you've achieved nothing because the goal was the activities, not the money you made. He said, that last one deserves a fire reaction. Thanks, man. I said, you're focusing on the wrong part. I said the real real is that who do I wish to become the type of person that does these things. And so I think if you can make that shift, and that was literally the text that I had to him. And six months later now, he's doing $100,000 a month. And he was at zero at this point because he was like really struggling. And he's got multiple kids. He's got a wife who doesn't work who's been relying on him and he's feeling all the pressure.

Every one of your peers, if you're younger, wants to be rich. 52% of 18-year-olds, high school seniors think they're going to be millionaires by 25. The world is going to be shook. many of you will fail. And that's because most of you have the same goal. 52% of you think you're going to be a millionaire, right? It's just the math. But only a small percentage will because if you want to be a millionaire,

you're not going to focus on making the million dollars. You're going to focus on the stuff that makes a million dollars. And so if you do the activities that generate $50,000 and you're like, oh, cool, I hit my goal this month, then all of a sudden you don't do the activities because that outcome was what you focused on rather than the thing that created the outcome. And so when you can divorce the activities, from the outcome, then you can focus on the doing, which whether your income does this over that period of time, your self-esteem remains the same because you're committing to what you can control.

If you can make that shift, it will change your life. So back to the beginning, I started making podcasts six years ago. I committed to that process. When I signed on with a YouTube vendor a few years ago on the first call I said I'd like to have this channel be something in five to 10 years I was like we'll look at it then and see if it was worth continuing to do I was like but I'm in for a decade and he stopped me afterwards he was like I've literally never had a client say that to me ever he's like they're all like how can I get leads in the first 90 days from YouTube and like blah blah blah I was like if we're making progress I'm good I'll commit to that and so I was like what do you need for me that I can commit to that I know that I can

can do for 10 years. He's like, if you can make two videos a week, I was like, I can do that for 10 years. And so I'm only sharing this because to him, he said it like changed the way he saw things. To me, I've been, I've been in this game a little bit. And I've just been focusing that way on business rather than on content creation. But I think that if you can think that way, you will get what you want. And then people will ask you a decade from now, man, how did you have this overnight success and blah, blah, blah, blah, and aren't you like, don't the followers and the fans, like, how does it not get to your head? And you're like, because it was never the goal. And so I feel just as good at year one as I do at year eight because the activities that I committed to remain the same.

And so I think if you can think that way and you can shift your perspective, it will decrease your emotional ups and downs. And I think we all need ways to decrease our emotional up and downs in the game of business. Because like we need to have second lives and third lives and fourth lives. And the way to do that is to not put your life, your game playing life in something that you can't control. But putting all your game playing life in the things you can. Right now, we just crossed our 400th episode, 400 episodes. Like, if I did one a week for a year, that would be eight years of doing that if I had 400 episodes. I'm at like year six.

And so if you make 400 long form pieces of content, I guarantee you that your following would be bigger than it is today. And if you're like, well, how long is that going to take? As long as it takes, because the goal was never the outcome. The goal was to do anything.