The Game with Alex Hormozi - If You're Going To Pitch, Pitch Hard | Ep 366

Episode Date: February 3, 2022

Either you sell or you don’t. Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) talks about the time he bombed at a pitch, his takeaways from that moment, and understanding the value of going all in and not going halfway.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:(1:16) - Sell or don't when presenting or pitching.(4:37) - Extreme moments teach valuable lessons. Reflect and learn.(7:08) - Avoid shortcuts. Give your all, even in repetitive tasks.(9:29) - Big vs small businesses: Understand goodwill and provide value.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

Completely bombed, a stage presentation and one of the most important lessons that I've learned from it that has made me a lot of money since then. 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. In this video, I want to talk to you about a time where I bombed, completely bombed, a stage presentation and one of the most important lessons that I've learned from it that has made me a lot of money since then and has protected my reputation. and gotten me a lot of goodwill. So if you've ever like not known what to do or what to offer people or, hey, should I try and use this as an opportunity to build goodwill or forge a relationship or should I try and, you know, sell something or get a margin on this, I want to tell you a couple different

stories that kind of all illustrate the same point that I've learned over the last few years. All right. And so one of my favorite kind of like bullets on this that you can, you can, a writer-downer, is no half measures, right? either sell or don't sell, but don't be in between. And so the first time that this kind of happened for me was I was asked to speak at this kind of high-level mastermind, which happens relatively frequently. But this one in particular was a fitness-related one.

And for me, when I have presentations and stuff, I usually spend a long time preparing. Sometimes I'll make a product. Actually, that was the only time I made a product. but I spent a long time on the presentation. So it's usually a big deal for me to say yes because it's like I'm going to have to do a lot of work on my side. And so anyways, I had this presentation and this pitch that I had made for a product that we had made specifically for this audience. And when I got there, they had given me a three-hour time slot, right, which is insane. And I think part of that was because they just wanted to have me talk as long as possible, you know, for their audience because they thought it would be.

valuable and so for whatever reason I agreed and the thing is is like you can't pitch for three hours maybe you can't but you can't straight pitch for three hours right and so what I decided to do is just provide you know a lot of value and then you know near the end after two and a half hours I was like I'll just kind of mention what we have going on right and so I get up there first off the the audience size is one third of what was what I was told so I was like okay that's a little bit different and disheartening and I go and I you know piece by piece I'm doing Q&A with the audience all that kind of stuff right and so as we transition or as we as I transition to the pitch part right I I pull up the the

slide deck that's normally a you know a 90-minute slide presentation with a pitch and an offer and everything and I went through it and I was like yeah yeah we talked about this and I'm going through the slides right like like super fast just being like yep and this you guys don't need me to tell you the story right you should understand this boom boom boom and then And at the very end, I basically make the pitch, right? Without any kind of pre-frame and I go through it just like really fast and kind of half-assed. And I bombed.

It was horrendous. It was horrible. And then because I had so much speaking time, they didn't take me off stage because I still had like time left. And so I'm sitting there on stage, having made the offer, no one's moved. And then people were, and then all of a sudden, hand star racing from the. audience with with questions and I had never so sold anything that was cheap in my life so this was a two thousand dollar thing it was literally the first time of my entire life I've ever sold anything below 16,000 you know which is which was

you know for our for into the fitness space right and anyhow I thought this was like a no-brainer it's too grand you know what I mean just buy it and then make a ton more money because it's it's stupid right and so anyways I started having people be like, hey, can I do a payment plan on the $2,000? I remember, be like, if you need a payment plan, then don't buy it. And next question. And someone's like, I feel like, you know, the supplements that you have are against my goodwill because I only promote vegan things.

And I was like, cool, then don't buy it. And I, and this is how the questions start unrolling. Like this vibe, this tone, right? And you could just watch the plane just going towards the ground on fire. burning, right? And so anyways, I do this for like 30 more minutes, all right? Of Q and A, of me just getting increasingly annoyed because A, there's only like 30 people there, um, which there were supposed to be a lot more than that. Anyways. And so I remember the feeling I had afterwards, which was just like anger and embarrassment and just like, you know, humiliate all of those, you know,

at once. And mind you, like at the time, and this is then, right, we were doing about four million a month. All right. And so when I had some people were like, well, how do we know it's going to like going to work for fitness? I was like, I have 4,000 freaking locations here like that use this licensing model. I paired it down just for you guys so that you can use the materials at a, at one eighth the price. This is not a discussion, right? So anyways, I remember sitting there and in the pain of the moment and the humiliation. I was like, what am I going to learn from this? Which may be in and of itself something that you might be able to take with you. But like whenever you have those like super emotional moments, right? I know from my conversations with Dr. Kashi that when you have extreme emotions, you're actually in hyper learning mode, right? So PTSD, right? The reason PTSD is where you're basically, you turn your brain on and it goes into hyper learning mode because there's trauma that is going around you, right? And, you know, it's a traumatic experience, which just means super heightened emotions. And so what happens is your brain says learn from this, right? And then it starts ingraining these things so that when you hear a lot of noises, then you get amped and then, et cetera, right?

And so it's the same kind of thing. So if you have these emotional moments, this is for me, this is what I do, is I try and think, like, what am I going to try and ingrain in my brain right now? Because I have an opportunity to hyper learn something in these moments. And so the lesson that I learned, and I'll tell you another story in a second that really drove this home is no half measures. Either pitch or don't pitch. All right. So if you go into a business meeting or you go to a conference or you go to a whatever, right? either ask hard or do not ask it all.

There is no half-assed asking. And this is a lesson that I have learned hard. I actually had one of my execs. He ended up pitch it because this is, you know, now that we've moved ourselves out of that business and now we're just on top of it. But one of the execs in my gym business, he half pitched something to our audience.

He like half pitches like, like you guys don't need me to do the scarcity thing, right? You guys don't need me to do these guarantees, right? you don't need me to do these. Actually, these bonuses, right? And I was like, what are you doing? I remember because I was like,

that is how you pitch. You're saying that they don't need all the things that persuade them. He's like, well, they know because we teach them how to do this stuff. And I was like, yeah, but like people still need it to make decisions. And so he bombed that and he learned the lesson himself.

So my goal is that you don't have to bomb it to learn the lesson, right? And so let me tell you the upside of this. Here's the flip side, right? So I talked about just now how you can, how like no half measures. Either pitch or don't pitch, right? Don't go in the middle.

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 so 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. It'll 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 think one of the things that's difficult for entrepreneurs is to know when to make the ask, right? So it's like, okay, well, if I'm either going all in or all out, well, then how do I know when to do which, right? And I would say that most times I have been better served in my life by holding back my ask. And what I mean by that, and this is like a super life hack, so for those of you who are perseverant and focused on what I'm saying right now, then take this in. if you get to a point of goodwill, if you keep giving and keep giving and keep giving, you don't need to ask ever. You will just get. So there's the commonly told like, you know, jab, jab, jab, right hook, right? Give, give, give, give, ask, right? But I would, I would postulate that there is another one that is even more powerful, which is give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give. Give, give, give. right is that people will just start handing things to you because humans are reciprocal in nature

they believe that if they are getting something at a certain point they must reciprocate somehow which is why the spammers who copy my name on this channel do so well with my channel because i don't ask for anything um from from mosey nation so by the way just another disclaimer i will not dm you or puts you on WhatsApp and ask you for cab fare or ask you to buy something everything that I have is free here. So just FYI, just as a reminder to everybody. Anywho, and a lot of the best things that I've had happen in my life have come from goodwill. And so I think the biggest difference between big business owners and small business owners is that they do not understand and apply the concept of goodwill, right? And I'll do an entire thing on goodwill next time

because it's a deep topic that I love talking about. But right now, in your business, you have the opportunity to provide things for your audience. And if you can continue to provide them and have the patience to wait for the ask, you can actually make significantly more money. All right? And so the thing is, is if you're going to make the ask, which means if you're going to withdraw from your relational capital, right, the goodwill that you have in your audience, if you're going to make the withdrawal, then ask and ask hard and mean it. It's not the time to make it a nickel here, a nickel there, a nickel there, right? It's so much better to just keep investing, keep delivering and then when you ask make it known that you are asking and that is one of the biggest

lessons that I have learned over time in business for me is that it is so much better to give and keep giving and keep giving and oftentimes you will get and if you pitch which you if like the idea is to ideally never even have to because you should be getting so much but if you if you must pitch then pitch like you mean it right and don't have facet so anyways that was a story of my bombing I hope you uh I found some of you in that for my humiliation.