The Game with Alex Hormozi - Ignoring Doubt and Embracing Success (with Flex Lewis) Pt. 2 - March ‘23 | Ep 600

Episode Date: October 14, 2023

“So you have to suck for a long time until it's unreasonable that you don't suck.” Today, join Alex (@AlexHormozi) as he guests on the Straight Outta Lair Podcast with Flex Lewis to talk about the importance of ignoring negative voices and self-doubt when pursuing success. They share their experiences and lessons learned in business and personal growth. The conversation also touches on the topic of balancing work and passion, with one of the hosts reflecting on how monetizing his passion turned it into work rather than enjoyment.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.Check out the episode on Straight Outta Lair’s YouTube Channel!Timestamps:(1:08) - Monetizing passion and work.(3:14) - Training with others for growth.(9:37) - Seasons of doing deals and a season of "no".(14:08) - Identifying business constraints.(20:14) - Turning a hat back to front and hustling.(28:43) - Losing time in younger generation.(30:35) - Volume begets quality.(34:47) - Picking the right opportunity vehicle.(36:50) - Chasing low-hanging fruits and leveraging for success.(42:16) - Entrepreneur seasons and commitments.(45:47) - Don't stop in the game.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

And you ignore everybody who tells you that you're wrong and tells you that you're not going to get there. And most of all, you ignore the thoughts that you were telling yourself about why you're not going to get there because you are wrong on a long enough time horizon if you do the thing. And so if you do that, it becomes unreasonable that you won't succeed. 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. Moving on to the, you know, obviously the business side of things is phenomenal. I'm in, but were you training in during that process? Because obviously, our viewers are split into different categories on the podcast.

We've got people who obviously big into the business, the brand in and everything else. But obviously, there's a big element of athletes to follow us too. During this process, were you still committing yourself to the gym? Was that like an element of stress view to get it out in the gym? You know, I wish I could say that because I feel like that's the common narrative for most people. people. But I would say that I really enjoyed fitness for the first seven years until I opened a gym. And then it became, it literally went from being my passion to being like work. I actually had a mentor tell me, he said, never, never monetize your passion. He's like,

because it becomes work. And I thought that was kind of interesting because it's kind of the opposite of what everyone says. It's just, it's just a, he just owned a bunch of chains of businesses. He's like, he's like, I go and hang out with my kids and I go serving. He's like, I'm not going to build a business out of that. He's like, it would just ruin my day. Yeah. And it's just kind of it was just an interesting perspective um but for me you know when i had the gym training was required to look like a gym owner so i just kind of saw it as the job yeah um i stopped competing the moment i started the gym yeah um and i would say i mean i'm almost i'm at 19 years training uh can't wait to cross the 20 year club but i think the longest time i ever took off from training

was six weeks um and so like i would say i definitely go i see things in seasons it's probably the easiest way to think about it. So I've got seasons of relationship building with Layla. I've got seasons of physique stuff. I've got seasons of work business wise. And I think of it as like, what's the minimum effective dose to not go backwards? And so I was talking to stay in efforting about this actually. And he's like, you know, he's like, you have a passive, you have a passive body now. Right? Like, I can maintain this on 5%, 10% of the effort that I did to get here. And so I think it's actually kind of interesting if you think about like investments that way. It's like you you work, you work, you work, you store up this, this nut or whatever.

And then you invest it. And then at a certain point, the passive off of that, you don't need to work as much active now. If you work active too, then it's even better, right? But that's where the analogy breaks compared to your physique. But for me, I worked out the entire time. I work out now probably because I've always worked out. And it's just more of an identity thing than it is something that I look forward to. If I train on my own, I don't look forward to it.

Not that I hate it. I just is. It's like running an errand. Yeah. So I work out usually like two or three times a week if it's just me. If I have people that I'm training with, then I'll usually, that I look forward to. So when I look at my life backwards on the times that I was the happiest, it's when I have a few guys that I'm training with on a regular basis. No time cap for the training session.

And I've got two or three hours and I can shoot the shit. hit the heavy sets, get into it, you know, banter between sets. Like, that's when I, A, grow the most, but I just like, I enjoy training that way. If I have to just go in there on my own and headphones and I'm like, I'll get it done, but I don't enjoy it the same way. I can attest that. That's what I'm at right now. And, you know, obviously I had a training partner who's just left to go to Florida.

Yeah. I'm not supposed to be swearing on this podcast I've been told to off. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, oops. So left me for Florida. but yeah he just he's just gone and left again listen to i've said this to many of my friends how can i preach about chasing your dreams and then tell my friend it's like not

selfishly you need to stay yeah and help me with mine so he's he's gone off and and uh he's well into m mma right now and he's good and he's doing a lot of different things on the on that side of the coast and coincidentally it's in the exact same town i used to live in in poker return um but to your point. I look forward to training with him. I had no, you know, end cap other than me meeting up at a certain time. Again, the session in. And then it was part of my day. Right now, I come in and I get so much distractions. Yeah. So, no, my distraction is grow my business. Yeah. So I come in here, I actually stand my day at 4 a.m. every morning. And that 4 was that I've gained in comparison to, you know, and I'm already like four hours ahead of myself before I even step in the office.

So that distraction right now, I allow to, you know, walk into whatever. But how do you stay focused on with having so many different distractions, even text messages for Flexly, which else can you train? The six hours thing is, like, if I look at the biggest productivity hacks that have served me in my life, by far waking up early to begin work, number one. number two not having any meetings until noon if i if someone just did those two things like if you wake up i don't start working at four i probably start working around six um so you know i'll wake up at five have a couple coffee with leila hang out whatever at six o'clock i start working from six to noon it's like

i get six hours every day of moving things forward and it's like the deep work in my opinion that gets the ball rolling that makes things happen and then i still have to put out fires this second half of the day. But that, like, if you, Jerry Seinfeld had two hours every day that he blocked for writing. And his one rule for that habit was that he didn't have to write, but he couldn't do anything else. So he's like, I can sit there bored, but I can't do, I can write or I can do nothing else. Non-compromise. Right. Every day. And so I think to that same degree, it's like, I usually know what I'm, I mean, I have a list of like two or three things that I put the night before. And then, like, like that's what I try and get done in those six hours.

And sometimes it's a big thing. You don't know what I mean? Like finish book. Like, okay. You don't what I mean? But it's like, all right, what I need to do tomorrow? Like I'm going to fully edit this one chapter. Great.

That's the big. Like today it was fully edit this one chapter. Um, create cash flow projections for an investment that we're going to make and pencil a lot different scenarios. Um, and then, um, there was a third thing I did. But I did that today. And then I did it in the book, right? And so those were like, those are the things that I, that I did this morning.

And then I came here. Do you pre-plan your day the night before? Not in the way that most people. I mean, like, I literally have, like, an email to myself that has the three things that I wanted to do. Okay. And I don't like, say, like, it has to be three. If it's just one, it's one. Yeah.

Oh, and I made the, I made two new forms for the landing page that I wanted to test out. All prior to jump in on this podcast today. Yeah. Yeah. But that's it. I mean, like, that's it. And sometimes just one thing. I just want to make sure that I have something that I'm going to be working on.

Otherwise, I just feel like I waste my morning. And I don't like that. Yeah. So you'll, morning obviously is comparable to other you know some some people start the day of four there's this like you said you know the you mentioned the cliche cold plunge right that putting yourself through that i'm putting myself through this early wake up because i i feel like it's been so beneficial for me to get up this really obviously for me i've got two kids too yeah um the kids don't get up until maybe

six yeah well if you hear me going crazy downstairs in the kitchen making hell of noise that up before that but that is the time that I get to myself, which I used to have going to bed late. But what I found was going to bed late and I would go to bed, say, like, two, three, sometimes four in the morning. Ali would be getting up an hour, two hours after that. And we didn't have our time.

Yeah. It felt like we were living in the same house. We worked together, but we didn't have our time. So now we're kind of on the same schedule where she's an early riser. Yeah. I was never an early bird. I have forced myself into this process.

And now, I can't wait. It's just actually trying to shut off is my issue. I have so much shit going through your brain. So my brain at night. But now I've taught myself these new patterns to stay away from certain things. Don't get stimulated by X, Y, Z. And what I was finding was at night, I was so distracted. Even though I was on my tasks, I was getting so distracted.

And I'd find myself in a loophole and a ton of. of nonsense. At 4.m. when I get up, I know what I'm doing. Obviously, the stock market is going up and crazy, and I'm getting all kinds of messages from international to with all my businesses, international. So it's, everything that's kind of tied itself well to me now serving myself at that 4 a.m. Mark, and as I said, the time that I get you, I can just, you know, attack what I need to be doing here. So what I deal with four hours prior to that is not the gym stuff. Yeah.

When I come in here, it's all gym stuff. And wherever else is going to walk to. As you know. It's to circle back to what you were saying earlier about like seasons, right? Where, you know, I think, I think defining that if I'm in a season of doing deals, which right now we're in that season. And so we call this a season of no. And so it basically means that we don't do, we don't say yes to anything.

And, you know, I'll say this, take this the way. I mean it to the audience. The more success we get, the more, you know, accolades fame, whatever you want to call it, the more amount of people try to take time from you. And so a season of no is not doing things that you probably didn't want to do. It's actually not doing things that you kind of wanted to do. And so I'm turning down things that I would probably otherwise accept in terms of like speaking things and whatever. And that's what every big business I've had, we, Layla and I consciously go through,

we look at each other, we're like, this is going to be a season of no. And so we stick to that season until the thing is done. And that also means that like, if working out is one of my priorities, it can't,

you can't have multiple priorities. And so what is then the minimum effective dose to keeping it? For me, it's two times a week for 45 minutes. I can keep the muscle mass I have. Okay, that's what I do. The rest of,

like some people are like, I do it for stress relief. I'm, I mean, sure, it makes me feel better, but I'm not that stressed if I'm not working out. People are like, I have so much more energy if I work out. I'm like, you're not working out hard enough because if I work out, I feel dead after you know what I mean. And so it's just looking and even right now, it's so like our marriage is on maintenance. We're good. You know what I mean? But like that our focus is not the marriage. Neither of our focus is fitness. Right now the focus is

growing acquisition.com. And we've already set kind of like what we want to get done. And until that's done, we're going to be in a season to know. How do you separate yourself from the personal brand to all the other brands that you're working with? Because you have done an incredible job of scaling yourself. I mean, in the number of years that I have seen you go from, you know, the genre you're in to where you are now, your personal brand has grown tremendously. And that is very time consuming. So with that said, coming off what you just mentioned too, how would you cut time for that?

So I see the personal brand as part of my responsibility from a business perspective. Like that is what brings in a lot of the deals that we do as people who saw me on Instagram, read the book, you know, and then decided to apply it atuizure.com. We have a good team and that's where Layla kind of shines. So we record every 14 days for our content. And so we usually have a prompts list of things that the team is like, hey, these are some comments that people ask questions about, like, can you answer those? I also tweet a lot because that's like one of the only platforms I like really actually like. I really like Twitter a lot.

And so I tweet probably three to five times every day. And so then I take my tweets and then we get in front of the camera and I just basically explain with more context what the tweet was about in a short format. And then probably, you know, four of those tweets out of like 30 have like a deeper story to it. And so we then make four or five long pieces of content that become podcasts and YouTube videos from that. And that's just once every 14 days. And then the rest of the time, it's write the book, you know, cash flow projections from a deal, you know, hopping on with, you know, doing a diligence call with a, you know, a senior leader at a company we're thinking about investing in and seeing like if we think that they're the person who's going to take it

to the next level or if we have to start recruiting, you know, talking to you. You know, talking to a potential CEO or CEO who we want to recruit into a company to help them scale. Like that's kind of the day-to-day of what it looks like when we're actually trying to grow these businesses. How many staff do you have, I know, and all your businesses? I have no idea. I know 16 companies, but in terms of like employees across all of them, I honestly have no idea.

At Holdco, I think we have about 25. So like our holding company that then helps each of the portfolio companies. So we have in terms of like, so the way, okay. Since you didn't ask, I'll tell you anyways. So here's coming to it. Yeah, yeah. Whatever it is. Yeah, yeah.

So here's how the whole code structured. We have subject matter experts across departments because typically we operate from the theory of constraint, which is that every single business is not growing because of a single constraint. And a system will grow until it is constraint again. And so we spend a lot of our time trying to identify what the constraint of the business is and then can we solve it. Usually if we can, and it's in our wheelhouse, then that's what is the type of business we'd invest in. Once those people come in, we kind of go a layer deeper. So it's like, okay, we have.

is it a sales problem? Is it a marketing problem? Is it a conversion optimization issue? Is it a pricing issue? Is it a delivery issue? Is it a customer success? Is it third party logistic? Whatever the problem is, right? And we have internal experts who have in, you know, very deep niche expertise around like building and scaling outbound sales teams, building and scaling inbound sales teams, how to create, you know, video sales letters, how to, you know, do like CRO optimization. So conversion optimization across pages, et cetera. And so we'll then figure out what the constraint of the business is. will task one of our internal kind of experts to solve that problem. And then that will decontrain the business and they will continue to grow. And then the other kind of half, I would say, of holdco

for us is recruiting function. And so if the way that we think about things is that you find the people and the people build the business. And so we find the best people who've already been there done that. So if we wanted to take a company on that's doing, let's say, 10 million a year in top line revenue in whatever mortgage sales. we would go and recruit an operator or head of sales or head of marketing, whatever, whatever the constraint is of the smaller business from a company that was at 30 or 50 or 100 million to mortgage sales. And then we'll recruit that person in, place them.

And we have the advantage of one, the personal brand that we have because we can attract better talent. But secondly, because we are a family office, hash private equity firm, you know, depending how you want to see it, we get a lot more responses to from higher level individuals where, you know, a normal, you know, $10 or, you know, $20 million mortgage company is not like a huge business. And so they might not be able to get responses from what we would consider a, you know, level A or top tier talent.

So that's kind of one of our competitive modes is that we can tactically add value at the operating company level. And we can recruit people into those roles. And then they interface with Holdco. So it's like sales is a problem. Go find the salesperson. Put the salesperson in who's a director and who's done this before. And then we take our sales expert and say, here's our playbook. This is how we want you to do it.

and then they implement that within the company. And then that way, the value is actually built in the company rather than at Holdco. So like if the holding company was, if all the companies relied on Holdco in order to function, then it would actually make them less valuable because it means that holdco is required to function, whereas if you have a company that can stand on its own and grow on its own, then that company in and of itself becomes more valuable. And so it's a harder solution, but it's the better long-term solution. And so that's how we build companies.

dumb how do I segue this into something else now I went a little deep on that yeah you gotta remember we got some viewers that are just like you know but no listen I'm thinking of the best segue and you got your videographer next to me how do I segue then to fitness um no but one thing that um I do want to try to reverse emman back slightly slightly um obviously for for

guys and girls who are on the first kind of step, right? So take yourself back to the fitness days and, you know, you're on that first peg. Yeah. Not on the peg that you just spoke about. Yeah. Which has come from time and experience and working with some incredible people and obviously investing knowledge into everything. First steps for any entrepreneur.

Yeah. Fitness industry. Branding. Yeah. What advice would that be? So one thing to one person on one channel. So a lot of people try and get really cute and try and do lots of things. But zero to six figures,

which is, you know, is really just sell something to a specific customer on one channel. When I say channel, I mean like you learn how to sell through Instagram DMs. You learn how to make YouTube videos that generates inbound leads. You learn how to run ads. You learn how to do cold calls. You learn how to do cold,

like whatever acquisition, you learn how to recruit affiliates. you learn how to create a referral system. It doesn't really matter what way you do it. One method for one specific type of customer with one product. That is what gets you from zero to six figures. If you want to go from six figure to seven figures, it's doing each of those steps, comma, consistently.

Because what happens is most people make a sale and then they stop working. And so it's being able to consistently do the activities that generate the sales. If you just do it consistently, then you get to seven figures. At that point, you usually have to look at a bigger picture in terms of the strategy of the business, which is, okay, how can we afford to get even more customers? So that's usually when you have to add in some sort of back-end products to increase the lifetime value of each customer. And I won't get beyond that.

But at that point, yeah, yeah, and then at that point, you'll be able to afford to go through other channels to get more customers. And that'll, I'll cap it there. That gets through a million a month and then we'll stop there. So basically, from entry point here, What would be your first step? If you lost everything today,

okay? Strip everything back down. Or you're just giving somebody that's just walked into the gym. I want to be the next Alex Amosi. What would be the very first thing that they need to focus on other than credible beer and cash? First thing I would say is be you, not me,

because you're not going to beat me and be me. But, you know, one, get an LLC set up through the legal zone. Two, go to take the LLC to bank, get them to give you a bank account. step three set that bank account hook it up to stripe or PayPal to get a way to process money step four message people with the thing that you are trying to sell and ask them to hop on the phone so that you can sell them the thing then they will give you their credit card and then you run that card and then you will get money and then you and then you do the thing that you said you were going to

do in exchange for money that is a business that is the easiest way that that and the most understandable thing I've viewed from your mouth of podcast which would be honest with you But even I was on board with that. No, but again, we have a wide variety of different people are watching you. We have a lot of young guys, you know, aspiring young, you know, hustlers. I know that, you got a videographer next to me. I had the pleasure of talking him before we jumped on the podcast. And, you know, he obviously put himself in uncomfortable situations until it became comfy

and put himself into, you know, L.A. until Alex Somozy was hit up. And you guys have linked, right? So again, I love that approach to, you know, just turning a heart back to front and hustling. I've got my own story. I came here at 20. I knew one person. I slept in the sofa. Wanted to be the best in the world.

I put myself all over California until I put myself into the gym where I had my kick twice a day. And I was around people that truly got the best version of me. And then I realized then I could do this. So, you know, you've got to get beaten down. You've got to be, you know, and have an incredible mindset to focus forward and learn from every mistake that has come. And for me, sitting now in my shoes, I mean, no, obviously I'm not as accomplished in business as you are. You're more accomplished in bodybuilding. But bodybuilding is different thing.

But again, it's more of the circle of people I have around me now that I pick and I learn from. from, you know, again, if it was came to body building, I've been around the best. I feel like I know everything in that space. And there's nothing else for me to achieve in that space. But what interests me now is the business element, is other things that, that scare the shit of me, just like being half naked up on stage dead. So now I'm chasing these new goals and these new dreams. And again, putting myself, as I said, not a cliche, the same thing again, in uncomfortable

situations until it become comfy, just like this podcast, right? This is nothing I ended up, you know, wanting to aspire to be a kid from Wales with his accent and incredible Lisp that I've had to work through. But again, I get to be around and interview friends and get to hear their stories. And what the common storyline among everybody I've had on this podcast is nothing has been given easy. Everything has come from trials, tribulations, failures, and every still, admittingly learning from their failures, no matter how much success they've had,

no matter how great their life is, no matter what car they're driving, how big their house is, they're still aspiring to be better every single day. And that's when I look at you, mate. That's something I always gravitate and get from you is

you're humble, you're driven, you live very frivolously, you don't, you spend on exotic stuff and front, and you probably want, if not one of the most of, if not the most accomplished person that walks around this gym in business.

So for me to you, man, I truly like business. There he goes again, see? Trying to take away the compliment, which I truly love, to be honest. I do love the humility. But again, I think that's one of the traits and many traits obviously that I like about being around you.

You lose me in half of a conversation, half the time of the time. It'd be like me talking about bodybuilding drop sets and this and the other, but I'm there to a certain point. But again, with the viewers that we have and getting you on this podcast today, I truly hope that, you know, a lot of these guys and girls who are watching this have taken, you know, the storyline of the success story and not seeing it as this was given to you. This is truly earned. Real quick, guys, if you can think about how you found this podcast, somebody probably probably, tweeted it, told you about it, shared it on Instagram or something like that. The only way this grows is through word of mouth. And so I don't run ads. I don't do sponsorships. I don't sell

anything. My only ask is that you continue to pay it forward to whoever showed you or however you found out about this podcast that you do the exact same thing. So if it was a review, if it was a post, if you do that, it would mean the world to me and you'll throw some good karma out there for another entrepreneur. If I can just talk and first off, thank you. I appreciate it. It's very nice if you say. If I can toss this out for the people who are younger or on the on the come up or they're not on the come up, but they want to be on the come up, um, one is that you have to figure out what problem you're trying to solve. So a lot of people start down a career path, you know, even if it's, let's say, let's say it's bodybuilding, right? And they haven't actually played it out. So my,

my three favorite questions to ask when we're trying to make a big strategic decision is number one, what problem we're trying to solve? Number two is let's play it out. And number three is, which problem we do prefer. And so if you figure out what problem you're trying to solve, then you are like, okay, well, then there's multiple scenarios to solve this problem.

So you play out each of them. So if someone's like, well, I want to be a bodybuilder. You're like, why? They're like, well,

I want to make money. It's like, okay, that's a different problem. Right? And so like, to be fair, the only way we're going to make that is like you're literally number one

or top five, you know, that you'll make realish money, right? Right. On the flip side, you could probably become an influencer without even stepping on stage and make significantly more money.

You don't know if that's the, you know, the goal. So it's, again, what problem are we solving? Then you play it out. And you're like, okay, well, now I've, now I'm number one. Now what? It's like, well, I wanted to like, for me, playing it out was like, okay, I'm going to go to business school. Okay.

Then what? It's like, okay, well, then I'll get a consulting job that makes me $120,000 a year. Okay, then what? It's like, well, I guess I'd have to work up the ladder there. And then eventually I would save enough money to start a business. I was like, well, what if I just did that if that's what I want to do. And so those are three questions I would ask myself. The second thing is that if you do not know the input output equation for how you're going to be successful, you will not be successful.

And so what I mean by that is you have to figure out what primary actions you have to take that will continue to stack up over time. So for example, if I wanted to create a marketing agency or I wanted to sell widgets or whatever it was, like I will need to get customers. And so either I will reach out individually to friends and family. I will reach out individually to strangers to get them to hop on the phone and buy my thing, right? I will run ads to get it or I will post content in order to get more customers. Beyond that, I could get affiliates or I could get referrals to send me people. That's it. Those are the only ways we can get customers.

If you don't know what the input system is there where you're like, okay, I need to do a hundred reachouts a day. I need to make five pieces of content. I need to get two affiliate relationships a week. I need to whatever the input is. If you don't know what that is, then you're never going to get there. So you have to figure out what problem you're trying to solve. You have to play it out and then figure out which problem you prefer and then figure out what your input output equation is to getting what you want.

And then you do it. And you do it as many times as you possibly can and you ignore everybody who tells you that you're wrong and tells you that you're not going to get there. And most of all, you ignore the thoughts that you were telling yourself about why you're not going to get there because you are wrong on a long enough time horizon if you do the thing. And so if you do that, it becomes unreasonable that. that you won't succeed. And so I like to create unreasonable equations for myself, which is if I did this thing every single day for 10 years and I never stopped, would it be unreasonable that I won't be a millionaire?

If it's unreasonable that I won't be a millionaire or I won't be a billionaire or whatever your number is, then I'm like, cool, then that's what I need to do. And so if you haven't figured out your input output equation, which is what I need to do to get the thing, then is the first problem you have to solve. once you do that, the rest of it is wake up early, spend the first six hours of your day, making your content, doing your reachouts, recruiting affiliates, blah, blah, blah, whatever thing it is, and then don't let anyone stop you. And that also means saying no to things that you probably want to do right now. Because the people who are further ahead of you have no more time than you do,

they do things differently than you. And if you fill your time right now, every day, which you probably do because you're alive, you do things during the day, then it's not about adding more to your plate. It's about removing things on your plate right now that you're wasting your time with. Repeat that last sentence. That's incredible. The people who are richer than you don't do things that you do. They stop doing things that you are doing. Because what happens is if you eliminate all of the wasted activity that you have in your life,

you will create room for doing the few inputs that matter most. And then that's the thing that's going to get you to where you want to go. I think that's the problem with a lot of the younger generation is they're around so much. They're losing so much time. I mean, I wish I could tell my younger self Stop around Especially on the phone I would have gained so much more space

And so much more yard Is there anything that you would love to change If you had the chance to get back And time hop Not really Because I I like where I am And I wouldn't want to mess with that

And so I wouldn't want to butterfly Effect my way out of not being in the position I'm in So Stoer words on my mouth there Yeah, I'm good with it everything's happened for a reason. I say that I repeat the same sentence. People ask me if there's anything I want to change in the past.

Everything's led me to this point. Yeah. And I wouldn't want a butterfly effect anything to him. Yeah, and I think one of the other things is for, as a point of encouragement, is that you're either, you're not getting what you want if you're not where you want to be, right? If, because you're either doing the wrong things or you're doing the right things, but you don't do it enough, or are you doing the right things and you haven't done it a long enough. And so you have to figure out which and that's where it's nice to have mentors and people who are ahead of you who can who can spot it and be like, okay, you're just doing the wrong things, right?

Straight up. Or you're doing the right thing the wrong way. That's possible too. But if you're doing the right thing, sometimes you just have to give time time. If you're like, man, I've been posting on social media. It's like, okay, well, how long? It's like, well, you know, I post like once a week and I've been posting for like three months. I'm like, okay, so you've posted 12 times. we put out 250 pieces of content a week. Yeah. You're not going to, like, of course you're not famous yet. You know what I mean? But like you have to do that first.

And then you will get better at it because you've done more of it. And then you try to go to once a day and then try to go to twice a day. And then you try to figure out what content people like. And like there's a game to it. And volume or quantity begets quality. The more you do, the better you get. Yeah.

And a lot of times people want to be good without doing the work to get good. And so you have to suck for a long time until it's unreasonable that you don't suck. So it's like, If I did a 10,000 cold calls, would it be unreasonable that I, that I, that I suck it. Would it be unreasonable for me to be good if I did 10,000 cold calls? The answer is yes. It would be unreasonable. And so then it's just like, great, go do that.

And then you'll be good. Yeah. If you, if you worked out every, you know, if you stuck to your training program and you stuck to your diet program for two years, would it be unreasonable that you'd make significantly more progress than you made in the last two years? Of course. But people do that. And the real thing, in my opinion is that people have to figure out why they're not doing something, not why. to do. People hide behind I don't know what to do when you know exactly what to do. And even even people were trying to lose weight, right? It's like, I just don't know how. I'm like,

really? I'm like, stop eating shit and move. Are you aware of that? You know that that's probably what you need to do. Fantastic. Get directionally correct. And so when people are early on, they try and find the perfect reason or the perfect business when you have no context from which to make a decision or make a judgment. And so you have no way of knowing if this is the perfect business or the perfect career path. So the only thing you can do is taste and then iterate. And so I try and get people to at least who were younger on who asked me for advice. I just say like get directionally correct. So it's like, okay, I like business. Oops. I like business more than I like this. Cool. Then I'm going to do more stuff in this direction. Now you're in business. You're like, I like the creative

side more than I like the sales side. Okay, cool. They start moving in that direction. And then when you like, you're not going to be like, this is the perfect product because every entrepreneur knows that the first business you start is not the last business you ever own. You learn. You learn. from the failures of your first business is like, this was wrong with this one. I'm going to try and fix that one in my next one. And then you'll learn something in your next one. Like right now, acquisitions.com, I think it's technically like a 16th company that I've started, not like acquired, but like started. So like, of course, my first business ever was an online training business. First thing I got money for. Lady wrote me a check. Which is a lot of the, our viewers right now.

Yeah. Lady wrote me a check. She just asked me for help at the gym and I met her for lunch and I gave her tips. And then she just gave me a check. I didn't sell it. She was like, here's a check. She was like, money. And I was like, oh, it was like, it makes some money doing this. You know, like, I had no idea. So like, you're not going to know. And the only way to know is to start doing it. Because even if you listen to podcasts, you read books, you watch seminars, whatever, the only way the information will actually make sense to you is if you've actually done it. If you read 20 books on cold calling, you will still learn more in your first 100 cold calls, then you learn from every one of the books. Now, if you do the 100 or you do a thousand cold calls,

and then you read 20 books, then you'll have. context to apply the information for the next call. It's like reading about training for a year rather than getting into the gym. As soon as you're in the gym, learning how to periodize, learning how to set up the equipment, whatever it is, will make sense to you. If you're like, okay, yeah, next time I'm on a quad extension, what was aquatic extension again? You've never done one. You have no idea. And so people don't do anything because they think they need all of the information, but if you have all of the information on an opportunity, you're already too late. It's already passed. And so you have to operate within the context of the unknown. And so a big part of

entrepreneurship is operating with incomplete information. You make the best bet you can and you get directionally correct and then you adjust. What do you see me as a future for me? What advice would you get me? Without part of myself in a very vulnerable situation. By the way, I can add it to shit out of this. Well, I would, so honestly, I would follow the first three questions, which is what problem are we solving? What's the goal? And then that like that's a you thing. So it's like, what, what is the goal? Yeah.

If you're like, I want to be a billionaire. It's like, okay, we have to solve that differently than like, I want to make 10 million this year. I want to make 50 million this year. Whatever it is, right? I'm just making those numbers up for the audience. Like, once you know that, because the, what's interesting about this too is that the goal that you set, like there are just, uh, you just take different path. But if you're going like, it takes the same amount of time to build a billion dollar thing as it does to take to build a million dollar thing. Like that's, like, that's,

crazy to think about. But it takes sometimes less time. Like if you want to build a really successful restaurant, it, it might take you 10 years to get a local, you know, get the local word out, have the good word of mouth, maybe open two or three locations. Like it takes, and you're still working 80 hours a week killing yourself versus starting a fund. It takes, and maybe you work even less time doing that. And you make a hundred times the money. So like picking the right opportunity vehicle, a lot of times comes from like, what problem are we solving? So it's like, I want to be a millionaire, I want to be a billionaire. Well, once we get that, then we're just like, okay, underneath of that, what are the unique skill sets we have that we can match to the opportunity

vehicles available to us? And then that comes a narrower list. Okay, well, these are the three highest likelihood things. Third question, this is going to be a problem with opportunity one. This is the problem with opportunity two. This is the problem with opportunity three. Which problem do we prefer? This one's going to be really hard with hiring lots of people. This one's going to be really technology driven. So you have to have like a really good technical co-founder or you have to understand software or whatever. This one's really marketing heavy. So you're going to have to make a lot of content. Which of these three problems that are the hardest parts of this is the one that you'd prefer to tackle?

Well, I think the marketing content is the one that I'd rather tackle. Great. That's the path. So we got the highest leverage opportunity, match with our skill set, with a problem that we feel confident that we can solve. And then we just say, what are our inputs? What are our outputs? We do as many inputs as we can, and then we get there. I think with my situation is I got so much opportunity in every different direction,

that I've retired. it's just picking that one thing and then just just said focusing on that, right? Even with this podcast, right? Yeah. Is this the moving forward or is this, you know, kind of distracting me from something else?

I enjoy this. This is kind of like my, this to me is nothing that is going to, you know, turn into Joe Rogan. Trust me. But I do enjoy having my friends on the podcast. And this is what it really is, right? It's just me talking and getting knowledge

out there to my audience, to the people who have followed me from the get or a new coming into it and also exposes them to your world, to your to your, to your YouTube's, to your Instagrams and stuff like that. So there's a lot of correlation from business into bodybuilding and whatnot because of the, you want something in life, you know, you just have to turn your hat back to find and go for it. You want bigger calves? Yeah. Put it in the gym. Go for it. Same with any type of business, even to being a better dad, right?

It's just putting effort into something and becoming good at it. Because you're going to fail. You're going to suck at whatever it is that you're trying to get good at until it becomes secondary. For me, again, I've got a lot of these low-hanging fruits that I'm doing right now. And I'm enjoying the process of chasing them. Maybe a different, if you were to see what I'm doing, And you'd probably be like, okay, flags.

I need a wrang glue into this like fun-no. But considering that my whole world and my whole life was on that shelf for 19 years, I feel like I have this new abundance of life that I'm chasing. And it's fun for me to be into different, you know, elements and genres, I guess. I think to answer the original thing, if I were to give my one, two cents on it, it would be you need to find another Moby Dick. Because right now it's like you're chasing lots of little fish, but you need to find the whale.

I like that. And I think right now like, sure, you can get some fish on the boat. Sure you can eat for a day. But it's like, what's the thing that you're going to like hunt and spend, you know, obsess over? Because I'll tell you a short anecdote. So there was a guy who, um,

who's a, let's say a world class athlete. One, whatever the Olympic stage was equivalent for, for him. And we were talking. connected me on Instagram or with me on Instagram and I got on the phone with him and I was like, all right, man. So what's going on? He's like, I need some help of business. I was like,

all right, what's up? And so he started talking. He's like, oh, yeah, I got this business. I got this business. I got this business. I was like, how many. And he said like six different business was on the phone with him. And I know he makes significantly less money than me. So I was like, what is happening. And he was like, oh, I've got like 40 something businesses. I was like, jeez something businesses. I was like, jeez. And I was like, how do you, he's like, oh, I have an Excel sheet to keep track of them. And he told me what his top line revenue was. And it was not like, you know, crazy numbers. And so he did have one brand that I knew of that I liked a lot. Okay. And I was like, well, if you had a magic one tomorrow and you got to kill all of the

other ones and just grow that one brand, how easy would your life be to triple that company? He was like, my God, I could do that in my sleep. I was like, then why don't you? And so like, and after that call, a year later, he killed, he like, killed all of the businesses. He's like, kept me up. I kept thinking like I should just be, I should be done with these things because it's about, so the equation for successes I see it, or at least getting an outcome is volume times leverage equals output. And so it's the number of activities times how much you get per activity equals how much you get, right? And so in the beginning, most people don't do anything. So they don't have anything to multiply to get the output, right? But once you've learned how to have

some level of motivation, whatever, where you're working all of the time, which, let's say, let's assume a certain level of success or whatever. Then the next multiplier, which is still the biggest multiplier, is how much you get back for the work you put in. So like Warren Buffett, for example, made a trade two years ago for Apple that has now made him $90 billion on one trade. And so he had a level of effort, volume that he put in to get a skill. And he made that effort and had tremendous leverage on that thing to get this huge and massive output. And so what a lot of people who don't understand, understand is that leverage is unlimited. So you can get a unlimited multiplier on the effort you have if you pick the right activity. So if you pick the right whale, because then if you had,

you know, flex online, the app that has, you know, 20,000 users and they all pay whatever, 20 bucks a month, then, okay, well, that's a $5 million year business that probably if everyone was sticky and you got more affiliates and whatever. Like that might be a $50 million exit business if you X, Y and Z, right? If you compare that to, let's say, say I'm taking a bunch of brand endorsement deals where I get little slices of affiliate revenue or something like that. Like there's no asset that's being built. And it's the same work to do both, but one yields you 10 times, 50 times the return of

the other one. And so if you have your time, which is the only asset that we really can allocate, then you put it and you stack it on the one that has the biggest multiplier effect on the work you're putting in. And so if you look at all the opportunities that you have on your plate that are approaching you a mentor of mindset. If it doesn't have a B next to it, don't bother. Right. So if it's not going to make you a billionaire, it's not going to make you a billion dollars, Alex, he's like, it's not worth your time. And so I think if this is me for you, like, if you draw a line in the sand and say,

like, if it's not going to make me X, it's not worth my time. And then that just gives you this very clear litmus test of like, cool, that kills 90% of my shit. And now you've got, let's say, three things left. Then it's what problem we're solving? You know, let's play each of these out. And then which of the problems would I prefer to solve? And then you narrow your three to your one. And then you have your whale. In my head, I'm actually going through this shit right now, by the way. Yeah. It's the most important decision you can make in your entrepreneurial career.

What are you going to dedicate the next five to seven to? Like, I think about it as in season. A lot of people want to think about forever, and I think the world changes too fast. Five years from the AI is going to take over. Who knows? But like, I can see five years. And so what can I commit five years to?

And if five years from now, I haven't hit what I want to hit like, I can reassess. But I can commit 60 months to one thing because Microsoft went from zero to one of the biggest companies in the world. seven years. Like, you can do anything in five to seven. And so that's how I see it in terms of entrepreneur seasons. And so I figure for me as an entrepreneur, I've got maybe like eight seasons in me from beginning to end. So it's like I got eight stamps. I got to pick. I got on my ticket till I die. It's like being really selective about which, which card I'm going to punch. Because

there's a hundred things we can do, but the one thing that matters most is the pick. that is a tough thing for me because I've got a lot of picks for everyone for everyone and the more successful you are the more picks you get but on the flip side if you picked them all you guarantee you don't get there that's what right it's like you're trying to be like head at the the crossfit champ the strongman champ and the bodybuilding champ you're not going to get there this is possible and then you ended just being like a mediocre athlete and the outcome is so far below what getting second place and bodybuilding is if you tried to do all three you wouldn't even place yeah but that's what it's like when you pursue multiple business endeavors at the same time. I wouldn't have achieved what I would have achieved if had I had multiple things going on in bodybuilding. So that is the again, because I've been there, I understand that analogy. So right now, I think me coming out of the blocks with all these things is exciting. Yeah. But you just kind of hit me with a Moby dick across my face.

It's wet whale dick. That's not a crossroad. No. There you go. You two will find a way. if demonetizing me. They love me. They love me, don't they?

Hopefully Alex will pull me out to the YouTube jail. But with that said, and obviously recap in the whole podcast, and, you know, I want to thank you for, you know, coming on you and dumbing it down

for a lot of my fans, I know we went off, well, he went off on a couple of business tangents. Just cut the tangent. No, no, no. Listen, I, I, I, I know I message you prior to coming on the podcast and you were like, we'll talk about anything you want, you know, and I was like, okay, I should have prefaced. Like, let's just try and keep it as

as easy and understandable as possible. But then again, you know, I got a wide verse of people that follow us. So I'm glad to see and, you know, see in the comments sections what comes of this because I do have a lot of different followers, different genres, different genres of people that are that are following me and for different reasons, right? And now I'm moving into different sectors like I said it's you know I'm trying to find D1 as you said it's it's great to have guests on like yourself and and you know pick your brain and see where you're at and and get the true story of success because again a lot of people are just jumping on your platform may have not have seen or heard your you know your story right and I know we kind of just skim through a lot of the

the you know the heartaches and heart breaks and we've kind of gone a little bit all over the place I understand my apologies but if there was one part in thing that you could give my viewers, what would that be? Once you pick, just don't stop. That's it. Because if you think of life as an infinite game, like the point of the game isn't to finish the game, right? Because that would mean the point of the game would be to die. So the point of the game is to keep the game going.

And that's the difference between an infinite and a finite game. So finite game has known players, two teams agreed upon rules and a set outcome where it ends. Infinite Games has known and unknown players, no agreed upon rules. And the only point of the game is to keep the game going. And so if you think about life in that way, whether it's business or health or marriage, the point isn't to win at marriage or win at business or win at health. The point is to stay healthy. The point is to continue your marriage.

The point is to stay in the game of business. And so the only way you lose in business is quitting. And so as long as you stay in the game, you have more innings. You have unlimited innings, unlimited at bats. and to the only way you lose is stopping. So don't stop.