The Game with Alex Hormozi - Is Going to College Still Worth It? (w/ Ken Coleman) Pt. 1 - Nov. '22 | Ep 467

Episode Date: December 3, 2022

“You must suck before you are good.” Today, join Alex (@AlexHormozi) as he guests on Ken Coleman’s Show to talk about the story of his 18-year-old neighbor’s path of not choosing to go to college, defining “goodwill”, and what pumps him up when it comes to his mission in life as an entrepreneur. This is part 1 of the interview.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 Ken Coleman’s YouTube Channel!Timestamps:(1:22) - Is college still relevant today?(8:52) - The Tale of Two Jacobs(17:22) - You must suck before you are good(22:16) - The connection between pain and pleasure(24:12) - Alex’s top 3 talents, what fires him up, and defining “goodwill”(32:00) - “My net worth is the narrative.”Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

It is worse to not be able to work than to be forced to work. If I had to pick, being unable to work is worse than being forced to work. The wealthiest people in the world see business as a game. This podcast, The Game, is my attempt at documenting the lessons I've learned on my way to building acquisition.com into a billion dollar portfolio. My hope is that you use the lessons to grow your business and maybe someday soon, partner with us to get to $100 million in beyond. I hope you share and enjoy.

All right, Alex, I talk about education all the time on the show, mainstream media. And because I'm so fired up about it, and I'm looking at the data, and I know you talk about it on your YouTube channel and in multiple places. Bottom line is I'm not sure it's a great investment anymore, and I think it's in danger, higher ed, of becoming extinct. When you look at enrollment numbers are down big time, you contrast that with, of course, you know, tuition up, student loans up. And I want to know what you think about that as you look at this new economy,

and you talk about the new economy all the time. where does college sit as it relates to relevance? I think it's a really interesting question. I think one of the easiest ways to think through it is to think like first principles of why was college established to begin with and then going backwards from there. And so I think for most people,

they say college was established to increase the quality of the workforce. So increased skilled labor so that we could be more competitive as a nation. And there was kind of different tiers of workers. There was tiers of workers who didn't have a college degree, tiers that did. College at that time,

from a price to value perspective was significantly higher. So price of what you pay values, what you get. And so the return on the investment of both time and money still made sense for people to forego income for most people for that period of time. I know that it rams. You encourage people to do both, which I would encourage as well, like don't stop making money if you have the option. That's right.

But the idea that you have an investment of time and money and then you can make up for it more later, which makes complete sense. And I give a little analogy to this, which is a friend of mine has a daughter. she's in high school and she started working at a bowling alley for minimum wage and he said hey you should take a phlebotomy certification it takes a weekend it's 500 bucks and you can start making $25 an hour now for her to save up the money uh to then spend the weekend it might take her eight weeks to save the money versus borrowing 500 from dad doing the certification and being able to pay dad back in a week and then making seven more weeks of basically net profit or whatever we want to call it increased earning capacity

that's a micro example what college was supposed to do. The difficulty is that now there is no discrepancy between what someone can earn with or without a college degree, but there is a very real cost in both time and money. And so I think that is the fundamental discrepancy of why college no longer is worth it. And then there's the additional risk of if you take on college debt or student loans, you can't bankrupt out of them. You're stuck with them forever. And you're stuck with them forever at a lower or insignificantly raised earning capacity overall.

And I want to stay in this lane because when I, I get to talk to people like you, different viewpoints, worldview, you're younger than I am as well. I'm just curious what you, your generation, what do you think is the distaste that parents have with trades? I think everything comes down to status. And so I would imagine that most parents want to be able to say that they did a good job of being parents. And so they use their children as a proxy for how good of people they are. And so if they can go and say, hey, my kid is do a. doing X, Y, and Z. It is perceived as high prestige versus my kid as an electrician, even though he makes

more than being a social media at insert random mid-market company. They would get more prestige from social media because it's white collar versus blue collar. From a dollars and cents standpoint, from a return on investment standpoint, and arguably from an enjoyment of life standpoint, that person who might be inclined to be an electrician or a plumber or whatever might actually like that more and have a better life. But I think it's selfishness at its core, is that they're putting their own needs rather than the needs of their children first. And most of them are doing so without knowledge. I would say that's the vast majority. And then I would say the other, I don't say vast majority, really half are there. And the portion is parents who are just afraid of messing something up.

And it is always safe to go with the herd. Because I mean, that's, that's human behavior. If you have a checkmark box on your purchases says, this is what everyone does or 89% of people choose this option, most people feel safe doing it because other people walked on the ice. And so you feel like you're not going to go down, right? So I feel like that's evolutionary. And so people go with herd behavior, even though the reason college originally was started was to create a price to value discrepancy in terms of value additive to people went through it. And that discrepancy no longer exists. It transformed from being a value additive to a cultural norm. And so people continue to do it as a cultural norm, not because it adds value because they've always done it that way. That's exactly

right. So I've got a ninth grade boy and a junior right now. And my ninth grader goes to our, we're very blessed to be able to go to private school. So the night my wife says to me, Alex, she goes, hey, it's a college seminar 101, something or other for the ninth grade. She goes, are you going? And I'm like, I'm not going. I'm not going. This is part of the problem.

We're putting ninth graders in their parents in a room. And we're creating, again, more pressure, right? And having conversations about college with a 14-year-old who is just like every other 14-year-old in the world, he is temporary insanity most of the time. He changes his mind all the time. What do they do it? He's 14. It's okay to change your mind 50,000 times.

And I bring this up to you because, you know, you've got a lot of, you got a lot of young people watching your channel. You've been tremendously successful. And we've created this homogenized view of success that has a lot to do with your test scores, the diploma and everything else. When in all reality, the diploma doesn't guarantee anything at all. other than in some jobs in career paths, it does get you the ticket in the door.

But that's increasingly less and less of a reality. I think Gary V said something that was really profound. He said, I get it. You know, doctors, lawyers, accountants, you need the degree. He's like, but what about the 95% of people that aren't in those three to 10 buckets of career paths that are the easy ones to name off the top of your head? What about them?

You know what about the two million plus salespeople that exists? You know what I mean? just in the United States alone, like what, what about those people? And so, yeah, I think everything comes down to price to value discrepancy and cultural norms. And I think that the price to value discrepancy, I don't think there's really an argument for it anymore with the exception of, like you said, the ticket of entry to a potentially higher path, which then makes the argument that it's really the higher education above the four-year degree. That's the thing that's conferring the value. And you only have to do this as a mandatory cost, for lack of better term, to get in. And then for

everyone else, the cultural norm argument of if they're going to take a normal job, there is No reason to do incur four years and the bankrupt list debt. Yeah. Well, let's just look at large companies like Google and other tech companies that are hiring young people. And they don't even care with the degree. Is whether they have one or not because they're training them for the job? You know, I love the story you tell in one of your videos about your 19-year-old neighbor. I was just going to tell it.

Yeah, go ahead because this is great. Here's a kid who's literally in the middle of this scenario that we're talking about. Probably has well-meaning parents. He's 19. He wants to be successful. he's blessed to be your neighbor and boom one day he goes, hey Alex, I want to make a bunch of money.

So he was what I would consider an above average but not exceptional student. You know, he did probably a three, five, you know, something like that. Student, he got into Pepperdine, which is an expensive school in Southern California. He did a semester there. He didn't like kind of the social programming aspect

of everything that was being pushed on his throat. And then beyond that, the big realization that he had was that he just didn't like this and he still felt like all of his time and all of his energy was going into watching YouTube videos of how to make money. And so we had this long walk. I remember it was almost like two hours where we walked around the neighborhood and kept walking.

And so I wanted him to make this decision. And so what it came down to for him was that he took because, A, he had parents who were well to do and could afford to put him in this college. But for him, it was a safety net, was that he had an excuse to not succeed at his entrepreneurial desire because he had a four-year buffer. And so I told him, I was like, you will always be able to go back to college. They will always take your money.

Oh, that's right. They will have no problem taking your money, right? That's right. But what I want to do is talk about a tale of two Jacobs, right? And his name was Jacob. And so I said, so Jacob number one, you go and you finish your, your Pepperdine in four years with a three-two business degree. I was like, let's be real. The world doesn't need a three-two business degree. And I'm not listening to anyone from Pepperdine with a three-two business to grow

and how I'm going to grow my business. Let's be real, right? So you're going to get some whatever job for $40 to $60,000. year right out of college, four years from now with $200,000 in debt. That's where you're at, to your parents, at least if you want to pay them back. In scenario two, I said, you have four years, and what I told them to do is, I said, just join our front end sales team. I was like, just dial, dial for dollars. It's the lowest, it's the lowest tier job. I said, you will learn so many skills on how to talk to people, how to work longer hours, how to work with adults, people who are

doing this as actually their main source of income, et cetera. And I said, I promise you that, A, four years from now, if you did nothing else, you'll have saved $200,000 in not cost. You'll have made $160,000 because you'll have made whatever, you know, four times 40. If you make no improvements in your life, you don't level up. I was like, but you do have the decent shot at moving up in the company, gaining skills. And then if we do an apples to apples comparison, and right now this kid is two years into that path where he decided to quit, despite all of his friends and the parents, and, you know, kudos to his parents for, they've been very supportive of this,

which I think a lot of people don't have. And when you say quit, I just want to clarify quit college. He dropped out after his first semester. I had to talk to his parents three or four times. They're like, hey, I want you to know you have a lot of influence over our son

and I really want you to use that. I'm not going to screw your son over. Like I promise. He's in good hands. Hey, let me, could we stay here for a second? This is so good. What were the fears that the biggest fears

you had to address with his parents? they didn't want him to be seen as less than or less capable. And they wanted, they felt like, because of their upbringing, their side of norms, whatever, they felt like college was still a viable plan B or it made his trajectory into the workforce less risky and more guaranteed as they perceived it to getting a job. And I, to explain to them that if you have Jacob number one and Jacob number two four years from now, You tell me a guy has been working on a sales for four years versus a guy who graduated college before. I was like, there's no businessman that I know who would take, you know, liberal ed's Jacob three, two business degree over the guy who's been banging phones and made, you know, 40,000 phone calls over the last, you know, four years, whatever. And so I think once they understood that he was better off and it, for them, the money wasn't the significant part.

They wanted to risk adjust his trajectory, the trajectory of his career. Yeah. And I explained that the risk adjust to return on the value additive, like on the skills he would acquire over the four years. That's right. Because he wanted to do business and that was a big because he wanted to get into business and make money, the best way to learn business is to get into business. That's right. Well, so he's two years in with you now. Yeah.

And how's he doing? So he's got $250,000 saved up. Wow. As a 19 year old, he worked his way off the call floor as the top. setter, they're the dialer, outbound dialer. And then we have three sales teams, not to get two in the weeds here, but there's three tiers of salesmen. He worked his way up at the top of the bottom tier, worked his way up to the top of the second tier, and became second highest in the top tier over the span of 18 months. And so, and I told him when he got the job, I said, I can't even give you

the job. I can get you the interview. I said, it's up to the salesman. He manages his own team. You have to, you have to show him. And the same thing with his career path. And I would always check with the managers. I was like, hey, I want to make sure that he's not. getting any special treatment. They're like, if anything, we give him worse treatment because he's young and we, you know, they're like, but his numbers are his numbers. Like, they're like, he sounds like a man on the phone. Wow. And so that was one of the things that he had to overcome too is like how do you, and he's now selling stuff. He's selling, you know, 30, 50,000 dollar, you know, licenses to Jim, you know, like, basically like Jim Franchise, he used to say it. Sure. Sure. To grow men. And so the amount of

maturity and the amount of how many people have hung up on him on the dialing side that he had to learn how to overcome that and position him and hold the frame and all these things that you talk about that guy four years from now compared to the guy who was studying Aztec literature like who you're going to hire yeah all right so what you're essentially describing is this young man may take a four year gap like a gap year is like a horrible thing to say to a parent i i i've done it at live events before i was in front of 2 000 people recently and dad stood up and said hey ken i got to ask you your question about my son he's thinking about a gap year and i think he thought i was going to give him some had a hell to talk the kid out of it.

And I was like, do it. Just do it. Who cares? As long as he's working, he's active, he's exploring, he's trying. I think it's so important. And I want to stay here with this 19-year-old because for my audience, they'll get where I'm going here. I'm always talking about the intersection of talent,

what you do best, passion, what you love to do, and then mission, what motivates us. And so I'm curious if this young man has told you, now having worked for you for two years, is he beginning to see a clear mountain top, or is he still just saying, I want to get as much experience as possible to figure out one day what the business is?

How far along in his vision is he? I'm curious. I would say, I mean, in his entrepreneur trajectory, he's so green. Of course. Right. But in terms of, because transparently, he had, he worked out with me.

So I had a big garage gym and he would work out with me after school every day. Right. And so he had two years of, He had a lot of time of 101 mentorship of reframing how he saw the world. And so he understands that this is a chapter in his life to gain one plume in his cap of, I understand sales. Got it.

And so he also understands that I've been very clear with him. I was like, these are that you need to understand all the departments of a business in order to run one. So he understands his personal finances because he's followed what I said. He doesn't spend money. He splits a place with four guys. And the kids making $25,000 a month. Yeah. Blitz a place with four dudes.

and he's got no girlfriend, everything he ends in cash. But I was like, you still don't know marketing. So you need to learn how to market. That's going to be the kind of the next. And he just, and he started to do this. So he's making content now. He's making shorts. He's made his first YouTube video this week.

So he's learning the content game. He's learning how to market, how to position himself. He's going to have to learn delivery, which is probably the next thing after that. And so he understands that he's on a journey to acquire skills so that when he does choose to deploy them, he'll have the capital and he'll have the experience in order to increase the likelihood of success. Because when I was explaining to his parents, I said, I want him to start cold calling because if he knows how to turn a phone into money,

he will never go hungry for the rest of his life. That's right. For the rest of his life, if he wants to start a business, he's got a phone and he's got numbers and he can find business. And he can take that skill to any business and any business owner will pay him handsomely to go get them business. Well, I got to tell you, and I think that's what's even more important than the ability to make money, and I think you're absolutely right,

is by putting him on a cold call floor and a phone where he's just banging on the phone. Let me tell you something. You learned to overcome rejection, which is maybe the most valuable skill of any successful person. I don't care what walk of life you're in. You learn how to handle rejection. That's huge because we are so scared of it, the sting of hearing no. And boy, you've cured him of that pretty quick. And then I would also say that this is where grit comes from. Totally. I mean, real grit. I mean, it's the ability to go, I'm going to do hard things. for the purpose of learning how to do hard things. Yes.

Like I'll tell you, I got three kids. And, you know, I don't want to sound like a middle-aged old guy, but I probably am already. I am middle-aged. My generation, I'm Gen X. One of the things that is concerning about me is how we have removed negative feelings from our kids' lives. We're so concerned about our kids feeling good.

We've forgotten to teach them how to actually be good, but you can't be good, Alex, unless you suck. I don't know how you get to be good at anything without sucking in the first place. Is that, is that fair to say that that's our greatest failure to these kids these days? I feel like you're preaching the gospel of Mosey Nation. That's the, it is, you must suck before you are good. Yeah, there's no way around that. And to your point about the ascribing a negative or positive label

to an emotional state is, in my opinion, the biggest plight of the youngest generation right now, is that we want to draw a line and say any feeling below the line is bad. It's like looking at the sky and saying sunny days are good, rainy days are bad, but they are both required for the earth to continue, right? And as humans, the human experience is the breath of the experiences, not just everything to the left of the line, which is why you have these over-medicated kids who think that any bad feeling is bad or rather any feeling that they would prefer not to have as something that they should not have

or should not experience rather than a corrective tool to get them back on the path that they want to be on. Like this is 100% like I could. And I just want to hit on a point that you said earlier because it's really profound for me and the audience that I have, which is I believe that there are three main things that people have to develop. You've got skills. You've got traits.

And then you've got beliefs about the world. You've got perspectives. And so, you know, you are limited, or at least in my view, entrepreneurs are limited by one of those three at any given moment. So if you have impeccable character and you have great beliefs about the world, but you have no skills, you will only be able to provide value

to the level of your skills. Now, once you add a ton of skills to your tool belt, the sky's the limit. The flip side, you've got tons of skills, right? But you don't have the character trait of focus, right? Like you can't stick with something for a long time. That's your grit that you were referencing earlier. Or you can't take rejection.

That's a trait, right? And so it doesn't matter how skilled you are or what you believe to be possible in the world and what you want to allocate your time and energy and resources and skills towards, you won't be able to accomplish it because you don't have the character trait to get there. And so I see it as those three paths. And so to Jacob's education, learning the phones was a very small percentage of what he was learning during that period of time.

He learned how to show up on time. He learned how to have a uniform. He learned how to talk to adults. He learned how to hold a frame. He learned from a belief perspective. You learned that you could sell stuff for tons of money before he could adopt. I'll say this, hopefully as people understand me saying it, a poverty mentality around money.

And hearing like $1,000 is a lot of money. Well, to a 16-year-old maybe, but also sometimes to a 40-year-old. And it's sad to me that it is a lot to the 40-year-old because they learned that. They didn't know that. They were taught that it was a lot of money. And I wanted to get to him before he would learn the wrong lessons. And so he can now say $100,000 over the phone and not break a sweat because he doesn't have worldviews that I had to unteach him.

He was blank slate. And so, anyway, he learned a lot of things and the traits and the skills of just how to pick up a phone and get someone to say yes and move forward was the minority of the things that he learned in that experience. Yeah. This young man's working hard for you. He's busting his butt. We don't know if he has a passion for sales. He might now. He discovered it because you made him do it.

But he might not. He's doing it if he doesn't have a true passion for sales, like connecting with people and getting him a solution, he's doing this because he's got maybe a passion for solutions. He's doing this because he's got maybe a passion for solutions and maybe a business around that. And that's great, all right? But here's my point. Mosy Nation, real quick, if you are a business owner that has a big old business and wants to get to a much bigger business, going to $50 million plus. We would love to talk to you. And if you like that, we would like to hear more about it.

Go to acquisition.com. You can apply anywhere on the page and talk to one of our team and see if we can help you get there. It's that as he is experiencing and you have putting through. through some real pain in a good way. He said to learn rejection, how that feels and busting his butt and competing and losing all the things that you've discussed. My point is, is that in the, doing hard things,

embracing the suck as we've been talking about, I feel that inside of that, we begin to discover along the way, oh, I did this just because it was hard, but along the way, I found that that I would do this, whether it was hard or not. Like if I, and I got, I did some hard stuff now it became easy. But now I find that I want to keep doing hard stuff because the pleasure I get from doing the hard stuff, the work itself.

And that what I mean by that is when I do, I have a 12 hour day tomorrow, 12 hours. I'll do three hours of the show, video shoot, all kinds of stuff. I'll be mentally like, you know what I mean? It's going to be a hard day. But I do it because I have found pleasure in helping other people relieve pain. because of my own pain when I went through some of my career crisis stuff. That's the point that I'm making. It's that in just getting kids out there and doing stuff,

they're going to begin to find pleasure in this thing called work, which has been created as a four-letter word, like work has to suck, that I only work for money. I'm just curious to your thoughts on that, because you're talking a lot about work and career success, but this idea of a connection between some of our pain and pleasure. Well, I'll say a statement that we say a lot in our community, which is your work works on you more than you work on it.

And so I believe that we were meant to work. Yes. We were built to work. Yes. And I had a very, a rock bottom experience, which was in a rock top situation. So I'll tell this to give context. So last year we exited three of our companies for a sizable amount. And during that year, I wasn't really allowed to work because I couldn't show that I was doing anything in the business.

We also couldn't make any big changes because you don't want to change stuff during a transaction, et cetera. And so during that year, I basically had to take off because I also didn't, I'm a big believer not starting new things until like you have finished the thing that you are working on. And so I pretty much had to sit idle. And it was one of the more depressed years of my life because I had to just sit on my hands and do nothing. And I realized the blessing that it is to, it is so much worse, it is worse to not be able to work than to be forced to work.

Yes. If I had to pick, being unable to work is worse than being forced to work. And so I think if we extrapolate that out, we learn to derive pleasure from work in a job well done. And I think that the gain or pleasure that you get is proportional to the pain that you experienced to achieve the outcome or accomplishment. If something comes easy, it leaves less to you. And so if we want to have these meaningful experiences as humans, then we must bear the price of that because there's no way we can cheat it. What we put in is what we will get out. What we reap is what we sow.

And so if we want to have the big reap, we have to sow big. And so I think that's what people want us. They want the big reaping without the big sewing. It's absolutely right. And you cheat yourself because you don't get the emotional experience of the fulfilled victory without the grit, the suffering that leads to it. Yeah. I want to do just a brief breakdown.

We're going to cover several things. But I do want to walk you through the methodology that we teach on the show so people can see it uniquely to your story. And that is talent. What would you say? are your top two or three talents? I'm good at persuading. Okay. Persuasion? I like that. I think that's one.

Okay. Probably the biggest one. I hate to use this term, but I'm pretty good at resource allocation. And so what I mean by that is if we have limited resources and time and money and bandwidth our attention and we have unlimited options that we have that the world presents us, we have to learn to say no to 99.99% of things truly, because options are unlimited, resources are. And so the ability to allocate resources,

I think for me, has allowed me to move through things quickly. Wow. So I want to take a shot at rewording that, not because it needed to be rewarded, but to go a little deeper. Am I hearing you say that you have got a natural ability to dive into the complex and simplify and then also then execute on it?

So there's a little bit of both there. You're able to analyze and then be, decisive. Is that what I heard you say? Yes. So you got the ability to analyze, okay, I've got limited resources and I can quickly take complex and simplify and go, we got to go here. I think I've been able to move quickly through life because I've been able to allocate my energy into the highest leverage activities, the things that I get the most return on for my time. Yeah, okay, that's good. Okay, so let's go into passion, work that you love. If there's two or three roles and or tasks, what would you say that I love this, Ken?

If I'm doing this, I get excited thinking about it and I get lost in the middle of it. What would you say those passions are? I love learning, which I do through teaching. So I, this is a realization I had about myself. I used to say that I love teaching and I thought more about it. And it's actually I don't love teaching. I love learning and I use teaching as a vehicle for learning. Right.

You love learning in order to dispense. Right. Yeah. And if I want to learn more about sales, I say, I'm going to go write a book on sales because I know I'm going to learn a whole heck of a lot more. So I say, like, if I'm doing that, I'm in a good space. Okay. That is transparently the majority of what I do in general and talking to people. You know, that's what I enjoy doing. So whether it's talking to the team, whether it's talking to our portfolio CEOs, whether it's talking to a camera to talk to an audience.

Like that is what promotion, if you want to put that as a different bucket. Yeah. If you had teaching and promotion, those are probably the two things. if I have a hat inside the business, it would be CMO. Yeah. It wouldn't be CEO. I actually think my wife is, she is the CEO. She's the chief executive officer.

And I have a function. That is what I do. She's much better. I think it makes sense with what you just said as CMO because you really love the communicative work. Connecting with people, telling stories, that teaching, instructing, and guiding. I mean, as I've watched some of the videos, I can, I just, it was fun for me because I've told people many times. If I wasn't doing this, I'd be coaching basketball somewhere because I just, love coaching.

And really what that is, it's about connecting with people and helping them get from here to here, if you're going to simplify it. And when you talk about the young neighbor and just, you know, here's a kid that wanders into your gym or however that happened and you decide, that's really the heart of a mentor and a coach, you know, that guide, if we want to choose one word. I love that. All right. So last piece of it.

So talents, what we do best. Passion is what we love to do. The last piece of a person's purpose statement is mission. what results matter to you. So what fires you up when you think about everything you're doing? What results really give you the juice? This is so timely that you're asking these questions. So I recently, after 10 years, have just redefined this for myself.

And it was something that I'm almost ashamed to say what it was before. Why? Why? I defined my self-worth through my net worth for the vast majority of my career, despite knowing that it is not the best way to do it. I know that that was still true for me. I could say whatever I wanted. I know that that was still true.

And so recently, I'm a big believer that the measuring stick that we choose to use is the filter that we decide what paths to take throughout our life. And we measure them against this lens of will it help me accomplish this measuring stick, right? And whether it's to glorify God, whether it's to be a good parent, whatever the thing is. And for me was, will this build my net worth faster than something else? Right. That's been, and it has worked for that goal. That being said, when I look at my 85-year-old self back into today, I don't think that that man would care if he had 50% more net worth. And so I feel like my decision calculus has recently begun to change.

And so for me, I have to find this and I'll try and break it down as will this build goodwill. So, love that. Now everything that I do is will this build goodwill? and the decision calculus for that is it can only build no neutral moves. So if something's just neutral, like it doesn't detract from it, but it doesn't build it, then I don't do it. And so I think about brand, brand equity, goodwill, as unmonetized value. And with my prior decision-making thesis, I would have to die in my deathbed with no goodwill because I would have monetized every aspect of goodwill

that I had in the marketplace to maximize my net worth. Like if we just take it to the natural extreme of me on my deathbed, having fulfilled my measuring stick, right, that I had prior to this. How do you define goodwill? I want to give you, I want you to go deeper on that.

I think people want to know. They're like, come on, Alex, what is goodwill? What's the measurement? It's giving in access of what you take. And so if I give to somebody and I ask for nothing back, I have goodwill.

I've deposited an, an IOU into the world. And I would like to die with a surplus of IOUs. So does that mean as an investor you're going, that's the measuring stick? It's not how much I'm going to exit for. It's can I come beside a business that needs my help or someone like me and I know I can make their dream bigger? Is that what you mean when you say give more than you?

Is that what you're talking about? I would love to die with the tombstone said, here lies the man who gave the most. Oh, so it's literally give you money away. Money is part of it, but I think we can get a lot more than, because like if I think of how can I provide the most value, if I write like the offers book that I wrote last year and it's like a number one, whatever, that I've gotten more messages and from the hundreds of thousands of people who bought and read and used the book, then I could possibly influence with the amount of tiny amount of money in comparison to the amount of good that way. And so I think what are the highest leverage ways for me to provide goodwill to the marketplace? And a lot of that right now is either code or media. Right. So I can take, you know, we have this time that we get to spend together.

But then millions of people can hopefully benefit from the conversation, shift a perspective, gain a skill, et cetera. Or hopefully maybe lead their child down a path that might not be the one. Hopefully, hopefully we can help some more Jacobs. And let me just say, just to applaud you, I mean, we may never know the impact that Jacob will have. I mean it gets stoked I know I got I got goosebumps right now going that's what it's about we don't know yet what story Jacob's telling and you just believe in this kid and being an advocate to his parents me this is real stuff let me I want it because I do hope a lot of people watch this and get behind the layers with you what was driving the old mission I asked you what results matter to you and you said I've recently just changed my narrative what was driving it to be all net worth where does that come from? Your background, voices in your life? What was driving that narrative before, that my net worth is the narrative?

I think it was an internal shift from fear to faith. Wow. Not in the, not in the traditional religious sense, but more so just it was fear-driven, you know, fear, anger, whatever, you know, but I think fear is usually at the core of it. Fear of what? Fear of not being good enough.

Where's that come from? Look at you, dude. You're busting out of your shirt, You're clearly a guy who goes hard after physical discipline. What's driving that? So I had a head, I still do have. A Middle Eastern father, I was the only child, only son, no real mom, no siblings. So if you can imagine a very strong parent father with all of their world dreams put onto one person, right?

Wow. There was no, and I'm very grateful for the upbringing that I had, but the results of that was never being good enough at anything. And so if I got a 99, it was what did you miss? If I was varsity, it's like, did you start more minutes? Like whatever the thing was, there was always a goalpost that moved. And it took me a very long time to realize that the goalpost would always move. Yes. And so I still think I learned the innate traits of I wanted to become bulletproof.

So that meant marrying the hottest girl. That meant being richer than everyone. That might being in better shape than everyone. So that, and it wasn't at least for how I am built. it was not to allow it over people. It was so that people would leave me alone. Yeah. But that no one could criticize me.

Wow. Because it hurt. And so a lot of my life was building a fortress of being beyond rebuke. That no one could hold something to me because I could, by every objective measure, beat them. And I'm not trying to say that from a prideful place. It was from a place of trying to protect me. Yeah, sure. And so in real life, you know, in thinking through what are the, and you know, we evolved through

these things over time. Sure. You know, in the beginning it was make as much money as my dad. Then it was make more money than my dad. Then it was make more money than my dad's ever made his whole life. Again, it was how can I get this even more bulletproof? Because when I made, you know, I think it was $17 million in take home income when I was 28. I told my dad and he said, well, we'll see how long it lasts.

And so it was one of those things where I just wanted to, I just wanted to win. I just wanted to win. And so what I realized was that I was winning a game that was set by someone else's rules. Yes. I was playing his game, not mine. And so then when I was tasked, or at least I tasked myself with the idea of like, well, if I were to define a game, what were the rules, what rules would I make? It was a very different game. And so I think over the last probably three-ish years, 36 months, which is not that long, I've been consistently kind of redefining this.

And I would say recently I've had a more major shift in terms of my distillation of language or concision of language of it was just a shift from fear to faith that what I am doing, even if I do not monetize every aspect of the goodwill that we put out in the world, comma, that's okay because the goal has changed. Yeah, that's beautiful. I mean, you nailed it. I mean, you went from protecting yourself. Those are the words you used to now it's about.

distribution. So from protection to distribution. And what a great shift that is in your heart. Wow, that's beautiful. Amazing stuff.