The Game with Alex Hormozi - Leveling Up- Why We Get Stuck | Ep 163

Episode Date: November 14, 2019

"You can be successful at anything you want, just not everything you want." Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) discusses the importance of acquiring and deepening skills, as well as developing character traits such as focus, patience, and consistency to consistently execute those skills. He also emphasizes the need to prioritize and say no to shiny objects in order to achieve success.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Timestamps:(0:22) Stack skills in deficiencies, find them, learn new skills.(4:54) - Consistency's not a skill, it's a character trait.(6:59) - Learn character traits to consistently execute acquired skills. Focus & patience.(8:35) - Beware of the woman in the red dress.(13:18) - Successful at anything, not everything.(14:55) - Effort to maintain muscle vs. make muscle increases dramatically.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

Hey, what's going, everyone? Happy Tuesday. I hope you guys are having a great second day of the week, for those of you who go by normal weekdays. I just came off of a 10-day bender of events that we had in person, which was awesome, very filling up the cup figuratively. And so I have a lot of like little, lots of repeat questions and things like that that got addressed. And so I may have a flurry of content that may be coming your way. And so one that I woke up today thinking about was about leveling up. And so one of the biggest, your most successful podcast I had recently was skill stacking, right? What, like, why you're not breaking through, why people get stuck at the same levels. And so what I wanted to do is actually break down kind of the next steps of that, right?

And so it came clear because one of the people who were out at our event, Layla described a pyramid, right? It's John Wooden's Pyramid of Success. And his entire pyramid is a series of traits that will create, success, right, that engenders are a successful person. And so I thought it was interesting to overlay that with kind of the common stuff that I talk about with skill stack. You have to apply more and more skills and you always have to frame your lack of growth in terms of the deficiency or deficit or lack of skills so that you can then be in control of fixing it. So if, for example, you cannot create consistent sales, it's not, man, there are no good salespeople. it's I lack the skill of finding, interviewing, training, and managing good salespeople, right?

And so now it is something that's under your control rather than you being a victim of your circumstance, which you cannot control, right? And so if you're consistently framing your problems that way, then you're able to identify these skills that you lack. Now, here's where it gets interested. When I was thinking through this a little bit more, because I had a lot of people ask questions about it, in the beginning, you have to definitely start. You have to find your deficiencies and learn them and learn these new skills so that you can get the first real money to come across the bridge, right?

And so you rapidly break through these transitions as soon as you acquire a new skill, right? If you know how to generate leads, huge explosion in business, right? If you learn how to sell, huge explosion in revenue and profit. You learn how to sell high ticket, another skill, huge explosion in bottom line, right? Now you start acquiring these skills and that's useful. But what happens next, and this is where people get stuck, is that the next thing, level is not necessarily skills. Sometimes it's skills in addition to character traits, attributes, right? And so I would say like for me right now, the two attributes that I needed to work on

were focus and patience, right? Probably the last three years, I have tons of scars of times that I wasn't focused and I try to do too many things because businesses die from indigestion, not starvation. I'm going to say it again. Businesses do not die. Businesses do not die from starvation. They don't die from not having enough. They die because the entrepreneur takes on too much. There's always opportunity. And the higher up you go, the more opportunity comes knocking and the sex year, the opportunity looks the higher up you go. All right? And so your ability to say no, which is focus, which is an attribute, you could say it's a skill, but I think it's much more character trait of who you are. Right. And so to the same degree,

if you could consider leadership a skill, leadership a lot of times is acquiring a number of of inspirational character traits that other people will look up to you for so that they're willing to follow you, right? You don't follow someone who's an asshole who doesn't care about you, who doesn't stick with their commitments, who just doesn't exemplify things or morals or traits that you want to, you know, that you want aspire towards. And so if you're trying to lead people, then you have to embody those character traits. And so I wanted to differentiate that from skills because you definitely need to level up in skills, but your character traits have to follow in suit. And I can say this.

because if we're at these, you know, we're at our summits and whatnot, I was joking with some of the gyms there. I was like, some of you are curious and are like, man, I can't get through. No one wants, like, my employees don't listen to me. My employees suck. They're stupid. Bola, blah, blah, blah, right? Terrible belief set, by the way. But I was saying, some of you meet each other and we're like, well, dude, have you met you? Like, duh, right? It's like obvious. And what's even funnier is that that dude might be you. Right. And so consistently thinking about that in terms of, like, like, okay, sure, here are the tactical skills I need to acquire. I need to know how to write copy.

You need to have creative. I need to have it creative funnel. I need how to get people to opt in. I need to know how to nurture leads. I need to know how to work that in total number of outreach attempts. I need to learn. Now, this is one word would be more of a character trait. I need to learn the focus and the consistent effort, right?

And so sometimes in the beginning, it's the skills, right? And then later it becomes the traits that you have to do to consistently execute those skills. Consistency is not a skill. it's a character trait, right? And a lot of people don't have that character trait associated with actions and the skills that you do in business, right?

So if you're consistent, by its very nature, you're probably also focused, right? And if you're consistent and you're focused, patience typically comes. And if you do those things with patience, then the outcomes typically happen on their own without thinking about it. Now, here's where I think it also gets interesting,

is that if you're looking at the skills, like in the beginning, you have to acquire a lot of different skills, right? Because it's like, okay, I learned how to write hobby, but I still don't have leads, right? Because there's more skills that need to get stacked together to create the overarching skill, which is generating liens, right? That is a skill set in of itself, right?

Getting people to say yes is a skill set of sales, but that would mean knowing how to build rapport, knowing how to manage your energy, knowing how to manage your head state, right? Knowing how to build scarcity, knowing how to provide value, know how to communicate. All of those things are things that would encompass

within the, like breaking your beliefs on pricing, breaking beliefs around money. All of that stuff is stuff that's going to encompass somebody who's a closer. Now, then the things that's, that person has to be consistent. Then they're even higher closer. Somebody who's not hot and cold, hot and cold, hot and cold, but someone can consistently produce at a high level. That's character trait, right? Not a skill. So in the beginning, you're learning lots of new skills, right? You're trying to build the steps of the bridge, the bricks of the bridge across the barriers so that you

start getting the flow of money that start going your way. Right? You might need to learn 30, 50 skills to actually make the first dollar go all the way across the bridge. And then the next one follows after that. Now, where it gets interesting is that now that you've learned lots of skills, then typically, once you do that, as soon as you start getting the flow, then it's how do I get better at those skills, right? So in the beginning, you're patching holes, and then after that, you're deepening the skills, right? You're getting better at those skills. So instead of thinking more, it's thinking, sorry, instead of thinking more in terms of variety, it's more in terms of depth, which is kind of like the next level, right?

And so first it's the variety, then you have the depth, and then I would say the next piece, right? The next thing is the character traits that must be associated that you learn as you go, right? Because these character traits are things that have to happen in order for these skills to be consistently executed, right? And then for you to have the focus and the patience to consistently continue to dive deeper in these skills that you now have initially acquired, right? It's not like you check the box and say, I know how to write headlines. Well, gee whiz, you can get better at writing headlines. You can get better at writing copy. And so there's a minimum proficiency that you need to do just to be able to fill the hole, right?

But then going from filling the hole to massively digging deep to the center of the earth's core where all of the gold is or whatever it is, right? I mean, the analogy is okay. But you get my point, right? Is that that is where you get the amplification, right? And so it's first you develop the skills, right, at a proficient level. then you dive deep on those skills so that you get better and better at them. And typically, that comes through consistent execution and repetition, which means that it takes the character traits of focus and determination and drive, right, and being able to be consistent

and not go away and start looking at shiny objects, looking at shiny objects, looking at a new opportunity, looking at this other side hustle you want to do, whatever it is, right? Because there's always new things. And what's crazy about this is that the higher up you go, the more seductive the woman in the red dress looks like. And I'm saying that from Matrix is my all-time favorite movie. The woman in the red dress, I'm using this as a parable or whatever, visual for opportunity. And when you're starting out, the woman in the red dress always looks attractive. And the thing is, is that the higher up you go, the more of a tend she becomes.

Now, if you're a girl, then I don't know, a guy in a red suit, whatever. I don't know, maybe that looks more like a Pimson, forget about that. But whatever, you know, George Clooney or whoever your person is, whatever, you have my point. Is it, like, I thought that I was having discipline in saying no to a certain level opportunity when I was starting my gyms, right? And I had to develop that discipline. Hey, guys, real quick, if you're new to the podcast, I have a book on Amazon. It's called $100 million offers at over 8,000 five-star reviews and it has almost a perfect sport. You can get it for 99 cents on Kindle.

The reason I bring it up is that I put over 1,000 hours into writing that book. and it's my biggest gift to our community. So it's my very shameless way of trying to get you to like me more and ultimately make more dollars so that later on in your business career, I can potentially partner with you. So that's my give. Go check it out, Amazon, and back to the show. And then we started making a few million dollars a year.

And I was like, okay, I need to develop a new level discipline because there's more things that I want to do that I have to not be able to do, right? One of the biggest successful things I did was not start the supplement company until a year and a half after, almost two years after Jim Launch started. I had planned starting the supplement company at the same time as I started gym launch original three and a half, four years ago. Like they were at the same time I wanted to do both. And Layla, the angel that she is was like, no, that's stupid.

Don't do that. And so she, thankfully, was like, you have to stay focused. And so because of that, we were able to have the explosive growth that we did. and then at the right time, we were able to bolt that on. Now, big, big, big picture, I don't know if I would have done it again. I still probably would have stayed even more focused on gym launch if I could do it all over again. Now, we have it, you know, we write a check for $600,000 every single month to our gym lords in terms of commission checks. So that's real money that I get to send back to the community, and that's very fulfilling for me.

And it solved a problem that I always had, I don't have my gym. So, like, there are reasons that I did it. And so, like, history will tell whether it was the right call or not. I can never live the life of what it would have been if I hadn't done it. But I think if I were going back in time knowing what I're known out, I might not have done it. But you never know. So I'm telling you, like, I've made these mistakes. You know what I mean?

And the thing is, is that that level of opportunity looked even more seducting or seducing or whatever the word is when we had two years more of a distribution base. compared to when we had at the beginning. And so I wasn't able to say no to her that opportunity later on as I wasn't beginning. And that was a deficiency in my skill set at the time, my character trait of staying focused, right? And so, like I'm saying all this,

if you're looking at it in terms of in verticals, the first step is filling the holes and that's stacking all the skills together so you can get the first dollar to go over. And that's just becoming proficient. Not amazing. Just proficient. You don't have to be an expert at running traffic.

You just need to be able to actually know how to run an ad. And the thing is that most proficient skills only take, like, not a lot of time. Like, you can Google how to do X. And if you consume for, like, two hours of information, you'll probably be proficient. Most people just don't take those two hours to do it because it's uncomfortable and you're not good at. So you consume the information and then you try, right? And then you fail because you're not good at it. You learn.

And then just use those first initial tries. You learn more in your first 20 sales than you do in the first 20 hours. of learning about sales stuff, right? First time you actually step in the ring, you learn more about fighting than you do it during all the time that you're practicing, right? Because it's real, right? So you're developing, you're stacking your skills

and you're becoming proficient at it. Next step, you have to do repetition and being willing to get punched in the face over and over and over again, right, so that you can deepen those skills. And that's what amplifies the skills that you have so that you can get to another level. Then, as you get to another level,

then your character traits need to be strong so you can stay the course. The biggest thing in the book by Angela Duckworth called Grit, which is really interesting, is that the people who are most successful in life just stick with it. Grit is stick to itness is what it is. So it's how likely are you to abandon a certain path to pursue another thing, right? And the people in the beginning have very low stick with itness.

Entrepreneurs, shiny object, shiny object, shiny object. They're jumping from opportunity to opportunity, and they never give any of the opportunities a chance to be successful. So one of the interesting things that maybe you can think about in terms of a quote that you can take with you is you can be successful at anything you want, just not everything you want. That was a huge lesson for me. All right,

I had a friend from high school who reached out who had a contracting business and a roofing business and they were flipping houses. So it's three separate businesses. And I was like, dude, like, what do you want help with? He was like, I don't know. Like, what do you think I should do? And I was like, pick one. He's like, well, we're making money in all three of them.

And I was like, cool, pick one. Each one of those businesses can be a billion dollar business. You can be a billion dollar flipping homes company. You can be a billion dollar flipping homes company. You can be a billion dollar general contractor. There are examples of each of these things, right? But you just can't be a billion dollars in all of them. And so there's a fallacy that we tell ourselves as entrepreneurs, which is that if I do more

things, I will make more money when, in fact, I need to do fewer things to get to where I want to go. And the reason I can tell you that it's the truth is because you naturally think the other way. And that's what most people think, which is why most people aren't successful, right? It's they can't focus because there's too many things. It's just so easy to just add this one thing. You do this other thing. And all of a sudden, you're two spread thin. You're not focused on amplifying the things that you're doing to get better.

You're not deepening the skills. You're spreading yourself there. Right. And so once you acquire the skill set, once you become proficient, then you amplify the skills that you have by deepening them. And in order to deepen them, you have to have the character traits of sticking with it, being patient, being focused, learning to say no and doing things over and over again and accepting the fact that it may take years, it will take years, in order to

break through the next level of proficiency. Because when you were developing a skill, let me give you an example to tie this as an analogy for fitness. The amount of effort that it takes to maintain muscle versus the amount of effort it takes to make muscle as you become more advanced dramatically increases. And what's interesting is that there's this big area of no man's land between enough to maintain and enough to break through and create a new stimulus for growth. There's this huge area in the middle. And most people just work out above minimum effective dose, but below the threshold that

it takes to adapt. All right? And so when we focus or when I focus on trying to get swollen, trying to gain more muscle, I try and go all the way to the other end to break my body to the point that it has to adapt and get better. Right. And so with the same thing with skill sets is that there's a minimum effective dose. And then there's a whole bunch of area in between where people do stuff enough, but not enough to get better, but still, like, they could take the extra time allocated towards deepening a skill and going all in on it.

And really push that forward and really deepen it rather than just consistently maintaining where you're at. And you can know if you're maintaining where you're at because if your level of income has stayed the same for a period of years, that means your skill set has stayed the same. And if your skill set has stayed the same, it's usually because you lack the character traits in order to deepen those skills to amplify the revenue and to amplify your level. skill set so that you can make more. All right. So I hope this makes sense. This was like one of the many things that I'll probably talk about after the summit. So leveling up why we get stuck. And it's because the things that you need to improve on are different. In the beginning, it's skills. But then you have to change your lens. And then after that it becomes traits, right? It becomes character traits. And those are very different to level up, right? Because everyone just always assumes it's going to be

linear the same way. And that's why people get stuck is because the actual thing that you need. need to improve changes, right? Not just skills, but the actual nature of the change itself changes, which is pretty cool. And sometimes the skill itself is to not do other things. Sometimes the skill itself is maintaining the course. And that is the skill. That is the thing that you need to do to get to the next level

is to do less and it's remove constraints. So I hope that makes sense for you. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did like this and you're listening on the podcast, drop a comment, drop a like, if you think someone else will listen to it. tag them, tag your friends. Hope you have an amazing day.

And lots of love. As always, keep being great.