The Game with Alex Hormozi - One SKILL That Is HARD To Learn, BUT Will Pay Off FOREVER | Ep 296

Episode Date: May 4, 2021

Replicate success before you iterate. Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) talks about the ONE skill that is incredibly hard to learn, how you can train yourself to develop the skill, and the importance of learning it. (Hint: you already have it!)Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Timestamps:(1:05) - Understanding the value and skills for talent switch industries(5:14) - Conviction in sales: deep roots, certainty for leads(6:58) - Learn from failures or make every mistake yourself(8:32) - Alex shares best way to master skills: repetition is keyFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

The reason you're not making money is because you're not that good. And that's okay. 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 than the many failures and lessons we have learned along the way. I hope you enjoy and subscribe. What's going on, everyone? It is Alex from here. If right now you're in a vehicle or a business and it's not growing the way you want it to grow, or you're looking at other people who are doing the same thing as you and you want to do better

or better than them or as good as them, then I would like to share kind of the nuggets from a conversation I had yesterday with an agency owner who was kind of struggling with the same thing. So they, they were an agency owner. They're in the real estate space. And he'd been doing this for a year and a half, ish. And he's like, at what point do I throw in the talent switch industries? Right. And this was an awesome conversation because the honest truth is you're not that good. That's why you're not making money. Like, just like, let that sit for a quick second. Like the reason you're not making money is because you're not that good. And that's okay. Because it wouldn't be reasonable for you to be good because you just start it. Right. And started

is in the business. Like you're not 30 years in the business. You've been there for a year. Right. And so, like, is it reasonable to believe that you're going to have a top 1% income only having been in a game where other people have been doing it for 20 years who are in the top 1%? Probably not. Right. And so the question is then how do you how do you skip through that? So the first is asking, do I think that the vehicle that I am in is viable. And so the easiest way to do that is look around and see if there are other people in the industry that are doing what you're doing. And if they are succeeding in, it means that it is possible. And therefore, it is possible for you. So the next piece is understanding the depth of the value and the skills that are required to be successful. And so let me

give you a quick example of this. I'll give you a theoretical example and then I'll drive it home with the real estate thing. So for those of us in the U.S., we have one word for snow. It's snow, right? Eskimos, this is from what I heard. Any of you guys are Eskimos, you can let me know if this is true or false. But from what I understand, they have seven different words for snow. All right, it's because of the different types of snow. And you could reason that Eskimos understand snow better than we do because it's literally all they have. And so the nuance that they have for what snow is is more delineated, right? And so when I was talking to this rural state agency, I was like, so why are your clients not staying on?

The obvious answer is they're not making money. But he's like, but he's like some clients we kill it with, some clients we don't kill it for. He's like, I got one guy who's doing $250,000 a month just using the leads that we send him. And I was like, right. That's because of him and not you. Think about it. I was like, all right, so what is that person doing that's different than the rest of your clients? Because from what I understand, I mean, he's just, it's just calling him up.

And I was like, that would be the same thing as looking at what I do all day and just saying, yeah, I mean, Alex just makes money, just hops on meetings. There's a little bit more to it than that, right? It's the depth of the understanding. It's looking at the sky and saying, oh, it's white, it's snowing, right? When in reality, an expert says, oh, there's seven different types of snow, and this is subtype A, right? If you were to ask me, how do I make, you know, like, there's only free offers and non-free offers. I'd be like, no, there's 19 types of ways to monetize the word free. Like, oh, Alex might know more about that, right?

It's because I have more volume, the guys who are the Eskimos see snow every day, and so they've been doing it their whole lives, and of course they have more delineation for what types of snow there are. And so the solution for this particular owner was, this is what I would recommend to him. He may or may not do this. But it will be the thing that I'll make him successful. I was like, fly out to the guys doing $20,000 a month off of your leads and soak up everything. How many times does he call? In what intervals?

What's the first thing he says on the phone? What's the intonation? How does he follow up right after the phone call? Where does he meet them? How soon does he meet them? is the meeting in person? Is it a Zoom call or is it, is it a phone call? Is he setting up for someone else?

When they do show up, what's the contract look like? What does that conversation look like? How does he walk around the room when he positions himself and presents the contract? When he orders the houses for the showing, how does he order them? Does he order the most expensive one first, then something else second, and then the one he wants to sell them? Like, what's the process looking? And then after the person says, yes, how does he close the deal out and make sure that he's getting paid? He doesn't know any of that stuff.

And I was like, right, and that's why you're not making money. I was like, if you were the top absolutely, if you knew more about how to make real estate agents money, we wouldn't be having this conversation because you'd be making them money. Right? And so everyone's unwilling to do the thing, which is to plant the roots. Right, you've got to plant the roots deep. And the only way to have that level of certainty, because if someone says to him, these leads are crap, right? For example, he could look back at them and say, no, they're not.

You're doing it wrong. because he has the certainty and the conviction that he has done it. And he knows that. And that there's only two ways to have that level of conviction. You can either be a sociopath and lie or you can have done it. There is no other trick, right? Like, I can speak with confidence and saying that I know that gym launch is better at serving gyms because we have more seven-figure gyms than most people have in their entire freaking franchises.

Right. I have 1,500 success stories. I know our stuff works, right? And so I can have that conviction. Like, there's just, there's no question about it. 33 turnarounds for two years, right? Two years. I spent in motel rooms. Everyone forgets about that stuff. Like, how do we learn how to sell supplements so well? Because I would stand in front of a room of complete strangers. And day after day after day, I would close these rooms

full of people to buy supplements. Right? In the first six months I did it, I didn't close anyone because I couldn't figure out how to sell them. And then I stumbled into one success. And then another success, another success. And then it became a system. And it became so repeatable I could do it in my sleep right but people were like well what's the hack right now you can learn from somebody who's already learned that that's how you fast track success I was on the same call and there was um a lady on there who who said um I might not have even been her but it was the point is if you can't learn from other people's failures then it means that you are literally going to have to make every single mistake yourself which is possibly the

stupidest thing you can do real quick guys you guys already know that I don't run any ads on this and I don't sell anything. And so the only ask that I can ever have of you guys is that you help me spread the words so we can out more entrepreneurs, make more money, feed their families, make better products and have better experiences for their employees and customers. And the only way we do that is if you can rate and review and share this podcast. So the single thing that I ask you do is you can just leave a review. It'll take you 10 seconds or one type of the thumb. It would mean the absolute world to me. And more importantly, it may change the world with someone else. Like, you obviously should learn from your own mistakes. But

wise people learn from other people's mistakes and even better they learn from other people's successes right I someone yesterday who was on that same call say like well I don't know if like what you're saying is is right for xyz and I'm like who do you think has more perspective about snow this is your first winter I've been living in Alaska for the last 20 years like I was like if you absolutely want to go make the mistake you can absolutely go make it I was like but it's stupid as shit right think about it and so To wrap this up in terms of like, if you were not seeing the success that you believe that you are, quote, owed, which you're not owed anything, right? Then you have to, you are, you earn the success.

And you get it through doing. And it, like, I was talking to another guy yesterday who's an entrepreneur. They're doing a few million bucks a month, right? And it was funny because hearing his story is the same story. It's the same story that every successful entrepreneur has. The same story. So listen to it. And if it's not your story, then it's why you're not where you want to be.

Every single successful entrepreneur has a rocky cutscene. They have a two-year, four-year, six-year period of time where no one talks about it. And they did the same thing over and over and over and over again. And then finally, they have mastery. And then at that point, they transfer that skill to a new opportunity, a new vehicle, and then they blow up overnight. That's how it happens. The guy that I was speaking with yesterday has an amazing selling system. He's very good at building sales teams that are both outbound and inbound.

Great guy. How did he learn how to do it? He saw all these leads that were happening online, all these opt-ins that no one was calling for digital products. And he's like, and he was a good salesperson at that point. He said, I'll bet you I can figure out a way to get these people to buy. And what did he do? He started picking up the phone. And every day, he would do hundreds of dials.

hundreds of dials to these lists that were just plowing through that no one was talking to. And then he finally figured out how to get him to say yes to the first phone call. And then he figured out how to set them for the second call. And then he figured out how to make the offer on the next call and close him. But it took, A, all the time of learning how to sell, which took him years. And then he applied it to a new vehicle and then did more reps with his initial skill. And then he learned a system. And then once he applied that system, he was able to show other people, et cetera.

Right? he blew up for me I did 4,000 sales consultations four thousand thousand thousand all right sales consults in person it's a lot and so so it's like when we talk about sales stuff the nuances are evident the difference between somebody who just talks about sales that you've seen in a video right and somebody that you can that someone who's providing excessive value is because of the new that you only learn through repetition, right, from actually putting time under the bar, which is the word that I use from the fitness space.

Like, you have to put your time under the bar. There is no shortcut. I was on a podcast where they were asking me, they're like, it seems like you've, you know, you've had this great success really quickly. Quick is relative, right? But he was like, and if the people who are listening want to shortcut that success, what do they do? And I was like, you're not. That's the answer.

You're not going to. Because the skill is the base of the pyramids, the, the fact. foundation, right? If your foundation's this small because you only spent six months doing your rocky cutscene, then the peak of that pyramid is small. But you give me a base that's like this and it's hundreds of feet deep, you can build a skyscraper taller than anything you've ever seen. But the foundation is the piece that no one can take from you. No one can take my experiences from it, right? And the skills that were shaped from that. And so right now, if you're not seeing what you want to see, it's because you haven't put the time in. You

have put the time into the bar. You haven't gotten the reps in. You haven't done the volume. right and so if you see someone that is doing something better than you then go and observe and then execute right iterate sorry replicate before you iterate go do it and then until you can do it as well as them don't change anything once you can do it as well as them or better than them then you've earned the right to iterate on someone else's system that is my advice so this is a passionate one for you it was just because it stemmed from so many conversations have culminated this. If you want to figure out how to a chiropractor is doing well, go to chiropractors are doing well and offer to work for free.

All right. Now, you're not going to work for free for me. I get a DM. I get two DMs a day like, hey, man, I'll work for free if I can just spend time with you. No, you have no value to provide to me. Don't ask, right? But there are other people who are probably closer. You know what I mean? like go message Bill Gates and say hey Bill you know I'll work really hard and I'll I'll stand next to you he's not going to accept that like no person who's like really really making money is ever like because you're just going to literally take from them you have no value to provide right instead have value can provide which might be like working the front desk it might be cleaning the facility it might be doing anything so

that you can be around a business owner and then you can learn skills that you can then apply all right like when I when we did the gym turnarounds I work the front desk for 33 different gyms. It's a lot of gyms, right? And so I got a feeling for how the floor is laid out, how the lobbies need to be laid out, how you can maximize your sales, how you can have more guys selling in the same space.

All those things happen because I time under the bar. So I'm spending 20 years in Alaska looking at snowfall after snowfall after snowfall and saying, ah, that's the detail. Oh, when you pick up the phone, say it like this, right, because I tried it that, it didn't work, right? And if you have to go ram your head on the wall and not learn from other people's mistakes,

that's dumb. So, yes, moral of the story is put the time in. You will achieve your success faster by taking the year or two of rocky cutscene and then blowing up. Look at how everyone else's success is. They didn't blow up. Like, they didn't just blow up, right? There's the rocky cutscene period. And if you haven't had that period, you probably won't blow up.

So just start putting the time in now to get your rocky cutscene done, to have the skill that you can then apply. to the new opportunity that arises. The sales guy's opportunity was he figured out outbound calls where there's a huge gold mine. For me, I figured out there, apparently there's a lot of gyms who wanted to learn how to get customers, right, profitably. I didn't know. I figured everyone was opening their gyms in full capacity.

I didn't know, right? And then it turns out a lot of people wanted to have that, right? Billy Jean, who I talk about all the time, he did cold calling for three years or two years before he ever started marketing, right? That was the rocky cutscene period. It's where he sharpened his sword. That's where he learned how to sell, right?

And so all of these things, right, look at your path, look at the rocky cutscene that you have or haven't done, and just get it done. And then after that, you'll build the base of the pyramid so you can have the peak that you want, rather than consistently building off of a peak, a foundation that's this big and never being able to pass five or $10,000 a month. Right. Because you haven't earned it, right? And the marketplace knows that. They can delineate between who really has trench knowledge and who is pretending. And that's pretty much it. So that's all I got for you.

Happy Wednesday. Keep being awesome. Catch you too.