The Game with Alex Hormozi - Past Mistakes that Almost Ruined My Reputation | Ep 396

Episode Date: June 9, 2022

Rewrite yourself, for yourself. Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) talks about a pivotal experience when he was fresh from high school, a really good piece of advice he got from someone close to him, and how he was able to turn around his perspective on self-improvement. 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:(1:24) - Fresh from high school, Alex tried to change.(2:28) - Dad's ultimatum and advice on reputation.(3:51) - Alex proved change is possible, regardless of time.(6:14) - Mindset shift: "What version of me do I want?"Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

Why are you trying to change people's perception of you when you can just change who you are and let their perceptions catch up? 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. This video I'm going to break down one of the stories that impacted my life the most and hopefully how you can learn from it. So I wasn't that great of a person when I graduated high school.

I think I was really self-centered. it was always about me and what everyone could do for me. And everything I wanted was just like respect and status. And maybe that hasn't changed. I've just gotten better at it. I don't know. Or my understanding of people's improved. But I think that some of the things that I did were really bad.

And I want to share with you a conversation that changed my life. And so if you don't know I am, my name is Alex Mosey. Ownacquisition.com. It's portfolio of companies of $85 million a year. And so this particular story was after my first semester of college freshman year. And so I went to an all-guise school in high school, and I went to Vanderbilt for my undergrad. And I thought, and I had acquired a pretty bad reputation in my opinion in high school by being kind of promiscuous, for lack of a term.

I was known as a womanizer. And I just didn't generally have a very good reputation, or at least one that I wasn't proud of. And so when I went to college, I was like, okay, it's my chance to start fresh. And it's a much bigger school. So, you know, my transgressions won't be as known because it's a way more people. and I went ahead and the first, you know, three months of my college career, I did everything that I was doing in high school on steroids. I did more of everything. I drank more. I went out more. I just did I did more of everything. And I ended up having a one, I think a one nine GPA going inside. I basically had these report cards from my teachers that were like halfway through the first semester that were sent home that were like, your son is failing basically. every class. And so my dad called me up and was like, if you're going to do this, like,

like, you can do this here for free and not, and not do this at college, right? And so, anyways, I went home and I was like, dad, like, what do I do to fix my reputation? Like, how do I get these people to stop talking all the smack? Like, there was this, there was a thing back in the day called Juicy Campus, which is like a gossip form. And I ended up getting shut down because there was so much hate on it. But there was like this massive, massive thread about me and how I was just like a total womanizer and all the stuff. And I felt horrible. You know what I mean? You can imagine like the younger version of yourself that's really sensitive to like what everyone says about you. And so I just went to about my dad and I was like, how do I change what they're saying? I was like, how do I get them to say

good things? And it sounds retarded to say this now because like, that's why I'm sharing this with you, because this might be better for a younger audience. I don't know. But what he said to me changed my life. and he looked at me in the eyes and he was like, why are you trying to change people's perception of you when you can just change who you are and let their perceptions catch up? He said, the only way you're going to change your reputation is by being different.

He's like, you need to stop being this person that does all these things and your reputation will catch up. And even if it doesn't, you'll always know. And honestly, it kind of like, it barely scratched the surface because my ego was so high and I was like, no, I just have to think of a better way

to like market myself. But I ended up knowing that he was, very serious about the threat of pulling me out of school if I didn't get my grades up. And so what I ended up doing for the next half of the semester of my first semester of freshman year is I didn't go out at all. I didn't drink anymore. I really didn't like hang out with girls at all. And all I did was study. And I was able to pull my like one, it might have been one two. It was very low. I think it wasn't one two actually up to a three point two for the semester, which basically meant I got an A on everything from that point for the rest of the semester. and I had to weigh down the zeros and fails that I had earlier.

And so when I went back home, he was like, well, now you know you can do it. And so we should always expect that that is what you're going to get from here and out. And I was like, and what he meant was the straight A is not the three-toe. And it also kind of proved it to myself, too. I was like, I guess I can do this. And you know what happened is after I started switching that way, people still thought of me as a whore. And I still had to deal with that. And I felt really bad about it.

But I continued to go down this path of like, I didn't talk to any girls. And, you know, after another basically semester, I ended up meeting a girl that I liked and I ended up dating that person. And so it took like two years to really reverse the reputation that I had acquired in the first three months. And I think during that period of time, I grew an appreciation for how easy it is, especially in first impressions to set the wrong one and how hard it is to overcome a negative impression. And my reputation overall, the realization I had was there's too many eyeballs. There's too many people that, you're interacting with in the world to try and curate your reputation.

Hey guys, love that you're listening to the podcast. If you ever want to have the video version of this, which usually has more effects, more visuals, more graphs, you know, drawn out stuff. Sometimes it can help hit the brain centers in different ways. You can check on my YouTube channel. It's absolutely free. Go check that out if that's what you are into. And if not, keep enjoying the show.

The only way to change your reputation is to change who you are. and reputation is fundamentally just what people say about you to your face and behind your back. Now, I'm not saying that you need to care about what everyone else thinks. That's not really the point of this. It's much more, you know, if one person says you're an asshole, whatever. If every person you know says you're an asshole, like you might be an asshole. And so if you have one of those situations where you feel like the proof or the evidence is overwhelming and you might even believe it, then it's probably you. And I think that for me, getting out of the whole like I can control all this and try and curate what people think about me and transitioning to be like, at the end of the day,

I'm the only person who knows who I am and I don't like who I am and just saying like, well, how can I get to a part where I would like me? And that would be good enough, even if everyone else hated me. How can I like me? And when I started operating from that place, it really changed my life because then I started thinking like, well, what version of me do I want to be and what does that guy do? Well, that guy studies really hard. And that guy works out really hard. And that guy's a really good friend. He's very loyal. He's always respectful. Doesn't have an ego. And it took me a long time and I still work on this stuff. You know what I mean? I'm saying I'm done by any any search of imagination. I still have insecurity. He's plenty of them. But I think that if you can simply shift the perspective of like,

I'm going to try and appear this way on social media when I'm on camera to like, I want to be this way. and if it just so happens to get captured, great, and if it doesn't, great. And there's this quote by Edwik Tetus that I'm probably going to butcher, but he says, if you need someone else to tell you something about yourself, you are out of integrity because you can always be your own witness. And I think that that's a great point to wrap this little video lesson up with because that piece strikes to the core of everything, is we are our own witnesses.

And if we want to change our reputation, we need to change a reputation with ourselves first. And then eventually, it will reflect in the world. And this has just been very telling for me because, like, more and more people recognize me every day when I'm walking around. And I'm like, geez, like, I don't have any room

for having a bad day. Like, if I'm out to dinner and, like, I'm just, like, not concentrating. And I'm short with the waiter. And the waiter recognizes me. Then, you know, he's like, this guy's an asshole or whatever. And so it's just, I guess in some ways, it's like you can pretend like you're famous because you are.

to yourself. You're the most famous person that you have to yourself. And so I will leave you with that, Mosy Nation. If you knew the channel, welcome. Lots of love. Bye.