The Game with Alex Hormozi - Shedding Relationships In Your 20's (Pt.1) | Ep 472

Episode Date: December 15, 2022

Growth comes through elimination. Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) shares with us his more in-depth perspective on why it’s okay to have friendships that don’t last long, the kinds of relationships that we need to keep in order to succeed in life, and why you should never take to heart the words or labels that are said about you (even if they’re from loved ones). This is part 1 of the episode.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:(1:50) - Your love for someone = time you’re willing to give up for them(10:08) - Our identity is based on the labels we say about ourselves(12:24) - In every season of Alex’s life, he makes new friends and sheds old ones(15:11) - To make a great company, you need to have hard conversations(17:24) - Every time you switch career paths, you start at zero again. But your existing skills retain(19:20) - People will judge you on how you spend your timeFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

One of the big things with identity is the labels that we say about ourselves. I am X. I am impatient. I am angry. I am whatever. And people in your past have the identity that they know you as. And then they will speak and they will beat that label into you because you're not matching their pattern. Why have you changed? You are X. You are Y. And you're trying to not be that because you're doing something different than changing. You're growing. Welcome to the game where we talk about how to sell more stuff to more people in more ways and build business.

is worth owning. I'm trying to build a billion dollar thing with Acquisition.com. I always wish Bezos, Musk, and Buffett had documented their journey, so I'm doing it for the rest of us. Please share and enjoy. I have shed friends basically every season of my life. And so I think about my life in three to five year seasons. And so the seasons of my life have gone from, first, I was a high school womanizer, for the most part, like externally. And then I was also like really deeply angry for my kind of like teenage into 19-ish, like 15 and 19, that was like that three to five-year season. And then I had my come to Jesus where my dad was like, hey, you suck as human. You have a terrible reputation. Maybe you should stop being who you are, which I took to heart and I

cleaned up my act. I stopped drinking nearly as much as I was. I stopped, you know, being the womanizer that I was at the time. I started going to school and studying 12 hours a day. And then I became present in the fraternity and started moving up in status in that way. And that was my college season, right? That's the lesson that I learned in that season. And I had college friends. And then when I left college, and I had high school friends that when I left high school, I basically stopped being in contact with them.

And then when I left college, I pretty much stopped being in contact with anyone that I went to college with. Real talk. People were like, how did you do that? Here's the telltale sign for me about affinity, right? The amount you like or love someone is directly proportional to what you were willing to give up to maintain their relationship. And so it is the easiest and best definition that I know to explain love. And so, for example, if there's a piece of shit car, right, and you work on it all the time, you might say, that guy must really love it because of how much time he puts into that thing, right?

This guy must really love his country because he's willing to give his life for it. What are you willing to give an exchange, right, to maintain the relationship, right? And so oftentimes we say these things, like, I really love my parents so much, but I'm willing to give. I'm not willing to drive an hour to see them. Do you love them that much? I know it's socially acceptable or not acceptable to say that you don't love your parents. But if you define how much you love them, because love is binary, it's not yes or no, it's how much do you love them? If you're not willing to give up basically anything to maintain their relationship, then how much do you love them? Kind of interesting, right? Now, they may be willing to give their lives for you because they love you

more than you love them. And that's biologic. It's okay. It's biology. But I'm just saying, when you think with this construct, I think it's been a very helpful filter for me to say, not do I love my friends, but which friends do I love the most? Which friends am I willing to sacrifice the most to keep the relationship? Right. And I am a big believer in utility, which is there is an exchange in every relationship. You get something and they get something back. Part of the strength of the relationship is how long you're willing to wait for the next time

that relationship is reinforced. So if you have a long history of great reinforcement, or positive experiences with a person, you're willing to wait a longer period of time if they're going through a breakup, they're having a hard time to keep the relationship going, right? But at some point,

even if you've been friends with somebody for 10 years, if there's just not any positive reinforcement, you are willing to sacrifice less for the relationship. And so then you stop it. If you just meet somebody, your willingness to delay when you get a positive reinforcement from that person is very low.

It's very low. If you're not pretty quickly in the conversation getting some positive reinforcement, some positive vibes getting some value, then you'll just exit, right? And so the longer you're with somebody, the more you've had positive experiences with them, the longer you're willing to wait between positive experiences. And so that's why you're willing to go through a lull with a friend who's going through a hard time because you have so many positives that you're waiting to get back to. But at some point, you do cut it off because how long are you willing to wait for this person

and pull them up? Interesting. And so for me, as I was going through my entrepreneurial seasons, For the most part, because my goals shifted so dramatically between seasons, many of the people I had around me, A, weren't willing to pay the price that I was willing to pay for the things that I wanted, but also wanted me to give them more than I was willing to. And so I'll give you a story that will paint me in a bad light, and that's fine. So I've told a story about there was a teacher that I grew up with in high school, and he's the one who stayed with me after school for a year and worked out with me. Two hours a day and he taught me how to work out.

And that obviously has been, you know, something that I was able to get, I got in shape, got more confidence. From there, I got better at school. From there, that snowballed into me getting into fitness. From there, that snowballed, like, it was a huge catalyst snowball, right? And so somebody heard that story and then found the teacher. And they linked us. And I didn't ask them to do that because I already had chosen not to maintain that relationship. And the reason was because as time went on, he was like, hey, man, I'm not asking for a lot.

I would love to just have like a two-hour call with you every week. I was like a two-hour call every week. I was like, I don't even talk to my mother that much. I'll talk to anybody that much. I talked to my wife, that's it. In that moment, I was like, I'm not willing to make that trade. Like this relationship, because to be fair, for me, the value of the relationship was in the past. You may be like, Alex, you're a horrible person.

And that's possible. Maybe I am. But to me, I was not willing to give two hours a week, a hundred hours a year for the rest of my life to pay a debt for somebody who worked out with me. And I can appreciate what it gave me. But to the same degree, I might have already just was going to start working out anyways. Right. And so we get into this weird indebtedness thing.

And I just don't. I think you have one life. And a lot of times we maintain these relationships because of social norms. And my only encouragement is that I have been willing to shirk or shed relationships faster than most. And that is because I believe that a lot of growth come through elimination. It comes through pruning the tree. Because we only have so much juju.

We only have so much time. We have so much focus, so much energy that we can pour into things. And a lot of people don't, like people talk about like energy vampires. And it makes it, it paints it an ugly way. But it's really just energy distractors. It's just you have this much activity that can happen. And you want it to be directionally aligned. And if you're not walking, putting all your energy in one direction, it's scattered and then you don't move this fast.

And so for me, I wanted to always surround myself with the people who wanted the same things as me and were ideally a little ahead of me. And so if all the friends that I had, I had achieved more than, then my relationship shifted because I had nothing to gain from them. They had everything to gain from me. Now, you could make the argument that there's other things. I have one friend that I've been friends with some middle school, but the exchange that I have is different. I'm not trying to get value from business with him. When we hang out, it is purely an unplug for me. And that is the value. Now, the amount that we hang out once a year, maybe. You know what I mean? I get maybe a text exchange every quarter. And so some people are like, well, that's not a friend.

Well, it's because your definition of friend and my definition of friend are different. For me, it's somebody that I have positive sense and board that I'm willing to keep that conversation going. That is what I'm willing to endure to maintain the relationship, which I don't do with many people. And so for me, that's worth it. My closest friend, I spend one hour a week with every week. My closest friend, like clockwork. It's my highest party meeting.

I meet with him because it is something that brings me joy. And we get lots of exchange with one other. He's the one who helps me write my books, Dr. Cashie. and so I get a lot from them. Now, if I didn't get anything from that, over time, I'd be willing, I would slow, slow down the communication between us. I would make it every other week once a month, right? I'd start shortening the times, and then eventually it would get faded out.

And that's how a lot of these things are. Now, a lot of people are afraid of having that confrontation, right? And I would say, big picture, most times you don't need to have it because most people are interpersonally aware. And if you slow down your communication cadence with someone and how frequently you see them and when you accept invitations, it naturally fizzles, right? Just big picture. If you're like, how do I get out of them?

That's how you get out of it. But if it gets to a point where someone's like so close that it would be obvious and a conversation needs to be had, I encourage you to just have it. And because you want to be a kind person, and the way you are a kind is that you tell the truth, right? It's not by shirking it.

It's by just saying straight up because you may have a shot at getting them to realize that they're not on the path that they wanted to be on. Because you were friends with them at some point. And so either your goals have changed or theirs have. And so if you make them aware of the fact that either your goals have changed

or yours have it and theirs have, they might not even realize that it has because they're playing, you know, a recreational dodgeball league and they, you know, they go to the Sunday with the boys and they drink their beers, you know, and they're in the fantasy league and they're doing the stuff. And I'm saying there's nothing wrong with that. But I don't want to be the 99. And so most people that I am friends with see me now and are like, he's a maniac. I would never want to live that way. I even got accosted by a family member who was like, I would never want your life. And I was like, and I would never want yours. 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. 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, but 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 for someone else. And so being willing to take people out of my life, and I've been very direct about it, and to the point that we were talking about earlier, one of the reasons that I cut people out sooner than most is because I do not like the labels that they speak over me. And so one of the

big things with identity is the labels that we say about ourselves. I am X. I am impatient. I am angry, I am whatever, right? I am poor. I don't like saying it. Right. And people in your past have the identity that they know you as. And then they will speak and they will beat that label to you because you're not matching their pattern. Why have you changed? You are X. You are Y. And you're trying to not be that because you're doing something different than changing. You're growing. But they see it as change. And that's why the best response in the world to someone who says, hey, you've changed is you say, yeah, you have it. Deep shit. right it's a spiritual process it's like an emotional process of going through this but you have to

choose the labels that you want over yourself and you want to surround yourself with people who encourage the labels that you want to be right because the identity shift the character trait shift is not a binary it's not are you honest or dishonest are you angry are you patient whatever it is it's how patient are you how kind are you how loyal are you how honest are you and so you want people who are voting in that that voting machine on this side so that the balance starts to shift from patient to impatient, right? And people encourage you in the behaviors that you want to be like. But if someone only tells you the stories when you got fucked up and why you did that stupid thing, they're encouraging and retelling you the story of who you used to be.

And you want people around you who don't believe the lies you used to tell about yourself. And so for me, my close circle has always been very, very small. non-existent. But it's because I also feel like I grow really quickly because I don't hold on to things long. Like as the moment something doesn't provide me value, I shed it. And a lot of people probably disagree with that. And that's cool. Like you disagree.

But that is how I have lived my life. And it has served me well. And so I have been reinforced with that behavior. And so I continue to do it. And so in each season, I basically make new friends. I join new communities. I meet new people. I learn everything I can. And as long as those people are going to the same place I'm going, we're riding side by side the whole way. And that's my hope. My hope is that the people that I meet now are trying to go all the way with me. And it's funny,

I was talking to a very big, very, very big influencer. And I was telling him about what I wanted to do, how we're going to get to a billion, how we're going to get to $10,000, et cetera. And he was like, no one thinks big. He's like, no one wants to do epic shit. And I was like, yeah, I feel you, man. And so the increment that your friends talk about in times and money, time and money are the increments that you will talk about time and money in. If they're talking about making a thousand dollar investment, you're going to start thinking in a thousand dollar investments. When if you want to be surrounded by people talking about a million or a hundred million dollar investments, then you got to get in those circles. Now, how do you earn your way? Well, you get in when you're a little bit below and then you absorb everything you can and you execute you, then you see who's going with you.

And then once that rubber band starts to stretch where you're too high, you change out. A lot of people don't like that. but that's how I've lived my life. And so for me, I've wanted to live a rare life. And so I will have to be surrounded by rare people. And rare people are by definition rare. They're not common. And so it makes sense that I would have to shift the people that surround me.

And it's only the romantic story that we were told of friends for life, et cetera. But if you talk to 85-year-olds, they will tell you the friends they've had throughout their lives with the majority of them being friends for convenience. They were next-door neighbors. They were whatever. But with the interconnectivity we have now with the internet, we can find those rare friends more easily. But if you die with one good friend or two good friends, you've had a really good life. So I think those people change. And for me, I don't.

I don't regret the seasons that I've had with someone, but I just see them as seasons. So for the people who are like, well, your hometown homies always have your back, right? No, not necessarily. I can give you 100 examples of people who haven't had your back. You know what I mean? and it's cool that you guys have whatever that is. The question is, is that going to last forever? And how many challenges have come up to that?

Right? Because it's not, do they have your back? It's how much do they have your back? And will they have your back forever? They might have your back now. But when they have a wife and two kids and a job, all of a sudden they're not willing to trade as much to maintain their relationship.

So then that means they love you less. So maybe they won't do it forever. And so maybe you're just holding on to something that is fictitious in your mind that Disney sold you. That is very, very, very rare. Not saying it doesn't happen. I'm just saying it's very unlikely.

And so I think they might have your back now in this circumstance. If it's like at a bar where a guy like shoves you and like my homies have my back, that's not saying much. Like there are strangers who will jump in to stop a fight to defend somebody. So is that really saying anything? I don't know. I don't think so. For me, that's not enough.

So if right now you, you're, you're, mosey nation. You're in it. You think long. You want to develop the skills. You want to build a company that's a great company that delivers great value to people. That's a good place to work. That encourages others. The steps of doing that is that you have to be willing to have hard conversations. I think Tim Ferriss said this. The speed that you go through life is the speed with which you can have hard conversations or the number of hard conversations you can have. And I wholeheartedly agree. Which means either you fade out people or you have to confront the people and you just be honest. And the easiest way that I can tell you to be honest is you know when you talk about somebody

behind their back, what you'd say, just say it to them. It's like, yeah, Sandra's been like all over the place lately and she's like, I don't know, drinking a little bit too much and not sure if I want to associate that. Sandra, you've been all over the place lately, you've been drinking a little bit too much. I'm just not sure if I want to associate with that right now. So either you've got to change or we got to separate or distance ourselves for a while while you're going through this. You just say it to that. People just don't have the balls to do that. But if you do that, I promise you, you'll either have better relationships or you'll be done with this Mickey Mouse bullshit of not even being in a real relationship and not wanting to confront reality. So just have the hard convoy and be in or be out.

And once you have the vacuum of friends, because you'll probably have weeded people out, then the best thing to do is join communities, right? And then you'll make friends to people in those communities who have the same goals as you. And then if you crush it because you understand that volume is the answer and time is the ingredient, then you're going to rise in that community. and you'll gain more status and you'll start hanging out with people who are at the top of that community and then you can leapfrog into other communities. It's just lunch tables on steroids. It's what it is. You sit with the people that are trying to do the same thing as you and then once they know they're only talking about football and you want to start talking about colleges, then you switch the table as talking about colleges. You have to figure out what you want because you need to linch the rich to make all your decisions.

So you can't say, I want to cut these friends because they are going to help me get where I'm going because you don't know where you're going. So there's an old Indian saying that's if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. And so we also know that many times if you don't know where you're going, it'll take you somewhere that you don't want to go. And so I think just getting really clear on what it is you want. Now, the thing is that that can change. Like that's the big people think that like the thing that they pick is the goal has to be impermanent. Now, I will say this, the longer you can have the same goal, the more of your life you directionally align in one way, the more compounding works in your favor. Every time you switch career paths, you start at zero again.

Now, you still have the experience and the skills. So you want to build on that, but not totally start at zero. So that's kind of the nuance there. You know what I mean? If you go from publishing books and music to making a book music publishing thing, those are both additive. But if you go from book publishing to mortgage sales, it's like, okay, that's a bit of a shift. And so ideally you don't want to start at zero and always build.

But the goal can change. And the way I like to articulate it is that it's not that the goal changed, it got clearer or more refined. a great one of understanding what you want is not even being crystal clear on what it is, but just being directional. So it's like, well, I want this more than that. I want this more than that. And so you don't have to be perfect.

You don't have to be right. You just have to know, like, well, I want to make money. Okay. Well, these activities don't make me money. So then I'll do more of these things. And then when you're in that, you're like, okay, I like building stuff more. Then it's like, cool. Then you're engineering products, code, et cetera.

You're like, I like being on camera more. Then you're more promotion, marketing, whatever. And then you're in there and you're like, okay, I like being on camera, but I don't like being in public. So it's like, okay, well, then why don't we talk about sales? Or it's like, I like doing that, but I don't like talking to people individually. Then let's talk about promotion. Right.

So like you just start weaving your way in because I think like intelligent design only happens in retrospect, right? It only looks like an intelligent path when we describe it in arrears, right? And so I think if you give yourself permission to just say, all I have to know is which when I want more and then just keep choosing between more's, you'll get to where you're trying to go rather than trying to pick the perfect spot because you don't have enough information to make the right call. So it's more about just directionally choosing, getting going on the paths. And then with each step, the next step in the path becomes a little bit more eliminated. And then you can

pivot your way to where you ultimately want to go, which is through time and repetition. So people will judge you on how you spend their time and their judgments are simply expressions that they would not spend their time the same way you do, and then you say, obviously, because we're not the same people. And so what feels like an insult is really just a statement of fact, hey, you work a lot. And I could say, hey, you don't. The only reason that there's any emotional charge there is because of the judgment we label on that statement. And so to the same degree, it's like, you spend so much time with your kids. Right? If I say it like that, but we're like, wait, no, I'm supposed to. It's only the supposed to, that's the thing that gives

all the emotional charge of these conversations. Otherwise, it's just observing reality, which is one person might spend more time with their kids. One person might not. Now, people then say, hey, well, when I'm 85, I'm not going to want the career growth I had. I'm going to wish that I had my family there. Now, if you really want to get heady about it, how much of your life are you alive? And if you only regret this moment, compared to all of this, was it the wrong call? You really want to get deep on it, right? But you could also come from the perspective of, like, I have more context here and I can look back on my entire life and see what I enjoyed. But for me, I want to do epic shit. And I, if I die and don't do epic shit, I will be bummed. And so I'm

willing to make that trade. And I've had conversation with my future stuff about what I'm doing right now. He's cool with it. He gets it. So that's how I wade through those waters. I think that people don't like the idea that relationships are transactional, but they are. And transactional just has a commercial vibe to it. But if we just think about it as from a behavior standpoint, you've got two things that can happen. A behavior is reinforced or it is punished. That's it. And so when you have exchanges quite literally with people, those exchanges are either reinforced or they're punished. That's it. And so the restating the original question, which is, would I regret cutting off relationships which punished me? No, not at all.

Would I be okay with the fact that there are relationships that were reinforced positively for a period of time? And then the positive to negative ratio shifted. And at that point, I cut it. No. Because I could see that as I got the best part of that relationship. And if I were to keep that relationship for the next 30 years, I probably hate that person. So I get to have all the good memories. And we got to have our trees interweave for a period, a season, and not forever.

And I think it's because humans want to live forever. I think it's like a deep human desire so we don't want to die. And so because of that, we project, project that onto everything. We want everything to be impermanent. Families forever. Not really, you die. That's it. And your bloodline diluted in fucking 100 generations.

So is it? I don't know. We're all family here. Because if you go back 100 generations, right? It's far fewer people. So we are family. So, but do you feel that way now? No.

Hmm. Interesting. So I like to think of things in things. seasons, which is this person. And the thing is, I can honor a relationship and say, like, he was a homie of mine and not think less of him because it no longer made sense. Just like, this is a perfect example. At least this is how I see past relationships. Every past relationship that I've had romantically, I've got nothing but love for the person. I genuinely just want the best for them. because they shared a period of my life with me.

And so just because I'm not seeing them anymore doesn't mean that I don't wish them well. I want them to succeed. And I heard this quote, I think it was a Tupac quote, which is like, just because we're no longer friends, doesn't mean I don't want you to eat.

It just means I don't want you at my table. And so that's how I see it. You know what I mean? Like, I want them to do well. It's just like they would better be served with people who want the same things to them. Right? And the same way in a romantic relationship.

If one person's like, I want to stay home, the other person's like, I want to work, unless they both want that, then doesn't make sense. And that's okay. If someone's like, I want to have kids, it's a non-negotiable, and they absolutely love each other. And the other person says, I absolutely don't want to have kids. It's a non-negotiable. Then they were not willing to give up something to keep the relationship. If it's truly a non-negotiable, then it's a non-negotiable.

And so does it mean the other person's bad? No, it means they want different things. And so, no. And at the end of my life, if I have many, many friends over different seasons, I'm told, really cool with that because I just got to rock with people who wanted to rock the same way I did for that season. And if things changed in their lives, maybe they got married, they got have kids and they don't want the same things anymore in terms of what they're willing to trade at their time for. Cool. Thank you for that season. It was awesome. Love it. Just like pro football players. They can

look back at seasons with players that they were on the same team as. And then they switch teams. It's not like they want them to break their leg. They just think back about the time they got to play together. And that was a great time. I will take that to my grave when I'm in 85. But I don't believe things need to be forever to be good. Thank you.