The Game with Alex Hormozi - Success = Ingrained Intolerance ...and why i dont go home for the holidays | Ep 92

Episode Date: December 13, 2018

"The reason that a lot of people aren't successful is because of their beliefs." Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) explores the challenges entrepreneurs face when trying to grow and change, including dealing with family perceptions and beliefs that may hold them back. He emphasizes the importance of being intolerant of certain behaviors and beliefs to achieve success and take control of one's life.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:(3:31) - Managing family relationships during personal growth.(6:09) - Power of beliefs: conversation with a high-level entrepreneur.(7:48) - Beliefs and necessity in achieving business growth.(13:35) - Power of belief in achieving success.(14:48) - Gaining wisdom through discernment: Seeing what others don't.(16:52) - Emotional challenges of making business decisions.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

It's good morning. I'm really excited for this podcast video because I've actually had this concept on my mind, this piece, probably for the last two and a half weeks. I feel like it's been like in the back of my mind like percolating and whatnot. And it's combining with like four or five other ones and I like felt it this morning as I was eating breakfast. I was like, all right, today's the day I'm going to make it. So originally I wanted to call this why I don't go home for the holidays. And there's probably going to be some things that I say that are a little bit controversial, but there are things that have absolutely been some of the keys to our continued growth and success, and I thought you might want to hear them. And so I put the title as this for, at least for right now, as success equals

ingrained intolerance. And so one of the reasons that I don't go home for the holidays is that a lot of people haven't grown since I left, right? They haven't had 10 years of growth. They've lived the same six months 20 times, right, since I was gone. And when I go back, they want to meet me in my past. And so they want to speak things over me that aren't who I am anymore. And then because it's difficult for them to, to, ah, the word, connect, right? Their perception of who I used to be and who the person is standing in front of them, how they are reconciling. Thank you. Reconciling those two things is really difficult for a lot of people because it's breaking the box they want to put you in. But the reality is that most people don't change.

Entrepreneurs do because we have to, right? We call it growth instead of change, but for the outside world, for the non-entrepreneurs who stay in their same box every day, it's hard to calculate. And so I'll go home and they'll say, oh, like my dad says that. So they'll say, you have the shortest fuse out of anyone. You just have such a short temper. And anyone who is in our company, my wife, like, I mean, anyone who knows me and spends time with me would probably not say that. And so I will be, I mean, very aggressive in combating that immediately because I'll be like,

don't speak that over me. That's not true. That's not who I am. And it makes people really uncomfortable. And so there's a lot of times if I go see an uncle, you know what I mean? if I'm at a holiday event. And then they're like, oh, Alexander, you've always been a little bit loose with the Alco,

but I don't even drink anymore. You know what I mean? Like, you're speaking about my past. And it makes people really uncomfortable. And I would implore you to meet those things head on. And the reason that I don't like going home for the holidays, because I have to be on guard. Because when I leave, I feel like I have to like wash myself

of the things that people were trying to speak over me. And it's constant. It's unending. It's incessant, right? They're constantly trying to put me back in the box that makes sense to them, right? And I refuse to have that happen. And so when I have these conversations, it's passing comments. It's little things.

It's never, because most people aren't confrontational, right? And so it's never, oh, like, you are like, you know what I mean? Like, it's not like that, but it's just like, oh, you know how you always are. And they'll say it even with like a smile like it's a good. thing, but like you have to catch it because you know how it makes you feel when you hear it. So you're like, that's not true. That's not me, right? I'm done with that.

That's in my past. And so like, this is who I am. And so I have to take like a week to detangle and then basically respeak over the things that I am or that I choose to be, right? And so it's one of the main reasons that I don't go back for the holidays and I really, really don't like it. And I definitely don't like spending any portion of extended time there is because it feels like I'm going backwards.

And what we are all as a community trying to accomplish is not normal. And we just have to come to terms with the fact that it isn't normal. It's okay that it's not normal. But it also means that normal people aren't going to like it. And so the higher up we go in business, I think, at least this is just my subjective understanding or how I'm perceiving it as I go through it, the more intolerant we become of people who try and, I mean, it's even tones. Like, I'll be like, don't speak to me in that tone.

Even if they're saying the right thing, I'm like, it seems disrespectful. It bothers me. And like, you become more and more aware because you're like, let me teach you how to treat me. Right. And sometimes you have to do that. And especially when it's been a long period of time, you have to teach people how you like to be treated now. And a lot of times it's a lot different than it was when they first met you. Right.

And it's the hardest with family. because I'll be really real with you. There's a lot of people that I'm connected with that I probably would never see again if I didn't have a blood relation. And I manage our space very well. And so if we, you know, if we go back, it's only going to be for a short period of time

because there's no other reason besides the fact that we share a biological bond that I would ever see you again. Because you have not, you don't have the same goals, you don't have the same values. You don't want to do the things I want to do. When we see each other, you make me feel worse. Why would I see you? Just being very real with you.

guys and maybe this is something that I'll look back at this video five years some now and I'll have grown more and I'll have more perspective but that's that's where we are now now. Now, total pivot, you know what? I'm not going to pivot. Like I'm going to dive a little deeper in this. Hopefully you guys don't mind. Being so intolerant of this stuff is like is so key to being able to like grow. I'm telling you because and that's why that's why there's just we keep such quiet space, right? Because it's like the only place that you don't have to have your guard up constantly fending off what other people are trying to tell you about yourself. Right. And so you can kind of build it while it's in its infancy.

And you're not as strong yet in these new attributes that you're trying to have. I was talking to a high level entrepreneur yesterday. Right. And he's like, ah, I mean, I'm just horrible of details. And I was like, don't speak that over yourself. I was like, because your business might need you to be good at details when you go from 10 to 20 million. Right? don't say that and he was like you're right I was like yeah you choose you're choosing to not be good at details do you really think that if your kids were

gonna die like because you need to learn to remember things to be able to do it well yeah I'm like all right then you're choosing to not be good at it that's your choice that's your belief right and so like if you identify these things like man I'm getting really deep on this I know but like the identity is so fluid like we can change in an instant like Tony Robbins talks about this stuff all the time. Like, like, we can, like, the only, the only moment that we're actually able to live in is right now, right? And so all of the things that we had before us are only stories that we can either choose to replay because they're positive attributes or choose to ignore if they're

negative attributes. And a lot of us just stay in these loops of speaking these, these things over ourselves that don't even serve us, right? One of my favorite sayings in the world, probably one of my favorite say, like one of the most profound sayings, is we question all of our beliefs, except for those that we truly believe and those we never question at all. And I always, I love that because it just makes you aware of like, I love catching myself on a belief that I've always had that I believe so thoroughly that I never actually thought to question it because that's how much I believed it. Right. It's just been there. And so like the higher up we go, the more we kind of uncover these beliefs about what's possible. What can we do? How can we grow? How quickly can

change happen, right? I mean, if you look at our business, if you look at our business, right, like we pivoted from a done for you model to the done with you model that we have now in April of 2017. And so from April of 2017 until today, right, that's like 19 months, I think, right? We've gone from zero to arguably the biggest company in fitness, like in the brick and mortar gym fitness world. And we're like two or three, times the size of anyone else who's like the second runner up and 2019 we're going to probably three to four X that I can say that pretty with a lot of certainty and so like how quickly are you able to achieve what you want to achieve is it supposed to take a year because you're

choosing to believe that it's supposed to take a year how quickly can you onboard someone let me give you another story I was so we're we're about to do a very big launch for our legacy group I I can't tell you what it is. But a friend of mine launched a new service category in his business. And it blew up overnight. He had a huge explosion of traffic. He was running like some ads and they just took off, right? And he couldn't do anything about it.

And so he hired 30 people in 14 days for his customer service team. 30 people in 14 days. 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, $100 million plus, we would love to talk you and if you like that we'd 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 and so when we had our Q4 planning right our fourth quarter planning we had our customer service director and I love you to death it has nothing to but like this was what happened

during the during the actual meeting she was like I feel comfortable saying that I can bring four people on every month between now and X launch date right which would you know get us to probably 16 or so people 16 to 20 right by the launch date, which is going to be like three or four months away. And so then I told that story about my friend who had just done this. He hired 30 people in 14 days because he had to, right? And so a lot of times the necessity is one of the biggest things that allows us to break our beliefs because we have to. We have no other choice, right?

And so I love thinking, and that's why when we have scripts and whatnot and the show rates double based on the fact that you know you actually are going to leave a location and you're not going to be able to sell that person, the tonality of how you're speaking to the prospect, even though the words are the same, the fact that it's just what you believe that changes the outcome and the influence on the other person is like so cool to me. And so the question is like, how can we trick ourselves into believing what we need to believe in order to grow faster? I made this, I did this experiment three years ago where I put on like 35 pounds of muscle

in six weeks, right? And I started, and they asked me to write an article, it's muscle and strength. And I did it natural. You can choose to believe you or not, but I did. and it was 35 pounds of muscle, but it was 35 pounds and a lot of it was muscle within six weeks. And I started the article off by saying, like, what if you actually had to gain 35 pounds in six weeks and get and add 100 pounds to your bench? What would you do? Right.

And so I tried to put this like these confines on myself and I was like I probably wouldn't just lift, you know, twice a week, right? For that lift. I probably lifted like once or twice a day. And then that's what I did. and then I got really, really strong, really fast. I added 100 pounds to my pitch at six weeks. And I was natural, right? And I did that because of the confines that we put ourselves under.

And so sometimes I wonder, like, what things are we allowing to be spoken over ourselves by others first? And then second, what things are we speaking over ourselves that we don't even know that we're doing? And so constantly questioning, like, those things that we speak over ourselves has been honestly one of the biggest things that has allowed us to grow. And so I know that I haven't been as tactical in the last few content videos. I would be guys on mine.

It's just been what's on my mind. We had Chris and Robin Barnett who flew out here because they won a competition that we were holding in secret. And anyway, so Chris and Robin Barnett came out and they were like, we feel like we're stuck, right? We feel like we're in a bottleneck. And like we just can't. We're just trying to break through. and when I talked to them about it, the whole time they were here for the whole day, I didn't tell them a single tactical thing to do differently with their business, not one.

But what we identified was the things that they were speaking over themselves and the things that they were choosing to believe about how quickly things can happen, right? And so I'll give you an example. I hope they don't mind. Robin, Chris's wife, didn't want to be in the gym anymore. She's like, it's not my passion. You know, like now we're comfortable, like I kind of want to do my own thing. And so, and it was causing some strife in their relationship, mostly because, like, you know,

she felt, you know, betrothed to him that she had to keep doing it, but then he felt guilty that she, you know what I mean? There's just kind of both sides of it, right? And so they were like, well, we're going to let Robin go, you know, she's going to leave in four months, right? So we're going to get four months and then she'll get out of the business. And I was like, well, why does she just get out today? Like, she doesn't want to do it. You don't want her there. Like, why don't you just get out today? Like, why are you choosing to believe that it needs to that it needs to take four months you know like I guess it doesn't I was like right and so a lot of times like I've just this has just been recently for me I've had a lot of

conversations with guys who are doing five to 12 million a year um in their businesses and a lot of them have been doing this a lot longer than me and they're like how have you freaking grown stuff like how are you hitting the numbers you're hitting how is the blow three that you guys are having like how is it possible right and like we've really just like I'm trying not to be weird about this, but like we've just chosen to believe it's possible. We've really just chosen to believe it's possible. And a lot of times, like, if you talk to them and like you look at, it's like you see these guys who are really, really, really high up in the business world.

A lot of times I do talk very non-tactical, very much mindset stuff. And I think it's, and I used to really not appreciate it. But now I think I'm appreciating you a little bit more because the reason that a lot of people aren't successful is because of the beliefs that they have. because if you can remove and break those beliefs, a lot of times they will go find the tactics that are necessary, right, to win. And so, and the higher up you go, the cleaner, people keep their space. And the reason they do that, the reason they keep it so quiet is so that they can pinpoint anything that comes in their area, right? Anything that's going to break or chip at them or just, like, bother them in any way to keep this bubble around them.

And then what that does, though, is that it gives them such clean perspective and clean vision on what's going on. Because a lot of times when I had these guys, like I said, you were doing, you know, five, six, 10 million a year. And they're like, what's going on? It becomes really obvious. It's really apparent. I'll give you another example. I had yesterday I talked to a guy who's doing, he's doing half a million a month right now. And he has a split between two businesses.

He's got one business that does like $400,000 a month. He's got one that does $100,000 a month. And he's like, well, the big, you know, the $400,000 a month business is my old business. It's the one that it's, it's got all the complexity in it, hate the customers, all this stuff, right? And then he's like, and then this business is really simple. It's super profitable. I'm running like three times the margin I run in that business. And he's like, so I just, I just can't figure out how to grow up.

And I was like, do you really can't figure out how to grow? He's like, yeah, I just like, I got so much stuff going on. And I was like, yeah, you should probably just get rid of the thing that is a big headache for you and do the thing that you really like doing. I was like, do you think if you got rid of all of the attention that that 400,000 arm on thing is sucking up, you'd be able to double the 100,000 arm on thing? He's like, yeah, like, easy. And I was like, cool, then why don't you do that? Right. And it becomes really apparent and obvious to you on the outside.

Like, I mean, these guys aren't dumb. You know what I mean? He's doing six million eight. Like, he's not stupid. It's just the beliefs that we truly believe are the ones that we don't see. Right. And so it's really interesting and like I think all the time about like I want to be wiser. I want to have more discernment. And if you really, if you start to dissect like what is wisdom, right? Wisdom is being able to see is the two people are looking at the same situation.

The wiser person sees things that the other person doesn't. And so it's it's vision. It's being able to see what other people don't see. And a lot of times they're just unseen chains that people have already chosen to tie themselves up with, right? And we're having a lot of gym owners. I've had just recently a string of gym owners who reached up and like, man, we're just stuck at 60,000 a month. Like, I don't know what this bottleneck is. And I always respond to, like, it's not the business model, right? It's you. And it's, and it's, and I should probably respond more specifically. It's a belief that you have, that you haven't identified them that's holding you back. A lot of times it's just because you're choosing to make less money. Like, no joke.

A lot of people choose to make less money. So people, like, we have Jim owners right now who ask like, hey, like, I've got this campaign. It's crushing it. I think I'm going to turn it off for next month, right? Because, like, we have a lot going on. I'm like, if you want to choose to make less money, that's your choice. You know? And so we make these choices.

Like, if you, if you were to articulate them differently, you'd probably think they were ridiculous. And I had every conversation I've had just in the last two weeks. So I've talked to four entrepreneurs, the last two weeks that are doing five million or more. per year. And each one of the conversations ended with, like, well, when you put it like that, I sound like an idiot. And I was like, well, are you? It's like, well, no. And I was like, then you should probably change the way you're doing it. Right. And so it's just these emotions and these beliefs that get in our way of like what seems so obvious. And it's just because we are

emotional beings, right? We are. We make decisions with emotions and we try and logic it later. But when you look at things logically a lot of times, some of the, some of the answers are obvious, right? Well, I've got this trainer that I've had for two years, but there's such a pain. They never want to do anything of anything that's new, but I have some clients that still like them. Okay, do you think that if you had a new trainer that was like bought in, that you would be able to grow more? So, right it is, is the fear of losing these few clients that are attached to this one trainer is outweighing the potential growth you would have from the key player that you know you need in order to make the model work. Right. And then when it's phrased that way,

it becomes obvious. Yeah, I got to let them go. Duh. But you don't have the perspective yet until sometimes you just need someone on the outside. But anyways, guys, this was just something that was on my mind, and I just like, it was like stirring in me.

But be mindful of the things that people speak over you and the tone that they do it. And just like, if you feel weird after someone says something, stop the conversation, catch it, and then address it and be like, please don't speak to me like that. Please don't say those things about me.

It really bothers me. I'm really working on this. where I've worked a lot on this, and I don't appreciate it. It really bothers me. And if that person cares about you, they will change. And if they don't, get them out of your life. You don't need that, right? And the most important person to make sure that you're doing that with is you.

Like, if you're the one who's saying, man, I'm just not good at details, man, I'm just, I hate employees. Good luck running a business. Like, I hear something, like, these are things I overhear, even in our group, like, employees, you're idiots? I'm like, do you really think that that is a good belief to grow and repeat inside of yourself if you want to grow and scale a business? Probably not. Right?

Like, be mindful of the things that you're saying because, and then ask yourself, like, does this belief serve? And if it doesn't get rid of it. So anyways, I hope you guys have an amazing weekend. I love you all. Thank you guys for giving me your attention. I know it's your most valuable resource. So thank you.

I hope I gave you a good return on it. And I hope you guys have an amazing, amazing day. All right, lots of love. Bye.