The Game with Alex Hormozi - Success = Ingrained Intolerance | Ep 234

Episode Date: September 4, 2020

We call it growth instead of change. Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) shares with us why he prefers not to surround himself with relatives and friends he hasn’t seen in a while, how to combat people putting you in a box, and our choice to give focus to certain phrases or feelings can either make or break you. (This episode originally aired in December of 2018.)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:(1:10) - Alex avoids going home for holidays due to others' perception.(4:36) - Teaching people how to treat you when moving up.(7:23) - Our choice on how stories/words affect us.(10:36) - Necessity breaks beliefs; no other choice.(12:11) - What others say or we say about ourselves?(16:47) - Wiser person sees what others don't.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

Welcome to the Jim Secrets podcast. This episode originally aired in December of 2018. You have to teach people how you like to be treated now. 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. Good morning. Happy Saturday. 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 concerns. you need 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 reconcile. 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 aqua, but like, 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 right and so like this is who I am it's all I have to take like a week to detangle and then basically re-speak 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 and what you know 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. Right. And so, like, 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. I'll be like, don't speak to me in that tone. Even if they're saying or I think 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 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 there. 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 where we are now. Now, total, total pivot. Like, sometimes, 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. Like, 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 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 um 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 right do you really

think that if your kids were going to die, like, because you need to learn to remember things, you'd be able to do it. I'm like, 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, we can, like, 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 things over ourselves that don't even serve us. Right. One of my favorite sayings in the world, probably one of my favorites, 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, hopefully you're as enjoying Saturday morning. 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 right 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? Right? How quickly can you onboard someone? Let me give you another story. I was, so we're about to do a very big launch for our legacy group. I can't tell you what it is.

But a friend of mine launched the 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, right? And so when we had our Q4 planning, right, our fourth quarter planning, we had our customer service director.

And Lily, I love you to death. It has nothing to do. But like, this was what happened 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. Real quick, guys, if you can think about how you found this podcast, somebody probably tweeted it, told you about it, shared it on Instagram or something like that. The only way this grows is through word of mouth. And so I don't run ads. I don't do sponsorships. I don't sell anything. My only ask is that you continue to pay it forward to whoever showed you or however you found out about this podcast that you do the exact same thing.

So if it was a review, if it was a post, if you do that, it would mean the world to me, and you'll throw some good karma out there for another entrepreneur. 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. 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, right, into believing what we need to believe in order to grow faster, right? I made this, I did this experiment, you know, three years ago where I put on like 35 pounds of muscle in six weeks, right? And I started, and they asked me to an article was 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 conf-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 lift it 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 hope you guys don't mind. 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 still. 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 job. anymore she's like it's not my passion you know like I kind 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 betroth to him that she had to keep doing it but then he felt guilty that 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 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 so like how are you hitting the numbers you're hitting how is the growth rate that you guys are having like how's 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 right 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 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, like 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 half a million a month right now. and he has it 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 got all the complexity in it. I 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 of grow up.

And I was like, do you really can't figure out a girl? 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 on a month thing is sucking up, you'd be able to double the $100,000 on one 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 $6 million. 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 that 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. 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 we're just stuck at 60,000 a month like i don't know what this bottleneck is and i always respond i'm 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 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 gym owners right now who ask like hey like i've got this campaign it's crushing it um 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 would 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.

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 answers are obvious, right? Well, I've got this trainer that I've had for two years, but they're 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 red 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, thank you for spending Saturday morning with me. 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 speak, 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, or 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, oh, employees are 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.