The Game with Alex Hormozi - The Honest Realities of Entrepreneurship Pt.1 (on the Aubrey Marcus Podcast) | Ep 645

Episode Date: January 27, 2024

“If someone's making more money than me they're better at the game of business in some way.” Today, join Alex (@AlexHormozi) as he guests on the Aubrey Marcus Podcast to talk about the importance of patience, investing in quality products, harnessing the power of word-of-mouth referral, and managing stakes in business relationships. They stress on the significance of directing your energy towards acquiring customers and enhancing their worth over time. They also explore the role of reputation while discussing the concept of brand value. This is part 1 of the interview.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.Follow Aubrey Marcus on:➤ Instagram | Spotify | Apple | X / Twitter | LinkedIn➤ Check out full episode on YouTube!Timestamps:(1:57) - Importance of honesty in business deals(7:10) - Reality of starting a business(11:45) - The role of comparison and competition in business(17:01) - Importance of reciprocity in business(27:00) - The impact of comparison and judgment in business(30:33) - Journey of building a successful business(33:56) - Leveraging technology and branding in business(38:07) - Importance of promotion and customer feedback(44:38) - The art of giving more and trimming down(48:00) - The role of legitimacy and proof in businessFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

In those early years, you put a lot in, but then there was significantly more on the tail. And so the rush is ultimately what kills most people because they're so concerned about, like, I need to make money tomorrow and I can appreciate the short-term need for that. But as much as you possibly can balance, how can I solve a problem for good so that I can just move on to the next boss, rather than having to keep fighting every month to pay payroll or pay myself or make whatever nut I need to make. Welcome to the game where we talked 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. All right, everybody. We're here at Arcadia with Alex Hormozzi, the legend himself. Thanks for coming, bro. Yeah. Damn.

See, you didn't think this was your crowd. No, I didn't. I really didn't. I was like, I didn't know if anyone even knew who I was. Yeah. Well, because the bottom line is, as much as we set our sights on our own personal transformation, our own growth, our own,

we also care about earning money, making money for our family, doing good things with that energy that we collect. We were just talking about the Tesla battery. We want to keep that battery full. The battery of our bank accounts full. Find a way that we can actually affect the world in a positive way and support our own community, our own family in the best way possible. So everybody gives a shit about it. A lot of people pretend they don't give a shit about it, but they're lying. And so many people I found in the spiritual community, they'll be like, no, I don't care about money.

money is the root of all evil, blah, blah, blah. And then you have a little business deal that you put in front of them, and they get greedy as hell. And you're like, whoa, where'd that come from? You know? So the bottom line is that we all do care. Even if we care so that our desire is to share that money, we care. And if we don't care, that means we don't trust ourselves

to do good things with the money we make. I agree with all of that. It's funny. That red flag that you mentioned is like almost a decision algorithm that I go off of, which is if someone says I value X over money in any business deal, for me that's always this person I need to watch out for because they're being dishonest. It's been true every time, not just like, oh, some, like, sometimes that it's every time it's been true. This is a side note for you guys.

So if someone's like, I just value this relationship over... If we both make money, we'll want to keep this relationship. Right. So, like, just tell me what you want. And I'll tell you what I want money-wise. And if it makes sense, then we'll both be super happy. And I've, I mean, I'm getting, like, right into tactics on this. But making deals as though I'm always dealing with a stranger has always been the best frame that is because now we do deals for a living now for the most part.

And then everything above the deal. is gravy. So rather than trying to factor in the intangibles, I just don't factor them in and say, so if I'm, I could employ my mother and I would still do the same deal, which is like, I would do this for somebody of your experience

because that way all my downside is covered, because this is the deal I would give somebody who's not my mother who I don't X, Y, and Z and benefit in other ways from. And so that way it's like, I think that's how you unlock plus plus deals where it's like the very worst case is that this is the same deal

I'd give a stranger. Everything else is just, And so that's helped me a lot. And even setting that frame at the onset, which is, I only do deals with strangers in terms of how we do deals. Because if it makes sense for you and our relationship didn't exist, then it will make sense if our relationship does exist. But if the converse isn't true, then it won't work. I've seen so many different partnerships develop amongst friends. And there's an inequitable value proposition based upon the friends.

But they're friends, so they're like, we'll go 50-50 on this deal. But actually, they can't contribute 50% to the business. So it all sounds good. It feels good as you're kind of moving along. Oh, this is great. We're going to do this together. But then one person with 50% of the business needs to do 90% of the work. And then over time, that just doesn't work because you're going to need to start selling more equity.

And then there's going to be more dilution. And then things get in balance. So the impulse is beautiful. It's a beautiful impulse. Share everything evenly. If I have a sandwich, you have half a sandwich. I believe in those type of things. but then there's business.

And business has its own codes and its own rules that also have to be, like, acknowledged. There's probably a disadvantage for the spiritual community within the world of business that everyone kind of has to deal with because there's this, I would imagine, because I sit probably on the exact polar opposite side of the world from the spiritual community.

So this is, like, the only time I've been in anything close to this. Seriously I got into here And I was like Are we gonna talk about like money at all? Or like any of that stuff? He's like no, we like making money I was like awesome.

All right, I feel like a little more comfortable I was like because I'm like the If you die, nothing happens And everything's meaningless person. I was like I don't know if that's gonna vibe with this community. I was like actually like kind of I was like I hope every

Because when you guys welcome me Which I really appreciate That meant a lot because I was like I'm surprised by that because I felt like most of this room would be like, I disagree with all of those things. And so...

And that's also one of the things that myself and Joe Rogan and a lot of different people stand actually as a disruptive force saying like, no, no, no, all the spiritual stuff, all the beliefs, and we're going to fucking kill it in the gym. Yeah. And we're going to be savages in the bedroom. And we're going to also make as much money as we can because we trust ourselves to do good shit with that money.

So it's like trying to embody this different model, like, you don't have to be one or the other. Yeah. You can actually be all of it. I love that. Yeah. So. How do we do it?

Making money. Yeah. One of the things I was kind of getting into with the part you were talking earlier about everything is equal in that perspective is people equate their equity value with their human value. And I think that's where the big misunderstanding, especially people were getting into business together. It's like, why aren't we equal?

we're both even people. But we won't be necessarily even contributors in the economics of the business. I have 100,000 followers, and that's going to be the initial demand for this entire business. And right now, your skill set is something that I can hire for at a value of 70,000 a year.

And so if I can replace you for 70,000 a year, it's basically like instead of me taking a loan for myself or someone else for whatever, $7,000 or $6,000. a month, I'm giving you this slice. And so $6,000 a month is only worth this percentage of equity relative to the value of the company. And so I think translating that, especially at the onset, because I don't know where everyone,

actually, this would be really helpful for me. So, okay, I don't know how, I'll just do this the way I would do it, and you guys can be uncomfortable if you want to. So if you don't have a business but would like to start a business, could you raise your hand for me? Okay, cool. That is helpful. If you are between like that, so you've made your first dollar and like $100,000 a year,

could you raise your hand for me? Okay, if you're between $100 and $250? Okay, if you're between $250 and a million, a million plus. Okay, this helps me a ton in terms of like what to be talking about. All right. So we were just talking about, there's my ADD. Equity, thank you. Whenever you start a business, you always incur debt.

And so the question is, what type of debt are you going to incur? And so you can incur financial debt, which is one that people can understand. You can incur management debt because you hire people that are underskilled for whatever the opportunity is. You can incur technical debt because you don't have the infrastructure to build the business off of. And so you want to take on the debt that is easiest to repay as fast as possible. And so when you think about that from the onset, it's not like, we're going to, to do this thing debt-free, you're always going to incur debt. And so when you think about that, you have way more levers to play with in terms of how

you want to build this structure for whatever you're ultimately trying to achieve. Now, if your goals are to make, you know, 100,000 a year or 500,000 or a million dollars a year, you can pretty much do all of that owning 100% of the equity and just developing skills. Like, I don't really think you need much more than that to do it. And sub a million, everything comes down to sub a million. Everything comes down to marketing and sales. is that you have to let people know about your stuff and you have to be able to convince them

to give you money in exchange for it. Unfortunately, for what I'm about to say, product matters significantly less at that level because you honestly aren't making enough of a dent for the word of mouth to really catch up given how big the world is. And I'm saying that from a very realist perspective. If you just know how to market and sell,

you could pretty much scam people for a million dollars a year for the rest of your life. I'm being very honest with you. And that's why there's a lot of bad advice that I think is out there from people who make around that because that's true for them. And so they're like, that's all you need. And it's true. But I would imagine that this community doesn't want to be that way. And so on the longest time horizon, the only thing that matters is product, which is how good is the thing that you're ultimately given in exchange for money?

And do people feel like they're always on the better end of the deal? And I've gone like 180 degrees from when I first started in business until today, where in the beginning, everything I cared about was sales. And then I learned that you could like do sales one to many with marketing. And I was like, this is like sales on steroids. This is so much better. And I got really good, really good at that. But then I realized that it's a perpetual hamster wheel because nothing stacks.

And so in order to get credit for the, In order to build something really big, you need to be able to get credit for work you did over time. And that means that I want to get paid today for work I did three years ago. And the only way to do that is to have a product that somebody I sold three years ago is either still using today or it still at least has positive things to say about me today. Otherwise, you're basically always hunting every month to find your next nut or whatever it is. And so if you always want to, like everyone's going to always work, but you won't always accumulate. And you can only accumulate by building something that people always have good things to say about.

And that takes a lot of work. And now we build businesses very differently, which is, let's not put any gas on this until we get everything right, until everyone absolutely loves the product, can't help but tell other people about it. We get referrals every single month. We grow without marketing and sales. And then you add marketing and sales on top. And then that's how you build really big shit. But for, and I'll try and taper this because you can go all the way in the sky and like talk about like how, you know,

trends of like what markets you want to go after or it's like, I just want to get to $20,000 a month, Alex. And are most people here doing products and services? Okay, if you're doing products and services, should you raise your hand? Okay, so that's, and is technology the other slice there? Okay, so it's mostly products and services. Okay. So if you're in, I'll shut the fuck up whenever. Keep going.

This is the sweet spot, baby. Let's go. Keep hitting these pitches. Let's go. If you're, if you were, I'm always amazed at, and it might be more prevalent in this community, not doing the math. And so I know that there's probably a little bit more woo-woo in this room

than there would be in rooms that I'm accustomed to, just say, just on a comparative base. Absolutely. Strong woo-woo family here representing. And so I think there's probably a misconception that you can woo-woo your way to money. And some of you probably know that that's not true. And so reverse engineering, what you actually want the math to look like is probably the first place to start. So I get a lot of inbound questions of like, I just want to make a million dollars a year. How do I make a million dollars in 90 days?

Which is a terrible question to ask. But if you just look at number of units you need to sell, and I break things down to days and weeks, because that's a lot easier for me to comprehend. And so it's like, okay, a million dollars a year is $20,000 a week. Okay, so divided by seven, so $3,000 a day. Okay. Well, how do I do $3,000 a day?

I, we do investments based on like the world's simplest formula, which is just number of units sold, multiply by lifetime value. That's it. And so if we want to grow the company, we either need to sell more units or we need to make people worth more. That's it.

Like, everything else really just overcomplicates it. And so if you're in the beginning and you're doing stuff, if you look at your calendar in terms of how you spend your time because that's the asset that you're going to be spending the most of in the beginning, if it's not contributing to either getting you more customers or making them worth more, then stop doing it. Like, you're wasting time.

Like, literally, you're just spending time. Because right now, if you work every hour of the day and you're not making more money, you're working on the wrong stuff. And that's like at the most basic level. And if you can accept that, then it's like, great, then now I have room to improve. Because if you're not making any money,

that means you can probably eliminate 90% of the shit you're doing. And nothing's going to matter, so you're already not making any money. So that stuff clearly isn't working. And so getting the more customer side is really about just letting people know about your stuff. And so I wrote the, you know, I just recently came out with the Leeds book,

and it was to try and simplify this for everyone. And if you were starting out, so if you're sub a million, there's eight ways. Well, shit, if you're at a billion, there's still eight ways, to let people know about your stuff. Four of them you can do, four of them use other people for. So you can just tell people that you already know about the thing you have. And you cannot be a scumball about it and just say,

hey, I'm starting this thing. Do you know who be interested in it? And nine times out of ten, when you ask someone like that, it's way low pressure because you're not asking them for it. But on the flip side, nine times out of ten, they're like, actually, I am kind of interested in something like that. And so they're like, screw my friends. Tell me more about that thing.

And then you actually get a more meaningful conversation where you could probably help them. And that's like the cheapest thing that every single person can do. But people are like, I'm so afraid of talking to my friends, but you're just asking them that they know anyone. And a lot of people still don't know, like, where do I go for that? It's like, well, right now, every single person here has a means to contact probably at least 1,000 people.

That's like super conservative. And when I challenge an audience with that, Oftentimes, someone's like, well, I don't pull out your phone, search contacts, export into it Excel sheet. That's list one. List two is you go into all the old emails and g-mails and Yahoo's you've ever had and look at every message you've ever sent. Export those sent messages into list two. Go into social media, all the different social medias you have. Look at followers.

All of those people have given you permission to contact them. Now, most social media are like that with the exception of YouTube. But like, Twitter, you can DM people. Instagram, you can DM people. TikTok, you can DM people if they're following you. and you can export all of those into a list. And so just like that, if you took all your followers,

all your friends on Facebook, all your DM contacts, your emails, your contacts on your phone, you put them into one list, you probably pretty decent-sized list. And so I am a big fan of violence in terms of action, and in general, and take a violent approach,

which is, okay, I will reach out to 100 people per day, and that takes about five hours. And if you're like, wow, that sounds like a lot of work, like, welcome to business. Like, and if you're starting out, it's welcome to business and being broke at the same time. It is what it is. And so the asset that you have right now is time

and you've got to spend as much as you can on it. And so making sure that, okay, if I'm putting five hours a day, it's 20 outreach attempts per hour, and that's very inefficient. The better you get, you'll get dialers and automation and technology that can help you do that stuff faster.

But if you're like, I'm poor and I don't understand any of the shit, start with that. And that's your first five hours of the day. I, especially when I had less means, I started doing that around like four or five in the morning, and then I'd be done around 10-ish, and then at that point, I'd start my day.

And so your job as the founder in the beginning is always promotion. Like, that's the job, is let people know that you exist. Because right now you're just in obscurity. Like, no one knows, like, it's only exists in your mind. You have to make it exist outside, right? I'm a little spiritual. And know the audience, right? So there's, thank you for that.

And there's, I want to double click a few things he said one is one of the deep spiritual principles which actually you talked about without knowing it is there's a ketchwell word which is a medicine language that's largely associated with the ayahuasca communities and the word is ione and the word is reciprocity and so one of the things we believe in that lineage which i studied in is that this is a universal law of the universe that reciprocity that there is a natural give and take that when you're in accord with that give and take things are going to be a lot easier, like a lot more fluid for you. It's actually going to help.

So when you're giving, there's a natural impulse for someone to give back. And it's just actually a law of the universe. And when you are selling cheap shit or taking advantage of people, you're going to be acting in accord with that reciprocity. And actually, there's going to be some aspect of yourself, which will make yourself fail because you'll feel like you don't deserve it. Because you know your I-Ne, your reciprocity is off. Right.

So finding that right level of relation, reciprocity, that's the way it was with honor. I knew every time we sold an alpha brain for $30 that they were getting a $30 worth plus or even more worth of that supplement they were getting. So when people ask like, oh, you know, you're selling so many and is this how do you feel? I was like, yeah, every single transaction, every customer service transaction, I need is we have a positive account balance. And whenever I can, I'm just depositing in that account balance. and it's proved to be, you know, where the universe itself and people and myself always feel in right accord. So I think that's one of these principles. It's a crossover principle.

It applies to business and it applies to this more kind of spiritual mindset as well. And the other thing that I really want to, you know, double click on is you kind of know when you got something that people really want. You know, like if you're hitting up your close friends and you're trying to offer your. service or the thing that you think is awesome and you really have to convince them like oh come on like and they're like ah yeah i don't know like uh yeah you know i'll try that when i get a chance and blah blah blah it's probably not the thing but i remember like the most successful things i had alpha brain of course was one of those we had a sample batch we gave it out to a few people who are curious and then they couldn't stop hounding me to get more of my sample batch right i was like yeah like

we got a little more. They'll be, I'm actually out. Like, I'm sorry. Like, you could just feel it. You could feel the demand coming in. And, of course, that ended up, you know, extending out to the whole rest of the world, you know. And so there's another, you know, I'm starting another supplement company actually now. And there's another product.

We've been exploring a lot of different things. People are like, yeah, I tried it. I thought it was good, you know, like caramel apple flavor. It's kind of weird for me, but blah, blah, blah. But then there's this one that we got. I'm not going to share what it is. But there's this one thing we got in our whole team. is like, yo, yo, you got any more of those samples?

You got any more of those samples, bro? And I'm like, oh, we got a winner here. We got a winner. Because I'm not having to convince my homies to take it. They're like, they're hounding me. Like, hey, can I dip in that private stash? You know? And so, and that's the same with services, too.

You know, it's like when, you know, one of the things that I don't do is a business, but I was apprenticed in a particular type of bodywork, I don't have to hound my friends if I want to offer them some body work. They're like, fuck yeah. When now? Sure. Like, well, don't you want to eat dinner? They're like, nah. Fuck it. You know what I mean? So like when you know you have something good, it'll be reflected to you by your inner circle. And then when you feel that really like uphill, like it's uphill, like come do this healing, come do this thing. And it's like hard to get your

friends to do it. It's probably going to translate to being hard to get the world to do it. and I will double-click back on giving out free samples. You don't mean? Like from a product's perspective, you're giving it out for free. And so fundamentally, you're incurring costs to give this thing to somebody. And in your mind, you're incurring this huge cost

because there's also all the time of formulation and getting the right cap size and all that stuff. And you're giving them out, and the person just receives it in two seconds, but they don't know that it took you five months to put that whole thing together. And so you feel like you're like, you need to love this, right?

But I think that you do it kind of effortlessly just from me just from the five seconds of me just saying this, is that you're also giving without a lot of expectation. And the only expectation you have is that you tell me that it sucks. Like just you serve me better by telling me it blows than by lying to me.

And so this is also just like one of eight ways of talking to let people know about your stuff is letting friends know. I just start there because it's the cheapest and easiest. But with services, you can do the same thing but the nice thing with services is that you can change it kind of in real time based on feedback. And so asking someone if you can do something for them, you can change what you're asking to do for them until they're like,

yeah, I would love that. Can you take care of that for me? And then all of a sudden you can see the interest, their eyes let up, they engage with you. And you're like, okay, maybe this is right. But the whole time, though, and maybe this committee will love this aspect, is that if you give without reciprocity, you only get, because like the, sorry, give without expectation, then anything you get back is just bonus. If you're giving in order to, then you will always be let down. And that's like, that's just hard to take, but it's just reality.

And so I think the more you can do that, I mean, the reason I built my brand in this way was just on the thesis that if I gave more stuff that was better than everyone else in my mind. I'm sure there are many people who do better things for free that eventually I had no, I have no monotic, you know, like there's a monotization master plan. It's just eventually an opportunity would come up that would make sense. And so, and it has worked out that way. But the amount of people that, you know, asked me to do X, Y, and Z for a quick, you know, whatever money dollar is a lot. And it continues to increase. But it's because they can see that there's this goodwill deposit in an audience.

And it's just that the audience size just starts really small and it grows. And when I was starting out, one of the easiest frames of mine that helped me get through kind of like the shitty, the second way of letting people know is letting people know publicly when you post stuff on social media for free, is that when I would see, like, I would click and see the little views, and it would be like 17 views, I actually imagined a room like this. So I was like, well, if I would get in front of a room of 17 people or 22 people and they wanted to hear something that I had, I was like, that would feel fine.

I'd be like, oh, cool. They like, it's like a class presentation. And so just frame me it that way is like in the real world rather than like looking at Instagram and social media metrics as. in comparing those metrics to Mr. Beast, but just comparing it to the real world, I was like, oh, this is actually making an impact. And so that actually got me through a lot of the early,

because what all people don't know is like my podcast, I was telling you the beginning of the story earlier, I made podcast for, I'm now on my sixth, as of July, I think my sixth year of making podcasts. For the first four and a half years, I averaged two to three thousand downloads a month. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that.

But it stayed there. for the entire time. But for me, I was like, I'm giving a keynote every month. All right. That's not bad. You know, three times a week. I do that in total.

And all of those together is a keynote every month. And I was like, that's not bad. So if I had to talk for a full day, because that's pretty much what a month of podcast was, I was like for a keynote, that's a worthy trade. And so I think if you can reframe it that way,

it can get you through the early rise. 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, 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 with someone else. And comparison is such a, is such a challenging thing to deal with. Because you start comparing yourself to the people that you follow and the people that you like,

you can get in some really negative psychological feedback loops. Like I remember my podcast kind of plateaued around 2015, 2016 at like 25,000, 30,000 people. And it's just stuck there. And I got like kind of hella discouraged. And then somebody goes, when was the last time you went to a basketball game, man? I was like, oh yeah, you know,

I went to a Lakers game, you know, a little while ago. I was like, how many people were sitting there? I was like, I don't know, 20,000. They're like, yeah, yeah, your podcast is reaching more than that. And I was like, imagining that stadium. I was like, oh, shit, you're right. Why am I being disappointed?

It was because I was looking at Rogan's numbers. I was looking at Tim Ferriss's numbers. And these are my homies, you know? So I was like, well, these are my friends and they're fucking killing it and I'm stuck. But that perspective shift shifted everything. And it like reinvigorated my love for the podcast. and it's important to, yes, look out at the field and be aspirational about it.

But comparison is really the root of all difficulty. One thing I say is competition is sacred comparison is profane. You know what I mean? Like, compete. Go out there, compete. Set your sights on some of those people and be like, all right. Like, I think I got the goods. I'm coming for you.

In that loving, friendly, competitive way, same way I'll come at it on the basketball court. I'm going to come for you. I'm going for your ankles. You know, like, let's go. Oh. And then at the same time, but not getting lost in that comparison, which then demoralizes you and then puts you into a state of inaction. I actually really like this topic a lot, and I won't spend too much on it.

But the nuance of comparison I find really interesting, because I find comparison to be an exceptional tool. It's the judgment of the comparison that hurts. Right. So it's like, I can say that Brogan is doing better than me, period. And that's objective. There's nothing wrong with that. He's doing better than me.

He's got more, more listeners, all that stuff. It's where it's like he's doing better than me and therefore I suck is the, it's the second part, I think, that people get in trouble with. So, like, I love comparison from a measuring tool perspective, just not as a judgment tool. And I think that's been helpful for me because then I can like look at everyone's stuff and say, what is he doing better than me? Because one of my big rules in business is that if someone's making more money than me,

they're better at the game of business in some way. And that has served me really well, because a lot of people don't like to, well, I don't like what they do. It's like, okay, well, do they make more money than you? Yeah, but they're not, what are they doing better than you? Because they're making more money than you. And the nice thing in business is that it's a very objective game. Like, you can see how someone's doing, objective.

Like, they're doing better. And so it means that they're doing something or they did something prior to that point better than you did. And I think dissecting that, like the reason that I'm on this stage right now is because Kylie Jenner was on the front of Forbes when she was 20. And when I was 27, I felt like really, cool. Like I was, I think I told him, just under 20 million that year personally. And I was like, I'm good at business. And then she was a billionaire and she was a girl and she was eight years

younger than me. And I was like, what the fuck? And so now I did feel terrible. But I was like, she is doing something. She understands something that I don't understand. And at that point, it was brand. I didn't get it. I was super transactional with business, which was just like, I was all about like conversion and optimization, how much like what are CPMs, like cost per impression, how much we're spending, how much we're making, like, what are our conversion rates across the whole process, like, where can we do more upsell, all that kind of stuff. Like it was all quant.

And when I saw her just like overnight become a billionaire, I questioned kind of like my fundamentals around business. And it was that and then the Rock and then Cluny and then Connor McGregor and Hooda Beauty, all of these people starting these billion-dollar brands overnight that I was like, I don't understand brand. And so that's what actually launched. me into doing this. It was only because of that. But I think if there had been a flip side of like,

well, it's just because Christianers her mom and whatever to protect me, like my ego, then I don't think I'd be here. And so I think it is valuable to compare and be able to pull out like what they're doing better than you and then just looked at that objectively. Like I'm not saying I want her brand, but I can see what she did and then emulate that in my way.

Or at least that's how I see it. And prove it. If you believe you're better, go prove it. Yeah. You know, like that's the reality. So many times, you know, you'll get this. And people, I mean, people do it with me all the time. You know, they'll be like, oh, yeah, must have been nice with daddy's money.

My dad, my dad went insane when I was 30, like literally, lost his mind, you know. Like, and I started on in at 31. And there was not a dollar that came from my family, came from my parents. But my dad was a very successful commodities trader. He's written about in books and things like that. People don't know the fucking story. But they want to say that I was successful because, Oh, it must have been daddy's money.

Must be nice. Must be nice. And then you get all of these things where people try to discredit your success based upon their own things because they don't want to look hard at themselves and say, shit, maybe I could have done that too. You know, maybe I could have raised, I mean, I raised 100. On it started as a ultimately a nine figure business. It started with I scraped together $110,000 from one, my best friend, Bodie,

and another, this investment banker who I'd done a lot of work with and working with other companies and making pitch decks for them and just helping them out. And neither one of them even looked at the business plan, but they love me. And they're like, yeah, bro. And like, are you into this? And I was like, yeah, I'm into this.

And we never had a Series A. We never raised any other money. We just grew it from that amount of money to a nine figure business. And that's just actually how it went. Now, I'm not going to discredit that my father implanted psychological ideas because he made his own money. He started with a $30,000 account, turned it into $40 million as a pioneer in futures trading.

So he believed in himself. and he gave me that belief. And that is a privilege that I had a model of somebody who said, son, like if you're good enough, you'll be able to make it. But that's what I got. And that's invaluable, granted. But people will always try to discredit what you do because they don't want to look hard in the mirror and say,

fuck, I could do that too. Like, it's possible for me. I really like this a lot. No, I do. I really do. because the must be nice perspective is actually one of my favorites because there's I feel like if you're playing like chess right they're like making a chess move out you like must be nice and they want to discredit whatever it is but I I've spent a lot of time trying to think about like the right

what's the right answer and at least for me it's been you're right and then you just keep living your life you know what I mean because so Because like at the end of the day, like, let's say all of my success I owe to my father, which I came out as a sperm, so sure. You're right. And to the same degree, I was born in America. I was born as a man. Both my parents were there for the first five years.

You know what I mean? So like, sure. You're right. And? Because at the end of the day, like, the stuff needs doing, right? And so like to build a business of this size, these are the activities that create that. And so you can be an absolute douchebag. You can be a white guy, black guy, girl, in Pakistan, whatever.

And if you do those things, you get the outcome. If more people find out about your stuff, you will make more money. Fight me. Right. It's just like, they're, there, I try and make bets on the objective truths. And so like for, and I'm circling back to money here, get back to it. If you want to, you want to win on plans that don't require luck. And so.

If more people find out by my stuff, I'll make more money. Okay. If more people like my product and tell their friends, I'll make more money. If every person who bought my product told at least one other person, I would never need to advertise ever again. So if that were the actual problem, why would I not put all of my emphasis on solving for that? Like, that alone. Because if you accomplish that one thing, you're done. And so people spend a lot of time on the logo, the brand, the website, the colors, the whatever.

When it's like, how do I make it so good that people, A, are like, like, oh my God, I have to get this. And let me tell my friends about it after I've consumed it. And if that's where you put the disproportionate amount of your energy, you'll get a leveraged return. And so I talk about leverage a lot because I just believe the game of business about leverage. And to define leverage, it's the difference between what you put in and what you get out. Right. So if I do, if I, if I DM people one-on-one, I put a certain amount of effort in and I get something out. If I use a dialer that does 10 times the amount, I put the same amount in in terms of effort, but I might get 10 times back.

So that technology gave me leverage. Right? If I can borrow someone else's money to start a business 10 times bigger right off the bat, that's leverage, right? It's just the difference between what you put in and what you get out. And brand, for example, the reason I think it's a worthwhile endeavor to invest in it is because if you build it one time, then you can use it multiple times. So it's the idea of build once, sell twice.

So if you can build things that, like, I mean, you spent a long time on Alpha Brain, and the work that you did on the onset of Alphabrain continues to pay dividends to this day. That's a high leverage activity. In those early years, you put a lot in, but then there was significantly more on the tail. And so the rush is ultimately what kills most people because they're so concerned about like,

I need to make money tomorrow, and I can appreciate the short-term need for that. If any of you guys know my story, I get that. But as much as you possibly can balance, how can I solve a problem for good so that I can just move on to the next boss rather than having to keep fighting every month to pay payroll or pay myself or make whatever nut I need to make. And so building a brand works like that in terms of if more people, my reputation can spread on its own,

then I don't need to do more advertising to get more customers. And so I'm going to hit the eight real quick just because I think it'll be helpful for you guys. But you can reach out to friends 101. You can reach out to strangers one-on-one. That's cold calls, cold DMs, cold messages, whatever. You start with friends because they're a little nicer. I go to strangers. You can pose content publicly

where you can run paid ads. Those are the only four things that you can do to let other people know about your stuff. And so right now, if you're like, the majority of my day, I'm not making money

and I'm not doing those four things, you're fucked. You're not going to make more money. Like those are the only four things that one person can do to let other people know about their stuff. Period. Now, the more leverage

is getting other people to do that stuff for you. And so version number one is that you get your customers to do those core four for you. They tell their friends, they tell strangers, tell their audience by posting about your stuff,

leaving a review, leaving a testimonial, whatever. Or now they're probably not going to run ads for you, but those are the four things that that customer could do on your behalf. You could get an employee to do that. So you hire somebody who's like, hey, I've got this system where I reach out to this many people, or cold, cold email as many people, are a cold call as many people?

I make this amount of content. I'll record these videos. Can you edit it and cut it so I can do more, right? So you get some time back. So now you just record and then they do all the cutting and distribution. So you get more for what you put in. Leverage. You can hire an out.

advertising agency to either make content for you or run ads for you, right? Those are things that, there's also cold outbound agencies that do that as well. You can hire an agency to do it. And then finally, you can get affiliates, which is just other businesses that already have your customers. And so affiliates also work like influence, so like Rogan would be in affiliate. Now you had equity and whatnot. But fundamentally, somebody who already has your customer base, they've already done all

of the work to assemble everyone. They already have everyone's attention. And then you make, and this is why the, uh, the, uh, the, thing that we started with this, with deals, you make an agreement that makes sense. And so maybe you do have a friend that has a medium-sized following. Treat them as though they weren't your friend and ask them to treat you like you're not friends. And then if you can still come to a deal, then you'll both benefit because you would have done it anyways with a stranger.

And so those are the four ways that you can get other people to promote your stuff. And so right now, if you're not using the core four, because you can use the core four to get those other ones. So you can use the core for paid ads, outreach. posting content to get employees. You can use those to get affiliates. You can use those to get agencies. You can do those to get customers.

And then that's the cycle. So you use those four, get customers. And then those customers, use the core four to get you more customers. Use the core four to get affiliates who then get your customers. And then it goes in around and around. Is this making sense? Okay. So if you're not spending your time doing that,

you are not spending your time trying to build your business. What about for people who are listening right now and they're like, damn, I don't know if my product's that good. I don't know if my service is that good. And they're thinking, like, I think I got to go back and ideate and figure this out. Like, what advice do you have for that type of person? So there is a baseline of promotion that you have to have. Because, like, again, like, let's base this on absolutes.

If no one knows about your stuff, you will make nothing ever. So someone has to find out about it. So you have to promote first. You have to let people know that you have a thing. Now, scaling that promotion, you only want to do when you know the thing's good. But in the beginning, you will have to let people know, and you have to accept the fact that it won't be as good. And the reason I'm a big fan of the samples is that it lowers the stakes,

especially in your personal reputation. And so you're like, hey, I've got this new service that I'm trying out. Can I try it out? Like, can I give it to you? Can I gift this to you, please? Right. Now, if no one wants to take your free thing, that's great feedback. Like, this is probably not something that they're going to pay for.

Right? But if people are willing to take the free thing, there's three ways you can make money from somebody you give away for free. Number one is that they become a paying customer. Awesome. They're like, hey, I've given this to so many people that I actually can't take the demand anymore. And so I have to put a pay wallet because my time's limited. And people get that.

Of course, well, I am willing to pay. Great. Version number one. Version number two is they say, you know what? I can't financially whatever right now, but I think this is awesome. And you're like, great, can you leave me a review? And so then they leave you a testimonial, case study, whatever, so that you can then use that to get you another customer.

And the third way, I have in my book, but I forgot what it is, but it's in there. But basically, they can leave your review, they can send your referral, or they, actually, I think I just called two as one. They can get you another customer as a referral. Yeah. So they leave a review, get you another customer, or they themselves become a customer for you. And all of those come from you just giving something for free. And so if you're like, okay, well, my shit sucks, fine. Give it to them for free and then ask them for fee.

And that's, so if you want to make a trade, it's like, listen, I'm not going to charge you. I just want honest feedback on how I can make it better. That's it. And if they like it, review. If they don't like it, personal review. Not public review. And then you spin the wheel of iteration. And like, if I can drill this into everyone's mind, like, you're not going to get it right the first time.

Like, I love the, I mean, I love the Matrix. It's my favorite movie of all time. But it says, like, everyone falls the first time when they're talking about Neo trying to make big jump. And like, I just think it's so true with, with the business stuff is like, everyone falls the first time and everyone has this idea that they're going to be Jeff Bezos on their first swing. And like almost every entrepreneur with the exception of Bezos and Zuck have many a graveyard of failed attempts. But they're not really failed attempts. They're like, oh, yeah, that's when I learned that this thing was really important.

So then my second business, I did this better. And that one did better than my first business did. But then your second business, you're like, oh, I didn't understand this part. And then you make your third business. And so like every one of the businesses just becomes less. to ultimately build the asset that matters, which is you. And that's at least how I see it, which is that, like, the friction we get from the marketplace

only serves to build who we become because at the end of the day we're going to die. Everyone's going to forget about us. It's not going to... Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. And it's not ultimately going to matter whatever accumulation we have here.

And so I see that as my in-progress journey so that I can get rewarded for the actions that I'm doing despite not necessarily having, like, money manifests. See? There you go. in front of me immediately. Right. I got, right. And that's at least the framework that I have with it.

But if your shit sucks, give it to more people and ask them for feedback and then just ask them what it would take to suck less and eventually it'll be good. One of the things that has really been helpful for me is there was a time when I was trying to develop like this mousetrap that would be valuable, not an actual mousetrap, using that as an example.

Some thing, some widget, some service, that would be beneficial. to this niche audience that I was imagining existed. And that never fucking worked. The only thing that ever worked was, do I want to be a customer of this now? Like, what do I want now? Alpha Brain was born out of a conversation with me and Joe Rogan.

What supplement would you like the most? Because I had a couple other failed supplements. They worked for me, but I was in this kind of unique position. I was like, no, I'd like an all natural cognitive enhancer in atropic. It's like, all right, great. We're going to make one because I wanted one too. So I was a customer. And I'm still a fucking customer.

I think I got a fucking alpha brain in my in my pocket right now, right? For my for my talk coming up. It's in my other pocket. But regardless, trust me, I was a customer. I was a customer. And that's one of the important things. And then it's not only are you a customer now, you can also go back in time and be like, man, when I was 25, what would 25 year old Aubrey really of fucking love?

Because you have that data and you know it. You know that if you would have bought this when you're 25, then maybe, that's your audience. That's okay. Or maybe you're hypothesizing like, what is the me of tomorrow or five years from now or three years from now? What does that person really want? But using yourself as a guide, and then not only using yourself as a guide, but then also if you're going to be the founder of this, you've got to actually embody and represent what that thing you're selling. On its slogan, our tagline was total human optimization. If I was a lazy, fat slob, And I'm trying to market a company about total human optimization.

People look at me and go like, really, bro? Like, really? Because you have to have the clout also to represent that. So if you're offering even a service, you know, about regulating your emotions, but your emotions are all over the place. Maybe that's not the right service for you. Like find what you're actually competent at and then say like, all right, what could have helped me get more competent if I would have offered that to me five years ago,

et cetera, you know? And that's also, it's sometimes it can work. I do know some people who sell, you know, weight loss supplements who are about 100 pounds overweight. And it's like, you know, but they still are able to do it. So it's not that it always fails, but to me, that's the surest guideline. It would be like, all right, what's your core competency? Can you prove it?

You know, do you have the evidence? You back it up. And are you a customer or were you a customer or will you be a customer? And all of those have to hit the checks. I agree wholeheartedly with all of that. I would honestly make the same three points in a different way, just to add color or texture to it. So number one is Y Combinator, if you're familiar with them,

they're like pretty big investors in Silicon Valley. And now one of their stipulations is that they want founders to have lived with the problem for five to 10 years. So whatever the problem that is you're trying to solve, they're like, man, I just wish this didn't suck this much. And if you've really lived with it, like I've had breathing problems for my whole life. And so like, I've always thought of like,

if I were to start some sort of business around that, that would be one that I've tried every solution that's out there. And I can tell you the pros and cons. And I would want to become, which is point two for you, it's like, I'd want to become a customer of that business. From a, from a tactical perspective, so point two, um, this is, this is services specific. What I'd recommend doing is giving way more away,

uh, than would be reasonable to charge for. So you start with the kitchen. sink. You basically keep adding things to how much you're willing to do for someone until eventually you're like in their house cooking them dinner. And you're like, okay, would you do this? They're like, yeah, fine. And you're like, okay, now I can start trimming things from this and thinking, okay, there's a hundred things that I could, that I am, I committed to doing these first five people. It turns out 80% of them they don't really care about. And I can actually charge the same price and eliminate 80%. So it's like, get the yes.

and then work backwards. Because sometimes it's a lot, because with physical products, you basically have to keep iterating on the product until you get the yes. With services, you can just keep adding, and then when you get the yes,

work backwards. And so that's just a tactical thing. And so we have a story about that is when I was starting in the gym business, I kept trying to sell memberships, and it just like really didn't work well for me. Now, that probably was I sucked at sales and I didn't really think gym members were that valuable myself.

I was a chief skate. I was like, I know, 50 bucks a month. You and me, sister. And so, So, but then I was like, well, what do they really want? I was like, well, they really want us to lose weight. They don't really care about the gym. They just want to lose weight.

And so I was like, well, what would actually take for somebody to lose weight? And I was like, what if I texted you every morning just to make sure that, like, you were on point? What if you could send me all your meals every day and I would, I would like make sure that they were matching. And what if, like, when you go out to eat, I'll give you a list on how you can do that at restaurants. And like, what if I can I drink? I'm like, you can if you do it on this way. And what if, and when you work out, do you? want me there with you? Yeah, that'd be awesome. Okay, I'll do that. And then so I started adding all

these things and supplements that you probably want to take along the way. And I had this big amalgamation of stuff that everyone needs because whenever you're solving a problem, there's always one, another problem that's going to happen if you actually solve it. But there's also like, like, a hundred micro problems. So if someone joins a gym, it's like, well, they're like, shoot, I don't have gym clothes. I don't know how to buy the right food. I don't know how to cook the food. I don't know how to store the food. I don't know how to make food taste good. I don't know how to work out. I don't know. Like, there's all these other problems. And so it was thinking forward of like, how could I solve all of them? And that becomes this huge thing.

And then I started offering that. And people were like, yeah, I'll do that. And I was like, great. But I was able to charge way more than I did before because I was actually solving the problem rather than selling a commoditized solution that they could price compare me with somebody down the street. And so that was point two is give away the kitchen sink and then trim down to make it profitable. Because in the beginning, you're not worried about that yet. You want to get people to actually want to buy your shit. And then you can worry about the profit. And then the third point that you made was about legitimacy. So I see this on the content side too. And I'm sure many of you guys see this, which is, you know, the girl who's an emotional wreck giving emotional advice.

Or the couple that you're like, and they're like, come to our love workshop. And you're like, I don't know if I want to. And so I'm just a big advocate of proof over everything because your message is consumed within a context. So like Elon Musk can tweet like, shits are awesome. I'm on the toilet. And it'll get a million likes.

But if you tweet that, you probably won't. Some people will be like, are you okay? Does someone steal your phone? Right. But it's consumed within that context. And so I would say that the context on a scuff from one to a hundred of the message, 90% of the message is your background. 10% is the actual thing that you're saying.

And so I'm not an idiot when it comes to the fact that, like, I had to go build a $100 million net worth, have a $50 million exit, all these other things before people listen to my podcast. I made the podcast for five years. No one gave a shit. But then when I had objective proof, Then people went back and listened to five years of podcasts on road trips straight through like,

this is gold. And then they told people. But they couldn't consume the message because there was no context around it. And so I would say solve for context. And then the message kind of takes care of itself. Because also when you do have the proof, you also will have the pudding because you got there. And so you do know how to get there. Whereas if you are on the journey, and I think there's an element to like documenting something like,

hey, we're working on our relationship is very different than come listen to me for my relationship. It's, I ate this for breakfast. I thought it tasted good versus this is what you should have for breakfast. It's nuanced, but it's different. And so if you're on the come-up, I would stick to how I rather than how to, and it will protect your reputation when you're making this content because no one can shake a finger at you. You're like, I'm just saying what works for me.

You can do whatever you want. This is what work for me. And I think that will help you get over some of the creation block, for those of you who do choose to make content to advertise your stuff. And it certainly has helped. has worked for me.