The Game with Alex Hormozi - The "New" entrepreneurial golden resource...and how you are probably leaking it...✨ | Ep 68

Episode Date: August 1, 2018

"The things that got you here are not the things that will get you there." Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) talks about the importance of managing attention, which he argues is the most valuable resource for entrepreneurs. He shares personal anecdotes and insights from successful business owners to emphasize the need for discipline and focus to grow and succeed.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:(0:34) - Importance of attention over time management(4:00) - High-level entrepreneurs prioritize attention and limit distractions(6:29) - Outworking others not key to long-term success(9:32) - Attention enables wisdom, opportunities, and solutions(11:52) - Clarity allows focus on growth. Discipline is key.(16:01) - Limiting beliefs hinder success. Expand mindset for growth.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

Good on everyone. Happy Thursday. This is a little bit less common for me. I'm going to make a video or I guess podcast depending on how you're consuming this on a pretty pine the sky topic. And I titled this the new entrepreneurial golden resource and how you're probably leaking it. So a lot of people don't know this, but I probably, I would say I mentor four or five people on the side, not in a formal business setting in terms of like them paying me or anything like that, but just people that have become friends that I've taken interest in their business, and I've helped them along. And invariably, and what's interesting is that the higher up you go,

the less tactical the mentorship is. And so I have, so I've had the fortune of actually connecting and befriending my first billionaire friend, which is cool. And what's happened as a result of that is that I obviously obsessively look at what people who are doing better than me are doing. And then when I'm relaying to the people who I'm trying to help, there's this one resource that people who make a ton of money manage extremely well and people who do not, do not. And a lot of people, I would say mistakenly think that the number one resource is time, right?

Everyone's like, time is money, time is money, time is money. And I would argue that that's not necessarily true. I would argue that attention is money. And that is the golden resource. So the billionaire friend that I have, he's actually been helping me. on the new endeavor that we are launching to our gym lords soon, which I think will change the industry. And anyways, he's been helping me with that stuff. But like, here's an example. On his phone, his phone does not ring unless you are already a contact that has been whitelisted.

His phone doesn't ring. He's impossible to reach, right? And the more, the more successful, the larger your company grows, the more you scale, the more you need to scale. The only way to scale you is because you do have a finite amount of attention. And so what happens is you have to decrease all of the other things in your life that drain attention because you can have as much time as you want. But if you're not there, you're not potent, you're not able, then you can't get anything done with that time that you're supposedly allocating, which is why a lot of people end up in this in-between state of always everywhere and at the same time nowhere.

right and so they're they're everywhere but they're not paying attention to anything and that's and the reason that it's difficult to focus is because entrepreneurs this the the character trait that made us into entrepreneurs is that we're go-getters we're risk averse we're creators we're innovators we're builders right we have all of those traits but the difficulty is is that the thing that gets you from zero to one is not the thing that gets you from one to two right and so one of the the reason that you have to totally morph and why you have to be a growth-oriented individual is because is you have to change your own individual character traits in order to progress as a business owner.

And so like I said, the things that got you here are not the things that are going to get you there. The things that got you here, which is your own internal skills, are not the things that you need to pass on to other people. So the only way that you were able to grow your business at a certain point is by growing other people, right? And the only way you can do that is if you have the attention and the bandwidth in order to do so.

And that's why if you look at a business owner, and like the more I obsess on looking at billionaires and people who are doing better than we are, is I look at how quiet, and how clean they keep their space. And I mean that both in a literal sense that, like, their surroundings, their office, their house, their homes, their cell phone, their computers, right? It's quiet, right?

Everything. Like, it's pristine. And when you talk to these people, there's a certain amount of tranquility that's there. And they just have very low tolerance. And it's not that they're trying to be impatient with you or impatient with the world. It's just that they understand that they have so, like, they're operating at such a high level that there's so many things that are demanding of their time and attention that they just like, they can't. And so they have to forcibly remove themselves from so many different situations. And I'm going to give you an example, like, I'm trying to think of a good one that happened recently.

So, man, I don't want to use that one. Okay. So one of the people that I'm somewhat mentoring, right? had four businesses and this is something that happens so many times it looked like like you want you want a hundred thousand dollar coaching this is what happens in hundred thousand dollar coaching questions and I'm being honest with you what happens is someone who's coming in usually doing between one and three million dollars a year can't get past a certain point right and the reason they can't get past is because they only have so much attention they that spread between four or five

different cakes that's when the gym owner has four gyms and is making less money than they did when they had one gym because the amount of attention that they can allocate to one facility has gone down so much that with fixed costs, they basically are breaking even, right? And so the same thing happens. Now, that entrepreneur is probably making one to three million dollars in gross revenue, but not taking anything home because they don't have the attention to actually put onto things. And so in order to grow, you need to do less. In order to grow, you need to do less. And that comes from both delegation and also choosing what not to do. The better you get, the better the opportunities that you

have to say no to. Imagine the level of opportunities that we have now. I'm just being honest. So imagine how many things we could do or try and JV with or do a partnership with or whatever because of the distribution network that we have and the trust and the goodwill that we have with the gym owners that we have in our network, right? A lot. I get, you know how many people cold message me? Like, I have an opportunity for you. I'm like, really, you have an opportunity for me, right? And so the better you get, the better your opportunities you have to say no to, which is why becoming a higher and higher and higher level entrepreneur is more and more difficult because it requires discipline.

It's not about doing more. It's about doing less because we innately want to do more. So doing more of your own internal characteristic, if that was what it took to get to be more successful, then everyone would be more successful because it would be something that does not take effort because that is something that we already do. It's like, man, I outwork anyone. I've got all this work with it. Cool.

That gets you from zero to one. It's not going to get you any further than that. So stop identifying with that. It was something that I used to identify with. I was like, I'll outwork anyone. That was something that I used to think about. And it was a character trait. It was an identity thing.

And the more you grow, the more you realize that your identity needs to be fluid. Because what it needs to be is exactly what it needs to be at that given time of development. Because the character traits that I'm going to have to emphasize in a year are going to be different than the ones that I have to emphasize now. And so the skills that you need to learn like delegation, leadership, those are things that are not the things that take you in the beginning. You have to be independent. You have to be hustling. You have to be grinding.

You have to be willing to put in the work because no one else will do it for you, especially if you have no capital to start, which most of the people who are on here are in that situation. And so to reel this back in, the number one thing that you have to be paying attention to is where you are paying your attention. Hey, guys, love that you're listening to the podcast. If you ever want to have the video version of this, which usually has more effects, more visuals, more graphs, you know, drawn out stuff. Sometimes it can help hit the brain centers in different ways. You can check on my YouTube channel.

It's absolutely free. Go check that out if that's what you are into. And if not, keep enjoying the show. Right? Like you spend attention. That's why they call it paying attention. It's because it is a resource. And most people don't pay attention to that, right?

And so one of the things that a lot of people don't know about me, this one's going to go long. Some of the things that a lot of people don't know about me is that I, for nine months, paid a coach to teach me one thing, which was to manage my attention, was to teach me how to think. And so for 90 minutes, every single day, all I did was talk about what I was thinking about. Think about that. Every day, I paid attention to what my attention was. and when I did that all of a sudden my business blew up right and I realized that I had toxic relationships

I had toxic relationships with parents I had toxic relationships with friends or pseudo friends things that I that were taking my attention past things that I had on my mind that I knew I had not handled so those are called like open loops or open cycles right so when you have something that you like I haven't resolved this then you need to handle that and you'll get that attention back because what happens is you have this bowl, this tiny little bowl of marbles, that each of those marbles is a unit of attention, right, if you had to measure it. And so you put little marbles of attention on your childhood traumas. You put little marbles of attention on your marriage. You put little marbles of attention on your health. You put little marbles of attention on your spirituality,

and then massive marbles of attention on your business. But the thing is that sometimes you need to quiet and collect all of these other little marbles so that you have more potency, more potential energy, more potential units of attention to spend on the one thing that you're trying to grow, which in this case would be your business. And what's interesting is that what happens is that things that were perceived as difficult become really easy. And I don't know if you've ever had this happen, but like if you were in college or you were in high school and you're like, hey, I can't solve this problem, this math problem, and you were exhausted, then you go to bed and you wake up the next morning. And then all of a sudden it seems really easy. You're like,

I don't know why I didn't see that before. Because attention gives you the ability to see, right like if you're if you think about wisdom right wisdom is an ability to see what other people cannot see right two people are presented the same situation the wiser person sees things that the other person does it and how can you see better you see better if you have more ability to see which comes from your most viable resource attention how much horsepower do you have right and so look at the things that you have in your in your life right now like if i see someone who has a messy relationship life who's got a messy love life who goes out every weekend and gets trashed right I can tell you,

billioners don't do that. The whole Tony Stark, like vision of the entrepreneur is a farce. It's not true. Don't believe that. Every single billionaire, every single high-level entrepreneur

is quiet, unbelievably quiet. They keep themselves completely isolated. They have a bubble around them of layers of protection. They're like, for me, it's me, and then there's Layla,

and then we have our CEO, and then we have our, executive assistant team because we have a team of EA's at this point we have four who work the next level there's no one who has direct access to me including our employees no one does and that's because it's it would deserve you you guys our gym owners if everyone had access to me the reason that i don't respond to facebook message is not because i don't want to it's because i literally can't and if i did i would be deserving everyone because then my attention would be split because someone can't generate leads in their mind or whatever. You know what I mean? Like,

because these little things, these little things that are perceived as huge issues to you in that moment because you have a little bit of attention, you have so little left that everything seems like an explosion. But when you have lots of capacity, big problems seem small. And small problems seem big. And it sounds reverse. Because what you do is you start seeing that all of these things are attention drains and you just say, I don't want to play anymore. And you stop playing. And then all of a sudden, everything gets really simple because the only things you have to do become really simple. At our gym lords event, one of the things that we had to do or that I had everyone do was simply define the number that they needed to have in their gym, number of EFTs,

in order to have the lifestyle that they wanted to have. Really simple process. Most people didn't have that, right? But it's amazing what happens when you have clarity, because it allows you to put your attention in one direction, right? And then it gives you a litmus test. Will this help me grow this number? Yes or no. Yes, cool. Let's do it. No. Ignore it. And it takes discipline to say ignore it. It takes discipline. That's why it's hard. That's why most entrepreneurs aren't successful. That's why most entrepreneurs don't grow. It's because it's hard. It's counterintuitive. It's counter your character. And so you have to learn how to not be yourself in order to be the person that you want to be. And that's why most people don't do it. And so to go ridiculously

circle on this. Every time I meet with an entrepreneur and I told you we I coach is probably a loose term but I'll meet with a handful of entrepreneurs on a semi-regular basis and just see how's how's it going. And the question that I always ask is what's your attention? Where's your attention? Right. And if someone comes in and they seem really really like scattered, I already know that their attention's all over the place. They're super spread that they're less able. So of course they can't grow their business because they don't have the very horsepower, the main resource that allows them to grow and push. And so look at your life, look at your relationship with your spouse, loved one, look at your habits,

how you wake up, how you eat, how you exercise, do you drink? Here's an example for why we stop drinking. And it has nothing to do with any kind of, like there's no religious anything regarding this. We stopped drinking because I realized that I would drink at night on a fairly regular basis. It's not like I always had some issue with it. I really didn't. I mean, I drink a lot, but I just, whatever. The point is this, is that I would drink in the evenings because it would help me just de-stress,

but help me unwind. But what that does is it masks the thing that is taking my attention that I have anxiety on, right? And so if you need to take a drink to unwind, then it means you have things that you have not resolved. And so one by one, what happened is that when I stopped drinking, everything got really loud. And so I had to face and confront the things that I had not resolved yet. And so in the beginning, it's the hardest. But then what happens is once you've actually resolved all of those things, the desire to drink goes away because you're like, well, I actually feel really good right now.

I don't want to mess that up. And so it flips. But it took probably six months for that to happen from it. And so I'm just giving that as an example of what having your attention split and kind of gaining that attention back can be. So look at your life, look at your relationships, look at your habits. And the things that are taking your attention, you need to have. handle, complete the cycles, and get the attention back so you can work on the one thing that

you're trying to grow. And if you have side hustles and side businesses, get rid of them. Kill them. That's what people, like, people come and they pay tons of money to tell them, do one thing. And the only reason that they listen is because we make one. And I'm telling you right now. That's what I would tell you. Do one thing. Focus. Do one thing. Focus. Saying it again. That's why most times when someone comes in, they're like, hey, I want to start a online business and a food prep business and a and and a whatever right all all at the same time because one of them is going to take off it doesn't work that way all of them could take off you could have a billion dollar food prep business you could have a billion dollar gym business like

your business like having more businesses is a farce I was talking to a gym owner the other day and he's like yeah I mean two paychecks is better than one and I was like no one fat paycheck is better than two you can have a hundred million dollar roofing business that just repairs You don't need to do general contracting and also windows and also gutters and roots. You can just do one thing and be really, really, really, really, really good at it and make as much money as you want. And so just break that belief of yourself of like, I have to have three things in order to make more money. No, you don't. You don't.

It's not true. You need one thing. I had someone who's in the real estate space who was doing real estate coaching after her first month of being in the coaching. called me up and was like, there's just not enough real estate agents. She was doing like $200,000 a month. And I was like, real estate agents, I was like, how small of a market you think micro gym owner is? I was like, you literally outnumber my market 100 to 1.

And I was like, and we are outpacing your revenue 20 to 1. It's just these beliefs that we have that are silly. And I can tell you that the higher up you go, all of those limiting beliefs disappear. And you just see people who operate a very high level, very quiet. very clean. They're like, if someone walks in the door and is any negativity, those people just get up and leave. Nothing personal. I just can't have that in my life. Right. Someone complains. Someone's negative. Oh, this is weather. Ah, traffic. So, don't worry. I'm just going to get up and go. It's nothing personal. Right. That's how they handle themselves. So thank you guys for

your attention. I hope I gave you a positive return on it. That was my intention. This wasn't a normal type of video that I would normally make, but it was something that was like on my mind. And I just had two or three calls recently where, I had told people to consolidate their businesses, get rid of one, two, or three businesses. And then within a matter of 30 days, two of those people had a multiple of 3x on their total revenue between what they were doing before within the 30-day period just by getting their attention back. So look at what you can consolidate lots of leverage one.

I appreciate you. Shoot a like for someone who feels really distracted. Or if you have a spouse and you're like, we should clean up our stuff. tag them so that you can clean it up and have to get some attention back. All right. Also have an amazing Thursday and I will talk to you guys soon. All right.