The Game with Alex Hormozi - The Point of the Game is to Play (with Chris Williamson) - Pt.2 - Apr. ‘23 | Ep 554

Episode Date: June 24, 2023

"Have a big tiger behind you and stay on the path." Today, join Alex (@AlexHormozi) as he guests on Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson to discuss turning philosophical insights into actionable steps toward success. He stresses defining the input-output equation, overcoming mental clutter, taking action, and discusses the relationship between success and happiness, traits of successful people, and the importance of pursuing desires and avoiding fears. This is part 2 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.Check out the episode on Chris Williamson’s YouTube Channel!Subscribe to Chris’ show Modern Wisdom here - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPnTimestamps:(3:51) - Use your pain as fuel(9:30) - Define your own game(14:10) - The point of the game is to play(25:48) - Directionally correct, not perfect(31:44) - Egos hinder success & limits growth potential(45:23) - AI will drive social mediaFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

And if you're like, well, I don't like doing anything. Well, then that's impossible because your brain is wired to be rewarded for things. And so you are doing things that reward you. That's why you do them. 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. One of the themes that I'm very interested in to do with your work in general.

And it's one of the reasons why it bridges the gap from what we're going through, which are, you know, some really lovely philosophical insights and all of the rest of it. The difference is you seem to have a knack to be able to drag yourself out of the philosophy and get yourself into action. There's not too much mental masturbation that goes on. So let's say that there's someone who's listening to this podcast, you know, thousands of people that are listening who are that person. Millions.

Thousands of people that are that person. There'll be a lot of people that are listening. Don't worry. that person that goes I love when I hear these aphorisms and things and maybe it goes on the whiteboard that's on the front of my fridge for a couple of months. How does that person get from mental masturbation around it to action? That this impacts my life in a tangible way that actually makes a difference to me, any of the things that we go through today. All right. Two things.

One is knowing the input-output equation. The second is knowing what your fuel is going to be. So if you can't define the inputs and outputs that are going to get you what you want, then there's no way to start, right? Because you don't know what you're supposed to do. So you have to define it down to like the most basic first action. So it's like, if I want to start creating content, that it means I have to post something. If it means I have to start doing cold, I always think in terms of business because that's what I'm in. But like, I'm either doing a cold reach out. I'm doing a cold call, cold email, cold DM, whatever that is. I have to make a piece of

content. I have to post it. I have to make a podcast. I have to make a YouTube video. I have to make a short. Whatever that is, make a blog post. I have to run an ad, right? I have to run the ad. I have to press go. I have to spend the money. Whatever it is. Like whatever that core initial action is the input.

Go to the gym, lift the weight, put the shoes on, get in the car. Whatever the input is, you have to define what the input is that's going to get you the output you want. Now, once you know what that input output is, the next one is why aren't you doing it? Right. And so I think a lot of people are looking for something that is very hard to find. And so, and then they attribute their lack of success or lack of action because they don't have passion or motivation, right? And I was the same way. And so the short story around this was that I watched all the TED talks in college.

Like that was like what I was like, I'm not watching YouTube. I'm watching TED talks. And I was like, and then I heard the term mental masturbation. And I was like, oh, that's definitely what I'm doing. I was like, my life hasn't changed at all. And then I got my job, so out of college. And I would read all the self-help books. Like every night, it's all I did.

I just read all these self-help books. And I found one of them that said, there are people who are entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs. And I remember hearing that word, entrepreneur. And I was like, it made me feel sad. I was like, I don't want to be fucking watchpreneurs. Like I'm not some bitch. Like, but like, but I was like, but what if they're right? I am a watch entrepreneur. I'm not an entrepreneur. I want to be one. And from that point, it took me six months to quit my job to actually decide to do the entrepreneurial thing. And the thing, there are many things that contributed to me being able to

leave. And I think a lot of it's not like people were looking for one thing. It might be a big bag of wise, a lot of them, right, that add up together to be above your action threshold. And I think in the early days, people are looking for the big carrot. They want the big vision. They want the big passion. But they don't have it. But I want to, I'll give you the first rule of entrepreneurship that I've learned, which is use what you have. And a lot more people have pain, a lot more people have anger, a lot more people have shame. And if you can use that as your gas in the beginning, you'll eventually get to a point where you can get out of that loop. and then find something that you are really passionate about.

But if you can't tie your shoes, you can't lift the weight, you can't send the DM, then you have to start with whatever you have. And so for me, it was hatred of my current existence. I hated being a entrepreneur. I hated being a wannabe. I hated being one of those people who, like, talked about all the things they were going to do and didn't do anything. I hated living the life that my dad wanted me to live.

I was his bitch. That's what it was. I was his bitch. I was living his dreams out, not mine. And that was, you know, led to that other 22. which was sometimes your parents' dreams have to die in order for years to live. And for me, I realized that the idea that my father had of me as his son, that image had to die in order for the image of myself that I wanted to be to live.

Because I kept trying to quit my job and go be an entrepreneur. And every time I'd have the conversation, be like, ah, come over, we'll talk about it, we'll have dinner, and he'd always talk me off the ledge. It was always over and over again. Good salesman. Yeah. And or great authoritarian. You don't need to persuade when you have compliance.

And so everybody has that person or it might actually be somebody who's talking off the ledge or might should be a voice in your head. It doesn't really matter because that that voice in person that only happened once or twice probably keeps talking to you when you're at home. But the big thing for me when I decided to make the jump and mind you, I was such a bitch about it that I had to drive across the country before I called him to tell him that I'd left. Yeah, I remember. Like I didn't want to. Yeah. I didn't want to confront him, which he then like flew off the handle about. But I just knew, and this is the Tony Robbins quote, but it's just when the pain of staying

the same is greater than the pain of change. And I think that I think pain moves people far, far more effectively than pleasure does. Like the easy thing to, a way to prove it is like point a gun at someone's head and you have absolute compliance and they will do what they need to do, right? Automatically, just like that. Like death is the great motivator. and the gun just reminds you. And so I think that if you can create the figurative gun to your head

of the pain that you're experiencing, and then I'm a big fan of future casting out, negative scenarios. So people are talking about positive visualization. I prefer a negative visualization, which is what if I keep doing what I'm currently doing for the next 10 years? What my life look like then? That usually takes my current pain and then just magnifies it. And then that allows me to get my action threshold high enough

that it goes over the edge so that I can take that first move. And so if you know what the inputs outputs are, of what you need to do, the guy who has a little quote on his wall, and you figure out whatever fuel you've got, not the one you wish you had, but the one you've got, and you use that to do the first input, you've crossed the line. You're in the game. I told a story on the episode that I did with Goggins

about bullying in school. And this was something where I like opened up about a topic that I haven't spoken about a ton because it made me feel weak and it made me feel vulnerable and so on and so forth. But one of the things that's only really, recently happened and it's actually been assisted by the guy that reached out and messaged me this dude messaged and said that he was sorry for what had happened his daughter was going to school and it reflect made him reflect on his time at school and how he

treated me and he was like dude I just wanted to say that I'm sorry I don't even know if you're going to see this I'm happy that you seem to be happy but you know I just had to get it off my chest and that really helped not that I was carrying much yeah but one of the questions you know you've spoken about your dad and this kind of like authoritarian relationship and living out that dream. How did you avoid or how have you got yourself to a stage now where you're no longer driven by a chip on your shoulder toward him? Because I think that there are a lot of people that go through challenges in their past. Yeah. That you find fuel in it. And they go, wow, I can be fueled by hatred. Yeah. phenomenal. I can alchemize this toxic thing into something

which is useful. Totally. But I would imagine that that has a shelf span, right? That if you keep on using that for long enough, there are more optimal ways that you could start to move perpetually under your own motion, transmuted into something else. How did you get past having this chip on your shoulder about the relationship that you'd had with your dad

and where it had set you back or forward or whatever? Or have you? Yeah, I think I have. I think my realization was, you know, first the goal was make as much with my dad, then it was make more than my dad, then it was make more than my dad had ever made. And I realized that the approval that I had, that I saw it was always going to be moved, right? I mean, I've told this story before, but maybe not to your audience. But like when I, when I, my dad and I didn't really speak a ton. You know, we texted, you know, two minute phone call.

Hey, you're alive. Okay, cool. But that was kind of like for like five-ish years after I left home to go do the gym thing. And only once gym launch was like printing money. And so we were, I think I was taking home a million and a half a month at like 27 or something like that. And he gave me a call out of the blue and like my dad doesn't like cold call me. And so I'm sitting at dinner and I step outside. And he says, hey, you're going to want to sit down for this.

And I was like, okay. He's like, I'm sorry. I was like, about what? He was like, everything. And I remember in the moment actually feeling nothing and thinking that was curious and then being like, huh, okay. And I probably should have just like accepted it for the olive branch that he was probably trying to like lean out to me.

But here's what I said instead. I said, you know how people get up on stage when they win the awards and they're like, I just want to thank my mom and dad for always being there. always believe in me. I was like, I'm not going to say that. I was like, because you weren't and you didn't believe in me. And right after that, he was like, well, we'll see how long it lasts. And so it was after that phone call that I realized that everything that I'd done to that point was to try and beat him at his game because everything my dad cared about and not everything. He's a good guy. Like, you know, we're fine now. But like when I was growing up, and it's fairly common in

most foreign families to be very like money driven. And I always knew that kind of subconsciously. And he would never say this, but like, I felt it because whenever he introduced somebody, you tell me how much they made immediately. He'd be like, this is John. John makes this. Like, this is Bob. He makes this. Like, it was just, it was just like the worth and the name was like immediately tied together. And so I realized that I was trying to win his game rather than playing my game. And I think when that happened, it was the same instance of kind of like the blame finger, but just at a different level of saying like, okay, well, I don't blame my dad anymore, but I'm still playing his game. And so I'm winning not my game. I'm winning someone else's. And so I think when

I was like, okay, well, then I have to define the game and the meaning of the game that I want to play. I have more responsibility now because I have to define the rules of what matters most to me, et cetera. But that was where I feel like I got. And maybe there's more that I'll impact later, but that was kind of the next level, at least from my awareness of how I perceived what I was going after. Do you remember you, I think you spoke about people that break the law in an attempt to make money. And you said, we sacrifice the thing we want for the thing that's supposed to get it. So we sacrifice freedom for money in the hopes that the money will give us freedom. Downstream from that, this is one of the best things that I learned for all of last year. And you created the framework and then

I filled it in. So I talked about the tension between success and the desire to feel like we're enough. I think that this speaks to what you're on about here. Success is a strange thing. Presumably we want success because we think a more successful life will bring us more happiness, meaning and fulfillment. Here's the problem.

We sacrifice the thing we want, happiness for the thing which is supposed to get it. Success. Failure can make you miserable, but I'm not sure that success will make you happy. And if you end up with an equation, if you could imagine, like, we sacrifice happiness to achieve success

in the pursuit of happiness. Like, if you just remove success from both sides of the equation, what are you left with? It's just happiness. Now, there are, we can't deny the fact that we're statusful beings, that we require external validation,

we can't just go and live in a cave and peaceful bliss and all the rest of it. Like there are things that we need to do, but I do feel like a lot of the time we overclock our lives with regards to success and the pursuits that we go through in an attempt to do this. And that we sacrifice the thing we want

for the thing which is supposed to get it is like, I see that all the time. I always ask myself, am I overcomplicating this? Like, am I doing more than I need to do? Is there a simpler, way to do this. I think, I mean, I think this is actually a game theory thing. And you're from, okay.

So I can, I can go on it or I can not. Bring it on. Yeah. So I mean, Simon Sinek popularized this, but you have finite and infinite games, right? Finite games where you have known players agreed upon rules and an outcome that wins the game, right? And then infinite game you have known and unknown players, no real. rules and the point of the game is to keep the game going. And what happens is that people apply

finite rules to infinite games and then they wonder why it's not working. What's an example? So a finite game would be like baseball. No, the players went at the end of the game, the person, you tally up the ones for the most runs and you win and there's you can't, you can't run, you can't hold the ball and run it around the basis like there's rules of play with an infinite game. The Vietnam War isn't a simple example that Simon Seneckis, which is basically the U.S. lost the Vietnam War because they were, they were applying a finite truck. which is we're going to win this war. And the Vietnamese people were playing an infinite game structure, which is we're going

to stay alive and keep fighting. And as long as someone is staying alive and keeping fighting, they will beat the person who's trying to end something. And so the infinite frame always conquers the finite. And the thing is that most of the games worth playing are infinite. And so if you were trying to get in shape, you don't win getting in shape. The point is to stay in shape for the rest of your life. You don't win at marriage.

The point is to stay married. You don't win at business. The point is to stay in business and keep doing business. And so the point of the game is to keep playing. And I think if the six, and I would imagine success, if you put all of those things together, it's an infinite game. And so the point of success is to do the things that make you successful. And so if you're doing the things that are making you successful, then you are by definition

winning. And I think that for me of redefining what is a perfect day and living as many of those days in a row as I possibly can, to me that's winning. And I and I obviously have a relatively contrary in worldview, but which is that like when we die, nothing happens. And we know what it was like to die because we've all been dead before, which is when we were before we were alive. But I don't think that what I will do will ultimately matter in 500 million years.

And so that kind of eliminates a lot of the pressure for me around like the external outcome. Sure, I'm human. There are definitely motivators. But if I can just over time chip away at how much that weighs on the scale and I can keep putting more and more coins on the other side towards the infinite game of like the point of the game is to keep playing. And like there are some things that I remind myself over and over again. It's like the point of the game is to keep playing.

That's the point. That is the point is to just keep playing. The point of the game is to keep playing. I very much like that. What was that? You found out the three trait, the three most common traits of highly successful people. Do you remember those? Yeah.

It was, um, it's so funny. A superiority complex. So the three most common traits of hyper successful people that they looked at. And it was interesting because there's the influencer world wants to be like, you have to wake up at five or you have to do cold plungers or whatever the fuck, right? But the thing that, but there was actually very few that they all had in common. So number one was that they had a superiority complex. They thought they were better than other people and that they deserved more. The second is that they suffered from massive insecurity and feeling that they would never be enough. And third,

they had impulse control. And so you've got this combination of people who are like, I want to do this big thing. So this big toward thing. And they've got this big away pain that's like, I'm never going to be enough. I always have to do more. And then they have impulse control that keeps them focused on the goal without seeing the woman in the red dress or getting pursued by her. And that like, so it's like shoot high, have a big thing that motivated, like have a big tiger behind you and stay on the path. Have you ever heard Jordan Peterson talk about that study of starving rats in a tube with a spring attached to that?

No. Fucking brilliant. This is what you're talking about. So starving rats are placed into a tube. Yeah. And they have a spring that is attached to the tail that can measure the force that they pull out. And that's a proxy for desire.

Then they waft the smell of cheese in from the front of the tube and the rat pulls and they measure how hard they want to go. And you think these rats are starving. They would be pulling pretty hard. Then they do another iteration of the study. This time they waft the smell of cheese in from the front, but they waft the smell of a cat in from behind. And the rats pull harder. Yeah. And what's the lesson that you not only need to run towards something that you want?

Yeah. But you need to run away from something that you fear. Yeah. Now the problem, and this is, I like superiority complex, crippling insecurity, impulse control. I like that. The problem is, the people. people who we admire the most due to the most success in the real world don't necessarily have the most admirable internal states. That to me isn't necessarily the most peaceful,

blissful way to live your life. What does it say that especially in the modern world, we revere the people who have external accolades of success? And yet, the three most common traits of these super successful people lead from a place which is almost objectively miserable unadmirable yeah how do we how do we square this circle I think it's just what are we solving for so like I mean a lot of people I love watching last dance which is Michael Jordan's you know mini docu series phenomenal yeah unbelievable um I think most people could see him there and be like I don't know if I really envy this guy's life like he still seems like pretty upset despite being a billionaire despite all these, you know, these other things.

And so I think that if like, what are we solving for? Like my closest friend, Dr. Cashy, he has a statement because he coached Olympic, Olympic teams. And he was like, champions are broken. I was like, huh. He's like, people look at champions and try and find something that that champion has that they don't have. He's like, but it's not that at all.

He's like, they lack something everyone else has, which is an off button. They just don't stop. And at the end of the day, like, If we're optimizing for outcomes, then the most broken person will win. The person who has the absolute biggest desire for achievement, the absolute biggest fear or pain that they're running away from, and the hardest impulse control. Now, impulse control, most people would agree is a good thing. The other two, not as much. And so what are we optimizing for?

What problem are we solving? It's probably the number one most frequently asked question that I ask to our portfolio companies whenever we're about to do anything, which is what problem are we solving? If the problem that we're solving is that I want to be content, well, there's a lot of ways to do that and you don't need to do all these other things. If the problem you're solving is that you want to be the richest man in the world, well, you're going to have to have a lot of superiority complex. You're going to have a lot of crippling insecurity and you're going to have a lot of impulse control and you're going to wait a long time. There's a quote from Jason Pargan that says, except that all of your heroes are full of shit. Your heroes aren't gods. They're just regular people who probably got good at one thing by neglecting literally everything else.

Yeah. I just, I agree with the statement. Fucking money. It's just so interesting to me. I've been thinking about this to do with Billy McFarland. Let me just get this in. Hit it. And that's okay.

Because if they wanted that, then that's the problem that they're solving for. Like, I get criticized all the time for work-life balance. People are like, well, you don't have any hobbies, Alex, and you don't, whatever, right? And I'm like, I don't fucking want any. So why do I have to sacrifice things that I would prefer to do to do things I don't want to do to satisfy your objective measure of what you deem as work-life balance. Why? So that's what, this is where you were talking about.

Was it optimized for the outcome or what's the metric of success? Yeah. You were saying like what is it that people are optimizing for? Right. It seems to me that you have stepped back and decided axiomatically, this is the thing that I'm optimizing for. That I enjoy most doing. Yes. That's, I enjoy playing the game.

And so everything I do is about the game. Yes. My podcast is called the game. I draw pictures all day about business. I write books about business. I make content about business. What pictures do you draw? I've never seen a picture for me.

Oh, dude, 100 million offers. Zillion pictures in there. Oh, are they done by you? 100% all of the drawings are mine. And 100 million are leads has like 100 dodles in it. Isn't it? Oh, yeah. Are they nice?

I think so. Are they cute? Yeah. You got little animals in? Yeah. If they don't have animals in, I'm not going to look at them. There's little bag of money, big bag of money. Like, that's how I'm dead serious.

Sweet. But no, but like, and I spend the rest of my day doing business. And so it's like, why don't you garden? Because I don't care. Here's the other thing, right? I always talk about this. Steffie Graff, one of the greatest female tennis players of all time. And she gets tested when she's 10 years old, 11 years old, and she's in some tennis academy.

And they gauge the players on two criteria. They gauge them on desire to train and skill set. And she was 10 out of 10 on both. So, okay, not only has she got the raw materials to make a phenomenal tennis player, but she'll outwork you and to her it won't even feel like work. That's fucking terrifying. And that's why I do think for the people that look at yourself and say, Alex is on a road to burnout,

it's because you are using your theory of mind about how you would feel if you had to work as much as you do. But, okay, what is the thing that you can do longer than anybody else? And to them it looks like work and to you, it looks like play or feels like play. What would that be? oh, well, for me, it would be computer games or knitting or rock music or whatever it is. It's like, okay. So imagine if you've just got to do that all day.

But instead of it being rock music, it was fucking business. Someone commented the other day, was it you're sprinting on a treadmill. They were concerned that the pace that the show is going out at was going to cause me to burn out. And in retrospect, I'm, you know, in five years time, I'm like, oh, fuck, yeah, I was moving too quick. But I don't think that. Like, I work at the pace that I like to work at. and I also like to see where those limits are. And that's exciting to me to go, okay, just how much harder can I go here?

And then again, you've got to temper it with, that's burnout. Like, that's just the beginning of it. And you only know that after you've burned out like 30 times. But that's, it's tried to say after atomic habits by James Clear, right? But the intersection of like what you love to do, what you're good at and what you can be paid for is like slap bang in the middle of it. slaves worked all the hours they were awake for their entire lives in American history, in Egyptian history, in the rest of the world that had slaves, which is most of the world at some given point.

I think like if they can do it, so can I. Now you're like, well, did they have a happy existence? Well, they didn't get to pick the work they did, but it means that you can work. That's if you have the cap behind you. You can work every hour of the day. I'm like, well, if you get to have the cheese and you get to eat the cheese, whole way you're going, then, I mean, there's the famous quote, you know, the person who, the person who loves walking walks further than the person who loves the destination, right? And so,

like, I think it's the same thing. But the everyone, so many people want to project their idea of, of what they think your life should be like onto you. And it's just completely irrelevant. It just doesn't matter. Like if all I did, if I, if I weren't married, right? Because people were like, okay, well, he is married. And like, I am in shape, but I also just like working out. But if I didn't have either of those things. And all I did was work all day. More people would talk about the work life balance thing for me than they currently do. And who cares? I just like, I just, I fundamentally am like, you are going to die and you're not going to matter and I'm going to die and I'm not going to matter. So why do I care about what you're going to say when you're not even going to show up to

my funeral? Who gives a shit? What is it that you're taking an enjoyment from then? The one step deeper than this. There is something that you're optimizing for. Oh, I love, I love the reward. What reward? The micro rewards I get every day. of operating a business. Of all things business related. Yep. So I love writing the book about business. I love talking to my editor about what we're changing.

Oh, that's a really way better way to say it, right? Or I like tweeting about the thoughts that we have. I love doing discussions like this because I talk about my favorite topic, which is business for the most part. Like, and I actually am pretty averse to punishment. I've learned that about me.

Like, I do not like it. And when I say punishment in the formal sense, like things you don't like, right? And so like, I avoid them. like the plague. I don't do them. And so I just do as many of the things I can that reward me as frequently as possible. But from the outside to a lot of people that looks like punishment. Right. Yes. Interesting. How can someone, uh, cut through societal expectations, the ways they've dealt with past trauma, expectations from parents, all of the things that aren't their thing. Yeah. How can somebody, because what you've done again, axiomatically, a priori, this is the thing

I want to optimize for. How do people find the thing that they want to optimize for? I don't have a thing. Alex, that's fucking great for you with your business. It just happens to be something else that's at the intersection of making a shit ton of money. Yeah.

How do I find anything? I was lucky with that. Yes. That just happened to be the intersection because if I love knitting and I didn't like business, that's a whole set, because like you can turn knitting into a business.

But if I only like knitting, then there's a way to make a living from that. But to get to the person who's like, how do I find my thing? I'm a big fan of being directionally correct rather than absolutely correct. And so I think what happens is most people are trying to find the perfect answer when they have no perspective from which to make a

judgment. They're trying to find the perfect thing to do when they haven't done anything. So how would you have perspective to make a judgment? Like if you try a lot of things in the beginning, which you have to know what your inputs, outputs are, decrease your action threshold enough with either a cheese or a cat, whatever you need. Most people have more cats than they have cheese in the beginning. So use the cat to start running towards something. And the thing is, is the rat, it's so simple. It's like there's cheese here. But what you really just need to know is that there's cheese out there. And there's a cat behind me for sure. Moza Nation, real quick, if you are a business owner that has a big old business and wants to get to a much bigger business, going to $50, $100 million plus.

We would love to talk to you. And if you like that, we'd like to hear more about it, go to acquisition.com. You can apply anywhere on the page and talk to one of our team and see if we can help you get there. And so if I just go anywhere away from the cat, I have a higher likelihood of getting closer to the cheese. Not that I will find it, but I will get closer to it. And I think it's and I've lived my life through a series of rapid iterations not trying to pick the right thing because I just like even when I started my first business I was between frozen yogurt, test prep and a gym. Those are the three businesses that I was choosing between. Makes complete sense. Yeah. Right. A lot of things that I like, right? And so I was choosing between those

things and like, why were those the things? I was like, well, I was pretty good at taking tests in college. So I get that. I like frozen yogurt. And I mean, it sounds simple, but like I was like, everybody likes something, right? And I actually didn't know that I was going to like business. That's the crazy thing. Because also, A, when you and I were younger, Instagram wasn't there. Like, none of this shit existed. And entrepreneurship wasn't cool yet. And so I just hated my job a lot. And I hated where I lived a lot. And so I was like, well, I will just not be here. So, Kat, don't know what city I'm going to go to, but just not this city. Yep. And went across the furthest place from Baltimore, just California. And then I was like, okay, well, what do I hate doing? well, let me not do that, which is, you know, sitting on meetings all day and doing whatever, you know,

doing grunt work for shit that I felt like was meaningless. And instead, I was like, I'll do fitness because I like fitness. And I was like, at the very least, I'll do something I enjoy, which I liked fitness at the time. And if you're like, well, I don't like doing anything. Well, it's like, well, then that's impossible. Because your brain is wired to be rewarded for things. And so you are doing things that reward you. That's why you do them. Like, everything we do is because we've been rewarded for doing things like that in the past. And we project the same activities. And we predict that doing things like we did in the past that reward us, reward us again in the future.

That's where our behavior comes from. And so it's like, okay, well, what has rewarded you in the past? Where's the cat? Go the opposite way. Yeah. So the reverse role model is something similar, but you're almost taking this into a lifestyle perspective. So the reverse role model is if you live in a town or you grow up somewhere,

and there's no one around you like the sort of person that you want to be like, but there are tons of people like the person you don't want to be like. You can say there's a way marker. I don't want his relationship with gambling. I don't want the way that he handles his finances. I don't want the way that him and his wife communicate with each other. It's like, okay, there we go. Warren Buffett, Munger says like an amazing amount of success has been achieved by not trying to be smart, but avoiding being stupid.

So there's your way markers there. But what you're saying is that this is almost like an abstracted lifestyle version of this. These are all of the things that I hate to do. What's the opposite of that? Yeah. And the challenge of, I don't know precisely what the exact thing is, therefore I can't move toward it, is one of mine, which is perfectionism is procrastination, masquerading as quality control. I was going to say it's a, it's a, it's a decision making fallacy. It's a same, it's, this is why investor frames can be so useful.

Like, if you're looking for the perfect investment, you won't find one. There's always downsides. Every, every investment has risk, right? And so using that frame, you're like, well, there's all these. paths, which one do I choose? It's like, well, you have to, the one thing it's guaranteed is if you keep the money, it will go down in value because it'll inflate, right? So not investing is the only way guaranteed to not get a return on your investment. Is that the fact that inflation exists, do you think that's a useful motivating force for business people? You know, you could imagine a different form of world economics where, you know, like embedded growth obligations weren't there and like, whatever, you know, inflation didn't happen. Do you think that that sort of motivates people to actually be like, oh, fuck, like, I need to, I need to do something with this money. I can't just sit. sit and leave it in the bank. I think it would motivate investors. Yes.

More, yeah. But I mean, the business people would just like probably keep more coins in their, in their vault and just keep transacting. It was that scrooge McDuck. Yeah,

they'd be less likely to, they'd be less likely to deploy capital faster. Because if you feel like there's a cost of capital that's higher for keeping it, like letting it sit there, then you have a higher urgency to do something with it. If you have less urgency, then you only do it when you know it's going to crush. You gain nothing from underestimating your opponent.

Mm-hmm. How does this relate to your world? So a lot of the tweets that I have actually come from conversations I have with our portfolio CEOs. And so they'll say something, right? And they're like, oh, we're way better than those guys. And I think somebody said like something like that on a meeting. And I just thought about it.

And I was like, what a stupid thing to say? I was like, you gain nothing from that statement. I was like, you literally gain, like, what do you gain from that? You gain complacency, right? You increase the likelihood of looking stupid in the case that they, they do crush you, right? I was like, because on the flip side, like, how many upset, like the only things that upset the guys who are on the top of the mountain is hubris. Like, there's really no reason that the guy on the top of the mountain should ever lose.

He has the most resources. He has the most, he is the highest perspective. He is the most vision. Like, he has everything. He's all the food at the top of the mountain. And yet, history shows us, humans act like humans. And so we lose because of our egos. And because it hurts to say, what if that person's better than me? And so I think that if you, it actually is really parallel with a different tweet that they kind of took off, which was people underestimate how much smarter you can seem if you have 20 minutes of preparation. Yeah. That's that's so fucking true. Right.

And so like people get into businesses and like, well, what if you actually had to face this team? People were like, well, I don't want to practice. It's like, why not? Like, why wouldn't you practice? Like a lot of fighters show up not having prep for the fight, not really hard. I'm like, what do you gain from that? Because if you practice really hard, you get better, period. And like, all it is is purely an ego play.

The only win you get from not prepping and showing up to the fight is that you appear to be more naturally gifted. And I would rather be known for my work ethic than my natural gift as an aside. But you appear to be more naturally gifted. And then you win by less than you would if you prepared. You gain nothing. And so it's purely an ego thing. but we do it all the time. And so I wanted to, like, my Twitter stream is just thoughts to self.

I deleted it because I didn't have enough room of my profile to say it, but it was originally like, no, it's to self. And it's just like to remind me of things as they come up. Because I fall into that trap too. I'm like, oh, we're going to outperform this guy or like, this company is going to crush it. I'm like, but we don't gain anything from that. It's like, so we just have to assume that we're always the underdog, and then they've got to trick up their sleep that we don't know about.

It's like, that's the whole, only the paranoid survive. A reverse of that or something that's interesting to do with people at the top of the pyramid is there's only one way I know to beat people who copy you get bigger. It's not by direct conflict, but by making them shrink into irrelevance by comparison. Agree. I just, I mean, especially when it comes to content creation, I imagine that this is something that, yeah, that, you know, you see one thing that becomes effective and then downstream from that, a lot of stuff happens. And, you know, if you've done the hard work of forging ahead, trailblazing, pathfinding, split testing, wow, we finally came up with this thing. And then within four weeks, you're like, oh, brilliant. This is all over the internet now.

Well, I always see it as like a first mover thing, which is like, they need me, I don't need them. They require me in order to iterate their content. I don't because I don't look at theirs to make mine. And so, and it's because like, my is. Everybody knows, man, as well. Everybody knows. Every single person that's copying thumbnails, that's copying subtitle,

subtitle styles that's, you know, going after the same talking points, they know deep down that what they're doing is creating a rough-hewn pixelated equivalent of what they think they can try and be. At best, what you can hope for is being the second best Alex Holmosey in the world.

Right. And I'll win that game. But like, they would beat me at being whoever they are. Correct. I mean, it sounds so trite, but like,

I'm trying to say this in a different way so that it hits because like people have heard like there's only one version of you like there's just so much actual meat to that concept because this is this is you know gary originally did the document don't create thing and i think that the the reason that the content that we have is quote original is because like we document i i document through twitter the things that come up in my actual life and so it's not like what's trending right now it's like well i had this meeting with a CEO and he fucking said that thing about the competitor and that's my tweet and there wasn't somebody else in the meeting also going, oh, brilliant, that's a lesson that I can take that I can use

for my Twitter. Right. And so it's all from like original source. And if everyone else, like, and this is on the flip side, if you're the person who's doing this, like, you need to find what your original source is of content because like you will always be second or second. You'll never be first is really the statement. And like, at least for me, if I'm playing a game, I want to play for the long haul.

And the point of the game is keep a game going. and if you want to keep the game going, then you can't be dependent on someone else. There was another one that I thought was quite interesting, especially given the kind of current world of men's advice and rich guy existence online, more people stay poor because of their egos than get rich off them.

At the moment, it seems like egos are being valorized on the internet, especially among men's advice. Yeah. How is it that more people stay poor because of their egos than get rich off them? if there's a bunch of examples of people with seemingly big egos that also have money? I think that's, what's the fallacy?

Whatever the cognitive fallacy for what's in front of your eyes. Availability bias. Was it? Availability bias. There you go. I think there are far more people who are successful and significantly more successful than the people who are visible on content.

And I would say many of those people aren't actually that successful. And so if we're looking at the objective measure of success as like net worth, just for just for the sake of this conversation. There are far more people who are rich and anonymous than there are people who flaunt their Lamborghinis that they rented for a day. Now, I mean,

if you really think about the influencer world of business, there are not that many guys who actually like are really in the game. Like most of those guys sell something from their platform about building a platform. Like that's, not even 95. It's probably like 98, 99%. And so there's only like a very small select. And to be fair,

those guys are all pretty humble. Like you look at the Gary's, you look at the Andy's, you look at the Tom Billy, like these, Ed Milet, like the guys who have become, you know, in the business space, like they're not particularly egotistical guys. And it's usually because they know what hard feels like. And they know what it's like to be inadequate over and over and over again because you only can be inadequate if you go to another level.

If you feel amazing, it's because you haven't moved up. Does that mean that if somebody wants to be successful and they feel like they've still got an ego that, they need to do some work on dissolving that. I think they just need to do harder things. Like, you need to fight harder opponents. Like,

you're winning in this little pool. The only way you can maintain an ego is by believing that you're a big fish in a little pond. Right. Or a big fish in whatever size pond you think it is. And if you're a big fish, you're not in a big enough pond. It's totally delusion. It's hard to comprehend.

Like, Bezos, if you've heard any of his interviews, seems like a very humble guy. But like, you could have a hundred billionaires in a room and he is worth the same amount as them. And then if you had each one of those billionaires, is a thousand millionaires, he's still worth the same amount as 1,100, whatever, 100,000

millionaires and then him. So like, there's just levels to it. And I think the moment you get to ego is the moment you stop growing because you feel like you beat the level, but you just keep repeating the level rather moving up because there is a harder boss. And they just haven't faced it yet. I suppose it's an easy way, you know, if you were going to a karate class, but you decided instead of going to the adult one to go to the one that's under 11s. And you're going to kick the fuck out of all of these kids. And you video it. And you're like,

look at me. And it just happens to be that they're the same size as you. And like, just imagine they're like dumb on the inside, but they're, you know, adult size and you're kicking the shit out of them. It's like,

yeah, do it to Jones. Yeah. Like, not going to happen. Yeah. And so like, I'm going to say this. Yeah.

Go ahead. I was just, I'm just trying to say this the way that I, take this the way I mean it. I get comments from people who are like, love your humility, Alex. And like, I don't think I'm that humble of a guy being real, at least internally in my own head. But I am reminded daily of my inadequacy on the business game.

Because like right now we've moved up a level in terms of like now we're making, now we're doing deals. Now we're investing in companies. We're taking on big risk. We're writing checks like another level of the game than just owning one. Not to say that owning one business and growing it is not hard. It absolutely is a different kind of hard. But like I'm getting into this game and I'm absolutely the small fish. Like Warren Buffet made $90 billion on the trade he made in Apple in 2020.

one move right and so I'm like I am entering into a like how could I say that I'm good like even if I was exceptional it's still going to take 20 years to prove it so like I can't say anything and by that point I'll probably have other guys who were you know who were fucking Titans at that point to remind me of the fact that I'm not as good as them so in your estimation is the presence of an ego something which artificially limits the size of the vision of how high you want to climb. Yeah, 100%. And because it's, you cannot, you can't both say that you are, you cannot admit deficits and say you're awesome at the same time, in my opinion. Like, I can't say, like, I suck at all these things and then also be like, I'm the bad, like, you can't do it.

You either like, you suck at all these things. And it's, I think it's the Dunning Kruger effect, which is like, the more you, the more you learn about something, the more like, the more you realize you don't know. And so I think that if you have a tiny, tiny subset of things that you were studying and a tiny subset of people you're comparing yourself to, then it's really easy to feel awesome about yourself. But if you compare yourself to, I mean, I compare myself every day to Warren Buffett. And like he's my,

him and Munger are like my heroes. Mostly because the way they lived life and what they, like just everything about the way they lived is something that I just love. And like I have, Buffett's net worth by age tracked. And I have like mine tracked and I'm like,

all right, I just got to stay above that line. And they're like, he's got a big line. Are you above it at the moment? I am right now. But like I had a, you know, like, his world was different.

Yeah. Like I got, Warren didn't have Warren to learn from. Yes, very interesting. It's, I mean, you talk, we spoke about this at the very,

very start where you were saying, you have the opportunity of using the blueprint that has been laid down by me. Yeah. Like, if you've got nothing to lose, do the me thing.

Yeah. You know, you have all of the mistakes, all of the failures, and all of the successes. And there was another one where you said, the rar you are,

the rarer the people are who share your perspective in this way, the greater your success, the fewer people you can share it with. And I was playing with this quote from Alanda Boton from the School of Life for ages, which was loneliness is a kind of tax you have to pay to atone for a certain complexity of mind. And I'm really not sure, because since I've been in Austin, the complexity of mind thing, which is that hasn't stopped, but the loneliness changed. And I figured that that was a big function of change of environment. And maybe like, whatever, embracing or acceptance of what was going on.

But again, is this a byproduct of success that a lot of people don't necessarily realize it's a price that's going to be need to be paid? If you want to achieve a ton of success, you end up at this rarefied strata out in the troposphere somewhere. And you're like, well, I got like five people that I can talk to that understand what I'm going through at the moment. Or another question is, well, is that. a combination of hubris and self-delusion. Like, is that true?

Or other things that the bus driver or the lady that serves you at Whole Foods can actually, like, relate to you on? So two questions. One is, I would probably reject the notion that it's a price overall. Because, like, being in, like, if you think about it as a mountain, there's less, there's less square footage at the top of the mountain. It just is. There's fewer people there.

And the air's thinner. It's harder to get there. Harder to breathe. Right? And you have to adjust to it. You have to acclome. And the people that are around you, like there are fewer of them, but you could make the argument that they have even more context than anyone else possibly could. And so maybe the relationship you have are potentially deeper. Even if they're not, humans don't need that many relationships. So like you just have a smaller pool to choose from. But like most people only have two or three good relationships in their life anyways. And so like you just have a narrower pool that you can make that selection from. And I mean, of the people that I have interacted with who are far above that above me on the mountain, that's been there. That's what they've relayed to me. but it's only bad if you think it's a cost.

If you're okay with it, because there are plenty of people who are lonely right now and don't have shit. So, and there's, you know, and you already know this, but like, there's a difference being lonely and solitude, you know,

um, and one is seen as bad, the other is seen as fine or good. In some circles, that's seen as self-care. So, like, um,

uh, so to me, it just means that like, I think you're, tolerance or your standard for friends raises. And I'll share this and hopefully it comes off the right way. I entered communities as I was coming up and was like, wow, everyone here's bigger than me. And then I was able to, through achievement, rise through that. And then I lost context with that group. And so I think there's just more free agency of friendship that happens

on your climb up because you're just moving between strata more frequently than it is that If I settled at one of these levels, then I would eventually find all the people at that rung. But if you're constantly on the move up the mountain, then more of that is in transitionary period on the climb. And it's only a problem if you'd hate it. I don't. What don't you hate? You don't hate the fact that sort of people come and go that some of these relationships are kind of transient? Yeah.

It just doesn't bother me. Because I think it's like a should statement, which is like one of my big things. It's like, why should I? Why does it have to be? Why must it? It doesn't must anything. It just is that way. And that's fine.

Talking about social media, we mentioned this earlier on. What are your predictions for the next six months to a couple of years in terms of what you think is going to be big, any focuses or any interesting trends that you're noticing at the moment? I will state first off that I'm not a social media expert by any stretch. But just, you know, I think AI is going to be the main driving. force behind the future of social media. And I don't know how we're going to deal with it. I mean, there's already the deep face of Rogan doing entire podcasts with Steve Jobs that are gone out there. And the entire thing is both created and recorded with AI. And so I think it'll be really interesting because right now it's still not as good as the best creators, but in a few

machine generations, it'll make the best content every time in seconds. And I'm not sure what's going to have. I think I know the verification checkmark is going to matter more. It'll change in its meaning. Right now it means status. In the future, it'll mean real person. So I'll make that prediction, that the verification of bot versus human will become more important in the future. I can make that prediction. And that there will be more AI generated content in the future than there is today.

And how we respond to it, I don't know. It's scary to think that what we basically had for the last five years or so since the algorithm started to get really tight is a, three-way feedback mechanism from algorithms designing better delivered content to users. It also nudges the user's preferences so that they are easier and more predictable to predict. That two-way street was something I learned from Stuart Russell and is fucking amazing. Everybody needs to understand that. It's not just you programming the algorithm. It's the algorithm programming you.

And it's one of the reasons that it explains increasing division and extremity. Because if you are far right or far left or super whatever or super the other thing, it makes you way easier to predict. And that's a byproduct of any algorithmic optimizing function. And then the third element of that is audience captured by the creators, because they are the third element of the creation of the content, right? That they go, how well did that perform? Oh, we'll red meat that a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more.

And then you end up on your knees like cooking for the audience, right? The fourth element of this is going to be then you are able to algorithmically create content that understands the back end of the algorithm, that can nudge preferences and can get feedback and all of that. I mean, that to me is, fuck me, if we think that,

you know, like the degree of overbearingness that social has on our lives at the moment, like that's a very, very big deal. Well, it could cut out the middleman, the creator being the middleman, and then it just becomes a vertically integrated platform that creates content on its own using AI

and just feeds it directly to the audience. That's what I say. As soon as those, the AI images of hot girls came out and then chat GPT, you go, look, like only fans, you're no longer an agency, you're now a tech company. That should be the move that you make. Every single person should have their own curated wifey girlfriend online,

and that's your thing. And it would be infinitely scalable. You know, like the perfect dirty talk, completely curated and twiddled to your specific, whatever it is. But that doesn't bode particularly. well for how much limbic hijack and freedom people have from social media because it is only going to become more and more compelling which isn't necessarily a good thing I mean I good bad no idea I think there will probably be a little bit of a counter movement um of people who want to do more

things in person make social media human again well you know an interesting thought experiment that I had I was like because we've we've taken some things and I do think AI is going to happen but like as in it will continue um but I was like we accept all technology as inevitable. And I was thinking about this and I was like, has there ever been a technology that humans have created that we were like, nah, we shouldn't do this? I thought about it.

I was like, there is one. Nuclear bombs. We all were like, I think it's better if we don't. We should just not do this. And everyone just agreed, we're like, we're like, we're not going to do this. And I think the rate of AI, how disaggregated it is, like, will prevent that from happening. But I just thought about that as like it just, there hasn't been

any other technological thing that I've seen besides nuclear bombs, that we all together, we're like, this isn't good for us. Have you seen how tabletop genetic sequencing machines work? No. This is a really good example of what you're talking about. So the way that pretty much all of them are cloud based. And in order to sequence, whatever it is that you're looking to sequence, it sends the request up to the cloud. And there's three gradings. There's green, amber, and red. And if it's green, you can just do it. No one checks. If there's amber, you have to submit a proposal for what it is, where it's going, BSL level, etc. Security, security.

And if it's red, you just can't do it. And then presumably someone comes around and goes, excuse me, what the fuck are you doing, trying to make smallpox. Yeah. But that, there's been, I think it's either two or three times in the history of gene sequencing that has been a moratorium placed globally on this.

Everyone's gone. Every fucking machine goes off. Everything. Stop until we work out what's going on. So there are. situations. That's a great example. Like cloning. As you just said, as soon as you start to atomize that and disaggregate it and distribute it between enough different actors, how are you going to be able to control? And the other thing is with genetic sequencing, the kind of machines that you need,

the hardware is complex. Yeah. It's expensive and it's rare. Yeah. The hardware is not complex for anybody can code. And the reward is everything. It's the world. It's the world. It's it's domination. It's money, it's success, it's all of those things. This is why, I don't know, man, like the fucking, the techno-optimist thing, ever since I read Super Intelligence by Nick Bostrom five or six years ago, I just don't see an AGI future where

stuff doesn't get fucked. I don't know, whether we get the general bit of AGI, super AGI is like still up for a big part of debate. But if you end up creating this very strange world in which everyone's limbically hijacked with their own personal news feed of like perfectly, you remember

Cambridge Analytica and the those scandals around the Hillary Clinton ads. It's like, I know your preferences and we're going to create these perfectly done ads. It's like, okay, I mean, the ads were still created by a human and it was still you were bucketed into a content with other men of this age with these interests in this area with these voting habits.

Imagine if every single news feed, not just post, newsfeet was perfectly curated to maximize time on site. It says, hey, Chris, I think that's the first line of every ad. Yeah. Crazy. Wow. But it might just be the same as email the first time there was personalized email.

All of a sudden, you stop becoming responsive to your own. name. So I think they'll be push pool on that stuff. But I'm with you on the AGI long term. You know, as a weird thought experiment, if you think about what God looks like in terms of most definitions, they're like an omniscient, omnipotent being. And I think we're just creating that. Like, what does AI know? It knows everything. Right. What can it do everything immediately? Like, weird. usually God would be benevolent yes rolling the benevolence in there

yeah yeah might be good if we could God's long term benevolent but short term sometimes mean yeah you are true definitely wrath yeah in almost all things what are you working on now what can people expect from you next uh 100 dollar leads 100 million dollar leads which is the second book in the 100 million dollar series um is going to come out this year uh

So that's exciting. We will be done the edited final draft within seven days. So I'm like, it's been, we put in 3,500 hours together, my editor and I combined, or the last two years doing it. So it is the first four to six hours of my day every day. Like before I came here, I was editing the book. And that's what I did yesterday. And that's what I did before.

So that it could be really, really good. And so that's the big creative side of me is the book. it'll be 99 cents there you go I get 33 of that by the way yes yeah I'm getting rich and then the rest of my life is all about deals it's just we've got some really interesting companies that we're investing in very very pumped on that side

so yeah if you've got a one to ten million dollar EBITA business and you would like a growth partner go to acquisition.com let us know dude I really appreciate you I really really enjoyed this today it's been cool to come and see thank you for having me