The Game with Alex Hormozi - The Power of Repetition in Creating Success | Ep 740

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

In this episode, Alex discusses one of the superpowers of building a business, repetition.Welcome to The Game Podcast where we talk about how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, and keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons we have learned along the way to $1B in sales. We've got roll-up-your-sleeves kind of hustle with a little bit of cleverness and a lot of heart.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

you think you're working hard until you see what hard looks like. And then you're like, fuck, I wasn't even working nearly as hard. But I see that as encouraging because it means that so many people have so much underutilized potential because they just haven't even learned how to work. I remember when I did my, I did a legal internship in France. So I had to do translating legal documents from French and English. And I was because people were like, you're good at writing. You're persuasive.

You should be a lawyer. And I was like, sure, I'll try that. So I went to, it was a company called Arkema. And I did my summer internship there, my junior year. and there was this partner at the basically it was corporate law but it was equivalent of a partner who was there and she walked by my office and she like I think she might have talked to me one other time like just to like welcome me to the office and this was the only other time she ever spoke to me and so she she like did one of these like piqued her head into my hole where they kept me to like translate

documents and she was like you know how's it coming or whatever and I was like I was like man I was like, I'm just working really hard on this and just trying to, it was like, just, I'm just working really hard. And she just, like, looked at me and she just laughed. And I was like, what the, what? And she was like, you don't even know how to work. And I, I just remember thinking that. And then, and then she just walked away.

And I, I went to the guy who was like two years above me. I was like, I was basically trying, you know, you'd get his job as like the lowest level. I was like his peon, right? And I was like, what the fuck? And he's like, yeah, they work so many more hours than we do and have so much higher stakes than we do. He's like, you're just translating documents. Like, if you get something wrong, it's on them, not on you. And I remember thinking about that because, like, I thought I was working really hard,

but they had to go review everything to make sure I didn't mess up. And especially in a job like law where you usually have billable hours, like you literally in order to get paid, you have to spend time. This is so clearly connected that those people just kill themselves in terms of the amount of work that they put out. And now that I'm at my position now, I 100% agree.

Like, I didn't know how to work. Like, the idea that I could work, she's like, you don't even know how to work yet. And it was only later that I had a different guy, I was like, you'll learn when you get older. They're like, it takes time to learn the skill of effort. And so I really genuinely believe that succeeding isn't hard,

learning how to try is hard. Once you learn how to try, if you just try it anything, compared to other people, you'll win. Because everyone, the bar is so low to win nowadays. Even like, and I'll give the, you know, the objective stats for guys.

It's like, if you're the average guy, you're $1,000 in debt, you're overweight. And like, like, that's the average. And so, like, if you're just not in debt and not overweight, you're already above average. Like, that's it. Like, that's it.

That's the bar. It's just because no one knows how to try. And no one knows how to like suck for a little bit. And you only have to suck for a little bit once because then you learn that sucking for a little bit has a payoff. And then you can just extrapolate that, you know, over and over again. But you just have to make it through the first one. But no one's willing to do that because they care so much about what everyone else thinks.

And they feel like they should immediately be good because that's what social media tells them. I mean, I measure myself on output, missed on how much of the work that I do is correct and done. And so I can usually see if my rate of work. work has slowed down because I've been doing this for a long enough period of time that I can tell when, you know, if I'm making slides for a presentation that it's like my rate of work starts to really drop or my quality of work starts to drop or from writing my quality or my speed

starts to drop. So like I know when that happens. Sometimes it takes longer to get there. Sometimes it it takes less time. I think that does take some time. I think in the beginning though, you should expect junk work. It's like junk volume where this is a hard one, but you have to get over it. Is that while you're still learning it, let's say you reached your point of maximum like production at, you know, hour five, and then you sell like another five hours of work. I would say do the extra hours of work because you won't know what that limit is until you get there. And if the next five hours of work, when you come back the next day, you look at it with fresh eyes and you say, like, this isn't good enough. I wouldn't see it as a loss.

I would see that your ability to see that it wasn't good enough, you would only be able to do if you had already done the five hours of junk work and that still got you further ahead than if you hadn't done it at all. And so even if I delete everything, I still, still have everything in my head. So like, for example, we've made videos before where we'll do the entire video. And at the very end, we're like, I feel like we could just do that one again and make it better. And then we do it again, and it is way better. So it's not that the first video was a waste. It was the first video set up the second video, or the first and second set up the third. And so Leeds had 19 drafts. The 18th set up the 19th. And it's not that the first 18 were waste.

It was just that they were steps. And so it's just that, I mean, I'll go biblical on you again, but I can remember the proverb, but it says, in all work there is profit, which I like the more rhetorical way of saying, like, the work works on you more than you work on it, which is that you always benefit from work. In all work, there is profit. In all work, there is benefit. And because the five hours extra that you do editing and then you realize the next day, it's not that that wasn't profitable for you. It's not that you didn't benefit from it. You benefited from it. And then once you benefit from it, that comes back out again and the work benefits. And so I used to say this when I was growing businesses earlier. I said either the business grows or I grow, we're both.

But like one of them's happening because if the business is growing, great, I might not be growing at all. Maybe I am, but the business is growing for sure. The business stops growing. It's getting hard. So I start growing. And then once I grow enough, the business starts growing again. And so the growth is always happening. It's just where you're measuring it. Everything comes down to figuring out what the input output equation is. If you don't know the input output equation of getting good at your skill, you will be lost until you find it. And so, like, if you want to be a good coder, it's 10,000 hours of coding. If you want to be a good editor, it's 10,000 hours editing. You want to be a good salesman, it's 10,000 hours on the phone. If you want to be like, it just is. And so for me,

as soon as I figure that out, then I just want to start chipping away at it as fast as I can. And so it's like, I can do 10,000 hours over 10 years or I can do it over four years. It's funny because people see a 2,000 hour work here, but there's so many more hours than that. Like, it's ridiculous. There's so many more hours than 2,000 hours. There's 104 days of the year that are weekends. And if you add in federal holidays and two weeks of paid vacation, you have 129 days a year out of 365. And of the remaining days that you quote work, you work eight of the 24. So like, there's so many more hours that you can do stuff and get better than people will give themselves credit for. And so it's just about, see, I was like, I'm used to, my,

my little tick for where my ring is, find the input-output equation, and then dump as much as you possibly can into the input side and get rid of everything that interferes with it, which also means the people in your life who interfere with you doing the input-out-up equation, the environmental cues says in like, I work in as closely as I can in no windows, no sound. That's how I work. I don't want any distractions. Some people work better with whatever. I have a hard time believing that? Maybe they enjoy working more. I doubt they work better. Some people were like, I listen to music when I work. There's just a ton of research that shows that empirically, you work less well. It's like, you just don't. Now, instrumental, that doesn't have words, maybe, but like, you're using

horsepower listening to words, period. And so I want all horsepower, like, even if you're balancing on your chair, like you're using brain power. And so I want to use nothing. I want to use 100% of my power on the task at hand. And that's it. And that means that if I have also stressors outside of my life, people who are bothering me, not just like, you know, people literally interrupting me, but just problems. It's like, I want to resolve those so that I can put all my attention here because if I'm trying to type it, I'm thinking about this snafu I had with somebody, deal with the snafu, and then you'll be able to work more clearly. So people think when they're starting out, one, that they should find something they're passionate

about. Two, that the first thing they pick is the last thing they're going to do for the rest of their life. And I think both those are false. So we'll start. with the first one. So the fallacy of finding your purpose, or finding your passion, excuse me, is that you're going to love something so much that you immediately fall in love with it. Some people do. The vast majority don't. And real, real, I liked fitness. But as soon as I start my gym, which I thought was quote, pursuing my passion, my life stopping about fitness is about business. And then I had to learn that and I sucked at it. And so like, even the idea that I'm just going to do my passion isn't even the reality of, quote, doing your passion. Because doing my passion became

working and I started hiring trainers and systemizing onboarding and getting them trained up so they wouldn't suck on the floor because I had to do other things. And all of a sudden, I made my, quote, passion into work as other people define work. And so you create passion. You don't find it. And you create it by being willing to suck for a very long period of time until you get good. And then when you get good at stuff, you tend to like it. One. second fallacy was that you, whatever you, is the perfect pick, is that you're going to pick the perfect thing the first time. Life is long. People change career directories more now than ever before. And so I prefer the process of approximation, which is, can I just get directional and then iterate?

And so it's like, okay, do you like words or do you like numbers? People are like, I like numbers. Okay. All these careers, probably not for you. Great. One directional change. All right. And then within there, it's like, okay, do I like money numbers or do I like data numbers or do I like computer numbers? It's like, okay, I like data numbers. Great. Now we're already in a like a zillion career path in this direction. But the thing is that if you then start getting good at becoming a data analyst for an oil company and then you decide that you want to pivot into media buying, there's going to be a lot of generalizable skills there because it was all. about data and you did have to learn a lot of stuff. And what I will say is that you get these unique carryovers that only you will have. So Steve Jobs tells a story about how he took calligraphy. And it seemed useless at the time. And then fast forward when they had the Mac, they started having different fonts. And they only have different fonts because Steve Jobs that one time took calligraphy. And so the lessons you learn on the first thing you do don't become apparent sometimes until the

third, fourth, or fifth thing you do. But that third, fourth, or fifth thing you do, the fact that you did that first thing gives you unique advantage compared to everyone else who didn't. And so following the tried and true path, there's nothing wrong with that. There is never a downside to learning more skills, period, because you are able to create more unique solutions to problems they get presented with in the future because of things you've done in the past. And so I'm sure that, like right now, there's not a lot of really jacked investors. There are. But I'll bet you that there are things that I have taken from my bodybuilding and powerlifting past that I can see more uniquely than some of them can. And I know more about fitness industry investments than probably they do,

both from a consumer and from an owner. I still get calls from many, many like multi-billion dollar portfolio owners. They're like, hey, we're about to invest in this chain of gyms. What do you think? And I've swayed multi-billions of dollars of decisions being like, I think they're a dog. I think they're going to go down. And here's why. And they're like, fuck, we didn't see that in the data. I'm like, yeah, but if you were in, you'd know that. But I wouldn't, if I was just another data analyst, they never call me. And so the idea of the perfect pit, perfect pick is just a fallacy. So pick a direction. This is closer or further. This is closer. Okay, cool. Think about getting warm, getting hot rather than this is it. And so then you can start approximating. And the work that you

did on a warm before it gets hot isn't wasted because you have a new lens that other people who just went straight there won't have, even if it takes you longer. Because again, life's super long. Andrew Turner and Peggy Turn who started Panda Express. They're deck of billionaires now. They started their first location at 40 years ago, but he's 75 now. So he wasn't like young, he was 35. First location. First. And they're richer than most people are or will ever be. And so like if it takes you 10 years or 20 years, it's fine. But I also bet you that they, now I have to learn this from them, but I'll bet you they did things before Panda Express that had nothing to do with running Chinese chicken chops. But those skills still translated over. I was a managed and consultant at space cyber

intelligence for the military before starting a gym. How does that translate? Well, I learned a consulting process. And the learning of a consulting process is learning how to solve problems. And so I use that with my gyms because the consulting process, you go to experts and you ask them what they do. So I started interviewing all these gym owners because they were willing to talk about the gyms. And I would drive out there every weekend because I had time. And I would just spend time with the gym. And I'd be like, how do you onboard people? What do your contracts look like? What terms you use? How do you do with cancellations? How do you do with turn? How do you do with decline cards? And I would ask all of them. And every once in a awesome be like, oh, I do that.

That's good. I'll take that one down. I'll steal that for me. And I would just do that over and over and over again. But I got that from consulting. Other gym owners didn't apply a consulting frame because they weren't consultants first. So if I maybe started straight into gym ownership right out of college rather than taking two years to be a consultant, I might not have gone as far. So like what felt like a complete waste of time when I was in it, which it did, might have been the thing that made me succeed in the next thing. And so even if you're in it right now, the only thing that I can say is that you want to try as hard as you can and get as many skills as you can in that field, even if you don't think you're going to use it later. And I'll wrap this with this. If you guys haven't seen it,

it's a worthwhile movie. It's something called a slumdog millionaire. So the premise of the movie is this kid in the slums in India. It basically just tells his story of just like trials and tribulations. He just says bad luck after bad luck after bad luck, the whole movie. And then by chance at the end of the movie. He gets on their equivalent of who wants to be a millionaire. And so I think it's like 12 questions or something. There's 12 or 20. I don't remember questions that they ask. And by chance, the haphazard crazy bad situations that this guy is in, his whole life amount to him winning and answering each of the questions correctly. And so a lot of times we just need to expand the time rise and to realize that we might be playing our own slumdog millionaire movie.

it's just that we're learning the answer to the third question right now, even though we're just getting kicked in the nuts. And so I think if you have that frame and remember that the worst thing that can ever happen is that you die and you're going to die no matter what, it lowers the stakes a little bit.