The Game with Alex Hormozi - The Road to Becoming a Billionaire Pt.1 (on Iced Coffee Hour) | Ep 660

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

“You can work smarter not harder, but you have to work hard in order to work smarter.” Today, join Alex (@AlexHormozi) as he guests on Iced Coffee Hour to his unconventional perspectives on entrepreneurship, success, and achievement. He sheds light on his unique strategies that transformed struggling gyms into prosperous businesses and his journey towards building a billion-dollar brand. Alex challenges widespread beliefs around personal development, emphasizing the role of consistent action and mindset over mood. He also exposes the intricate relationships between doing, being, and having, stressing the importance of action irrespective of one's current mood. This is part 1 of the interview.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Follow Iced Coffee Hour on:➤ Instagram | Apple | Spotify➤ Check out the video episode on YouTube!Timestamps:(2:00) - Dealing with insults and negative perceptions(5:54) - The journey of entrepreneurship and business success(7:57) - The art of acquisition and business growth(21:12) - The power of branding and perception(31:27) - The importance of taking action in business(33:28) - The role of deprivation and motivation in success(36:51) - Billionaire ambitions and impactful content(42:57) - The concept of future self and motivation(48:56) - The importance of mindset and overcoming labels(54:14) - The power of doing and winningFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

People overthink a lot. They use overthinking as a proxy for action and it just isn't. They think that they're being productive by thinking more about the business they want to start rather than just starting it. You can boil all of this down to fear of rejection. People are okay with failing. They're just not okay with other people seeing them fail. 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. How often, and I want a serious answer to this question, okay? How often do you look at yourself in the mirror and you flex both biceps? How often do you do it? Probably a few times an hour. A few times an hour? I think you need to increase those numbers.

I might have to. That's ridiculous. Is your workout split? I'm guessing it's the same thing as it was last time? Haven't changed. Been a decade. So can you just walk us through real quick? If I want a body like you, what is the split?

Want a body like me? Give me 30 days. What split do I need? We should preface it by saying this. How much do you charge for your time? Really, what is one hour of your time worth? I don't know. I probably wouldn't do anything for less than $50,000.

50 grand for like just like hanging out for advice 50 grand an hour okay about right so if this is a two hour podcast just speaking is like 200 250 let's just say for if someone wants your advice 50 grand an hour if this podcast is two hours long yeah whoever's watching this is theoretically getting a hundred thousand dollars of value just by listening to this so i just want to preface it by saying stick around for the episode you're getting a lot of value from this wow that's fantastic Now, how often do you go in the mirror and just flex? A few times in error. I mean, really, when there's a reflective surface, I'll definitely give it a, whatever's convenient.

It might be a calf, it might be a calf flex, it would be a tricep flex. Sometimes it might be a double front. Right. I would say mostly to other people, it's one of these. I'll throw one of those up all the time. That would be intimidating. Like, if you want to thwart off an enemy, it's just doing that. Just like a bear.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like at the gym for sure, like I'll flex on lay all the time. That's good. I want to know, because I've heard from other people, People that are like larger, bigger, muscular, tall. Like they, other people will feel threatened by these people.

So they'll try to instigate some sort of fight. Because it's like an alpha mentality. You feel like you've been threatened by some massive dude. Do people come up to you and you feel like you've been instigated in something? Not really. Never. So that's just a farce. I think I don't give off a lot of like, let's fight energy.

You don't think so? No. Because I mean, it'd be really hard. Because if someone's like, you man, I'd be like, you're right. Yeah, you just don't. They'd be like, you're a piece of shit. I'm like, probably. Like, I agree.

This is where I want to be at, that level of undeniable, just confidence. Just raw confidence, okay? I don't even think it's confidence. Yeah, it's like, I appreciate you translate it that way, but I... It's just not having anything that it bothers you. But comfort with oneself, right? Well, it's like if someone comments on a post and they're like, Alex, you're an asshole.

I'm like, you're right. Okay. Because a lot of it's like, I want to put a lot of effort into trying to, like, make them wrong. Like, why? A, I'm not gonna change their mind at all anyways. But like, the flip side is, why is that such a bad thing? Like, why is that not okay?

So he was like, you're an asshole. I've been in it many times in my life. I'm sure. I'm sure I have. And so like, they're right. Okay. It's just like there's just not like, oh, I've noticed that I can end a lot of these things. Like there's no endless loop when someone's like, you should have done this, this and this.

I'm like, right. So what personality traits do you think are negative? Because you're saying being an asshole necessarily is not a negative thing. where I would say by definition, it kind of is. It could be. Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's all because we think that somehow good or bad. You know what I mean? And I think there's just like, all of us have lots of different aspects to who we are.

And I think at different times in our lives, we've been really impatient. We've been really patient. We've been really nice. We've been really mean. Like, I've had many of those things. And then if we're really going to say, I have a character trait, it's like, to what degree do I have that trait? Like, it's not a binary.

It's not like, are you patient or not patients? How patient are you? And so for me, it's just like a lot of people get really upset around someone calling them a name because they think that having that label ascribed to them by this one individual somehow means something. And it's like, I just don't think it means anything. I think that's because you have this security. Now, I could be projecting. But I would say most people, if they are insulted, if the insult is valid to some capacity and picks at their insecurity, then they respond and they react and they deny. They take it personally. Exactly. That's all it is. Having that

affect them. Yeah. But I think that's just being affected by outside influence. Like for you, you're very just self-assured. It's just like your reality is your reality. Someone else tells you otherwise, it doesn't matter to you. It's like someone telling you, you have blue hair and you're like, no, I don't. Right. To your point, this is a really fun little side story. So I was walking with Layla on the strip and some guy bumped into her or something. And he was like, watch yourself skinny like, like you said that to her. And she was like, I mean, you think I'm skinny? And so it's like she said it like half jokingly to me afterwards, not anything. She just, we just obviously kept walking.

But I thought it was such an interesting things that he meant it as an insult. She chose to take it as a compliment, which then meant that like all of the like these things that we toss at one another. It's like it's only because we choose to accept that it's an insult that it becomes insulting. Like I'm sure someone at some point in your life has said something that they intended to insult you with. And you're like, oh, well, that's not that's not that bad. I'm actually kind of okay with that. It's like, well, if I'm, if I can make that thing okay one time, then I can do that every time because it's literally just a choice on how I want to perceive it.

So you can obscure the intentions of other people to even if it's not necessarily the way that they intended it. I have no idea what their intention is. None. I don't know what their psychology is. I don't know what their affirmations are. I don't know what they say in the more like I don't know if they wanted to hurt me. I don't if they wanted to help me. It just doesn't like all I can know is like I can observe fact, which is they said this.

Okay. Now what? Like they said these words to me. Okay. You know what? for people that aren't familiar with you, because I bet there's a subset of the audience right now. I was like, who is this guy? Is he a personal trainer? Yes.

Tell people why they should listen to you. You absolutely should not listen to me. First and foremost, got into the fitness industry. I started a gym. Opened a chain of gyms. Head six. Sold those six locations in Southern California when I was 26 years old. Started my first in when I was 23. Took the IP from that, started doing gym turnarounds, flew around the country, did 30-something turnarounds. From there, I really got the system dialed. And then I started licensing it out. And over the next five or six years, we got up to 5,000 locations. Licensed our model under a company called Gym Launch.

I started a supplement company called Prestige Labs, which sold through that distribution base of gyms. They sold our supplements kind of specifically made for gym owners. There's a lot of benefits we made specifically for gyms. And then I started a software company called Allen in 2020. That was also to work brick and mortar leads because that's one of the big issues that a lot of brick and mortar business owners do is they like they get a phone call or they get a text and that one responds.

And so they just lose business for no reason. So we wanted to solve that problem too. All three of those businesses, we chose to exit. in 2021. Two of them we sold together to American Pacific Group for 46.2 million in an all cash deal. I sold two thirds of it. Excuse me. And then the software company, we did an entirely stock sale. I sold 75% of that company. And then starting into 2022, we started our family office formally. Up to that point, my wife and I had made private investments into three companies that had done really, really well. And we done well enough with that that we said, you know, we'll take all the dividends

and distributions we'd taken up to that point, plus the liquidation event that we had from American Pacific group and we said let's start our family office, which is acquisition.com. And so we start with three companies. And now over the last, you know, however long, that portfolio in total does over 200 million a year. And I started making content on the internet with the intention to help as many people get into business as humanly possible because I don't have a lot of faith in the larger institutions. And so I think that if we're going to solve our problems, we need to do it for ourselves. And I think entrepreneurship is one of those paths in order to do that. Don't necessarily need to be an entrepreneur, but just getting involved in businesses and private enterprise in general, I think is the most efficient way.

that we can allocate the resources of humanity to solve humanity's problems. And what do you say acquisition.com does exactly? We buy companies, usually 49% or more of a business. And then we basically inject our expertise and capital into the business to grow it. And so we have to have a combination of, do we like this business on its own? Do we think that we are a really good, unique partner that can add a huge amount of like, basically, do we have an unfair advantage with this deal in terms of value creation, just like that we have proprietary deal flow because that's why I make the content I do. But do we

actually have a real way of like, do we see a 10x that we can like implement and execute on? And so that's a lot of our kind of our front indulgences. Okay, this might be a good business, but it's not our perfect business to work on. And so we try and find those deals where it's just like there's no way we can lose. And we try and do those deals. How do you tell if there's a 10x? What do you look for? What sort of qualities do you see? So it's actually just looking at the business like a pipeline. So it's like basically just to understand everything from click to close to renewal. And so every business more or less is like you have eyeballs that at some point. get converted into leads or they get converted into customers. So if it's leads, then they eventually

have to get a scheduled appointment. They have to show, they have to close. And then on the back end, once they are closed, they have to get a product delivered or a service delivered. And then they have to buy again and again or get upsold into other things. Right. So if we look at that, we can see breakages along that line because that would be something that we'd get in diligence, just like, okay, what do the click-through rates on the ads? What are the conversion rates on the ads? What are the conversion rates on the pages? What percentage are scheduling? What percentage are showing? What's the average offer rate? What percentage are we collecting cash up front? What's the average closing? rate on the back end, like, how many dropouts do we have in the first 48 hours after that?

What does it look like over the next 12 months or 24 months for those customers? What percentage are ascending to the next level of service? And so if we look at that and we have our benchmarks for what we think we can do with the processes that we have already tested, then we're like, okay, well, these guys are getting 30% of their appointments to show up. And we know that we can get that to 80. It's okay, well, there's a two and a half X. Okay, boom, there's one. And we're like, okay, I think they're mispriced on this offer. And I think we can at least double this.

It's like, okay, well, there's 5x. You got two and a half and two. You're like, okay, and right now, they're not doing anything to reduce their turn. They're at 10%. I think we can get them to three. So there's a triple. And so we're like, okay, so that's 15x. What's our confidence score in terms of our likelihood that we'll be able to implement these changes? Is it like a super big overhaul? Or is it's just like there's a handful of things so we can implement immediately see that. The easier it is, the more likely we want to do it. And so like, I just bought a chain of teeth whitening studios. We had 32 locations. We just bought. And I just got so excited because I saw their sales process. And I was like, I'm going to murder this.

very interesting business. Oh, very interesting. I've seen a lot of this direct to consumer products, though, that you see that you get on the subscription and they just send you to, I actually have a whole bunch from Ali, later or not from, I think that was an alpha M product. Alpha M. Yeah. Well, I saw their sales process and it was like, I could make this, like, we literally can just change a handful of things around here, switch it from one time to membership, make these packages based on these price points, have an intake questionnaire, you know, like do some of the things that we already know work over and over and over and over again. And we five X the LTV of the customer. So five X, how much people were worth to the business. And so it's like, great. Well,

there's a five X. Then all the other than the next five years. I got a 10x. Great. And then what do you do once you do that? Is it just collecting cash or is it to eventually then sell that business? Depends on the business. Depends on the business. I would say there definitely are like I used to give probably like I always wanted to hold everything forever. But I think there are times where businesses get to a point where the next like increment of growth requires like an order of magnitude in terms of effort that it's not worth or we might determine you know what we're good cashing out on this one like we might not be the right partners or like we might not be the right owners to take it from here to there it also just depends on

what's on the horizon if it's like you know interest rates are super low i mean i sold literally everything i owned in 2021 because money was free and so i was like i sold my house i sold my cars i sold all three my companies i sold everything i was just completely cash because it just seemed ridiculous what people were willing to pay so i was like okay and so if like something like that comes along but i would be If someone wants to buy it more than I want to own it, then I always, I always entertain offers. In hindsight, it seems like you made a pretty good deal by selling everything somewhat at the peak of the market. I think you cashed out. The market kept going up a little bit. Yeah. Amazing time. And then I think you were in contract to buy a house, weren't you? And then you

backed out of there. And also, fantastic time. Yeah. So things have worked up pretty okay on the timing of that. And I would not like, so it wasn't like, I think I'm timing the market. It was just more like, this makes sense. Like, this is a deal that I will accept. And on the flip side, when you're buying, I don't know if this is a deal I want to do. And it's just more like that. Unless you have like an absolute need, which I would say on the flip side, like if you need a house, you know what I mean? Like if you like whatever. If you need an office for your company, like buy an office because you're going to make more than trying to time the market perfectly, at least in my opinion. Yeah. So what are you doing now strategically? Do you think that things

are going to be getting better? What are you holding on to? Like, where do you place your importance today? I focus all my stuff on the things I can control, honestly. Like I actually spend a laughably small amount of time on like the economy and interest rates and things that are happening right now. Like I spend almost no time on it. Like the only time that I will think about that stuff is just to what degree will that affect our businesses? And like the only way that those things have affected our business is just that some of our businesses require financing or like use financing for consumer purchases. So like if you're buying a car, you know, sometimes you use financing. And so the the interest rates on the loans that they're getting are higher. So their actual payments are higher.

And so that affects sales and the average ticket that you can sell for those those businesses. But then to what degree do I control that? It's more that I'm aware of it and we do our best to mitigate those things. One thing I do want to talk about before we go into a lot of the other subjects is a hundred million dollars leads. I watched that and was blown away at that presentation. How many people did you have watching at that time? We had 180,000 people clicked to go live. How much work went into that presentation? A lot. To me, this was, it was structured in such a way where I'm listening to you and I'm thinking, how could I use this in my own life? Because it was that incredible. Every, slide. And every way you framed it was like, you're getting this positive feedback loop by saying,

because you're here, it worked. And because it works, you should listen to me. Yeah. Because all these people are here, because it works. And it was incredible how you pitch this. So walk us through exactly what $100 million leads is. Yeah. So it's the sequel to the first book, $100 million offers, which was the purpose of that book was to answer the question, what should I sell? So like the first thing, people were trying to get an entrepreneurship. They're like, what should I sell? Like, I'm trying to like, what I'm trying to? They ask the question, what business should I start? But the question they really should ask is, what should I be selling or who should I be selling it to? And so, offers answered that question, is what I'm going to sell? Leeds answers the second question,

which I just gave away, which is who do I sell it to? Do you need leads? And so once you figure out what to sell, you have to go find those people. And you can force people to find you through advertising. And so I split test the name six or seven different times. And so the book is about advertising, but leads beat advertising in the split test. So it's $100 million leads. But it's basically, but it's basically how do you let other people know about your stuff? And so there are eight ways that you can know about stuff for that you can do on your own, four that you need other people for. And so the book basically details step by step how to do each of the eight. And fundamentally, if you're getting into business, you only need to do one of them and do them well. And if you do more than one, then awesome.

Now, I specifically have used all eight in my life for a variety of businesses. And for the book launch, I purposely like the offers book, wanted it to be a meta concept, meaning the offer's book was 99 cents. And it came with a course. And it. all of that and it was it was all basically free. But it was an offer so good, people feel stupid saying no. And so like the book itself was an example of what it taught. Leads was about getting leads and advertising. And so I wanted to demonstrate all the things in the book to advertise the book. Like there was a book on Amazon, I think I used in the presentation who said how to market a book. It was like four years old and had 14 reviews. I'm like, I don't need to read this book to know that you have no

idea how to market a book. I have proof in front of me that you have no idea how to market a book. Because if you did know how to market a book, this wouldn't have 14 reviews. And so if I was going to have a book about how to advertise. Like, I better be good at advertising. And so I thought that the event would be a great demonstration of that to show that these stuff, I purposely, because I wanted, because I knew people would come back later to it. I purposely used literally step by step what, like, I didn't go outside of the book. So like the ads that I wrote for the book, I used the templates in the book to write the ads for the book. Like the content that I made for the book, I used the templates that I showed people to use on how to make content. The emails that we

wrote were emails that we used from the outbound part of the book. And so just like, every single part of this was using the book itself to market itself. And so that was what the book was about. So like if you want, if you have something to sell, you need people to sell to. And in order to have people to sell it to, they've got to find out about you. In order to do that, you need to advertise. And that book teaches you how to do it. How important was social proof? Was it just a random coincidence you had all the people in the background? Because I'm looking at this and I'm thinking, this is so strategic to have everyone in the back versus you with just like a gray wall with nothing going on in the background. I obviously want to show that there's like

lots of people there. And I think the live, you know, indicator with however many people are alive also helps for that stuff. But I actually think the biggest weakness, honestly, of that presentation was that there wasn't enough social proof, social proof for like the stuff in the book. So most times if I'm going to like markets, if I were to like start a business around this, I would probably have had a beta group, have them go through it, show their results or their changes. And then I would have used those stories and reviews and testimonials throughout their presentation. But because it was so important to me to keep this like just this Mondo secret until the day I released it, I didn't have that luxury. And so a lot of the stories that I told

were actually basically borrowing from success stories from offers being like, these books work in general. And if this worked for offers, it'll work even better for leads. I kind of had to transfer it that way. But yeah, there's always the implied. And I tried to use, to your point, I couldn't show people yet because the book had just come out that people could use the book to grow their businesses. So I had to go one degree separated from that, which is I use the book to market the book, look. The one thing I also noticed throughout that is that you kept putting a price

on what this was worth. You're like, this is worth $3,000. And this is worth this. And then I think at the very end, you're like, you're getting $8,000 worth of value. And it was interesting for me to see the immediate switch when people thought you were going to sell them something.

And for me, that makes me upset in a way because I'm like, here's someone providing so much value, offering nothing but free content this entire time. And you're there learning from something. And it's like, oh, gosh, now maybe you have to spend some money for something else that you're not even forcing on. Like seeing the switch up in people of going from like these avid supporters to all of a sudden just like, Alex sucks. Okay, sell out.

This is horrible. I can't believe it wasted my time. But you hung through that to the very end when you said it was free. Yeah. And then you had the book. Yeah. What was going through your mind at that point? They don't know everything yet.

So like I understand why some people would be upset. We have the last chapter hasn't been written yet. So it's like leaving a book halfway through. It's like, okay, well, you haven't heard the whole story. And so I was willing to bet that the only loss that I would have would be the people who already have made it 60 minutes in. So I was willing to bet that the people who made it 60 minutes in were going to make it another 15 minutes.

And the only loss was the people who made it 60 dipped and then didn't make it the last 15. And that's a like, you know from video retention stuff. Like it's a tiny, tiny. And in live, it's even less. It's like, it's, the retention curve on that video is like flat. It actually goes up during the entirety of that process. Because everyone wants to see a train wreck. Like everyone wants to see what's going to happen.

It's the ultimate open loop, the whole way through. And so, yeah, I mean, I saw the comments. I knew that they didn't know. And if anything, it just kind of got me, um, because I went into it knowing or at least expecting that was going to happen. And so I knew that it would just like be an even crazier rubber band like snap when I flipped it. Yeah. For me, it's sad to think that so many people would switch up. Oh, yeah. After two years of giving value? Yeah. It's like two years and they get upset at something

that fast without even knowing anything. What do you think that says about people that are watching in general? I would say if you were one of those people who got upset for like a brief moment, I would look internally because if you get upset when people sell, good luck trying to sell. But people are people. They're going to be them. I'm going to do my best to serve the audience. And there are people who even though I gave everything away for free, we're like, what the hell. Now it's hard for us to compete. He's giving all the stuff away for free. Like there was a, there was my news feed was just all these people who were upset that I had given away stuff for free because it made it harder for them to sell stuff. So like there's no way to please everyone.

And so like I kind of just went into it saying like, I will do what is right by me and what I have said. I will meet expectations. And like that is what I will commit to. If I say I will do something I will do it. And I said I was going to do this thing and that's what I'm going to do. And the next book is going to be cool. And I'll have a whole new bag of tricks for that way. Yeah. I'm just why do all of that for free? for those wondering just like why would you not try to make money? Why would you not try to get more of something?

I saw so many Twitter threads that were analyzing how much you would have made had you charged at different price points. Yeah, I would have about 50 million. Yeah. So why turned down $50 million? Because I have, I'm not trying to make $50 million. I'm trying to make a billion dollars.

And that's me making 50 is not going to, it's not really going to make a big dent in that. And so I believe. Would though. No. What is that 5% or something? Yeah. Yeah.

But like, substantial. I think it, so we're going to take a segue. And I think you'll like it. You'll find this interesting. So I have my next book coming out. But the book after that is the one that I'm thinking about. Because I've already written the next book. And I wasn't going to write this next one,

but it's the one that's been like on my mind the most, which is on branding. And I think it is one of the most misunderstood concepts. And I think it's why so few people can build big things. And I think brand is the single most valuable thing that you can build in a business. Because brand is basically persuasion or suggestion. or influence at scale. And so if you were to go to like the etymology of brand, like what does branding come from? Branding comes from cattle, right? You sear a cattle with your brand on. You literally brand them.

And what is the point of that? The point of that is to change someone else's behavior. So if you have two cows, one that has a brand and one doesn't, the one that doesn't have a brand, you will treat differently than the one that does have a brand. The one that does have a brand, you might return to its owner. You might steal it. You might kill it, depending on your relationship with the owner, which then, depending on the brand, you'll behave differently. But at the end of the day, it will change your behavior. And so the point of a brand is to actually change. teach a change in behavior. And so if you have a white shirt that's playing

in a white shirt with a checkmark, you train a behavior that you want people to do something when they see that and then behave accordingly. And so the idea of braining is basically teaching. It's pairing, it's making associations between things people know, things people don't know. And then you do that enough time. Like if I wear this hat out of times,

people will eventually just want to wear the hat if they like what I've associated the hat with. If they like me, like fitness, they like, they like free value, they like the values in general that I stand for, they will start associating that. If they want to be more patient, they want to be more ambitious, they want to be more fit,

want to be more driven, whatever it is, whatever they associate me with, they might put this hat on because it stands for that, for them. They've made that association. And so they'd be willing to pay more for this hat than just a generic hat. And like that is branding. And so to the point that you may as like, why not make 50 million? I think that I want my brand to stand for something more than that. And so I made it the mission to make real business education accessible for everyone. And that is what I have been, I have not wavered from that since I started doing this. And I have two aspects, fixed to that. One is like the distribution of how do I get this to everybody and how to make it accessible. And that has multiple levels to it, which is one is like, is it easy to understand,

but also like, is it fun and entertaining? And I'm getting better at that. I think I'm, I'm better at the easy to understand part. I'm still working on how do I make this more entertaining so that like a stay at home mom will actually click and maybe get interested in something like this and maybe recommend her son or her daughter to like watch something like that. I'm not there yet. Like, but that's, like, in order for me to get that level of accessibility, like, I need to get better. But on the flip side, the context that the content is consumed within is basically my background. So like at the very beginning, you're like, hey, just for everybody who doesn't know, here's this guy. Right.

If I had said, hey, I make $100,000 a year, listen to me. I think fewer people would listen to me. I mean, maybe some would. But like, far fewer would listen to me as a quote, authority on making money in general. We had to provide the context up front because the context is, in my opinion, a larger percentage of the message than message itself. Like, Elon Musk can tweet on the toilet and say, like, I'm shitting right now. And everyone will like think it's hilarious and whatever. If I tweet that or you tweet that, we probably wouldn't have the same response because we're not the richest man in the world.

And so like that message is consumed within the context of Elon Musk. And so what I'm building with my personal brand is the context to deliver a message at scale that I want to deliver. And we're not there yet. And so this is much more of like a 10 year, 15, 20 year plan that I'm that I'm trying to out line and I'm showing pages one at a time. Like the book launch was one piece. There's going to be another piece next year. And like people will see that as it unveils. So it's more about the perception of you rather than potentially optimizing for impact because there is an argument I feel like to be had. If you were to charge some money for the book, I do think people would pay more attention and potentially it would make more of an impact on those who do read it than just giving it

out universally for free. I'll give you the argument for it. So I do think that perception overall be like, oh, this is the guy that gives all of this value for free. Whether or not it impacts them, who's to say? So I've been on both sides of this. I have charged. I have charged. lots of money for things. And so you make a greater impact giving away things for free. That's just objective, you'd say? Yes. Because you get 100 times more people to consume it. But the percentage of people who consume it who are impacted is smaller. So if I charge for something, a higher percentage of people who consume the thing, if they paid for it, will be likely to follow through that. If it's free, a hundred times, a thousand times more

people will consume it, but a smaller percentage, but a larger absolute amount of people would be impacted. I respect the objectivity on that or the objective answer. I had to because I had to deal with that because I had to deal with that myself. I was like well if I claim this like now if you have like for example a really in-depth like if I were if I were flying out to people's houses and trying to like do huge interventions with people and like recook their shit like no you can't do that for free but like there are certain things that you can give away for free information give away for free media in general like you can give away for free software if you're really good coding you can give away for free like there are elements or things you can give away for free tools sometimes and

I think that this is from a business perspective, you'll ultimately make more money serving a huge amount of people and then having some bar that people can jump over now. I purposely put my bar really high because I know that, like I only need one Facebook. Like people would be surprised by how few deals we do. Like I get 2,000, I get 2,400 companies a month that reach out to me to do a deal every month inbound. Like can we do a deal with you? And in two years, I've done 22 deals in total. So like you look at that over, you know, whatever 24, like a 50,000, 60,000. and deals that I've looked at and I've done 22. It's a very small person.

Part of me thinks, what's the message that you want to share that you can't already share with your platform? It seems like the platform is big enough that whatever you say will have an impact. What can you not already do right now? I don't think it's what I can do. I think it's who will reach.

So like I think right now, sure, I've got whatever, six, seven million, whatever followers across different social medias and whatnot, but there's a different level of impact there compared to if I had 70 across that. And I'm still learning this game. I'm like super new to this.

I came from the business. side and was like, I see the value in this. And part of it is because just my general worldview is like, I believe in education over everything. And I think that if you die and you die with any knowledge left in your brain that you haven't shared with other people, it's just a waste of a life. Like the idea that you could learn something and then share it with no one and then die is just such a waste. It'd be like the guy inventing the wheel and be like, nah, I'm not sharing it. Like why? Do you have firm long term goals on why you focus so much on branding, what you're optimizing for? Is it for the next Facebook or is it for something? So I mean, I've built

this brand on the idea of faith, which is that like, I believe that opportunities present themselves when they're right. And it's not like, and I'm sure with you, like there's no shortage of opportunities. The amount of things that come my way, but it's like it has to be the right one.

And I'll know it when I see it. But yeah, I'm pretty patient about it because I also enjoy doing it. Like the only reason I can still do this because I enjoy doing it. I also have other means of income. I think it's worth saving the context that I can deliver the message in

to give away some of the short term money to have the trust of a much larger audience later. How much did you end up making? from that. I think it was like $5 million. Still impressive. Yeah. I mean, objectively. Yeah. In $30 bucks. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, the books probably in general right now make about a million bucks a month. But like it's not an efficient business. You know what I mean? Like books are not a great business to get into. Like there's cost, there's no price control on a book. Like you can't charge $50 for a book. Like you're stuck at what books go for, which is $29.

Like that's what books go for. It's an actual physical product that you have to mail to everyone. So you've got logistics. You've got shipping. You have to print. the books. Like there's a lot of costs that go into just like 29 bucks. And then you make the margin on that. So on a million a month, what's your net profit on something like that? 360, I think. It seems like that's still incredible. For a book. Yeah. No, I mean, don't be wrong. It's a top. Like, there's whatever, 60 million titles on Amazon. Both books are top 200. Like, it's like not a 1% book. It's like a 0.0.001% book. Yeah. We were talking to Mark Manson recently. and he told us that I think it was like $20, $30 million when you really did the math and reverse engineered, how much one successful book made net profit.

Yeah. Which is incredible. I mean, it's why Ingram built, like owns Vanderbilt University. Like, Ingram is publishers. Like you literally print money. Well, the thing that's interesting with books is that they're the oldest form of media, right? And so you print a book. And if the book is good enough that when people read the book more than, like on average, each book creates at least more than one other book.

buyer from like word of mouth, then it just becomes a perennial, like how, think about how to make friends and influence people, you know, habits of successful people, Stephen Covey, like rich dad, poor dad, Dave Ramsey, his millionaire makeover, those ones, right? Like those books, when you sell five million copies of a book, it's $30. That's $150 million. And so, and now that might be spent over a decade, but the thing is like Stephen King still collects checks for carry, like still. And so from a leverage perspective, it's kind of interesting, like now that I'm in the publishing business, which is kind of ironic because I guess I'm a top super high percentage author, but like I don't consider myself on that way. It is a really interesting

business because it requires almost almost no employees, if any. Like I employ my father-in-law. It's my only direct report. And I was just like, just manage the book stuff. Just in general. Like the Amazon listings in the warehouse and the printer, you know, making sure we order more book. Like just manage all that. And so he does that. But like we could probably do it. Or I could take a few hours and do that. I just don't. What's the difference between putting that in a book and making like a YouTube video that's 10 hours long. I do it. I mean, I did that too. Yeah. So I just did it in every format. So it's like if you want a physical copy of the book, then you can pay for a physical copy of the book. But you can literally get an audio version of the book for free on my

podcast and not pay for it. You can get the video version for free on my website, not even opt in for it. It's free on the site. You can watch the entire book just with a visual presentation. Because if I'm going to try to make it accessible for everyone, then I need to make it for whatever learning format. A lot of people don't read. A lot of people only watch video. A lot of people only listen. Everyone's very different in terms of how they consume. And so I just wanted to make it for everyone. You might find this interesting. It's like an almost perfect split of how people consume it.

So it's almost, I think it's 25% hard copy, 25% ebook, 25% audio, and then 25% like video. What do you think the biggest problem people have right now is when it comes to business? Oh, man. Just from your observation, because of 200,000 people watching it, you have to notice, these 200,000 people have a problem that they're trying to solve. It's got to be some solution that you have. that they want. That I have.

No, honestly, I think a lot of it is people overthink a lot. And they use overthinking as a proxy for action and it just isn't. They think that they're being productive by thinking more about the business they want to start rather than just starting it. And it's just, it's fear, you can boil all of this down to fear of rejection. People are okay with failing. They're just not okay with other people seeing them fail. For success, let's say a recipe for success, what percentage would you say should be thinking

about action versus action? Like premeditating what you're going to do? versus action. Yeah, in the beginning, you need to think a lot less and do a lot more. And the more advanced you are, the more you need to think

unless you need to do. It just flips overtime. And you just know automatically that, like, I think it happens naturally. Like, I don't think, you know, think about Warren Buffett,

he makes like one move a year. And it's like he spends basically the rest of the time trying to make the right decision. And so like you move, the speed with which you move through business is directly proportion of leverage

you have with the actions you take. And so leverage being defined as the difference in what you put in what you get out. Like if you have a lot of leverage, then like with this podcast, we have a lot of leverage. Like there's a lot of people that will listen to this,

even though we might only take us a couple hours, right, to do this. So there's, we put a little bit in, but we get hundreds of thousands of people who will see and listen to this, you know, later. But when you start, you don't have leverage. And so you need to make up for that with just shitloads and shitloads of effort. And basically do, like you can see output as volume of,

of repetitions times leverage equals output. And if you have no leverage, then you just need to crank on volume until you can create leverage. And one of the things that creates leverage is skill. So like Graham can make a video and someone else can make a video. It might take Graham and the other person the same amount of time to make the video. And Graham's video will have a hundred times more people who see it. That's leverage.

Skill created that leverage. But how did you get the skill, the volume that he did beforehand? You can work smarter, not harder, but you have to work hard in order to work smarter. So you have to do that first. So we just had on Dr. K or Healthy Gamer on the podcast. I wanted to know how people start taking action in the first place. And he gave me a very interesting answer. I want to know what your answer is.

Like if they can't find motivation to just start taking action in the first place, where do they start, if not just action? I think motivation can be measured by its equal opposite, which is deprivation. So you want water. You're motivated to drink water directly proportional to how thirsty you are. You are horny in the direct proportion to how long it's been. I'll just leave it at that.

And so those are physiological needs that most people kind of understand. Like hunger works the same way. Like you're really hungry if you have eaten well. So you're more deprived or more motivated. So money is kind of interesting because you then think, okay, well, poor people should be the most motivated. But that we can see with our eyes that that's not the case. So then like what's different there is that the deprivation has to be perceived. So like you feel when you're hungry, like you have a physiological need to eat or you'll die.

But I see more motivation among rich people to make money, which by that context would mean that they feel more deprived of money than poor people do. And I would say me personally, like I'm talking about how I want to get to a billion dollars plus. I'm extremely money motivated. And the difference between my current level of wealth and a billion dollars is greater than the person who is at $5,000 a month who wants to make $10,000 a month, both in relative and absolute amounts. I'm more deprived of my goal than they are. And so I'm more motivated. And so from a tactical perspective, if you want to change your behavior, you need to change your environment. It's the fastest way to change behavior.

Like if you want to get good at swimming, you join a great swim team. It's the fastest way. Like you want to get great at ping pong. You join a great ping pong team. And you play on the team. You surround yourself with other people who then you can compare yourself to and get fast feedback loops going to get better. And so like if you're like at home in your mom's basement and that environment consistently

does not help you change the behavior you want, then you need to move. 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. What if the person knows what's good for them to move and change their environment, yet they still don't do it? Then they won't do it. There has to be some level of something that they are deprived. So they're actually not that deprived. So they're like, I'm really motivated. It's like, you're not.

You're not. If you don't want to be that successful, that's fine. Like, it's only like you thinking that there's a problem with it is why there's a problem. Like, you're going to die. I'm going to die. Both of us will be forgotten a long enough period of time. So like, it doesn't really matter. I find this interesting.

And so that's the game I play. If I, if I loved video games, as much as I love business, I'd play more video games. I just love business more. So you're pursuing business, pursuing a billion dollars because it interests you, it amuses you. Or do you have a certain like North Star? Like we talked to Tom Billy, you. We've done something with him twice. I think now. He says his North star is increased human flourishing and decrease human suffering. Yeah. Do you have a true North that you kind of like always base all decisions off of? Or are you in pursuit of this billion dollars just because it amuses you. It's not a bit. Yeah. I mean, billion dollars is, it's just an objective measure. And when I hit that, it'll be 10. I mean, I'll just move. the goal post. It's more I want to die with nothing left. And so what I would love to have be true on my tomb is not just have it there, but what I would love to be true, or at least that people say is that like, that man died with nothing left to give. And that would be a life well lived for me. And so like I deem that. Why do you need a billion to be able to do? Oh, I just think that having that contrast will force me to be a better version of me. Like I'll have to level up.

And so I want to be the like for me to have nothing left to give means that I've used up every ounce of my potential. And so do I think I can be a billionaire? Absolutely. And so that's what I'm measure you're giving in a billion dollars. No. Or how does, no, I think, I mean, I think the stuff that I do with my content, my books is far, my opinion, far more impactful. Now, to be fair, a billion dollars, five billion dollars, 10 million dollars can do a lot of good. And like, if I'm thinking about this in a long term, which I try to, if I spend 10, 20 more years building this amazing audience of people that I can help, and then I over that same period of time, I'm able to aggregate a tremendous amount of wealth. One, it gives me credibility to the things that I'm trying to

talk about. But also, like, there will be emerging of those two things that can create something really magical. And that's what I look forward to. And who I am today doesn't necessarily have all of the details yet. And I'm like, I'm fine with that. Like future me is pretty smart too. He'll figure it out. I want to talk about Solomon. Okay. Sure. You said this during a couple of podcasts, which is like your 85 year old self. You name them Solomon. Yeah. And that's the counselor that you use to base decision making off of in this day. Yeah. Can you talk us through the last thing that you consulted with Solomon. And maybe if I didn't properly describe who Solomon is. I'll give, some context. So Solomon was named after something called the Solomon Paradox. And for those you

don't know who Solomon was in the Bible, he was a very wealthy ruler who many other kingdoms came to to seek counsel or advice. The reason it's called Solomon's paradox is that he was amazing giving advice, but his actual life was in shambles. So he cheated on his wife and his son was, you know, he had bad relationship with the son. And so the idea is that as humans, we are better at giving advice than we are at following it. And so that's why it's called Solomon's Paradox. And so in an effort to try and get better answers, the higher up,

and I'll use quotes here that you get in business or whatever endeavor you're going after, the harder is to find people who can actually help you out. And part of having or getting help from people is that I want someone who has aligned incentives. I want someone who is competent. And I want someone, there's a third piece. I want them to have complete context.

So like they have to have complete context. they have to be competent with that context to give advice and they have to be aligned. Because if someone's super competent and has complete context and not aligned, they just know how to ruin my life. You know what I mean? If they're really aligned and they're competent, but they have no context, they have good advice in general,

but it won't be specific to me. Right. If they're aligned and have context, but they're incompetent, it's your mother. She completely understands you and she loves you, but she has no idea how to tell you how to invest. Right.

And so I wanted someone who would have all three. And so in trying to think through this, I had multiple experiences with the, you know, executive coaches, counselors, therapist, whatever you want to call it. And I've always had very short-lived experience with those people. And I think part of my experience was that I felt like their incentive was not aligned. It was that their goal from a financial perspective was that I just continue to pay. And I was like, well, that doesn't really solve problems for me. Like you just want me to keep staying.

No matter what you say, that's how you get paid, right? The other piece was that from a context perspective, I would notice that I would spend 60 minutes trying to just give color to the decision that I was trying to make that I was faced with just so that they could give me. me some valuable feedback on it. And the third piece is if I'm talking to a therapist, I'm probably better at business to them. And the vast majority of the problems that I face on a daily basis have to do with business. And so like, I'm asking somebody who is basically a solopreneur or self-employed on how I'm trying to manage a $200 million your portfolio and how I'm going to like allocate resources. And like, they're probably not going to have a good

answer for me in terms of their competence level. And so in trying to tackle that, I came upon the Solomon paradox. So I was like, what if I could give myself advice? Because I'm sure everybody who's listening to this is given somebody advice on a relationship or on fitness or whatever. And you're like, man, if I follow that advice, I'd be in better shape too. And so I was like, well, maybe, maybe I have the answers and I just need to package it differently. And so I started having these sessions with what I call, you know, my 85 year old self, who I call Solomon for whatever purpose that seems to separate my personal self and my older self. Because that man is the only person who has absolutely aligned incentives with me, has complete context to my situation and is as competent as I am. And I'm

trusting the fact that I give better advice than I heed. And so I have basically chat forum messages with Solomon. It's an ongoing document. It's the first hour of every Monday for me. It's like, what's top of mind for me? And the nice thing is that it also can last seven minutes and sometimes it can last 45 minutes. I don't need to like stay for 60 or drive somewhere or take a Zoom call. Like if I get to the bottom what I wanted to get to, it's done. And I don't need to waste all this time giving context. And so I usually keep going with Solomon, literally back and forth like it's chat. I just hit enter and I just keep going back and forth until I get to the root of the issue. And I usually have some sort of thing that Solomon will tell me that we'll kind of like close the loop.

And I know it when I get it. And then at that point, it's like, I don't think about that thing anymore. Like the decisions made or like I know I've resolved the inconsistency. And so an example of that was I had a big snafu that happened. I'd worked for a while on a project. It ended up falling through because of a vendor. And it cost me about $15 million of actual money. It really sucked.

And so I was really upset. I won't go into the details. But like basically, thinking about this way, like, I paid a big chunk of money for insurance against a $15 million loss. And the person that I had paid, that was literally their only job that I paid a good chunk of money, a fraction of that, but a good chunk of money, several hundred thousand dollars to ensure that didn't happen. And then after paying, it did happen.

And I was like, this was the only job you had. This is the only thing I hired you for. Was this one thing that you said you specialized in? I was really upset about it. And so I'm having this conversation. And the thing is, the more I talk to the person, the more as I realized that They were just truly incompetent. It wasn't malicious.

They were just stupid. And they made the promises just because they're stupid. And so it's almost like if you have a Babe Ruth Ricky card and your toddler pours pain on it, what do you do? You hit the kid. Like they don't understand. Like you just have to take it. You just get kicked in the nuts.

Just is what it is. And so I was going through this process with Solomon. And he said, I am the asset you are building. And I am satisfied with the effort you put in. And that is enough. And, That was kind of it for me. I was like, I put all this work, but two years into this thing in this project.

And it was because of the person that I ultimately want to be because I'm going to die. It's not going to matter anyways. And so the person I'm becoming is the ultimate asset that I'm trying to build to answer the billion dollar question. Like billion is just a reflection of the asset I'm trying to build. And that's the person who I want to impress. And the interesting thing with Somme is that like you, especially the higher performing you are, because I'm sure you get this question a lot. Like, how do you stay motivated, whatever if you've achieved a certain amount?

It's by not comparing yourself to other people. comparing yourself to the person you want to be. And so the tough part about that, if you're really real about it, is that like Solomon knows if I could have tried harder. So like with a presentation for the leads book, I couldn't put more effort in, about 200 hours in over 28 days.

It's basically every hour every day. I'd review the slides in the morning. I would do a live recording and then I'd watch the recording afterwards and I would edit the slides in real time as I watched the recording. And I did that every day for the entire month leading up to it. I had no idea. Yeah.

Wow. I thought maybe there was like a teleprompter or something. I know you're kind of going based on the slides, but. Yeah. And so it was funny because right before I got on stage, I'm going to loop back to Solomon. Like the lady who was the one who ran the venue with the screens and whatnot was like, I've literally never seen anyone so chill about something like this. And this is like the biggest event we've ever even had here. I was like, I've done this before. I've done this before. Like this isn't my first time. Like I know this presentation. Like there's nothing more I could

have done to prepare for this. And so in that instance, Solomon in that mini setting would be like, I am proud of the effort I know you put in because at that time, whether all the cameras cut off and the, you know, a storm came through and everything blew up. There was nothing more I could do. And so for that, I try to make that man proud of me.

But the tough part is that he knows how hard I can try. And then a lot of times, if you are a high achiever, if you compare yourself to other people, you're going to beat them anyways. And so like, you can't compare yourself to them. And it's like,

well, who's the one person who always knows how much more I could have tried. And that's future me. And I also think that hopefully a future me has an even higher work capacity. and more focus and better skills than I do to work. And so that's the man I ultimately try to impress. And if I'm brutally honest with myself,

I think he gives me ruthless honesty in terms of my deficiencies and the things that I can work on. And I am good enough at giving that advice. I can take it. So for the 15 million loss, though, what was the takeaway for you? It's just like, I know you did everything you could,

but then wouldn't that also say that you should have done a better job vetting people to make sure they're more competent? Yeah, I'm going to always do that. But I would say this, which is that when you play with bigger stakes, your chips are worth more. If you're playing a poker game and your buy-ins a million bucks, every hand you're bent in 50 grand. As the game gets bigger, you just add zeros to the stakes. And so if you want to make a billion dollars, you have to be willing to lose $100 million.

I mean, you've lost money now. Right after this, I'm sure you've lost money on things and be like, fuck, I learned from that. Given the information that I had at the time about the vendor and their experience and how they came recommended, I think that the decision that I made was reasonable. I could always go and 100% quadruple check every single thing, but at what point do I become micromanaging and then blow that blows up in my face. So it's like, Reid Daly talked about this with, I think, crypto in the early days. But he basically said, I don't feel bad about missing out on opportunities because if I were to make the decision to prove that opportunity, I'd have to also apply that same decision making process to all the other opportunities that I would have bought and then lost all my money on. And so sometimes you just get kicked in the nuts.

and I think that you do the best you can. There's always going to be things that are uncontrollable. And it is what it is. When is the last time you've fallen short of Solomon's standards? Every day. Every single day?

Yeah, of course. For real. There's always things I could do better on. I could have been kinder to Lela. I could have put more effort into what I was going to say to her this morning. Like, there's always things I can do better. But I will say that my talks with Solomon

are typically about one specific thing. So when we ask you questions, it sounds like you place a lot of value and fulfillment in who you eventually will be at some point. 100%. Right? which is like the guy providing the most amount of value, the billion dollar guy, et cetera, Solomon.

Yeah. Yes. Yet at the same time, you do say things like, I do not want to place my value in some sort of future event that could happen. Right? Because then you're creating a distance between who you are right now and who you'd like to be. How do you maintain that balance of like putting so much value in this future self,

yet at the same time being fulfilled and happy in a present moment? I think it's just the process of becoming. If you ask me truthfully, like, I enjoyed every minute of the suffering. of doing that presentation five, six hours every single day for the entire month leading up to that. Like, I enjoyed it because I knew I felt like I was becoming the versed of me or was living through the values that I choose to believe matter to me. How do you find something or how does

someone that's watching this find something that they can set as their true North that every single action will make them fulfilled on their way to that? I don't think you're going to figure it out on the first shot. I think an easier North Star is learning to work. I'll give you a different example. So I had a buddy who was in the fitness industry and he had a pretty successful fitness business and then he quit that to start cookies, a cookie store completely. He's getting people skinny and he's making a fat. He was like, yeah, I've got a complete system, right? He's joking, right? He wasn't passionate about cookies. He was passionate about being excellent at whatever he did. And I really like that as the frame, which is like, first off, you're not going to find your passion because

anything that you start doing that you haven't done before, you're going to suck at because that's what you do when you do something for the first time. And you tend to only like things that you are good at. And so sucking is a prerequisite for liking most of the time. And so you just have to be willing to suck in order to quote, find your passion, which all you ended up doing is creating a passion, but whatever. And so anyways, he had his cookie store and it wasn't like he woke everyone and me like, I just want to feed cookies to the world. Like I just want everyone to understand how butter and chocolate and salt work. Well, he didn't think that way. He was like, I want to run an excellent business. And so whether he was doing a dry cleaning business or a tractor supply store business or

he was wholesaling real estate, it was his dedication to excellence, that single value, which then permeated everything else. And so I think that for somebody who's starting out, like, simply dedicating yourself to understanding what hard work feels like and the commitment to the repetitive actions that you have to do day and day out without reward, making that the W gets you there. And I think the long term is that you just make that the W period. You're not thinking about getting there. You just win every day. And you think that will serve most people. Absolutely. To strive for excellence in a given field. A million percent. And then creating, you said creating interesting rather than finding a passion. No one finds a passion. I mean, some people

do. Sure. I think the vast majority of people, the vast majority of people find themselves in careers because they on, like, think about like the first job you ever got. It's probably just like on a whim. Somebody told you there was a thing. And then you find yourself 10 years later, like, off a tree branch from this first path of career that you got into. What? I would disagree. Not for me. Yeah, the aquarium stuff. I wanted to do that. But you still do. You're still off a tree branch. I mean, we blogged on this to family about your aquarium and stuff like that. Oh, yeah. But I feel like I have control over that. That was just

something I would love to do. Yeah. My point here was just that dedicating yourself to being excellent and doing the repetitive tasks, you get better at the thing. And then you tend to like the things when you get better at them. And then external reinforcers start kicking over. Like, you just need to have enough in the beginning to get you going. And then after that like being good at playing ping pong takes over for playing ping pong. Do you like anything you're bad at? What are the some of the things that you're bad at? Maybe Layla's like, oh, let's go ax throwing. And you're like, I hate axe throwing, but I will do it. You do it and you suck, but you like there's not many things. I don't do many things that I like, to be fair, I don't do a lot of stuff.

I recently picked up ping pong, which is fun. You actually? Yeah. I recently picked up. I can coach you. I did. Are you good? I'm disgusting at ping pong. I'm very good. That's like, that's my one thing. Did you compete? No, I've never competed. Have you been to Las Vegas table tennis? No. Okay, it's like a club on the strip. The people there are incredible. Oh, sweet. Yeah, I might partake. Okay.

No, I've just like, I used to play at home when I was a kid, because I didn't have siblings for a while. And so I just played against the wall for fucking hours. What do you like about ping pong? What's the appeal of it? Low state, baby. Yeah, it's 100% that. Do you find a way to zone out?

I'm not, like, I am not there. It's like racing. If you've ever done like race cars, it's the same thing. Like you, not just like rallying, but like if you're really playing, you can't focus on anything besides the ball. And so like everything else disappears. And what do you get out of that?

I just enjoy that. It's like unplugging. Like that's just truly like a wreck range. Like I just enjoy it. I would say the same thing is true for lifting for me. When you have a huge amount of weight on your back, you can't think about anything else. You just have to be there.

An old time lifter Dave Tate used to talk about he wrote this kind of like epic blog post on he called Going Into the Void. As he said when his father died, the thing that he would look forward to most was like getting under the bar because like during those few seconds where he had like his life literally like on his back. Because if you fuck it up with a thousand pounds in your back,

you'll just break. your rack. He was like, it was like the world went quiet. And I think that's, that's what I like the most. But I lift. I now recently picked up ping pong back up again. And I do business. And that's what I do. Just since you're here and you're like such a strong guy. Okay. I'm wondering because I'm doing my best. Because I've been thinking about like I did get on creatine. I kind of slowed it down. I picked it back up. But I heard from somewhere that it can build muscle like 33% faster. As someone who's just absolutely shredded, you probably do creatine. Like, oh, well, way to make assumptions. Yeah. I mean, I just thought everyone was taking it to

honest. Everyone's on this stuff. Everyone's on it. Is it not? You don't take creatine. No. If you eat a lot of meat, you already have a ton of creatine in it. If you look up the data, like creatine, you should be taking five milligrams per day. You have to eat so much meat in order to get that much. So have you, have you ever seen like the midwit memes where it's like the IQ where it's like the dummy and then like the middle guy and then like the guy at the chat? Yeah. Yeah. At the very end. A lot of stuff in fitness is like that. That makes a lot of sense. So it's like pick the right parents, eat protein, lift progressively heavier weight. And then you're like, set schemes, red schemes, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And it's like, pick the right parents, like, eat protein, lift more weight over time. Have you ever gotten your testosterone checked? Of course you have. Yeah, actually recently. What's your testosterone? It was 124. $124. Yeah, super low.

What do you mean $1,000? I thought it goes up to like $1,000 to like $300 to $1,000 is the recommended range. I'm below the recommended range. How? How is that even physically possible? I've always been low. The highest reading I've ever had is $270. You eat lots of soy?

No. That makes no sense because I see that like the beard and the muscle. Don't you have to have the deep voice? Like you have to have more testosterone. You can be androgen sensitive. It can be very sensitive to androgen. Some people are not sensitive at all. So it's like if you add testosterone to your system like you,

somebody will get a significantly higher response than other people. And so you have, you know, genetic potential from parents, but you also have just like how responsive you are to animal hormones in general. Like some of the big, because the Olympia just happened for bodybuilding like this last week. A lot of those guys, some of them, some of the genetic factors that they have are just that.

that their body is just more responsive to antibiotics than other people. And so like you can just be more androgen sensitive. You need less testosterone to make the same muscle. And so like those ranges are, they're arbitrary. They're completely arbitrary. Now if you are below that, you know, 300, and I'm not gonna get into science stuff,

everyone don't listen to me. So I put that as my disclaimer. But if you're below 300, but you're not suffering from low testosterone issues. Like you don't have erectile dysfunction. You don't have like issues getting out of bed in the morning. You're not depressed.

You're not moody. You're like, you're, you pretty much just like, you don't have like supremely low muscle mass compared to normal men, then you're probably just and it's fine. Wow. So I noticed this theme in you of like, I don't care what anything's happening. I'm controlling what I'm controlling and I'm being exactly who I want to be. Were you always like this as a kid or is this something that you have developed over time? Yeah, I think it's a skill is developed over time. I mean, I think there's definitely like, when we talk about deprivation earlier, I definitely felt deprived of money. I've always wanted to make a lot of money.

That's like been a very big desire of mine. And I just have gotten better and better at pursuing that goal. You know, like in the beginning, I just had general motivation, but I had no scale. So it's like, I heard this works. I heard that you wander and you just have lots of activity to try and burn through things to figure out like what starts to give you some feedback and then you start moving in that direction. I've always been motivated. I've always been pretty high achieving. I don't have the like, I failed school and like I was great at school.

You know, I think I had 13 AP credits going into college. I finished college in three years, Madigan, Laudey. I was vice president of the powerlifting team. I was president of the fraternity. I always try to fuck life. You know what I mean? Everyone's different. But like at the same time,

there's plenty of people who didn't have any of that stuff and then crush it later. But you, I think you can just always make the decision to do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it. The idea that you haven't been successful for your entirety of your life has absolutely no impact on why you can't be successful right now.

The work that needs to be done for someone to succeed remains unchanged. And so like whenever you choose to start that, you choose to start that and everything before that moment doesn't really matter. Well, I think it's easier when you have momentum behind you. Oh, sure. Yeah.

I'm just saying like objectively, If you had zero momentum and you still do the thing, it still works. My thought is that it might be harder if you don't have that previous success to draw from. Totally. Might hold you back in ways of maybe being more cautious. Yeah. Self doubt, things like that. Yeah, I think I use the term chunking up or chunking down, but like the biggest predictor of future success is past success regardless.

And so the idea is like, okay, well, you might be like, well, I want to take this big jump, but I've never done that before. Like, how do I take this job? How do I take this risk, right? Well, it's like, can you generalize some of the other things you've done in the past? that would give you some level of confidence that this is not unreasonable. And so it's like, if I've been really disciplined at school and exercise, then it might be, it might follow that I'll be relatively disciplined with my job. Is it guaranteed? No, but I could still make a generalization

that that's, it's plausible. And so I think it's like stacking those wins as low as a common denominator as you can. I mean, you know, for somebody who's absolutely just like sucking a life right now, that it's like, if you got out of bed today, then cool, call it a W. You know what I mean? Like, just regress it back and then you start just like you'd add weight to a bar, you add weight to the goals. So is it as simple as just waking up in the morning? Great. Then it would be take a walk for 10 minutes. Great.

And then just building on that. Yeah. And I think your bar always moves. Like when a toddler in the beginning begins speaking, they approximate the word mom. They're like, and you're like, yeah, you're so excited. But like, you know, a 10 year old says mom and you tell them to screw off, right? Like the bar moves. I'm not your mom.

Right. Yeah, sure. I'm not your mom. No, but the bar moves because like your standards for excellence continue to improve. So it's like if you're like, don't use someone else's standards. use your own. And once you can say mom really consistently, then like start saying sentences.

I want to know because we talked, I think it was the first or second time you came on the podcast about trauma. Sure. Because you have very interesting takes on trauma. Okay. And recently, not to be that guy, but I feel like I have gotten

more similar to your beliefs with regard to trauma. Everyone goes through traumatic experiences in their life. It's their response to that trauma that actually ends up making the difference. Now, I saw this video. I don't know if you've seen this before.

But it was someone holding the baby. Yeah. And then they like knock. on a doorway or a door nearby, and they're like, oh my God, I'm so sorry, your head, and the baby's like, and it starts crying as though it's in pain, right? And that could be a traumatic experience for that baby.

And then I saw another video of a baby that took a tumble, like a pretty bad spill. And the mom's like, oh, look, we just had a happy spill. This is so funny. And the baby starts laughing. Yeah. And like one actually went through something

and one did not, yet the responses were completely different. So I think now my opinion from these two baby TikToks Is that like, it really has to do with the way that other people respond to your trauma and then your perception of how you should be feeling after a specified event occurs. I agree. Which is crazy.

I'll add one piece to what you said. Yes. Which is that you said, people experienced trauma. I would just erase that. Things happen. Things happen. No need to label good or bad. Things happen to people.

It's meaning is really just what you attribute is switch though. Totally. That's a whole different level to this. Sure. Like was I traumatized by the $15 million? loss? No. Was it unfortunate? Yes. Did I deal with it? Yes. Okay. I'm not traumatized. I'm not like, I can never make a bet again. Oh, it is what it is. Things happen. The toddler can spell pain on your baby. What do you do now? Are you traumatized? Do you blame your baby? Like,

man, I've got all these issues because my baby. But you know what? But there could be instances that happen that definitely change your entire mindset. Like let's say you are driving fast on the freeway all the time. And then you get in a horrible car accident. You could be terrified of driving, especially at that speed for good reason. Maybe your entire perception is changed after that. Trauma is just accelerated learning. It's all it is. It's accelerated learning.

And the question is just, is the behavior that I learned something that I want? Does it serve me? Now, if you were driving really fast and then you drive slower, does that serve you? Well, forgetting places on time, you might have to leave a couple minutes earlier. Besides that,

does it serve you and the likely that you die in a car accident? Yeah, probably. So is that traumatic or is that like you just learned? I think just calling it trauma makes it this really heavy thing. Well, here's maybe a better example. There is that video of a car on the freeway where all of a sudden the car is just driving along,

going the speed limit, and a tire. At the no fault of that car, the tire comes out, the car flips. I would be terrified of driving just because you never realize how dangerous it is until you're in an experience like that. Yeah.

And then the question would be, is that the lesson that you want to learn from that? Or is it that there was a baby and he'd ruined your baby with a cart. Like you were driving and something happened. It's just like, is the adaptation, is to learning useful. If it isn't, then maybe we don't call it trauma. Maybe we call it bad luck. But trauma to a certain degree is a thing. Right? Because, well, if you look at all available data

and people that go through certain things, I don't know what that means. But like, do you look at all available data? But if you're saying, like, do people have emotional disturbances? I would agree with you. I think if you tell people that they have trauma, they will absolutely be affected by whatever the thing is. I agree. I'm saying that things happen. So I gave the extreme example last time, but it's probably worth repeating. So you're a 14 year old girl. And you all of a sudden have this man you don't know and he has sex with you. He's 35 years old. Traumatic.

I think most people would be like, okay, that's a traumatic experience. It was also just the middle ages and you might actually be a wonderful daughter doing her duty because that's when they got married and they would be married to men who are significantly older for alliances for their family. Were they traumatized or was that just like actually the they were actually being a good daughter doing their duty as a as a daughter of their family? So there's literally things that we can state with facts. This happened. A 35 old man had sex with someone that he had never seen before and that she had never seen him and she was 14 years old. That happened.

Everything else we do is the narrative we create around it. And I use that extreme example, which everyone like, you know, pulls away when I say that. But it's like you have to use the extremes to make the point. And so like if that can be both duty in one setting and horribly traumatic and other, that it means that the narrative is the thing that gives all the power. The context has changed in society. There's a lot of things that are different today that were normalized back then.

It doesn't make it necessarily okay. But it's the surrounding context. My exact point is that if you have something bad that happens, another human at a different time period might have experienced that same thing. And so the only reason that you choose to get upset about it and then get into a hyper-learning phase about something good or bad is because you were told to. It could also be in context of what's happening around. you where if it's like if everyone else is doing it around you if you're you now today you're

the outlier whereas maybe back then you were fitting in with everyone else who's also that's just narrative like I'm saying as a tool so for everybody who's listening to this yeah if you have something bad happen you can think I will subscribe to the traumatic experience that my counselor has told me that I have that I have gone through and they've labeled this thing and then I get to have I just get to keep this problem with me forever whenever I go to new relationships say oh I had I was traumatized earlier like I have a hard time trusting people because of this reason that I'm making up right now. Okay, cool. Or something happened. Okay. Moving on. It just doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. Creating the label that you are now this way because is the problem.

Not the thing. That's the problem. Is the label that people describe to whatever circumstance. And the more you'll start to note it like, the more attuned to this you get, the more you see it all the time. People are like, I'm the type of person who. I am a, right? I'm a neat, freak. Okay. So you have this label you described to yourself. Now, does that serve you in some way? And like in the beginning of every relationship, like you're single now, you're dating, right? So girls like, you know, or you'll probably come in and be like, I'm the type person who does this, this and this and I am this way. Like you just give you, like, here are all my labels. But like, what if you didn't do any of that? You're like, I do things. Like, sometimes I do these things.

Other times I don't. I mean, in practical sense, I feel like it does, it is important to have some of those belief statements, right? Would you agree with that? If they serve you. If they serve you. So you're saying belief statements like I am somebody who likes to keep my room clean. Sure. That is a fine belief statement. If it serves you. If it's a good thing, but if it's like I am lazy, I am worthless, I am unmotivated, I'm not funny. People don't like me. Stuff like that. I'm not confident because my mom didn't tell me enough when I was a kid. One, eliminate the because part because you don't know that. There's a hundred other things that could have that made you not motivated. You just pick that one out of thin air. Like here's the reason. Like you don't know. So you really do not believe in psychotherapy.

No. Well, my understanding is like you are who you are today because of these. Well, you do what you've been rewarded for doing in the past and you avoid things you've been punished for in the past. That I will absolutely agree with to the death. But don't you believe even as a child, let's say you could be shaped by your parents. So let's just say you're told by your parents, you are worthless. You can never do anything like that's hard to break, I think as an adult. I don't disagree with it.

The fact that they're hard of the break. I'm just saying you choose to believe it. There's a choice. Could it also be that your brain is wired in such a way that the, Neural pathways all point to you being worthless and you're told that you will amount to nothing. And it's so ingrained that when you become an adult, it's just like these are patterns that are really difficult to break

because you've been told your entire life and you believe one thing. And shattering all of that takes a lot of work. So to anyone who has that paradigm, you're right. It's not your fault. You're never going to be successful. Now what? okay, well, maybe I can do something about it. Okay, great.

There's no benefit. I get Q&As every once in a while. Someone's like, can't grow my business because of my kids, right? Like, they take up all my time, and it's just impossible for me to do the things. So what would you tell me? I just say, you're right.

You're never going to be successful. And it's not your fault. And then you can just watch the person just rive. They're just like, well, I mean, and I'm like, what? You're going to fight me on the fact that you're going to be successful? Great, the fighter showed up.

So what are we, what are we talking about? Do you want my permission to not be successful? or do you want to accept that you're not going to be like, what do you want? They're like, well, okay. It's like, well, yeah, there's your answer. Like, whatever reason you're giving yourself is the very reason you should do the thing. Like, if your mom was mean as shit to your entire life and she told you were worthless, that's a great reason to be successful.

There's just as many people who've had terrible outbreaks and became successful as people who did it. Why wouldn't you tell that person who says, I have kids, I can't be, give the business the time it needs? Why wouldn't you tell that person practically well? You're going to have to structure your day better. You're going to have to sacrifice some time with your kids. You're going to have to wake up a little earlier. It's going to suck in the beginning. you'll get used to it.

Why not go in with that approach? Because I think that person's looking for permission. I think they're looking for an excuse that's reasonable that protects their ego. I don't think so. I think sometimes people just need to be told what to do. They might know what the answer is, but if you tell them what the answer is,

they'll do it and they'll believe it because you're the one telling him. Well, this person was saying, I'm not going to be successful. Like in the premise that I was saying, this person saying, I'm not going to be successful. Here's my excuse. Tell me it's okay that I have this excuse.

Then I say, you're right. It's not your fault. You're never going to win. And then all of a sudden, their whole psyche changes because they want to contrast, they want to rebel against that. And they're like, what do you mean? I mean, I'm totally going to like, great, cool. So you agree. So you are going to win. So what are we talking about? Right? It's like it's just this back and forth that people always rebel. I just find that context interesting because a lot of times if you actually

just like put a knife in and just twist and say, sure, let's take it to the natural end. You'll never win. Okay. How do you feel now? Right. So then you making all of that fanfare about all these reasons, why it's justified that you won't win. How does that serve you? It does it. So you might as well act as though it didn't matter anyways and do the stuff that is required. to be clear for everybody, like, I share the stuff that work for me. If what you're doing is working for you, then I love you, keep crushing it. You know what I mean? Like I just share this stuff because people ask, they're like, how to do this by this time or whatever. And I share my worldviews. And they're relatively contrary. A lot of people believe as little as I believe about anything,

really. There are a few things that I absolutely believe through and through. And then everything else for the most part, I feel is noise. And that has helped me a lot because it has gotten me out of like, you know, 99% of the stuff, no, 99th, who knows. But like a vast majority of the content that I see on the internet is there's a lot of fluff. There's a lot of just like, just yes, a lot of people giving advice that have never done the thing that they're trying to give advice on. And so it's like when people talk about like, you know, energy and manifesting and, you know, psychology and affirmations and all these things, it's like, even this, the statement, like, have you heard of be, do have, you heard that? It's like a pretty big in like the personal

development say. If it's like, be the certain way, so you do the things to get what you want or have the thing, right? It has to, you have to be the person first, then you can, to do the things to have the thing, right? That's like, be. And everyone's like, be, do you have. I think it's completely. bullshit because being is a function of doing. If we were to say who is this person, we would describe their identity by the things they do like he is a carpenter. He's into these things. He does, he takes these actions. That is what creates his identity, how we describe it. So if being is a function of doing, then we can just cut being out, right? So it's just doing and then have. But if the

having comes from the doing, then that's an after effect. That's an outcome, not the thing that created it. And so the doing creates the having. And so you can cut out the have. And so it just comes down to doing. And so we don't need to like obsess about like, am I a good person? Am I a bad person? Am I a villain? Am I an asshole? That's the point that we're making the very beginning of this is like, maybe you are an asshole. Maybe you are a loser. You can still do the stuff to win and win anyways. If Graham identified as a loser tomorrow, like truly through his being identified as a loser and still made the same video and posted it, it would still crush. And for me, that's actually given me a lot of shelter and hard times, which is like, I don't need to be the best whatever. And I don't

even need to be in a great mood. I don't need to identify as like some shining night hero. But I can still run these ads or make these calls or do these outreach attempts or make this partnership deal. And I will still get the end result. And to me, that is very. very reassuring because it puts a lot more into my control. Do you think that you would do better in that case, if you're feeling bad, if you were feeling better about yourself, that you would have a better result? If the exact same activity was done, no. If I send the same hundred emails to the same exact people, whether I'm in a bad mood or good mood, the same response rates could come back. If you feel like you're in a really great mood, don't you feel like you could craft those emails

in such a way that's maybe one percent better? And I'm talking about if we just stick to what the doing is Because then at that point, it's like, shit, great, we shifted the doing. But like the doing itself can just be done. And I like that a lot because for people who are in hard times, it's like you don't have to feel confident to do shit. You can still get the result for it. Like you don't need to be confident to go up to the girl. You just go up to the girl and not be confident and still ask her out. Basically, what I'm trying to prevent against is the person who's waiting to be in a good mood to work.

Because sometimes that good mood never comes. Yeah. But the work still needs doing.