The Game with Alex Hormozi - The Road to Success (w/ Tom Bilyeu) Pt. 1 - Sept. '22 | Ep 479

Episode Date: December 31, 2022

Most people have a dramatic underestimation of how much volume it takes to be successful. Today, join Alex (@AlexHormozi) as he guests on Tom Bilyeu’s Show to talk about the traits of highly successful people, why people are afraid of “sucking”, and things that make or break a salesperson. 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.Check out the episode on Tom Bilyeu’s YouTube Channel!Timestamps:(0:36) - Successful traits & skillsets, and common mistakes (11:25) - Having the methodology & the fear of sucking (20:10) - The traits of highly successful people (27:08) - Expectations & the “boring” work(35:34) - What makes a salesperson “creepy”?(47:03) - The beliefs we have about our emotions are the things that drive us madFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

For me, a very core belief that has been, I think, intrinsic to at least the material success that we've experienced has been a belief that meaning is self-ascribed. So that there is no inherent meaning in the things that we do or the actions we take or the outcomes that happen, but only that which we ascribe to it. The wealthiest people in the world see business as a game. This podcast, The Game, is my attempt at documenting the lessons I've learned on my way to building Acquisition.com into a billion-dollar portfolio. My hope is that you use the lessons to grow your business and maybe someday. soon partner with us to get to $100 million and beyond. I hope you share and enjoy. I want to dive right in. If somebody is starting from scratch, what are the traits, skill sets that they should be cultivating in order to up the odds of their success? They should focus on one thing in general,

rather than lots of different things that you're not sure about, because if you're starting out, everything looks like an opportunity. So the correct answer is all of them are opportunities, but all of them won't work unless you pick one, right? So you have to see no to all the other mistresses. So boom, you pick one. And then from there, I always say six figures is sell something to someone. That's it. And if you want more detail, sell something to someone. So it's one avatar, one product, one channel. So you don't have to figure out, how do I create 20 pieces of content across? It's like just pick one channel, one media source, whether it's Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, you know, whatever, Twitter. Consistently start going on that, whether that's cold outbound, whether that's

content, whether it's running paid ads, whether it's affiliates, word of mouth, whatever it is. And start reaching out to people there to start selling your stuff. And so if you can just do that consistently, and I use something, all right. What's the skill set that's going to make somebody good? And this is six figures still. Yeah. So what's the skill set in that? Is it getting good at the outbound? Is it getting good at saying no to the other stuff? Like, how do we translate that into a skill set? You have to learn how to advertise, which I define is the process of making known. So how do you let other people know about the stuff you sell? So you have to advertise. There's six ways to do it. I covered five just now. So there's six ways you can do it. And then once people engage with whatever advertisement you have, you have to sell them.

So advertising is the first skill, selling them is the second skill. And then product would be the third skill, which is the thing that you're ultimately advertising and selling. Okay, so that gets the six figures. What gets the seven? Doing the same thing consistently. So usually once people do it in the beginning, they're sporadic, they're not consistent with it. Just the act of doing the same thing every day usually gets people to 100,000 a month, which sounds crazy to probably people listening, but most people who think that's crazy also haven't done it consistently

for an extended period of time. And so I use something that I call the Rule 100, which is 100 primary actions, whether it's 100 minutes of content creation per day, 100 reachouts per day, $100 of ad spend per day. You have to pick one of them, but 100 per day, and you do that for 100 days,

and I promise you'll be making six figures if you do that. Most people won't. I know you know that. They will fail at something. What is the most common thing that you see people fail. So you give them the blueprint. Your ability to articulate a blueprint to success is insane. Legitimately insane, dude. When I, so I'm going to make a prediction right now. Five years from now, in this space, you will be one of the biggest people on social media 100%

guaranteed YouTube podcast, whatever, because your advice is real. And I said, I was about to tell you something and I said, I'm going to say it on camera. And I will tell you right now, I judge everybody that comes on this show by when I'm doing the research to bring you on, which is a way bigger time investment than the interview itself, did I actually learn something? Did I move forward? Did I enjoy myself? Dude, it was awesome.

Researching you was awesome. It was good for the business. It was good for the soul, good for the mindset, everything. So this is going to be incredible. But where do people fall down? Because most people, even knowing how articulate you are and know that people are still going to fail is crazy. and I know that most people are going to fail.

So where do people really struggle in that equation? I think it's fear mostly. I know that's not a skill, but I think it's a character trait. And so people are afraid of not getting validated or they're afraid of judgment that they perceive from other people that exist or don't exist in their lives. And so for whatever reason, they have this second voice that criticizes everything they do

that in reality isn't even there, but it's constantly present. It's like the antithesis of whatever the God figure is, but just the negative voice. And so I think that's the thing that stops most people from doing the stuff they know they need to do. Because if you think about whether it's want to get in shape or I want to have a better marriage or I want to make more money, most people on some level, at a basic level, they know what to do. And my proof point of like even making money, right, most of us have had a bill that came up that was unexpected, a tax bill, a car breaks down, a health thing, whatever it is. And we find a way. And so when it's for someone else, people are used.

use the actual resourcefulness that they have to make the money. But for whatever reason, they won't use that same resourcefulness to make it for themselves. And so I think that most people know if they want to work out, to get in shape or to lose weight, whatever, they know they need to eat fewer donuts and move more in general. But they don't, right? Because they're afraid of getting started or they don't have the discipline to keep going, which is they can't make the short-term sacrifice for the long-term achievement. So big picture, it's like there's usually some fear that's preventing from doing it.

And then how it looks from a behavioral standpoint is they do not make the short-term sacrifice of discomfort for the long-term achievement, independent of whatever path they're talking about. You guys are going to want to say to the end, I'm going to give you my favorite Alex quote, but now I'm going to give you one that I actually think pertains to this. So you said, how to stay poor, assume you're always right. Yeah. And when I think about people failing, it's because, in fact, there's another quote. This one I didn't write down, but I'm going to get close. Marketing is just a fancy nine-letter word for test. And once people, understand you're going to fail and you're going to fail a lot. If you can't deal with that failure,

if you think that failing makes you a failure, if you think that it's a permanent state of being and you're never going to get better, then you won't do the things you need to do to ultimately be successful. You talk about consistency, but it isn't just consistency because if you do it wrong, consistently, you're still going to fail, right? So this is, you have to be, in my own language, willing to stare nakedly at your inadequacies. And if you can stare nakedly at your inadequacies, then you can actually get better if you're running the test. You're like, hey, looking at the data, did this work or did this not work? 100%.

Then you can actually improve. But you went through this. So in the beginning of your career, and this is one of the things I find most interesting about your story, is you failed. You actually pulled your now wife aside and said, I'm a sinking ship. And if you wanted to leave, I would completely understand. How did you go from that to, like there was. something you figured out. What is that thing you figured out? The reality of my situation was so

bleak that I honestly didn't even process the reality of my situation because the more I thought about it, like the sad or more hopeless I would feel. And so I focused on the few things that were under my control, which is like I can do these things. And so when I talk about advertising, when I talk about selling, I talk about those things boiled down to the actual actions because I had to think of it in that way because it was the only way that it wasn't overwhelming. It's like, I just have to make a hundred reachouts or I just have to spend $100 a day and I have to look at the ads and I have to turn off the ones that are bad and do more of the stuff that starts to work. And that was the process of getting me from kind of like dark to a better outcome.

But I mean, from that actual point, we did the only thing we knew how to do, which was at market and sell. And that was how we got out of that. And honestly, that single skill of being able to generate leads independent of the industry has been like my get out of jail free card, which has allowed me to fail over. over and over again until finally, you know, I got it right. And even after that one, when we were at the rock bottom there, I had just, you know, 90 days earlier, gotten a DUI, my mom was in the hospital, really bad shape. That's when I had just lost all the money, which is when I pulled her aside. But then fast forward six months, basically repeated the cycle again, which is we

had started doing these launches where we'd fly out and turn gyms around like bar rescue, but for gyms. And when we were out there, all of a sudden we came back home and we saw like, two of the gyms refunded all of the transactions because they just told the people they could just sign up through them and just do it for half the rate after we had already spent the money to the hotels and flights and all the ad spend and every you know a whole month of work and so basically all the money that we had saved up in that like I think we're out of jail free lost it all again and only then did we accidentally pivot into the licensing model which ended up becoming the thing that was like the first very big success that we had but like that whole period of time was

five years of basically not having anything. Even though on paper, when I had the gyms, I materially looked successful because we had six locations. But I always just put all my money back into each, you know, each new locations. I had very little actual cash. I was asset rich and cash poor. I know. And so, but then when I lost everything after that, because I sold them, took the money, put in the new venture, and then lost it, I was like, wait, I just lost five years because I had nothing to show for it. And so that's probably what has created a lot of the hypothesis I have now around I didn't lose the five years. I lost the assets which were not the most viable thing that I had earned over that time. It was the skills, the experiences, the character traits, because I still had those.

And then using those three things, I was able to do the next thing, fortunately. Yeah. I'm obsessed with learning. And it's interesting, because I've had the level of success that I've had and because I'm technically middle-aged, just crazy to say, I used to be the kid. I swear to God, there's a gravitational center in my brain that wants me to think that I have crossed some line and that it's about looking backwards and it's really dangerous. Like you have to be looking for it. I mean, God willing, I've got, you know, another 40 plus years of life left. And every time that I get in that trap, it's, I just re-anchor around, whoa, I'm still learning.

Like all this stuff, I'm 46, but I've learned. so much. I failed so many times and I've acquired so much knowledge and skill set and all of that. And then you can think about, oh, cool, like as long as I've got the energy to keep pushing, to keep building, because I have, to your earliest point about what makes you successful, that is literally my kryptonite, is I have a very hard time accepting the fact that I can do anything I want with my life, but not everything. And that I find deeply distressing. But like on a level that borders on mental illness. Yeah.

And by focusing, cutting out the other stuff and recognizing, okay, I've reinvented myself again. Yeah. But a lot of that knowledge is going to transfer. It's going to be useful as I push forward. But getting obsessed with learning.

Yeah. Like that would be the gift if I could give to people and say, okay, you want to be successful. I get it. Everybody wants it right now. But if you can stack these skills, like then if you've got

the skill set and the methodology that you and others can really lay out incredibly well, it's like now you can do something. But if you have the methodology but not the skills or you don't have the mindset and so you're broken by the failure or you don't have the methodology, if you're missing any one of those, then you end up in a death spiral. It's interesting when you're saying with the learning thing because I think a lot of people that say the early, because I also have like, I feel like two parts of the audience that like follow my stuff.

I've got the business owners who are trying to scale their business, et cetera. And then I've got all the people want to start a business. And usually they're a little bit younger and whatnot. And I think there's a misnomer around like education. And so a lot of them, I don't know how explicit I can be, but like they mentally masturbates are watching lots and lots of videos. They, you know, want the pump-up speeches. They buy the tickets to the things.

And so they just learn. And I think that they think that exposure to information is learning. And I don't think that's true. Or at least it hasn't been for me. That's definitely not sure. I'm sure you get asked all the time, like, what are the books that transform your life? I've had a handful of books that have been useful to me, but I would say 99% of the things that I have learned I've learned they're doing. And so when I do the original rule of 100 and whatnot, it's because I think it's the most effective way to learn, which is you force yourself on the one controllable that you have, which is the activities that you can take.

And then it goes with the underlying assumption that you go off feedback and you're like, well, that opening message did not work. Right. And then I think most people have a dramatic underestimation of how much volume it takes to be successful, independent of the thing, right? They're like, okay, I should go on five dates and then find the girl I'm going to marry. Like, what if it was 500 to find the right girl you're going to marry? Or I want to, you know, start this new channel. I want to become an influence or whatever it is. And they start doing, you know, one post a day for four weeks. And they're like, why am I not famous yet? And they find, I mean, real, right? And they find out that like, you know, we ended up doing 400 episodes before we made it to the top 10 on the podcast thing. And now we start doing, you know, 100 plus pieces of content a week. And it's just this volume game that you get the skill from the volume, the feedback from the volume. And there's all these like little things. I'm sure it's like from the exercise role because you come from that. Like when you squat, the first time you squat, you're you're orienting yourself to your environment. You're barely actually squatting. You're just looking like you have a bar on your back. But you learn so much between that first rep

and your 10,000th rep of squats. And so I think for most people, it's like, my goal, like the learning is like, if I can just decrease the action threshold for people to begin and be okay with the fact that they're going to suck and it is okay to suck, it is you should expect to suck. And it would be unreasonable for you to be good

if you haven't done it before. And so it's like, are you asking the universe to be unreasonable for you by expecting to be good on your first try? And I think that's where a lot of people, it's the expectation that destroys their ability to be successful because they expect to win on the first shot and no one does. Do you worry at all about people wanting to be on camera right from the jump?

Because that puts an expectation to be good that, oh, yeah, that's rough. So many feelings about this. So you've got, you've got this whole space, right? And you look at like, if you're like, I want to be a business influencer, right? Well, it's like, well, you look at the guys who are actually the top of the business game. And virtually everyone, you, Andy, Ed, Gary, all those guys have killed it in business. And most of them, even Gary, had gone to 60 million a year before he made his first content. And so I think the issue is that people look at that and say, I should make content like them when you can't answer the underlying question, which is why should I listen to you? Which is always in the back of every audience's mind, in my opinion. At least that's what I think.

Like when someone's like a relationship expert and I find out they've been divorced three times, I'm like, you know, maybe not, right? I mean, as terrible as it is, they might be giving amazing advice, but it doesn't pass the first filter, which is if I'm going to, take military strategy from someone, I'd rather have a general that has a winning record, even if the other guy, Napoleon said, I'd rather have lucky generals. So even if he had two that were even, he'd rather have the lucky one. And so to the same degree, I think people use that filter because it actually takes less effort to learn from someone that you trust.

And so it's like if you've got the basement teacher that's telling you to dollar cost average into the S&P, and you've got Warren Buffett who's telling people to dollar cost average in the S&P, they don't want to listen to the teacher, even if the teacher is better objectively from a constant standpoint because they just don't know if they should trust them. So you have to have two filters. I'm hearing the thing. Should I trust the thing? With Warren, you can just plug into whatever he's saying, just take it as truth, which takes

less effort. And so I think most people don't get that point. And so I think you should advertise the stuff that you sell, let people know about what you're doing. But it should be about the true expertise that you have, which is oftentimes just talking about the stuff you're doing, rather than saying, you should be doing this, this is what I am doing. Hope you find it interesting.

Hope you find it valuable. And I think that's a big dynamic, which at first is like how to. It's how I. just that little shift. And I think a lot of people would get bigger, better audiences and actually make more money from the content that they're making

because everyone else is like, why should I listen to you? Yeah. Yeah. With content, like I'm open. Anybody that wants to make it, make it, people will watch it if it's adding value. Hopefully they don't do what you were describing earlier,

which I'll call spiritual entertainment, where they're just learning, learning, learning, watching, watching, watching, getting motivated, getting inspired, they're not doing anything with it. But my big concern with people creating content is that they will trap themselves, because they're afraid to suck.

Like when I got a camera, I was like, wow, I'm really rolling the dice now because my life has taught me one immutable truth. I'm going to fail a lot. And there's nothing that tells me that that period in my life is over. And it was never interesting to me to like ride into the sunset on,

oh, I sold Quest. So I sold Quest and then like fucking Babe Ruth, I said, I'm going to build the next Disney, right? But I went on camera and said, look, honestly, the odds are stacked against me. The odds that I fail are way higher than I, that I succeed, right? And so going into that, I did not want to back myself into a corner where I was afraid to try things. I was afraid to step into an area where I wasn't good because it's the only way that I know to get better, right,

which I call the physics of progress. I call it the physics for a reason. So I think it is truly the only way to improve is basically the scientific method. You come up with an informed hypothesis, come up with a test that lets you actually try that out. You test it. You get results. You stare nakedly at those results, which will sting a little because it almost certainly did not work as well as you hoped. You will then get a little bit wiser. You will reformulate a hypothesis. You will retest.

And you just, that's the loop, right? And you just go, go, go. And you see what works and you see what doesn't. But people are so interested in looking cool that the content becomes the trap that stops them from actually getting good. It's the posturing. It's the external validation that they need to feel like the success they're not having in reality can be made up for with likes and comments and perceive success.

Talk to me about the, so you said that you wanted to vanquish your dad. So this to me is tied to that idea of like you, you need something that propels you. You need something that pushes you to go through all of this. But also trying, letting your dad control your actions is probably not the best move. Yeah. So like, how is it useful? and then is there getting to the other side of that? Yeah.

And, you know, to be clear, dad. I would say that the vanquishing thing is something that I was able to kind of recognize in retrospect, which was it was all about beating my dad earlier on. And a lot of that was because I felt like a lot of the respect was withheld for me. Earlier on, and it was always like a moving target, which is, you know, you need to be this, you need to be that. You have to be in shape. You have to date hot girls.

You have to top your class. You have to play all the varsity sports. Like all those things, right? be editor-in-chief of the newspaper, be editor-in-chief of the literary magazine, all those things at the same time. And still, if I got something wrong on a test, it was like, what you get wrong, you know, rather than, this is cool. I'm not, you know. Got 99 right. Yeah, I'm not booing about it. It is what it is. It's made me who I am, and I'm grateful for it. But that was kind of the earlier part was, I wanted to win the game

that had been set up for me. And, you know, first it was make $100,000 a year, and then it was make the same amount as my dad, and then it was make more than my dad, And then it was make more than my dad had ever made his entire life. And then once that happened, I looked around and I was like, I think I've been playing his game and not my game. And so I wasn't really setting any rules. I was just playing with the rules that were given to me. And so kind of thing like, is this even the game I want to play? And so that, you know, that took me, you know, a little bit of time to process.

And I think that it ultimately, to your question, I think it did serve me a lot. And I don't know how much of these reinforced behaviors that I learned during that period of time still benefit me to. today, but they're not fueled by the same thing. So I still have these habits of how I work and, and, you know, being dedicated towards goals, et cetera, that I think we're born of that, but no longer are fueled from that now. You lay out three traits of ultra successful people. I don't know if they're yours or if you read them somewhere. This is so brilliant. And when you said it, you put words to something that I have felt for a very long time. If you don't remember them, I have them here. But if you remember them, yes. And so,

So there's three traits that people, when they looked at, because they were trying to find habits of highly successful people. And when they actually pulled apart, it's not, you know, and I hope I'm not contradicting anything. But there's people who are really rich who wake up really late and work really late. And there's people who are really rich who wake up really, really early, and there's people who are really rich who eat really healthy and there's people really rich who drink Coke, and eat french fries every day. And so there's all these things that we want to make as truths, but there's easy examples

that counter those things. So it's like, what are the few things that are true, or at least that seem to be present in all of the situations. And it seems as though they were surprisingly few. And so the three common trace that they had, that they had found were, one, that people have a superiority complex. They believe they're better than others, and they believe that they deserve more than everyone else does, and that they can accomplish big goals.

So they have a bigger vision because they believe they deserve it or whatever it is, that they were able to identify that. The second thing that they were able to identify is that they had crippling insecurity, which is a paradox of paradoxes. They feel they'll never be enough, and they'll always be measured against the things that they've achieved. And so you've got this crazy dynamic between they think they're better than everyone. They think they deserve more.

They want to go after this big hill. And at the same time, they fear they'll never be good enough. They'll never actually achieve it. And they actually suck. And then the third piece, which kind of adds the beautiful mix of this is impulse control. And so they're able to control their actions and focus on a single thing for an extended period of time. And so if you put those three things together, it's like you've got a big goal that's pulling you this way. You've got this big fear that you are running away from.

And then you've got impulse control to keep you focused on the one thing that matters. Yes. And if you do that, if you are the type of person who has those traits, then you are very likely to be successful. You gave me the chills twice while you were explaining that. So this is, I'm often asked like, hey, you know, what does it take to be successful or how did I get successful? And I'm like, from the time I was a little kid, so I grew up lower middle class. And but from the time I was a kid, I told everybody, I am going to be rich. Like you don't understand. I'm going to be rich. I was so angered by not being able to get the things that I wanted as a kid. And I had a little problem with authority. And so I felt like I was being told that I had this box of staying. And I was like, no, no, no. I'd always had these crazy dreams. And I just believed I could make it come true. But I'm terrifyingly insecure that I'm not smart enough to pull it off. And I have something I need to prove to myself, to my wife, my father-in-law, my own parents. Like, I just, fuck. No matter how much I achieve, I still have this. Right? So I have

this crushing need to validate myself and to feel like, no, you really did have it, kid. Yes. But I am psychotic at my ability to delay gratification. Like I can suffer and toil and grind and just like, I don't need to eat the marshmallow for a hundred years, right? Which is stupid in some ways. But you put those three things together and you just go and go and go. It's really I got you. So I got you. So I, yeah, yeah. So to the marshmallow point, because I think this is really interesting, and I don't think it's talked about enough, which is they, they like to separate the kids into the two buckets, right? Like the kid who waits for two marshmallows and the kid who just says, I want the marshmallow now. But I feel like they should have a third bucket,

which says, how long do they ask the kid to wait for the marshmallow, right? Because it's not, do you have, like, as I like to think of things, and like, a lot of times we have false dichotomies or we have binaries where, like, good or bad, you know, disciplined or undisciplined, I'm honest or dishonest, right? When I think more reality is to what degree am I honest, to what extent am I, you know, loyal, right? Oh, God, there's a whole conversation. Yeah. And so I think that each of those three traits that we just went over, it's not do I have them or not for the people who are listening. Because people like to think, yes, I have it or like, oh, well, I have all three of those. It's not having them. And I'm sure you've interviewed some of the most successful people on

the planet. It's how much do you have? Yeah. Right. And so I think that like your ability to to delay gratification, it's not just like, oh, I can wait a week or I can wait a month. I made this tweet that went pretty viral. And it was like, if you can wait a year, you can make a ton of money. Like if you can do something for 12 months, you can not need for financial goodness, pretty much for the rest of your life. I'm not saying you're going to be hella rich, but you're not going to need for anything. If you can wait 12 months.

If you can wait a decade, you're going to be above the 1%. If you can wait 10 years for an outcome, be able to do the doing without seeing the result, For 10 years, you will be able to be above any, most achievement of most people. And if you can wait a lifetime and you don't even need to see the result of your doing this, even while you are alive, but know that it may get done after you pass, then I believe that you can change the world. And I mean that. And so I think that if people can just extend the time horizon that they're measuring themselves on,

they can just do so much more. I mean, you've probably heard the Bill Gates court where he says people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade, I think it's the same thing just continue to draw it out. And I think as we've been able to achieve more leverage and make more money, et cetera, my horizon has extended. And when I listen to the people who are the people who I want to emulate, I can almost tell by the measurement of money that they talk about and the measurement of time that they discuss how successful they are or how successful I think they're going to be.

Like if I talk to a 25-year-old and he's talking about what he wants to do in two decades and his whole plan of what he's going to do, as long as he's not just blowing smoke because he's heard an interview from me. then I'm like, this kid's got it. He gets it. He gets it. And most people just don't think they can't wait 90 days. Most people can't even wait a month. They start a diet and 14 days later, they don't have a six back and they can't wait. If you do a year, you can look whatever way you want for the most part, you know, by and large. And if you wait a year for the ability to learn how to sell, you wait a year for the ability to learn how to market, wait a year just providing value to a group of people for free and then delaying your ask, you can do whatever you want. Real quick, guys, you guys already know that I don't run any ads on this

and I don't sell anything. And so the only ask that I can ever have of you guys is that you help me spread the words so we can out more entrepreneurs, make more money, feed their families, make better products, and have better experiences for their employees and customers. And the only way we do that is if you can rate and review

and share this podcast. So the single thing that I asked you do is you can just leave a review. It'll take you 10 seconds or one type of the thumb. It would mean the absolute world to me. And more importantly, it may change the world with someone else. Now, and I don't know how you're going to react to this, if we can separate that idea from being patient.

So I made a shirt that said, fuck patience. Okay. But if you're not playing the long game, you're screwed. So my thing with patience is you have to go all out at a sprinter's pace and run a marathon at a sprinter's pace if you want to achieve something. That's where people fall down. You'll find people that can wait, but can they, and this is one of my all-time favorite quotes, I'm pretty sure it's Winston. Churchill, though people often attribute things to handle. Who knows? Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm. Now, there are people that can go from failure to

failure, but do they lose the enthusiasm? Can they attack it as hard? I was telling you, at the end of this year, we have a plastic table that I'm going to smash the little pieces because it has come to represent like the hardest thing that I've built in my professional career and just all the fucking problems that have been associated with it. But I'm still, going after it is hard every day. And when I think about, like, so because I've had success, and I know how many people are chasing it, and I can just save people a lot of time, it's not going to give you what you think it's going to give you. So like, don't bother chasing that kind of success. So an easy way to say it is, don't worry about winning a championship ring.

We worry very much about becoming capable of a championship performance. That will be a far more interesting life because you really do want to get that good. Yeah. But in the pursuit of that thing, in getting that good, it's like it is going to take an inhuman amount of concentration, willingness to fight through the pain and suffering, and an ability to attach enough meaning and purpose to it that you'll keep going when you're just getting kicked in the face over and over. Like it's crazy. And so knowing how badly people want that,

I want for them that thing, like how whatever it is. And I have a method that I can teach people how to do it. but most people still won't do it, which is to build the desire, to create an association between the doing that thing and the meaning and purpose that you want to have for your own life and that it's not going to seem self-evident. You have to bolt it on. It feels kind of fake in the beginning. But if you really invest, and it really is something that you care about, it can't be fake. But if it really is something that you care about and you build that intense association,

then you can fight through that. But boredom kills more entrepreneurs, than fear or failure ever will. When you say boredom, do you mean that they're starting something and starting to work and then they just switch because they're ADD or? No, I mean that doing something where you don't get the result that you want and it's 10 years out and you're going to have to do what Jeff Bezos calls overhead, right? No matter how much you love your job, there's always overhead. There's boring shit.

And what I find is people, they can't stay on task. I find in myself a strong desire not to say. stay on task because it is boring. It's just boring. Or even worse, if it feels bad and you have to keep doing it and you have to wake up every day and face that like this is really going to be tough. And it's going to be tough for a very, an undetermined amount of time. So it's not even like I know it's going to be a year. There is an unknown amount of suffering before me. And I have to somehow continue to muster the enthusiasm. And have faith. Yeah. That this. theory that I have is actually going to work out. Or that I'll get better, right? That maybe this theory

isn't the right theory, but I'll be able to figure it out. It's interesting to say that because we talk about need to believes when we're thinking about a company that we want to invest in. And so it's like, we know, we try to have as few need to beliefs as possible for, you know, a growth thesis to happen. And then not only do we want to have as few as possible. That's really interesting. Need to believe, like, I need to believe that this is true for this outcome to be possible. Yeah. So how do we have as few of those as possible? And how do we have that those need-to-belief statements are as high likelihood as humanly possible? Right?

So it's like if we had a business that was reliant on an inflationary period or something, I'd say like, okay, well, I believe that that's, you know, it's high likelihood that it's going to occur. Okay. So I feel okay about that one. And if that was the only thing I need to believe for this whole business to be successful, we're like, where do I write a check? Because it's the only thing I need.

So it's how many of these are there, right? And if there's a lot of them, then with each additional line, our likelihood of getting the outcome we want goes down. And so I think that if reversing that for success for somebody who's coming along is like, what amount of action would it be unreasonable for me not to be successful? And so for me, it's like, I believe that if you do 10,000 cold calls, you'll get better. Like it would be unreasonable for you not to be good. Like after that level of effort.

If you run, you know, you take half your paycheck every month or a 30 year paycheck every month and you say I'm going to advertising university, which is I'm going to spend money actually advertising, trying to get people to click on this thing and give me their name and phone number, if you go and you spend that amount of money on actually advertising, after a year, after two years, you'll probably be pretty good, especially if you join a community to other people who are doing the same thing, right? You seek out mentors who have done and give you frameworks that you can just work off so you can shortcut your path to success.

It becomes unreasonable that you wouldn't be more successful in the future than you are today. And so I like thinking about things in terms of directionally correct rather than will I hit it or not. I think there's so many binaries because it's easy psychologically for us to say yes, no, honest, honest, et cetera, successful, not successful. But it makes making decisions really hard because you're like, is this the path for me? Is this the product going to the business I'm going to start? Whereas like, well, if I started something, I would be more likely to be successful than if I did not start anything. And from there, I will gain experience and perspective to then make the next iteration on the main thing.

And was Quest your first thing ever? First successful thing. But you'd done other stuff before that and failed. And I still, I was like, I hope Quest wasn't his first thing. Most people had. They God it wasn't. Most people had a graveyard of failures before they had their actual first success. And so most people spent all this time, a different tweet that went viral.

It said like with 20 hours of focused effort, most people can be pretty decent at something. Whether it's guitar, it's singing, even cold calling. If you actually cold called for 20 hours, focused effort, you'd be decent. But most people spend years waiting to do the first hour. Whoa. And so it's like, how can I decrease that action threshold and get someone to just just embrace the suck? And so it's like, how can I normalize nose? So it's like, if I'm teaching somebody to sell, it's like, dude, I need you get 100 nose.

All right? Let's get 100 nose fully. I don't remember the else. Just get 100 nose. And the thing is all of a sudden, if the no becomes the goal, then they realize that it's about the process and not the outcome. And then they will become better salespeople because they stop being afraid of it. The same thing like for training a salesperson. I want them to hear the gasp, right?

Which is like, you say a price over the phone. Everyone's afraid of saying the price. It's like, dude, if you didn't get a gasp, you didn't go high enough. They're like, what? I'm like, oh, you failed. Terrible sale. They didn't gasp. They're like, really?

And so then it becomes, it flips it and it becomes a point of pride. It's like, oh, I got her to hear the gasp on this one. And so all of a sudden they stop being afraid. We normalize we do like exposure therapy on the things that people are most afraid of. And I hope that with all the stuff that we do, that we can do that in a micro way for at least a handful of people. So they just start doing and realize that they're going to gain perspective and the light of their knowledge will give them the next foot. But the thing is they're stuck on the first one trying to pick the first path when they had no idea what they're doing. Was selling ever hard for you?

Like the idea of selling, not that I'm sure you were bad at it at one point, but was the idea of trying to convince somebody to buy something. Yeah. So when I quit my job, my dad's buddy was in private wealth management in Merrill. And so he called me up and was like, hey, you should sell for me. And I, to this day, and he jokes about it now with me. I said, oh, sales. I was like, I'm not a salesman. I was like, I'm an academic.

You know what I mean? I just come from, you know, on the bones. And I thought I, you know, whatever. And then lo and behold, I signed my lease. I slept on the floor. And I was like, how do I pay rent? And woman walks in the door. And I was like, I need to get her to give me money so I can pay rent.

And I was like, oh, this is sales. And I didn't know. So for me, it was just begging people to give me. me money in the beginning. I was like, I promise I'm going to give you the best results ever. But the idea of sales was very, I thought it was beneath me. I thought it was scammy. I thought it was used car sales, you know, just like the abhorrent flag. You know, that would be the right word. But yeah. And then through exposure, I realized that it was, and I ended up in life's irony being something that I've really fallen in love with. There are people on the internet.

I will let them remain nameless that they give me the hebie-jeebies. I am deeply uncomfortable with something in the way that they sell. And I've actually never taken the time to figure out what it is. And I probably should. I'd make a lot more money. But there are people that make me deeply uncomfortable. And then there's something about you. So I'd never heard of you.

Somebody peeing me was like, yo, you need to check this guy out. And I looked at your stuff and I'm like, there's something about the way that you talk that is super matter of fact. It isn't the I have nothing to sell you because you're an incredible salesperson. So even when I interface with the way that you sell, it doesn't creep me out. I've not thought about it enough to know why, but I bet you have. What is it that makes a salesperson creepy and why aren't you creepy?

Why aren't you creepy? The best interview question I've ever had. So I think a lot about this because I'm outlining the next book, so the next book is leads and I'm already done the draft and you know how that is where I'm like, oh, I'm not done that book, but I'm like, I can't wait for the next book. And so I'm thinking through like, what is it that sales is overall, right? It's structuring your conversation to increase the likelihood that the person who's on the other side gives you money.

That's what it is. It's structuring that conversation that way. Structuring that conversation. I heard you mentioned something that you call, and I am so only vaguely aware of like proper sales. You said holding the frame. Oh yeah. It's not about the words you say. It's how you say them and whether you can hold the frame. Is that what you mean by structure of the call? All of it. Yes. I mean. So what is what is the structure? What is holding a frame? Like what does that mean? So I've like a lot of sales. So when you're when you're when two people interact in. general, no matter what, man, woman, child, whatever, two frames collide. And I believe it's animalistic, whatever it is. There is a, there's a decision of who is alpha. Now, the alpha is also contextual. And so you can be alpha in, like the president of the United States is alpha

everywhere until he goes into a doctor's office, he tells him pull his ass and he sticks to him right. Frame, right? In that room, doctor is king, right? He is the alpha in that setting, in that context. And so the ability to hold the frame for most for most salespeople is really having a it sounds crazy, having a clear agenda and controlling the conversation, which is why are we here? Right. Because a lot of sales is clear communication because if you clearly communicate because the biggest advantage that a salesman has is that the person has already said they have a problem most times. Right. So if someone responds to a content piece and says, hey, can you help me? They've already enunciated, they have an issue. They have a problem. And so you already have the inherent advantage

of the frame, which is, you said you needed help. I'm here. How can I help you? Right. And so it starts with that, right? It's being clear about why we're here. And then we get agreement that we understood the problem that they said they had next. And then from that point, we have to turn the desire into a decision, which is, okay, you say you want these things. Here's the frame that I want to give you to analyze the decision. Can we agree to this frame? Right. And so for example, if I were selling marketing services, we rework a sales script with any of the portfolio companies, which is one of the things that we do to make them grow. A lot of times they have all this gobbly decook, right? And so I like the shortest possible scripts.

We can because a lot of communication is wasted. Right. So what happens a lot of times on a sales call is they say hello, build rapport, talk for 30 minutes, see that there's time that's running out and then realize they have to pitch. Right. And so then they moat her mouth and then just awkwardly ask, right? And it is, to your point about it seeming icky, right, or sucking, is that it's not normal human communication and you're not providing value to the other person. And so giving clarity to someone on a decision is tremendous value. And so if you can sell in a way that clarifies a decision, my objective always, when I teach sales, the goal is not to get the person to buy. The goal is to get the person to decide. And I believe that people

don't decide for only three reasons. And this comes from Albert Ellis. This is not me. But people blame all the woes of their lives on circumstances, other people, and then ultimately themselves. And so when we're overcoming obstacles in a sale, we have to make sure that we are accounting for the circumstances, which is taking away time as a reason they can't do it, taking away money as a reason they can't do it, taking away particular aspects of the product as a reason they can't do it. We have to make sure that they don't cast their power to other people and saying, I can't make this decision, someone else has to make it. And then finally, when they're with themselves, they want to avoid the decision. They want to delay it. They want to not make it. I'm not going to

think about it. Right. And so the idea is that I believe that if you sell properly, you can talk to an empowered person and you have to basically sift through the crap that they're telling themselves about why they can't decide, why they have to talk to their husband, why the circumstance of their situation matter. And so I think that if you can do that and you communicate that in a conversation, you have made someone feel powerful and you've given them the tools to make a decision. and then in making that decision, they take a step towards the life they want to have. And so if you can structure a conversation that way, it's not a key, it's value additive. And then ultimately you do make more money, but you're not focused on that because you're

focusing on helping them make the call. And if we can do that, you can sell whatever you want. And I think that's like, that's what I try and structure. And that's why I'm so excited for the sales book when it finally comes out. But most of it's clear communication. When I listen to sales calls, because I still kind of do it because I like it. It's like therapeutic. You know what I mean?

There's so much waste. People aren't direct. It's like, why are we here? And someone's like, I just want to get more information. That's an obstacle. No, you didn't. Not here because you want more information. You're here because you're suffering from a problem.

You don't just hop on sales calls all day to get information. No, you're trying to solve something, right? What are you trying to solve? What are you in pain from? Got it. So let me make sure I understand this. Label the problem, right? So it's like a lot of people just don't know how to talk and they just make face noise at each other.

And no one's listening and no one's talking. They ping pong back and forth. No one actually is listening. Yeah. They're not communicating at all. Right? They say a statement. I mean, someone says, I'd literally just a review to say,

call yesterday. Guy says, I'm not sure now is a good time. Salesman then responds with, well, I'm not sure if you're a good fit, if you're, if you're not sure, because it just goes off on this weird tangent, and then there's a pause. And then guy just asked another question. No communication happened. It was like, I have a question. You just said a bunch of words. And I guess it's normal for me to say something else now. And so then he just asked another question, right? When you overcome these obstacles with somebody, it's like, I don't have time, right? I'll just give you a simple one, because this is one, this is for everybody who's listening. Because right now, you're probably not doing something because you're like, I'm too busy. I'll start when it's convenient.

Whatever. If you say that as the excuse for not doing something, then there's an assumption underlying that that says that if I get busy again in the future, I will stop. And so do you want the success that you want to be long term? Yes. Then do you believe that you'll never be busy again for the rest of your life? No. So you might as well start when you're busy so that you have the most support. Because if you learn how to do it when you're busy, when it gets quiet, you'll succeed even more. B, C, again, you know how to do it because that's how you start it. Right? Obstacle overcome. And then one step closer to making a decision. And so what happens is in the obstacle process when people are trying to sell stuff, people start from the outside end. So it's so easy to say,

I don't have time. It's the easiest thing. It's, I don't have time, I don't have money, right? And then once you peel, you show them how that's a fallacy. It's a logical fallacy. It's a distortion of reality. You peel that back. You get one layer closer to them. My wife won't let me. My partner won't let me. My kids. So you can feel like it's it's closer to you, right? And you peel that out because how do you overcome that? Well, five years from now, if you didn't do the things that you wanted to do with your life and you blamed your wife the whole time because she wouldn't let you do it, who you're going to blame? Her? Is that fair for your marriage, for your relationship? What do you think? No. So I think what you're doing is you're asking for permissions that

of support. All right? And you hear you say you have that conversation with your wife. Right? So now we're we're sliding the other side of the table and we're like, let's play this out, right? It's not going to go the way you think it's going to go. Because if you keep repeating this habit, you're going to end up five years from now. You're going to look at your life the same way you're looking at it now and hating it. And who you're going to blame? Now you're five years in. You still kind of like your wife.

Five years from now, you might not so much because you've had 10 more times you try to do something. She said no. So it's today the day, right? And so we peel one layer. And then finally, you're at a person who's squirming there, right? Because you force them to confront reality, which is now they don't want to make the decision. Right? because they're like, I'm just going to avoid it, I'm not sure, et cetera, et cetera.

And you're like, hold on. Like, I've got you. You know what I mean? Like, we're going to get through this because you're just waiting through this shit that people tell themselves, right? And so finally, when they're in the avoidance part, the biggest fear they have is making a mistake, right? They don't want to be seen as stupid. They don't want to lose status as a result of this decision. And so when we're dealing with that, it's making them understand that you don't need

time to make a decision. You need information. And if the only source of the information you have is May, then let's talk. What are the variables that you're going to use to make the decision? And a lot of people haven't even thought through that. It's like, well, if you don't know what they are, why don't I walk you through for that might be useful? Does this thing solve the problem the way you want it to be solved?

Yes or no? Yes. Do you want to work with us? Yes or no? Yes. Do you know someone you have access the amount of money to get started with this program? Yes or no?

Yes. Great. Let's do it. Right? And so you can walk someone through it and it's like, oh, wow. Like, and like you feel like just wanted this magical journey of like all these things of why the reason they haven't, they decided not to make decisions, but so many people are stuck in that same spot for why they're not taking action, whether it's

selling a product or selling themselves. And I think that those frameworks of thinking through each of those problems and there's, I have a zillion of them for each of those things. I had to develop because I use those on myself. So I was like, I have to give myself a compelling reason to start doing stuff. I have to give myself a compelling reason to make decisions when I don't want to. I have to give myself a compelling reason that I can explain to a partner of why I made this decision, right, later. And so by doing that, it decreased the time between me getting information and acting, and then it sped up my decision loops in my life in general. And then obviously I applied that to sales, but I've applied it to everything. When I say these beliefs, I don't say

these as an affront to anyone who shares different beliefs, to be clear. But for me, a very core belief that has been, I think, intrinsic to at least the material success that we've experienced has been a belief that meaning is self-ascribed, so that there is no inherent meaning in the things that we do or the actions we take or the outcomes that happen, but only that which we ascribe to it. And so because of that, I feel like it's allowed me to the point of what you're saying about the amount of pain and the amount of suffering that you have to go through in order to achieve the things on the other side. I think it's been able to, it's allowed me to reframe a lot of the discomfort into what if this just is how it always has been or what if this is actually

amazing and what if this is exactly what it should look like. And so I think a lot of times it's the discrepancy between our expectations and reality that shape the emotions that we have in response to any given situation, bad, good, et cetera. And so I think a lot of people can't control their state. And we deal with this with a lot of the portfolio companies is it's like, it's funny because I don't even necessarily want to get in this. I want to talk about like the business and what's the strategy and how we're going to execute the stuff. But, you know, there's a big percentage of time where they're stressed and they think there's something wrong with that. And so I feel like a lot of people feel like there's something wrong with experiencing human

emotions. And so they are stressed and then think there's something wrong with them or they are sad. And I know that this is the thing that the keyboards are, you know, the fingers are right on top of it is my belief. It is contrary. And I accept that. That it's the beliefs we, have about our emotions that are the things that drive us mad. Facts. And so somebody's sad and then they tell themselves that they're bad because they're sad or they're wrong to be sad or they're a piece of shit because they're sad rather than saying, isn't this a beautiful thought about human existence? Like if I could not be sad, then I would not experience joy. So like if I say that I don't want to be sad anymore, then I would also have to give up joy. Am I willing to do that? No.

Well, then this is just a part. Like I can't say that I want sunny days if there are no rainy days. Like we don't say whether is good or bad, it just is. And so I think to the same degree, the human experience is also that way too, at least how I define it. And so I think having that is my backbone frame in terms of my worldview, although contrarian has helped me a lot in dealing with the things that often derail entrepreneurs on their path to getting what they want. And so for me, that's been very helpful. So from a contrarian standpoint of like, you know, Peter Thiel's question, like what closely help believes you have that most people don't agree with? That's one of them. I'm scandalized, by the way, that that one is something.

that people don't hold. I think that people get themselves in trouble because they believe the opposite of the following quote. There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. And they think that, no, there are things that are objectively good and bad and I'm simply recognizing the truth. That is that that's certainly what I struggled with the most of my own life, that I was simply, when I had a negative view of myself or anything else, that I was simply recognizing the truth of the situation, not understanding how the belief I had about the thing was influencing my behaviors and my behaviors entirely determined my outcome. And so then I was like, well, hold on. If my behaviors are predicated on my beliefs and my outcomes are predicated on my

behaviors, then my outcomes are actually linked to my beliefs. And so I've got to go in and make sure that I'm believing things that are effective. And so my whole thing is I only do and believe that which moves me towards my goals.