The Game with Alex Hormozi - This is How You Build a Brand - Keynote Pt.2 | Ep 402

Episode Date: June 30, 2022

Quality over quantity! Today, join Alex (@AlexHormozi) as he shares one of his favorite Keynote speeches about the heart and soul of building a brand and the mistakes that some people aspiring entrepreneurs tend to repeat when starting out on creating content. This is part 2 of the talk.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Timestamps:(1:25) - Two frame shifts: "Here's What I Did" vs. "Here's What I Should Do"(5:59) - Niche-specific authority over generic(13:46) - Gain authority by admitting limitations(18:14) - Give away secrets, sell implementation for brand building(21:51) - Talk about your specialty, unchallenged truthFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

I gave a custom keynote presentation that I made specifically for Grow with Video Live, and it was all around brand and content marketing, which if you've seen lately, Layla and I have accumulated over a million additional followers in under six months using the content strategy that I've never revealed before. And the second half of this presentation is, in my opinion, I think the best stuff from the presentation because we transition from the tactics to the strategy, from the doingness to the beingness of building a brand. And I think the real secret sauce to what has led to the tremendous expansion in our audience in a very short period of time.

And if you're looking to do something like this, I think a lot of people are looking at it wrong. And I think it's really costing them a lot and honestly just backfiring. I want Mosey Nation to crush it. I want all of us to rise together and build the best businesses in the world. And it starts with the brand and the promises we make and keeping our promises. So enjoy. 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. So how do I make content from just starting out? Excellent question. So there's two frame shifts that I think have to occur. Do, then talk how I versus how to, and give versus get. All right? So let's start with the first one. So who here hates this?

How to live an amazingly happy life and get everything that you want. from somebody who is doing this part-time and is still cutting hair, right? There's nothing wrong with cutting hair, but it probably wouldn't make you an authority on this matter. Does that make sense? Some of you are doing this. I'm wondering why it's not working.

You're like, I mean, my stuff's so much better. It honestly doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Because if I had a thousand people on state, like, on my followers, and I made the same presentation, you wouldn't give a shit. Like, I'm trying, like, real, right? And so there's a better way, I think. All right. So this is Alex's crazy content creation model trademark pending.

Step one, do shit. Step two, talk about what you just did. I know. And then do bigger shit. This is a complex model. I know. We're getting to it. So here's how it looks in the real world. All right. Hey, here's what I did. Versus here's what you should do. Feel the difference. This is what I did. It works for you awesome. It doesn't work for you, knows what. Here's 20 of my clients. This is the stuff that I'm doing with them right now.

Rosie was struggling with some skin condition. We started giving her magic pills and look at her skin now. It's amazing, right? But like this is what, it might not work for you, but this will work for her. This will work for him. This will work for my clients, right? Not what you should do.

As soon as you point out, people hate you. Because it sounds like you're preaching. It sounds like you have an ego, and I just don't think people like that. And so I think it's also switching from how to to how I. So how to build a massive social media following to how I built the following that I have.

Feel a difference? It's really small, but really big in terms of how people interpret your message. Because it's like, I appreciate it. I think that what happens is when you say it that way, you're pulling back and saying like, hey, I hope this serves you in some way. Like this is like me opening the kimono.

This is the stuff that's working right now for me. Whereas the other way, you're at the pulpit commanding, giving demands and commanding people. And I just don't think people like that. I mean, how many people, their entire Instagram theme is people shaking their finger at you? It sucks.

I hate it. And so I think it's really speaking on your truths rather than claiming to know the truth. There's a point I probably make later, but I'll bring it up now, is that everyone is unquestionably an expert on your own life. No one can question that.

If I say I had oatmeal for breakfast this morning, I am unfucking touchable. You know, it was kind of lame. But from a factual type, like, no one can challenge me on that. Like, this is what I eat every day. No one's going to be like, fuck you, Alex, harming the planet. They're not going to say that because like, that's real. That's true.

No one can touch that. Right? But as soon as I say, you should have oatmeal for breakfast, fuck you. Right? It's this big of a difference, but it makes all the impacts in the world in terms of how people receive the message. So question, who here makes the content because they want to become famous and feel good about themselves? Or who is making stuff because they want it to be received and help the audience? Right?

And so the thing is, is you have to feed them and not you. And I think if you can make that shift, I think, in my opinion, it will be more effective. And so if you look at the biggest influencers in the business space, because this is the space that I'm kind of in, you look at these guys, I mean, shoot, half these guys are talking here. So congrats to the event. it's awesome. I'm very honored to be on stage with them. So that's the ACCCM at work, the Alex Crazy Content Creation Method at work, by the way. Do shit. Talk about the shit you did. Which one of these guys made money from their social media following? Made the money they have

from the social media following. Right. And so how many of these people needed the followers? None. Right? People are like, I want to be the next this. It's like if you want to be the next that, then you got to walk that walk, right? And so you probably won't be respected as an authority on business until you've achieved mega success. The same reason you look at your competitors, like, that guy sucks. It's like they're looking at you, right?

And it's because why should I listen to you? And so here's the good news, because you're like, well, shit, Alex, what do I talk about? Here's the good news. You can become a niche specific authority. So rather than going like, here's how to live an amazing life, right? That's like you've got to be Jesus. Jesus can do that. You can't do that. Jesus can do that. Jesus can do that. Right. So you got to go from here to like,

I'm really good at helping people build ATM businesses. I'm really good at how people flip houses in Phoenix. Right? Because in that little ocean, that little pond, you can be king. Because you got to compete against 20 guys. You got to walk the talk. Right. You got to do what you're doing. You talk about what you're doing. That's it. But you can win in that little pond. And I'll show you how to scale from there in a second. But you can do that. All right. And so this is me when I start. started. So I had a couple powerlifting records and I liked working out. And so the stuff that I did then was about what I was doing then. And so you can't read it, but it says how to get rid of stubborn fat on your arms and stomach. That's the content I was making that. And who is it relevant for?

Just the members at my gym. But that was my way of adding value and already had rapport with them. So they're like, if I'm going to learn about this identical topic from 100 different people, I'd just rather learn about it from you because I like you. And I had values-based rapport, not expertise. Like I had general expertise because I looked the way I looked. But beyond that, I'd have a PhD. It's not like I did a ton of research. I read the same articles and just tried to make it entertaining.

That was it. And I didn't become mega famous for that. But this made me money. This made me enough money to grow the company that I had at the time. And so from there, I leveraged that to grow my first gym and then the gyms after that. Right. And then from there, once the gyms grew,

I started making content about how to grow gyms. Why? Because I fucking knew how to grow gyms. I wasn't like how to scale your SaaS company. You know what I mean? Like how to reach a billion dollar valuation? Like I was like, I don't know, but this is what worked for my gyms. And people are like, dude, this stuff works.

I'm like, I know because I'm doing it. That's how I do it. Like I know it works. This is how I do it. Of course it were. I'm doing it. Here's what's fucking crazy. So many people are talking about shit and teaching stuff that A,

they have never done. And B, they are reprogram. purposing someone else's content and making a shittier version of it. Some of them are you. And that's the thing is, when you start talking the theoretical and trying to teach something, it's how to rather than how I. So if you do the thing, then you just talk about what you just did.

Now, later on, I think it's the capture, capture don't create, documents don't create concept. But I understand that that takes resources. Like, it takes money to get people around you to, you know, document your life and all that kind of stuff like that. That's expensive. But I think just even doing recaps of like, this is the stuff that's working right now for us in this context.

People are like, thanks. You didn't have to do that. Thanks for sharing that stuff that's working for you rather than how to. And no, if you do it that way, you will not gain a mega following at first, but you will accomplish it, which will say you on the path for you to be broader later. So the Jim Secrets podcast became the game that I published from the, Jim Launch Secrets book, which is how to build a profitable gym to a $100 million offers book. And the difference in scale was pretty tremendous.

That's my Jim Blonde Secrets Book, but I still think it's a phenomenal book, by the way, to that book. And that book's done that in less than a year, and that other book's been out like four years. And so it's not bad. It's just sequence. People try and go out of sequence. They try and say, like, why am I not Tom Billy? Why can't? I'm doing everything Tom Bily is doing, except for building Quest.

Oops. That's why what he says is relevant. Right? You know what I mean? Because the thing is, it's like, we want everybody here, most people seek truth. Would you say if you're like, raise your hand if you seek truth. Okay. So the easiest shortcut for the brain to seek truth is to look at someone who's the most extreme version and then saying, okay, I don't have to apply a lot of decision making filtering here because now I can just absorb this because I can just take this as fact.

Because if Warren Buffett says this is how I should invest, I feel okay about that source. Even if he's like, save your money, spend less than you earn, dollar cost average into the S&P, and don't buy gold, right? Like he says that stuff and you're like, okay. Now, the stay-at-home teacher who's been saving all of her money could say the exact same thing, but she just forgot to build Berkshire Hathaway. And so the thing is that, and I'm actually very against the whole confidence mantra of people being like, you got to believe in yourself, you got to blah, blah.

You have to do things so that you have evidence that you can support why you are good. You guys are great. And this is like my favorite line from The Matrix. It's, I think in the second or third, I can't remember which one of it is. But Morpheus is up there and he's like, I feel truthfully unafraid, not because of the path that lies before me, but because of the path of lies behind me. I think it gives a lot of spiritual strength that, Because I got asked on an interview, they're like, how are you so certain?

I was like, you talk about these things like with so much certainty. I was like, well, that's just how I've done it. Like, and it's that depth of experience and knowledge that like no one can question that we built those things. That's truth. Those are the real numbers. And so as long as you're not fudging your numbers, right? And you just say like, this is what it is, then of course you're fucking certain.

Right? because I think confidence is self-delusion. It's trying to make up for what you don't have evidence for. And I think it's a much easier practice to stop pretending and start doing the stuff that you should be certain about. And then you don't have to have bravado. You can get up, like, you can walk on stage and people are like, that guy built the biggest King of Water empire out there,

nobody colon's in the front. And he built that. He doesn't have to have confidence for people to listen to him. they will want to listen to everything that he says if that is what they want to do. Because they'll just go to the person that's done the thing that they want to do so that they don't have to apply a lot of effort in thinking, and they can just say, I'll do everything this person says, right? Most people cannot separate information from source.

So what we do is we just seek out good sources. I think wisdom is built from separating information from source. A fool can give you a very wise piece of wisdom or information or a lesson. But it's much harder to do that. Real quick, guys, if you can think about how you found this podcast, somebody probably tweeted it, told you about it, shared it on Instagram or something like that. The only way this grows is through word of mouth.

And so I don't run ads. I don't do sponsorships. I don't sell anything. My only ask is that you continue to pay it forward to whoever showed you or however you found out about this podcast that you do the exact same thing. So if it was a review, if it was a post, if you do that, it would mean the world to me and you'll throw some good karma out there for another entrepreneur. The shorthand for most of us is just go to somebody who's an absolute authority in this thing

that has unquestionably a reason that I should listen to them and then just listen to them. The downfall of that is that you start taking stock advice from your hairdresser. I'm not bashing hairdressers right now. That's just top of mind. And so you're like, I trust you. What else you got? And then they start talking about things that are not their expertise. And then that's when you get in trouble.

And so at the same degree, if you probably have an audience that start asking you questions, right? Anybody have an audience that ask some questions? Raise your hand. Okay. If someone asked you a question, that is not something that you have authority on. I think you gain more authority by saying, I don't have authority to speak on that. And then you gain more respect because this is what happens. Damaging admissions are the single greatest thing that built trust.

If I say, I suck at marriage advice, I suck at, you know, giving happiness advice, I suck at whatever, but I'm really good at making high returns in the stock market. How much more believable is that than I make really good returns in the style market, and I'm really good at marriage, and I'm really, and, and, and when you admit your deficits, whatever comes after the admission of guilt or the admission of deficiency is believed more. So if I say, hey, I really suck at a lot of things, but you're going to believe what I say where I say right here, that's a sense of structure for persuasion. And you can use that in all of the content that you have forever.

it's also great for negotiating. And so, anyways, I say all this to say, it's the path that lies behind you, not the path that lies in front of you that will give you the certainty that you want to gain the influence you desire. And so my evolution for me was fitness first,

and I just talked about this is what's worked for me. People are like, Alex, how do you eat Twizzlers and cookies all day and have a six-pack? And I'm like, A, genetics, B, I live at a gym. And C, I eat. this way, right? And people were like, oh, so I can have cookies too and have a six-back.

And I was like, yes. And that was relevant for me. Some people are like super vegan superstars. Awesome. And they're going to talk about what was relevant for them. And the people who follow will be like, that's, I vibe with that. Cool. Right. And so I'm not going to be the best nutrition expert in the world, but in terms of like my little, little fiefdom, I can rule that. Right. And then I moved up because I started doing well there. And people started asking me, hey, how are you growing your gym? I was like, well, this is how I grew my gym. We were like, What about business in general? I'm like, I don't know.

I'm never in an e-commerce business. I don't know about manufacturing. I don't know about software. I don't know about any of that stuff. But I know how to grow a gym. So it only talks about that. And the amount of people that that was relevant for this many. But for that audience, fucking everything.

Right? I mean, and just for context here, there are riches and niches. Like, that company made a lot of money. Just a egg. Like, it made a lot of money. that didn't make me famous at all. And so again, the question is, do you want to be rich? Do you want to be famous?

Are you trying to serve you? You're trying to serve the audience. And then the last one is like now we've been able to leverage that initial success to build an e-commerce brand, to build a software brand, to sell those, and then now we have a portfolio. And so now, because we have businesses that span a lot of different areas, I can say, these are the frameworks that we used to build all of them. I hope this serves you.

And then people can take that. And has anybody used any of the frameworks that we've, for Mosey Nation, anybody who's been there, Have anybody used those frameworks to make more money? One person. Probably not. So a big part of that is that you just get better over time. And so I said this quote and it got shared a lot. It's like you're not making as much money as you want because you're not as good as you think you are.

I'm just being real. Like, I don't know. I could have done like the here's my 17,000 content model. You know what I mean? But like the real shit is that you're probably not that good yet. comma and that's okay. Like the only person beating you up is you. And so the only way to get better is volume.

And the only way to get even better than volume is volume times time. Because volume, you can write this down. I don't have this in the presentation. But this is like the equation of life. Volume or at least business. Volume times time equals skill. You got to do it a lot of times for a long period of time and you will get better. that is a promise you will if you suck today you will suck less tomorrow and eventually one day you will

look up and suck so little that you will actually be good and then people will ask you how did you become an overnight success and then instead of saying here's how you cold call you say here's how i did it i hope this serves you right and you can build that trust that way great aleks so how do i make money if I'm just starting out. Fantastic. All right, Colton. Jeez, always about the money. I'm kidding. Colton's awesome. So here's a couple observations here. Give away the secrets, sell the implementation. If you want to build an enterprise that is valuable, this is how you do it. You can sell info. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you want to build a brand, give way the secrets, sell the implementation. All right? Because you can give the whole farm away. People still won't do it.

1% of people will do it. My business model relies on the 1% who do it. I mean, so I bank on that. But only 1% are going to do it. So most people need help. Most people need encouragement. Most people need accountability. Most people need somebody who's going to act as their virtual Google.

Because they don't want to type it in. It's true. Right. And so one of the side notes that I have here is that if you're not afraid of what you're giving away, that you're giving away too much, you're not giving away enough. And so every time I've written. in a book or I've made like a presentation that ends up going live, I always think to myself like, oh God, I'm sharing everything. What will they do? They won't need me anymore because I give them

this information. They can, they don't, they'll just keep living their lives and I will become obscure and nothing and I will and I will die, right? That is what it feels like. I mean, you're, you catastrophize. But that's real, right? It's the it's the opposite though, right? And there's so many things I feel like that I, that I've at least realized for me is a lot of things are the opposite of what you expect. It's like you only gain your life by giving it. Like you only get trust from others by trusting first. You only get value back by giving value first. And so if you're afraid of giving away all the secrets that you have, I promise you if you make content that does not contain the secrets, 99% of people who are the people who are never going to pay you anyways, 99% of people will just

think you suck because you give nothing. So you just make fluff because you're so afraid of giving good stuff away. The thing that most people consume is they consume one video and they make a judgment and say, I will never consume a video from this person again. What a waste of time. And so like my big fear with every piece of content is I would rather make fewer pieces of content because I'm so afraid of somebody taking 20 minutes to consume something after watching a bunch of my stuff, watching that one, and not actively deciding to stop watching, but just don't get enough for the time that they're like, I'll just watch something else.

They don't say like, oh, fuck Alex. They just pivot a little bit. And slowly you fade away. And so I would rather have quality over quantity, but quality quantity beats just quality, right? But I would personally, this is me, I would personally prefer to have better stuff and give away as many secrets as I possibly can

to get people to start taking steps towards you. Because what also happens is if someone goes and uses stuff from the YouTube channel and grows from a million dollars a year to $3 million a year or $5 million a year, they don't have questions on whether or not we can provide value because we already have. And then it makes the sales process dramatically easier

because you say, what brought you here today? And they're like, well, you made me $2 million a year. I love you. And you're like, awesome. Want to get to 10? And they're like, sure. Like, how do I know it's going to work? Because it already has.

right and you can take that as a totally different it's totally different frame for the sale okay and so make your free materials better than everyone else's paid materials i heard this from tony robbins and i think it's really true but i think the real real is that most of your stuff is not better than they're paid stuff and so that's why it doesn't work and so talk about you really know which is your specialty which is your individual thing that you have experienced that no one can challenge your truth. All right? And so finally, you want to play games where if you wait, you win.

Because Goodwill compounds faster than money. Because the longer you can delay the ask, the bigger the ask can be. The longer the runway, the bigger the plane that can take off of it. And so I promise you, and this is, again, gigantic Himalayan grain of salt. With the limited experience that I have, doing organic, because I've only done direct-to-jugular paid ads cold calling, affiliate stuff,

straight pitching. I've only done that. But I can say that this brand is very special to me because I enjoy what we're building and I'm in no rush to do it. And you have time. And so the longer you can wait and keep walking with people, the longer

the compounding works in your favor. It's no coincidence that the biggest people in the business space don't need anything from their audiences. Right? Because I think that that compounding process gets interrupted when you do a hard pitch. That's my opinion. I could be wrong.

That's my opinion. And so the idea is how can we, how can we sell without selling? Right. And I think in that way, the compounding will happen faster than the revenue would have otherwise increased if you started trying to make the money fast. And so the longer you can delay that, the better it's going to be. And then you can understand why all these guys play the infinite game of never even wanting to do that right hook because it's like, but next year I'm going to have five times the audience.

And then a year later, they're like, but next year I'm going to have five times the audience, right? Because as soon as you shoot your shot, you dramatically decrease the goodwill. And so I think that I've at least adapted, and this is maybe just a different way of saying it. I know Gary's got jab, jab, jab, jab, right hook. Just a personal observation that I've had is that you can go give, give, give, give, give, give, get. You don't even have to ask. People just start handing things to you. Because if you deposit enough goodwill in there, it just starts coming back. And I know that sounds crazy, but like the amount of people that DM you are like, hey, man, can I give you 10 grand for 10 minutes? And I'm like, no, I don't do

that. It's like, I'm about 20 grand. Like, no, I don't do that. The amount of times people inbound and they're like, hey, can I have you on my podcast? Can I have you on my stage? Can I, all these things are happening because you're not asking for anything. And it makes people feel uncomfortable. Like it makes people feel really uncomfortable. They're like, how can I buy something from me? And you're like, you can't. They're like, ah! And I'm like, use the shit, get to $3 million, then we can partner, right? But that's it. You know what I mean? There's nothing else. And so I think that if we can make that pivot and have that patience, but like, if we're thinking really big picture, the reason most people are successful is they just can't fucking control themselves.

Like that's it. It's impulse control. And so there's three things. They did this research study that said that ultra successful people have three common traits. Number one is they have a superiority complex. They think they're better than everybody. They think they can do bigger things. Second is that they are, they have crippling insecurity of not being enough. I like, that one hits me. And then the third one is impulse control. So they know where they want to go. They have a way, they have a way drive to not be a failure and they stay focused on it because of impulse control. And so the idea here is if we can do that, we will be more successful. And the reason that most people don't make money is because they can't wait 12 months.

Like I have this, I have this 18 year old who is my neighbor. And I said, I'm going to have you sign a contract that says, I want to be a millionaire. I was like, you got to wait five years. And you can't make any money between now and then. Would you do it? He's like, yeah, I would do it. Every single person can do that. I guarantee if you delayed your ass for five years and you should provide a value to people for five years,

you have a bigger fucking audience than you what to do with. and you'd be a millionaire in five years. Probably happen a lot faster than that. But if you committed to doing it for five years, you would. But guess what? No one's going to do it. And that's why most people aren't successful. And so, like, we come to these events and you have the models and all the stuff, right? But people still eat cookies when they're trying to lose weight.

And so it's a concept of local versus global, which is there's a local benefit to eating cookies. You feel better, whatever. The global benefit goes down, though, because you don't get the six-pack you want, if that's the goal and you're counting macros, you get the idea, right? And so most people cannot sacrifice local benefit for global. The sales guys don't want to put the notes in the CRM, even though the benefits the entire organization, because it's a local cost, right?

And so, as a side note for operations for a business, operations are supposed to bring global benefit in excess of the local cost. And so when we're trying to achieve the things that you're trying to do, right, the local benefit is just make the ask fast. The global benefit is the longer you can wait, the bigger it can be. And so for me, I'm like, why not wait as long as humanly possible? So I'll wrap this up. Speak from strength.

Share your experiences to add to the body of knowledge. The problem with a lot of the social media stuff and books that are out there now is that the barrier to entry in terms of what it takes to publish content is so low, it's almost not visible. Right? It's so low. And so everybody can produce content. Back in the day, the only way you produced content was like, after 30 years of being a research, you're like, this is my entire life's work in one book so I can add to the body of knowledge.

People are like, wow, thank you for that. And that's how content was made, right? And if you wanted to do a direct, you know, a marketing piece, you had to edit it and put it on a piece of paper and look at it every single way and know that you're going to pay 50 cents for every single person who's going to receive it. And you've got to be damn sure it's beautiful. But it's so easy now to publish that most stuff is shit. Most stuff sucks and is a total waste of time. So just try and talk about the stuff that's not a waste of time that you actually know. So you can add to the body of knowledge.

If you say, hey, this is what I did. Consider yourself a mini researcher. These are the experiments I ran in my business. These are the experiments I ran in my weight loss clinic. These are the experiments I ran in my plumbing business. Just talk about the experience because no one can question that. Second is that teaching on principles is difficult until you've achieved a material amount in the field because there are others who will teach you with more depth of experience.

It's very difficult to teach business unless you're very successful business because there's just another person who someone will listen to more, right? But no one can question what you have done. And if you have done nothing, then do something first and then talk about it. Because not everyone is an expert on everything, but you are unquestionably an expert on your own life. So you can share it. And then wait 10 years.