The Game with Alex Hormozi - Throwback: The "New" Entrepreneurial Golden Resource | Ep 68

Episode Date: June 16, 2020

In order to grow, you need to do less. Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) gives us insightful advice on how to say no to opportunities that spread your attention too thin, how you can start focusing on more important endeavors, and growing your individual character traits as you progress in your entrepreneurial journey.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:(1:24) - "Attention is money" - Alex's perspective on the value of attention(3:04) - Entrepreneurs struggle to focus due to their go-getter nature(5:30) - Learn to say no and prioritize where you direct your attention(9:56) - Focusing attention makes difficult tasks easier, reveals insights(13:13) - Alex asks entrepreneurs about their attention, warns against spreading too thin(15:33) - Focus on one thing, multiple businesses divide attention and cause troubleFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

You can have as much time as you want, but if you're not there, you're not potent, you're not able, then you can't get anything done with that time that you're supposedly allocating. Welcome to the Jim Secrets podcast where you 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 that we have learned along the way. I hope you enjoy and subscribe. Happy Thursday. This is a little bit less common for me. I'm going to make a video or I guess podcast, depending on how you're consuming this, on a pretty pie in the sky topic. And I titled this, the new entrepreneurial golden resource and how you're probably leaking it.

So a lot of people don't know this, but I probably, I would say I mentor four or five people on the side, not in a formal business setting in terms of like them paying me or anything like that, but just people that have become friends that I've taken interest in their business, and I've helped them along. And invariably, and what's interesting is that the higher up you go, the less tactical the mentorship is. And so I have, so I've had, I've had the fortune of actually connecting and befriending my first billionaire friend, which is cool.

And what's, what's happened as a result of that is that, like, I obviously obsessively look at what people who are doing better than me are doing. And then when I'm relaying to the people who are, who I'm trying to help, there's this one resource that people who make a ton of money manage extremely well and people who do not, do not. And a lot of people, I would say mistakenly think that the number one resource is time, right? Everyone's like, time is money, time is money, time is money. And I would argue that that's not necessarily true. I would argue that attention is money.

And that is the golden resource. So the billionaire friend that I have, he's actually been helping me on the new endeavor that we are launching to our gym lords soon, which I think will change the industry. And anyways, he's been helping me with that stuff. But like, here's an example. On his phone, his phone does not ring unless you are already a contact that has been whitelisted. His phone doesn't ring. He's impossible to reach, right? And the more successful, the more, the larger your company grows, the more you scale, the more

you need to scale. And the only way to scale you is because you do have a finite amount of attention. And so what happens is you have to decrease all of the other things in your life that drain attention because you can have as much time as you want. But if you're not there, you're not potent, you're not able, then you can't get anything done with that time that you're supposedly allocating, which is why a lot of people end up in this in-between state of always everywhere and at the same time nowhere, right?

And so they're everywhere, but they're not paying attention to anything. And the reason that it's difficult to focus is because entrepreneurs, the character trait that made us into entrepreneurs is that we're go-getters, we're risk-averse, we're creators, we're innovators, we're builders, right? We have all of those traits.

But the difficulty is that the thing that gets you from zero to one is not the thing that gets you from one to two, right? And so one of the, the reason that you have to totally morph and why you have to be a growth-oriented individual is because you have to change your own individual character traits in order to progress as a business owner. And so, like I said, the things that got you here are not the things that are going to get you there. The things that got you here, which is your own internal skills, are not the things that you need to pass on to other people. So the only way that you were able to grow your business at a certain point is by growing

other people, right? And the only way you can do that is if you have the attention and the bandwidth in order to do so. And that's why if you look at a business owner and like the more I obsess on looking at billionaires and people who are doing better than we are, is I look at how quiet and how clean they keep their space. And I mean that both in a literal sense that like their surroundings, their office, their, their house, their homes, their cell phone, their computers, right? It's quiet, right? Everything. Like, it's pristine. And when you talk to these people, there's a certain amount of tranquility that's there. And, and, and, They just have very low tolerance.

And it's not that they're trying to be impatient with you or impatient with the world. It's just that they understand that they have so, like, they're operating at such a high level that there's so many things that are demanding of their time and attention that they just like, they can't. And so they have to forcibly remove themselves from so many different situations. And I'm going to give you an example. Like, I'm trying to think of a good one that happened recently. So, man, I don't want to use that one.

Okay. So one of the people that I'm somewhat mentoring, right, they had four businesses. And this is something that happens so many times. It looked like, like you want, you want a $100,000 coaching? This is what happens in $100,000 coaching sessions. And I'm being honest with you. What happens is someone who's coming in, usually doing between $1 and $3 million a year can't get past a certain point, right? And the reason they can't get past is because they only have so much attention and they have it spread between four or five different cases. That's when the gym owner has four gyms and is making less money than they did when they had one gym because the amount of attention that they can allocate to one facility has gone down so much that with fixed costs, they basically are breaking even, right? And so the same thing happens. Now, that entrepreneur is probably making one to three million dollars in gross revenue, but not taking anything home because they don't have the attention to actually put onto things. And so in order to grow, you need to do less. in order to grow you need to do less and that comes from both delegation and also choosing what not to do the better you get the better the opportunities that you have to say no to imagine the level of opportunities that we have now i'm just being honest so imagine how many things we could do or trying

jv with or do a partnership with or whatever because of the distribution network that we have and the trust and the goodwill that we have with the gym owners that we have in our network right a lot I get, you know how many people cold message me? Like, I have an opportunity for you. I'm like, really, you have an opportunity for me, right? And so the better you get, the better your opportunities you have to say no to, which is why becoming a higher and higher and higher level entrepreneur is more and more difficult because it requires discipline.

It's not about doing more. It's about doing less because we innately want to do more. So doing more of your own internal characteristic. If that was what it took to get to be more successful, then everyone would be more successful because it would be something that does not take effort because that is something that we already do. It's like, man, I outwork anyone. I've got all this work with it. Cool, that gets you from zero to one. It's not going to get you any further than that. So stop, so stop identifying with that. It was something that I used to identify with. I was like, oh, I'll outwork anyone.

I'll work. That was something that I used to think about. And it was a character trait. It was an identity thing. And the more you grow, the more you realize that your identity needs to be fluid, because what it needs to be is exactly what it needs to be at that given time of development because the character traits that I'm going to have to emphasize in a year are going to be different than the ones that I have to emphasize now, right? And so the skills that you need to learn like delegation, leadership, those are things that are not the things that take you in the beginning. You have to be independent.

You have to be hustling. You have to be grinding. You have to be willing to put in the work because no one else will do it for you, especially if you have no capital to start, which most of the people who are on here are in that situation, right? And so to reel this back in, the number one thing that you have to be paying attention to is where you are paying your attention, right? Like you spend attention. That's why they call it paying attention. It's because it is a resource. And most people don't pay attention to that, right? And so one of the things that a lot of people don't know about me, this one's going to go

long. Some of the things that a lot of people don't know about me is that I for nine months paid a coach to teach me one thing, which was to manage my attention, was to teach me how to think. And so for 90 minutes, every single day, all I did was talk about what I was thinking about. Think about that. Every day, I paid attention to what my attention was. And when I did that, all of a sudden, my business blew up, right? And I realized that I had toxic relationships.

I had toxic relationships with parents. I had toxic relationships with friends or pseudo friends, things that were taking my attention, past things that I had on my mind that I knew I had not handled. So those are called like open loops or open cycles, right? So when you have something that you like, I haven't resolved this, then you need to handle that and you'll get that attention back because what happens is you have this bowl, this tiny little bowl of marbles that each of those marbles is a unit of attention, right, if you had to measure it. And so you put little marbles of attention on your childhood trauma. You put little marbles of attention on your marriage. You put little marbles of attention on your health. You put little marbles of attention on your spirituality and then massive marbles of

attention on your business. But the thing is that sometimes you need to quiet and collect all of these other little marbles so that you have more potency, more potential energy, more potential units of attention to spend on the one thing that you're trying to grow, which in this case would be your business. 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. And what's interesting is that what happens is that things that were perceived as difficult become really easy. And I don't know if you've ever had this happen, but like if you were in college or you were in high school and you're like, hey, I can't solve this problem, this math problem, and you were exhausted, then you go to bed and then you wake up the next morning. And then all of a sudden it seems really easy. You're like, I don't know why I didn't see that before. Because attention gives you the ability to see. Right. Like if you're, if you think about wisdom, right? Wisdom is an ability to see what other people cannot see, right? Two people are presented the same situation. The wiser person sees things that the other person does it. And how can you see better? You see better if you have more ability to see, which comes from, your most valuable resource attention how much horsepower do you have right and so look at the things that you have in your in your life right now like if i see someone who has a messy relationship life who's got a messy love life who goes out every weekend and gets trashed right like i can tell you

billioners don't do that that like the whole tony stark like vision of the entrepreneur is a farce it's not true don't believe that every single billionaire every single high level entrepreneur is quiet, unbelievably quiet. They keep themselves completely isolated. They have a bubble around them of layers of protection. Like for me, it's me. And then there's Layla and then we have our CEO and then we have our executive assistant team because we have a team of EA's at this point. We have four who work the next level. There's no one who has direct access to me, including our employees. No one does. And that's because it would disserve you, you guys, our gym owners, if everyone had access to me. The reason that I don't respond to Facebook message is not because I don't want to. It's because I

literally can't. And if I did, I would be deserving everyone because then my attention would be split because someone can't generate leads in their market or whatever. You know what I mean? Because these little things, these little things that are perceived as huge issues to you in that moment because you have a little bit of attention, you have so little left that everything seems like an explosion. But when you have lots of capacity, big problems seem small. And small problems seem big. And it sounds reverse. Because what you do is you start seeing that all of these things are attention drains and you just say, I don't want to play anymore. And you stop playing. And then all of a sudden, everything gets really simple because the only things you have to do become really simple.

at our gym lords event, one of the things that we had to do or that I had everyone do was simply to find the number that they needed to have in their gym, number of EFTs, in order to have the lifestyle that they wanted to have. Really simple process. Most people didn't have that, right? But it's amazing what happens when you have clarity, because then it allows you to put your attention in one direction. Right. And then it gives you a litmus test. Will this help me grow this number? Yes or no.

Yes, cool. Let's do it. No, ignore it. And it takes discipline to say ignore it. It takes discipline. That's why it's hard. That's why most entrepreneurs aren't successful. That's why most entrepreneurs don't grow.

It's because it's hard. It's counterintuitive. It's counter your character. And so you have to learn how to not be yourself in order to be the person that you want to be. And that's why most people don't do it. And so to go ridiculously full circle on this, every time I meet with an entrepreneur and I told you, coach is probably a loose term, but I'll meet with a handful of entrepreneurs

on a semi-regular basis and just see how's it going. And the question that I always ask is, what's your attention on? Where's your attention? Right. And if someone comes in and they seem really, really like scattered,

I already know that their attention's all over the place. They're super spread. They're less able. So of course they can't grow their business because they don't have the very horsepower, the main resource that allows them to grow and push. Right. And so look at your life.

look at your relationship with your spouse, loved one, look at your habits, how you wake up, how you eat, how you exercise, do you drink? Here's an example for why we stop drinking. And it has nothing to do with any kind of, like there's no religious anything regarding this. We stop drinking because I realized that I would drink at night on a fairly regular basis. It's not like I always had some issue with it. I really didn't. I mean, I drink a lot, but I just, whatever. The point is this, is that I would, I would drink in the evenings because it would, it would it would help me just de-stress, but help me unwind. But what that does is it masks the thing that is taking my attention that I have anxiety on, right?

And so if you need to take a drink to unwind, then it means you have things that you have not resolved. And so one by one, what happened is that when I stopped drinking, everything got really loud. And so I had to face and confront the things that I had not resolved yet. And so in the beginning, it's the hardest. But then what happens is once you've actually resolved all of the, those things, the desire to drink goes away because you're like, well, I actually feel really good right now. I don't want to mess that up. And so it flips. But it took probably six months for that to happen from it. And so I'm just giving that as an example of what having your attention split

and kind of gaining that attention back can be. So look at your life, look at your relationships, look at your habits, and the things that are taking your attention, you need to handle, complete the cycles and get the attention back so you can work on the one thing that you're trying to grow. And if you have side hustles and side businesses, get rid of them. Kill them. That's what people, like people come and they pay tons of money to tell them, do one thing. And the only reason that they listen is because we make one thing. And I'm telling you right now. That's what I would tell you. Do one thing. Focus. Say it again. That's why most times when someone comes in, they're like, hey, I want to start an online business and a food prep business and a whatever, right?

All at the same time because one of them is going to take off. It doesn't work that way. All of them can take off. You could have a billion dollar food prep business. You could have a billion dollar gym business. Like your business, like having more businesses is a farce. I was talking to a gym owner the other day and he's like, yeah, I mean, two paychecks is better than one. And I was like, no, one fat paycheck is better than two.

You can have a hundred million dollar roofing business. right that just repairs ruse you don't need to do general contracting and also windows and also gutters and roots you can just do one thing and be really really really really really good at it and make as much money as you want and so just break that belief of yourself of like i have to have three things in order to make more money you know you don't you don't it's not true you one thing i had someone who's in the real estate space who was doing real estate coaching after uh her first month of being in the coaching uh called me up and was like there's just not enough real estate agents She was doing like $200,000 a month.

And I was like, real estate agents. I was like, how small of a market do you think micro gym owner is? I was like, you literally outnumber my market 100 to 1. And I was like, and we are outdoing outpacing your revenue 20 to 1. Right? It's just these beliefs that we have that are silly. And I can tell you that the higher up you go, all of those limiting beliefs disappear. And you just see people who operate a very high level, very quiet, very clean.

They're like if someone walks in the door and is any negativity, those people just get up and leave. Nothing personal. I just can't have that in my life. Someone complains. Someone's negative. This is weather. Ah, traffic. Like, don't worry.

I'm just going to get up and go. It's nothing personal. Right. That's how they handle themselves. So thank you guys for your attention. I hope I gave you a positive return on it. That was my intention. This wasn't a normal type of video that I would normally make.

But it was something that was like on my mind. And I just had two or three calls recently. I had told people to consolidate their businesses, get rid of one, two, or three businesses. And then within a matter of 30 days, two of those people had a multiple of 3x on their total revenue between what they were doing before within a 30-day period just by getting their attention back. So look at what you can consolidate. Lots of leverage.

I appreciate you.