The Game with Alex Hormozi - Throwback: Why Hard Work Beats Happiness Every Time | Ep 696

Episode Date: July 4, 2025

In this throwback episode, Alex (@AlexHormozi) dives into the trap of chasing happiness and explains why striving to be useful is a better goal. Drawing on personal experiences, he breaks down how confidence is built through reps, how mastery is forged through editing and effort, and why doing the hard work repeatedly is the most sustainable form of personal growth.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 and will learn on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Wanna scale your business? Click here.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | AcquisitionMentioned in this episode:Get access to the free $100M Scaling Roadmap at www.acquisition.com/roadmap

If you're doing work or you feel like you're not as good at something, you have to figure out what the input output equation is. You have to figure out, like, what's the thing that I have to do a lot of? Because every skill's like this is that there's a period where you have to do a lot of something. And if you don't know what it is, then you're not going to get better. 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.

The nice thing with being useful is that in order to be useful, you have to be useful to other people. Like, no one can be useful in their own. You have to be useful to other people. So there's a service element, but there's also a self-improvement element, which is, to be useful to other people, you need to improve yourself. And so that's why I think being useful has been probably my day-to-day goal of what I need to do. And that served me well, not saying anyone should or should, they can do whatever they want. But for me, that's helped me.

I mean, this is a Tony Robbins quote. We said, if you stay in your head, you're dead. And because it rhymes, it's true. But for real that, like, when I was 19, the reason I said fuck happiness is like, I realized that I was in this cycle, this loop of trying to, like, everything you analyze of like, does this make me happy? Does this pizza make me happy? Does this class make me happy? I mean, I quit premed because I thought biology didn't make me happy. Now I'm very glad that I did because I like business a lot more now. But like, that was the reason I did it. I studied really

hard. It did well. But I was like, this doesn't make me happy. But like, of course, it doesn't make you happy. You suck at it. You're learning something. You're going to suck for a very long time. It's only when all these skills go together that you'll be good at something and you'll actually be useful to society. Of course, you learning the fucking chromosomes doesn't do anything. But it's because of what it shows a school that you're willing to put up with so that you might be useful to society in the particular skill set. And so, yeah, I think being useful is a far better goal. And this is me just shouting on specifically to men. Try this on for a month. If you're happy, do whatever the fuck you. Well, really just do it everyone either way. But if what you're doing isn't working

for you, I would try this on for size. One, say that you're going to stop trying to be happy. just give up on it. Just stop thinking about it. Like, I'm not, you know what? I'm actually okay with being unhappy. I'm fine with it. I'm still here. Like, it doesn't mean anything.

Okay. And so then you can take action despite your lack of happiness and think, okay, how can I be useful to other people? And I think if you do that, you'll actually start focusing on the tasks and on people outside of yourself

and you'll be amazed at how much better you feel overall. And what happened to me when I went into my fuck happiness thing is that I stopped thinking about happiness altogether. And then like years later, I was like, you know what? Because I was so used to, because like I wanted to label myself that way and be okay with it. People would ask me like, hey, XYZ. I'd be like, oh, I'm not a happy person. I would just like say that up front. That way I didn't have to. And I remember catching myself probably like five years later. And I was like, huh, I say that. I was like, but I actually really do like my life a lot.

So I stopped saying I'm not a happy person because I actually kind of do like my life. But I feel like I only got to liking my life by being willing to not like what I was doing for a long period of time. I think people just only think of the things that, quote, feel good, but there's tons of things that feel good that are not bad for you. Like sex feels good. It's not bad for you. It's just, we immediately jump to like cigarettes, booze, you know, whatever. But it's really anything in excess is bad for you. Even cigarettes. Like, if you have one cigarette or a week, doesn't do anything for you. Probably you smoke more than that, just walking outside. You know what I mean? For a week in terms of just CO2 from cars.

So it's always in the dose. People want a binary when it's really a continuum. And so I think learning to work is the most useful thing that you can do. I mean, I think for me, I love finding input output equations that equal, like, success of some kind. So it's like if you're giving public speaking,

I'm going to give this example because it's perfect. So Caleb, who's my team, had said years ago when we met, I don't really like public speaking, I don't like presenting, I don't like any of that stuff. I'm like, cool. And I think he said somebody to agree of like, I don't like it or I'm bad at it, whatever.

And he did a presentation for the team, and it was good. And then he had a bunch of things that he wanted to do better on the next one. Now, between those time periods, I had done the book launch. And so he had seen me prepare for my presentation. And so I did it 100 times over 30 days. So I did it three times a day before I gave the book launch. And, you know, when there was 500,000 people or whatever, there were the launch. when we had 500,000 people registered for the launch and I was about to step on stage,

the team that was doing it all said, we do this every day. And I've never seen anyone so, like, relaxed. And it wasn't a front. It was because I had done it so many times. And so fast forward, Caleb had another presentation he had to give. And this time, he prepared three times as long. So he did, instead of 10 hours of prep, he did 30 hours of prep. And instead of having 80 slides, he had 330 slides.

and the presentation went way better. And he noted that he wasn't nervous at all going into the second presentation compared to the first presentation. And so he messaged me afterwards and said, it wasn't that I was bad at speaking. I was just lazy. And I think that a lot of people

mistakenly think they're bad at things, they haven't even learned how to try. And I do think learning how to try is also domain specific. And so like, Caleb's an exceptional video editor and media strategist and great with building the team and those skills, but those had been skills that he knew how to work hard at. But this was a completely different skill.

And so it's like writing. I have a lot of entrepreneur friends who are writing books now. Now, they don't know that I come from background of writing. I got a full writing scholarship to Tufts University, which is a good school. I got a personal letter from their writing seller. Like, we love all your stuff. We want you to be here. I ended up in a point of Banderbubo.

But like, I was the vice editor of the newspaper. I was the editor-in-chief of literary magazine when I was in high school. like I like writing. And so I know what hard work looks like in writing, which is just editing and editing and editing and editing, which is basically like doing the speech again and doing the speech again and doing the speech again. And it's the same as ping pong, which is 500 backhands, 500 four hands. It's just repetition, right? And so right now, if you're doing work or you feel like you're not as good at something, you have to figure out what the input output equation is. You have to figure out like what's the thing that I have to do a lot of, because every skills like this is that there's a period we have to do

a lot of something. And if you don't know what it is, then you're not going to get better. Sales is like, I have to do 100 calls a day. I have to do 10 conversations today. Whatever it is. You do that every single day and you do that for a year. You get pretty fucking good. And so you have to learn what that input output equation is so that you can push as much. If it's me, once I know it, then I just jam as much input as I possibly can into that thing. And then that's where the whole quote that went viral, was confidence doesn't come from shouting affirmations in the mirror by having a stack of a deniable proof that you are who you say you are. I'll work yourself doubt. And so like you become confident by giving yourself the stack of evidence, the hundred times I went over the

presentation. I felt confident going into that because I had a stack of proof that I'd already done it perfectly the last 20 times in a row that I'd done it. So why would 21 be different? And if you've had a thousand sales calls on your thousand first. If people are watching, they're like, man, you sound so confident. You're like, it's just how it is. It's not like I'm confident. I just know what's going to happen next. And so I prefer to think about it as like, do it so many times you get bored of doing it. And like, that's when you'll look confident to everyone on the outside because you'll have no emotional affect to the outcome because you'll have recognized the patterns so many times that there's nothing that's going to surprise you. And I think that most people just don't know

how to work that hard. Like, there is no way that anyone will know how hard I've worked on the books. They just imagine that there's a reason that they're all-time bestsellers for each of the categories they're in. And still, they're like, it's because you're following. It's like, no, you know why I know that? Look at every other fucking person who has a following and their books don't fucking sell, even though they have a big following. They launch it and then they stop selling. Why? Because the book sucked. They had a ghostwriter, they voiced it in, whatever. They make their, whatever, five million bucks or whatever it is. They think the book is finished when it has reached the number of pages that creates a book. Like, I can write a book in two weeks if I was just trying

to write a certain number of pages. But, like, I've usually written five times the amount of pages as what actually comes out in the final draft. And I've rewritten end to end the whole thing, not once or twice, but like 10 times, end to end. But you know what happens when you do that? You get really fucking good at knowing what is important, what isn't. And you also give yourself way more outside life exposures that trigger new thoughts over that period of time that remind you of things that can make it better. And so it's kind of like a, like when you paint, it's like, it's like putting coats of paint and letting it dry. And so I kind of see editing drafts as like another coat of paint. And then you think, you're like, you know what? I went to a new area today and I saw this new

yellow. I wonder if I could throw that in. If you had immediately shipped it, you wouldn't have had the opportunity to see the yellow thing because time didn't transpire during the creation of the thing. And so I think there's a reason that books that take 10 years to write look and read like they took 10 years to write. There's just a depth to the quality. I find happiness in figuring out what my input-out equation is and doing it as much as you only possible. You want to make it easy as possible to work as as hard as you can. And so everything that is not that input output equation is interference. 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 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 ask you do is you can just leave a review, but 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. And so like relationships, I mean, I said this before,

but everything that you are not willing to sacrifice to be the best, the person who's best in the world is willing to and already has sacrificed. And so I'm not saying good or bad, do whatever you want. But if you want to be number one, and a lot of people say, I want to be the best, it's like, no, no, you want to be better. And you can be really good. You can be really good and not sacrifice plenty of things. But if you want to be the best, then you just have to assume that the best person in the world

has the genetic predisposition, has all the environmental cues aligned with their ultimate goal, and is willing to give up everything that is not achieving that goal. And if you're not in that boat, then you're not going to be the best. People just like saying because it makes it feel good, but it's false. And so in terms of aligning the environment, if you know what you put out of question, so for me, it's writing right now is the season that I'm in because writing kind of is the pillar of everything else we do, content-wise, internal communications, the books, everything, comes from me taking time to write because I organize my thoughts better that way,

not because I've become skilled at writing. So it's the best way, it's the most distinct way that I can communicate. And so there's a reason that the first six hours of my day, when I'm freshest, most well rested, I have no meetings, and I have only one thing that I do, which is right. There's nothing else. And so if you know what the input out equation is, find the time that four to six hours a day, every day, that you can do that and then allow nothing to interfere with it. And that's it.

Like, nothing interferes with it. And if you do that for five years, it'll be really fucking good. And you'll be useful. and you'll feel good about it. Because the thing is at a certain point, the work itself becomes reinforcing. Like when editors edit, and then they make a change,

and then the story goes or the video goes the way they wanted to, it's like, boom, that was reinforcing. And if I, like, work really hard on a paragraph and I could just shrink it to one sentence, I'm like, fuck yeah. And that literally might take two hours to just keep beating it down until I get it to like the one most succinct thing.

But that's satisfying. And so in the beginning you suck, and you do the reps so that you can learn the skills so that eventually you do the way, work itself because the work itself is rewarding. But that takes time to get to. In the beginning, you start the journey because you have this big ultimate payoff you want to have, but that's way too far out to actually wait. Like, you have to be an exceptional person who's been reinforced in the past for waiting for a very long period of time. That's why I say the athletes thing is kind of interesting

because they've had to wait a long period of time, and so they have to practice for a long period before they get the thing. But typically, they get enough reinforcers early on that the act itself becomes reinforcing. And that's what mastery is. You transition from having some sort of external motivator to external, I believe all motivators are external, but from the work itself being intrinsically rewarding versus having a carrot of some kind that's been artificially put there, like status or an award, or number one, or a ranking. And masters enjoy the work more than novices do. So it's actually easier for masters. I would say the hard thing that I have now is that my level of quality, the standard that I have, is only mine. Like, I know that I could probably put out the first draft and it would probably be a bestseller.

it's just that I would know that it could have been better and that would eat me alive. So it's actually the hard part for me now is that I maintain my standard as the number one standard that I optimize for. And if the world so chooses to also like it, great, but it also divorces me somewhat from the outcome because if it were just about getting the bestselling book, then I would publish it on the first shot. Because at this point, I do have enough skill that probably would be a bestseller on its own. but I also think there's a difference between being a bestseller for a season and being

bestseller for 100 years. And so I'm trying to write these books to be bestsellers when I'm dead. So they're still useful. When there's nothing else I can do to it to make it better. Same thing for the presentation. There's nothing else I can do to make this better. I can't practice more because even at a certain point when you, if you get past a certain point of practicing, you start knowing it almost too well that you start cutting corn because you're like it gets too natural. Like I actually, I borderline over prepared for the GMATs. I like, peaked, because I took tests every week, and my math score, sorry, my English score peaked before my math score did. So my math score peaked at the test. But my English score, I had done it

so many times, we were like, shoot, you recognize so many patterns that you're like, man, which pattern is this one? Because like, I'm so good at all, but I have to remember. Like, you peak, right? So there is a point where it's not even diminishing returns. You actually start getting worse, at least in my opinion, or least in my experience. And so if you regress something down to its simple form and then I just cut the sentence at half, I lose material. I lose stuff that needs to be there. And so you get as simple as possible, but no, somewhere. A really fun thought exercise for somebody who's just like, all of this is like,

wow, that's so much work. I'm not really prepared for that. Well, I'll walk you through what it looks like in a micro example. So if a video editor comes to me and says, hey, do you like this clip? And I say, yeah, I do like the clip. If you had another two hours to work on it, what would you do? And they're like, well, if I had another two hours, I'd do this, this and this. I'm like, okay, go do that, come back.

They come back. And I'm like, do you think it's better? And they say, yeah, they show it to me. I'm like, it is better. Okay. Now, if you had another two hours, what would you do? I'm like, well, I'd do this, this and this. I'm like, okay, cool. They go, they come back, same conversation. They're like, okay, if you had a week, what would you do? Well, then they're like, well, shoot, I would probably scrap this whole style overall and I actually make a totally new framework for how I'd approach the video, and I'd want to come at it from this angle altogether.

It would just take, you know, a lot more work, but I think it would still make a better outcome. It's like, okay. So that idea, just do it on five years. And so, Everybody just wants to get it done rather than get it right. And getting it right is where all the money is. At a certain point, you start to develop mastery even around pursuing goals. Like, this is book three from the $100 million series. Every month, I get thousands of reviews and DMs and people who say their lives change from their first two books. The hard part was book one when I have none of that for a year and a half. But once that one's out, leads, I'm like, well, I'm getting reinforcement every day from my writing.

And so I write. And so now I have two books worth of that. And once the third books, there'll be three books worth of that. So maintaining that gets easier and easier just because I have regular enforcement for writing, not necessarily this book, but writing in general. And so then means I can generalize past good experiences onto how I act and work now. You become an expert at pursuing goals because you have pursued goals in the past. I just use writing as an example, but I've pursued goals in the past.

and sticking it out has had big payoffs. And so when I feel like I'm sticking it out again, I'm reminded of the past times I've stuck it out and it's been worth it. The hard part is for the people who haven't stuck anything out because they've never seen it work. And so the first one's always the hard one. It's like you just have to have faith on some level. You just have to fucking believe that it'll work out.

And the thing that carries you over the bridge in the short term is that you are getting better. And if you can just focus on that, then even if the crowd doesn't cheer when you give your presentation or you don't sell books or whatever it is, you'll know. And so it's funny because I look back at the presentation that I gave five years ago, and I really am embarrassed. But I'm not embarrassed at the effort I put in then. Because the effort I put in then, I really did think it was really good.

I just didn't know what good could be because I also gave myself 20 hours rather than 200 hours. And so if I only had 20 hours, maybe that is the best I can do. And maybe today that's still the best I could do. I just give myself way more time. But the problem with giving yourself way more time, once you see how much good, can be is that you realize how few projects you can do. That's why the biggest guys and the biggest business titans in the world talk so much about focus because it's not that like focus is the thing. It's just that it takes so much fucking time to do something right that you can't do more than

one thing. Real quick, guys, I have a special, special gift for you for being loyal listeners of the podcast. Layla and I spent probably an entire quarter putting together our scaling a roadmap. It's breaking scaling into 10 stages and across all eight functions of the business. So you've got marketing, you've got sales, you've got product, you get customer success, you've got IT, you've got recruiting, you've got HR, you've got finance. We show the problems that emerge at every level of scale and how to graduate to the next level. It's all free and you can get it personalized to you, so it's about 30-ish pages for each of the stages. Once you enter the questions, it will tell you exactly where you're at and what you need to do to grow.

It's about 14 hours of stuff, but it's narrowing. down so that you only have to watch the part that's relevant to you, which will probably be about 90 minutes. And so if that's at all interesting, you can go to acquisition.com forward slash roadmap, R-O-A-D map, roadmap. Real quick, guys, I have a special, special gift for you for being loyal listeners of the podcast. Layla and I spent probably an entire quarter putting together our scaling roadmap. It's breaking scaling into 10 stages and across all eight functions of the business. So you've got marketing, You've got sales, you've got product, you got customer success,

you've got IT, you've got recruiting, HR, you've got finance. We show the problems that emerge at every level of scale and how to graduate to the next level. It's all free and you can get it personalized to you, so it's about 30-ish pages for each of the stages. Once you enter the questions, it will tell you exactly where you're at and what you need to do to grow.

It's about 14 hours of stuff, but it's narrowed down so that you only have to watch the part that's relevant to you, which will probably be about 90 minutes. And so if that's at all interesting, you can go to acquisition, dot com forward slash roadmap r oad map roadmap roadmap