The Game with Alex Hormozi - Unlock the Power of Boring | Ep 140

Episode Date: July 30, 2019

"Consistency matters so much more than intensity any day of the week.” Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) emphasizes the importance of doing boring work consistently to achieve success. He explains that simple tactics, such as making compelling ads and consistently working leads, are often overlooked but yield significant results when done consistently over time.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:(0:45) Boring work is powerful because consistency is underrated for success.(3:06) Grit: how to deal with failure and stick things out.(5:43) Unlearn old characteristics to start new business.(8:03) Consistency matters more than intensity any day of the week.(11:41) Discounting simple tactics causes failure; focus on fundamentals.(14:16) Doing boring work yields unboring results.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

Happy Thursday, everyone, hope you are having an amazing second half of your week post-hump day. I want to make a quick vid-slash podcast for you. I'm planning to unlock the power of boring, do the boring work, whatever it is. We recently changed out one of our core tenants at Jim Launch from Go the Extra Mile to do the boring work. And I think that's been in alignment with what our own team was talking about. And I kind of, and I just finished the presentation that we're releasing later today to the whole team. but even recently I've had a couple messages coming in from different gym owners and they were like man it really is just about doing the boring work and so I kind of wanted to highlight it in a couple different instances different lights or examples that I think would shed just eliminate it for some people so I think that the reason that doing the boring work is one of the most powerful things to unlocking growth is because the underlying principle behind it is the most underrated aspect of success right which is consistency there's nothing sexy.

about it, right? Yet we recognize it in other people. We value it in other people, but just doing things consistently doesn't yield consistent results. It actually yields parabolic results because of the effect of compounding, right? And so when you see like, was it Einstein said the eighth wonder of the world is compounding interest, right? Because if you gain 10% year over year over year and you start with $100, you end up like a billionaire like Warren Buffett, right? Because doing something, Like if you look at any one of his years, it's never crazy. It's just good. He just never doesn't have those good years.

And so to the same degree, like, we've been able to grow gym launch at a very insane rate from the outside, right? But internally, we're focused on doing the same things every single day, right? And doing those same things every single day are boring. It is not fun to continue to work leads. It is not fun, or sometimes it's fun, to continue to make ads. It's not fun to have the 19,000th conversation of a gym owner who's like, well, how do I know this is going to work for me in my market? You're like, well, here's 40 other people who are in your market and it worked for them. You know what I mean?

But the point is that if you're the one having that, you're in the trenches, you're doing the block blocking and tackling, right? There's a lot of times it doesn't feel special. And so we start seeking exciting things. We start seeking things that are shiny and that are new. but I can tell you that having spoken with so many entrepreneurs, both from the coaching side and also just within my network, you can see how successful someone is based on their ability to focus and do the exact same things over and over and over and over again.

And so there's a book called Grit by Angela Duckworth. I may have mentioned it before, but I think it's so good. I think I read the first half of the book in the first sitting, but she was able to unlock the psychology behind success. And so this is something that they've been trying to do for years. Dan Gilbert was the cover of her book saying, like, people trying to figure it out for decades, right? They thought, is it intelligence?

Nope, it's not intelligence. Is it, is it, is it EQ? Nope, it's not EQ. Is it, you know, whatever it was, right? Everyone trying to figure out what's that one thing that sets apart people who are successful from people who aren't, right? And there's two aspects to grit. All right. And that's what she created is her index.

You call the grit index or the grit scale. And so it's a series of questions, eight questions. I think if you Google Grit scale, you can find it. But the questions cover two basic characteristics that create grit, create people who are unreasonably successful doing to whatever they put their hands to, right? And the two characteristics are, how do you do with failure, A, and then B, how willing are you to stick things out when they suck and not get distracted or start a new project? So it's the shiny object syndrome on one hand, and on the other end is response to failure, right?

And so the people who have extremely high grit, which is the thing that was most positively associated with success, right, with accomplishment, were people who responded extremely well to failure, didn't even see failure as failure, just thought it as learning, and who saw new shiny objects as distractions that would take away from their mastery of the thing that they are already doing. right and the reason that she because she goes I mean she has a whole book about it right but that's the those are the two basic characteristics she tries to tease out in her questionnaire now the reason that she posits that it's such an important quotient is because effort counts twice and so if you look at achievement you have talent times effort equals skill right so if you have some talent cool but if you don't put effort to it it doesn't become a skill right you might be decent at math but if you don't

apply yourself, you're never going to learn calculus or whatever, right? It takes effort to become skilled in something, even if you have talent, right? And then again, once you have skill, you have to apply effort with that skill to accomplish something, right? And so effort counts twice in the equation of achievement, in the equation of accomplishment. And so all this to say, in the business world, you can see, and I guarantee you, like for those of you who are part of our group or people who are in our community or can even open your eyes and see, you can tell the people who are constantly distracted, right, who every time you talk to them, they're like, yeah, we're doing this new thing.

I can tell you, every time I hear someone who's doing a new thing in the beginning of my career, I was like, oh, that's so cool. They're doing stuff. They're being active. But now I just recognize as a sign of ADD, like, ah, you can't focus. Like if someone's like, oh, yeah, I'm starting this new venture. I'm like, oh, great. All right.

So I'm guessing the other venture didn't work out either, and this probably won't either because you're not going to stick with it, right? And so you have to unlearn the characteristics that got you to end your first thing to start this business that you are in. But once you have abandoned that first ship to enter this new vehicle, all of what you do has to be about mastering the mundane and doing the shit that is boring as hell because it compounds. What you get on your two is more than what you get on year one from doing the same thing, right? doing the same 10% improvement, your 1 versus your 5, that 10% on your 5 is so much more

than the 10% you got at your 1, right? Because it compounds. And so I was talking to Chad, Scrutor's dude, so right now he's set himself a huge goal because he's trying to absolutely, I mean, he's already crushing hybrid, but he wants to massively crush it and be number 1. And so when we boiled the goal down,

I was like, dude, all you got to sell 3 a day, right? Like, it's not hard, right? And it's the same thing with exercise, right? Like people are like, man, like, how do you get, oh, man? It's like anybody who does one workout like with us is never like, man, that was horrible. I mean, they're like, yeah, that was training. But the thing is that when you want to like massively grow, you just do that same thing every single day. And it's not day two that's hard.

It's day 17. It's day 67. It's day 127. Right. That's when it gets hard. It's because you're bored. right but most people know from the physical training side the more volume you do the more you respond right but the thing is it's true on all aspects right the more volume of sales you do the better you get at it

right the more you make advertise if you looked at our marketing department's advertisements that we were making nine months ago compared to the advertisements that we're making right now it's night and day difference but if you look at it week to week you can barely tell but night and day across more significant periods of time right and so it's that it's the the reason that we we underline this in our core tenets is and we took out go the extra miles because go the extra mile has this underline underpinning concept of intensity of like you know what I'm going to put the team on my back and I'm going to carry it to the end zone but then but then what about tomorrow right because for us we believe going the extra miles just like that's you should do that you should

go above and beyond as part of your job that's an expectation right but doing the boring work is whether you can do that consistently right is doing it day and day out because consistency matter so much more than intensity any day of the week, right? Would you rather have that trainer who comes in four days a week and is late on one but does great sessions? Or would you rather have the guy who's never late, who always shows up on time? That always gives you an eight because it's predictable, right? And if you can make your business predictable, then you have a stable business and then you have a business that you can now have less variables that you have to worry about. You can tweak one thing at a time to improve. Hey, Mosin, a minute, quick break just to let you know

that we've been starting to post on LinkedIn and want to connect with you. All right, so send me a connection request and note letting me know that you listen to the show and I will accept it. There's anyone you think that we should be connected with, tag them in one of my or layless posts and I will give you all the love in the world.

All right, so let's get back to the show. Right, but when everything is constantly in a state of flux and a state of chaos, you can ever improve because everything's in flux, right? And so setting goals that like reverse engineering goals is one of the single things that every time I have, like consulting days and when I when I talk to people like even on my own team we were sitting like we were like I want to make more money and like as much as you've probably heard this some of the

people on here still do this I want to make more money I'm like what does that mean right uh well I I want to like what do you make now uh I'm not even sure they don't even know what they're making right now okay cool now you know what you're making okay you want to make $10,000 more than that great what do we need to do to make $10,000 more than that I need to make an extra you know two sales a week okay You make the extra two sales a week. How did, like, how many sales do you close on average? 50%.

Okay, so you need four appointments, okay, per week extra. Okay, how do you get your appointments? Well, I have to set, you know, whatever, I have to set seven appointments to get four to show. Okay, so we need seven appointments to get four to show to get two to close. Okay, so now we have seven appointments then. Now, what percentage of people do you set on appointments?

70%. Okay, cool, so I need 10 leads a day. Well, how much does it cost you to get a lead? Well, it costs me $15. Okay, so we're spending $150 a day extra to get the two sales to hit my goal. Awesome. So let's do that, right? But everyone says, like, I want to make more, but it's like, cool.

Then what you need to do is make the ads and spend an extra $150 a day to get your extra $10,000 a month. Right? And then you have lifetime value and all the other shit, right? But that's the point is that like, is like that is boring as hell. But making massive growth year over year, right? Like, people look at the numbers that we had. We did half a million. We did $5.5 million.

We did $28 million. And this year we're going to do $45 million. All right. That's what our run rate growth has been. But if you look at it week to week, nothing is sexy. Nothing is special. Everyone asks us, what's the secrets? There is no fucking secret.

You know what I mean? Like, we make fresh ads every week, right? And we put out good creative that has compelling hooks and offers that sound interesting with attention grabbing headlines, right? And we drive those people to appointments and we remind them of their appointments and when they get on the call we ask them clarifying questions. We asked them why they were there We figure out what the past things they've done. We examine the gap of where they are and where they want to go and we break it down just like we just did of what you actually need to do Actionably to achieve what you want. Right and then we fulfill the promises that we made that is it, right? That is really it and so Simple not easy and it's one of the big things that we have in the presentation is that like most things that are advanced right? Most

the things that that give people these crazy results are simple, not easy. Stop eating shit and move. Simple, not easy. And so one of the biggest things that I see is that people discount, especially business owners, discount simple tactics because it seems simple, right? It must be, it can't be just that. But the thing is, they don't even do the fundamentals. They don't even do the simple things that make you successful, right? They're expecting that it's got to be the in FusionSoft, crazy follow-up retargeting campaign, I still don't even, like, I've never even seen the emails that we said. I have no idea what we said. I literally have no clue, right? Like, because that is not what drives it, right? What drives it is, it's making compelling

heads, getting applications in, working the least to get them to show up for appointments, making sure that we sound like fucking normal human beings on the phone, examining what they need, and then matching their need with what we have. And we do the same thing in fitness as we do in gym launch, it's all the same, right? And so right now, when we looked at Chad's goals, he was like, I really just have to sell two a day. I was like, yep, it's all we have to do. And right now, every day he's just been messaging when he's like, sold two more. He's like, this really is like, that's all I have to do. I was like, yep. It's just that people go through these spurts of intense effort, right? You need to make money. You need to pay bills.

You need to pay your rent, whatever it is, right? And then all of a sudden, you go all out. You're like, oh, yeah, we're going to cranking and ripping and roaring, right? And then you hit your goal, you exhale, and you stop. And you're like, woo. man, because it's not sustainable, right? But sustainable progress is actually pretty simple to do, right? And it compounds far more than these intense bouts of effort. And it gives your business consistency. It gives your business predictability.

It allows you to systematize things. It allows you to increase your margin because you have consistent flows in, consistent flows out, you know exactly what's going to happen because you're doing the boring work of making sure that it's going to happen. And so what does that look like for a sales manager? right so like Cole for example who's our sales manager crushes it he's doing an amazing job he's like he's totally like he's done such a good job and so what did Cole do when he came in right when he massively increased the productivity of our sales team what did he did he said I don't want to do anything new

I don't want to change any processes I don't want to change any compensation structures I just want to hop on one-on-ones with every single one of the sales guys and I want to coach and roll play and listen to their recordings and give them feedback. That is all I'm going to do. He's like, we're just going to play fundamentals football. And that is a two and a half X, the productivity of each of the people on the team. Two and a half X, not 50% in brief, which would have been awesome. A two and a half X increase per person on the team. That is what doing the boring work yields on boring results. But when you ask him, what did you do? He's like, well, I did the one-on-ones. I listened to listen to recordings of each of the sales guys before I would get on the calls. I have a list of notes

of what they could improve on and then I gave them the improvements and then I coached them through it. We'd watch some of the footage together and show them where they should have said a different question or their tonality was off here. They talked too much. They didn't ask enough questions, right? And coached them so that they improve. That's it, right? Simple. Definitely not easy. right and so like I'm hoping that from from this this tirade this rant of doing the of doing the boring work is that right now in your business there is boring work that you need to do that will yield the unboring results that you were after and it is simple and you already know what it is you're just choosing not to do it because you think it's too easy but it's not too easy because you're not doing right and so look at your

business look at the things that you're not consistently doing like it blows me away when people like I don't always advertise I'm like why like you're choosing actively to not make money that's a choice you're choosing to make less money. Cool, right? Okay, I don't really get it. But fine. If you're doing these big ballots, then it doesn't create consistency because then you have like, okay, well, we do this one thing four times a year. Like, all right, why don't you just do it every week of the year and decrease the flow so that you can give everyone a better experience so you don't overwhelm your staff and then slowly increase the flow so that what used to be a huge bang for you

is now just every day. But it doesn't happen overnight. It happens over weeks and weeks of incremental improvements of doing the boring. work until eventually you're like, we can turn this up. And you keep going and you keep going and you keep going. And that's how you incrementally improve. And those incremental improvements are what absolutely changed the game. And then when somebody asks you, how the fuck did you grow your gym so fast? You're like, we make ads consistently.

We work our leads. We ask some clarifying questions. I make sure I meet with my team. Make sure I give them feedback that's productive. We go over game footage. We look at what we're doing and we improve. Right? And they're like, no, no, no, but what do you really do?

And then you get to laugh on the other side of the table because you remember what you were like when you used to ask the same questions wondering what's the magic sauce what's the secret because there is no secret you get you get the guys on stage you see the billionaires and they're like just do the work right they're like just do do the shit do the boring shit because that's the stuff that makes you money right all the fun stuff is usually not the stuff that makes you money right and so whew a little bit of rant but um maybe this is what you needed to hear today i'm not sure but anyways i want to give kudos to our team because We've been doing the boring work.

So hats off. We had our best month ever last month. Highest number of sales, lowest amount of turn all time, which is phenomenal. So it's just like great job. And it did it from doing nothing sexy, but doing all of the boring work

and just following the fundamentals and just doing a great job. And so maybe you need to pass this to your team today. I don't know what it is, but throw a like, throw a comment. Hope you have an amazing Thursday. And I hope that nothing shiny distracts you and no failure gets in your way

so that you have the grittiest You become the grittiest motherfucker around and you can just keep moving forward one percent a day every day until all of a sudden you look back and you're like holy shit Look at what we just did. All right have an amazing day guys. Keep being awesome. Kitch you soon I