The Game with Alex Hormozi - Violence is the Answer & What I Learned from Having 4 Meetings with Arnold | Ep 137

Episode Date: July 12, 2019

"Hatred is a condition of success." Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) discusses the importance of accepting and dealing with negativity and hate as a condition of success. He shares lessons he learned from Arnold Schwarzenegger, emphasizing the need to develop mental fortitude and focus on business fundamentals to achieve higher success.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:(0:53) - Higher success leads to more hate(6:06) - More impact means more criticism(9:14) - People remember how they feel, not what's said(10:52) - Success requires boring work and good content(17:27) - Mental fortitude is critical for successFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

What's going on, everyone? Happy Thursday. I have a good one for you today. I'm calling this. Violence is the answer and what I learned from having four meetings with Arnold Schwarzenegger. So I haven't talked a lot about the stuff that we do with the charity. And I don't know why I haven't done it. I think it was just because I never, I didn't want it to feel like we were bragging about or anything like that. I think that's why I haven't discussed it as much. But that being said, I've got a ton of things that have been on my mind and a bunch of lessons that I think that I took from. speaking with Arnold, we had a breakfast together that was two hours long. We went to his house less than a month ago. Actually, she was two weeks ago. And in all of the instances, I feel like, I mean, there's tons of things you can learn from a man like that, but the big thing that I was able to take away was, I want to call it like the optimist, like a delusion of optimism. And what I mean by that is that once like the higher the level of success that you achieve, the more noise and hate you will receive, right? And so if you think about like the amount of security we had to go through to get into Arnold's house and all of those things,

it's like just befitting of the fact that there are people out there who send him death threats every day for just existing, right? Because they watched a movie and their wife divorced someone for who looked like him, right? And so that kind of leads to the second thing, which is the more impact you have, the more impressions you make based on the scale that you have, it's just law of large numbers. It's going to be a larger percentage of bat shit crazy people that you've got to deal with. And so if for some reason, the negativity of a trainer or a competitor or a client drags you down, then you don't have the mental fortitude for the success that you want to achieve. because the condition of that success is more, not less, of the hate of the shit, of the noise that you're currently dealing with.

It doesn't go away. It gets louder and louder and louder. And so one of the skills or the disciplines that we have to develop as entrepreneurs, especially if we seek this impact. And that's just so many people that I talk to. So many entrepreneurs are like, I want to impact. I want to help 10,000 people. I want to transform lives. If you want to help 10,000 people, then you have to be prepared to have 500 people. who fucking hate you, all right? Because anyone who does anything worth doing is going to have an equal and opposite reaction, right? That's how it is. If you look at every single great religious leader that's ever happened and it doesn't really matter, almost all of them died, right, and were murdered for what they did. And most people would argue that they were probably good people. But with every positive thing that you do, there's going to be an equal reaction

that's negative, right? And so it's like, I just want to say this sentence to you because it means so much to me is that hatred is a condition of success. It's a condition. If you have no hatred, if you have no people who hate you, who talk against you, speak against you, that it means you're standing for nothing. Like, you're standing for nothing. Because if there is nothing for anyone to debate against you, then you stand for nothing. And that means that you're not actually having any impact. fear that kind of confrontation, if you fear that kind of hate, that kind of whatever, then you need to not be in business or you need to fix that part of yourself because you will sabotage your own success. You will become successful. The noise and the hatred and the naysayers

will increase and then you will make yourself less successful so that you don't have to deal with it. Right. That's like real, right? That's what happens. And so just just some of the mental things that I've, that I've, you know, had to go, you know, like you have trainers and you have clients, you know, whatever it is, right, the gyms. One thing that I've seen with Arnold, and on the flip side, Trump, right, and they don't like each other. They're like Arnold's outspoken against Trump and all that kind of stuff. But one thing that they both share that I really admire is almost a delusional optimism, is that they almost don't even, they don't even address it. They don't even acknowledge

the presence of haters. They're just like, like, if you see Trump get attacked, he just won't even acknowledge it, right? And listen, I've never voted. I don't care, right? But the point is, like, their level of mental fortitude of being able to just exist on a plane that's above, everyone else above all the noises, the condition for them being able to achieve the levels that they've been able to achieve, right? And so one of the things about this that gives me solace is that none of the hatred, none of the trainer who leaves and starts talking shit about you. None of the clients who leave and talk shit about you. None of that ever affects your business. It only affects you. Right. And so I think I think Layla made a post, I don't know, a week or two ago about like, she was basically like, if anyone talks about you, it's because when they talk about themselves, no one gives shit, right? That's what they said. Or that's what her quote said. And she had like seven different people message her people who were talking shit about us that we had no idea existed. And so she was like, God, I'm never going to make that post again, right? But the thing is, is that, this is a record month for us.

This is the best month in sales we've ever had, right? And amid that, this was when she posted this post and there's all of this negativity. And so you have to remember that if there is negativity, there's also positivity that's coming with it because as ugly as this sounds, there really is no negative publicity. Like, you know this from the freaking presidential election, right?

He won because there was, he owned the conversation, good and bad. He owned it all, right? And if everyone is talking about you, guess who they're not talking about anyone else. Right. And so you have to be polar. You have to stand for things because that is going to bring the haters out. And you should welcome it.

You should be like, thank you for thinking about me. I appreciate that. Thank you. We had a record sales month this month. Keep talking about me. I love it. Like feeding my bank account. Keep going, dude.

Keep going. It's awesome, right? And so understanding that the law of large numbers is that the more people you impact, right? the more by percentage, you're going to run the wrong way. And so just like accept it. And then always put things in context, all right? And so when we have our, we had our quarterly meeting, whenever, you know, someone from the front line or some of the management comes up with

someone who's like, I think this is a problem. I always ask, all right, what's the number of incidences? And then how many total incidences do we, and then how many total people who could potentially have an incident are there, right? And so I'll give you an example. We had someone who's a manager who was saying, we had a gym owner who complained about PayPal, that they're getting paid out from PayPal on the prestige website.

They said, I don't want to sign up because you guys pay for PayPal, and I paid PayPal. And she was like, it really bothered me. And I was like, well, how many people has this been a problem? She's like, so I think we should consider switching from PayPal. I was like, well, how many people has this been an issue for one? And she was like, well, one. Like how many active affiliates?

A thousand. So 0.1% of people had a problem with it. it. Like, don't even let it touch you. You know what I mean? Don't even let it touch your thought, your mind. Because when you have scale, you have 200 clients. If you have five assholes, think about it. It's two and a half percent of your entire clientele base. What percentage of humans do you think are kind of crazy? I would say at least two and a half percent, at least, right? And so if you can, if you can always take apart the problems that arise or that people bring to you and think about it in context of the larger numbers that you're dealing with,

I promise you it will make the noise of the world go down. And you'll be able to get to that, to ascend to that higher level. And eventually we can get to the spiritual plane of Arnold and Trump. And whatever you feel about them, I don't care. It's just you can appreciate the fact that they can exist on another plane and literally just live in a world of delusion where, like, they're untouchable because they put themselves in this box. And there is a borderline where it does become delusional because you don't take feedback, but because the hate is so loud, they almost can't allow it. Right?

Like Arnold was attacked at the Arnold Expo where he's like cheering kids on. You know what I mean? Like, people are crazy. And you just got to accept that. So let me make sure I hit all my lovely points. Yeah. And so the only thing that you have left to do that actually drives your business is the four numbers that I brought up the other day.

Is any of these things going to drive more applications? Is it going to drive a higher percentage of clothes? Is it going to decrease my turn? Is it going to increase my profitability? And believe it or not, the haters, right, that you have, the trainers, the ex-clients, the whatever, right? The likelihood that they're going to really impact, like, that they know the majority of the marketplace is basically zero, right?

Like, if you have a client who leaves, and mind you, I'm not talking about any specific client because I'm talking about the gyms. I'm saying, but like, if you have a client at your gym, who leaves, right? And they know 10 people. They know 20 people. aren't making posts, right? People only remember how they feel when they read that. No one ever remembers what any shit talker talks about. They only remember the negativity and they associated with the person who's talking shit, which is why one of the biggest issues that I had early on in

my life, I was telling you, is that I used to talk shit. And it was like something that I really hated about myself. And so the rule that I made is that if I am going to say something that is negative, I'm going to say to the person first. And then if I am, so if I do tell someone else, by the way, I've already told this person this is what I think about. And so that's kind of given me my like, I don't say shit unless I've told the person about what I believe. Right. And so that's kind of my rule of thumb for shit talking.

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 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. But I say all that to say, that person who's left your business, that client or whatever, knows 20 people. Your ads are reaching 50,000 people a day. What actual impact do you think they have? None. And so you've got to think about it in terms of math, right?

Because it will literally just like put you at ease because you realize that the things that matter in the business are the things that matter. This video is not going to drive sales for me, right? I make these partially for me because I like documenting the journey and I want to look back. That's actually why I do this, right? But me posting on Instagram doesn't do shit, right? It doesn't do anything, right? These don't really do much. The things that do are the things of doing the boring work, of making sure that we refresh our ad content, make sure we have good offers, make sure that the leads are getting worked, make sure that we're following up, make sure that when we're on the sales calls, we're clarifying whether they're labeling with a mobile problem.

We're going over their past pain and then we're selling them the vacation and making sure that we can explain how we can fill the gap, right? The fundamentals. And all scale is, is doing the fundamentals in the larger numbers. That is all it is. And there's complexity in that. But the process from a mental standpoint is simple. Right. And so that is what's going to grow your business. And so if you get distracted and you have somebody who's bugging you, you have a trainer, you have a client, or whatever it is, just go back to your numbers and focus on the things that drive your business. Because I can tell you that A, any person who's speaking against you is confirming the fact that you were being successful. It's a condition.

It's a condition of success. If you stand for nothing, no one stands against you. Period. That's what it is. Right. So first, they're confirming that you're actually having impact. Second, the bringing top of mind awareness. They're talking about you all the time.

Great. And then third, it doesn't matter anyways. all of it doesn't even matter because none of it is impacting the things that grow your business. And so just remember that when you're spending $100 a day, you're buying 2,000 impressions. You're buying 2,000 people and you're buying it every day. Right. Sorry. 25, 5,000 impressions. So you're buying 5,000 eyeballs, right? And this person's organic reach is like 100.

It doesn't matter. And so just like put it to rest. Just stop worrying about it. Like, I can't tell you, like it got to the point where people would ask me, they're like, hey, do you want me to, like, send you this stuff for other people? I was like, no, man, I've been doing this two and a half years. And when I came out, I was talking against things that people didn't like. There was a lot of gurus who were established when I came into this three years ago.

I was like, I don't think I'll be at his work. Here's why. This is math, right? And they started bashing. And it's like, that's cool, but the math is wrong. Right? Like, I'm going to be right. What they should have done was copy my shit.

That's what they should have done. And they did it. They postured against with pride, which is the wrong move. And so I'm totally going another direction, but we're just going to rock with it. So like from a strategy standpoint, right? If you're the small player, what you want to do is you want to attack the methodology of the bigger player. That's what you should do, right? But you better be right.

And you have to have a unique angle of why yours is better and different, right? Now, if you're the incumbent, there's virtually no reason that the incumbent, the person who's established in the market should ever lose. the only reason they lose is because they're human and because they're human because they're prideful and because they don't want to accept that they're wrong or there could be another way, right? Because technically, the winner should do exactly what you see Amazon doing.

They let someone come up with something and then boom, they rip off and they copy it. Right? And then that guy's gone because they own the entire distribution network. And so real talk, there hasn't been anything that has come out from anyone that I have seen and I know because I buy everything, right? That has been useful.

Right? Not real. And so I see everything. And I will not let someone do to me what I did to the people before me, which was attack, attack, attack the methodology because you don't want to be the type of person who attacks on this character. It's just it literally never looks good. It's a losing battle. Makes you look like an ass. No one remembers who you're attacking. They just remember the turn asshole, right? So wrong strategy that way. You do want to attack the methodology if you have a superior option. But the problem is, if you attack it loud enough and the eye of Sauron comes to you and sees what you're doing, what they should do, the strategic move is to take it, distribute it, and then wipe you out. That is how that's the game. Like, that's the game theory. And like, that's how you win. And so the only way to beat the incumbent is also for the income. That's why Amazon trades at like a zillion times its actual earnings because no one knows how they can beat them.

How do you beat them? They don't have an ego about it. They don't give a shit. They're like, cool. you found a new toilet paper brand, boom, got it. And Jeff distributes it. And now it's his toilet paper bread. He doesn't care. He doesn't have an ego about it. He's like, great. Thanks for doing the R&D. I appreciate that. And so it's only the people who have the ego about being like, I was the first one. Like, no one cares, right? The only thing people care about is how much money you make

period, and that you are looking always for the next thing. And so that's why, that's what we came out with hybrid, right? Like, that's the next thing. Like, I think down the road, group, I mean, group change is not going away, but the price points will become increasingly commoditized and the pressure will increase. And the middle tier players, the lower tier players are going to go out, right? It's just what it is. And so if I'm helping the most amount of people, I have to create the new or the next opportunity to shift everyone into, which is going to take the next seven years of gold rush

until eventually more and more people copy it and then we'll come up with the next thing because that's business, right? If you want something that's going to stick around forever, don't be a business owner. It's not going to work, right? Same thing with marketing. So anyways, all this to say, the reason I call this violence is the answer is that massive action is the only thing you can do, right? It's the only, it's the only combat you have. It's like success is the only revenge, is that you just keep focusing on doing you and increasing the amount of opportunities, increasing the percentage that you capture and decreasing the turn of your business.

That is all you do. That is all you focus on. And the rest of it does not matter. Ignore it. It doesn't matter. The only way that it starts to actually affect those numbers, if it takes up your headspace. It's the only way someone wins. It's the only way.

And so if you don't want someone to win, right, and someone talks shit, it's a client, it's a trainer, it's a whatever, a competitor, right? First off, understand that they're not marketing to the people that you're marketing to. They're not, right? And their little, itty-bitty reach is irrelevant compared to how much you're spending. And that's why we pay Facebook because they give us distribution, right? Just get that. and then understand that none of that is any way going to affect your business unless you allow it to affect you.

That's all. So that is why Viance is the answer. That is probably the single greatest lesson that I learned and witnessed from Arnold and being close proximity with him. Obviously, we talked about work now. We talked about business stuff. We talked about charity. Talks lots of things.

But the principle, the essence that I feel like I got from him was that he exists on his own playing field. He plays his own game. and he just lets everyone else react. And that was probably the single biggest takeaway that I saw is that like when you get to that level, you have to have this level of mental fortitude that is almost delusional. It borders on delusion. But the only difference between crazy people and geniuses is that the geniuses are right.

It's the only difference, right? And so like if you're like, we're going to make it, we're going to make it, we're making it. And you do all of a sudden everything you did before was sin. Right. And so if you have to exist in a place where you're like, don't show me that stuff. If you have, you know, your managers or your trainers are like, hey, this gym down the street, like talk shit about us, right? If they say that to you, you'd be like, don't show me that shit. The only way that it will actually affect our business is if we talk about it because it doesn't actually affect our business in any way.

You close and sales tonight? Yeah. Are we marketing and making more ads? Yes, right? Are you doing the five force of retention? Yes. Great. Then let's just keep fucking rolling.

Right? That's all that matters. You keep steam rolling forward. And the thing that pisses everyone else off is being unfuckable. right you can't be fucked with you just keep going and keep going and then the noise gets louder because they want a reaction and you just keep fucking going right and you keep winning because what you do is you focus as soon as they get loud you focus in you focus in on the things that drive your business which is the math right it's doing the work there's nothing else right don't get in some

pissing match it doesn't matter right just distracts you takes your attention so anyways um I hope that there's somebody here who that affects I hope there's somebody here who's dealing with a trainer or dealing with a client or dealing with a competitor, who's talking shit, who's making posts, who's, who, like, whenever you see that, just be like, thanks for thinking about me, bro. I appreciate that. You know, thanks for talking about, thanks for keeping me top of mind, like, much love. But you got to think like that because that's the only way, and now get even more under there,

and now you're in their minds and they're not in yours because you just keep doing what you need to do, and that's the only way you win. So anyways, lots of love, everybody who'll be having an amazing Thursday and keep being awesome. I love you all. Tomorrow's gonna be sick. It's be so sick. All right. Ah!