The Game with Alex Hormozi - What Are You Willing To Sacrifice? | Ep 577

Episode Date: August 17, 2023

Ask yourself, is it really worth your time and effort? Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) talks about the decision-making process that he uses to evaluate opportunities that don’t just apply to entrepreneurs, but to anyone in general.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:(0:52) - Story about a conversation with 18-year-old neighbor(4:05) - Socially acceptable solutions are not always for the right reasons(5:23) - Consider sacrifice when evaluating effort & outcome of scenarios(8:15) - Our stories shape who we become(9:34) - Failure doesn't make you a failure, it's part of entrepreneurship(13:25) - What you do for a season may not be foreverFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition(This episode is a re-run. Original airdate was December 29, 2020)

And when we make these choices, I think just as important, if not more important, is the story that we are telling ourselves about why we made the choices and what that tells us about who we are. The wealthiest people in the world see business as a game. This podcast, The Game, is my attempt at documenting the lessons I've learned on my way to building acquisition.com into a billion dollar portfolio. My hope is that you use the lessons to grow your business and maybe someday soon, partner with us to get to $100 million and beyond. I hope you share and enjoy. I want to tell you a story that may be applicable to you if you're an existing entrepreneur. or a new entrepreneur or somebody is about to make a big decision in life. Yesterday, I had a conversation that transpired between me and an 18-year-old, who's now a

freshman in college. And I wish I could have recorded it, but there were a lot of kind of decision points and lessons and thought processes that we walk through together that I think will be valuable for many because it's the same, it's honestly the same decision-making process, whether you're making a multi-million dollar decision or you're making a, you know, relationship decision or whatever it is. And so this 18-year-old kid is my neighbor. I think I've referenced them before. And he's entrepreneurial. He did a little car washing business. He's done a little e-commerce business that he started on his own. And it's worked out pretty decently well for him. But because of the pressures that he's had on himself and from outside, he decided he had to do college. And so he started his first semester in college. And to make a long story short, he did something he wasn't supposed to do. And now he's in trouble and that may jeopardize his future in college. And so he's obviously really wrecked. about this. And so I said, hey, let's go for a walk. And so on this walk, I said, you know, what's your plan? He's well, I think I'm, you know, I think I'm going to try and fight this thing

and, you know, give college another shot. And I, I wanted to walk him through this because I wanted him to make any decision for the right reasons, right? And so I said, you know, do you think, like, what's the outcome you want to have from giving another shot? at college, right? Because he didn't really like high school that much. He's like, well, you know, I just want to give it a try. I was like, okay, again, what do you want to have happen or what do you think is going to happen? What is the positive outcome that you're potentially looking for? It's the negative outcome that you think could happen. He's like, well, honestly, I don't know. And I was like, okay, now we're getting somewhere. So do you think that taking, you know,

gender's literature studies and history of Aztec culture, whatever, is going to be more interesting to you now than the stuff that you studied in high school, which was, again, general literature. Is that going to be interesting to you? It's like, well, probably not. And I was like, okay. Then what's the real reason that you want to go to college? It's like, well, you know, I feel like I, you know, I'm a kid and I should experience,

you know, having fun and all that kind of stuff. And I was like, okay, having fun's fine. do you feel like you can have fun without going to college? Do you think that you could not spend $200,000 in four years of your life and still have fun in that same period of time if you weren't at college, but still with other people who are your age? I was like, well, yeah, I guess so. I was like, okay, cool.

Then I'm assuming that's not the only reason you want to go to college. What else is there? You started thinking, he's like, honestly, I don't really know. And so to give you a little bit more context before what I told next. I asked him, what do you think, because he's doing his, he's starting a new entrepreneur thing right now with real estate. And he hasn't, he hasn't cracked it yet, right? And so I said, do you think it's possible that you want to go to college because it's a, it's a socially acceptable shield for you not being successful in entrepreneurship? Do you think, do you think that that might be a reason? Because if

you're in college, then you're not seen as a failure if you're not winning at the thing that you're doing, right? It's your side hustle. It's your side gig. He was like, well, maybe. Yeah. And I think first off, you know, kudos to him for being able to realize and admit that. But I think that that was, is such a core issue for many of us is that we present these socially acceptable solutions to ourselves when deep down the reason that we're doing them is not for the right reason. And so in this instance, he's using it as a foil to protect himself against having to confront the realities of life of business of the marketplace of not being good enough, right? Yet. And so I said, all right, well, what do you want to have happened in your life? Do you think you want to have a job?

And he was like, no, I don't want to have a job. I was like, what do you want to do? He's like, I want to have my own business. And I was like, what do you think business school looks like in the real world. He was like, well, probably doing business. I was like, okay. So if you have four years and $200,000, if you invest that in college versus investing $200,000 in four years into learning, into trying to start your own business, which of them after four years do you think will get you closer to your goal? And it's like, well, probably the business one. And I was like, okay. So then right now, what you have is a clear logical outcome in terms of which decision path. to make, but then now we have to start looking at what's the emotional driver that's preventing

you from doing it, right? And so for him, going all in means making the first real tradeoff he's ever made in life, right? Because if you're newer or you have a job or you're, it doesn't matter where you're at in your life, a lot of times, especially when we're younger, there's fewer big branch points, right? But as we get older, we have to commit and trade off. something else, right? It's this for that. And I think, excuse me, sorry, I think that a lot of times we have to frame these things in terms of the things that we're willing to sacrifice. And so I told him the story of when I was starting my gym, the mindset that I approached it with was, I will not outwork everyone, but instead I will out-sacrifice anyone. And so what I meant by that is I'm willing to put everything and anything that I have on the altar, of my success. And that's what I started from a mindset standpoint. So I wasn't like, I'm going to be smarter or I'm going to do something else. I just knew that any time my competitors or other people were going out or they were, you know, seeing friends or playing video games or watching

football games, which I used to do all the time before I started a business, or sleeping in or just all the many things, you know, even, honestly, my fitness even suffered during that period of time. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I'm saying I was willing to do, I was willing to sacrifice anything to get to where I wanted to go. And I introduced that kind of concept to him of like, you tell me you want these things. And yet when it comes time to sacrifice, to pay the piper, to make the tradeoffs that are necessary to have that outcome,

that's when you're faltering. And so, are you willing to sacrifice for the things that you want in the long run? And I was like, because he's my neighbor and we live in a nice neighbor. I said, like, I'm the age I am and we live here. I was like, I sacrifice my 20s. Straight up. I sacrifice them. And I'm not saying it's the right path. But I want to make sure that whatever decision you make, you make it for the right reasons. If you want to go for four years in college, do it by all means. But understand the reason you're doing it is because you believe that four years of in college and spending $200,000 is the best use of your time. And then having the

story that you'll have to tell yourself about the type of person who makes these types of decisions and then you'll have to live with that because the thing is is the stories that we tell ourselves or create the identity that we have right one my favorite scenes in matrix is in the third one i know people don't like the second and third i like all three is when morphies is standing in front of all of humanity and he says i can tell you that i stand here truthfully afraid, not because of the path that lies before us, but because of the path that lies behind me. And I think that's such a deep message because where we are is because of the stories that we have that have led us to be who we've become. And when we make these choices, I think just as

important, if not more important, is the story that we are telling ourselves about why we made the choices and what that tells us about who we are. 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 so I wanted to clarify the decision for him in terms of,

Is this what you want? Yes or no? Of these two paths, which one will get you closer to that thing? Yes, like this one or this one. Cool. Now, why are you not making it, which now goes from logic to emotion? And then at that point saying, okay, I think we've discovered the root issue, which is that you're afraid is being seen as a failure if you're not immediately successful. And so what I wanted to give to him was, if you fail, it does not make you a failure. It means that you failed. And part of entrepreneurship is failure and being able to deal with failure and how you come back from failure. And I said, right now you're in this instance where this is the first real big hit life has ever given you. Right. Everything's relative.

But in his life at this moment, this is the biggest thing, worst thing's ever happened to him, right? This bad issue that he had with his school. And so I said, the story that you now get to tell is what you do from here. Right. Do you use this as the catalyst to realize that you actually don't, aren't interested? in the school stuff and you never have been and have always wanted to do the entrepreneur thing, but it's been a side hustling. You've never fully committed to it. I was like, is that, is that the story you want to tell? Or do you want to go and try and fight this thing and try and beat it and then

spend, you know, another three and a half year spending more money and then be another 3.1 student that graduates from Pepperdine, right? Which one is the story that you want to tell? And so I think, I wanted to share that story with you because I don't know where you're at or what decisions you're facing. But I think there was a lot of many things that we kind of covered in that conversation and unearthed. And so many of us know what we need to do, but have some emotional trigger that's stopping us from doing it. And I think digging deep and saying, like, what am I afraid of happening? What's my biggest fear? Because if I know this is what I need to do, then why am I not doing it? And I think if you can simply name the fear of what you are afraid of, it allows you to face it and

removes the power it has over you because then you have clarity. And then it's simply, am I willing to let my fear of failure stop me from having what I want to eventually have in my life? Or would I rather let that have me walk down a path that never actually helps me realize my potential? And so when you think about a maybe versus a never, then I'll take a maybe over a never any day of the week. And so, like I said, I don't know where you're at.

I don't know what tradeoffs you're facing. I don't know what sacrifices you may have to make in order to get to where you want to go. But I think literally listing those things out of what you were willing to give up. There was a point in my life where I wrote down all the things that I had to additionally give up because I was at a point of just rubber meeting the road and I had to push harder. And this is probably three or four years in my entrepreneurial journey. And I remember making this video about that where I actively gave up football on Sundays, which was like a thing that I enjoyed watching.

I know that I gave up all TV of all kinds, even like the Wind Down TV. I gave up any kind of going out. And I'm not saying that you have to do that. I'm just saying that that's what I did. And I know that this kid's father was like, hey, you need to have balance. You need to be able to enjoy life. You're still young. And my father, when I was younger, really hit on that really hard.

And I really pushed back. And I still pretty much do. because I don't believe that anything great was ever accomplished by someone who was balanced. I think that it takes extremes. It takes extreme effort. It takes unreasonable sacrifice in order to achieve things that are unreasonable. And so, you know, and I was telling him yesterday, the kid, not my dad, if you were competing against someone else who was a coder, you guys were both coding software, right?

I was like, and you're going to college, you're having fun, you're going out on weekends, and you know you code a couple hours a day versus the kid who drops out of college code 16 hours a day doesn't go out doesn't see his friends just codes for three and a half years it's like who do you think will be further along he was like well the other kid and I was like right I was like how much further along he was like probably a lot further I was like right do you think it's reasonable or unreasonable that he would be further ahead than you he was like reasonable and I was like so why would you not want to take the reasonable bet that you will be so much further ahead by my making that choice. And so all that to say, I don't know any people who are really successful

who don't approach things in an unbalanced way. And I think that there's a differentiation between seasons and your entire life. What you do for a season of life doesn't have to be forever, but sometimes it does have to be for that season. And sometimes you are uneven. And so sometimes it's difficult to look at what I do now versus what I did to get here. Right. If I, you know, I sack my fitness for periods of time, right? I'm not saying it was good. I'm just saying I did. There were times where I did not sleep as much as I probably should have. There were times where I did not see I didn't do anything social at all for months. I'm not saying it was right. I'm just saying that's what ended up happening. And when I hear stories of many people who kind of go through the

shit, who go through their Rocky Balboa period, the rocky cutscene, almost every hyper-success person that I have seen goes through a three to five-year period where they just get hit in the face day after day after day after day. You know, some of the, some of the great marketers, some of you guys may have heard of. You know, Russell Brunson pitched for five straight years on stages unknown before he became Russell Brunson. You know, Billy Jean did cold calling for two, three years. Dan Kennedy did face-to-face door to door sales for three years, right? I did four thousand one-on-one consultations over a four-year period selling fitness, doing 15, 20 appointments a day, right? And the thing is, is like, I wasn't Alex Formosie then. I was just a dude who was selling.

and just getting better and better. And the thing is that there's this unreasonable amount of effort, this unreasonable amount of sacrifice that usually has to go in to get the unreasonable goal. And yet people are not willing to make the sacrifice to do it. And so I think if we can simply look at what is the decision that's going to get me to where I want to go, which of these do I think will be better? And then what is the sacrifice that's required?

And am I willing to make that sacrifice? Then I think it makes much simpler decisions. And we know why we're making decisions we are so that decisions are not made for us by life.