The Game with Alex Hormozi - Why I Chose to Disappoint My Dad | Ep 414

Episode Date: July 28, 2022

Are you living the way you want or by someone else's rules? Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) talks about something more personal. He dives into his relationship with his father, the impact this had on his entrepreneurship journey, and how he managed to break free from the expectations set on him, ultimately making a name for himself.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:(0:22) - The constant need to seek validation felt like death(3:59) - Legacy can leave heavy expectations(6:56) - Father not supportive the things Alex wanted to do for himself(10:22) - "I would prefer to not be alive if this is what my life will be."Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

I had to die to my father or die to myself, and I realized that I would rather die to him. Pretty much ended up happening. And so my fears were relatively justified. 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. Well, I usually asked my guess, how did you get this job? So I was a management consultant right out of college.

I did space cyber and intelligence for the military, which sounds much cooler than it really was. top secret clearance. It sounded really good at dinner parties and just about only that. And, you know, one day I looked out from my balcony because I had a really nice place because I could afford it at the time. And I was like, is this it? And I was, you know, in my young 20s, you know, at that point I had done everything that I think I was supposed to do. So I was, you know, I did well in school. I, you know, was president of all the clubs, you know, graduated in three years, got the good job. And I realized that it was, I was living, you know, life for me that my father wanted me to live. And so that was kind of, you know, I faltered back and forth for probably a period of six months of really not wanting this to be my life, but not wanting to let my dad down. And so at some point, the thing that kind of pushed me over the edge was I can either, you know, die to myself or I can die to my father.

And at the end of the day, you know, I have to survive. So I will, if I make this decision and he no longer wants to be my dad, then I can accept that. Wow, is that extreme then? Yes. Say more about that. Are you an only child? Yeah. So only child raised by a single father, Middle Eastern. He was born in Iran. And, you know, everything in my life up until that point was really just to make him proud. So it was very much a seeking approval, seeking validation kind of drive at that point in my life. And so the idea of disappointing him or not getting his approval felt like death. And at that point, I was actually contemplating not living. You have watched some of my YouTube stuff. Mortality has been the single biggest driver and the biggest decisions that I've made in my life. And it has become. more routine process for decision-making for me in general, because I think it provides clarity and it provides context to most of the decisions we have, which the vast majority of them don't matter,

which is helpful in and of themselves. And then, you know, beyond that, it helps me make the decisions that I think removes everyone else from the playbook, because if you study subjective well-being and how people perceive how they're doing in their own lives, it looks like a smiley face. So seven-year-olds think they're killing life. And then it drops dramatic. between 20 and 30. And then there's still a little bit more of a dip right around 45. That's like when people are their truce, they hate life the most. And then it kind of slowly goes up until like 55, 60, and then it shoots right back up again when people see that they're going to die and that life is short and that they can make the decisions without worrying about

the ramifications of other people. And some of the people they're worried about are also dead. And so it was using that context for that biggest decision that's been duplicated many times in my life since then, because if I have a good decision-making algorithm, I try and reuse it as many times as I can. Let's unpack it for the audience a little bit. So, you know, when we're seven, we don't have a care in the world. The artist or the, whatever we want to be has not been beaten out of us yet. No one's told us that we are not what we think we are. We're still popping wheelies and climate trees and falling out and that's okay. And then you get to your 20s and 30s and the rubber hits a road a little bit. And if you've made money, I guess, and if that's your

sign of success, then you're okay. But if not, you're kind of hosed. Then in your 40s, I'm guessing you start to have more life experience. 50s, maybe you start caring less what people think. And then you fast forward all the way to maybe near death. And then you really get to a point where you don't care what anyone says, and you really boil it down to what's important. And probably I'm guessing that's love, relationships, legacy. And then you're just like peace out.

I think for most people, yes. for me specifically the legacy piece less so but I think for most people yes and why is the legacy piece less important? More so and whenever I get into this topic I think a lot of like some people get sensitive about it and so I just like to put the disclaimer like

this is not me judging your beliefs and me stating my beliefs is in no way a judgment on any else but if you just look at expanding the time horizon over a much longer period of time if you look at it in 10,000 years or 100,000 years or a million years right The easy way to test this is to go backwards, right?

Which is, do you know your great, great, great, great, great, great, grandfather? Probably not. And then if you look at it from a how much has somebody achieved standpoint, I happen to be in an interesting situation where my great, great grandfather was in the ruling class in Iran, and he had 400 children. So he would literally, you know, like ruled and had a lot of wealth. He had a lot of wives to create 400 children, right? And I actually still can't remember his name because my dad told me one time and I can't

remember it. And I've never seen any of the quote, that I'm sure he felt like he was leaving. And so if that was that level of success and legacy, and only four or five generations later, I don't even remember the man's name, nor do I have any piece of that legacy, it seems a little bit irrelevant.

When the revolution happened in Iran, we talk about legacy, lands, buildings, houses, bank accounts, everyone just says those are ours now. That's it. There's your legacy. Gone. That's why I'm like, and people are like, I'm going to build a legacy. I'm like, U.S. might not even be the superpower in 500 years.

Your kids might be in Bangladesh. Who knows? India might be the hot spot 500. No one knows, right? And I think in a long enough time horizon, we're all screwed. And I think in some ways people find that incredibly disheartening. But an equal opposite is you can't find it both disheartening and also not freeing because all of the decisions that we're making that are not for ourselves are subject to change that we feel pressure from,

whether that be society, societal, I'll put quotes there because that's a big word. or family, friends, expectations that we perceive other people to have of us, if you can just relinquish all of those chains, I think it's incredibly freeing. And I choose to live that way. That advice is good because it helps us live in the moment. Because even if you believe in something after, that's still in the future. And there's a question mark because no one actually knows with knowledge what happens or if something happens. So you might as well live in the doesn't make the best of it. Yeah. An interesting one that I thought through around that was a lot of us, not a lot of us,

all of us, have 100% experience not being alive, right? Before we were born, we were not alive. And so we know what that was like. There was nothing that we can recollect. And so I would imagine that that's the closest experience that we can have to not being alive yet again, which to me is not that frightening. Yeah. And it is freeing, you're right, because it's both humbling to know that You don't matter in the grand scheme of things, but at the same time, you matter infinitely if you just focus on the present and the mark that you're going to leave here and now. I contemplated. I had to die to my father or die to myself, and I realized that I would rather die to him, which pretty much ended up happening. And so my fears were relatively justified. He was not in support of the things that I wanted to do. I ended up quitting that job, sold everything I had, packed my car, went to California because that's where I thought the land of fitness opportunity was because that was the only thing I really enjoyed.

I mentored under a guy for a few months to try and at least learn the ropes. Started my first facility, slept on the floor for the first nine months, which was a very terrible experience for me. And timestamped the age for me now? I was 23. So you graduated early. You got that dream job, and then you bailed. Yep. Yeah.

Two years. And that was really at the time. And all of this kind of, it was at a splitting point where I had done two years and the kind of career path traditionally is like two to four years of management consulting. And then you go back to an Ivy League for your GMAT. And then from there you go into, you know, you can go do investment banking, you can do private equity, you can do some of the bigger white-collar jobs. But it was, I didn't want more of what I had. And so I thought that I would have a better shot taking $200,000 in two years, which is what the economic equivalent of equivalent of equivalent of equivalent of

was and starting something on my own. I figured I would learn more in the first two years and with that money and maybe even have a business by the end of that period of time that made an equivalent amount of money compared to what I would have had as a job offer. Hey guys, real quick, if you're new to the podcast, I have a book on Amazon. It's called $100 million offers that over 8,000 five-star reviews and it has almost a perfect score. You can get it for 99 cents on Kindle. The reason I bring it up is that I put over 1,000 hours into writing that book. And it's my biggest gift to our community. So it's my very shameless way of trying to get you to like me more and ultimately make more dollars so that later on in your business career, I can potentially partner with you. So that's my give. Go check it out, Amazon,

and back to the show. What signals did you get? I mean, you're saying, like, I wasn't feeling it, but like, where was your motivation? Because I see you as this hustler, this go-get is all about gobbling up new opportunities. It transcends beyond that now. But, like, at first, it sounds like you were just all about the go-get. But how did you know? I mean, at first, I was driven by fear.

Okay. It was all fear. Fear of failure. Feel of disappointment. Fear of other people's judgment. Right. What did your dad end up saying? Did he say, good luck with you?

No. he thought he was stupid, he thought I was wasting my life. Yeah. And wasted a degree that he'd spent money on and wasted a good job opportunity that he had set up for me, all these things. Right. In his defense, did he immigrate here? Yeah. Okay.

So in his defense. 100%. Right. And I just want to tell the audience. So they're not like, but, but, but, but it's like, you know, if you have. He's justified in saying that. Yeah. If you escape from a country where there's trauma and impending danger, then your son squanders an opportunity.

you might get a little anxious about that. 100%. I mean, my dad came here with $1,000, you know, in a medical degree. Yeah. And then built everything. Didn't even speak English. Right.

I think what he did was harder than what I've done. Like, I got to stand on his shoulders. Okay. You know. In what way? I mean, I speak English. Okay. You know, like, just the basics.

Like, I speak English. I went to a good school. Just all the support infrastructure known and unknown that was around me. Yeah. To, you know, to be the gospel. Yeah, I think it's healthy to recognize. your privilege. But at the same time, you know, it came with lots of baggage too. And so you had signals which were mainly fear-based. Yeah. And I mean, the biggest thing that made the decision for me,

I would say I had the logical decision and then I had the emotional decision. The emotional decision was, I don't want to do this. This is not the life I want to lead. I am not happy doing this every day. I would prefer to not be alive if this is what my life will be continuously. If I would prefer to not be alive, then that kind of opens up my decision calculus. And what was it? I'm trying to put my finger on. What was it that made you happy? Was it just the freedom to do what you want? I didn't know what made me happy. I knew it was not making me happy. Okay. So I think that's another important lesson, too, if I can just extract them. You know, I'm sure a lot of people watching, they feel the same kind of family pressure. They want to be what other people expect them to be,

if, you know, if that's who you are. And that's totally normal. But we should always remember the context in which that advice is given, could be given through the lens of a certain lifestyle, a certain time frame. But I think that's a thing. Whether you're young or middle age, you're trying to figure out what you want to be when you grow up. You're trying to have it all figured out. Because it seems like we don't like

uncertainty. But I think your message, if I'm hearing you, is sometimes you have to try it on for size to see if it fits or not. And you get it on, you're like, well, I thought that dream job was going to be like, perfect, but turns out, you know, It's tight in the crutch. You know, it's like, I need something different.

I think giving yourself permission to do that. And as aside to what you were saying about my dad, like education saved his life. Like, he was only able to leave the country because he was educated. And so there's very deep roots there. And I can appreciate that. But for this context or for my life, it just wasn't appropriate. Right.

And when we did come to terms later, the only time he's ever apologized to me in my life and said, but to be fair, in my time, I would have been right. Oh, absolutely. he would have been. It's just not the same time. Yeah, absolutely. It wasn't that it was inappropriate. It was just out of context and didn't necessarily translate to this new life. I love the saying, you know, in our 20s, we're concerned about what everyone thinks about us. In our 40s, we don't care what anyone thinks about us. And in our 60s, we realized that no one was thinking about us to begin with. Right. And I just feel like that's, I mean, who else have you thought about today besides yourself? Probably not. I mean, you have your kids, which is an extension of yourself. But you know what I mean? Not a lot. And so most people are like that. And, you know, a lot of it. like we have a lot more leeway than I think we give ourselves credit for. And I think the more that I have now, you know, I'll say accomplished with quotes in material success, the more I am excited about the things that I can do.

And that was why the opening of the book was like there are no rules. And it just took me a very long time to realize that. And I continue to unlearn rules that I thought existed, you know, as I continue to, you know, go on this journey. Yeah, I love that idea of unlearning. I think we all just try to go back to being like we were when we were children. Just because when you're a child, you're purely present. You're just present in the moment. And I don't like the word happy very much.

I prefer using joy because you can mourn joyfully, right? Because it's internal rather than happiness, which I feel like happenstance. It's more from external. And so, you know, what are the things that bring me joy? What are the things that I find joy in? And I think for anyone who's listening, it's a much harder question to answer, what are the things that bring me joy than answering the question, what are the things I hate? and it's easier to correct those first.

You're like, well, I hate my job and I hate my relationship and I hate the city. Okay, those are all very changeable. And a lot of times you get there by inversion. Well, if I wanted to destroy my life, I wanted to have the worst life possible, what would I do? And then taking all those things that you would do to really destroy your life and make your life miserable and then reverse them. It's a much easier way to solve the positive psychology equation, in my opinion. Yeah, I love that. And I remembering this Picasso quote, which is, I think he said,

everyone is born an artist right and then eventually we get convinced that we're not and we have to really just strip away and get back to basics Thanks.