The Game with Alex Hormozi - Why Not All Friends Want the Best for You | Ep 534

Episode Date: May 9, 2023

"People don't actually want the best for you. They want the version of you that best serves them." Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) shares with us the challenges of pursuing one's dreams and goals while dealing with unsupportive friends. He shares his views on friendship and how it's important to surround oneself with people who believe in one's future self and that not all friends want the best for you.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:(1:45) - Friendship is not a binary term(5:41) - People project their idea of friendship onto us(7:51) - 2 perspectives on burning bridges(11:11) - Prioritize treating the other person as human(13:55) - Learn to enjoy being alone and add value to others(17:21) - Friends don't need to pursue greatness, but help you pursue it.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

understand that seasons by their very nature end, and then look back and say, like, we both contributed to another, and then we found out that we wanted different things, which is great. That's the whole point of learning. Welcome to the game where we talk about how to sell more stuff to more people in more ways and build businesses worth owning. I'm trying to build a billion dollar thing with Acquisition.com. I always wished Bezos, Musk, and Buffett had documented their journey, so I'm doing it for the rest of us. Please share and enjoy. One of the harsh things about pursuing your dreams and pursuing your goals is that a lot of the

people that are in your life right now will not support you and will not support the future version of you that you need to become in order to accomplish those goals. And it's arguably one of the hardest aspects of entrepreneurship on a personal level because you want people who believe more in the future version of you and don't buy the old identity of you that is keeping you where you're currently at. And old friends often have old versions of you that they continue to want to reinforce because one of the things that I found true is that people don't actually want the best for you. They want the version of you that best serves them. Now, the closer they are to you in terms of long-term alignment, the more likely those two versions of you

will intersect, which is often why, often, not always, why family and your spouse should hopefully be the most aligned with you because long-term, their best interest is often aligned with your best interest. Now, how you get there may be the point of contention where you might have to break ties for a little bit for a season and then maybe re-engage later. Now, there's a handful of contrarian views that I hold around friendship and I'm just saying these are things that have worked for me and I get lots of questions about it. So I'm just sharing my viewpoint. Number one is that I don't see friendship as a binary term, meaning it's not that we are friends or not friends. It's how good of friends are we? And I think just from that onset, you can have a much better understanding of all the people that are in your life, which is, well, how good of a friend are they? Now, to define friendship, rather than define what it is, I think it's more useful, at least for me, when I try and I try to find something, I think, well, what's the opposite and what would have to be true for the opposite? So the opposite of friend would be an enemy or a rival. And so an enemy would be someone who doesn't root for me, obviously. They actively try and destroy my efforts in order to succeed.

They try and get me to be emotional whenever I can rather than make logical decisions. They try and confuse me. And they try and distract me from my ultimate goal. So they try and drain resources from me that I could otherwise allocate towards what I'm trying to do. And so you have a goal and they try and knock out the legs underneath of that achievement from every angle they possibly can. That's what an enemy would be. And for many of you, some of your friends fit that description now. So the reverse of that would be somebody who roots for you in front of you and most specifically

behind your back. And I think the telltale sign there is not whether they do it in front or behind, is that they actually root for you. And real talk, that's one of the hardest things out there, especially amongst guys where it's very alpha, competitive, et cetera. And as soon as your status starts to raise within the group, you, by comparison, make everyone else worse. And so it's in their best interest to make you less of a threat to them by diminishing your status. And they will use the things like talk, mind your back, trying to distract you, make you emotional, make you feel guilty about the things that you're doing, take you away, try and label you with old labels that are your old identity, not aligned with the things that you want to do later.

These are all like techniques. And the thing is, I don't think these are bad people, to be clear. I don't even think there's good or bad people anyways. But the question is just, are they going to help me towards my long-term goal? Are they not? And for me, that is an easier way. Now, that is a binary in terms of decision. For me, it's a more helpful way to sift through who I want to keep in my life.

And oftentimes, when I actually make it that cut and dry, will this person make it more likely that I achieve my goal or not? If it's more likely, then they've earned a spot. They're paying their rent for my time and attention. If they're not more likely to help me hit my goal by being in my life, then for me, the question is, is the relationship more important than my goal? And that's a decision for you. For me, I made my goal, my most important thing because I believe that if I achieve that goal, I would feel better about myself, my identity associated with it, and I think that there would be a new level of friends who would unlock as I got to that new level. And for me up to this point, that has been true.

As an aside, my single one-strike policy, like I understand that people are human and people make mistakes. But if you want the one-strike, not three-strike, one-way ticket out of my friendship, you only have to do one thing. you have to not root for me, meaning you actively resent either explicitly or implicitly when I win. And for me, that's it. Like, if you resent me winning, why are you here? And I'll answer the question. The reason they're still there is because there's a chance that your success will benefit them, but while you're succeeding, they'll still try and destroy it in case they can bring you down.

So they're hedging. So they try and destroy you, but they keep their friendship on the surface in case you're status can benefit them. It's fucked up, but it's true. And there's a lot of statements that friends will make to try and keep you where you're at. They'll say, you've changed, and they'll phrase it in a way that makes it feel like you're doing something wrong by changing. And all you have to do is look back at them and say, you're right, and you haven't. And that carries almost an equal way back to them because some people want to stay the same. Comma, and that's okay. The biggest issue that I've had with friendships in general is that people project what they believe

friendships should look like in their minds onto our relationship. And so oftentimes we have disagreement on what that relationship should look like. For me, I am transactional. And this is going probably piss a lot of people off. But what I mean by that is simply that the pros of this relationship should outweigh the cons. That's it. And if people were like, I can't believe you'd say that, well, then we probably wouldn't be friends. And that's okay. you'll probably be friends with people who don't have that definition. But for me, that means that my life is better off with you in it. You help me achieve my goal. You root for me along the way. And for me, the definition of help is giving attention back. So have you ever had somebody who's

like, I was just trying to help? And all you did was just like, and that person just like made your life 10 times harder, that is not help. That is inverted health. That is destruction. Right. And this what a lot of your current friends will claim to be doing and either do so knowingly or unknowingly. But true help comes from someone who comes into your life and all of a sudden, everything gets easier. That is help. That is a friend. That is somebody who's an ally. If you think about this in terms of allies and enemies, it's probably easier than friends, which can seem really amorphous.

And so maybe using that word, like, is this person an ally of mine makes this a lot easier, at least for me. So in terms of exchange, I believe in abundant exchange. Same way in business as I do in a personal relationship, which is if both of us feel like we're getting the better end of the deal, then this relationship will continue at infinitum. It's going to keep going, right? So I try and deliver value to them. And if they deliver value back to me and it feels like it's in excess of the value I provided, which most times in any kind of exchange, it takes me less effort to take 10 years of experience to provide value to somebody in terms of time versus how much value they get from that investment.

And they should be able to take the same level of investment and put it back to me and I get a disproportionate return. If that's how the relationship is, you would have no reason to end it. Where you get into trouble is the types of relationships that you're wondering, should I keep these? you probably already know you shouldn't. And I love this little framework for decision making, is that when you're face between a hard thing and the easy thing and you're not sure what to do, you should do the hard thing because if the easy thing were the right thing to do, you would have already done it.

And so let me give you a little frame shift around burning bridges, because people love using that. It's like, you don't want to burn bridges. Remember where you came from? And so I want to give you a counter to both of those things. One is that analogies of metaphors persuade, they also confuse. So you can consider it burning a bridge, but you could also consider it pruning a tree in order for the tree to grow, right? Where you only have certain amount of sunlight, water, and minerals in the soil if you're a tree and you're trying to grow, you have branches that start spouting off of you and draining resources away from the direction you're trying to go. The healthiest thing for the tree is to prune it. It means to cut the branch off.

And that may seem uncomfortable for many of you, but again, there's the hard thing and the easy thing. And if you're making the decision, you already know the right thing is probably the hard one. The next line is actually one from Tupac that I like a lot. And I think Tupac embodies this transitioning between friends really well. And he said, just because you lost me as a friend doesn't mean you gained me as an enemy. I'm bigger than that. I still want to see you eat, just not at my table. And so it's one of those things where it's like, I don't wish you ill.

I want you to succeed and I want you to do all the things you want to do in your life. It's just that your vision for your life doesn't merge with my vision for my life. It's the same thing as having an ex-girlfriend or an ex-boyfriend. and you had a season together. It doesn't mean you don't honor the season and all of a sudden start destroying the memory because why would you want to live a life where all you did was destroy every memory of your life

until that very moment? Well, that sounds like not fun. Appreciate the fact that you had a season. Understand that seasons by their very nature end. And then look back and say, like we both contributed to another. And then we found out that we wanted different things, which is great.

That's the whole point of learning. Hey, guys, real quick, if you're new to the podcast, I have a book on Amazon called 100,000, 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 a thousand 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. When I think back to friendships in that way, it allows me to maintain the goodwill I have associated with that person and also say like you want different things and that's okay and so if you encounter somebody who's in that kind of camp right where it's like it's clear that they want to you know play fantasy football they want to drink on sundays and they want to you know do the bar crawls and all that stuff and this is really common right they want to go to clubs every night whatever it is if that's not aligned with the vision of your life and it used to be your old life and now it's coming in conflict those people are going to and like rightfully so they're losing a friend so they want to keep you there. And that's okay. Like, don't hate them for wanting that. It's just that it no longer

aligns anymore. And I think there's really two directions for these types of friendships. Number one is that if you decrease the frequency of communication with someone, over time, you get fewer and fewer invites and then it kind of fizzles. That's how most friendships or loose acquaintances end. The very hand-select few of times where you have family or like super close homies, whatever you want to call it, cistas, in those instances, usually you have to confront this conversation, which probably grows as an elephant in the room that needs to be addressed. And I have one framework for having really hard conversations, which I stole from Layla, which is keep the other person as a human being at the forefront of the conversation rather than being right.

And if I remind myself every time I go into hard conversations that way, it's amazing how much better of a conversation I have. And accepting responsibility for the fact that, like, hey, I've changed. And that's not on you. That's on me. And you want these things, right? I don't feel like I can be the friend that you deserve in your life. And so like if it means that we're not hanging out as much anymore, again, it doesn't mean that you have me as an enemy. It just means that like, I'm moving in a different direction, comma, and that's okay. The thing is, is a lot of people have these precepts of what a friend should be. They're like, we're going to be friends for life. But how many 85-year-olds do you know who are friends with the same people their whole lives? Not many. And if they are, they've got like one. It's not. not common. And so to expect something that's really uncommon from the probably 10,000 people you're going to meet throughout your lifetime, that they're going to be the one is not really reasonable. But it is okay, in my opinion, to have seasons of friends. We're friends for the season. And then we had train tracks that aligned. And then we found out we had train tracks that diverted, comma, and that's okay. And so I think that's been my recurring theme with friendships

is just accepting them for what they are and saying, that's okay. Things have changed. Good. That's what growth is. You can't grow and stay the same. Doesn't work. And if we want to grow as entrepreneurs, then we have to expect change. And that also includes the personnel on our roster and our bench. Now, some people have said that my approach or view on friendships is transactional, extreme, whatever. And I'll say, sure, you're right. And like, I'm not trying to achieve a common life goal. And so it would make sense that my views would be more extreme than other people's. I also think that some of these views become compounded when you have increasing demands for your time.

And so if that's not real for you right now, if you don't have people vying for every minute of your day right now, then what I'm saying might not be relevant for you. But for the people who do have people vying for every minute of their day, then it might make more sense. There's a reason LeBron says no new friends. Like at a certain point, he's decided like he doesn't need any friends or he doesn't trust anyone new.

And that's fine. That works for him. He has a rare life. It would make sense that he has rare rules. You might not say no new friends. That sounds extreme. so does being the best or second best or whatever top five basketball players of all time. And I think one of the things that helped me out a lot during this transition is that some people,

just like boyfriends and girlfriends who like go from boyfriend to boyfriend to boyfriend or girlfriend to girlfriend, like they never spend time alone. I think there are some people who do the same thing with friends. It's like they like overlap friends and then they drop one friend. I think it's very helpful to be okay being alone and like learn to enjoy being alone because then you're kind of like a whole person who adds value into and of themselves. And then you can add value to someone else's life, but you do not require them. You don't necessitate them. You don't become dependent on that friendship. And so that's always

been my goal is to like be interdependent. We're like, I can operate on my own. You can operate on your own. But together, we are better off. And until we are no longer better off, I will continue to make that exchange. We trade time. We both get better. Trade time. Both get better. Until eventually one of us is not getting better and chooses to end the relationship or decrease the frequency of the relationship. Like that's a really common one. You might just be like, we're not every week friends, but like I'm a once or twice a year phone call friend, maybe. It's just to what degree are we friends? And I think you can decrease the frequency of communication with people as a very easy way

to balance maintaining a relationship if you want it for long term, but you don't have as much good stuff to exchange in the short term. The negative friends are the easy ones. Okay, they're the party. And let's be real, they're not easy because they're the ones who're probably going to cling on to you the hardest and probably insult you the most. But if they're insulting you the most, then like you probably already know that it's not the right fit. But what about the neutral friends, right?

What about the ones who, like, they don't really hurt, you know, your goals, but they don't really help your goals? I have rather extreme views, which is like, if you are not helping me, you are hurting me because you are taking the place and the time of attention of something that could be helping. And so I just see that as the same exact continuum. It's just further along on the same continuum, which is where are you going to trade, right? And fundamentally, if you think about everything you do as an investor, you invest time and energy into a relationship with the hopes of getting some sort of positive return, right? And so you spend

that time no matter what. And the people who build their best relationships, the best networks, are the ones who invest in relationships that yield the highest returns. And the thing is, is not all the relationships have to have returns in your financial realm, right? Like, I have a very close friend of mine who is an FBI agent, and he's my oldest friend. He and I've been friends in sixth grade. kind of is it's my one friend, but friends in sixth grade. And he is exceptional at what he does. But I obviously make more money than him. He's like, you can look up what I make on Google. And he jokes about it. But you know what he's doing? He's knocking down like pedophile rings and drug ping pins. And like every time I talk to him, he's got like new stories of things that he's doing. And for me,

the benefit I get from the relationship is that it gives me an escape from the day-to-day business stuff that I'm dealing with. I have somebody who never really asks me for anything because he benefits in no way from the status, from the followers, from the anything, because he does no way to financially benefit. He's an FBI agent, right? And to the same degree, but what we both mutually appreciate about one another is that we've both been committed to being excellent at our craft. He works every hour of every day. He works overtime. He works weekends because he loves it. And that is something that will always have my respect. So it's not about money for me. It's about who has a commitment to excellence. Now, the vast majority of the friends that I have are entrepreneurs and their

vehicle for excellence is entrepreneurship. But if someone came to me and they're like a rapper, you know what I mean? And they're exceptional at rap. Their art, for me, business is my art. For whatever your art is, for my buddy, taking out bad guys is his art. As crazy as that sounds, like that's his art. And so I just want people who are as passionate about their art as I am and who root for me to make the best painting possible. That's what I'm really going for. And I think if you can see it that way, at least for me, it's been helpful. So I think that you can have friends who aren't necessarily pursuing greatness as long as they're helping you pursue yours. And that's the, that's the bridge, in my opinion.

I like to be inspired by the people that I'm around. I want to admire something in every friend that I have. Because if I already characterize like, okay, what about fitness-wise? What about relationship-wise? What about business-wise? Or like whatever their art form is, whatever they're dedicated. their mindset, their spirituality, whatever it is. I want to be getting better from every friendship that I have. They have to be better than me at something. And I want that. And I think the most

important person that should be better than you at stuff is your spouse. Like if you don't admire your spouse and don't feel like you have things to learn from them, that's tough, in my opinion. And so, like, that is the best friend you have for life, which means you have to have the most alignment with them, which means they should root for you harder than anyone else. They should never resent your success. They should always be rooting for you to stay in the game when the game's on the line, like a true friend would on the sideline, rather than shouting from the sidelines and trying to distract you and trying to make you feel bad for still playing, trying to make you feel emotional about beating the other team. All of those things detract. And so I think the spouse is

like the nth degree of what the most extreme friends should look like. Ally, the biggest, strongest ally you have, and then the friends you have are just non-sexualized versions of that core ally you have. But I mean, at the end of the day, it's just like, does this person make me better? And that, like, if there's one bottom line question that I have to say yes to, it's that, is like, does this person make me better? And like, if they don't, then why are you here? And here's a tough one, where you make someone else better in a lot of ways and they don't make you better. This is where there's dynamics that sometimes have to change, where sometimes you're a friend,

you break up for a minute and then you reconnect, but it's in a different context. Like, you might almost be a little bit of an advisor or a mentor because you've moved, you've leveled up a lot, right? In those relationships, sometimes you do get things out of that relationship. Like, teachers learn just as much as students do in those dynamics. And so, again, it's like, is this making me better? Kids make parents a lot better in a lot of ways. They're more patient after they have kids, they're more empathetic. They learn how much they can love something that they never thought. Like, there's lots of ways that kids, even though, transactionally, like, all they're doing is sucking resources out of you. But most parents would probably think, yes, my life is significantly

better. I am better as a result of this relationship. And they may have some ridiculous. But like, just boiling it down, that's a lot of what it is, right?