The Game with Alex Hormozi - Why You're Stuck in Your Business | Ep 680

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

“Just because no one has done it doesn't mean it's not possible.” Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) discusses strategies to overcome market limitations and personal barriers for limitless business growth. He emphasizes the need for a mindset shift, strategic thinking, and a focus on serving more customers to break industry revenue benchmarks and scale beyond perceived ceilings.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:(0:58) - The three pillars of business growth: beliefs, traits, and skills(3:13) - Expanding your vision: the power of belief in business(4:26) - Traits and skills: the inner workings of success(7:26) - The path to unprecedented growthFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition(This episode is a re-run. Original airdate was on October 19, 2021)

If you're in like the 1% of your marketplace or half a percent of your marketplace, you haven't capped your market. You just have capped your skill or your beliefs or your traits. 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. If you're stuck in your business, then this will help you get unstuck. So this morning I was reached out to by a business owner who's doing about one and a half million a month in revenue. And he was like, hey, man, I'm kind of stuck doing what I'm doing. And I just don't know anyone who's in my space who does more than $2 million a month. And he's in the online marketing space, a generalist, so just mass market. And I thought that was really interesting. And we had a good conversation about it. And so I wanted to share what we talked about. And so the first thing is I completely oppose that viewpoint. And I think this is so interesting because

the reason we get stuck in our business is because we either have a belief that is incorrect, There's this character trait that we lack or there's a skill deficiency. We don't know how to do what we need to do. We don't know how to be who we need to be. We don't believe what we need to believe. That's what we think about the world. And so whenever I'm looking at a business or business owner or myself and I'm stuck at a certain level, I think, is this a belief that I'm lacking or that's wrong? Is it a trait that I have that I need or I need to change or is there a skill, right?

And a lot of times it depends on who you're talking to, but you need all three. And a lot of people who are just really good at character development, only talk about traits, people really good at skill development, only talk about skills. and people who were kind of like a little bit more woo, we only talk about beliefs. But you need all three, right? And so when I was talking to this guy, he said, you know, just no one's, no one's in the online space making more than $2 million a month. And I thought this was interesting because when I came into the gym space, which our, with our first company, there was no one who was making more than $3 million a year

in that space. And for those of you don't know, you know, we grew that company to $30 million a year plus. And so we 10xed what the biggest person in the space was doing at the time. And so a lot of that's kind of like running the four minute mile for the first time is like just because no one has done it doesn't mean it's not possible. And so, you know, for this individual, I was like, well, break it down to physics, right? Break it down to like, tell me why you think that you can't get past that no one, excuse me, that no one can get past $2 million a month. Like, why? Right. Is that, is it not, is there not enough customers? Right? And he's mass market.

So of course there's enough customers. I was like, so, so tell me, like, why can you not do it? Right. And so as we're talking about this, I want you to think, like, think about your business, right? I get reached out to all the time. Like, hey, I'm doing $2 million a year. I'm doing $5 million a year. I'm doing $10 million a year. I just don't think we can grow any bigger within our market. Now, there are real market constraints, right?

So, for example, if you were serving chiropractors and there's 50,000 chiropractor in the United States, if you had all 50,000 of them, then, yes, you wouldn't be able to grow in that space. And then at that point, you could grow adjacent. And so at that point, your business still would continue to grow. And it's normal for businesses to go vertical to vertical and expand horizontally. not only in that way, but if you're in a mass market business or a business that serves consumers in any way, the entire marketplace is your base. And so when he said that he just know anyone who's

doing over $2 million a month, that is a belief issue, right? I'm like, well, let me give you this one to think with. Well, if you have 10 competitors and each of them are doing $2 million a month, then it means that one of you could be better than all of you and make $20 million a month. Say it for a second. Think about it. Because when I looked at the gym space, when I got into the very beginning, I looked at all of the people who were out there and I saw that all of them were doing one to three million dollars a year. And so I was like, if I'm better than all of them, then I should be able to do 30 million. I should be able to add up all of their businesses and that should be what my business should be able to do. And so if you think about it like that, like, it is 100% that way. How much do people spend on logistics and, you know,

fulfillment, right? How much do people spend in a consumer? Can you imagine Jeff Bezos, like in the early days of Amazon thinking to himself like, well, like you just can't get past $10 million a year. I just can't get past $100 million year. Like there are so many people, the reason that people get limited is because of their beliefs and the reality is because they don't have one of those three things. And so with this individual, I first started with the belief. I said, do you believe it's possible that you can get there? Because like, if we don't have that, then nothing can happen, right? And so I was like, well, let's just add up all your competitors. Is there any reason that you couldn't just get all of their revenue? Right. I was like, well, no. Okay, cool. So that one's done. Traits. Well,

this one is like are you are you patient enough to see it out with which and part of that comes to the fact of like if you believe you're making a positive impact right and you believe that your product or service really is benefiting the world which is honestly what I think one of the biggest issues is a lot of people don't really genuinely when they look at themselves in the mirror and I believe that the product is good enough and so subconsciously they do not push it further than to meet their own individual needs think about that for a second like if you if you've matched your own individual like you've you've capped out your ability to spend money and and like your ability to generate money. The only reason to make more money past that, if you're a self-aware individual,

is because you actually believe the thing that you have is going to help more people. And so it shifts from being a self-centered focus to an other center focused process, right? And so that person may not have the traits or the like to have that like to do that, right? And the third is like he might not be able to grow because he lacks the skills. Like you might not have the skills of recruiting somebody to open a new sales channel, right? You might not have the skill himself to do it or the skill to find someone. Because those are two different ways to think about it. Like you can always acquire the skill, which is how do I do it?

Or you can have the, you know, probably the wealthier mindset of like, well, who can do this? Right. And so then you can make, you can approach that. But as long as you know what needs to happen, then you can find the who. Now, if you are completely unaware, because I get this question all the time, like, well, at what point do I bring someone in to, like, run my business for me? And so I had someone asked me this yesterday. They were making, I think, like, 50 or 100 grand a month. I can't remember what it was. And I was like, dude, like, you're just starting. You don't know what I mean? Like,

you're just getting into the game. Like, what's the, you know what I mean? Like, you don't need to have, like, is your market capped? Is there a reason that you, like, why do you want to do this? Right. And I think it's because they didn't really believe in the thing, right? That they're selling. Because if you believe in the thing, then you want to, you want to be the one who's driving it, you know, and continuing to grow it over time. So anyways, all that is to say, right now, if you're stuck, right, or you perceive yourself to be stuck, I would break down, is there an actual cap on how big my market is, right?

And have I sold 100% of my marketplace? I sold 30% of my marketplace. And if you're in like the 1% of your marketplace or half a percent of your marketplace or 0.1% of your marketplace, you haven't capped your market. You just have capped your skill or your beliefs or your traits. And so then I would look at, okay, well, if all my competitors are doing this put together, then there's no reason I can't get all of that or half of that if I were way better than all of them, right?

If you were better, because each one of those businesses has a specific way they acquire customers, a specific way fulfilling those customers, right? And so if you knew how to do each one of those things and you did it better than them, then there's no reason that you couldn't beat them, right? And so if you think about that, then all of a sudden that should break the limit that you have on how much you can actually make within your current vehicle. then you get forced to look at the other two, which is like, is there a trait that I lack or is there a skill that I lack in getting to where I want to go? And so this was the conversation I had with him. At the end of the conversation, he was like, wow, I guess I can get this thing to $10 million a month, et cetera. And I was like, right. And so that was the entire purpose of this video is that if you are stuck and you're thinking that you are capped, you might be, but it's not because of your market oftentimes. It's because of your beliefs, a trait or a skill that you lack. And then figuring out which one it is and then attacking it is usually the way to go through it.