The Game with Alex Hormozi - You’re Not Good Because You’re Unwilling To Be Bad | Ep 611

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

“You are going to suck at this for a very long time.” **Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) addresses a belief system that holds many back from learning the things they need to learn in order to be "successful".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:(2:02) - Many people limit themselves by believing they are bad at certain skills.(4:31) - Believing that if someone can do it, you can too.(7:27) - Approaching skills with the understanding that improvement is possible.(8:11) - Encouraging others to invest in skills and overcome fears.(8:31) - Personal example of improving math skills through practice and belief.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition(This episode is a re-run. Original airdate was on November 17, 2020)

No one's ever done it, and I'm going to be the first. If you can at least just believe that if someone has done it, it is therefore possible, and therefore I can't do it too if I do the same things. 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 wanted to make this kind of short for you because I had two or three things happen or less.

handful of days that just seemed to be this repeated thing and it reminded me that a lot of people struggle with this, which is they believe that they are inherently bad at things because they are not good at them. And I think that that is an incredibly dangerous belief set to have. And so what I want to do is kind of break that belief sit down to hopefully break it for you. So I think one of the most valuable beliefs, because, you know, in terms of building on success, in my opinion, first you need to develop skills, then you need to develop character traits to make sure that you do those skills. And then you have to make sure that your beliefs are correct so that you can open up the world. But the beliefs are kind of imbued throughout the entire process because if you don't

believe you can acquire a skill, you never will, right? If you don't believe you can have a character trait, you never will. And so I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who's looking to switch career paths, she's trying to figure out, she wasn't making as much money she wanted to make. And the issue that she was dealing with, she's like, she just doesn't have a valuable enough skill set. And she's like, I want to make this much money. And I was like, well, you're never going to do that doing what you do it. Right. And I was like, have you considered learning how to sell.

Right. I mean, because if you sell, you have a far, you know, if you still have the desire for security, but if you know how to sell, you can pretty much write your own paycheck if you know where to look. And she was like, I'm not, I'm not good at sales. I'm not a salesperson. And I was like, well, how many hours of sales training have you gone through? She was like, you know, none. And I was like, well, then why would it be reasonable for you to be good at sales?

Right? Like, that doesn't make any sense. Of course you're not good at sales. Like, you haven't done it. Right. Well, it's the same thing like, well, I'm not a very marketing type person. Well, how many courses have you gone through? How many hours a day do you spend studying marketing?

Well, you know, none. Well, then why is it reasonable that you like, why would it? It would be unreasonable for you to be good at the skill given the amount of investment you've made. Right. And so it's this, it's this recurring thing that I've seen over and over and over and again. And it also presents itself in different ways. Like I, you know, I'll speak at some event or something and I'll start getting into very basic math about business. Just business math. Like, you know, how much it costs to acquire customer? How much what's the lifetime value? Things like that. And I can see

people starting to freak out because they're like, I'm not good at math. And I have to lean back and or lean, you know, pressure onto that belief because one, that's a belief that will literally never serve you. It's like saying like, I hate employees. It's like, well, good luck owning a business that you want to grow to any appreciable scale. But with the math example, you can massively succeed in business knowing only algebra, not even algebra,

just basic multiplication, subtraction, division. If you just know how to do that, that's all you need to do. And just about everyone knows how to do those things. And at the very least, has a calculator who can do, multiplication, division, add addition, and subtraction.

That's it. That's all you literally need. And the thing is, is that people mistake that they are bad at math, when in reality they do not understand the concepts that create the math, right? Cost per acquisition, right? Okay, that's a math statement just expressed in words.

And so everyone gets tripped up and then they say, I'm bad at math, when in reality they just don't understand the term. And by doing that, they inherently limit themselves from learning because they have this checkbox in their head that as soon as it gets difficult, they say, ah, I'm bad at this. I am bad at this. I identify with being poor at this thing and therefore will never succeed at this thing that's a requirement for being successful. And so I think that for me, one of the cornerstone beliefs that has helped me a tremendous

amount, I just want to share it with you, is that if someone can, therefore I can. And sure, does that necessarily mean that you're going to go to Mars? like no one's ever done that before. I think that's a next level belief. No one's ever done it, and I'm going to be the first, right? But I think if you can at least just believe that if someone has done it, it is therefore possible, and therefore I can't do it too if I do the same things. And the nice thing about actions is that they are agnostic to your level of deservingness and skill. What I mean by that is, if you spend an hour a day practicing sales, over a year, you will likely be in the top 10%, 5%, 2% of people, because most people do nothing.

Most people do absolutely nothing except for deal with their emotions on a regular basis and procrastinate and give themselves reason for why they are not successful besides the obvious one, which is that it is not reasonable that they would be successful given the amount of time and effort they've put in to achieving it. Real quick, guys, you guys already know that I don't run any ads on this and I don't sell anything. And so the only ask that I can ever have of you guys that you help me, spread the words so we can out more entrepreneurs, make more money, feed their families, make better products, and have better experiences for their employees and customers.

And the only way we do that is if you can rate and review and share this podcast. So the single thing that I asked you do is you can just leave a review. It'll take you 10 seconds or one type of the thumb. It would mean the absolute world to me. And more importantly, it may change the world for someone else. And so the only reason for this is because I had that conversation. I spoke to the mastermind where the girl talked about not understanding the math. And there's just so many repeated events like this, or it's like, can you ask yourself

with reason, would it be reasonable for me to be good at this skill given the investment I've made? And as an antithesis to that example, I've got an 18-year-old kid who lives across the street and I sort of, you know, semi-mentor him. He's a good kid. He works super hard. A lot of hustle. And the thing is, is he's too young to know that he can't do things yet. And what that does is makes him incredibly dangerous because he hasn't been slapped in the face by the world yet. And so he believes that he can accomplish anything. He has no reason to think otherwise. And so I've been actively trying to speak that into him. And now he's wholesaling real estate right now. He's 18 years old. Right. I love this. Right. And how did he do it? He watched YouTube

videos for free. Right. And then he picked up cold calling because I was like, this is a book you need to for cold calling. And so he just started cold calling based on what the YouTube videos said off of a free list that he found on the internet. And he closed his first deal. as 18-year-old. And so does he have an inherent skill? No. But what I did was I prepared him mentally by saying like, you're going to suck at this for a very, very long time. And eventually, after doing it so many times, it will be unreasonable for you to suck and at that point you will be good. And so I think if we can all approach the skills that we feel like we are deficient with that kind of concept of, of course I am going to suck. It would not be reasonable for me to be

good. Well, if I do these actions, it would over time be unreasonable for me to be bad at these things. And I think by doing that, you unlock a different ability to learn and by extension grow. And so anyways, I hope you find this valuable. It's just, it's a belief set that I find repeated, especially in people who are smaller business owners who are getting started, et cetera. And it drives me nuts because it's just saying that you can't do something before you've even started. And that's why people have been so long in the beginning. beginner stage is because they inherently dispel away their ability to learn and get better. You can say, well, I'm not good at that. Well, obviously you're not good at that. You have not done it.

And so, anyways, I hope you find this valuable. I hope you share it or tag an employee who you feel like needs to invest in a skill and is afraid of it or somebody who is bad at drawing. And just to bring this home, I've said this before, but I'll say it again. Many of you, or I hear regularly that people consider me to be good at math. Until I was 23, I thought I was horrible at math. Like, I just like, I need you to understand this. Like, I believed I was horrible at math. And so what I did was, I stopped allowing myself to use a calculator and said I had to do all the math in my head. And what ended up happening is I got a lot of stuff wrong for a long time. But over time, I started to get better at math because I did everything in my head. I spend every

day not using a calculator for almost every calculation I make so that I can get better. And now it seems really cool because I can do a lot of math in my head pretty quickly. But I was bad. I literally cheated my entire way through high school in math class just to get by. I told myself I was bad at math. On like the SAT and the G mat, those are the sections I was most afraid of. Right. And I studied so much harder on the math for the GMAT and I ended up doing, you know, hitting 99 percentile on it, but I didn't, but that was because I did 16 phone books of problems. Over four months, I spent four hours a day for four months. I was like, I will do so much work that would be unreasonable for me to not be good at this. And so I say that just because like I feel like so many

of us just limit ourselves when you just like have to try. And so anyways, I love you all. I'll give an amazing day. I hope that if there's something that you want to, require from a skill standpoint that you will allow yourself to be reasonably bad until a point where it would be unreasonable for you to be at given the amount of time and effort you've put into it.