← Build with Leila Hormozi
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If you want to have a better 2024 than everybody else, this video is for you. By the age of 28, I was worth $100 million. And I did it by following one simple principle for winning at life. I call it the season of no. A lot of people feel bad saying no. They feel guilty saying no. But here's the thing. Saying no doesn't mean saying no. It actually means saying yes to the one thing that is most important to you. So I want to share with you the principles that I abide by when I'm entering a season of no such that I can say yes to the one thing that matters. The key is this is a season. This doesn't mean it's forever. It also means you can dictate how long it lasts and what the terms of the season are. The first time I entered a season of no was in 2017. I just started gym launch and went from literally sleeping in motels, having like $1,000 in the bank account, to finally making not even just money, but, like, hand over this money, profiting, like over a million dollars a month. I was so terrified of going back to that place that I had been, but I was like, I have to enter a season of no. And I didn't come out for three and a half years. So what I say no to, I said no to drinking. I said no to friends. I said no to any activities on weeknights and most weekends. I said no to texting people back. I said no to obligatory social events, AKA like weddings and anniversaries and birthday parties. And I said no to driving anywhere for anything and built a fortress instead. I can guess what you guys are all thinking, which is like, that sounds like it would offend a lot of people, and you're not wrong. But you're also wrong, because here's the thing. If you're winning at life, why would people not want to associate with you? And even to take it one step further, why would you want to associate with anybody who doesn't want to see you winning at life? So every time I'm entering a season of no, which I have done three times in my life, the first thing I do is I look at who I'm spending my time with. I ask myself a question which says, does this relationship help me reach my goals or deter me from reaching my goals? Some relationships I'm sure you can think of, maybe one, unfortunately, probably less. But some relationships make it easier to achieve your goals, whereas there are probably more, unfortunately, that make it harder for you and they actually interfere with you hitting those goals that you have. When I was 19 and I had gotten arrested six times, six, I realized that the environment I had put myself in made it really hard for me to achieve my goals. All of my friends were drinking and partying. I none of my friends were achieving any sort of goals monetarily, relationship wise, health wise. And so I realized that though I liked them, the environment that had those people in it made it much harder for me to achieve my goals. And I wanted to rig everything possible in my favor to reach my goals. So if that means that I'm going to engineer my environment by strategically ensuring that I only support myself with people who make it easy, then I'm going to do that. Yes, you can use willpower and you can grid it out and all those things. I'm not saying it doesn't require that, it doesn't require discipline, but if you can make it easier to achieve your goals by just changing your environment, why wouldn't you do that? Another question that you can use to filter is, do I feel better or worse about myself after I see this person? Is this person building you up or are they constantly insulting you when you're hanging out with them? Unfortunately, a lot of people have family, for example, that falls into this category. And guess what? I can tell you, tons of mine did too. I would show up at the family gatherings and people would say little passive aggressive comments at me talking about my new lifestyle or all the money I'm making. Oh yeah, you're too good for us now. And I was like this, I don't need to be here. And then another example of that would be after selling Gym launch and going into a season of building acquisition.com I had a lot of people that I was friends with while we were running Gym launch and a decent amount of those people when I talked to them about my aspirations for acquisition.com and how I want to make it a $10 billion company and how I'm going to start doing social media. They start telling me all these reasons why I should just stick with what I'm doing. You know, you've just been running the company. Why do you need to make content to. Why do you need to go to 10 billion? Like, aren't you good enough where you are? And I remember thinking like, wow, this is my new season of no, these are my now friends that even though they're great, they're all actually very successful on paper. Every time I tell them my aspirations and my goals, they don't want to Help me. They want to give me more reasons why I shouldn't try. Which brings me to the last question I asked myself, which is, if I met this person today, would I initiate a relationship with them? Many of us stay friends with people who no longer are a good influence on our lives. Now, when I say good, I will use that in the context of good, as in they help you achieve your goals. And so I say this to you because I want to give you context. One, just because it makes it harder for you to achieve your goals when you're around somebody doesn't mean they're a bad person. It just means maybe you should just surround yourself with people who make it easier. Right? Probably make your life easier and more enjoyable. Maybe what it was that you used to have different goals, and so those people being around them helped you achieve those goals. Maybe you're in your 20s, for example, and you hang out with people that when you're in college, you're partying with them, and they give you social status when you hang out with them. Well, now what are you trying to do? You're trying to make money, and then trying to party all the time is actually making it harder for you to make money. And so it might mean that if you want to go into the season, you no longer hang out with those people. And the seasons change. My first season when I was 19, I was hanging out people partying all the time. The second season was when started gym launch. And in that season, I actually had a lot of friends who were entrepreneurs, but I they'd been doing the same thing year after year, talking about the same problems year after year. I remember the moment for me which was like I was in this room at this mastermind. We had been at a session, I wouldn't say about nine months prior. And then we came to the next session and I had hit all my goals and I had a whole new set of problems. And I remember everyone got up to the front of the room and it was like Groundhog day. Everyone had the same set of problems they had had nine months ago. And in that moment, I was like, this room, I don't even care what I paid for this. I don't need to show up here. And I never went back because I was like, this doesn't help me to be here. Maybe I am help them, but they're not helping me anymore. There's nothing wrong with them, but it's not making my life better. And then the second piece is that as you're going through these seasons, each Time looks a little different. When I was 19, it was like the friends I was hanging out with are nothing like the friends I was hanging out with two years ago. Completely different ballpark. And in fact, the friends I was hanging out with two years ago would have been the friends that, if I were 19 and hanging out with, would have been great friends to be around. They would have helped me get to my goals. But when you have new, higher goals, you have to look at that circle and say, do these people still make it easier or harder for me to get there? I think a lot of people feel guilty no longer in terms of interacting with people or no longer being friends with people. And I think at the end of the day, the way that I positioned myself is I may be saying no to them, but I'm saying yes to myself. And a lot of the times, I think what keeps people stuck in those situations is they feel a sense of sunk cost. You made a decision to be friends with this person. It was a good decision, but over time, it turns into a bad decision to remain in the relationship, and then they stick with the bad decision. And if you look at successful people, there was a study done on people who are successful, and it was one aspect of their success came from the fact that they could quickly identify when a good decision turned into a bad one and then reroute. And so I think of that consciously when it comes to friendships, which is I always want to be surrounding myself with people who I think are getting me to my goals. If that means that I feel like that's only one or two people, it. It is. There are points where you're not going to have a lot of friends because maybe you're in a transitional period or maybe you're going from one level to the next. That's okay. I think that it's okay to be alone. It's okay to do things on our own. It's okay to learn to stand on your own two feet. And it's okay to not have an insanely large friend group. I think a huge piece of that as well, just throw it out there, depending on your age, is that a lot of times we feel like we should have the same amount of friends from high school into college, and from college into our 20s and from our 20s into our 30s. And the reality is a lot of people's friend groups get smaller and smaller over time. That's okay. That's life. The second principle contributing to my season of no is saying no to activities that don't contribute to my yes the first one, drinking. I don't hate a martini every once in a while. But when I go into a season of no, I recognize that I can't afford to be hungover. I can't afford to be off my game. If I've got to be up every day at 4 or 5am to work towards these giant goals I have. If drinking makes it harder for me the next day, I can't afford that. And so I look at it as, is drinking this martini worth one day's worth of productivity? And that's the frame that I use for myself now. Hey, maybe you can drink a martini and be fine the next morning. I am a small woman, so if that works for you, do it. The second piece that I say no to is I say no to weeknight plans. So when I'm in a season of yes, if somebody asked me to go out to dinner, I'm like, sure, screw it. You know, Like, I don't need to work for hours and hours after I finish, I can go out to dinner with people, etc. And a great frame that works for me to stay on top of my game. Because usually when I'm in a season of yes, it's like I'm driving towards one hard goal. And I also want to maintain other things in my life. I still want to stay in shape, I still want to have a good relationship, I still want to have friends. And so to maintain all of those things and take all of my discretionary effort and put it towards that goal, then usually I don't have time for little like weeknight extravaganzas or weeknight dinners or weeknight plans or honestly, anything. Most of the time I stick with a routine for the weekdays so that I maximize my time so that I know that I have all of my discretionary effort and time is maximized to get me to my goal. And then the last activity that I say no to is texting people back. The frame that I go into is, just because you texted me does not mean I'm obligated to respond. And what I do know is, is that if I respond to people, they're probably going to respond back and then it turns into a conversation. And so when I'm in a season of no, I only have a select few people that I choose to maintain a texting relationship with, and then everyone else I just ignore. I used to have a problem with this. I used to feel guilty if I didn't text people back. When I moved to California and I was a personal trainer and all these people started texting me. All these people that I'd moved there, I made all these friends, I had all my clients. And I remember I was talking to a mentor and I was like, you know, I'm spending, like, this is serious. I was spending like two hours a day texting people. And I remember being really stressed about it and I was like, I just, I can't get back to her. I feel terrible. You know, I remember she looked at me and she was like, have you ever thought about just not responding? And it was like, blew my mind that I could get a text and not respond to it. Because I made this rule for myself that if someone texted me, I respond. And that day forward I said, if it doesn't serve me to text this person back, I do not need to do so. And your emergency does not equate to urgency on my behalf. And so I don't need to urgently respond to you. Right. Just because you texted me. If every time somebody bids for my attention, I give them a dollar of it, then eventually I have none left over for my greater goals. And so I look at every text message that I have to respond to as a bid for my attention. And if I have a jar of marbles and I have say, 25 marbles that represent my attention, every time a text comes through to initiate a conversation, I have to give it a marble. Okay, well for me, I might have 15 to 20 a day come in. Right? And that's pretty conservative. If I gave every single conversation a marble, I wouldn't get anything done. I wouldn't have any of my projects moving forward. I probably wouldn't be able to pay attention to my meetings. I look at it almost like people text almost to get entertainment, like social media. And I don't need that. And I don't want it to be distracting me for what I'm doing during the week. And so I just don't text people back. And again, these things are for a season. I don't claim to do this all of the time, but I am very intentional about when I enter a season. And so, for example, when the season ended, that was the three and a half year spout of like not drinking, not seeing people on weeknights, not seeing friends. I like went on a two day bender with Alex and just got like drunk as hell in Park City. So I don't claim to be perfect and I don't do that all the time. The third principle in terms of the season of no is saying no to opportunities. Steve Jobs once said is only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are truly important. So a lot of people can enter a season of no and deal with the things I've talked about thus far, which I would say are like the small potatoes. But then when a big potato enters the room, people have a difficult time saying no. So I want to list out for you guys the things that I have actually said no to in this season of no so that I can say yes to my greater goals. First one, having a TV show. I'm not even immune to temptation. I actually signed the contract and backed out later. And the guy was like, nobody's ever backed out of this before. Because I was like, how do I kill this? He was like, I don't actually know. Never happened. Nobody's ever not wanted their own TV show. But it doesn't lead to my goal right now, right? Maybe in the future, but not now. Publishing a book with two of the top agencies in the country, really tempting. Makes you feel all sorts of way, oh, you want me to write a book to be published by you and like be in Barnes and Nobles and like all this stuff like sounds really sexy. Doesn't serve my season. Every week keynote speeches where I be paid over six figures. I just always like make no, Last minute no. 2 different CO investments with billionaires who I admire buying some really discounted real estate. That would have been a great opportunity. And multiple, I mean, I want to say probably at least 10 trips with really freaking cool people. And here's the thing, all of those things, I don't label them as bad because I say no to them. In fact, many of them seem like great opportunities, just not for me, not right now. They're not going to help me get to my one goal. So therefore I say no to those things. I've seen countless entrepreneurs stay really disciplined in the small stuff, only to lose themselves to the big potatoes that come by. Because it sounds all really easy to go into a season of no until someone's like, do you want your own TV show? And you're like, yeah, sounds great. This could also manifest itself in other ways. A huge one is starting a new business because some guy who was like an expert real estate developer wants to partner with you because you're a marketing expert now. He's like, we're going to blow it up. And you're like, yes. And you say yes, even though it has nothing to do with the business you have or the goal that you had for that business. The second one could be starting a second business on your own, because maybe the first one isn't working and you haven't even given the time to get to your goals. And you're like, but there's this opportunity I see, and everyone I see is doing it now, so I should probably do it too. It sounds like it makes sense, but again, split attention, it's not going to help you get to the one goal. And the last piece, I would say is a lot of people spin their wheels endlessly making content that doesn't actually grow their business or do much of at all. They just make content that makes them look cool. A lot of people don't know their objective for making content. They make content because it makes them feel important and they like the attention. Not because they want to help people, not because they want to attract more customers, not because they want to build a reputation, because they like saying that they were on a podcast or like saying that they got to speak at this thing. And so saying no to these shiny opportunities, these shiny objects, is the most important thing that you can do when you enter a season of no. Because seldom have I seen it be that somebody can't not drink for a period of time, not. Not text people back for a period of time. You know, they can usually say no to going out to dinner. But when this huge opportunity that they've never had access to before comes and the FOMO and the like fear of, like, what if this opportunity never happens again pops up, that is when people tend to cave. And here's the thing about opportunities. If you say no to all those things and you just say yes to the one thing right in front of you that gets you to that really big goal, those doors will open for you in the future. Those people will be standing there on the other side begging you to take those opportunities. But if you fail because you're distracted by those opportunities, those doors may never open again. I had a question about why the focus is so important. The way I look at it is it's much easier to grow one thing at a time than grow like six things at a time. If you focus on one thing and maintain everything else, then you can just over time move what you're focused on or move your goals. It probably takes you a shorter period of time to achieve more things if you focus for 30 days on one thing, but you, like, put all your discretionary effort into it. I'm sure that what takes most people two years because they're focused on 10 things you could do in 30 days or even like a week. So if you watch this video and you think entering a season of no is for you, then the next natural step is how do I tell everybody that I'm in a season of no? And the answer to that is you tell everybody you're in a season of no. I have never over complicated this. I have always said just globally. I have thanked people for their invites, I have thanked people for the opportunities and just said like hey, I'm actually in a heads down season right now so I'm saying no to anything that doesn't fall within them. Now I will say this is that I give that explanation to people that are in my closer circle. If somebody comes from afar, I do not give them an explanation to as to why I'm saying no. I just say thank you so much for the invitation. No thank you. And I think a lot of the times we feel the need to over explain because maybe we feel uncomfortable and you don't need to over explain.