Podcast Summary: The Game with Alex Hormozi

Episode: Throwback: Why You Need To Be Working On Hard Stuff | Ep 948
Host: Alex Hormozi
Date: September 1, 2025

Overview

This episode of "The Game with Alex Hormozi" focuses on the realities of hard work for entrepreneurs—specifically, why tackling the "hard stuff" that you don’t yet know how to do is not only essential but where the greatest growth occurs. Alex discusses why most entrepreneurs gravitate toward tasks they're already skilled at and explains how to reframe stress and failure as necessary components of progress. The episode is rich with metaphors and practical advice, aiming to nudge listeners from contemplation to action.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What "Hard Work" Really Means in Entrepreneurship

Definition & Misconceptions
Alex clarifies that real hard work isn’t about bravado but about “the work you don’t know how to do.”
- "The hardest work is the work that you don't know how to do.” (00:26)
The One Thing That Changes Everything
Every business has a single biggest priority; solving it makes everything else easier or irrelevant.
- Examples: Fixing churn, building a mega brand, hiring the right sales director.
- Many entrepreneurs avoid this ‘level 3 boss’ in favor of easier, familiar tasks.
Entrepreneurial Avoidance and Ego
People often solve problems they're good at for the ego boost, rather than confronting new, harder challenges.
- “It's basically like going back to level two when you're at level three and you don't know how to beat that boss… it feels good.” (01:46)

2. The Nature of Stress and Growth

All stages—growth, stagnation, decline—involve stress because each requires tackling unfamiliar problems.
- “Growth is stressful, stagnation is stressful, decline is stressful… in each of those scenarios, you're still doing the same thing, which is that you're solving a problem you don't know how to solve yet.” (02:40)
Stress is a byproduct of meaningful problem-solving, not a problem itself.
“If you're solving problems you don't know how to solve, welcome to the game.” (03:15)

3. Obstacle as Opportunity: Why Difficulties Increase Moats

Barriers as Moats
Harder problems create barriers for competitors. Relentlessness becomes a competitive advantage.
- Story: Alex on a complicated CPG product—difficulty in manufacturing is a good thing as it deters easy copycats.
- “Because that's more things that anyone who's going to try and copy us is going to have to overcome.” (04:08)
Metaphor of the Heavy Rock
The “big rock” analogy: tough challenges are directly proportional to the rewards.
- “On the other side of that rock is a big bag of money. And the bigger the rock in general, the bigger the bag of money.” (05:12)

4. Quantifying Hard Problems: Motivation by Value

Assign dollar values to challenges to see the real incentive in solving tough problems.
- Example: Software feature worth $150M if successfully executed.
- “If you hire that sales director, I'll pay you $5 million, guess how motivated? You'd probably be more motivated. But the thing is that your business will pay you $5 million when you solve the problem.” (06:28)
Reframes stress as compensation for useful action in uncertainty.

5. The Power of Action and Real-World Learning

Transitioning from theory to practice dramatically accelerates learning.
- Personal anecdote: Alex’s leap from running businesses to managing a family office—real learning came through action, not just research.
- “You learn a hundred times more from your first hundred phone sales than you will from 10,000 hours of reading books about it.” (09:11)
Shortening the gap between contemplating action and taking action is the biggest driver of progress.
Definition of Learning:
“Learning is same condition, new behavior. If you have not changed your conditions and your behavior remains the same after this video, you have learned nothing.” (10:16)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On hard work and priorities:
“Most of entrepreneurship is eating glass.” (02:17)
On stress and problem-solving:
“Stress is a fact that occurs when you solve problems.” (03:03)
On barriers and market competition:
“If we can bet on the fact that we're more relentless… then we will be able to be the winners.” (04:35)
On motivation and valuing challenges:
“If you can quantify how much more valuable your enterprise or your business will be as a result of this change, then you can ascribe a value to it.” (06:07)
On real learning:
“The faster I can get to me just wrapping my arms around it, me actually taking the first action, you learn a hundred times more…” (09:09)
On measuring learning effectiveness:
“You can measure every video, every piece of content… as to will this change my behavior? If it didn't, it was a waste of time.” (11:19)

Timestamps for Key Segments

00:00 – 01:10 | Introduction to “hard work” and the challenge of the unknown in business
01:10 – 03:00 | Why entrepreneurs prefer familiar tasks; analogy of “levels” in business
03:00 – 04:00 | Role of stress in growth and solving new problems
04:00 – 05:30 | Barriers as moats; difficulty deters competitors
05:30 – 07:10 | Quantifying value of tough challenges; business will “pay you” for growth
07:10 – 09:30 | Learning by action vs. learning by research; family office example
09:30 – 11:30 | Action as the true learning mechanism; “same condition, new behavior”
11:30 – End | Encouragement to close the gap between thinking and acting; effectiveness of learning

Tone & Language

Alex Hormozi’s style is direct, no-nonsense, and metaphor-rich—frequently using analogies to games, bosses, and battles (“eating glass,” “level three boss,” “big rock, big bag of money”). His practical, tough-love approach motivates listeners to take action rather than fall into analysis paralysis.

Conclusion

The core message: Progress and profit in business come not from repeating what you already know, but from pushing through the discomfort of solving new, difficult problems. By reframing stress as an indicator of valuable work and acting quickly, entrepreneurs build unique advantages and accelerate their learning—and their success.

Transcript

A (0:00)

Welcome back to the game. Today I want to talk about hard work and what it actually is. Not the pseudo manifesto bashing your chest, but what it really feels like tactically. In the world of an entrepreneur, the hardest work is the work that you don't know how to do. And the reason this is so tough is that the vast majority of the time, if I said, what would it take to grow your business if you only had one thing you could do by the end of the year and make sure that it was accomplished, that if you just did that one thing, all of your other goals would get accomplished, what would that one thing be, by the way? That one thing is what we call a priority. Now. The thing is that you might not know how to make that one thing happen. So it could be, if I had a mega brand by the end of the year, all of my other issues would go away. It could be, if I didn't have the churn issue that I have by the end of the year, all my other issues would go away. If I had a good sales director that could scale a sales team, all of my issues would go away. Many businesses have one thing that if you think about it long enough, have enough downstream effects that it would accomplish many of these other goals that you have, or more likely make them irrelevant. And so what we do oftentimes as entrepreneur is we solve the problems we already know how to solve. And so we like doing those because we have fast feedback loops, because it's rewarding, because we know how to solve it. And so it's basically like going back to level two when you're at level three and you don't know how to beat that boss, you just keep beating level two again because it feels good. But the thing is that the level 3 boss hasn't changed and he's still sitting there, bowser with his fists and his spikes, sitting there ready to wreck you. And so the thing is that the hard work of entrepreneurship is the failure that you're inevitably going to encounter by not knowing what you're doing and then taking action steps despite that, with the idea that you will eventually succeed if you don't stop. And so we as entrepreneurs have to accept that that is what hard feels like. It is confronting the unknown that we don't know how to do and realizing that we're going to take our best shot and probably be wrong 4, 5, 6 times in a row. And yet that single priority has not changed. If we still built the big brand, if we still hired that really good sales director, if we still fix churn in our business. If that thing were solved, it still doesn't become less of a priority. But. But what happens is the entrepreneur fails once, fails twice, and then decides, you know what, I'm gonna go back to level two and beat that. To feed my ego, to feel good about myself. But most of entrepreneurship is eating glass. And that's why I said earlier, growth is stressful, stagnation is stressful, decline is stressful. Because in each of those scenarios, you're still doing the same thing, which is that you're solving a problem you don't know how to solve yet. And so the actual doingness in all three of those scenarios is the same. And so that's why when you wanna say stress is the problem, it's not the problem. So stress is a fact that occurs when you solve problems. And if you're solving problems you don't know how to solve, welcome to the game. If you knew how to do everything, you'd already be Elon Musk. And so the whole journey of entrepreneurship is turning the unknown into the known through trial and error. There's a company that I was thinking about investing in that has a consumer packaged good CPG product that I asked the founder, I said, how hard is this to manufacture? And he said, it's actually a lot more complicated than I thought it would be. And I was like, that's amazing. And he just looked at me cross eyed and he was like, why is that amazing? I was like, because that's more things that anyone who's going to try and copy us is going to have to overcome. And if we can bet on the fact that we're more perspicacious, that we're more relentless, that we're more unyielding in our desire to keep solving the problem and keep bashing our heads against the rock until the rock gives way, then we will be able to be the winners. And any single thing that you have to overcome to be successful is what anybody who behind you wants to compete with you will also have to solve. And so I like to think about it like, there's this big rock that I have to figure out how to move with rope and some duct tape and a lot of sweat and a few guys with me, and on the other side of that rock is a big bag of money. And the bigger the rock in general, the bigger the bag of money. I mean, I use this frame all the time. One of our other portfolio companies, we have a software that we've developed and has now gotten really really good and is generating a lot of revenue. And there's this next big feature that we have to build out. And he's like, this is going to be really complicated. I said, well, the good news is we're going to get paid $150 million when we solve it. And he was like, well, when you say it like that. And I was like, well, it is like that. And so when you think about these things, whether it's I need to add a second acquisition channel, or I need to learn how to hire, manage, and train a sales director, each of these are hard things that you have to figure out how to do. But if you can quantify how much more valuable your enterprise or your business will be as a result of this change, then you can ascribe a value to it. And if I said, hey, man, if you hire that sales director, I'll pay you $5 million, guess how motivated? You'd probably be more motivated. But the thing is that your business will pay you $5 million when you solve the problem. And so if you frame it that way, it stops being this woe is me. People are hard, man. Life is stressful. It's. We get compensated for our ability to deal with that stress and take action despite it. One of the biggest unknowns that I had when I started a few years ago is how do you run a family office? So I went from an entrepreneur business building businesses, to I have to manage cash at a portfolio and allocations of resources and capital across multiple businesses and different industries. How many resources do I allocate in terms of man hours to each of these companies? Is it proportional to the capital? What kind of deal structures are going to be? The things that are going to mitigate risk but also give us the most upside. These are all these things that I had no experience with. And so I just got on the phone with anybody who would give me time and ask them as many questions as I possibly could. And then guess what happened Once I started doing it, I learned way more than I did from all those conversations. And I developed my own thesis of how this works. And so the thing is that every time you start on something new, whether it's starting a business to begin with or learning how to run paid ads, or learning how to sell, it always feels like this big amorphous thing. But once you take your first phone sale, once you run your first ad, once you hire your first person, all of a sudden you're like, oh, okay. I kind of wrap my arms around it. And now I can see all the holes that are there. And so in my experience, the faster I can get to me just wrapping my arms around it, me actually taking the first action, you learn a hundred times more from your first hundred phone sales than you will from 10,000 hours of reading books about it. And so my goal with a lot of the content that I have here is if I can just shrink the time between you thinking about doing it and doing it, the faster you're going to get to your goal. Because learning is is same condition, new behavior. If you have not changed your conditions and your behavior remains the same after this video, you have learned nothing. And you can measure how intelligent someone is by their rate of learning, which means by the rate at which they change their behavior given the same stimulus. So if I say, hey, pick up the phone and answer it. Someone picks up the phone, they say, blah, blah, blah. I say, great, I want you to read the script now. Pick up the phone. Now. They pick up the phone, they read the script. Same condition, new behavior, they've learned. And so right now in your life, there are conditions that probably remain unchanged. And so if your behavior does not change, you learned nothing. And you can measure every video, every piece of content, every book that you or every sales exchange, every meeting you have as to will this change my behavior? If it didn't, it was a waste of time. Real quick, guys, I have a special, special gift for you. For being loyal listeners of the podcast, Layla and I spent probably an entire quarter putting together our scaling roadmap. It's breaking scaling into 10 stages and across all eight functions of the business. You've got marketing, you've got sales. You've got product. You've got customer success, you've got it. You've got recruiting, hr, you've got finance. And we show the problems that emerge at every level of scale and how to graduate to the next level. It's all free and you can get it personalized to you. So it's about 30ish pages for each of the stages. Once you enter the questions, it will tell you exactly where you're at and what you need to do to grow. It's about 14 hours of stuff, but it's narrowed down so that you only have to watch the part that's relevant to you, which will probably be about 90 minutes. And so if that's at all interesting, you can go to acquisition.com roadmap R O A D map Roadmap.