Alex Hormozi: How To Invest In YOURSELF To Become A Self-Made Millionaire

Summary

The School of Greatness Podcast - Episode Summary

Title: Alex Hormozi: How To Invest In YOURSELF To Become A Self-Made Millionaire
Host: Lewis Howes
Guest: Alex Hormozi
Release Date: January 22, 2025

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of The School of Greatness, host Lewis Howes welcomes entrepreneur Alex Hormozi, renowned for his brutally honest insights and explosive mindset. Hormozi delves into the critical mindset shifts and strategies that propelled him from selling his first company for $40 million to generating over $100 million in EBITDA from acquired businesses. The conversation offers invaluable lessons on focus, talent acquisition, brand building, financial management, and personal development.

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1. The Power of Focus and Prioritization

Alex Hormozi begins by redefining focus—not merely as concentrating on primary objectives but also as the strategic ability to say no to distractions. He articulates, “Focus is the quality and quantity of things that we say no to” [06:27]. This approach ensures that every decision aligns with overarching business goals. Hormozi emphasizes the importance of prioritizing health, relationships, and career, understanding that each choice involves trade-offs. By recognizing the season of one's life, individuals can better decide where to allocate their efforts and resources.

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2. Developing a Strategic Deal Flow System

Harmozi shares his evolution in managing portfolio companies, highlighting the necessity of a focused deal flow system. He explains how slimming down his portfolio from 24 to 10 companies led to improved performance, stating, “We’re a cyn understanding of strategy is limited resources against unlimited opportunities” [09:44]. By conducting workshops and selectively investing in high-performing ventures, Hormozi ensures that resources are devoted to businesses with the highest growth potential, thereby enhancing overall efficiency and success.

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3. Investing in Top Talent

A pivotal theme in the discussion is the immense leverage that top-tier talent brings to a business. Hormozi draws a comparison to taxi drivers to illustrate the disparity in performance: “The absolute best could get a hundred times more return than somebody who’s even just good” [16:45]. He underscores the importance of hiring exceptional individuals, even at higher costs, as they can significantly amplify business growth. This investment in superior talent is portrayed as a fundamental strategy for scaling effectively and sustaining long-term success.

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4. Branding for Long-Term Success

Harmozi delves into advanced branding strategies, using New Balance’s experience as a case study. He recounts how New Balance’s shift from discount-focused advertising to influencer-driven branding initially led to losses but ultimately resulted in a spectacular rebound: “They made it 70% influencers and sponsorships and 30% direct sales, and it shot up like a gun” [24:36]. Hormozi emphasizes that branding efforts often have delayed effects but are crucial for establishing a strong market presence. He advises entrepreneurs to think long-term and "dig the well before you're thirsty," planting the seeds for future brand strength today.

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5. Effective Money Management

Harmozi shares his disciplined approach to financial management, highlighting the principle, “The first rule of money is spend less than you make” [41:34]. He discusses the importance of meticulous budgeting and investing surplus funds into skills that enhance earning capacity. Hormozi reflects on his early jobs, where he learned to value time over money, and how this mindset shaped his financial strategies. This disciplined approach not only fosters financial stability but also prepares individuals for scalable growth.

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6. Overcoming Money Wounds and Behavioral Changes

Addressing negative beliefs about money, Hormozi categorizes them as "bad behaviors under specific conditions." He advocates for transforming these behaviors through consistent, positive actions: “If you have to choose one thing, you think differently” [06:27]. By adhering to fundamental financial rules and focusing on observable actions, individuals can overcome financial anxieties and build a healthier relationship with money. Hormozi emphasizes that changing behaviors is essential for breaking free from limiting financial beliefs.

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7. Advice to Young Men

Harmozi presents three brutal truths for young men aspiring to success:

1. Accountability: “Everything that I have in my life is my fault” [69:32]. Taking full responsibility for one’s actions is crucial for personal growth.
2. Change Your Environment: Surrounding oneself with positive influences and removing toxic elements can significantly impact behavior and success [70:55].
3. Delete Non-Essential Activities: Focus exclusively on actions that align with one’s goals by consistently asking, “Does this action, this person, this decision increase or decrease the likelihood that I achieve my goals?” [71:59].

These principles are designed to foster resilience, discipline, and unwavering focus in the pursuit of greatness.

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8. Decision Making and Protecting Reputation

Protecting one’s reputation is paramount in building lasting success. Hormozi recounts advice he received: “Protect your reputation with your life” [61:10]. He explains that consistent, ethical behavior over time builds a robust reputation that can withstand negative feedback or misinformation. Hormozi advises maintaining integrity and focusing on actions that reinforce positive perceptions, ensuring that one’s reputation remains untarnished despite external challenges.

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9. Final Thoughts and Resources

In his closing remarks, Hormozi encourages listeners to invest in themselves by developing valuable skills and maintaining relentless focus. He emphasizes the importance of continuous learning and adaptability as keys to sustained success. Additionally, Hormozi promotes his resources, including his free $100 million scaling course available at acquisition.com/training, designed to help entrepreneurs scale their businesses from $0 to $100 million and beyond.

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Notable Quotes

• “Focus is the quality and quantity of things that we say no to.” [06:27]
• “The absolute best could get a hundred times more return than somebody who’s even just good.” [16:45]
• “They made it 70% influencers and sponsorships and 30% direct sales, and it shot up like a gun.” [24:36]
• “The first rule of money is spend less than you make.” [41:34]
• “Protect your reputation with your life.” [61:10]
• “Winners think about what they can make happen, and losers think about what happened to them.” [82:19]

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Conclusion

Alex Hormozi’s insights offer a strategic roadmap for aspiring entrepreneurs aiming to achieve significant financial success. By prioritizing focus, investing in top talent, building a strong brand, managing finances wisely, and fostering personal accountability, Hormozi exemplifies the principles of becoming a self-made millionaire. This episode serves as a powerful guide for those seeking to unlock their inner greatness and build enduring wealth through disciplined actions and strategic thinking.

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For more insights and resources from Alex Hormozi, visit acquisition.com.

Transcript

[A]

My friend, welcome back to the school of greatness. Today we've got an incredibly successful entrepreneur that this audience loves every time he is on. And I'm excited to bring you another episode with him. His name is Alex Hermozi and he's one of the most brutally honest, explosive minds on the Internet today. And we sit down and uncover the mindset shifts that have fueled his extraordinary success. And I had Alex on, I think it was almost two years ago before he really kind of took off on the Internet and online. And I think that was one of the first kind of long form episodes he did. It got millions of views and he just became a machine of media and content and really built his own team of just putting out tons of content and has exploded his audience since then. We talk about some of the things that you might already know about. He talks about, you know, in the beginning selling his first company for 40 million to now generating over 100 million in acquired businesses. He shares his evolved understanding of focus, talent acquisition and brand building. And he's one of the most brilliant brand builders today. More specifically, he talks about why true focus means the quality and quantity of things you say no to and how to ruthlessly prioritize every level of your business. And this is something that I've been implementing more and more over these last couple months, actually not just in business, but in life. And really prioritizing the most important things in life. Health, relationships and business career money, and just planning those things and saying no to as many other things as possible. And again, with every decision you make, there's a trade off, right? So it's like, okay, if I'm going to become more disciplined over here, that means less time over here or less travel and, you know, just free time during, during this season of my life. And it's really just understanding what season of your life you're in and what you want to create. And again, with this trademark brutal honesty of his, he's going to break down why most entrepreneurs fail to scale. And he reveals the three critical mindset changes that transformed his business approach. So whether you're just starting out or you're looking to take your business to the next level. Alex's insights on prioritization, investing in top talent, and playing the long game will fundamentally change how you think about success. I'm so excited for you to dive into this episode if this is your first time here. We have been doing this show for 12 years now on the School of Greatness. It's crazy to think this is 12 years every single week for 12 years. That's something that I feel like when people ask me, louis, what's your key to success in your podcast? A little bit about what Alex talked about today is I have played the long game. I mean, I don't know many people that do anything every single week for 12 years except for breathe, eat and sleep. But I have been showing up consistently for 12 years every single week and put out an episode, two episodes, three episodes for the last eight, nine years now every week. And it's just been consistency and I'm not always perfect and I make mistakes and I've got things I got to continue to still learn and grow. But I played the long game. No one can deny that. And I think about brand and that's one of the key things that have helped me succeed long term. And there have been massive growth spurts and there have been setbacks and there have been declines in the business and the podcast, all these different things. It's gone through phases and seasons, but I keep showing up. And as you keep showing up in your life, beautiful things are bound to happen. If you're willing to set new standards and if you're looking to create more financial abundance in your life, I've got a brand new book coming out very soon. I would love for you to pre order a copy. If you found any value from my show. It would mean the world to me if you went to the link in the description of this show right now it'll be at the top of the description. It's called Make Money Easy. It's all about creating financial freedom and living a richer life and. And if you want to truly unlock your financial abundance in 2025 and beyond, then go get a copy right now. It's coming out very soon and I want you to be one of the first to get it in your hands. Make money easy. You deserve to have a financial peace and freedom with the money in your life. And I want you to have it. Okay, my friends, thank you so much for being here. I'm grateful for you. Let's dive into this episode with the one and only Alex. The School of Greatness is proudly sponsored by Amica Insurance. As Amica says, empathy is our best policy. That's why they'll go above and beyond to tailor your insurance coverage to best fit your needs. Whether you're on the road at home or traveling along life's journey, their friendly and knowledgeable representatives will work with you to ensure you have the right coverage in place. Amica will provide you with peace of mind. Go to amica.com and get a quote today. Some people think self care is indulgent. You know firsthand that's a myth. And you know what else is a myth? That Discover isn't widely accepted. The truth is Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. You heard that right, 99%. And every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. It pays to Discover. Based on the February 2024 Nielsen report. Learn more at discover.com credit card if you are on the hunt for your next home or you're just in the mood to check out some cool dream spots, which is also a great manifestation technique, then I see you make sure to try out the Redfin app. With Redfin, searching for homes or apartments is super easy and actually pretty fun. You can explore everything for sale or rent in your area all in one place. And when you find that perfect spot, just book an in person tour right through the app. It's that simple. So whether you're looking to buy or rent, Redfin's got you covered. Download the Redfin app to get started. Started. Mosi. Welcome back everyone to the school of Greatness. Very excited about our guests. My man Alex Hermosi is in the house. Good to see you, brother.

[B]

I am honored to be here.

[A]

Very excited. One of the things that you just talked about before we got started was the biggest mindset shift that you've made this year that has helped you unlock more money and financial abundance.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What is that big mindset shift that's helped you go from where you were a couple of years ago when you launched, you sold your company, I think around the 40ish million mark to now over 100 million in EBITDA. What has been that mindset shift for you?

[B]

So there have been, I would say, two really key ones and a third kind of bonus. So the first big one was my understanding of focus has changed. And so if we were to define focus as the quality and quantity of things that we say no to. Right? Because the most, the most focused person would do nothing but one thing. And so anything that's not that thing would make you less focused. So if that's the definition of what focus is. But I've thought about it like, it's almost like wine where like, as it ages, there's more nuance and there's more depth to the flavor. And I feel like as my entrepreneurial journey has like progressed, my understanding of what focus means has changed because it's actually like Focus from the top. It's literally from the top all the way down. Meaning the company needs to focus on one thing, not five. And if we have five objectives for the year, it's because we, me personally, I haven't done my job because one of those things is the most important. And if I can't tell my team this is the most important, then how am I going to expect them to make that judgment without the context that I have? And so it's like being willing to make the hard call. And I think a lot of people are afraid of making it. And the more I've doubled down on saying, if I have to choose one thing, you think differently. So like, for example, if I said, you know, Louis, what one thing? If you could only have one thing happen in 12 months, what would reality need to look like in 12 months for you to hit your goal? Like, what one thing? If that only thing happened, the rest of your goals would either be accomplished or become irrelevant as a consequence, which is the more common one. And so in thinking about that, like this is four years ago, the big thing that I had was like, if I just built a big business brand, then I don't need to be the best picker of investments. I need to be the best negotiator because I'll have more proprietary deal flow. So people want to. They'll just want to come invest with me or have me invest in them. And I'll be able to pick the best company because I'll get more at bats than anyone. And I don't need to be a pro negotiator because people want to do a deal rather than just like auctioning off between me and 10 other parties. And so it's like, if I can just what's that one thing for this year? And I think where kind of strategy comes into things is by forcing that focus and saying no to the other things, you get really, really selective. And that's at the top level.

[A]

So what's the main focus for you.

[B]

Then for this next year?

[A]

Yes, what was it this year and what will it be for the next year?

[B]

So this year was actually developing like a farm system for the portfolio deal flow. Yeah. So basically we figured out was we looked at our number one. So we looked at our whole portfolio. And right before we were talking about this, I was saying how we had kind of pruned things. And so I'm a big believer in deleting as much as possible because you only have fixed bandwidth. And if strategy is limited resources against unlimited opportunities, and so your prioritization of that limited amount of stuff against the things you can do like that is strategy. And so we had 24 portfolio companies, and so I trimmed that to 10 within the last 12 months. On top of that, I did no new.

[A]

Does that mean you sold your equity stake in those?

[B]

Yeah, you just. Yeah, I basically got rid of them at a loss or whatever you want to call it. But the thing is that the portfolio as a whole still outperformed the previous year by focusing on the Stallions. And so on top of that, over the last year, we only did one deal, which before that, we'd done 12 deals the year before. And so did you need to do.

[A]

Those 12 deals first, though, to see where you were?

[B]

I think so. Yeah. I think so.

[A]

You can't just do one deal a year to start out. You need to have some losses.

[B]

I think it's a great point, because it's very much like, okay, if I want to be rich, I should just fly private planes. It's like, it doesn't work, actually. If I want to be tall, I should play basketball. It's like people conflate what you're doing now versus what it took to get there. And so those are kind of two separate things. But. But back to the focus piece. If strategy is prioritization of the resources, then having focus is part of strategy. And then all the way down, because I've just hopped. I recently hopped into the media side of the business, back into operating, which I haven't done in years. And it's been really fun for me because I just have such a. I have a better skill set now than I did five years ago, which was really the last time I really operated stuff. And just ruthlessly focusing the team on what one thing, if we did in media would change everything. And so to the question that you had. This whole year has been dedicated to the farm system, which was like, when we looked at the portfolio, we saw that our number one, number two, and number four, highest performing portfolio company were companies that we had met prior to doing deals. And so we'd work with them for a little bit, just like me helping them out, hopping on phone calls, meeting in person, whatever. And I was like, oh, okay, there's something interesting there. How can I recreate that process on purpose rather than by accident?

[A]

So only one company, once you started the farm company, made it to the top four after you started doing this. Right.

[B]

So number one, number two, and number four, those happened by accident before, just for me doing normal deals, you know, Meeting people, whatever. But now I was like, okay, how do I create that? And so that's what. We started running these little workshops at our headquarters. So there's, I mean, it's just what we can fit in our office. So it's not huge, but we invite entrepreneurs out and that way we can meet them. My team meets them, we say, hey, this is what I would do. Like, a lot of them aren't necessarily portfolio ready, but if we've helped somebody go from call it 5 million to 20 million a year, interesting. Then when they want to get a growth partner or they want to exit, our hope is that they call us first.

[A]

So it's like an incubator weekend, not a full time incubator.

[B]

Exactly. Because I don't have the resources to do that and I don't want to take my eye off the ball. But it felt like. So that was basically this year. That was the big thing that we did this year.

[A]

How many of those workshops did you do?

[B]

I want to say we've probably done like 14.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

This year. So probably a little bit more than like basically 1ish a month. Sure, sure. And it's like, you know, if we're busy, then it pushes out and we can do to, hey, we're kind of free, let's do two as well. Yeah. So that's, that's, that's, that was the big thing. And then focus all the way down. Because it's just been more and more ruthless in terms of being able to say no. Like, I talked to, I talked to somebody in my team and I say, your job, if you just did this one thing, it would make your job the most valuable version of your job. And then they say something to the degree of like, well, I have all this other stuff. And I'd be like, cool, don't do it. And they just look at me, I'm like, yeah, don't do it. I'm the boss here. I'm the one who pays you.

[A]

Don't worry about that one thing.

[B]

If you just do this. And so the thing, the feedback I'm getting back is like, dude, it's so much easier if I just have to do this one thing. I can totally crush this. And so everybody needs focus. And I see the job of the boss at every level, entrepreneur or division head or you know, department leader, manager, whatever, as constantly assessing the things that are on the people who you who report to use plate. It's like, what do they have in front of them? And how can I prune that tree? How can I strip things away from them so that they can put all their resources into one thing? And to me, like acquisition.com, like our little logo here, is the two main forces of business as I understand them. You've got supply and demand. And the reason that it's a fulcrum is for leverage. And so leverage is getting more for what you put in. And so the people who move fastest in life don't do more than other people. They get more for each rep. And so I think about that within, across all the organizations that we have. Like, we spent a full day with our large portfolio company, and I'm sure we'll transition off of, like, hardcore business, but this is what's top of mind for me. We spent a full day with all the executives from our large portfolio company, which this year probably closed out at 110 million. That's a software business. And we grew from 2 million. So we've been very integrated in the growth of the company. And at the. What they came in with the day was five objectives, and each objective had five sub tasks. So it's 25 things that we had to do for quote this year. And I, like, you know, I was just kind of like sitting a little bit more quietly throughout the day, like, just taking it in, like something felt wrong.

[A]

25 things.

[B]

Yeah, it's a lot of tasks, a lot of stuff. And so at the very end of the day, I ended up going to the whiteboard that was on the side of the wall, And I wrote 1, 2, 3, and I wrote the three things that I thought we needed to do. And I said, and we don't do number two until number one is done. And it was this really clarifying moment because I was like, if we don't do this one, nothing else matters. And if we do this one, then this one will be worth more. And so it's like this will multiply the second thing. And I think there's this big fallacy of concurrent tasks. Like a lot of people, there's been super well studied that if you switch between tasks, you're way less effective. You're like 75% less effective when you switch between two things, let alone like five and your phone and your kids and your whatever, right? And so I think there's this big fallacy that I've changed in terms of how I operate, which is that we actually do things in sequence. We do things in an order. Meaning, although you might have five people on your team, we need to deploy all resources towards solving this one problem. And then once that problem is solved, what happens is the fact that the other four fires exist. Because let's be real, there's always going to be problems. But the fact that the other four fires exist gives you urgency to solving the first one. And so you actually get five things done faster when you do them in order than trying to do all five at once. And yet for some reason we don't regularly remind ourselves of that. And so this has been like, I'd say like that has been the single largest shift in my entrepreneurial career and the reason that it Gym Launch, which was the company that I sold. For those of you who are listening, the biggest mistake I made in that business was that when it was crushing, I then started another, basically another company rather than doubling down on what worked. And basically the year that I started the second company, revenue didn't go down, but my growth rate went down a lot. So we added maybe like 30% in revenue when we probably could have doubled because I put all my attention to this other thing. And so things are going really [e-mail] and I had this inkling to do the same thing, just repeat the same mistake. And I was like, I cannot learn this again.

[A]

It'll be more painful.

[B]

I can't. So much more painful. The stakes are higher.

[A]

And so, so focus has been the biggest thing so far, number one.

[B]

The second one has been my understanding of talent has also kind of developed like a fine wine in terms of like how there's so much leverage with good talent. So for example, Steve Jobs gives this great, great analogy. He says, you know, in, in New York there's a ton of taxi drivers and the worst taxi driver, if you had to get it, get you across town, would maybe caught, you know, take you twice as long as the best taxi driver. Maybe, maybe he'd take you one, you know, he'd take you a third of the time of the bad guy. Right? But that's the difference between the absolute best and the absolute worst. But in like a knowledge based business like mine, like yours, the absolute best could get a hundred times more return than somebody who's even just good. And compared to bad, obviously, I mean they basically wouldn't, it wouldn't even ever happen. They couldn't even succeed. Right. And so in thinking about that, I still, I've doubled down on the arbitrage of intelligent hard working people, which is like, it's worth paying someone millions of dollars a year if they can make you tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars a year. And I think that it's one of the great opportunities that will always exist because there will always be cheap entrepreneurs and who will not recognize the outsized value of talent. And I think that as I've, as. The longer I've been in the game, to be fair, the more, the more exposed to higher level talent I've become and, and the more I know what's out there. And one of my great mentors, he told me the best talent is always in the future. And so whatever your standards are, he's like, you always have to keep pushing that standard because as things grow too, some people grow out of their, you know, their sphere of competency. They're not as good at this level as they were before. There's nothing wrong with them or with you. It's just seasons. And so my understanding of that has shifted in terms of my role as well. Like, I see myself as lead recruiter for the top people because the absolute best people only want to talk to the CEO because you're not giving them an opportunity to have a career. They already have a career. They're giving you basically everything they know to help grow your vision. And so it's a lot more of you selling them than it is them selling you. They already have a tracker, they already.

[A]

Make, they're making money, they have offers.

[B]

They have headhunters that call them every day. That's you're not giving them anything that they don't already have. And so it's really, it's like Sheryl Sandberg with Zuckerberg. He met with her, her for dinner like once a week for a year before they, before she transitioned and took over Facebook. And so it's a much longer courting process. And all the people that I'm looking at, they're all killers. And so rather than thinking like, man, we really need someone to fill this role, it's like I need John to fill this role. And John doesn't currently work for me. He works for somebody else. It might take six months exactly. And I have to figure out a way to get John to leave what he's doing and come work with me. And so that has probably been. Those have been the two biggest. Those have been the two biggest changes or shifts that I think have propelled acquisition.com to just. The last few years have just continued to get better and better is focus on the one thing that matters most and be disciplined enough to say, yes, we aren't going to do these things and yes, they are problems and we will get to it as soon as we finish this one thing that matters most. And then in order to execute on that, you need the absolute best and brightest. Because the arbitrage on if somebody, if that. Imagine the difference if we had this as engineers, right? This, this taxi driver thing. If, if a good engineer costs $250,000 a year and an amazing engineer costs a million dollars a year, but you get 100x return on that guy, it's still a better deal, even though it costs more. And I think that's where people get mixed up is that it costs more, but it's a better deal. And so talent is a better deal.

[A]

This is the fear for most people is, okay, what if I make that $200,000 investment in the person half a million dollars out.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they, they're lazy, they're entitled, they're this or that. And I just invested six months of my life recruiting all this money, all these things, and they're not delivering what I either expected or hoped they would.

[B]

I think you'll love this. So this is so what, what we outline is the job of the entrepreneur Risk. The reason that we are, we are outside our compensation is outsized to our effort is because we're willing to take on risks that other people.

[A]

It doesn't always work out, of course.

[B]

But the thing is, if you think about that, let's say there's a casino and you have a game where you've got a 1 in 5 shot at 100x payout. Well, you should play that game every time knowing you're going to lose four out of five times because it's worth it for 100x payout, but you lose more times than you win. And that's the difficulty from the human brain perspective is that we see two, three losses in a row and we're like, oh, this doesn't work or I'm a failure or whatever. But it just may be intrinsic to how the game works. And so most volatility comes from lack of volume and that, that's all the way down. So like I, you know, I'm me trying to get my first, my, my side business going on Etsy or whatever. Like, you know, I'm trying to get my, my little accounting or bookkeeping business started. They're like, you know, clients are kind of sporadic. You know, I'm getting, you know, one every, every other week or so. But if I took the whole year of the amount of promotional effort you did and then I crunched it into a week, then you'd actually be able to have predictive Metrics that make sense. It's just that you're having 100 conversations over six months and those hundred conversations create three deals. And so it's like, okay, what appears sporadic or what appears volatile is actually a function of low volume. You're just not doing enough. We're not on a, on a fast enough time horizon. And so I think about this a lot. Whenever there's inconsistency, I said, do we just need to do a lot more? So it becomes consistent. We have the illusion of inconsistency, but we just need to increase n by 100 fold. And then all of a sudden it feels very consistent that 3% of conversations turn into customers. And then all of a sudden now we have a business.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. What would be the third thing then? Is it third and then a bonus or is this.

[B]

No, the bonus one is basically my understanding of branding has, I feel like, also developed. So these aren't. All three of these things are not new concepts. I feel like my understanding of them has, has deepened and I, and I look forward to deepening my understanding of them even more in the future. But so I had a wonderful conversation with Ben Francis, who's the CEO. Jim. Yeah, for those of you don't know, he's like 32. They do a gazillion dollars a year. They're like crushing it. Number two, biggest apparel brand in the uk. Really impressive. Awesome guy. And we were talking about basically the ratio of branding versus asks direct response. That is the right for a business. Now everybody who's listening to this is like, I don't even know what he's talking about, but I'll tell you a story that'll make that. He told me. And it just, it changed my perspective. It was probably the most influential conversation I had of the year. So the CMO of New Balance got fired because they had 15 years of decline. So the new guy came in and he went to the CEO and said, hey, can I just swing for the vences here? Can I really? Can I take a big bet? And the guy said, sure, go for it. And so what he did was they had 70% of their advertising budget going towards just, you know, discounts and deals and getting people to directly buy shoes. And then 30% was going towards like influencers, sponsorships, endorsements, more top of funnel awareness, like, you know, cool factor. And so what he did was he flipped it and he made it 70% influencers and sponsorships and cool factor Branding. Branding, exactly. Positive associations for their ideal audience. And then 30% was you know, hey, come buy the shoes. And so over the next 18 months, they just kept losing more money. And then on month 19, it just went boop. It started going up and then it just shot up like a gun.

[A]

And it's kind of changing the perceived value within the E. Oh, 100%. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And they're having a complete rebirth right now. They're crushing, crushing it. Yeah. You see, it's like it used to be dad shoes and Gen C girls who have like white socks pulled up, going to the gym and new balances. I'm like, what is happening? But that there's a number of smaller lessons that I took from that. The first one is that branding happens at a delay. It's like he changed the behavior. And it took 18 months in a big company that spends a lot of money.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so when I think about that for myself, it's like I'm living today based on work I did two years ago. And so you want to dig the well before you're thirsty. And so if I'm thinking to myself what I want two years from now, it's like, I have to start digging for that water today. I need to plant that tree now. And so that was, that was number one is just the delay between how long basically when you need to start changing your behavior and when you, when you see the result of that behavior. The second thing is founder led companies tend to do significantly more investment in brand versus the corporate suit owned guys because they are measured by quarters. And so that's why they tend to destroy companies over the long term. Because the day that you go shift from branding to 70%, you know, direct, hey, buy the shoes for a period, you do better, you're pulling forward revenue that, that, that, that's maturing kind of like a fruit on a tree. It's like you're, you're plucking some fruit a little bit early, but you know, they're, you end up filling the basket faster, but then there's no more fruit to pick because you haven't been planting your trees.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And so interesting. And so that dramatically shifted. And it also had a quantifiable metric too, which is, and what's interesting about the 7030 is that it's super well studied because so TV, Facebook, if you look at the ratio of posts to ads on your newsfeed, you listen, look at the ratio of minutes on a show compared to ads. They've already studied this. They know how to maximize. Okay, how do we, how do we put as many ads as possible without getting people to stop watching. Right. And so the ratio is about three and a half of what like basically good experiences to ads that has to occur. And so when you think 70, 30, it's, it's, it's a little bit, they're a little bit on the, on the lower side. But so for me I take it as like it'll probably be closer to 25, 75. But I'm also, I'm assuming that they're rounding and there's, you know, and numbers change. But the fact that it was in parallel with the same ratio that consistently delivers value and allows you to monetize, was it, was it corroborated different evidence that I had on different platform.

[A]

Would you believe me if I told you that there are people making the exact same amount of money as you to the dollar who are not stressed about money? Think about that coworker who you know is getting the same paycheck as you. But they're always talking about that latest vacation to some exotic dest or hosting parties in their freshly renovated Pinterest perfect homes. It makes you wonder how do they do it? Where does all my money go? Well, with Ynab, your money goes wherever you tell it to. Ynab spelled Y N A B is a life changing money app that helps you give every dollar a job so that you know your hard earned money is going towards things you actually care about. The average ynab user saves $600 in their first two months and $6,000 in their first year. 92% of users report feeling less since using YNAB. YNAB doesn't just show you where your money went, it helps you tell it where to go so that you can build the life you want. Life is short. Spend it well with YNAB, the School of Greatness Listeners can claim an exclusive 3 month free trial with no credit card [e-mail] Lewis what makes someone a leader? It can be a tough question to find just one answer for. But one thing is for sure. True leaders lead by example. And a true leader takes risks too. They plunge into life with determination. For those who lead by example and who approach life with true passion, there's the Range Rover Sport. A new dimension of sporting luxury. Get ready to elevate your desires with the dramatic and uncompromising Range Rover Sport. Experience its world renowned off road capability with adaptive off road cruise control which monitors ground conditions and acclimates to the present terrain. Plus agility, control and composure are achieved with the dynamic air suspension While adaptive dynamics reduce unwanted body movements to deliver smooth and composed handling for focused on road performance. It's time to rise to every occasion in the Ranger Rover Sport, where sophisticated refinement meets visceral power. Build your Range Rover Sport@Land RoverUSA.com that's Land RoverUSA.com do you own a business that's ready to Thrive? Let Intuit QuickBooks take things like unpaid invoices and tracking expenses off your plate to take things to the next level. Intuit QuickBooks is an all in one business platform that can help with day to day tasks like invoicing and expenses. Manage and grow your business all in one place.

[B]

Intuit QuickBooks your way to money.

[A]

Money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments Inc. Licensed as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. So what are the three biggest moves you'll make this year? To invest in branding that won't get you the return you want now, but will bring at astronomical results later.

[B]

My book that's. I literally I this like this quarter after looking at everything I was like, because obviously I'm in the business space and so it's not like I can, you know, sign c bum up like Gymshark can and just get all the athletes and have them promote my thing. Like I can't get Elon Musk to promote me right as much that Elon, if you feel like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I doubt it. And I, and I say that with the most respect. And so I was like, within the context of business, there's really only two things that I can do. One is go do big aspirational things, which is what we're doing with our actual portfolio companies. And the other is help other people do those aspirational things, which I can do most effectively with leading with the books, leading with value. And so I'm pushing more into content. I'm pushing more into the books. The books are free unless you want a physical copy. Obviously you can buy them, but like those are big Gibbs. And so I'm like, how do I put. And I'm looking at how much I'm spending on team and what the team is creating relative to what the give versus ask ratio is. And so I'm gonna, I'm gonna be putting really heavy. I'm gonna be doing more than 75%. I'm gonna be putting like 95% towards it. Cause I'm always, I'm always happy to push more, you know, plant more trees for the future.

[A]

So is it more content or is it more Promoting a book.

[B]

It's both.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Basically the call to actions I'll likely shift towards will be the book. And from a content perspective, I, I'm using the same concept of the talent piece, which is if I had the absolute best people in the world who could help me with the content that I have, we could get 10 or 100x improvement in what we do. And so I am going to be paying even more. And I gave my whole team just massive raises. And I also eliminated the people that I thought weren't up to that standard or just didn't, Weren't as invested. Don't like business, things like that. Right. Just good, good objective editors, things like that that didn't mesh with where we're trying to go.

[A]

So you had to let go of a lot of people too.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I see that as being kind, not nice. Is long term. You want. I want somebody to have the opportunity to be at a company where they have a very long term trajectory. They're aligned with the mission and if someone isn't, I think the day that you realize they're not, you owe it to them. It's kind of like being on a relationship. If you don't think you're gonna marry somebody. I think the day you realize that, you should let them, you should, you should release them to free agency because somebody else will and they are the right person. There's a company out there that they're best for. And even though those, those conversations can be trying in the short term, I've, I've seen it work out so many times that I have limited emotional affect when approaching them because I'm like, I know this is going to be better for you.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I know this sucks right now, but you will not go homeless and you will not die.

[A]

Right, Right.

[B]

And figure it out.

[A]

You'll figure it out.

[B]

You'll be. Yes. And so and we obviously, you know, we do our best to try and make recommendations and.

[A]

Sure, sure, sure.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So the three big mindset shifts for you this year have been focus more on the main thing. Not everything.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Find intelligent, hard working people and really invest in that talent and be willing to risk losing or not working out also. And the third thing is branding.

[B]

Betting big on brand.

[A]

Really betting big and more content, higher quality content, books, things like that.

[B]

And all three of those things are aligned.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What's the one big thing? If I can continue to 10x the brand, that's the focus, what do I need for that? I need the absolute best people. And then how Do I back that up with dollars and cents and time? The only resources I have. And so I'm putting all my resources into doubling down on that.

[A]

That's cool, man. If you could go back to yourself before you started making money, what would be the mindset shift that you would have needed to have to go from more lack or scarcity into abundance?

[B]

Only think about the actions and not about anything else.

[A]

What were you thinking about?

[B]

I mean, honestly, a lot of it was what other people would say. It's so weird because it's so foreign to me at this point. But I remember that the most terrifying thing that I ever did was quit my job. It was the most terrifying thing. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, for sure, bar none. Not even close. The hardest thing I ever did was quit my job. I belabored the decision. For six months. I called every friend I had. I wasn't sure. I remember just pacing in my tiny little condo back and forth, just on these endless phone calls where I just loop in circles. It'd be like, I don't know, but I mean, but I really wanted to, but I could fail. But what if I, you know, like there's all this, all this nonsense, right? And so the thing that ultimately allowed me to get over the hump was actually playing out the worst case scenario in exquisite detail. Like, most of the reason that we're afraid to fail is because we're afraid of dying in an abstract reality. We think, oh, we catastrophize. Okay, I'll lose my job and then no one will like me, and then I won't be able to get a job again, and then I'll be homeless and then I'll die. Like, it's just right. Like that's, that's how we go, right? But, but when I, when I thought through, I was like, what would actually happen? So if I went there and I failed what I do, I was like, well, I'd apply to business school and I'd have this cool story and they like entrepreneurs. There are people who tried to do things. So this would actually. This would be fine. This would be okay. And I have plenty of friends who would let me sleep on the couch if I had to. I could go back to mom and dad's house with my tail between my legs, which I felt it was, was. That was honestly the most horrifying thing that I could imagine. Going back home as a failure. Yes. But the idea, the one that got me out of it was I can always get the job back Mm. So like, this is actually a significantly lower risk move than I'm perceiving it to be. I just get it. I can get the job back or I can get another job that's comparable.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I have the experience. And me doing all this stuff only makes me more valuable because I'll have a cooler story than somebody who just did four years of this job rather than two and then did, you know, two years of things on the road. And so that was actually, that was the one argument. The secondary argument was for me, I was young at the time, I was like, this is extremely hard to do. If you say. Because I used to always tell people like, yeah, I'd like to own my own business someday. Like, it's almost like you like tag it on to like, what's your, you know, what do you do now? And I'd like to. And so I thought to myself, if it's this hard now, when I have no kids, I have no life, I have no stakes, it's going to be nearly impossible for me to do later. And so I was like, I have to do it now. And so I'm actually a very risk averse person. Despite the fact that I am a quote, entrepreneur now. I guess. Not quotes, I guess I am an entrepreneur. I think it's just because the influencer was so like, everyone's like, ah, everybody's an entrepreneur. But that those are the two strongest arguments that got me to take the plunge and make the bet.

[A]

What would you say then for those that don't have money right now is the frequency or the energy that money is attracted to?

[B]

I don't know what that means.

[A]

What would you think if money was trying to go somewhere? Money is out there, it's in the middle of the table.

[B]

Sure, sure.

[A]

What is money attracted to? What type of a person is money attracted to?

[B]

I don't. So I define everything by actions because it's the only thing that's observable.

[A]

So a person who takes action.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, at the most basic level, yes. And then, you know, one level above that, I'd be like, money is exchanged for goods and services. And parties, when they make exchange, both parties are better off. The person who sells the goods and services believes they'll be better off if they had the money. And the person who buys the goods and services feels like they'd be better off if they buy the goods and services. And so it's a mutual exchange. Both people say thank you, which is why capitalism is wonderful. But the point is that you have to look at. And I like people starting out with service based businesses because when you ask the question, does somebody need to have money? No, you shouldn't have time if you don't have use. The first rule of entrepreneurship is you use what you have.

[A]

First rule, if you don't have money, use your time.

[B]

Yeah. And so that's because everyone focuses on resources rather than resourcefulness. And so every self made billionaire and millionaire was in the exact same position as you because they were self made, which means that you have the same exact ingredients they had, which is nothing, but also nothing to lose. And that's what makes you the most dangerous player on the board. And that's the piece that I think anyone who starts out misses. You're the one. If you lose it all, you're still at zero. You have unlimited shots on goal. It's like life gives you a lottery ticket and you're like, well, what if I lose? It's like, well, the lottery ticket's free and you can keep cashing it in until you win. And so you might start a car detailing business or you might start a lawn care business. And the thing is is that everyone has this fallacy that the first thing they pick is going to be the last thing they pick. They think that's going to be their business forever. But I've had a lot of businesses over my career and you learn it each time. Like every business I've had, I learned lessons from the ones before that before I moved on. And it took me nine businesses before I actually had my like first real successful one with gym launch.

[A]

Yeah, you were saying before we got started that your thoughts on manifestation. What are your thoughts on manifestation?

[B]

I shy away from things that I can't define. And so I function 100% in the observable reality. And when someone says I have manifested this, I would say if you have a set of beliefs that you repeated on a regular basis that then changed your behavior, the behavior is what created this outcome, not what you repeat to yourself. And so as long as whatever you do translates into changing what you do in reality, then great, whatever it takes for you to do there. But I just focus ruthlessly on that because how do you know someone's like, he's really motivated? You can't see if someone's motivated until after they've taken action. Which means, do I need to be motivated at all? I just need to do something. And that makes for me, this has made business teaching, people, training, learning so much easier. Because what happens is if someone's Good at something. A lot of times getting good at something and then teaching someone else to do that thing are two very different skills. And so people who don't know how to teach or train then add a lot of energy and mindset and all this stuff. But it's like, dude, just do this. Just do this. And so what happens is we have these terms. So people are like, man, I want to be more charismatic, for example, right? Well, if I looked at someone and said, be charismatic, what do you do? Yeah, you can't do anything with that. And so what happens is we have these. I call them bundled terms. And so it's these words that actually have a laundry list of behavior underneath of them. So be charismatic really might mean when you walk into a room, stand up straight. When you talk, talk louder. When you shake someone's hand, like, grip them firmly, look in the eye, try and say their name as many times as possible. When someone's talking, you're doing it right now. Nod your head. It shows that you're listening. And over time, if you do this laundry list and there's more, people will begin to describe you as charismatic. But if I said be charismatic, it's useless. But if I said do all of these things, then all of a sudden people would then say, charisma has occurred. And so in training people to do things in the companies that we have, and also in trying to train myself to do stuff, because I try and learn all the time, I see the purpose of life as learning, changing my behavior. How can. If someone has a skill that I want, I just. Instead of looking at, and I don't even listen to what they say because a lot of times they don't know why they're that way either. I just try and look at what did they do that was different than what I'm doing and try and compare their reality versus mine and say, oh, I need to do this. Ah, now it works. And all of a sudden, people describe me in that way. And so trying to operationalize as many words as possible that are amorphous is how I've made sense of reality.

[A]

How has your relationship with money changed then, over the last few years since selling a company to then growing your companies, do you have a different relationship with it?

[B]

Honestly, not really. I like to always know what I make per minute, because that. So I'll say, I'll rewind the clock in terms of the things that I have now, I think are a result of behaviors that I did in the past that I haven't changed. And it's just that I have more time under my belt. And so I think one of the big misconceptions of people who are starting out is that the amount of results you get in the beginning for correct behaviors are not indicative of how correct the behavior is. And so the first week you go to the gym, you're not really going to see anything. It doesn't mean that going to the gym is wrong. It just means that your results are going to come out of delay. And so for me, it's like I checked my bank account every single day for years until I had more money that didn't make sense anymore because the volatility of the things I was invested in made it irrelevant. But I call it having a pulse on the money. You need to know where it's going and where it's coming from. And when you have that pulse, all of a sudden you're like, I know what an expense that costs $500 means to my bank account and I know what a thousand dollar check means to my bank account. And all of a sudden I started seeing my expenses as bundled time. So I remember the first time I had this realization. I used to work at a minimum wage job at a smoothie king. I was a blender tenant. So I made 675 an hour. And, and peanut butter mood. That's right.

[A]

Go ahead.

[B]

And so what I remember, I remember my co workers, it was like three or four people to a shift. They would go get lunch at Cosi, which was next door. It's like a sandwich. And, and I went with them one day and you know, I bought a normal meal and I think it was, you know, 12 bucks, something like that.

[A]

You know, like Dan, that's two hours.

[B]

Exactly. And I was like, wait, I'm only working, you know, five hour shift and I'm using post tax dollars and this is two. And I was like, if I do this every time I'm here, I only get credit for three of the hours that I'm working. And so immediately I was like, wait, I'm going to cut my work efficiency in half every time I go to eat lunch out while I'm here. And so I was like, oh, I have to change that. But then as soon as I realized that, you know, when I go to the, the mall on the weekend, because that's what you do when you're, you know, 15 or whatever, I would look at it, you know, a new shirt from the Gap, which was cool back then.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I would look at it and it was like $30. And I was like, man, if someone, if my boss came to me at the beginning of the shift and said, hey, work a whole shift and I'll give you this T shirt, I'd be like, nah, I don't want to do that. And so in thinking about how much time it took me to pay for things, all of a sudden a lot of stuff wasn't worth it. And so it shifted. So from a. My relationship with money is more like, what, what did it change about how I spent and bought. Sorry, how I spent and how I acted to make more. And so I, I've always been a saver in terms of I always live below my means. I don't if like, the first rule of money is spend less than you make. First rule of money, like, you don't need to listen to anything else. You don't need to do any investing, you know, nothing else. The first rule of money is spend less than you make. The second rule of money is take what's left over and invested in making more money. And I think the big piece, especially people who are starting out, miss out, is that they expect that they're going to get rich as rich people get richer. And it's a different strategy when you need to, when you're starting out, you have to think about how you're going to make money while you're awake, not while you're asleep. The only reason that people who are really rich think about how to make money while they're asleep is because they've already maxed out their waking hours and they can't put more time into investments. And so they have to, by consequence, pick passive things to make money. But they already maxed out their active. Currently you haven't maxed out your active, and the returns on active are significantly higher and lower risk than passive income opportunities. So, for example, if I were in a, you know, it's about to be wintertime in most of the U.S. if there's snow in the area that you're at, you could probably buy, you know, a push snowblower for a couple, you know, I don't, I don't know what the rate of snowblower call it. A thousand bucks, right? And you could use a shovel in the beginning and you might be able to do two, maybe three, you know, big driveways in a day. Okay, if you have a snowblower, you might be able to do 20. And if you have that, then you just 7x your earning capacity. And so it's a small, like what, thousand dollar stock is going to 7x your pay nothing, right? And so I think people wildly, wildly undervalue the active investments where you put a little bit of capital and a lot of time and how much that capital multiplies what you make with your time. And so that's obviously in the physical labor where you have a machine that helps you out. But even on a, on a. On knowledge based work, the. One of the highest leverage things I did is I paid a guy who knew how to run Facebook ads. I didn't know how to run them. I had a gym. I knew, okay, because I'd like, looked online and stuff. But I knew. I was like, I need to get better at this. And so I went to. I went to three different agency owners and they all pitched me their services. And I said, honestly, I couldn't afford them. And so I said, what. What would it take for you? This is the question. What would it take for you to teach me how to run ads? And I was like, I'll pay you every hour. He's like, I don't sell my time. And I was like, it's America. Everybody sells.

[A]

Yeah, how much?

[B]

Yeah, exactly. What would it take? And he said, $750 an hour, which to me was an unbelievable amount of money at the time. And so I said, okay, deal. And I said, but the terms are I have to have my hands on the computer, not you, and you need to tell me what to do, and then I have to do it. And then if you change something, I need to understand the decision making behind it.

[A]

Why you did that.

[B]

Exactly. And so it took me eight sessions with this guy.

[A]

Eight.

[B]

One hour session.

[A]

And it's cheaper than hiring him for two months.

[B]

Totally. Oh, he asked for 5,000amonth. And I was like, oh, my God, I can't afford that. But from every time I would do it, and then I'd record it, and then I'd rewatch it a couple times, I would take notes, and then the next one, I was like the best student ever, right? But by the sixth time I got it, and by the eighth time, I was like, I don't need this guy anymore. I get it. And so that $6,000 investment made me millions of dollars in my life because I knew how to advertise, and I didn't know how to advertise before I could get leads, I could, you know, and I could. I could call them and close and bring in my gyms. And then eventually I showed other gyms how to do the same thing that I did. And so this is the, like, leverage, right? How do you get more for what you put in?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And the, the, the biggest and best investment that you can make is in your own skill set. Because skills are the ultimate hedge against inflation. They're the hedge against currency changes. People are like, what's going to happen to the dollar? Doctors are going to get paid in seashells or Bitcoin or US Dollars, it doesn't matter. If you have value to exchange, the world will exchange for it.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And so that's, that's the, the big thing that I think people who are, who are starting out miss.

[A]

What's the number one skill that people should be investing in to earn more promotion?

[B]

You need to learn to advertise. So if you think about it in sequence, right, if you start a business, what are the, what are the, what are the, what are the contingencies? If no one knows you exist, no one can buy your stuff. And so you have to first let people know you exist. So it begins with advertising. Now advertising doesn't mean you have to run paid ads. I say advertise, I define that as letting people know about your stuff. And so you can let people know one on one via outreach. You can dm, you can email, you can phone call, any, you can knock on doors. All that's one on one. You can make content, you can post on public platforms, you can stand on the sidewalk and shout. It's one of many, right? And then the third way you can do is you can run ads. The fourth and kind of like secret or more advanced ways that you can use those to then go get somebody who already has that audience that you want. So get an affiliate to then refer you business. And that's amazing strategy. But you, in order to get in touch with those, you reach out one on one, you make content or you run ads. So those are gonna be the core things that you're gonna be able to do. And so in the beginning you have to do that to get the first interest. Now I think where people make mistake is they then double down on that at that stage, oh, this worked. I should do more. Which is a logical thing to think. But long term, the product is gonna be the thing that's going to allow you to scale really, really big. Now don't get me wrong, you can make a few million dollars a year, $10 million a year, being a really good marketer, being a really good promoter. You get limited at a certain point because like you, you, you burn through a marketplace because people understand the Concepts of word of mouth, they're like, yeah, you want to have word of mouth. But what they fail to realize is that negative word of mouth is significantly stronger and more viral. And so all of a sudden when they, their advertising stops working or their, their cost to acquire customers doubles and triples, but the cost on the platform hasn't doubled or tripled. It means that you have an invisible hand that's suppressing your result, which is that somebody who would have bought, heard that you're not good or that you're even mediocre and just decides not to. And we do this all the time. Like you were like, I was thinking about checking out the restaurants. Like I went, it was. And that's it, it's done just like that. And you would have gone if that person hadn't said anything. Yes, I was going to go to that movie. How was it? I mean, it was okay, done. That's it. And so people overest. Like it's so hard to get positive word of mouth and it's so easy to get negative word of mouth. And that's what suppresses you long term. So in the beginning you advertise, then you maintain that level of advertising to continue to iterate the product because you need to get the people in. And this is the unfortunate part, but you bring people in knowing your product's not that good and you just do the best you can and you keep making it better and better and better until you get people to stick or keep or get people to come back. And so if you have a, if you have a membership business, it's obvious you want people to not cancel. If you have a consumable business, like if you, if you sell coffee, you sell Coca Cola, whatever it is, it's, it's how reoccurring is the revenue. How likely does that person who buys your coffee come back again to buy coffee? Whether it's a shop or it's a product, doesn't matter. And so once you know that people are coming back, it means you fix the product sufficiently that now you go back to the advertising and then you, you double, down you go.

[A]

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[A]

Only has a few thousand dollars a year extra to spend on something, what's more important for them to invest it in the stock market or real estate or to invest in themselves?

[B]

You know where I'm going with this one? So my favorite ism that I that I like is don't invest in the S&P 500. It's invest in the S&ME 500. Because you will get so much more on active income by investing the small amount you have into increasing your earning capacity than you ever like. Just think about the dollars here. So let's say that you had $1,000, all right, saved up. If you invest in Apple, whatever, or you've like, you'll have a 20% gain this year, a 30% gain this year. Okay, great. So now you have $1,300. But $1,000 can teach you a new lesson or a new skill that can take your earning capacity. Because if you only have $1,000 saved up, you either make very little money or you don't. You're not following the first rule, which is you got to spend way less than you make, right? And so if you're, if you're on the I don't make a lot of money part, by the way, you can still definitely save more. But if you're on the I don't make a lot of money part, then doubling your earning capacity would. By the end of the year, you might have $30,000 saved up rather than 1 or 1300 in the alternative scenario. It's not even close. It's an order of magnitude. It's not close. But everyone's afraid of work and everyone wants to get rich quick, which is why lotteries continue to make money. And so if you can just get out of that basic. Under that basic fallacy that you're somehow going to get lucky, I would rather get rich for sure and be willing to like, that's for me, like, success insurance is extending the time horizon and being willing to learn skills along the way. That's success insurance. Because here play out the other scenario. If you actually do hit the lottery, you also lose it because you don't have the skills to keep it. It's true. So the other path is pure fallacious thinking. It's false. It's a false dream. It's never going to result in wealth. If you get rich quick, you get. You get poor even faster.

[A]

We've already said again, if you get.

[B]

Rich quick, you get poor even faster.

[A]

Why?

[B]

Because you don't. It's so my favorite magic card. Hold on. Going to bring it back. My favorite magic card was this card called Burning Wish in Magic the Gathering and the sub. The. The flavor text on the card said she wished for a weapon, but not the skill to wield it. And I always loved that text because I thought about that as, as business as money. It's like we wish for money, but not the skill to wield it. Because money is just a potential for exchange. And so if you don't know how to make it, then everything you have is just enough that's going to go down because you also don't know how to multiply it if you got lucky. Because anybody who wants to get rich quick only is relying on luck. You're relying on chance. You're gambling, you're not investing. And so if you want to play the game and the thing and unfortunately the tweets, the Instagram posts or whatever, we see someone screenshot when they get from a $10,000 to 1.5 million, you just don't see the other hundred people or thousand people who put 10,000 and went to a dollar. And so the idea is, I want to get rich for sure. And the surefire way to get rich and the reason all these billionaires get up there and they say, hey, just invest in skills. Everyone's like, sure, it's because that's the only thing that protects you. And I come from a country or my father comes from a country. Rather, where my family, everything we had, was taken from us by the government. And so it's very real that you may have to start over halfway through your life at zero. And if you do lose it all, the only thing you have is what you do with your brains and your hands. And so my grandfather, who I was very, very close with, used to always say, you have two hands and one brain. Use them. And my father came here with a thousand dollars, and he built the life that he has. Now he's a doctor. But that was only possible because he had skills. And even though everything was taken, land, houses, everything was taken, you can't take no divorce, no tax, no government can confiscate who you are and what you can do. And I see that as the ultimate freedom and independence of excellence and representation of excellence.

[A]

If someone has skills but they have a bad relationship with money, or they have money wounds, or they have money beliefs that they live in fear around whenever they receive money, are they able to earn and make a lot with those money wounds?

[B]

Yeah. And so I will. I will. First off, I don't know what money wounds are, but I will, if I can define it the way I would define what you're saying is, so it's like bad money beliefs, money wounds, money trauma, bad energy, all of that. I bucket into bad behaviors under specific conditions, which is that you don't know how to behave with money. That's all it is.

[A]

How do people learn how to behave with money?

[B]

Well, you just follow very simple rules. The first rule is that you spend less than you make, period. No questions asked. That's it.

[A]

What if money. What if people have never had money and then all sudden, oh, I got $1,000, and they get excited or they get scared or they get worried. How do you manage the energy that money brings to you?

[B]

So I think it's thinking in ratios. So it's like, I will save this percent, I will spend this percent. This person goes to my house or my lodging. This goes to food, and you just have to stick with it. Now, I think that that process is good to go through, but I agree that when you don't make a lot of money, what feels like a lot of sacrifice results in very low payoff. And that's why I'm bullish on. Put as much as you can in increasing your earning capacity, skills. Yeah. And the thing is, you don't have to buy, so you really only have to have one skill, and then you can get every other skill you need in your life. And so when I got into the business game. The only real skill I developed quickly was sales, and I didn't even have that skill, but I had to for the gym. So I learned how to sell and I got pretty good at it. And so I would go to these networking things, I would meet other business owners, and I felt like I was a collector of fine skills. I would find people and I'd be like, hey, how do you get customers? And somebody be like, oh, I'm really good at Google ppc. And I'd be like, oh, I don't know how to do that. That sounds interesting. And so what I would do is I'd go and say, hey, what's your sales process look like? And they'd be like, oh, you know, it's okay. I'd be like, hey, do you mind if I just. Like, I'm pretty good at it and I can walk you through what we do because I might help you out. And so then this is the key part. If they said yes, which plenty of people take free work, I would then treat it as though they had paid me for like a $10,000, like, consulting gig. I would do tons of research, I would talk to my team, I would re script what they had, and then I would train their team on it. I would tell them how to manage it. And this is when, you know you did it right. I would present it to them as though I was like, making a presentation. And they'd be like, dude, this is too much, man. Like, whoa. And then the magic thing comes out. They say, what can I do for you? And I'd be like, it's funny. Ask. Can you show me your PPC stuff? And the thing is that they would give me less than I gave them, but it was more than I had. And so it was a net positive gain. And so you only need to develop one skill, then you can barter for everything else.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So, like, in the networking groups that I joined, I got voted the, the best, you know, the member of the year in the first year they ever had it. When I was in my fraternity back in the day I became voted president. Like, I always try. Like, when I was in high school, I was editor in chief of the, of the literary magazine and vice editor of the newspaper. Like, I always tried to, like, what can I. How can I trade what I know? How can I just keep trading up? And that's fundamentally what I've done my whole life is just, just trade up. And the risk here is that let's say you do all this Work and the guy says thanks and then just gets off the call. Well, there's two possible scenarios. One is you're not as good as you think you are or they don't function with reciprocity.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And that's okay because again, volatility only appears volatile with low volume.

[A]

Yeah, you got to do it a lot of times.

[B]

If you do it 100 people, you'll get what you want. And if there's three guys who know PPC, you give to all three and maybe one of them helps you out.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

But you're still better off than you were before. And so this is the, like this, this was how I. This is how I leapfrogged in my earning capacity. Really? Oh, 100%. And then for the people I couldn't, I would do a favor and ask to pay them. You know what I mean? Like, I would do whatever I could and I would encourage people to. I spend so much money for one on one time. And I also think there's something very powerful about being in person and not Zoom. Yeah, I think there's something. I think that you can observe far more behaviors in person. There's so many things that are lost on zoom.

[A]

What's the most you spent on one on one time?

[B]

I spent $350,000 for an hour.

[A]

An hour?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

With who?

[B]

Guy was worth 7 billion.

[A]

What was the biggest lesson he taught you in that one hour?

[B]

He said, protect your reputation with your life.

[A]

Did you spend 350 grand for that?

[B]

I think that there's something powerful about knowing that someone who is much further ahead says it to you. And it's not that that advice is something you haven't heard before, but it's the advice that you needed to hear right now. And that was what I needed to hear.

[A]

Wow. Protect your reputation with your life. What does that look like? And how does one do that when anyone can speak about them negatively online and say what they want and make.

[B]

Stuff up, or you can only control what you do. And so the stoic approach to this is that you know the truth and, you know, there's the whole like, you know, bad, bad news, lies get out of, get around the world before you know the truth gets out of bed. But I see lies a lot. Like, so Warren Buffett says this about the stock market. He says in the short term it's a popularity contest. In the long term, it's a weighing system. And I see reputation the same way, which is in the short term, somebody could make some viral thing about you or they make some piece of content, some hit piece, whatever it is. But if you do right by the values that you have on a long enough time horizon, you touch enough people, the surface area of your reputation compounds. Because it's not just that you do business with one person, but as soon as. Because if you do grow in your reputation, then more people will ask about you to the people who have met you, and then they will give you. They will give their opinion. Just kind of like the movie before or the restaurant or whatever. Yeah, exactly. And so if every person who has done business with you is like, he's tough, but fair, or like, he's very ethical, or like, you know what? I would trust him with money. You know what I mean? If you have that core set of beliefs and you behave consistent with that, there's bundled terms. I want people to think these things about me. What are the behaviors I have to do in order to get them to think that. I'll give you a story about this. So when I was in college, I had a bad reputation with women. In my freshman year, I went from high school where it was small, you know, small pond, and I kind of ruined my reputation there. And so I went to, like, a new area where, like, no one knew me. And I was like, oh, this is like. It's like virgin land, right? Not with the pun intended. But I went to college and I very quickly got the same reputation in weeks. Yeah.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

And so I went home depressed and I went to my dad and I was like, man, I was like, how do I get all these people to stop saying that I'm, you know, a man whore or whatever, and like, that I'm just like this guy who just goes around and sleeps with girls because it's preventing me from sleeping with. And he said. And I had all these ideas of, like, maybe I. Maybe I could do this or I could, like, I had all these, like, strategies. And he said, have you considered not acting like a.

[A]

Not sleeping with women?

[B]

Yeah. And. And I was like, no, no, it can't be that. And so. But it's like, as a kid, like, you, you know, for the parents, they are listening. Right. I dismissed it immediately. But, you know, on the, on the flight back and in thinking when I'm, you know, sitting there alone in my dorm, I was like, maybe I do need to just stop acting this way. And so what ended up happening is I decided I was like, I'm. I'm. I'm going to be something, someone that I want to be proud of. I Would want to. I want to be proud to associate me with me because I want a different caliber of girl. And that caliber of girl is not going to go for this, you know, this guy who's always chatting up like, I want a good quality girl, not just hop. A good character. And it took basically two full semesters of me acting like a priest, basically, and just like doing well in school, studying hard, just being a contributing member of society, that all of a sudden the reputation started to change. But like, the new balanced reputation, it took time.

[A]

It did, yeah.

[B]

And so it's like there's this period of time that you have to go through and be willing because right now you are living through consequences of actions you took last year, five years ago. And so you have to be able to split it without getting the reward for it. And that's the hard part, and that's the part that no one's willing to go through.

[A]

And the longer people know you for one set of characteristics, the longer it's going to take for them to unlearn that.

[B]

This is a really good point. So the reason I think it's so hard for people back home, right. So for anybody who's ever left home and you go back and people treat you a certain way.

[A]

Because I knew you for 20 years.

[B]

Exactly. And what's interesting is imagine over. Imagine you went to high school with somebody and in middle school, all right? So it's like they had eight years with you and they had every single day. They had hours and hours of exposure. You go back and they have two days a year during the holidays to see you. Well, it's like, okay, well, two days out of 10,000 were this way.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, it's.

[B]

It's almost never going to outweigh it. I've given a lot of thought to this because I was like, why can't. Why can't I change everyone's mind? Because, like, I have changed so much. But the reality was that the exposure required to change their perception of me was greater than the time that I was willing to dedicate to it.

[A]

You need to spend two, three years with them now to show up as you are. Not two days.

[B]

Exactly. And then the trade off is, is it worth it?

[A]

No, it's not. I don't have many childhood friends anymore, of course.

[B]

And then. And so. And I also, I'll make this point to anybody who's in that situation where you're like, man, I don't want to be like these people. I don't want to be like my Friends that I have right now is that you have to be willing to accept that you may lose those friends, or you probably will lose those friends, but you will gain many more with the caliber of person that you want to become, and you'll get caliber of friends that match it. But there is a transition period where you'll have neither.

[A]

It's tough, man. For about a decade, I felt like I didn't have many friends. I felt like all my childhood high school, college friends, they didn't want to hang out or when we hung out, they didn't really understand me, and they were kind of judging me. And it felt like, why are they always talking weird about me behind my back? Why am I not invited anymore to stuff all these? It's kind of hurtful, right?

[B]

Totally.

[A]

But at the same time, those, I guess, childhood friends that I maybe do have or I talked to once in a blue moon, they've chosen to accept the person I've become and appreciate who I still am, not expect me to be who they once knew. And I can respect them for that and not judge them on their journey and just accept them for being a friend.

[B]

Yeah. And I think, well, two parts. One is the people who hate it or the people who don't accept the new version of you. They downplay your success for being willing to take a risk that they were unwilling to take because your success makes them feel bad. Whether they say it or not. It does. Because humans are comparative creatures. We look at one another. I mean, we learn through modeling. We see what someone else does. And if they did something that we aren't willing to do and they have something that we don't have, we start not liking them because what does that mean about me? And so what does that mean about me? It's much easier to say, he's changed and he sucks now, rather than saying, I didn't. And I suck so hard. Because the people who don't know how to say, you've grown, say you've changed. And they say it like it's a bad thing. And I think the eve. The. The. The simple response to that is, and you have it. And I think it's being willing to sit in that and be like, I'm okay with this, and I have lost almost every friend. Or rather, I could say I have actively cut off every friend that I've had, you know, from the beginning. I have one friend that I still have from middle school, One friend, but basically no one else. And that one friend is, because he is a. Is a champion like, he's a cheerleader. He has a different life, but he's just like, dude, go.

[A]

He's not criticizing you. He's not judging you. He's like, you're amazing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And you keep him in his life, your life.

[B]

And he's also not a money guy. He's an FBI agent. And so he's exceptional at what he does. It's just not money related. So we have this perfect thing where neither of us. We have no competitive overlap. So I'm like, how many. How many drug rings did you bust this month? Oh, dude, let me tell you, these Syrians, I was. I was taking this whole gang I took down, you know, like. And so I get to hear this whole thing. He's like, what deals have you done? And because he, you know, we get to kind of live vicariously, but those relationships are rare. And if you find somebody who speaks well of you behind your back and talk to you to your face, those are the friends that are worth keeping.

[A]

Amen.

[B]

And if you can find somebody who can do off both of those without flipping every conversation and making it about themselves, I think you have somebody who's worth keeping. But most people don't even meet one of those criteria, let alone all three.

[A]

Yeah. Speaking of young men and ourselves when we were younger, what would you say are three brutal truths that young men need to hear in order to become more successful in life?

[B]

You have to be willing to trade the things you love right now for the things you want. And you may not like the price of what you want, but you can't change the price. And so there's all this groveling that goes back and forth for younger men of, like, basically wishing it didn't cost this much time or cost as much failure or cost as much risk in order to get to where they want to go. And so they basically stomp their heels and then, you know, retreat inwards into their basement and video games and whatever else, rather than confronting their own inadequacy. Because the first thing you have to do is say, it's my fault. Everything that I have in my life is my fault. But if it's your fault, it's also under your control to change, because you cannot change what you do not control. And so to me, it's taking full accountability. So that's number one. The second thing is if you want to change your behavior, change your conditions. And so one of the most powerful things that you can do is change who you surround yourself with and where you live. And so if you have an environment of people around you who speak ill of you or, like, basically reinforce the wrong traits or the wrong actions. There's a reason I left Baltimore and there's a reason you left, right?

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

As I went to where I thought I was like, I want to get into fitness. And so I was between Miami and Southern California. Those are. I was like, those are kind of the fitness capitals. I'm going to go to one of those places because I want to do fitness and I want to be around the best. And so Baltimore is not the capital of fitness. And so me changing my environment allowed me basically a blank slate to. To start behaving the way that I wanted without interference. Because a lot of people have interference in their surroundings. And so I think it's. A lot of times you have to. Well, I think this leads to the third thing. So you change your environment. That's number two. The third is delete everything that is not getting you closer to your goals. And so I have used that. This razor has not changed in my life, which is my. Probably the two most often asked questions that I have that I like, mentally think, I probably think of 10 times, 20 times a day is number one. Does this action, this person, this decision increase or decrease the likelihood that I achieve my goals?

[A]

Yes or no.

[B]

Does it increase or decrease? Does this friend who always wants to go out, does you playing fantasy football increase or decrease the likelihood that you hear your goals? And that is just. It's black and white. It's pretty like, you know. It's pretty like, you know, which now you can make the whole, like, but shouldn't I have a. I'm talking about winning. If you want to talk about. Talk about, you know, fulfillment and all the joy and all that stuff, like, I'm not the guy for that.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, but because fulfillment is winning for you. For me, that's your hobby. Your hobby is winning. Where some people have hobbies for joy and fulfillment, you have hobbies which are to win.

[B]

I like looking back and enjoy because memories pay dividends in the future. And so suffering lasts only for a moment, but the memory of the achievement lasts forever. And for me, I love, like, looking back on what I've done only insofar as it excites me about what's to come. And so delete everything using that question. And the second question, which is my problem, it might be my favorite question. It might be my favorite question in general, which is, what would it take? And the reason I love that question is because it assumes success. So if you go up to some girl who's way out of your league, and you're like, what would it take? It assumes that she's going to go.

[A]

Out with you, or she's going to say, you need to make this much. You need to do this. You need this. She's going to give me the answer, right? And then, do you want to pay that price?

[B]

Exactly. Either you don't like the shoes, or you don't like the price. You got to pay it if you want it. And. And so what would it take? And it's like, hey, if we have a deal that we're working on, like, what would it take? Now, you can make the decision whether the price tags worth it, but at least you learn the price. And what I have found in my life is that when I. When I try to answer those questions, like, what would it take for me to be number one in this field? What would it take for us to lead this market? What would it take for me to be the best salesman in this company? The answers are not as crazy as you'd think. And so a lot of people spend most of their time answering questions not worth answering. It's playing games that are worth playing. It's like, if you play stupid, stupid games, you win stupid prizes. And so no one asks the question before they play the game. Is this game worth it? And so when you ask the question of, like, what is the big goal and what would it take? Then you just get to solve for it. And to me, it's just great. If I know what it is, then either I have those resources or I have to use my resourcefulness to get them.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

But it's under my control. And these are how the big leaps in my life have occurred. When I. When I wanted to get in the gym business, I was like, okay, what would make it the highest likelihood that I hit my goals? So what I did was I joined. I said, I'd say $50,000. 23 years old. I lived on nothing. I said, $50,000. And I traveled to California because I was like, all the best fitness people are here. Then I joined a gym mastermind of all gym owners. I didn't own a gym. I joined a gym mastermind without owning a gym. And he was like, you sure? And I was like, yeah. He's like, why? I was like, well, I figure I'll learn from everyone else's mistakes before I start smart, right? So the first thing I said is, like, where do you guys open? One guy's, oh, I have a terrible Location, I wouldn't done this. Another guy's like, oh. And then the guys who had the best locations, like, what was it? Okay, well, how many square feet should I have? Oh, how should I organize the gym? What equipment should I buy or lease? My day? I thought I was gon. They're like, oh, don't buy those. They're really expensive. I thought I was gonna use them. No one uses them. Oh, yeah, girls trip on those. Don't. Don't use them. And so I was like, huh? Huh? I was just taking all these notes. And so then I was like, okay. If I'm around the best gym owners and I'm learning from them, then I can be at year 10 in my career on my first year, because if I do what the best people did, I will get with the best people got. And so I've always just focused on what did they do? Forget the. Forget the energy, Forget the manifestation. Forget the, you know, the vibrations and the frequency. Like, what did they do? I will do that. And not only will I do that, I'll do way more of it. Because I don't want to just pace them. I want to beat them.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And so, like, Kobe, it's like, if he's. If he's working out, if the best guys are working out twice a day, he's like, well, I got to work out three times a day because they're already ahead of me. So if I'm working out twice a day, they're working out twice a day, then we're going to advance at the same pace. But I got to work out three times a day. If this guy's doing $100 a day ad spend, I got to spend $500 a day. If this guy's doing, you know, one piece of content, I can make 10 because he's better at it than I am. So I have to make tensions to make up for my skill deficiency. And so, again, this volatility is a consequence of volume is that you're typically just not doing enough. And the people who outwork you, they out output you. And I'll give you a really simple example that will demonstrate this, that it's very real. So in a company. So I just took over operating one of the divisions on the media side. And the first day I came in, I was like, okay, so, you know, what are we going to do? And so they're like this. I was like, okay, what are we going to get done by? And they're like, you know, next meeting, which is like the next Monday is a weekly meeting. I was like, okay, how many hours does that take? They were like, I don't know, probably four hours to do this thing.

[A]

Can we do it today?

[B]

Exactly. And then I was like, okay, well it's, you know, noon. Let's meet at 4. I'll give you an extra hour and show me what you did. And then we met. Four hours later, it was done. And then I was like, okay, well what can you do tonight so that we can do tomorrow morning? And he said this thing. So we just moved the buck along. And in three days we did three months of work. Because if you think there was 12 actions that had happened and you had a one week cadence in a very real way, we moved forward at 20 times the pace. And so a lot of people think that, like, it's not speed of activity, it's elimination of waste. There's all these other things that people are distracting, they're distracting themselves with. And so if you were, if you were that young man, you have to recognize the trade offs that you have to be willing to make. You have to change your environment so you can change your behavior. And you have to delete everything. That's not the thing that you want most. And if you can't decide what you want most, then that's what you need to do first. But once you know what you want, then go get it.

[A]

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[B]

So if we define traits as bundled terms, right, which means that there's just series of behaviors that bundle into one word, convenient for communication, hard for training, is that, you know, there's actually just a hundred small skills that you need. And I think demystifying this makes it easier. So it's like, I want to be confident. Well, confident is an approximation of how statistically likely something is to occur. So in statistics, you have a confidence metric. How likely is this thing to occur? And so if you want to be more confident, it means we need to do enough repetitions that you can make a statistical prediction that it's likely. If I go up on stage 100 times in a row, I do the same presentation. And I get up there like, how are you so confident? I'm like, because I've done this a hundred times and I know how this is going to go because I've done it before. And so people want the confidence before the reps. But especially in confidence, the proof comes before the pudding. You have to do the reps before people are like, wow. Because you can't fake. I mean, you can fake confidence. People will. Yeah, yeah, you'll know. And as far as I'm concerned, in life, I'm the only one I'm trying to impress. And so if I know I'm fake, I'm the one who in the middle of the night is looking up being like, I can't believe I'm so fooled. I would hate that. It's an empty life. It's also living for other people. And so if the toxic trait Is people wanting the outcome without the repetition. Right. Without the price. That's how I say that's number one. The. Let me see, what are they? I'm trying to think of, like, a really specific thing. Well, the second one is. Has everything to do. It's offshoot, but it's entitlement. Right. Is fundamentally believing you deserve things and that the world must accommodate you.

[A]

Why do so many people have that belief?

[B]

I think parenting in the school system has made it so that, like, you can have a safe room and you can have a cry corner. And if you. If you think that one plus one is five, like, this is emotionally safe for you, I don't want you to feel. It's like. But you're gonna. The thing is, you can't change reality.

[A]

All right?

[B]

And so you can believe whatever you want, but if your actions aren't aligned with how the world works, you're not gonna get what you want, and you're gonna be very upset for a long time until you figure out that the universe doesn't bend to your will.

[A]

Like, does it bend to your will, though?

[B]

No.

[A]

But if you do a set sort of actions, it starts to bend.

[B]

I play with it, I play within. I play within the realm of reality.

[A]

But it bends to your will once you do the actions that it. It wants you to create for you to get the results you want.

[B]

I think that the universe is. I don't anthropomorphize it, so I don't humanize it and say anything.

[A]

But because of the actions you took over the last 20 years.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You were able to create extraordinary results.

[B]

Yes. Based on reality. If I had said, I want to become the best business guy and then sung songs every day, that's not going to be a line. Now, I can manifest all I want, but that's not going to be the thing that makes me the best businessman. And so I don't get to set those rules, but I can play by them. And I think a lot of people, a lot of men specifically, waste a tremendous amount of time stomping their feet, demanding that the world be different than it is. And so, to me, that's a loser's mentality. And they then spend more time defending their excuses than defending their ambitions. And so if you. If you put all of the effort into, how do I. How do I make this thing into reality rather than how do I excuse my behavior up to this point? Like, winners. Winners think about what they can make happen, and losers think about what happened to them, and it's one flip of a switch, which is I will judge myself on what I do and what I make happen, not of what occurred. And I think that divorcing those things is like. And this is a freeing thought for me. It's a little bit heady. So maybe your audience like it.

[A]

I'm in.

[B]

The past. Doesn't exist except for in your mind. It's literally, it's gone. It's gone. We only have this moment and then this will be gone. Right. And it's only exist in our memory. And so I have this mental idea where, what if I woke up one day, I got hit with a shovel and all these things, I forgot about them. What does it change? And so a lot of people are like, I need to process my trauma. I'm going to get into this because I think there's somebody who's listening to this, could change their life. I define trauma as a permanent change in behavior from an aversive experience, from a bad thing that happened. Now does that mean that trauma is inherently good or bad? To me, the answer is no. If I'm a child and I touch a stove and it burns me, that's traumatic. If I never touch a hot stove again, it permanently changed my behavior from a negative experience. Is me touching, not touching hot stoves a bad thing? No, it's just a matter of learning. And so if you have ptsd, you had a traumatic experience, which is fundamentally rapid learning. It's what trauma is. You learn, you have an accelerated rate of learning. Bombs go off, loud noises, your friend dies in front of you, and then a car honks really loud and you're in, basically you take the same condition and then you repeat the same behavior because you learned it, which might be duck down or whatever it is, right? And so this idea that people espouse that trauma is, is stored in our body, it's in our, it's in our banks, it's in our DNA. Now I'm like, where, where is this, where is this compartment in our physical biology? No, you learned a different way to behave under circumstances. And so we just need to behave differently. I had a young guy who got on my, who was on my team in one of, one of the portfolio companies. And I wanted interview because he was a sales manager. And he said, you know, I have, I have some demons that I need to like, you know, slay. And I was like, what does that even mean? He's like, you know, I just, I tend to, I tend to like self sabotage sometimes. And I just said, you don't know how to behave, period. In certain conditions, you don't know how to act. Great. So we'll expose you to those conditions and then we'll teach you how to act the right way. That's it. That's all it is. That's it.

[A]

Exposure therapy.

[B]

Yes. And that's how you change behavior. Same condition, new behavior as learning. And so I bring this up because I think so many people are chained by the idea of trauma. Rather than thinking, okay, this thing occurred, I learned a behavior that is aversive to my goals, makes it less likely to achieve my goals. So, and here's the key point. This is the thing that you ask yourself, what can I do instead? And so, for example, if you give feedback to someone, the reason no one can, or very few people are good at giving feedback is that oftentimes they insult rather than criticize. So if you say you suck at that or you're a dick, Right. That's insulting. But it doesn't tell someone what to do instead.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And so criticism is the difference between desired and actual. Now that can be very non emotional. You can say, hey, you said you were going to show up every day and you've been late. Great. Okay. It's a desired actual. Am I saying now if I said, and because of that you're lazy, that's an insult. Me saying this is reality is just looking at what we can observe. And the reason I come back to this over and over again is like, what can I observe? Is because these are the only things that affect the world is what you do. And so in trying to, quote, conquer trauma, like I could say, like I can create a narrative around whatever. So it's like if you were to say, hey, Alex, what do you think happened in your childhood that made you driven or whatever, right? I could make up something, but no one knows. I can't run a split test on my life. I know that I do these things and I've been rewarded in the past for doing so. I repeat them. That's about the only thing I could probably say. But if I said I treated women that way because I had a broken relationship with my mother. Okay, and you still have to change the action, right? It doesn't. Right. It's like, so it's all it is, is it acts as a defense for maintaining behavior that we know doesn't help us hit our goals. And so every ounce of effort that goes in defending trauma or a negative experience, a negative behavior from a negative experience is waste. And so using that hit head in the shovel, like got hit. You have amnesia, you don't remember that that thing happened, great. But you can do that today and you can just say, okay, under the next time this happens, when my husband comes home drunk again, what can I change about my behavior now? It might be leave. It might be telling him, hey, don't do this or I'll leave. That's a consequence, not a threat. It's a consequence. And so this has massively simplified my life. And I have this belief that billionaires see the world more clearly than everyone else.

[A]

Why?

[B]

Because they've been able to predict what's going to happen better. And so my only goal is to be able to see more clearly how reality works. And my posit or my hypothesis is that the more clearly I understand how things work, the better I will be able to execute within that realm and predict what's going to happen to make better decisions.

[A]

That's it. And then you get the results you want. More likely get those results you want.

[B]

And that's what I would define as good decision making. A high likelihood of getting the thing that you want.

[A]

Speaking about good decision making, you've talked about this a lot, the Solomon paradox, where you have conversation with your 85 year old self. Here's a question for you. We're getting close to the end here. How often do you have this conversation with your 85 year old self?

[B]

Whenever I have a big decision.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And so it's not.

[A]

How many times in the last year would you say five?

[B]

Yeah, that's actually about it. Probably about five. That's probably what I said.

[A]

Let's say you're. The next time you talk to your 85 year old self, you ask him, hey, I want to make this decision. And he gives you the advice that you need to hear subjectively outside of yourself and saying, I'll just do this, this, this, and boom, it's done. When you become 85 and you win at everything, everything that you do and you touch, you win at. You accomplish way more than you fail. All these things happen. What do you think will be the biggest price you pay that you look back on and say, I wish I would have told you to do something else. We won a ton. We wanted everything. Everything we wanted, we want. Yeah, but there was a price we paid somewhere that maybe at 85, I wish you would have taken a different choice and not looked at winning, but looked at doing something differently. Is there anything that your 85 year old self would tell you what that could be?

[B]

I think about this a Lot. And I think that most people have deathbed regrets because it's easy to make them on your deathbed.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so basically we wish we could have lived six lives. And so the concept of regret basically is like, I wish I could have had. It's. I wish I could have had my cake and eaten it too. Right. I wish I could have lived the life as a musician and as the perfect husband and as the best businessman and as a professional health whatever. And I think it skews the idea of trade offs, which is what life is more realistically about, which is that you make trades given the information you had. And for me to wish for a different outcome would mean that I would wish for a different decision making algorithm, which would then massively change my life in general. Because saying, oh, I wish I had spent more time with my wife or whatever, if that meant it would have. People say, I wish I would have done this, but they don't accept the cost of that. Would you actually? Because the thing is that if you play all that all the way the other side, they might say, I wish I would have done this. I see this as fundamentally, we want to have everything and we can't. And for me, and that's okay.

[A]

What's the biggest regret that most billionaires have that you've talked to?

[B]

I don't talk to them about regrets. I talk about business with them. To be like really real. Like, the real answer is if I have an hour with a billionaire, I'm talking about money stuff.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

That's about it. I mean, what if I think about my younger self? Right. I'll play this out for you. So let's say today I'm not 85, but I'm in a very different time in my life than I was when I was 23, when I started 22, when I started my first gym. I know what that young man was going through and I know how hard he worked and how hard he wanted it. And if I were to look back at that young man and tell him what to do differently, if I were to go back, I would look at him and I would smile and I would say nothing.

[A]

Why?

[B]

Because I love the life I have and I wouldn't want to change anything right now.

[A]

You do? Yeah. You'd be like, whatever you're doing, whatever you're going to do, do it.

[B]

I wouldn't want to mess with it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. So like, I've already played if a time machine ever exists and an old version of me comes back and he says, Nothing and smiles. I'd be like, all right, all right, I'll keep going. Right, exactly. And so I think the regrets only happen if you, if you don't, if you dislike the present. Like that is where regret comes from. There's some part of the present that you. Right. But I spend all of my time doing the thing that I enjoy most. And I have to the criticism of the vast majority of people in my life, past, present and probably future. Like we were talking at the very beginning. Like I worked the first hundred days of this year, I didn't take a day off. And I've probably taken 11 days off since, you know, since the halfway point or whatever of the year. And I went on a vacation that was a two day vacation. And I left one day in. I got to this beautiful resort. Very expensive, you know, crazy, you know, 22 villas. That's all it is. Super high end, whatever. There's, there's a, like a three to one person who works there to you ratio. Like it's crazy. And I remember we had this beautiful view of this mountain. There's this lawn chair. I'm sitting on a fancy lawn chair. But I'm sitting there and I look out and I say to myself, this is beautiful and I don't give a shit, I don't care. And the thing is that there's this expectation of myself that I should care, I should take a vacation. But I think about how Recent is the five day work week. It's a 50, 60 year old concept. It's not something that happened for hundreds of years, for thousands of years for humans. This is a new thing.

[A]

People used to work every day.

[B]

Yeah, it's just life. That's what they call it.

[A]

You had to get up and work on the farm and take care of everything.

[B]

Your name was literally what you did. Carpenter, Butler, Taylor. Like all of these were names because what he was like, oh, John the Taylor, John the Butler, John. Like. And then eventually they just became names that we have now. The Smith. Like it's the same thing. And so I, I spend an inordinate amount of effort trying to remove every should from my life. Why should I go on vacation? Why should I go home for the holidays? Why should I call my mom once a week? Right now some people may disagree with me and that's fine. Live your life differently, that's okay. Do your thing.

[A]

I guess if you're unhealthy or you're exhausted or you're drained, you'll take the time to sleep and recover. You're not going to burn yourself out every day.

[B]

No. And so I think about output in terms of net output over a long period of time. So if I said, okay, you have to work as hard as you can for 24 hours and of course you take every stimulant in the world. You don't sleep because you only have 24 hours. But if I said do the most work you can in a month, then it doesn't really make sense to do that. Right. Because you really just want to maximize your effective time. And so that also means that you're going to have periods of rest and maybe it isn't working, you know, 18 hours every day. Maybe you're good on 14 hours a day, or maybe you're good on 12. That's going to be dependent on you. But I also think that your ability to work itself improves. And so like in the fitness world, there's something called work capacity, which is basically your ability to recover. But I think there's work capacity and work as well, like my ability to do work. So like I have like, you know, if you, if you speak on stage, right. And you do these press, you know this. So people are. If I were to say, hey, I'm gonna go do a hundred of these in a quarter, people might be like, that's insane. You did a hundred speaking events. Right. But if I were to say, I'm a university professor and I do eight of those a day because I have lecture halls that I give presentation to. Why is this different? It's only different. People say it is, that it should be different. You should be tired, you shouldn't travel that much, you should feel exhausted, whatever. And I'm like, why? And is there another alternative reality that I can ask, like the thousand years ago or the teacher that would make the current struggle that I have just par for Course. And if I can do that, then why don't I do it now?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so if, if my priorities change, I'll change my behavior. If in, if tomorrow I wake up and I say, you know what, I have enough money and my achievement goals no longer matter to me, then fine. But I believe that we're a whisper in the wind anyways. And so I think we just. I think life is hard, then you die.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's just what, what type of hard you want. This has already been, you know, talked to tears. But like in the business context, like, growth is stressful, stagnation is stressful, decline is stressful.

[A]

So disease is stressful.

[B]

Yeah. Life is stressful. And so to wish that life weren't stressful is to live is to wish to not be alive. Like, stress is just an indication that you are alive.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

That you exist. Congratulations. So that would actually be a positive thing. Again, all of these are just shoulds that people tell us. And so I just. I really push back on that a lot and try and keep my space and say, like, I'm going to do the things that I think increase the likelihood that I get what I want to have. And if someone has a problem with that, then they can. They can not be in my life. And that's okay because there's 8 billion other people and I'm sure there's one that's fine with it.

[A]

I'm glad you're in my life. I appreciate you. You've got two bestselling books that have sold over a million copies each. A hundred million offers, 100 million leads. We'll link those both up. You've got another book that you have coming out here in the future. We'll announce that when you're allowed to announce it. You've got a free $100 million scaling course, which I think is pretty cool. Where can people go to get that?

[B]

Just acquisition.com training. We just released it. I spent. Gosh. So I probably spent. I spent so many hours on this.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

I vetted it with three other billionaires and I walked through each of the stages and they were like, dude, I can't. Like, this is so accurate.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And so basically break down every stage of business across all functions, going from 0 to 100 million plus. So what does sales look like? What does marketing look like? What does customer service look like? What does product look like? What does it look like? What does HR look like? What does recruiting look like? What does finance look like across zero, which would be. You don't even have a business yet. Next stage is you graduate by making your first dollar. Next stage, you get your first employee, and then you basically scale all the way up from there. And so I got all the way to 500 employees, which for most businesses will be over 100 billion a year. I scaled it by headcount because headcount is more similar in terms of structure of business rather than revenue. Like a software company can have 20 guys and do 100 million a year, and then restaurant has 20 and does.

[A]

Yeah, right. Yeah.

[B]

And so. But the structure of the organization is more similar by headcount. And so basically walk through each of these as functions.

[A]

That's cool.

[B]

What must occur to move to the Next level. And so basically, you can take the roadmap assessment. It'll tell you where to go, it's all free, and it'll give you a personalized, like, plan of like, this is what you need to do your sales at this point. This is what you need to do advertising this point. And then there's videos that go with it. If you're more of a video learner. Wow.

[A]

So that's acquisition.com for that.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Just training, I think. Roadmap. It's forward slash, you know, backslash, whatever the slash is. Yeah, yeah, Roadmap.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

One word. I'm pretty sure that's what the URL is. Worst case, if you're gonna link it up dot com, you'll find. You'll find it.

[A]

You'll be up there somewhere.

[B]

Yeah, you'll find it. Where I will have failed as an advertiser. If you get.

[A]

How much. How many pieces of content are you putting out a day on all social media now?

[B]

65.

[A]

So if you want 65 pieces of content a day, go follow you lexhermozi on YouTube, Instagram, Hermozy, Facebook, Twitter, all the. All the places. This has been powerful, man. I'm grateful for you, for always sharing your heart. I'm glad to see that every year since two and a half years ago, there's been this, you know, new insights that pop up for you as you keep expanding and growing and learning and failing and winning. Mostly you continue to learn more and share more here. So we appreciate you here. We're grateful for you. We acknowledge you for constantly evolving. You know, it's like the last time I saw you, you were 50 pounds heavier of just mass. Now you're leaning because you're focused on longevity, which I think is really cool. But either way, man, we're grateful for you here. We appreciate you and we're excited to see what's next. Is there any final thing you want to share before we wrap up?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Never give up, my man. Appreciate you.

[B]

Appreciate you. Thanks for having me, man.

[A]

It's great, brother. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed this and if you found value, make sure to share this with one friend. Just copy and paste the link and text a friend where you feel would be truly inspired by this episode as well. And also make sure to click the follow button on Apple or Spotify, wherever you're listening to this episode because we have a massive episode coming up next that I do not want you to miss. So make sure to follow this and be on the lookout for the next episode coming with some massive content and guests. Also, I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy and if you are looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier, you want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to make moneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment. Moving forward, we have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to the next episode on the School of Greatness. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness+channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you of no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

[B]

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