Alex Hormozi on Skills That Actually Build Wealth, Part 2 (SB1785)

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Stacking Benjamins Show

Episode: Alex Hormozi on Skills That Actually Build Wealth, Part 2 (SB1785)

Date: January 2, 2026
Host(s): Joe Saul-Sehy ("Joe"), OG, Doug
Guest: Alex Hormozi

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Overview of Episode Theme

This special two-part episode finishes a deep-dive conversation with entrepreneur and wealth builder Alex Hormozi, focusing on practical skills, mindset shifts, and actions that meaningfully increase your earning potential, whether you’re an entrepreneur or in a traditional 9-to-5 role. The hosts take a dense interview with Hormozi and break down his most useful lessons for a broader audience, with a focus on skill stacking, strategic risk-taking, mentorship, value exchange, generosity, patience, and long-term thinking.

Tone: Upbeat, candid, and practical—filled with useful personal stories and gentle ribbing.

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Core Discussion Points & Insights

1. Reframing Mindsets for Wealth Building

• The most significant leaps in income come from self-belief and recognizing your ability to learn new skills, not just raw ability or waiting for promotions.

  "A lot of times it's the stuff that's between your ears…thinking, I can do this." — OG [03:42]

• Don’t wait for your boss or the universe to tell you what skills to learn. Create your own 'curriculum' by seeking and investing in the skills you need.

  "Spend a little bit of money... set up your own curriculum." — Joe [04:25]

2. Skill Stacking for Exponential Returns

• Stacking multiple high-value skills together (ex: sales + negotiation + digital marketing) compounds your value and opportunities.
• Invest in yourself ("S&Me") more than just in the markets ("S&P"). Only your own skills create exponential returns.

  "You're the only thing that can have exponential returns." — OG [04:57]

3. Negotiation as a Superpower

• Always ask "What would it take?" when seeking a raise or deal, as it assumes the answer can be 'yes' and invites problem-solving.

  "What would it take? Because it assumes yes." — Alex Hormozi [10:47]

4. The Value—and Limits—of Mentorship

• Mentorship is challenging to acquire for free, especially from people much further ahead; often, there’s little direct value for the mentor.
  • Pay for coaching or seek mentorship from those just a couple levels ahead for the best exchange.

  "Try and go to a local business owner who's one or two levels ahead of you...that guy might be able to say, sure, you can take my coffee." — Alex Hormozi [11:17]

• Instead of broadly seeking mentorship, get specific: buy targeted coaching or ask for specific skill advice.

  "It's less about mentorship than...I want you to teach me this specific skill that I need." — Joe [19:56]

• Bartering skills (give what you have, learn what you need) is underutilized and powerful, especially early in your career.

  "Barter, I think, is wildly underutilized." — Alex Hormozi [26:23]

5. The 'Drug Dealer' (Generosity) Model

• Give away your best, not your worst, work or ideas for free. It draws people in and forces you to keep growing.

  "What it feels like when you give away stuff that's truly valuable is there's a little bit of fear...but it forces me to then backfill skill-wise." — Alex Hormozi [31:43]

  • Applied to both entrepreneurship and 9-to-5 life: Be the genuine go-to person (“the expert who helps everyone around you”), not just someone who’s looking to “suck up to the boss.”
  • Generosity (when intentional) builds goodwill and can become a form of negotiation because others advocate for you behind your back.

  "You are the expert and I'm giving your department something that I don't have to give you from my department...people will promote you from below." — Joe [39:34]

6. Risk and the Cost of Inaction

• Not taking action, or sticking only to what’s safe, is itself the biggest risk—termed here as paying "ignorance debt."

  "You're probably paying a million dollars a year in ignorance debt." — Alex Hormozi [08:48]

• Early failures or “losses” are necessary:

  "Get the loss out of the way. Get the no out of the way, because you're going to have it." — Alex Hormozi [55:03]

7. The Power of Specificity & Taking Action

• Reading and preparatory knowledge (declarative) only goes so far; you must take action (procedural knowledge) to truly learn and grow.

  "You'll learn more from doing a hundred cold calls... than you will from reading all the sales books..." — Alex Hormozi [51:46] "[Some people] know everything, but have done none of it." — OG [53:47]

8. Patience as a Byproduct of Skill

• The more skilled you become in an area, the more “wins” you can see and sustain yourself with, making patience easier.

  "The more skilled you become, the more patient you become, because you have more ways to win in the meantime." — Alex Hormozi [65:04]

• True patience comes not just from waiting but from focusing on the right activities.

9. The Principle of 'One Thing' and Ruthless Prioritization

• Major change comes from identifying and focusing on the one crucial action or skill that will eliminate or render irrelevant many others.

  "If you can get really clear on that one thing, then you can do something that makes every one of your other goals irrelevant." — Alex Hormozi [56:24]

• Focus is defined by the quantity and quality of things you say "no" to.

  "I define focus as the quantity and quality of things that you say no to." — Alex Hormozi [58:16]

10. Hiring, Delegation, and Personal Constraints

• Whether to hire, automate, or learn a new skill depends on risk-adjusted return and your own unique constraints.

  "The unsexy answer is it depends... you have to evaluate personally." — Alex Hormozi [61:43]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On asking for mentorship:

  "I have people to take my coffee for me that aren't going to then think, I got you a coffee, teach me. That values my time at $3." — Alex Hormozi [09:47]

• On the real risk of stagnation:

  "Most folks don't [take risk]. And that's why they stay poor and they stay small and they stay insignificant." — Alex Hormozi [55:33]

• On the bartering mindset:

  "I was a collector of IOUs...I helped all of them...and then I was the one who was better off..." — Alex Hormozi [26:59]

• On listening to advice:

  "You have to listen to the people who are closest to your goals, not closest to you." — Alex Hormozi [45:40]

• On action trumping knowledge:

  "Get the first one out of the way." — Alex Hormozi [52:58]

• On the danger of limiting beliefs:

  "A lot of adulthood is fundamentally unlearning things and choosing to know that you believe your beliefs for your own reasons." — Alex Hormozi [46:49]

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------------| | 03:03 | Setting up the key mindset: reframing skill & risk | | 08:48 | Hormozi defines "ignorance debt" and importance of negotiation | | 09:27 | The challenge of mentorship—the value exchange dilemma | | 10:47 | Negotiation tactic: "What would it take?" | | 16:03 | Organizational mentorship—target people 1-2 levels ahead| | 26:23 | Hormozi's barter/bartering skills approach | | 31:34 | The "drug dealer" model—give away your best work | | 39:34 | Generosity as an internal career strategy (corporate translation) | | 45:40 | Whose advice to actually listen to | | 51:46 | Do, don't just read: action as the best teacher | | 56:24 | Ruthless prioritization: focus on the single most important thing | | 61:43 | When to hire, when to automate, when to learn yourself | | 64:02 | Patience, skills, and how to sustain progress over time|

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Actionable Takeaways

1. Focus on the one lever that makes most other activities unnecessary.

“Circle the one thing on the board—do that, say no to everything else.” [56:24]

2. Stack new, valuable skills deliberately over time—don’t wait for someone to tell you which ones.

3. Be intentional about mentorship and coaching. Ask specifically for what you want, and consider paying or reciprocal bartering with those just ahead of you.

4. Generously give away your best skills and knowledge—not to curry favor, but as an investment in relationship capital and your own growth.

5. Take risks and be willing to fail up front; the cost of no action (ignorance debt) is far greater than the cost of early losses.

6. Patience grows with skill—seek interim “wins” as feedback to maintain progress over the long term.

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Memorable Closing

"Build skill, stack skills in 2025 stackers, and then realize it's not about what you know, it's about what you do. Use that to negotiate, and you're off and running." — Joe [65:44]

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For more from Alex Hormozi:

• Alex’s books: $100M Offers, $100M Leads
• More info at acquisition.com

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Top 3 Takeaways Reiterated (as given by Doug)

1. Do more—but focus on the core activities that eliminate other tasks and maximize ROI.
2. Use skill stacking to your advantage—build on your unique strengths and outpace the competition.
3. Make 2025 a year of action, skill-building, generosity, and patient, focused growth.

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A pivotal episode for anyone looking to radically transform their earning power, career, and confidence—from entry-level to executive, freelancer to entrepreneur.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, Stackers. Welcome back to a rare, very rare second episode in one day of the Stacking Benjamin show. And Doug, I can see the look in your eye. You're like, let's get this recorded because I just want to get a breakfast burrito.

[B]

I can't even think anymore, dude. I, I just, you know, like in the cartoons where there's the two like the penguin and the something else in the life raft and the. They just see the other one is food. That's all. I'm looking at you and I just see a giant burrito for your face.

[C]

There was the Simpsons I was watching the other day where grandpa Simpson was recounting a story when he was in the war and he got stranded on an island with Mr. Burns. They were both like fighter pilots and it was a holiday episode so they ran into Santa Claus. That's how they were rescued. Anyway, grandpa Simpson is talking about how he had been on the island so long, even Mr. Burns was looking good. And it turned Mr. Burns into this bikini model and he turns out he goes, eyes up here, sailor, like the best Mr. Burns voice ever. It's like, that was so great.

[A]

Well, we're finishing up our holiday week with episode two of our two part series with Alex Hermosi. Happy holiday season everybody. I hope you enjoyed our special holiday extravaganza week and a half of programming. Monday. We are back in the basement making magic for 2026. All right, Doug, you get to go get your burrito. The rest of us, Alex. Hero Part two. I look out my window and I.

[C]

See my neighbor Doug.

[A]

Poor, lazy, deplorable Doug.

[B]

Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's a special edition of of the Stacking Benjamin show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor Doug. And on today's show, part two of our discussion with a guy who makes millions and helps others make millions. Alex Hormozi. On Wednesday we built the foundation and today we'll share more tactics to build your income in 2025. And now two guys who are honed in and ready to help you stack more Benjamins. It's Joe and. Oh, J.J. ju Ju G I've run.

[C]

Him out of breath.

[A]

Welcome to the guy who needs to maybe do a little bit more cardio.

[B]

I did that whole thing on one take air.

[A]

Hey stackers. Happy happy New Year. If this is your first time with us in 2025, I may advise you to first go back and listen to part one of this episode. But for those of you who are going to Push through. Maybe you're. You're out on a run or snowshoeing, or you're in the shower and you can't get to the rewind, but I don't know.

[B]

Don't make it weird. Joe.

[A]

All the reasons why you're going to start with this episode. Let's set the stage. I went out to Las Vegas to interview Alex Horosi, who is a guy who went from zero to $26 million by the end of year two working, and he now makes hundreds of millions of dollars. And we are obviously, if you read the title of this, going to teach you to make a lot more money. Maybe it's not $100 million like the title says, but we're going to get you way on your way. And I think, OG we already set the stage there that this is all about just reframing your thinking, isn't it? Yeah.

[C]

I mean, the difference between $100,000 income and $200,000 and $300,000 and $500,000 has something to do with skill and ability, but it has a lot more to do with your ability to recognize that you have the ability to do those skills. It's obviously contingent on other people recognizing your ability to do those skills in a lot of cases. But a lot of times it's the stuff that's between your ears thinking, like, I can do this. I have the ability to make this happen in my life. Now I just have to figure out how I'm going to do those things as opposed to having the limiting beliefs of, well, only those types of people can make those types of decisions or make that kind of money.

[A]

Yeah. And some of the highlights from the first half of this episode to me are this idea of skill stacking by thinking to yourself, what are the skills that I'm going to need to succeed? And going and getting them, really. OG setting up your own curriculum. Don't wait for your boss to do it. Don't wait for the universe to do it. Spend a little bit of money and what did he call it? The S and me versus the S and P. Sure, you want to invest in The S&P 500 is you're throwing off money, but you certainly want with your career to invest in SME.

[C]

You're the only thing that can have exponential returns. The market is going to have great returns. If you invest your money, you're going to get 10%. That's what we know, S and P to return over history. So that's great. But that's not a hundred times returns or 10x or 100x or whatever the 100x 10x big giant leaps are going to happen from the stuff that you do.

[A]

And then second for me was this idea that what's the one thing I can do? What's the one thing that will eliminate five other things that are suboptimal? If I can simplify my life, then. And I'm constantly just working on this one thing that makes my life easier. I think that is a. Is a huge piece. And then the third og and this is where we left off. We left off on this idea of risk. Do things other people think are risky, but because you're an expert in them, there's not nearly the risk for you that there would be for other people.

[C]

Again, I think this just boils down to reframing things in your mind. You know, Doug made a great point at the end of the first episode, which was, you know, we think that the W2 job is super secure, but it has risk too. It's just a different kind. As long as you recognize that you're taking some amount of risk in virtually all your decisions that you do, I think you're a step ahead in kind of conquering maybe a little bit of that fear.

[A]

We have some sponsors that make sure that this is all free while you're on your journey to make more money. We're going to hear from them. And then we are diving into Alex Hormozi Part 2.

[C]

Get ready for the Rush with Max Crosby.

[D]

It's time.

[C]

Don't miss the behind the scenes moments everyone's talking about, regardless of what they say.

[D]

I'll take the fine. I don't care.

[C]

All pro defensive end Max Crosby takes you beyond the field with exclusive insights.

[D]

I could say this because I've played them.

[C]

This is the Rush.

[D]

You guys already know what time it is. It was fire. And we'll be right back on the pod. We'll be talking about it next week.

[C]

The Rush with Max Crosby. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.

[A]

American Skyjacker tells the story of DB Cooper copycat Martin McNally who hijacked a plane and jumped out with $500,000. But that's just the start of this epic true crime saga. Now American Skyjacker is an action packed documentary available on all all major platforms. Go to americanskyjacker.com to subscribe to the podcast and watch the film. And look out for a new bonus episode of the podcast coming soon. American Skyjacker. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. For those of you that Missed part one. What we're doing today is parsing this interview with Alex because it's so dense with good stuff. Alex also has a tendency to speak to entrepreneurs because that is his core audience. However, this all applies to people working a 9 to 5 job as much as it applies to entrepreneurs. That's why OG and I are going out to my previously recorded interview in Las Vegas and then pausing it. And we're breaking it down for you so that you can see how, even though you might think this doesn't apply to you at first, 95% of this, I think, applies to all of us if you're looking to increase your income. All right, let's go back out to Las Vegas. And me and Alex Hormozy, we did a story back in the fall of last year looking at a wonderful piece where the person that wrote it said, we all look at risk in our investment portfolio, but we don't look at risk through the lens of our career. Which is exactly what you're saying. I'm very comfortable in my 9 to 5 job making $60,000 a year. I wonder why I don't have any money, and it's because my damn stocks and my 401k aren't going up. When the truth is, you should probably be out there learning negotiation.

[D]

And right now, you're probably paying a million dollars a year in ignorance debt, the debt that you pay to the universe for not knowing.

[A]

I love that tough love messaging. Kind of the Gordon Ramsey, like, just sometimes we need it, though. I said, seriously, here at the start of the year, like, I love having those people in my corner, which actually, that's a good pivot, Alex, because we spoke to Seth Godin back in October, and I asked Seth about mentorship. And you've talked before in your books that I've read that you've had mentors. Seth gave me a really surprising answer. He goes, mentorship is tough because there's not much in it for the mentor. Is it much more about finding coaches and, to your point, paying them through the curriculum, or is there a way to find mentors that maybe the great Seth Godin doesn't know?

[D]

Oh, it's tough. Okay, so I'm going to split this into two parts. So one, if you have nothing, then you usually have nothing to offer. So go save up your shekels and then pay somebody to learn stuff. When I wanted to learn, you've got nothing to trade.

[A]

I'm just going to Alex and going, hey, man, can I learn from you?

[D]

Yeah, I had A guy. You know, I get stopped a lot and people are like, hey, let me take your coffee for you.

[A]

Like, well, that surprises me. No, I'm kidding.

[D]

I have four executive assistants who are all incredibly capable. I have people to take my coffee for me that aren't going to then think, I got you a coffee. Teach me. Right, like, so that values my time at $3. No, and I understand that the person who says that, the reason they say that is because they don't understand the value of time and they don't understand value exchange to begin with, which is why they're poor to start with. So I get that. But, yes, you save up your shackles and then you buy skills. And when I say that, I'm a huge believer in one on one tutoring. When I needed to learn Facebook ads at a more advanced level, I went to an agency owner and I said, hey, can you do the ads for me? And he said, a lot of money. And I couldn't afford it at the time, so I said, well, how about I'll just pay you hourly to teach me? He's like, well, I don't sell my time. And I said, well, it's America. Everybody sells their time. I said, just tell me how much. And so he said, $750 an hour. And so it's huge amount for me, right? And so I said, okay. And so I recorded everything. I said, the only deal is that you can't touch the keyboard.

[A]

But wait, but can I stop you right there? The key thing here is that you didn't take no for an answer. Because I feel like a lot of the time he goes, hey, this huge amount of money, and what do we. What do 95% of us do, Alex? We walk out of the room. I can't do it.

[D]

Yeah, it's somebody else's fault. One of my favorite questions to ask when you want something is, what would it take? Because it assumes, yes, what would it take? I won't let you marry my daughter. What would it take? What do I have to do? Because then they give you an equation, then you can just solve it. And it's probably my number one strategy for negotiation too. When you go in for and ask for the raise, don't say, I would like to make $180,000. Say, what would it take for me to make 180 grand a year here? What would I have to do? And then you can make the assessment of whatever the equation they give you. If you think that's reasonable, you can do it to the caveat of spending money on tutors, coaching, whatever. I'm a huge advocate. I mean, I'm a product of that. On the other hand, with the mentorship thing, I've had very few unpaid mentors. I have had people who spotted me as a rising star and wanted to develop a relationship with me because they thought I would get at their level or pass them. That's honestly what's happened in my life. The piece that people miss is they try and go to Elon Musk and say, hey, can you mentor me for free? He's a hundred levels above you. Try and go to a local business owner who's one or two levels ahead of you, and then ask there you can provide more value to them. That guy might be able to say, sure, you can take my coffee. Right? Because he doesn't have anybody to take his coffee. So he does have a deficiency that low skill labor will solve. But the higher up you go, the higher you have to trade skilled labor and higher skilled labor in order to get your foot in the door.

[A]

I want to stop him right there because I think this is a really important concept. Oh, gee. And how many times have you been asked for mentorship? I've been asked for mentorship by somebody who wants to, quote, get you coffee or just wants to pick your brain for a moment when you're at an industry conference, wants to go out to dinner. There's a person I know that just wants to go to dinner and then pepper me with questions about how I can make her life easier. Which, truly, I'm not a quid pro quo kind of person. But I'm busy.

[C]

Right.

[A]

Alex is busy. You've got these things that you're working on. Like, that's why Seth Godin said that mentorship is. There's nothing in it for the mentor.

[C]

I think it's kind of interesting. Yeah, Doug's gonna jump in here too, because he's got some experience there. But I think that the further up the food chain that you go, the more you have to recognize that the time that you have has to be used on ultra productive activities. And part of the problem, I don't even know that it's a problem, but one of the things that I think you face. Joe, One of the things that I face is when people ask you for help, which is basically what they're saying, right? In some roundabout way, could you help me do this thing? Could you help me be better at this thing that I suck at? I think if you've got some amount of, you know, a Little bit of heart. You want to help, right? And you're like.

[D]

I can probably do.

[C]

A little time, you know, and you feel somewhat obligated to do that. What I heard him say was, no, get out of my way. I have people for this. I don't need your $3 an hour conversation. And, and very ungracefully, and I'm sure he's okay with that saying, I'm a hundred levels above you. Like his example of Elon Musk.

[A]

Can we stop right there for a second with Elon Musk, too? Because the other thing that strikes me is if you're asking Hormozi for help, the reason why you and I are parsing this episode is because so much of it seems so dense and seems like it wouldn't help you. That idea with the guy who's a level or two ahead of you or the woman who's a level or two ahead of you, they will be able to help you because you're going to make a connection because they're closer to doing the stuff that you're doing now. And they can help show you the way to level up three levels. Right now, Hormozi is going to have a hell of a time trying to help you level up 100 levels in an hour over.

[C]

Well, to be fair, a lot of those resources that he has, he already has the manual for levels one through 50, right? It's his book, it's his ebook, it's his course. It's, you know, there's ways to interact with his thinking that doesn't require buying him coffee. Same thing with Elon Musk. And frankly, the same thing at any level. Honestly, I have a group. I'm thinking about this in the context of the group of friends that are business owners, firm owners like us. And there's some people that are a little bit ahead of us. There's people that are a lot a.

[A]

Bit ahead of us.

[C]

There's people that are, you know, there's eight of us together, right? We're all good friends, but we all have different. We're all in different stages in terms of our business and in terms of our growth plan and what we want to do and that sort of thing. But I think that is a fair mutual exchange of ideas and conversation because we're all striving for the same thing. And some people are a little ahead and behind in different areas. Whereas if I did the. Hey, Joe, I'm starting a podcast. Can you help me? You're like, that's so broad based. I don't even know where to start. Like, do you need help picking technology? Do you need help picking a theme? Do you need help finding an editor? Do you need help scripting? Like, I don't know where you are, but if we're in a room with podcasters who've been doing it five or 10 years, we're not at the same level, you know, but we're all kind of there, been there, done that a little bit, and maybe one person.

[A]

We also may be ahead of each other in different aspects. I might be better than them at creation, they might be better at marketing.

[C]

Exactly. So that's a really great solution to this. Like, how do you find this network? A, you can, you know, just try to build it your own. But if you're in an organization. Doug disagrees vehemently. I can tell the anger on his face.

[B]

This whole thing is pissing me off.

[A]

Why?

[C]

Well, let me just finish real quick. I think if you're in an organization, work with the people that are around you and a level or two above and a level or two behind. I don't know that you go to the CEO and ask for mentorship, you know what I mean? But you can ask your manager, you can ask your manager's manager or put that group together and say, hey, there's 10 of us and we're all kind of on the same path, different offices, you know, that sort of thing. Now take everything I said, Doug, and throw it in the trash and tell me why.

[B]

I mean, it's this whole notion that I'm too busy and I'm way too far above you and ahead of you. My time is too valuable is the most selfish thing that, that I can think of hearing. I've been asked to be a mentor a few times. You know, I'd like it to be more. It's an incredible compliment and I'm really gratified by even being asked. I love and get an enormous value out of being able to share any kind of personal or professional experience I have with somebody who's looking to learn, especially a young person. It's just really gratifying for me and it always has been. Now, what I will say occasionally to folks, sometimes I've said it upfront and other times I've had to say it a little bit further down the line is I really like doing this, spending this time with you in a true sort of mentor, student, mentor, mentee context, not as a business networking thing. Because then it absolutely does feel like it's a one sided, only truly benefiting One person, if they're really trying to get to me because they want my Rolodex, they want my contact book, I can't use Rolodex anymore. It's too old. I didn't even ever have a Rolodex in my lifetime.

[C]

Your Filofax?

[A]

I had one. It was just fun to spin.

[B]

It's fun to watch that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Watch the paper flow.

[A]

I didn't really use it much. I just spun it.

[B]

Yeah, that's crappy. And when you get four meetings in and then the person says can you introduce me to. Do you know anybody who might. That's annoying because then it really feels like this whole thing was much more one sided all along. So I usually get that out of the way up front. And then if it's truly just a what can you share with me? I get so much out of that. To say there's nothing in it for me is horse. That is really. I'm disappointed to hear that notion.

[A]

I think we got to go to the through line here, Doug of why they why we heard the same thing from Seth Godin who clearly is incredibly successful and Alex Hormozi who very much. You know, he didn't say I agree with Seth, but he agrees with Seth. He said the same thing to me that Seth Godin said. So if these two ultra successful people are saying it, what's the point? The point is I think much more if I'm seeking free mentorship. You have to realize how little there is ostensibly in it for the mentor. Maybe for me they is something in it. But that's for me. That's not for you to assume when you come up to me that this is going to be all glorious and hey Joe, you're going to love this. You're going to love working me because it is stellar, it's awesome.

[B]

I don't need to. That is not incumbent on me or dependent on me to know your attitude towards this. If I admire you and think that you're somebody that I want to mirror and my progression, I'm going to take.

[A]

A shot at it. I think Koi nails it value people's time fairly and he likes paying for knowledge. He likes paying for knowledge. I think paying for knowledge in the way that suits you best. However you're going to pay for it creates an exchange on the mentees part that makes it valuable for everybody. Why am I going to come in and offer zero value in a relationship and just expect that that's going to go well versus come in, come in with value.

[B]

Never learn from a student of yours.

[A]

That's on me, Doug. That's not on the mentee. I'm. I'm thinking the mentee gets a hell of a lot more value by thinking about approaching this relationship from the point of what can I bring to the table? Goen says, you're bringing nothing to the table. Her Mosi says, you're bringing nothing to the table. Figure out how to bring something to the table. Horosi says, figure out how to pay for it. At the time, 750 bucks was a lot of money, but he paid for it. He's like, yes, I want to know this thing now. What else is cool, too, is it's less about mentorship than it is, I need this skill. Notice how Hormozi on Wednesday and then again today is going back to not, I want you to mentor me. It's, I want you to teach me this specific skill that I need. I want this specific skill transactional.

[B]

And I don't think mentor mentee relationships need to be transactional. It's about giving back. I've had a lot of mentors that I learned from, and I probably got more out of the relationship than they did. So now it's my time to. To add balance, and my mentee is going to get more, hopefully more out of it than I do.

[A]

Walk in and assume that that's what I'm going to get out of it. When I have a limited amount of time is BS And I have had too many people waste my time in something that was supposedly going to be just, you know, a great mentor relationship. I could go into those, but some of those people might be listening to the show, and I don't want to offend them.

[B]

Too late. They're all wondering right now.

[C]

I'm sorry, Joe, for the 10th time, I'm sorry that I asked you to mentor me. You don't have to out me like that. I think that it's okay for it to be transactional. I also respect the fact that Seth Godin and Alex Hormozi are at a profoundly different level than I am or Joe or even Doug is in terms of professional status, so to speak. That doesn't mean that, you know, what you guys offer are any better or worse for different people. But I do respect the idea that if he just said, oh, yeah, it is about giving back, like, his inbox would be so overwhelmed with, like, he has to set some value on that, some amount. There's just not enough hours in the day to help everybody. But if you don't have the $750 an hour and you still need this skill, there's platforms for this that you can get all of these knowledge things or all of these resources. Something as simple as Masterclass, which is. I don't even know how much it is now. A hundred dollars a year or $200 a year, you can pick through. Here are the things that I want to learn about, and they're constantly updating, you know, so it doesn't have to be like an all or nothing value proposition. I either get Alex Hormozi or I'm screwed. I either get Bob Iger to teach me about leadership or I'm screwed. There's a middle ground. You can buy his book. I've got Alex's book right here on my desk. You can watch the podcast episode. You can, you know, use the platform like Masterclass or skillshare or whatever the case may be, and. And have some sort of combo plan along the way, which makes it a little bit easier. But the thing is, is that you have to identify. It's on you. You can't just show up to Masterclass and hit play. You have to go, I need to learn how to X. And then who's the person? How do I get them? Okay, I can't afford Hormozy because he's a freaking million dollars an hour. I can't afford Doug because he's a dollar an hour.

[B]

That's before discounts.

[C]

And you got to figure out where that skill is, who has it, how do I get it? And sometimes the answer is I get it digitally. Sometimes I show up at Doug's house and say, hey, you're really good at this. I think the big lesson for me here is that you have to respect that other person. And one of the challenges that I think young. I don't want to say young people. I think some people have, is not recognizing that Alex's time is, quote, unquote, worth more than my time. In his eyes, right in Alex's eyes, he's like, I'm billing a million an hour. And I'm going to him going, I'm billing 800 an hour. I'm billing $8 an hour. I could go talk to Alex in line at the coffee shop, and he's like, dude, no. Nope, I got. I make a million dollars an hour, bro. This has got to be worth it. Now, maybe you get that opportunity, like Doug said, to give back or whatever the case may be, but I don't know that you can go into it expecting that. So I think that's a different.

[A]

I think it's a whole different thing.

[C]

Find the skill that you want and then work through it to figure out the best way to acquire that skill. I mean, there's 10,000 ways to get Facebook ad skills, for example.

[A]

And two more points here. Number one is early in the conversation on Wednesday, early in this entire conversation, he talked about calculating your dollars per hour. And then if you start thinking about dollars per hour that you have, I think you get this sense of if your goal is to make more money. The leveling system that he's using. Right. I don't necessarily think that means Alex Harmozi, just to be clear, is a better human being than Joe Salsihai is. It just means that when it comes to me trying to gain that skill that he already has, he is late years ahead of me on that skill. The second thing, though, that I think is really important here is we talked about the importance of negotiation. This isn't just about gaining skills. It's about being able to negotiate. And I want to reiterate what I said to him in Vegas, which is he didn't take no for an answer. When the guy goes, yeah, it's not for sale. Well, yes, it is. I love that. I think that it's just not taking no and saying, what will it take? What will it take? I agree with him. There, too, is a wonderful, wonderful question to ask.

[D]

So it's like you need to just have this tool belt of skills that you can bring to the table so that you can provide outsized returns to somebody.

[A]

I think the next step then would be to realize that that relationship from the beginning is not meant to be permanent. Like, you learn what you can in six hours, six weeks, whatever it is, and you need to move on.

[D]

Yeah. And I think that's okay. And I think, honestly, the biggest way that I learned skills that I don't think I even talk about this is I had one skill in the beginning. I knew how to sell. I just went to everyone and was like, I can help you sell more. And so I joined a network way back in the day with like a hundred entrepreneurs in it. I just went to every one of them and said, hey, I can help you with your sales process.

[A]

It's like a BNI kind of thing. Yeah.

[D]

Or I don't know. Bni. Is that like a networking business network? Exactly. You had to pay to get in, but whatever.

[A]

Sure.

[D]

Right. Everyone was like, okay, sure. And so I would hop on. But the thing was, is that I did the work as though they had paid me. And so I thought, okay, if this person had paid me $10,000 or $20,000 to make a super comprehensive sales plan and improvement for them, what would I do? Right? And so I did that level of work, and I would work for three hours, five hours, a whole day. So that when I talk to them for 30 minutes, they're like, holy crap, I can't believe this guy did this. And then at the end of the call, they would be like. They would say something like, dude, this is way too much. I can't believe you did, like, what can I do for you, dude? Like, and I'd be like, you know how to run Facebook ads? Show me that.

[A]

Come to the table with something, right?

[D]

And so I would. And the thing is just like, I didn't trade it. I gave it. And then if they asked, then I was like, actually, really, if you could show me to build a landing page. And this was. I didn't know how to build a webinar. There was a lady in the thing that knew how to build webinars, and I helped her with their sales team. And then I was like, can you help me build a webinar? And she said, sure. And then there was another guy who was really good at email. And I was like, I don't know how to send an email. I was like, but I can help you through sales. So I did the sales. And so barter, I think, is wildly underutilized. And so I learned so many skills from that network. Cause I just looked at everybody there, and I was like, what does everyone here have that I don't? And so I just went shopping, and I just shopped via barter. And I think this is so underused, because everyone's afraid of, what if I give them something and they don't give anything back?

[C]

Great.

[D]

You just help somebody. And what I like to do is like, I'm a collector of IOUs. I'm happy to get there at the very end. And they're like, what can I do for you? And I'm like, nothing, man. Just happy to help. They're like, that guy's awesome. Because the amount of deals that I've done, two years later, calling somebody up and being like, hey, I need a distributor for supplements. And I know you know somebody in that space. They're like, got you. Don't worry about it. Because I did such a big favor for them before that they're like, this is the easiest thing I can do. But the amount of lubrication for getting things done, that having a network of IOUs, this big stack of checks that I can cash in at any time, has been invaluable for me, and especially when I had less money. In the beginning, it was all I did. I got voted the person of the year for that community because I. I helped all of them. And then I was the one who was better off because it was kind of like there was a show back in the day called Heroes where, like, one of the main characters could absorb other heroes skills.

[A]

I forgot.

[D]

Peter Petrelli, NBC, I think. Yeah, yeah. And so I saw it like that, which is like, if you can join a network, then it's like, I'm just going to absorb everyone's skills. And so I think also if you work in an organization, instead of saying, hey, I'm going to go to finance and ask them to teach me finance, go and teach them stuff. And then let them say, do you have any, like, what can I do for you? And you're like, dude, if you could show me how you do these financials, that'd be really helpful. Or like, hey, you go to the content guys and you're like, hey, how do you edit videos? Can you show me? And if you do something for them first, they're very likely to help you out.

[A]

Leading with the gift og that kiss. I love the idea of a stack of IOUs. All these people feel like, man, I owe this guy big time. I mean, the goodwill he's spreading around this BNI group by doing this work. I think, though I want to caution people here, I think he's still got to be intentional. Like, it's clear that Hormozi is intentional about this, right? He knows where he's going, he knows what he's building. I've seen people do all kinds of free work for people, and, you know, that doesn't put any food on the table. But if you clearly have a mission where I'm doing this to receive this skill in the future, then I think that makes a ton of sense.

[C]

Well, there's two things here. One is kind of that law of reciprocity, which is you do something for somebody, somebody else wants to do something for you. That's just kind of how the world has existed for a long time. But I also think that if you go into it with that sort of, you know, commission breath type of thing, then people will see through it. Kind of like what Doug was saying about his mentorship relationships, where all of a sudden it's like, hey, by the way, I know you know this one guy and I've got an investment idea I need to run by him. Can you hook me up? People will see through that pretty quickly. If you're going to use this approach, you have to go into it fully. Okay. With not getting anything in return and not getting the thing that you want out of it.

[A]

A hundred percent.

[C]

Yeah, I can tactically go well. I think Joe's really good at podcasting, but he sucks at this, so maybe if I help him, he'll turn on. But if you expect that a Joe will figure that out, you'll see it coming a mile away and then you'll be disappointed and maybe a little even resentful. I think the thing that he said that I wrote down was this person hired me for 10 or $20,000. What would I do? Like, they haven't paid me, but if they hired my top tier package, how would my deliverable look like? What would be the value that I would provide, assuming that they've already written the check? And if you have the ability to be excellent in an area like that and you can leverage that skill for other people, the sky's the limit. The fact that more and more people will reciprocate, it's just kind of a self feeding system.

[D]

So.

[C]

So, I mean, it's a great idea.

[A]

We are going to dive even more into tactics that Harmosi used. A couple of these ones that are coming up are just incredible.

[B]

Hi, I'm Derek, and when I'm not.

[C]

Working on the hook for Joe's mom's next greatest rap album, I'm stacking Benjamin's Baby.

[A]

All right, let's head back out to Las Vegas and my interview with Alex. Rosi, you've got a phenomenal way of presenting stuff. I love the fact that in all the works that you've done, you avoid jargon, which I appreciate very much. And as you know, in personal finance, Alex, that's so hard to do. I mean, we're talking, what the hell is a Roth IRA? What the hell's a 401K? Why don't we call it what the Canadians call it, like a retirement plan.

[D]

Sure.

[A]

One way you get around jargon is in using stories. And a way you present this in a similar topic is to come at life like you're a drug dealer. And I read that, like, I'm sure a bunch of your audience read that. And I'm like, what? I don't know if I like it. And you're like, wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold on. Explain that Thought process because it really does make a ton of sense when you tell us what you're doing. And by the way, he ends this story in his audiobook by going, and make sure it's legal.

[D]

You know, the famous drug dealer offers the first hits free. We want to give away stuff that's so good that people, once they try it, they can't get enough of it and they want to come back.

[A]

And nobody wants to give away their best stuff though.

[D]

Right. And I think, and fundamentally that's a scarcity perspective. All I can tell you is that what it feels like when you give away stuff that's truly valuable is there's a little bit of fear. I have to get to that point for myself still today because just the things that I can give away now are more valuable than the stuff I could give away 10 years ago. But when you're afraid it's because it's the best stuff you have. When it's the best stuff you have, it might just barely be good enough for someone to find valuable. And so the idea that somebody who's a novice is going to hold back on value when the value they have is probably not even that good to begin with. I think constantly giving away value, that's the most valuable thing I can give has forced me to then backfill skill wise and be like, well, what else do I need to learn so that I can give something even more valuable after that thing?

[A]

It puts fantastic pressure on you to make the curriculum even deeper. You have to get your own curriculum.

[D]

Totally.

[A]

That is, it's just, it's such a powerful message. And it's funny because when I learned how to be a financial planner and I haven't been one in a long time, salespeople taught me, no, no, no, hold your cards like this. Don't show anything until they, until you give it away. And it was only when I started giving it away. So I was high fiving you.

[D]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[A]

You don't know that when I was.

[D]

Reading it, I think it's the difference between promotion and selling. Right. In sales, it's like you want to have things in your back pocket so that you can basically increase the price to vow discrepancy in real time. Whereas to promote and attract people, you need to give something so valuable that they break their pattern of not paying attention to you and then direct their attention your way. And it's gotta be, I mean, the sub headline of the book A Hundred Million Dollar offers is how to make an offer so good people feel stupid Saying, no, it's not how to make a mediocre offer that looks like everybody else is in the marketplace. And most people do that. I, I had a bunch of business owners out here last week. A lot of them were like, I want to have an affiliate program. I want to have a program where other businesses can refer me business. And so I looked out at them and I was like, who here, raise your hand, gives 20% to people who refer you business? And almost all of them raised their hand and I was like, cool, so why don't you guys do that? Because it's not worth it. Why are you going to take this hard earned customer that you have, you spent all that time marketing, selling, delivering all this stuff and then you're like, yeah, I'm just going to hand them to you for 20% of whatever you charge, right? Who cares, right? If you want to make, I'm just using this as a microcosm. But if you wanted to make an affiliate deal, I say take your service, peel off a portion of it, one actual core service you have, give it to somebody else and say you can sell it and keep all the money and I'll deliver it. And then when you deliver it, what do you get? You get a paid lead. You get a lead who's literally already a customer. And so then upselling from there is obvious. And so that's like there was a speak in finance terms. There's a friend of mine who has a very large bookkeeping company and he gives away LLC incorporation. And I think like, wow, yeah. And it's like it costs whatever hard cost on that, you know, market cost is a couple hundred bucks usually to get that incorporated whatnot. He could probably do it for 50 bucks because of internal systems or whatever. And so if you think about it like this, which is like, okay, his hard cost is 50 bucks and he has to give it away to three people to get one customer. Okay. Then his CAC's 150 and then he sells them bookkeeping services, business banking cards, all these other things on the back end, a lot of people aren't willing to give away things for free because they don't do math. And so to your point earlier, like you have to come in with a giver's heart. I don't even know if I've come in with a giver's heart. I think I just come in with a math heart, which is like, okay, I will give to a hundred people and I will be able to get 10 of these people to do something that will be worth more than the cost of giving to a hundred. And I think that's the piece that people miss, is that it's not about the 90 who don't give you anything. It's that what you make in the 10 makes you so much more than what you lost in the hundred.

[A]

This is OG where this idea early on, the foundational stuff that we set, this idea of risk. There is risk in this approach. There's real, real risk that I am going to give away the best stuff that I have. And yet when you take that risk, at least it's what Hormozi is saying, it pays off over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

[C]

Ultimately, what I think about here is the part that he mentioned. It forces you to continually to get better if you're trying. I'll just use us as an example. If everything that we talk about on the show for the last 15 years is our best effort at trying to help whoever feels like listening. I honestly don't think that there's been a time that we've gone. Like, there's probably a better way, but we're not going to tell you that.

[A]

We're going to tell you the second best way for free. If you pay us, we'll pay you the best way.

[C]

Yeah, we just go here, solve this problem. Because I think from a belief system, you and I share this belief that fundamentally very smart people and very silly dumb people can be successful with money. It's about systems and process, and if you build those things and follow it, you're good. At some point in time, you may choose to outsource some of those activities and so be it. Good for you. If you do, great. If you don't, that's fine too. But you're not relying on some wizard to make your life better financially. The stuff that we talk about with our clients individually, it's not fundamentally different than what we talk about on the show. In fact, a lot of times people are like, this is the same thing you talk about on Thursday or on Tuesday. I'm like, yeah, yeah, because this is what we do.

[A]

If it was different, that would be. That wouldn't be congruent. Like, I feel like people should expect it to be the same, just a deeper relationship.

[C]

Sure, yeah. There's all the benefits of a personal relationship. But I'm saying once people get over that hurdle of just give away your best stuff because. And I got this also from Strategic Coach, they give away their best stuff every quarter. Right. They're like, here's our newest thinking. This is the most recent thing that we just thought up in terms of how to think about your business, how to have conversations around relationships and creativity and value creation, whatever. It's like literally their best thinking that. So what do they have to do the next quarter? They have to go, we got to think up new stuff. And Dan writes books every quarter and goes, here's what I'm thinking about. You could take all those books and implement them all. Just do what's in the book, or you can have a cohort of people that go through it with you. That's a different type of relationship. That doesn't make going to coach better or reading the books by yourself better. It's just what's better for you in terms of where you're learning and what you're working on in your life. So the abundance mindset of there's plenty of people to help if you're in a helping business. And honestly, I think anything that I think anybody anywhere can basically say, I help people blank, right? Like, I help people get coffee. I help people solve their money problems. I help people, you know, solve their health problems. Like, whatever is going on, you're helping people. And if you can figure out a way to give a bunch of that stuff to the DIYers of the world, the world's better for it.

[A]

Let's talk about this on the. In the 9 to 5 business world, because in this particular instance, he decided he's been good about sometimes giving us nine to five examples. In this one, I don't think he was. I think he very much was talking to entrepreneurs and talking about, you know, establishing this as an entrepreneur, how I helped other entrepreneurs. Let's put this back into nine to five terminology, which I think is hugely important. The key here is, I think, long term and not so obvious, because when I was with American Express, you would see people that would suck up to the boss that were just always the takers, were always the people that they weren't really performing as much as they were just putting on window dressing to be the cool kids so they could get the next promotion, the next raise. What Horos is talking about is if you give away stuff to the people around you and you are that, dig in, dig in. And I'm, I'm the expert and I'm giving your department something that I don't have to give you from my department.

[D]

I don't.

[A]

I don't really have to, but I'm going to help you out with that heart of a Giver. All of a sudden you're going to have more people come to you. More people are coming to you. And then that rise, which Tom Peters always talks about in his management books is then instead of being promoted from up top, there's a groundswell of people that are promoting you. You're getting promoted because everybody around you freaking loves working with you.

[B]

Yeah, well, one of the challenging concepts to get your brain around is how can you be a leader when you're not in a leadership role? Or how do you. If you are in a leadership role, how do you elevate yourself to the next leader? And you just said it, Joe. If you are that person who becomes a go to because either you're willing to put in the effort, at least initially, at some point you'll start gaining knowledge so that you become the go to person not only because of the effort, but also because of the knowledge. It doesn't matter if you're, if you're getting a paycheck from somebody else or through your own entrepreneurial efforts, the way to go about it is exactly the same. It's easier, frankly, in a corporate environment because you've got your networking group built in. You didn't have to pay to go to a ballroom at a Hilton in Louisville.

[A]

Right. That he, that he pays to be a part of the group.

[B]

Right. Your networking group is. Is there for you. And it's just a matter of you over lunch or walking down the hallway saying, hey, I hear you're working on a pitch for, you know, such and such a client. Can I help you out with that in any way? I'm pretty good at visual stuff, or I'm pretty good at, you know, boiling a message down to the fewest pot. Whatever you think your skill is, sooner or later they're going to be like, yeah, man, I'll take the help. This thing's due Monday morning.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And who's going to be the go to person the next time? Doug. Right, the next time after. After I helped you, when you're in a meeting, then with your boss, you're going, oh, yeah, Joe. Oh, Joe. You need to bring Joe in on this project, man. You should see now, I rocked the last project.

[B]

Well, that's the other. I'm not sure if this is what you just said or not, but another side benefit is if you can say it without being slimy, you can say when you're talking to your boss, you know, I was helping out Steve with the pitch for, you know, AC Delco, and he'll be like, Wait, what? What were you working on? I mean, you gotta be delicate about that. You don't want to be up, you know, too self congratulatory, but just letting other people know.

[C]

So you probably know this, but Steve sucks. So I got involved in it and fixed it.

[A]

I saved his ass again.

[B]

I looked at that. God, you were part of that. I looked at that work. God, I had to spend the whole weekend getting that thing right.

[A]

I'm so great. Well, the goal here is to be the go to guy or woman. And nobody wants that woman who's just the self congratulating. Yes.

[C]

Solve problems for people. And the more that you can solve problems for people that are not immediately in your sphere, the better your name recognition is if you're just the guy who solves problems. People like to have problems solved.

[A]

And remember Alex said this was about negotiation. Right. So we're stacking skills at the beginning. We don't have many skills. So he's taking the one skill that he, that he has and he's selling it like a drug dealer. The first hit's free. That forces him to be better and better so that he can get the paying gigs later and then be better than what he gave away for free later. So he's consistently working to be better. And then that becomes his negotiating, either implicit or explicit. This is his negotiation lever. Even though there's no explicit negotiation that I'm negotiating with Doug to get his. His work. Doug. I'm putting it out there that I'm really good at this. I'm showing him my work ahead of time. And then Doug comes to me. This still is negotiation, even though there's no explicit. He and I sitting at a table chatting about this.

[B]

I did it a little bit differently than what he was talking about. I would create the first problem for free and then. And then come in to help fix it also for free. It's. I mean, you want to talk about a self perpetuating business model.

[A]

Somebody effed this up. I don't know who it was.

[C]

Firefighting and fire starting.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

My neighbor Doug.

[B]

It's genius.

[A]

It's the circle of life. Yeah. All right, back to Las Vegas. What's funny about that too is that people get to see his process. If he's selling the llc, they get to work with him for free. They get to see a little microcosm of how he works. They get comfortable with that. It means he's got to have a good process. You fired up a lot of people today, Alex. Which means that I can see people here on January 1, going, you know what? 20, 25 is going to be different. Maybe it's a year that I say no to some of the crappy stuff. Maybe I go and I figure out what my next step is. But, you know, and I know what's going to happen next. They're going to go talk to their family and they're going to go, I got this great idea. And you know, your family, they want to help, they want to be comfortable, they want to be on your team, but they hear this. This sounds crazy ass crazy to your family members. How do our entrepreneurs, or budding entrepreneurs present to their family? You know what? I'm going to be taking a risk on myself. And by the way, I said entrepreneurs in this. And before he answers, I want to define this a little wider because I remember at American Express, I got this offer and it was that I was going to get to help train people. And I remember talking to my dad about this. I'm like, I'm going to get to go train people. He goes, great, that sounds great, Joe. Congratulations. That's a promotion I get. Well, yeah. He goes, how much more does it pay? I said, zero. And he goes, that sounds dumb. You don't, you don't work that way. I go, no, no, no, no. I'm going to go into like 20 meetings a week instead of 10, and I'm going to learn so much. Now, on one hand, was I being taken advantage of, maybe. But on the other hand, I did learn. So, so, so, so, so, so, so much. I learned so much there. And I accepted that deal. I accepted the risk of that deal. So even internally, even though I said our entrepreneurs and budding entrepreneurs, if you're going to do something where you're sticking your neck out at work, your family's going to still tell you not to do that. So even though I said entrepreneur on the audio you just heard, this really is for any of the stuff that he talked about, let's listen to what he had to say, because I think you went through this, didn't you?

[D]

Sure.

[A]

With your dad.

[D]

Yeah. You have to listen to the people who are closest to your goals, not closest to you. There's that famous Harvard study that found out that people's net worth was correlated with their reference group. Now, a lot of people mistakenly say it's the five people you spend the most time with, but I believe it's the five people you compare yourself to. Fundamentally, you could disprove it because Elon, he spends the most time with everybody's Poorer than him, so it can't be that. But who does he compare himself to now? For him, I think he compares himself to who he could be in the future, which sometimes that also can be the person that you can be. I think future you can be a part of your reference group. Like, who do I want to become? What does that guy do? I should do that today. And so I think fundamentally, the people that are in your surroundings, if they don't have what you want, don't listen to what they say. And I think it's hard to do because as humans, we're social creatures and we learn to listen to the opinions of others. When you're a child, you say, is this good or bad? An adult says, that's good, that's bad. And you kind of incorporate it. And that's how you learn how to make your way in the world. And then you become an adult and you realize that some of the people who give you your good and bad advice are actually morons. Because you meet them now and it's Doug. And you're like, doug's an idiot. I listen to Doug. It's like while I was eight years old and I didn't know any better, right?

[A]

And so Doug works in my mom's basement. Sorry, Doug, Chief idiot.

[D]

And so it's like you have to peel. I think honestly, a lot of adulthood is fundamentally unlearning things and choosing to know that you believe your beliefs for your own reasons. And so I think that if you cannot explain why you believe what you believe, it's not your belief, it's someone else's.

[A]

I love that Alex gave you a shout out, Chief idiot Doug.

[B]

So I was kind of into Alex for the last episode and a half.

[A]

It just threw me when he said Doug. Like he just picks Doug out of the air. It was.

[C]

I didn't say, oh, gee, so that's good.

[A]

It's a pretty funny jack hole. But guys, that is hard. It is hard to take the opinions of well meaning people around you and go, thank you. But that doesn't apply. You don't have to say the second part. You know what I mean? Smile and say thank you and then file it in a circular file.

[C]

I would say that it's equally as challenging to take the advice opinions of the people that are at the goals that you're at, because it fundamentally requires you to have a leap of faith that you might not have yet. He said you have $950,000 of stupid tax or whatever he called it that you're Paying to the universe for not making a million. If he said, here's how you need to run this business. Like, if I were in your shoes, here's what I would do. I bet that that person goes, yeah, however, I get what you're saying, but you don't understand what's going on in my world. You don't know what my market's like where I'm from. I was just.

[A]

You and I had a discussion specifically og about this after I left Alex, because our friend Seth, who helped us set this up, who works for Alex, Seth said as soon as the recorder's off, he's just going to go into coaching mode. He's going to ask you all about stacking Benjamins, all about what you do. And he said, so what do you guys got going on? And I said, we have these guides. We have the stuff. We have this da, da, da. And he starts coaching me. And I literally, when he gave me a piece of advice that I called you and talked to you about, I went, yeah, you really don't know my market.

[C]

I don't remember what that was. But, yeah, that's a great example of. I can think of many situations, both with the show and both with my firm, where people who were at what I deemed to be successful, they're like, hey, this is what you should do. And I'm like, okay, well, maybe you can do that. But I'm. It's not here. And it's funny to see it on the other foot because I was having breakfast with a friend a couple of weeks ago who is kind of in a career change, and, you know, and. And I said, well, what are you doing up here? He lives far away. And I said, what are you doing here? And he's like, look, you're further down the path on this than I am, and I trust what you have to say. I just want to ask some questions. I mean, it's kind of this mentoring thing a little bit, but it was more breakfast at a time.

[D]

Scrunch.

[A]

Did you ask him if you could get him coffee?

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

I even paid because he's unemployed, so I felt guilty to do it. But anyways, I said, well, here's what I would do. Da, da, da. And he goes. And he just looked at me, he goes, yeah, but wouldn't it be better to have a bunch of $5,000 relationships than 1,15,000? I go, no, it wouldn't. No, it wouldn't. He's like, yeah, I know, but you, you know, like, where I'm from, where I And I'm like, no, it wouldn't. And it's funny because I see that same thing in that conversation as what happened 20 years ago in conversations with people who were above me. And you see it with conversations that you had with Alex about stacking Benjamin's, and it's like, yeah, I mean, no, I see what you're saying. And it's always Case, right? It's like, no, I get it. But see, our market is. Or the situation we have going on, and it's like immediately like, well, dude, don't ask me questions then, you know, So I think it's equally challenging both to take advice for the people that you're trying to aspire to be, and also to not take advice from the people that are still kind of stuck.

[A]

Where you are and going back to coaching you. And I get coaching from this group strategic coach that we reference a lot. And you told me this when I first joined og. Sometimes you go to that meeting once a quarter and it's exactly what you need to hear. And it hits home. And there's other stuff a quarter later that, that you go, yeah, none of this applies to me. And then what's funny is maybe six months later, maybe a year and a half later, you go, oh, I totally get what they were doing.

[C]

We did something with that.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Like, to your point, the. The student.

[C]

The student is ready to be ready.

[A]

Yeah. Let's go back to Alex. I'd like to borrow a question from Tim Ferriss, because I was curious about this. As a guy that has really enjoyed your books, what books do you give to other people? What books do you tell people to read more than any others?

[D]

I don't. I mean, I say, you know, read my books because I get a lot of entrepreneurs. But so I wrote them. I was like. I started answering the questions. I was like, go read. They're like, what should I sell? And I was like, read a hundred million dollar offers. And they're like, okay, I read it.

[A]

I'm tired of repeating myself.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. Then they were like, well, well, who do I sell it to? And I was like, oh, okay, read $100 million leads. You know, I wrote the books to just not have to. Have to answer the question over and over again.

[A]

But you don't tell people, go read this. Go watch this YouTube video. Go do this.

[D]

I think you will learn significantly more taking action. And so, like, you will learn more from doing a hundred cold calls and a hundred door knocks than you will from reading all the sales books that are out there. Because there's a very big difference between declarative knowledge, which is knowing about something, and procedural knowledge, which is knowing how to do something.

[A]

I see this in school all the time.

[D]

Yeah, you can learn about private equity and never have done a deal. And the day you do a deal, then you will learn procedural knowledge of how a deal actually works. And so I would beware of the people that you follow to make sure that they are not just. They don't just have declarative knowledge, they can talk about stuff, but that they have procedural knowledge, which is that they've actually done it. And if you wish to have the latter, which I wish for you, then the only way that you can learn procedural knowledge is by doing it. And some things you can't learn without going through the fire.

[A]

My son learned this. He owns 14 rental houses. He's 29 years old, and he. He was very certain after he read some of the Bigger Pockets books that he knew exactly how to buy a house. And he will tell you now that he didn't know he knew nothing about how to get the deal done. And I bet that was the same for you. Your first deal was probably a hell of a lot harder than any deal you did since.

[D]

Yeah, I mean, really, I just think about the first sale, you know, be the first everything. And so my encouragement would be to get the first one out of the way.

[A]

I want to stop right there, OG because that's a huge point. No matter what you try to do, you're probably. You're going to suck.

[C]

Well, that and the declarative knowledge thing. I could show you a text thread that's happened within the last four hours of a podcast episode that I mentioned. I have this group that we all kind of bounce ideas. Anyways, somebody found this podcast episode and was not ours, but a different one and said, hey, have you listened to the such and such a thing? It's a cluster F. And basically it's this. It's the person who knows everything. And then as you dive into their history, but has done none of it, immediately it's like, okay, yep, we're not talking about that. You can know all the things in the universe. Your eloquent word for these people are Joe.

[A]

Broke professors.

[D]

The broke professors.

[C]

People who know everything but have done none of it. And no offense to professors, the answer.

[A]

To this question blew me away because I've heard Tim Ferriss ask so many of these academic people that know a ton about a ton, and they always play his game. Oh, I give this book Oh, I like this book. And Hormosi is like, nope, yeah, go do it.

[C]

Go knock on a hundred doors and see what happens.

[A]

I thought Dougie had himself muted. Doug laughed when he heard Hormozy say that. Yeah, no, no, don't go read more. Just. Just go get the bad stuff out of the way. And it is so valuable. You will learn so, so, so much.

[B]

Joe. That was one of the things I remember learning from you in the early days of this podcast was your willingness to deliberately scrape your nose on the pavement as you were falling down, failing. Like, we're going to do this. We're going to do it now because we know we're going to suck. And I want to get the suck out of the way right now so that we'll. We'll be better faster as our audience is building.

[A]

If there was one thing I regret, it was waiting, because I thought we'd suck. And it was only Doug, to your point, when I knew that the first episodes were going to be bad no matter what we did that we finally got rolling, and I wish we had that year back. I think he's 100% right on here. Let's go back and finish up with Alex.

[D]

Get the loss out of the way. Get the no out of the way, because you're going to have it. And I had a mentor tell me, he said, you got to lose $100 million to make a billion. You got to be willing to lose it. And I think that's like, you got to be willing to lose 100 to make a thousand. You got to be willing to lose a thousand to make 10,000. And fundamentally goes back down to risk, which is like, you have to be able to risk. And sometimes it means you just risk your time, which in the beginning is, hey, we're going to give with that expectation. That's risking your time. But you got to be willing to take risk. And most folks don't. And that's why they stay poor and they stay small and they stay insignificant.

[A]

The entrepreneurs here in the building today that are getting coaching from you guys.

[D]

Not coaching, to be clear, but do.

[A]

They feel that fear? Is it feel the fear but do it anyway, or do they push away the fear?

[D]

So, first off, we don't do coaching. I just want to be clear. We have businesses that we invite out that if we're like, this is an interesting model, they might be a little bit too green for, you know, portfolio for us, because we have relatively large companies. Well, relatively. We have low mid market. We say these are the things that you need to fix about the business. Fundamentally, we operate everything off the theory of constraints, like I was referencing earlier, which is that every business there has something that limits them. And we rely on our ability to recognize patterns and have know. Having seen a lot of businesses in that particular space, like if you're a roofer, we've seen a hundred different roofing businesses. If you're in the med spas, we. We've. We've looked at 10 different med spa deals with different chains. We know the models, we know the comps, we know what works, knows what doesn't.

[A]

And you're helping people fix very specific problems.

[D]

Yeah, it's just like we think, what is the most valuable version of this business? What does it look like? And what's the discrepancy between that business and what you have today? And then what is the single move that we can make that brings you the closest to that future, better version of your business? And we will do that one first. And I think one of the big things that people struggle with is they do not know how to prioritize. And the big part of prioritization is saying no and they can't do it. Especially once you develop a little bit of skill in the beginning, you have no opportunity, so you're just trying to say yes to something. Right. But as soon as you say yes, you learn this yes muscle, and you say yes to too many things. And so I spent an entire day with one of our portfolio companies, does $110 million a year. It's a SaaS company. Very, very big company. We spent the whole day going through all the different strategic priorities, and I'm just, like, sitting there and, like, something just, like, felt off. And while they were talking at the very end, I just went up to the board and I wrote 1, 2, 3, and I wrote the first objective, and I just circled that, and I was like, this is all we need to do. The room got really quiet, and I was like, if we don't do this, nothing else matters. I spent a crazy amount of time trying to think about, like, what is that one thing? Because if you can get really clear on that one thing, then you can do something that makes every one of your other goals relevant. And that was like, for me, in 2020 or 2019, when I started making content, it was like, if I just build a big brand and business, nothing else will matter. There is a one thing for you in your business or your career that if you just did this one thing, it would make everything else irrelevant. And I would just encourage people to just get really clear on that one thing and then basically do nothing else. Because if you. I define focus as the quantity and quality of things that you say no to. If you think of the hypothetically most focused person on earth, they would do nothing but one thing. They wouldn't eat, they wouldn't sleep. They would, you know, and obviously you were like, you run into, okay, well, you need to eat, you need to sleep. Okay, fine, you got those two. But again, we're just talking hypothetical. I'm not saying this isn't a prescription, just saying hypothetical. If that person only played Diablo 4, that's all they did. They are focused. If all that guy did was sales, that guy is focused. A lot of people want to be focused and they want to be patient. They don't know how to do that. And so you stay focused by doing one thing and saying no to everything else. And you stay patient by figuring out what to do in the meantime between now and when you think your goals will happen. Just understanding that, like patience is just figuring out what to do in the meantime.

[A]

I know he goes back to the one thing that he referenced earlier, but this time in context where now I think here at the end of the season, you can see the bridge between all of these. Patience, doing more, but doing just the right things, setting yourself this cadence, finding that one thing to do, staying focused, saying no to everything else. Now I think people can see this framework is way more simple that he's working off of, I think, than people thought at the beginning of this on Wednesday.

[C]

The more that you can simplify, I'm a simplifier. That's kind of my thinking anyways. But the more that you can get that all the stuff that you're doing in a particular thing to the easiest thing to do that has the biggest impact. It doesn't mean it's going to be easy. I didn't say an easy thing. I said the easiest thing to do with the biggest impact, the better off your life is going to be. Whether it's something business related or if it's health related. I mean, there's so many 10,000 different ways to diet. Or you could just say, I'm not going to eat any bread, you know, if I don't eat any white carbohydrates. Like, what does that do? It like eliminates its calorie restriction. It helps your glucose. You know what I mean? It does all of those things without having to keep track of it by going, I'm not eating rice Potatoes or bread.

[B]

It also makes you hate life.

[C]

Well, if you like those things, it could.

[A]

I want a life worth living.

[C]

If you value your life, you probably. Probably will eat less of it, but you get the idea. It's like, we stress about, we build these business plans, we build this career path, or we build the financial plan or what. We do all these things, and they have 75 different pieces to it. And it's like, I appreciate his simplifier mindset of, okay, just go on the whiteboard and circle the one damn thing. Just do that, and then, you know, in a year from now, do something different. But do that thing for the next 12 months and see how you.

[A]

Well, not even that OG if you're having trouble finding out what it is, put up those 10 things you're doing now and say, what's the one action I'm missing that's right in front of me that will eliminate these?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Is there some way that I can have a domino that that makes this whole thing I'm trying to accomplish easier by doing just the one thing pretty well?

[D]

Okay.

[C]

That dude's a pretty smart guy. We could have him back. I'd allow it.

[A]

Let's finish it up with Alex here. You've this set of three things. I want to end our time together on these three. The first one is exactly what you just said, so nice job. The other two, though, you say, number one, focus. Do one thing, which is clearly, I think, a great thing for us to think about in 2025. The second one you say is hire good people. And earlier you were talking about constraints. I'm assuming I should focus, Alex, for my own time, not on something that I'm mediocre at, probably what I'm badass at that nobody else is good at. Does that mean I hire somebody then to take care of the constraints? Because your second thing that you write about is hire good people.

[D]

Yeah. You know, the unsexy answer is it depends. So if the constraint is people, that would be one thing. The constraint could be a skill, which is that something that you can go get, and then that becomes the constraint. Fundamentally, identifying how to solve a constraint is how many resources will it take to do these alternative paths to get the outcome, and then an approximate value for how likely it is with each intervention. And so fundamentally, this is a. There's something called the RICE framework for software when they talk about prioritizing products, but I think it applies to just about anything, which boils down to risk adjusted return. So it's like, what's the reach, how many customers does this affect? I is what's the impact? To what extent does it affect the customers confidence, which is C, which is how likely is it? And then E, which is expense, which is how much is it going to cost? If we think about this as, okay, I have this problem and there's three paths to solving it. Which one has the highest risk adjusted return, which one's the most likely to get? Because you might hire, you might take all that time, all those interviews, all that onboarding, all that training, and then get somebody and then they don't work out and then you have to do it again versus maybe you learn the skill and then you can do it in five hours a week. It depends on where you're at with your career and whether your return on time of like, okay, could I do those five hours doing something else and make more money? Then it would be worth doing that. Right. And so that's why the unsexy answer is it depends on the resources you have and what returns you expect based on the interventions that you want to use.

[A]

I want to, before we go on, I want to just clarify this too, because he's talking specifically to entrepreneurs, but oh, geez, this is why people hire people to clean their house, is why people might hire somebody to cut their lawn. They're like, I'm not paying for that. But if your return on investment is way above that, your ability to not have to deal with that is big. Can still be powerful. Somebody else to get your groceries.

[C]

Right. All of those things are things that you have to evaluate personally. And what, what looks like something is an expense and unneeded in one person's life is a great use of resources in another's. To your point about hourly rate and.

[D]

That sort of thing.

[A]

So let's go to his third point and then the third one. And this is great. Cause you know what's happening today for a lot of people, we're going to be fighting New Year's resolutions, right? That last two weeks. Your third tenant is think long term. How do we make sure that we're setting up milestones to think long term in 2025?

[D]

Man, you framed that question really well. I would almost answer with the question, which is that you can measure someone's skill in any domain by the quality and number of ways they can reward themselves for doing something. And so, for example, if I go to the gym and I'm a novice, I don't know how to do very much. And so the entire experience is not that fun if You're a professional bodybuilder. There's a zillion things that you can do in the gym that are fun and interesting that you enjoy. If I'm an amazing video editor, if I get a raw piece of footage, there's a hundred things I can think of to do this, and I get rewarded after each step. Very quickly, when you're a novice, you have fewer feedback loops and they tend to be more distal. So they're further away from me. They're more like what happens at the end. So did the video do well or not? Whereas an expert can see a hundred different things that we can improve in the video, the more skilled you become, the more patient you become, because you have more ways to win in the meantime. And so that is why skill can, in my opinion, make you more patient. The other piece, which is probably.

[A]

Yeah, you're almost saying. I mean, you're talking about the gym. But what you're saying, Alex, I think, is patience is a muscle, I think.

[D]

A skill for sure. One of the encouraging things is that I actually don't think people become more patient. I think time moves faster. I mean, if you talk to a five year old, it's like one year is 20% of their life. It's like, oh, my God, if I have to. If I. If it's 20% of my life, I have to wait a year. Right, right. At 56, it's what it is. 2% or 3%, you know, of your life right now, it's like, oh, it's. It's seven times faster. And so I'm not really sure that people actually get more patient as they get older. I just think time passes faster.

[A]

Alex Hormozi, thank you so much for being our first mentor at 2025. You set a high bar, my friend.

[D]

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

[A]

And it's funny, I ask him about being more patient, and he talks about building skill. Build skill, stack skills in 2025 stackers, and then realize it's not about what you know, it's about what you do. Use that to negotiate, and you're off and running. Okay, big thanks to Mr. Haro. I know Doug's going to say this later, but big thanks to him because, oh, gee, hopefully people have notepads as full as yours and mine today.

[C]

Yeah, I'm on page four. So so far, so good on the remarkable tablet.

[A]

Yeah. 90. What? 97 days left of the trial and sounds like it's going pretty well.

[C]

So far, so good.

[B]

I don't know, Joe, I don't know if I'm going to say really great things about Alex in the in the takeaways.

[A]

All because one character, Doug, that he doesn't even know happens to say the wrong name.

[C]

Or does he?

[A]

Or does he? Of course he knows. Right, Doug? Lots of takeaways. But what would be our top three?

[B]

Well, Joe, first, do more. But by more, we mean focus on those core activities that can eliminate five other tasks that are either a waste of time or have a smaller roi. Second, use skill stacking to your advantage.

[A]

What do you love?

[B]

Build on that stack and use it to increase your piece of the pie because you now have skills that others don't. But the big lesson 2025 is truly going to be a different year after those two episodes. Buckle up everybody, because we're going to all be rocket ships now. Special thanks to Alex Hormozi and his Las Vegas based team for helping make our 2025 kickoff possible. Especially the amazing Seth Silvers. You'll find more on [e-mail] this show is the property of SB Podcasts, LLC, Copyright 2024 and is created by Joe Salsihai. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You'll find out about our awesome [e-mail] along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. Oh yeah. And before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don't take advice from people you don't know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor.

[D]

Her.

[B]

I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug and we'll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.