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

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 Hermozzi, and he's 1 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 2 years ago before he really kind of took off on the internet and online.

And I think that was 1 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 40,000,000 to now generating over 100,000,000 in acquired businesses. He shares his evolved understanding of focus, talent acquisition, and brand building, and he is 1 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 slash 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 gonna 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 wanna create. And again, with this trademark brutal honesty of his, he's gonna break down why most entrepreneurs fail to scale, and he reveals the 3 critical mindset changes that transform 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, 2 episodes, 3 episodes for the last 8, 9 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 gotta continue to still learn and grow. But I play the long game. No 1 can deny that.

And I think about brand, and that's 1 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 if you keep showing up in your life, beautiful things are bound to happen if you're willing to set new standards. And 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 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 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 1 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 1 and only, Alex Hermozzi. Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest.

My man, Alex Hermozzi is in the house. Good to see you, brother.

I am honored to be here.

Very excited. 1 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. Yeah. 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 40 ish million mark to now over 100,000,000 in EBITDA. What has been that mindset shift for you?

So, there have been, I would say, 2 really key ones, and a third kind of bonus. So the the first big 1 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 1 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 I've 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 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 1 thing, not 5. And if we have 5 objectives for the year, it's because we, me, personally, I haven't done my job because 1 of those things is the most important. And if I can't tell my team this is the most important, then how am I gonna expect them to make that judgment without the context that I have? Mhmm.

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 1 thing, you think differently. So, like, for example, if I said, you know, Louis, what what 1 thing if you could only have 1 thing happen in 12 months, what what would reality need to look like in 12 months for you to hit your goal? Like, what 1 thing, if 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 1.

And so in thinking about that, like, this was 4 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 don't need to be the best negotiator, because I'll have more proprietary deal flow. So people will wanna they'll just wanna 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 wanna 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 1 thing for this year? And I think where kinda 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.

So what's what's the main focus for you then?

For this next year?

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

So, this year was actually developing like a farm system, for the portfolio. So Deal flow?

Yeah.

Yeah. So, basically, what we figured out was, we looked at our number 1 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.

Yes.

And so so we had, you know, 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 jobs. Mean, you sold your equity stake in those? Yeah. You just

got them out.

I got yeah. I I basically, got rid of them at a loss or whatever you wanna call it. But the thing is is that the portfolio as a whole still outperformed the previous year by focusing on the stallions. And so in on top of that, over the last year, we only did 1 deal, which before that, we've done 12 deals the year before. And so

Did you need to do those 12 deals first, though, to see where you were?

I think so. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I had to

You can't just do 1 deal a year to start out. You need to have some losses and

I think it's a great point because it's very much like, okay. I if I wanna be rich, I should just fly private planes. It's like that it doesn't work. Actually, if I wanna, you know, be tall, I should play basketball. It's it's like people will conflate what you're doing now versus what it took to get there, and so those are kinda 2 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 actually have such a I have a better skill set now than I did 5 years ago, which was really the last time I, like, really operated stuff. And just ruthlessly focusing the team on what 1 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 1, number 2, and number 4 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. That there's something interesting there. How can I recreate that process on purpose rather than by accident?

So only 1 company, once you started the farm company, made it to the top 4. Right. After Yeah. You started doing this. Right?

So number 1, number 2, and number 4, those happened by accident. Before. For me, yeah. Me doing normal deals, you know, meeting people, whatever. Yeah.

But now, I was like, okay. How do I create that? And so that's why 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 we can meet them.

My team meets them. We say, hey. This is what I would do. Like, a lot of them are necessarily portfolio revenue ready. But if we've helped somebody go from, call it, 5,000,000 to 20,000,000 a year

Interesting.

Then when they want to get a growth partner or they wanna exit, our hope is that they call us first.

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

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

How many of those workshops did you do?

I

wanna say we probably did, like, 14 Okay. This year. So probably a little bit more than what like, basically, 1 ish a month. Sure. Sure.

And it's like, you know, if we're busy, then it pushes out and then we can do total, hey, we're kind of afraid. Let's do 2.8. 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 somebody in my team and I say, Your job, if you just did this 1 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 don't know what he pays you. Don't do

this once again.

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 1 thing, I can totally crush this. And so, everybody needs focus. And I 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 how can I prune that tree?

How can I strip things away from them so that they can put all their resources into 1 thing? And to me, like, acquisition.com, like, our little logo here, is 2 main the 2 main forces of business as I as I understand them. You've got supply and demand. Mhmm. 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 a 110,000,000. That's a software business, and we grew from 2,000,000. So we've been very integral in the in in the growth of the company. And at the the what they came in with the day was 5 objectives and each objective had 5 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.

25 things.

Yeah. Basically

lot of tasks.

Of stuff. And so at the very end of the day, I ended up going to the the whiteboard that was on the side of the wall, and I wrote 123, and I wrote the 3 things that I thought we needed to do. And I said, and we don't do number 2 until number 1 is done. And it was this really clarifying moment. So I was like, if we don't do this 1, nothing else matters.

And if we do this 1, then this 1 will be worth more. And so the 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 it's been super well studied that, you know, if you switch between tasks, you're way less effective. You're like 75% less effective when you switch between 2 things, let alone like 5, and your phone, and your kids, and your whatever.

Right? And so, I 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 5 people on your team, we need to deploy all resources towards solving this 1 problem. And then once that problem is solved, what happens is the fact that the other 4 fires exist because let's be real, there's always gonna be problems. Mhmm.

But the fact that the other 4 fires exist gives you urgency of solving the first 1. Mhmm. And so you actually get 5 things done faster when you do them in order than trying to do all 5 at once. And yet, for some reason, we don't we don't regularly remind ourselves of that. And so this has been like I'd say, like, that has been the the single largest shift in my entrepreneurial, like, career.

And the reason that, like, at 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, you know, we added maybe, like, 30% in revenue when we probably could have doubled, because I put all my attention to this other thing.

Mhmm.

And so, things are going really well at acquisition.com, and I had this inkling to do the same thing, just repeat the same mistake, and I was like, I cannot learn this again.

It'll be more pain. I can't.

I have so much more pain. The stakes are higher. And so

So focus has been the biggest thing so far.

Number 1. The second 1 has been my understanding of talent has has also kinda 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 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 1, you know, he could 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 100 times more return than somebody who's even 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 I've doubled down on the arbitrage of intelligent, hardworking people.

Mhmm.

Which is like, it's worth paying someone 1,000,000 of dollars a year if they can make you tens of 1,000,000 or 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars a year. And I think that it's 1 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 the more I know what's out there. And 1 of my 1 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 wanna 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, but they already

They're making they're making money.

They have offers. They have headhunters that call them every day.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's they're 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. Right. And so it's it's a much longer recording process, and and all the people that, you know, that I'm looking at other, like, 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.

He might

take us months. Exactly. And I have to figure out a way to get John to leave what he's doing and come work with me. Yeah. And so, that has probably been Those have been the 2 biggest those have been the 2 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.

Wow. Is focus on the 1 thing that matters most and be disciplined enough to say, yes, we are going to do these things, and yes, they are problems, and we will get to it as soon as we finish this 1 thing that matters most.

Mhmm.

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 ta this taxi driver thing. If if a good engineer costs $250,000 a year and an amazing engineer costs $1,000,000 a year, but you get a 100 x 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.

This is the fear for most people is, okay, what if I make that $200,000 investment of the person half a $1,000,000 Sure. And it doesn't work out? Yeah. And they they're lazy, they're entitled, they're this or that, and I just invested 6 months of my life recruiting

Yeah.

All this money, all these things, and they're not delivering what I either expected or hoped they would.

I think you'll love this. So this is so what what we outlined 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 risk that other people aren't. Mhmm.

And that Doesn't always work out.

Of course. And that's but the thing is just, like, if you think about, like, that let's say, there's let's say, there's a a casino. Right? And you have a game where you've got a 1 in 5 shot at a 100 x payout. Well, you should play that game every time knowing you're gonna lose 4 out of 5 times because it's worth it for a 100 x payout, but you lose more times than you win.

Mhmm. And that's the that's the the difficulty from the human brain perspective is that we see 2, 3 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 kinda sporadic, you know, I'm getting, you know, 1 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 a 100 conversations over 6 months, and those 100 conversations create 3 deals. And so it's like, okay, what 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? Illusion of inconsistency, but we just need to increase n by a hundredfold. 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.

Yeah. Exactly. What would be the third thing then? Is it a 3rd and then a bonus or is this No.

This the the yeah. The the the bonus the bonus, the bonus 1 is, is basically my understanding of branding has, I feel like, also developed. So these aren't all 3 of these things are not new concepts. I feel like my understanding of them has deepened 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 of Shar.

Yeah. Yeah. For those of you who don't know, he's, like, 32, they do a gazillion dollars a year, they're, like, the number 2 biggest apparel brand in the UK. Yeah, 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'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 CEO and said, hey, can I just swing if 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. We're 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. And branding. Yeah. Branding. Exactly.

Positive associations for their ideal audience.

And then 30% was, you

know, hey, give 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.

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

And they're having a complete rebirth right now. They're crushing.

Crushing it.

Yeah. You see, it's like it used to be Daqo's and Gen C girls who have like white socks pulled up going to the gym in New Balance. So I'm like, what is happening? But but that that there's a number of smaller lessons that I took from that. The first 1 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. It's when I think about that for myself, it's like I'm living today based on work I did 2 years ago. And so you wanna dig the well before you're thirsty. And so if I'm thinking to myself, like, what do I want 2 years from now? It's like, I have to start digging for that water today.

I need to play that tree now. Mhmm. And so that was that was number 1, 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.

Mhmm.

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, kinda like a fruit on a tree. It's like you're you're plucking some fruit a little bit early, but, you know, there you end up filling the basket faster. But then there's no more fruit to pick because you haven't been planting your trees.

Right. And so, and so that that has that dramatically shifted. And it also had a quantifiable metric too, which is and and what's interesting about the 70 30 is that it's super well studied because, so TV, Facebook, if you look at the ratio of posts to ads on your news feed, 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 stop watching?

Yes. Right? And so the ratio is about 3 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, I it'll probably be closer to 2575.

Sure. But I'm also I'm assuming that they're rounding and there's, you know Yeah. Of course. And numbers change. But the fact that it was in parallel with the same ratio that consistently delivers value and allows you to monetize, it was it was a corroborated different evidence that I had on different platforms.

So what are the 3 biggest moves you'll make this year Yeah. To invest in branding that won't get you the return you want now, but will bring astronomical results later.

My book. That's I literally I I 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 Seabama 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 as I Elon, if you feel like it 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 2 things that I can do. 1 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 gibs. 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 percent.

I'm gonna be putting, like, 95% towards it. Because I'm always I'm always happy to push more you know, plant more trees for the future.

So is it more content or is it more promoting a book?

It's both. Yeah. Basically, the the call to actions I'll likely shift towards will be the book. And from a concept perspective, I, I I'm using the same concept of 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 a 100 x 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. So

you had

to let go of a lot of people too.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I see that as as as being kind, not nice. As 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 a mission.

And if someone isn't, I think the day that you realize they're not, you owe it to them. Kinda like they got a relationship.

If you

don't think you're gonna marry somebody, I think the day you realize it, you should let them. You should you should release them to free agency. Because somebody else will and they are the right person. They there's a attorney out there that they're 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 gonna be better for you.

Yes.

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

Right. Right.

And you'll figure it out.

You'll figure it out.

You will be okay. Yes. And so and we obviously, you know, we we do we do our best to try and make recommendations and Sure. Sure. Sure.

Yeah.

So the 3 big Yeah. Mindset shifts for you this year have been focus more on the main thing, not everything. Yeah. 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.

I'm betting big on brand.

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

And all 3 of those things are aligned. Yeah. What's the 1 big thing? If I can continue to 10 x 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.

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?

Only think about the actions and not about anything else.

What were you thinking about?

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 6 months. I told every friend I had, I wasn't sure. I would I remember just pacing in my 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 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 1 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.

Right? Like, it's just right? Like, that's that's how we go. Right? But but when I when I thought through it, I was like, what would actually happen?

So if I went there and I failed, what would I do? I was like, well, I'd apply to business school, and I'd have this cool story, and they like entrepreneurs or people who try to

do things.

So this would actually this would be fine. This would be okay. And I have plenty of friends who 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 thought it was just was that was honestly the most horrifying thing that I could imagine, going back home as a failure. Yes.

But the idea the 1 that that got me out of it was, I can always get the job back. Mhmm. So, like, this is actually a significantly lower risk move than I'm perceiving it to be. I can just get an I can get the job Or I can get another job that's comparable. Right.

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 4 years of this job rather than 2, and then did, you know, 2 years of things on their

own. Mhmm.

And so that was actually that was the 1 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, and I'd like to own my own business someday. Like, it's almost like you, like, tag it on to, like, what's your what do you do now?

And I'd like to and so I I thought to myself, if it's this hard now, when I have no kids, I have no wife, I have no stakes, it's gonna be nearly impossible for me to do later. Mhmm. 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 they're 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, but that those are the 2 strongest arguments that got me to take the plunge and make the bet.

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?

I don't know what that means.

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

What is money attracted to? What type of a person is money attracted to? I don't

so I I define everything by actions because it's the only thing that's observable.

So a person who takes action?

Yeah. I mean, at the most basic level, yes. And then, you know, 1 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 I like people starting out with service based businesses because when you ask the question, does somebody need to have money? No. Usually, you have time. If you don't have you use that's the number the first rule of entrepreneurship is you use what you have. First rule.

If you don't have money Yeah. Use your time.

Yeah. And so that's because everyone focuses on resources rather than resourcefulness. Mhmm. 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 1 if you lose it all, you're still at 0. 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, 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 gonna be the last thing they pick. They think that's gonna 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've I learned lessons from the ones before that before I moved on.

And it took me it took me 9 businesses before I actually had my, like, first real successful 1, with Gym Launch.

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

I I shy away from things that I can't define. And so, I 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 then great. Whatever whatever it takes for you to do there.

But I just focus ruthlessly on that. Because how do you how do you know if 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 actually need to do something.

Right.

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 2 very different skills. And so people who don't know how to teach or train, then add a lot of energy and 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 wanna 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. Yeah. 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 I see the purpose of life as as learning, as 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 Mhmm. That was different than what I'm doing? And try and compare their reality versus mine and say, oh, I need to 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.

Mhmm. 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?

Honestly, not really. I I like to always know what I make per minute, because that so I'll say I'll I'll rewind the clock in terms of the things that I have now, I think, are 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 1 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 1st week you go to the gym, you're not really gonna see anything.

It doesn't mean that going to the gym is wrong, it just means that your results are gonna 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. Yeah. But I have I call it having a pulse of 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 $1,000 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 in a minimum wage job, at a at Smoothie King.

I was a blender tenant. So I made 6.75 an hour. And, and when I was Be

in a butter mood. That's right. Go, man. Yeah.

And so what what I remember I remember my coworkers, it was, like, 3 or 4 people to a shift. They would go get lunch at Kosey, which was next door. It was, like, a sandwich shop.

Oh, yeah.

And and I I went with them 1 day, and, you know, I I bought a normal meal, and I think it was, you know, $12, something like that.

And you're like, dang,

that's 2 hours. Exactly. And I was like, wait. I'm only working, you know, a 5 hour shift, and I'm using post tax dollars, and this is too and I was like, if I do this every time I'm here, I only get credit for 3 of the hours that I'm working. And so immediately, I was like, wait.

I'm gonna cut my work efficiency in half every time I'd I 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 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. Yeah. 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, then I'll give you this t shirt. I'd be like, nah, I don't wanna do that. And so when 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 it what did it change about how I spent and bought? Sorry.

How I spent and and how I acted to make more. And so I, I've always been a saver in terms of I always lived below my means. I don't if like, the first rule of money is spend less than you make. 1st rule of money. Like, you don't need to listen to anything else.

You don't need to do any investing. You don't need 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 invest it 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 it's about to be winter time in most of the US. 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 $1,000. Right? And you could use a shovel in the beginning and you might be able to do 2, maybe 3, 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 7 x your earning capacity. And so, it's a small like, what $1,000 stock is gonna 7 x 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 on knowledge based work, the the 1 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 3 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 my

time. Yeah, how much?

Yeah, 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 And I said, but the the the the terms are, I have to have my hands on the computer, not you. Yeah. 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. Why you did that?

Yeah. Exactly. And so, it took me 8 sessions Oh. With this guy. Who?

8 1 hour sessions.

It was cheaper than hiring him for 2 months.

Totally. Oh, he was he was he was he asked for 5,000 a month, and I was, oh, my God. I I can't afford that. But from and every time I I would do it and then I record it and then I rewatch it a couple of times. I would take notes.

And then when I the next 1, I was like the best student ever. Right? But by the by the 6th time I got it, and by the 8th time, I was like, I don't need this guy anymore. I get it. And so that $6,000 investment made me 1,000,000 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 them, 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 let like leverage. Right? How do you get more of what you put in?

Yes.

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 gonna happen to the dollar? Doctors are gonna 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. Yes. And so that's that's the the big thing that I think people who are who are starting out miss.

What's the number 1 sale that people should be investing in to earn more? Promotion.

You need to learn how 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 contingencies? If no 1 knows you exist, no 1 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 1 on 1 via outreach. You can DM. You can email.

You can phone call. Any you can knock on doors. All of that's 1 on 1. You can, you can make content. You can post on public platforms.

You can stand on the sidewalk and shout. It's 1 of many. Right? The the and the 3rd the 3rd third way you can do is you can run ads. The 4th and kinda, 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 prefer you business. And that's an amazing strategy. But you in order to get in touch with those, you reach out 1 on 1, 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 $1,000,000 a year, $10,000,000 a year, being a really good marketer, being a really good promoter. You get limited at a certain point because pro like, you you you burn through a marketplace because people understand the concepts of word-of-mouth.

They're like, Yeah, you wanna 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 of the platform hasn't doubled or tripled. It means that you have an invisible hand that's expressing your results, which is that somebody who would have bought, heard that you're not good, or heard that you're even mediocre, and just decides not to. And we do this all the time.

Like Yes. 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 gonna go to that movie. How was it? I mean, it was okay. Done.

Now go ahead. That's it. And so people over like, it's so hard to get positive word-of-mouth, and it's so easy to get negative word-of-mouth. Mhmm. 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 people 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 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, it 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 crazy on it.

If someone only has a few $1,000 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?

You know where I'm going with this 1. So my favorite ism that I that I like is don't invest in the S and P 500. It's invest in the S and 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, alright, saved up.

If you if you invest in Apple, whatever, or you've asked like, you'll 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 a $1,000 saved up, you either make very little money or you don't you're not following the first rule, which is you gotta 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 difference. It's not even close. But everyone 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. You'll it's never going to result in wealth. If you get rich quick, you get you get poor even faster.

We've already seen

Say that say it again.

If you get rich quick, you get poor even faster. Why? Because you don't it's so my favorite magic card hold on. I'm gonna 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 gonna 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 wanna play the game and the thing and unfortunately, the the the the the tweets, the the Instagram posts, the whatever, we see someone's screenshot when they get go from a $10,000 to 1,500,000. You just don't see the other 100 people or a 1000 people who put 10,000 and went to a dollar. And so the idea is I wanna 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, where my family, everything we have is taken from us by the government. And so it's very real that you may have to start over halfway through your life at 0. 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 2 hands and 1 brain.

Use them. And my father came here with $1,000, 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.

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 Sure. Whenever they receive money.

Mhmm.

Are they able to earn and make a lot with those money wounds?

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 Yes. Is so it's like bad money beliefs, money wounds, money trauma, bad money energy, all of that. I'd bucket into bad behaviors under specific conditions, which is that you don't know how to behave with money. That's all it is.

How do people learn how to behave with money?

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

What if money What if people have never had money and then all of a sudden, oh, I got a $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?

So I think it's thinking in ratios. So it's like, I will save this percent, I will spend this percent, this percent goes to my house or what, you know, my my lodging, this goes to food, and you just have to stick with it. Now, I think that 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 is, you you don't have to you don't have to bot. So you really only have to have 1 skill, and then you can get everyone every other skill you need in your life. And so when I when I got into the business game, the only real skill I developed quickly was sales. And I even have that skill, but I I had to for the gym.

So I learned how to sell, and I got pretty good at it. And so I do I would go to these networking things, I would meet other business owners, and I I felt like I was a collector of of 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 it's it's okay.

I'd be like, hey. Do you mind if I just like I'm pretty good at it, and I can 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 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 the team. I would rescript what they had, and then I would train their team on it. I'd tell them how to manage it. And 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, woah. And then the magic thing comes out, they say, what can I do for you? And I'd be like, it's funny you ask, can you show me your PPC stuff? Right. And the thing is is that they would give me less than I gave them.

Mhmm. But it was more than I had. And so it was a net positive game. And so you only need to develop 1 skill, and then you can barter for everything else.

Yes.

So like in the networking groups that I joined, I got voted the the best, you know, the member of the year, in the 1st 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 I've done my whole life is just just trade up. And and the 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 2 there's 2 possible scenarios. 1 is you're not as good as you think you are. Or they don't function with reciprocity.

Yes.

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

Yeah. You gotta do it a lot of times.

If you

do it a 100 people, you'll get what you want. And if there's 3 guys who know PPC, you give to all 3, maybe 1 of them helps you out. Absolutely. But you're still better off than you were before. And so this is the like this is this was how I this is how I leapfrogged in my earning capacity.

Really? Oh, a 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 I would encourage people to I spend so much money for 1 on 1 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 could observe far more behaviors in person. There's so many things that are lost on Zoom. That's the most

you spent on 1 on 1 time?

I spent $350,000 for an hour. An hour? Yeah.

With who?

Guy was worth the 7,000,000,000. What was

what was the biggest lesson he taught you in that 1 hour?

He said protect your reputation with your life.

Did you need to spend $350 for that?

I think that there's something powerful about knowing that someone who is much further ahead says it to you. Mhmm. 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 right now.

Protect your reputation with your life. What does that look like, and how does 1 do that? When anyone can speak about them negatively online and say what they want and make stuff up or

You can only control what you do. And so the stoke approach to this is that you know the truth. And, you know, there's the whole, like, you know, bad bad news you know, 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 it's a, it's a popularity contest.

In the long term, it's a 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 you 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 1 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 kinda like the movie before, or the or the the same shot, 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 I would trust him with money. You know what I mean? If if if you have that that core set of beliefs and you behave consistent with that, those 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 kinda ruined my reputation there. And so I went to, like, a new area where, like, no 1 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 the weeks. Really? Yeah. Oh, wow.

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 with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with with

I could do this or I could like, I had all these, like, strategies. And he said, have you considered not acting like a whore?

Right. Not sleeping with women. Yeah. Yeah. 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 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 going to be someone that I wanna be proud of. I wanna be proud to associate me with me because I want a different caliber of girl, and that caliber of girl is not gonna 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. Mhmm. And it took, basically, 2 full semesters of me acting like a priest, basically, and just, like, doing well in school, studying hard, just, you know, being a contributing member of society, that all of a sudden, like, the reputation started to change.

But, like the New Balance reputation, it took time.

It did, yeah.

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, 5 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.

And the longer people know you for 1 set of characteristics, the longer it's gonna take for them to unlearn that.

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.

So I knew you for 20 years.

Exactly. And what's interesting is imagine over imagine you went to high school with somebody in in middle school. Alright? So it's like they had 8 years with you, and they had every single day, they had hours and hours of exposure. You go back, and they have 2 days a year during the holidays

to see you.

Well, it's like, okay. Well, 2 days out of 10,000 were this way.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's it's almost never gonna 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.

You need to spend 2 or 3 years with them now

Yeah.

To show up as you are, not 2 days.

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

No. It's not. Which I don't have any childhood friends anymore.

Of course. 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 wanna be like these people. I don't wanna 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 wanna become, and you'll get caliber of friends that match it. But there is a transition period where you'll have neither.

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 wanna hang out, or when we hung out, they didn't really understand me, and they were kinda 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? Always, it's kinda hurtful, right?

Totally. 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 Yeah. And 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.

Yeah. And I think, well, 2 parts. 1 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. Mhmm. Because it like, your success makes them feel bad.

Whether they whether they say it or not, it does because humans are comparative creatures. We look at 1 another. That's 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 the, 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. It's 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 simple response to that is, and you have it. And I think it's 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 1 friend that I still have from middle school, 1 friend, but, basically, no 1 else. And that 1 friend is because he is a champion. Like, he's a cheerleader. He has a different life, but he's just like, dude, go

He's not criticizing you. He's not judging you. He's like, you're amazing. Yeah. And you keep him in his life, in your life.

And he's also not a is 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 bust we have no competitive overlap.

So I'm like, how many how many drug rings did you bust this month? He said, 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 I get to hear this whole thing. He's like, what deals have you done? And because he you know, we get to kinda live vicariously.

But That's cool. Those relationships are rare. And if you find somebody who speaks well of you behind your back and talks to you to your face, those are the friends that are worth keeping. Amen. And if you can find somebody who can do both of those without flipping every conversation and making it about themselves, I think you have somebody who's worth keeping.

Mhmm. But most people don't even meet 1 of those criteria, let alone all 3.

Yeah. Speaking of young men and ourselves when we were younger, what would you say are 3 brutal truths that young men need to hear in order to become more successful in life?

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 wanna 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 1. The the second thing is if you want to change your behavior, change your conditions. And so, 1 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 and the wrong actions, there's a reason I left Baltimore. And there's a reason you left the right lane. Yeah. Yeah. As I went to where I thought I was like, I wanna get into fitness.

And so I was between Miami and Southern California. Those are my I was like, those are kind of the fitness capitals. I'm gonna go to 1 of those places because I wanna do fitness, and I wanna be around the best. And so Baltimore was 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 2. 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 2 most often asked questions that I have, that I, like, mentally think.

I probably think of 10 times, 20 times a day. Is number 1, does this action, this person, this decision increase or decrease the likelihood that I achieve my goals? Yes or no.

Yeah.

Does it increase or decrease does this friend who who always wants to go out, does you you playing fitness football increase or decrease the likelihood that you hit 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 wanna talk about

if you

wanna talk about, you know, fulfillment and and and and and all the joy and all that stuff. I'm not the guy for that.

Yeah. Yeah. But it is not 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.

I like looking back and enjoy it because memories pay dividends in the future. Mhmm. 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, so delete everything using that question.

And the second question, which is my prop 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 out with you. Or she's

gonna say you need to be you need to make this much, you need

to do

this, you need this, and then she's gonna give you the answers. Right. And then do you wanna pay that price?

Exactly. Either you don't like the shoes or you don't like the price. You gotta you gotta pay it if you want it. Yeah. 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 tag's 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 1 in this field? What would it take for us to to 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 aren't worth playing.

It's like,

if you play stupid stupid games, you win stupid prizes. And so no 1 asked the question before they play the game, is this game worth it? And so when you ask the question of like, what, 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, if I know what it is, then either I have those resources or I have to use my resourcefulness to get them. Yes. 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 save $50,000, 23 years old. I 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. And so the first thing I said, I was like, where do you guys open? 1 guy's, oh, I I have a terrible location. I would have done this.

Another guy's like, oh, I might and then the guys who had the best locations, like, what was what was it? Okay. Well, how how many square feet should I have? Oh. How should I organize, you know, what equipment?

Oh, no.

Should I buy or lease it for you? Exactly.

I thought I was gonna, they're like, oh, don't buy those. They're really expensive. I thought I was gonna use them. No 1 uses them. Oh, yeah.

Girls trip on those. Don I was like, uh-huh. Uh-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 1st year because if I do what the best people did, I will get what 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 wanna just pace them.

I wanna beat them. Yes. And so like Kobe, it's like, if he's, if he's working out, if, if the best guys are working out twice a day, he's like, well, I gotta work out 3 times a day cause 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 gonna advance at the same pace. But I gotta work out 3 times a day.

If this guy's doing a $100 a day in ad spend, I gotta spend $500 a day. If this guy's doing, you know, 1 piece of content, I gotta make 10, because he's better at it than I am. So I have to make 10 just to make up for my skill deficiency. And so again, this volatility is is a 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, 1 of the divisions, on the media side. And the first, you know, day I came in, I was like, okay. So, you know, what are we gonna do? And so they're like this.

I was like, okay. What are we gonna 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, like, 4 hours to do this thing.

Can we do it today? Exactly.

And then I was like, okay. Well, it's, you know, noon.

Yeah.

Let's meet at 4. I'll give you an extra hour and show me what we did. And then we met 4 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 3 days, we did 3 months of work. Because if you think there was 12 actions that had happened and and you had a 1 week cadence, in a very real way, we move 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, it's 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.

Yeah. Then what do you think are the most toxic traits that young men have today that are holding them back?

So if we define traits as bundled terms, right, which means that there's just series of behaviors that bundle into 1 word, Convenient for communication, hard for training. Is that you know what? There it's there's actually just a 100 small skills that you need. And I think in I think demystifying this makes it easier. So it's like, I want to be confident.

Well, confident is an app is an approximation of how statistically likely something is to occur. So if in statistics you have a confidence metric, how likely is this thing to occur? Occur? And so if you want to be more confident, it means you need to do enough repetitions that you can make a statistical prediction that it's likely. If I go up on stage a 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 100 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. Mhmm. But especially in confidence, the proof comes before the pudding. You have to you have to do the reps before people are like, wow.

Because you can't fake I mean, you can you can fake confidence

Even though I'm now. Yeah.

Yeah. To your you'll know. And as far as I'm concerned in life, I'm the only 1 I'm trying to impress. And so if I know I'm fake, I'm the 1 who in the middle of the night is looking up being like, I can't believe I'm so full. I would hate that.

It's an empty life. It's also living for other people.

Mhmm.

And so, if the toxic trait is people wanting the outcome without the repetition, right? It's without the price. That's how I say that's number 1. The the let me see. What what what are they saying?

I'm trying to think of, like, a really specific thing. Well, the second 1 is, has everything to do, it's an offshoot, but it's entitlement. Right? Is is is fundamentally believing you deserve things, and that that the world must accommodate you.

Why do so many people have that belief?

I think parenting in the school system has made it so that, like, you can have a safe room, and you can you can have a cry corner. And, if you think that 1 +1 is 5, 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. Alright. 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.

Like Does

it bend to your will, though? No. But if you do a set sort of actions, it starts to bend.

I play within I play within I play within the realm of reality.

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.

I think that the universe is that I don't anthropomorphize this, so I don't humanize it and say Sure. Sure. Sure. Anything. Right.

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

Yes.

You were able to create extraordinary results.

Yes. Based on reality. Yes. And if I had done if I had said I wanna 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 gonna 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 peep 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 put all of the effort into, 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 1 flip of a switch, which is I will judge myself on what I do and what I make happen, not on what occurred.

Mhmm.

And I think that divorcing those things is is like and this is a freeing thought for me. It's a little bit heady. So maybe maybe your your audience will like it. I'm in. The past doesn't exist except for in your mind.

It's like, 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 this mental idea where, what if I woke up 1 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 gonna get into this, because I think there's somebody who's listening to this, so this could change their life. I define trauma as a permanent change in behavior from a 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. Mhmm.

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. You had 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, the this idea that people espouse, that trauma is is stored in our body.

It's in our in 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 1 of, 1 of the portfolio companies that I wanted to 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.

Exposure therapy.

Yes. And that's how you change behavior. Same condition in your behavior as learning. Yeah. And so I I 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, 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 1 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. And so criticism is the difference between desired and actual.

Now that can be very, a, non emotional. You can say, Hey, you said you were gonna show up every day, and you've been late. Great. Okay? So desired actual.

And I say, 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? It's because these are the only things that affect the world, is what you do. And so, in trying to quote, conquer trauma, like, I 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 that made you, you know, driven or whatever. Right? I could make up something, but no 1 knows. I can't run a split test on my life. I know that I 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 I treated women that way because I had a a broken relationship with my mother. Okay. And You just

gotta change the actions.

Right. It doesn't Right. It's like So it's all all we 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 behavior from a negative experience, is waste. And so using that 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 this has massively simplified my life, and I have this belief that billionaires see the world more clearly than everyone else. Why? 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 I my my I 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.

Yeah. That's it.

And then You get the results you want. More likely get those results you want.

And

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

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.

Mhmm.

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?

Whenever I have a big decision.

Okay.

And so it's not How

many times in the last year would you say? 5?

Yeah. That's if you got it. Probably about 5 is probably what we're saying.

Let's say you're the next time you talk to

Yeah.

Your 85 year old self. Yeah. You ask him, hey, I wanna make this decision. And Yeah. He gives you the advice that you need to hear subjectively outside of yourself and saying, just do this, this, this, and boom, it's done.

When you become 85

Yeah.

And you win at everything, everything that you do and you touch, you win at, you, you know, you accomplish way more than you fail, all these things happen. Yeah. What do you think will be the biggest price you pay that you'll look back on and say, I wish I would've told you to do something else. We won a ton. We wanted everything.

Sure. Everything we wanted, we won.

Yeah.

But there was a price we paid somewhere that maybe at 85. I wish we would've taken a different choice, and 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?

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. Yeah. And so, basically, we wish we could have lived 6 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 eaten into him. 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, you know, 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 is that if you play all that all the way the other side Mhmm. They might say, oh, I wish I would have done this. Right. Right.

Right. I see this as fundamentally, we want to have everything

Yeah.

And we can't. And for me, and that's okay.

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

to? I don't talk about to them about regrets. I talk about it. I talk about business with that. They'd be, like, really real.

Like like, the real answer is, if I have an hour with a billionaire, I'm talking about money stuff. Sure. That's that's 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. Why? Because I love the life I have, and I wouldn't wanna change anything.

Right now you do. Yeah. You'd be like, whatever you're doing, whatever you're gonna do, do it.

I wouldn't wanna mess with it. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So, like, I've already played if if a time machine ever exists and an old version of me comes back and he says nothing and smiles, I'd be like, alright.

Alright. 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 In that small

way. Yeah.

Right. But I spend all of my time doing the thing that I enjoy most. And I have to to the to the 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've I worked the 1st 100 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 2 day vacation, and I left 1 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 3 to 1 person who works there to to you ratio.

Like, it's crazy. And I remember we had this beautiful view of this mountain, create, you know, and I and I there's this lawn chair. I'm sitting on, you know, 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. It's and and the thing is is that there's this expectation of myself that I should care.

Like, I should take a vacation. But I think about, like, how how recent is the 5 day work week? It's a it's a 56 year old concept. It's not something that happened for 100 of years, for 1000 of years for humans. This is a new thing.

People used to work every day.

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

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

Your name was literally what you did. Carpenter, Butler, Taylor, like all of these were names because what he's 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. Like, do your thing.

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

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 stim 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 wanna maximize your effective time. And so that also means that you're gonna 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 gonna 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 at 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 and you do these press you know this. So people are if I if I were to say, hey. I'm gonna go do a 100 of these in a quarter. People might be like, that's insane.

You did a 100 speaking events. Right? But if I were to say, I'm a university professor, and I do 8 of those a day because I have lecture halls that I give presentations to, why is this different? Mhmm. It's so different from people to say it is that it should be different.

I 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 1000 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?

Yeah.

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.

Yeah.

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.

Mhmm. So Disease is stressful. 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.

Yes. 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'm gonna do.

Mhmm. And if someone has a problem with that, then they can they can they cannot be in my life. And that's okay because there's 8,000,000,000 other people, and I'm sure there's 1 that's fine with it.

I'm glad you're in my life. I appreciate you. You've got a you've got a you've got 2 best selling books that have sold over a 1000000 copies each, a 100,000,000 offers, a 100,000,000 leads. We'll link those both up. You've got another book that you have coming out here in the future.

We'll we'll we'll announce that when you're allowed to announce it. You've got a a freeze $100,000,000 scaling course,

which I

think is pretty cool. Where can people go to get that? Just acquisition.comforward/training.

Okay. We just released it. I spent gosh. So I probably spent I spent so many hours on this. Wow.

I vetted it with 3, other billionaires, and I walked through each of the stages, and and they're like, dude, I can't like, this is so accurate. Wow. And so, basically, break down every stage of business across all functions, going from 0 to a 100,000,000 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, 0, which would be, you you don't even have a business yet. Next stage is, you you graduate by making your 1st dollar. Next stage, you get your 1st 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 a 100,000,000,000 a year.

I scaled it by headcount because headcount is more similar in terms of structure of business rather than revenue. Like, a a software company can have, you know Sure. 20 guys and do a 100,000,000 a year, and then, you know, restaurant has 20 and has does Yeah. Right. Yeah.

And so but the structure of the organization is more similar by headcount. And so, basically, walk through each of these as functions. That's cool. 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 your advertising point. And then there's videos that go with it if you're more of a a video learner.

Wow. So that's acquisition.com for that? Yeah. Yeah. Just training.

I think road map it's forward slash, you know, backslash, whatever the slash is.

Yeah.

Yeah. Road map. Okay. 1 word. I'm pretty sure that's what the the URL is.

Worst case, if you're We'll link it up. Dotcom.

You'll find it. You'll be up there somewhere.

Yeah. You'll find it.

Or I

will have failed as an advertiser if you get to the if you get the Exactly.

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

65.

So if you want 65 pieces of content a day, go follow you at alexhermose on YouTube, Instagram, Hermose, 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 like every year, since 2 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 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 wanna share before we wrap up? Yeah. Never give up. My man, appreciate you.

Appreciate you.

Thanks for having me, man. It's great, brother.

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