Alex Hormozi: How He Built A $150 Million Empire And His Best Business Advice

1. 0:00 – 2:12

   Intro

   1. AHAlex Hormozi0:00

      And I think the big problem is that people expect that they're gonna have a perfect business. I can't think of an entrepreneur, besides Jeff Bezos, who's a freak of nature. Most people have a, a graveyard of failures behind them. The idea is you start not with the intent of saying, "This is gonna be the one thing I'll do for the rest of my life," which is the fallacy that employees have, when in reality it's, "I just have to do a thing that I'm good enough at that I can learn the game." And the thing is, once you start taking steps, the pa- the next step becomes illuminated. You trying to think 100 steps into the future when you have no context is irrelevant because chaos is going to break your plan. And a lot of people think they need to have some novel idea. The best way to start a business is just look at what everyone else is doing and just try and do it better. What are things that I already know how to do or I have past experience in? What things, because I have past experience, I know that other people struggle with that sucks about this thing? And then I will solve that specific problem. And it could also be a problem that other people solve too. You just try and do it a little bit better.

   2. AAAli Abdaal0:48

      Hey, friends, and welcome back to Deep Dive, the weekly podcast where every week it is my immense privilege to sit down with authors and academics and entrepreneurs and creators and other inspiring people, and we talk about how they got to where they are and the strategies and tools that we can learn from them to apply to our own lives to help live our best lives. Now, what you're about to hear is an interview between me and Alex Hormozi. Alex has been absolutely taking the internet by storm over the last year or two. He's a business owner, I guess, who's just... He's also absolutely jacked and just produces loads and loads of content, which is all around helping you start and build a business. He and his wife, Layla, they own businesses together. Their portfolio is worth over $150 million. And Alex has written an absolutely fantastic book called $100M Offers, which is a book basically all about how to craft an offer which converts people and which sells well. And he's genuinely one of the most inspiring people that I've ever come across in the world of entrepreneurship. He has nothing to sell you. That's, like, one of his, one of his selling points. His whole mission is to help people start businesses, because starting a business and growing his business was what allowed him to become free and get ridiculous levels of wealth and be able to do whatever he wanted. And so in the conversation, we talk a little bit about how, let's say, someone working a normal job could potentially be taking those first steps to start that business, which could potentially allow them to quit that job if that's what they want to do. And we touch on a bunch of other things around the importance of learning versus earning, investing in the S&P 500 versus the S&Me 500. And we explore a little bit of Alex's backstory, where he quit his corporate job and then started gyms and, like, all of the various lessons he learned along the way. So I hope you enjoy this interview with Alex

2. 2:12 – 4:17

   $100M Offers

   1. AAAli Abdaal2:12

      Hormozi. Yeah. So thank you so much for taking the time. Um-

   2. AHAlex Hormozi2:15

      No, your welcome

   3. AAAli Abdaal2:15

      ... this is, uh, a conversation I've been looking forward to for a while 'cause I've, uh, discovered your stuff around the time you were blowing up seemingly on all of the social platforms. Um-

   4. AHAlex Hormozi2:24

      Yeah

   5. AAAli Abdaal2:24

      ... and then, and then I came across your book and I listened to it on Audible. And aro-around the same time, all of my friends had also discovered the book and they were just like... We were all messaging being like, "Oh my God, have you read $100M Offers? It's just absolutely sick and it's just, like, jam-packed with value." So firstly, thank you for that, um, and for providing that as a 99 cent service to the world broadly. Um, [chuckles] how did, h-how, how did you think about pricing for that, for that book, by the way?

   6. AHAlex Hormozi2:48

      I mean, I think it's always like, what's the... you know, what problem are we solving? And so for me, like, the point of the book is not to make money from the book. The point of the book was to, you know, help as many businesses make money and then... I mean, the, the, the play for acquisition.com is a very long play. You know what I mean? Which is just, I believe that there's lots of... The, I think the, the biggest inflow of deals will actually come in five years from all the people who've consumed the stuff and have gotten to, you know, three, five, 10, 20 million and they want to work with acquisition.com who are not at that threshold yet. Um, but it's guys who wanna go to 100 and they're capped at 10 and they're trying to figure out what to do. Um, that's, that's what I'm making all the stuff for. Um, but yeah, so the problem that we're solving is, like, how do we get this in as many hands as possible? And so giving it away for free, I actually don't think would've gotten as many hands because I wanted to use... 'Cause if Amazon makes money, Amazon will push it, right? And so I had to make... And so at 99 cents, Amazon gets two-thirds of the revenue from the thing. If I was at t- $2.99, then it's, I get two-thirds and they get one-third. And so my, at least my mental argument was it's easy to sell a 99 cent thing. Uh, I can tap into the traffic that Amazon will provide and what problem am I solving, which is mass distribution, you know, as many people as possible. And I think there is also a tiny element of free versus paid. There's like an emotional difference of, like, I paid something. I mean, it's the difference between a customer and a voyeur. You know what I mean? And so, um, that was, that was at least the, the thought process behind it. And, um, yeah, just that, that was it. That was it. There wasn't, there wasn't too much more thought than that.

3. 4:17 – 6:42

   The philosophy behind ‘I have nothing to sell you’

   1. AAAli Abdaal4:17

      So one of the things that you open a lot of your content with is, um, the phrase to the effect of, "My name is Alex Hormozi. I own acquisition.com." Uh, uh, "And I'm gonna help you get to 3 million in revenue. If you're more than 3 million in, in revenue, then talk to me. I wanna acquire you. But if you're less than 3 million in revenue, I wanna help you get there and I have nothing to sell you."

   2. AHAlex Hormozi4:35

      Yeah.

   3. AAAli Abdaal4:35

      Um, and that's, that's interesting. So it's, it's, it's interesting, A, because, like, the way people were describing you when it was sort of on the, on the grapevine when you first started blowing up was th-that phrase that, "And, and I have nothing to sell you."

   4. AHAlex Hormozi4:50

      Mm-hmm.

   5. AAAli Abdaal4:50

      And that was... That, that really tapped nicely into some-something in the zeitgeist where everyone knows someone's always trying to sell you something. And then just the fact that you're so blasé about throwing the word 3 million out there, where for most people, they hear that number and they like shit their pants because, like, 3 million's a lot of money. But the way you seem to talk, like, it, it's, it's almost like it's, it's not. And it helped, like, for me at least, helped me change my mindset around multiple millions to the point as that it, it didn't seem like such a big deal. So I wonder if you can just kind of speak to that a bit. Like, what, what-

   6. AHAlex Hormozi5:21

      Sure

   7. AAAli Abdaal5:21

      ... what's the philosophy behind the introduction?

   8. AHAlex Hormozi5:23

      Yeah, I mean, so many, [chuckles] many of the things, uh, that I feel like I've, I've gotten some notoriety for have been, uh, you know, sheer accidents that it's, it's... it only seems masterful in retrospect than [chuckles] more than it was, you know, um, intelligent design. Um, I got frustrated 'cause a lot of people were like, "He's just trying to sell a course." This is, like, early on. Um, because, you know... And I was like, I was like, "I'm not... I have nothing to sell you." I was like, "I have nothing to sell you." And so the very first video, I can't remember which one it was, I just said it like I was just annoyed, uh, when I said that and then, you know, the comments just like poured on after this, like, oh, so I just need to be more de- like, more explicit about this. I... people just don't know. I was like, "I have nothing to sell. I have a 99 cent book." Like, you know what I mean? Like, if that... And that's actually the one thing that I've struggled, uh, with is 'cause, like, the internet doesn't do well with nuance. Um, and so they're like, you know, some people are like, "He's trying to make money." I'm like, "Dude, like, yeah." And the, and the book does make money. The book makes, uh, probably about 60,000 a month in income. Uh, that I make from the book? Yeah. Um, so I mean, like it makes money. Um, but like relative to my income, it's just like it's irrelevant. Like it doesn't even... You know what I mean? Like it doesn't, it doesn't. My top employee makes a million plus a year. Like it just, it doesn't do anything for me. So, um, [chuckles] just like for context, right?

   9. AAAli Abdaal6:32

      Yeah. [laughs]

   10. AHAlex Hormozi6:32

       Um, [laughs] so, um, anyways, all that to say, the, the thinking process was more just me trying to be explicit. Um, and in terms of talking about

4. 6:42 – 9:08

   The biggest issue between 1 and 3 Million

   1. AHAlex Hormozi6:42

      three million, I may even change it. I may... I've changed it on some, a lot of my profiles to 10 million, um, and up. Uh, but the, the biggest issue that most people have between zero and three specifically, um, is just ignorance. People just don't know what to do. You know what I mean? And so like just, you know, getting to six figures is literally just like sell something to someone. Like that's it. That's all you have to do to get to six figures, like s- s- one channel, one product, one avatar. Like that's it. You don't have to do anything else. And then, you know, when you get, you wanna get to seven figures, then you just do that and then add the word consistently, which is you do, you know, you input, put the inputs in the system in a way that's consistent so that you get a consistent output. So it's whatever way you acquired those customers, whether it was reach outs, whether it was content, whether it was paid ads, whether it was affiliates, whether it was referrals, whatever the thing was that got you the customers, cool. Do that consistently and you'll be at a million. You know what I mean? Which is, which is still only 20K a week. It's not like a huge number. You know, one to three is usually, uh, increasing output of that, that main thing to a small degree, um, and really just like baseline efficiencies and building out the core team. So usually at that point, going one to three is getting the person out of delivery, um, to a large, you know, to a large extent, and usually they get their first kinda first follower, first like one or two, uh... I'm trying to think of the right word to how to say this. Um, competent individuals, uh, who are helping them out and then, you know, a handful of frontline. And so it's usually like companies that si- you know, three million, they're like five to 15 employees and so. And there's usually really only like two-ish good ones, um, and the rest are okay, right?

   2. AAAli Abdaal8:17

      [laughs]

   3. AHAlex Hormozi8:17

      And so at that point, you know, going from three to 10 is usually where we can... It's the minimum level that we take people on, and it's not because there's something magical about three million. It's that three million typically checks two boxes. Box one is that they have product market fit at some level. People want something from them, like something they're selling is resonating enough that they can generate sales. And the second thing, I guess there's three boxes. One is that. The second is that they have at least one reliable acquisition channel that they're currently doing, and the third is that they have a core team in place. So they've demonstrated product market fit, they have a reliable acquisition channel, just at least one, uh, and they have a core team in place which may be relatively dysfunctional and have very few key players, but at least they have some semblance of structure. And so if they ha- if they meet those minimum requirements, then we can at least start from at le- some level of leverage, um, to start helping them grow.

   4. AAAli Abdaal9:06

      Okay. So I'd love to talk

5. 9:08 – 14:03

   How to make a living from something you love

   1. AAAli Abdaal9:08

      a lot about that, that initial bit that you sort of th-threw away with like, oh, one product, one channel, one, uh, one, one avatar.

   2. AHAlex Hormozi9:15

      One avatar. Yeah.

   3. AAAli Abdaal9:16

      Um, so for a bit of context, a c- a couple of weeks ago, I, I happened to be on, on vacation on some Greek island, and I posted an Instagram reel of like, "Hey, this is the creator life. I'm working on my-

   4. AHAlex Hormozi9:26

      Yeah

   5. AAAli Abdaal9:26

      ... iPad and, and stuff." And there were a few comments from people being like, "I'd love to live this sort of lifestyle, but I just don't know where to start." And that sort of, that idea of I'd love to be able to... You know, if, if we imagine 99.9% listening to, of people listening to this, if you told them they could make six figures a year doing what they love, they'd be like, "Phew," mind blown, would absolutely love that. So I wonder if we can kind of explore that zero to six figure jump, uh, or sort of process. Let's say someone has got a full-time job. Let's say they're working in, I don't know, consulting or some-something corporate, and they love the idea of, "I wanna make a living doing what I love." How, how, how would we break that down?

   6. AHAlex Hormozi10:02

      And this is under the assumption that they hate doing what they're doing.

   7. AAAli Abdaal10:04

      Yes.

   8. AHAlex Hormozi10:05

      I was like, 'cause I, I always like to be clear. I was like, "I've got employees that make a million bucks a year plus." So like you can absolutely become filthy wealthy, and that's income, right? And so a lot of businesses that are at $10 million a year, the owner might only take a million bucks in income, depending on, you know, margins, et cetera. And so like a lot of, a lot of employees will wish for... They see top line as income, which is just a very employee mindset. Um, they're like, "Oh, if I make six figures a year, I'll make six figures a year." It's like, well, if you really wanna make six figures a year, I'll probably make 500 grand a year, um, you know what I mean, revenue-wise at least, if you don't wanna have just bought yourself another job, right? 'Cause so s- Let's, let's talk through this transition. So if you're an employee, when you make the switch, you're still an employee. You're just an employee of a different business that you happen to own, and you are basically 100% of the expenses. And so the business itself actually makes no money. You as the sole employee of that thing and the boss, um, gets to call your own shots, but you are still the employee, right? So you're wearing all the hats, et cetera. Um, and so it's relatively nuanced. You know what I mean? [chuckles] Like if you had a six-figure consulting job and then you start consulting on the side, for example, through your own LLC, you have the same job. You just got rid of the person who was giving you direction, and now you are responsible, right? The thing that most people have to do is they have to go get money, right? You have to go make money, and the way you do that is you sell stuff, right? And the way that you can even begin the conversation to sell stuff is that you have to have people who show interest in the thing, which means you have to make your products known, and we do that through advertising, right? And there's five ways to advertise, which I, which I just went over earlier. Um, and so it's like pick one of those five ways. Start doing it on a consistent basis. Bring people in. What do you sell them? That's what the $100M Offers book is for, is like this is how you figure out what to sell. Um, and then you sell them the thing, and then after that you'll have some delivery. Now, usually if you have a consistent method of advertising and selling with a, with a what to sell from the offer, then you can start getting people to help you, uh, on the level of delivery you have, which comes down to breaking the delivery into chunks rather than holistically and saying, "How can I specialize the labor?" 'Cause you trying to say, "I just need somebody to do what I do" is silly, right? You need to figure out how can somebody do... How can I get, how can I get five people to do 20% of what I'm doing and do it consistently, right? And then you can increase your advertising. Sales is a very high leverage thing in the beginning. If you spent all day selling just you, you would have enough for five people to do work, right? And so then you would have a business. You know?

   9. AAAli Abdaal12:19

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6. 14:03 – 18:45

   How do you find what you can sell to the world?

   1. AAAli Abdaal14:03

      listening to this, and they're thinking, "All right, cool. I know... I... Like, I've, I've read Alex's book. He, he, he's, he's telling me I've, I've gotta-"

   2. AHAlex Hormozi14:08

      Yeah.

   3. AAAli Abdaal14:08

      "... I've gotta sell a thing."

   4. AHAlex Hormozi14:09

      Yeah, yeah.

   5. AAAli Abdaal14:09

      "I don't, I don't know what to sell. I don't know if I have any skills."

   6. AHAlex Hormozi14:12

      Yeah.

   7. AAAli Abdaal14:12

      "I don't, I don't, I don't know what I could possibly offer to the world."

   8. AHAlex Hormozi14:15

      Yeah.

   9. AAAli Abdaal14:15

      How do we, how do we break that down?

   10. AHAlex Hormozi14:17

       Yeah, this is actually s- a topic that I, um, I cover more in the leads book that's coming out soon. Uh, soon, relative terms, six months-ish.

   11. AAAli Abdaal14:24

       Note to self. [laughs]

   12. AHAlex Hormozi14:26

       Um, everybody knows something, all right? And so the idea is what do you have, y- like, everyone has unique depth of knowledge in certain areas because you've been alive and your eyes and ears have taken inputs, period, right? And so I like to think of, of people starting... Like, so if you look at y- Are you familiar with Y Combinator?

   13. AAAli Abdaal14:44

       Yeah.

   14. AHAlex Hormozi14:45

       Y C... Yeah.

   15. AAAli Abdaal14:45

       But, um, yeah.

   16. AHAlex Hormozi14:46

       So, yeah, so Y Combinator is one of the most successful, you know, uh, I don't know if they're technically VC. They're st- you know, seed capital, startup, um, investors in Silicon Valley, and they have a very standard deal structure, and they have criteria for what they look for in companies. And one of the most important criteria that they look for is past experience. And so they're okay with somebody who's super young, et cetera, but they wanna, they want you to have experience in the industry because there's just so much ignorance debt that you have to pay down if you literally know nothing about an industry. Like, there's just so much. Like, if your dad was a mechanic, you know so much about cars just by osmosis of being around a mechanic for 18 years. And so I like to think past jobs you've held, you will know stuff about that industry. Um, the jobs of your parents are things that you will know about that industry, and then you've got personal interests. And so I think that if I put those into three buckets, it's like parent stuff, past jobs of self, and current interests. And so it's like, of those three things, which of those three buckets do you think you could help someone do a thing better? And so the idea is you want to sell the most valuable thing, right? And so the most valuable thing is what is the problem that I can help somebody else solve that I could charge the most money for, or in reverse, that could make them the most money? Um, and then I will be able to charge a percentage of the money that I'm able to make somebody else in this thing. Now, that's in a B2B setting. In a B2C setting, it would be how valuable do people perceive, uh, the problem that they have as, right? Whether it's like I can teach music, tons of people want to be able to learn how to... And if you're better, you know, because you've had a side interest in that, awesome. Maybe you have a side interest because you're really good at editing the songs. Well, there's tons of musicians who would love, who hate that part and would love to have that. So it's like we all know how to do stuff, and all we have to do is package the thing that we're doing, and I think the big problem is that people expect that they're gonna have a perfect business. But if you look at the track record of all the... I can't think of an entrepreneur besides Jeff Bezos, who's a freak of nature, whose first business becomes the most valuable business in the world, is most people have a, a graveyard of failures behind them. And so the idea is you start not with the intent of saying, "This is gonna be the one thing I'll do for the rest of my life," which is the fallacy that employees have, uh, that whatever they pick is gonna be the thing they're gonna do for the rest of their lives, when in reality it's I just have to do a thing that I'm good enough at, that I can learn the game. And the thing is, once you start taking steps, the pa- the next step becomes illuminated. You trying to think 100 steps into the future when you have no context is, is irrelevant because chaos is going to break your plan anyways. And so do what you know. Exchange, I like service businesses to start because they are the, in my opinion, the lowest risk to start because you're just... It's just your time, right? So-

   17. AAAli Abdaal17:22

       So service businesses meaning?

   18. AHAlex Hormozi17:24

       Do stuff for money. [laughs]

   19. AAAli Abdaal17:26

       Like mowing the lawn or cleaning windows or like what? Yeah.

   20. AHAlex Hormozi17:28

       100%, service.

   21. AAAli Abdaal17:29

       [laughs] Yeah.

   22. AHAlex Hormozi17:29

       Clean houses, like whatever. Like, all of those are just service businesses, right? And they're fine.

   23. AAAli Abdaal17:33

       Mm.

   24. AHAlex Hormozi17:33

       And a lot of people think they need to have some novel idea to start a business when, l- I mean, the best, in my opinion, if you're, if you're getting into it, the best way to start a business is just look at what everyone else is doing and just try and do it better. Like, I mean, a- and there's obvious holes. Like, if you've, if you've gone to, if you've gotten your dry cleaning, it's like, can I do this in half the time as this guy? If I do the lawn care, what are the things people hate about lawn care? Ah, they leave the, the, the trimmings around the edges. They're all, are all shitty. The person doesn't speak English that well. Like, well, cool, then I've got advantages, right? So it's like, what are things that I already know how to do or I have past experience in? What things, because I have past experience, I know that other people struggle with that sucks about this thing? And then I will solve that specific problem, and it could also be a problem that other people solve too. You just try and do a little bit better. Like, it's, it's just not rocket science. You know what I mean? And then you exchange, you start selling your time for money. So yes, you're still trading time for dollars. You don't need to re- read Rich Dad Poor Dad just yet, right? You're still trading time for dollars. Right? But the point is that you're, you're, you're trading that time for money in order to learn not to earn.

   25. AAAli Abdaal18:32

       Yeah.

   26. AHAlex Hormozi18:32

       You need to earn in order to pay your, pay your rent, eat, et cetera. But the, the major thing you're doing is you're paying down ignorance debt. So the vast majority of your income is coming in the terms of, in, in the form of education rather than earning.

   27. AAAli Abdaal18:44

       Yeah, there's

7. 18:45 – 25:10

   Learning vs Earning

   1. AAAli Abdaal18:45

      a few, a few things there that I think are really interesting. Uh, the first is that, um, I think if w- if we think of sort of how an employee thinks versus how a, an entrepreneur thinks or a, or a business owner, an employee sort of mindset is often sort of the activity that I'm doing, whereas the entrepreneur is more like the problem, the specific problem that I'm solving. Um, and I found that when people in, in, in our team have started doing freelance work and now they have more of an idea of what a creative business looks like and they can solve a specific problem, they're just like, "Oh my God, it's so easy to make money." Whereas before they were thinking of their service as like, "Oh, I am, I, I offer writing as a service," or, or s- or something like that. But as soon as you connect it to a problem that preferably a business has 'cause businesses can pay for it, suddenly the eyes, eyes light up and you realize, hang on, what does money even mean if I can, if it's seemingly so easy to make it? Um-

   2. AHAlex Hormozi19:33

      Yeah

   3. AAAli Abdaal19:33

      ... I, I like what you're saying about service-based businesses because it's, it's not that sexy. Like, when you hear people on podcasts, you don't tend to hear of someone who built a service-based business and it, and it, and it went really big. You tend to hear the stories of like the tech entrepreneurs that build a, an, uh, that built an innovative product and stuff. Um-

   4. AHAlex Hormozi19:49

      They don't see the hundred failed startups. Like the failure rate on tech startups it mi- it like is just as high as everything else, except it usually takes capital and it doesn't take capital to start a service business.

   5. AAAli Abdaal19:59

      So with you, like, um, my understanding is that you quit your corporate job, um, to, and started the, started the gym business and I wonder if we can kind of explore, explore the story there a little bit more.

   6. AHAlex Hormozi20:07

      I can actually even rewind. Uh, there was a half step in between there. So this is also covered in the, in the leads book, but I'll, I'll give a, I'll give a sneak peek.

   7. AAAli Abdaal20:14

      Nice. [chuckles]

   8. AHAlex Hormozi20:14

      So what I did, um, is I actually... 'Cause I'd been interested in fitness, right? That was my interest. So like I had past experience. I, I was obsessed with fitness. I've been in- at that point I was 23. I'd been training for eight years. I had several state records. So like I was a pretty, you know, I was pretty into it, right? And it was to the point where people were asking me for stuff all, you know, workout programs and things like that just 'cause they knew my interest, right? And so as a, as a quick, you know, pro tip for everybody, if you've got stuff that people ask you to do for them because you're good at it, maybe you're good at tech. It's like, "Can you help me set up my like Wi-Fi and stuff?" You know, blah, blah, blah. It's like that means you're solving problems. You can char- like what people ask you to do as a favor is an indication of the things that you can charge for later, right? So I had all these people who were asking me, uh, not all these, I mean a handful of people who had asked me for programs and stuff. And so what I did was during my last year of consulting I started something called The Free Training Project. And so The Free Training Project was I would charge $500 to $1,000, but I would as, I wouldn't charge it. They had to donate that to the charity of their choice in exchange to work with me, right? And so that way I wanted people to value it, but I, they weren't paying me directly. So they'd get a write off. They felt good. I had a ton of goodwill also in the marketplace too 'cause I was like, "I'm doing all this stuff for charity." I got, I got all these people reaching out to me like, "This is so cool," blah, blah, blah, right? And so after a year of doing that I had probably, I don't know, 12 really good test of like great before and after pictures that I had collected from my clients and I told them that was part of the deal. I was like, "I'll, like you have to donate it. I would like to do this for real later, but um, you have to let me use your testimonial." And they were like, "That's fine." So once I had that, um, I had those first, you know, 10, 12 customers who had, who had great before and after pictures, um, I transitioned many of those customers and said, "Hey, I'm doing, I'm gonna do this full time now. Are you comfortable paying the same amount you were paying to charity except just making it charity of Alex 'cause Alex can't eat either?" And so, and that was actually how I transitioned, uh, from not-for-profit or donating everything. Um, and I'd even set up the entity. I just told them to, to literally donate it and send me the screenshot. I didn't even do anything like that. Um, and so I didn't have a website. All I had was an LLC and a PayPal account. So like for everybody who's like, "I don't know how to start a business," I was like, "You literally just need a bank account and a way to process money." That is it. Like two things and you can Google how to figure out. If you can't figure it out from Google, entrepreneurship might not be for you. All right? But you l- like think about there's 30 million businesses in the United States. 30 million other people have figured this out which means you can too. So bank account, payment processing. Make the first 10 free or some sort of charitable thing so that people like don't feel weird or you don't feel weird about selling, et cetera. After you have it, after you're providing this service to people, you can transition people from free service to paid service and if they don't wanna start paying you then that gives you insight as to either you suck, right? Or they suck which is also possible too. But either way a certain percentage of those people will continue to stay and pay you and now you have income. Now you can also ask those people for referrals which is exactly what I did. Um, so I think half that business came in just from, I got, you know, the initial ones came in from friends and family and me posting and so I was, I'll, I'll close the loop on what I said earlier. A year later after I had those testimonials I made a public post being like, "Hey, I've got this thing now. I, I made a website," which is, that was my big announcement. I made a website.

   9. AAAli Abdaal23:33

      Nice.

   10. AHAlex Hormozi23:34

       I still have the post. I found it. It's 2013. Um, I was like, "I made a, I made a website and uh, I, I am now open for business and so if you would like, you know, training stuff let me know. Um, this is what I'm doing now and I, you know, had some testimonials and go check out the site," whatever. And so from there I was able to get I think about 20 guys, uh, who were willing to let me do just like almost bodybuilding type stuff 'cause I was kinda like what I, I was power lifting and bodybuilding back then. And so, um, I think I wanna say I got 20 guys at 200 bucks a month and so I was making $4,000 a month, uh, from those people and it took me four hours every Saturday to do the fulfillment.

   11. AAAli Abdaal24:12

       What was the fulfillment?

   12. AHAlex Hormozi24:14

       I would just, I would just update their training programs and, and send them nutrition, uh, like update their macros, updated meal plans, um, and then like, you know, new workouts planned for the week, et cetera. Um, and then I, and everyone had my cell phone and I would just text them the new stuff and h- if they had any questions they could hit me up. Like it was a very simple business. Um- And so that's what I did. It was just one-on-one online, and it only took me four hours on Saturday morning. And to show you what kind of person I am, I hated it. Uh, even though I loved fitness, I hated having to do something, the same thing every day, um, like on the delivery side. So I ended up having the genius idea of saying, "Oh, I need to own a gym because then I'll be a business owner. I'm really just self-employed right now." Um, and so that's what got me to start my gym, rather than probably doing the wiser decision and saying, "Okay, this ca- costs you four hours a week and you're making four grand a month. Maybe you should do this for 40 hours a week." But doing more of it to me felt like a horrible idea, so I didn't

8. 25:10 – 28:10

   Your business ideas

   1. AHAlex Hormozi25:10

      wanna do it anymore. Um, and so-

   2. AAAli Abdaal25:11

      So how did, how did you jump from that to therefore I should probably own a gym?

   3. AHAlex Hormozi25:14

      Oh, I don't think the-

   4. AAAli Abdaal25:15

      Like that's, that, that seems like a big, a big leap

   5. AHAlex Hormozi25:16

      ... the inferential jump was not high.

   6. AAAli Abdaal25:17

      Yeah.

   7. AHAlex Hormozi25:17

      Yeah, it was not a-

   8. AAAli Abdaal25:18

      Oh, okay

   9. AHAlex Hormozi25:18

      ... it was not, it was not an intelligent one. I always thought I was gonna own a gym. That was... I mean, that was the... Not always. I had done a... So, so these are the three things that I was deciding between for my business. I was deciding between a test prep company, because I was really good at standardized testing, um, and I had a process for how I, how I did it. I had a yogurt business idea, 'cause I was a big yo- froyo guy. Yeah, I know, I know. I was like, "I'm a avid consumer of this shit."

   10. AAAli Abdaal25:45

       Yeah. Nice.

   11. AHAlex Hormozi25:45

       I, [laughs] like, I feel like I know... And I, and I hated... There's so many things I knew that I thought I could... I actually know a lot about the yogurt business now. Um, and I was good at fitness. So those are the three things that I felt like I could do, for anybody who's listening. Like, those were the three that I was picking between. The yogurt business cost 250 grand to start up. I didn't have that money, so I couldn't do that one. Um, I had saved about 50 or 60 grand. I can't remember if it was 50 or 60 at the time. Um, I was 23. And then, uh, the test prep business I actually did a ton of work on, um, and I was gonna partner with a professor from my university to do it with me. And so I set up all of the initial materials. Um, and based on a miscommunication, I'll just put it that way, um, he ended up either taking the materials and not... and using them without me to start a, a business consulting thing. Either way, it, it became clear that what I thought was happening versus what he thought was happening were not the same thing. Um, and that left a very sour taste in my mouth with test prep. I do think it was the smarter business I probably should have done. Um, and so all that was left was fitness. And so fitness I was like, "I already know that. Um, people already want me to help them with it, so I'll just start that." And so the gym was the, the, was the... what I, what I would've said is, like, the legit business. I didn't think that the online thing was a legit business. Remember, this is 10 years ago. So, like, it wasn't... It wa- I... No one even thought it was... that was a, that was a concept of legitimate business. You know what I mean? So I was really early days on it. And so, uh, you know, from there I hit up 40 gym owners, uh, to see if, uh, I could just basically apprentice for them and just work for free. Uh, one guy hit me back. He had a mastermind. Uh, I joined his mastermind for $10,000 even though I didn't have a gym, and I said, "Are you sure that it makes sense for me to join?" He was like, "Oh yeah, sure." Um, and it did actually make sense for me because then I could learn from all the mistakes everybody else was making before I started. So I was like, "Okay, this works." And so I learned all the stuff that I could from that mastermind and from him. Um, he ended up signing me as an employee.

   12. AAAli Abdaal27:37

       Okay, hang on. So-

   13. AHAlex Hormozi27:37

       Yeah. It was actually-

   14. AAAli Abdaal27:37

       A couple, a couple questions on that front.

   15. AHAlex Hormozi27:39

       Yeah.

   16. AAAli Abdaal27:39

       So, um, yeah, the, uh, the test prep thing is interesting. I didn't, I didn't know that part of the story. So m- my first business that went well was also a test prep business, and I still have the Evernote document from 2012 where I was like, "Shit, I need to make some money. What am I good at? Uh, and what could I possibly do?" And it was like, "Test prep and web design." And I was like, "Cool. Let me make a test prep course thing and let me advertise it on a website," 'cause back then-

   17. AHAlex Hormozi28:00

       Yeah

   18. AAAli Abdaal28:00

       ... it was hard to make a website look pretty. And-

   19. AHAlex Hormozi28:02

       Yeah

   20. AAAli Abdaal28:02

       ... [laughs] that, that's what ended up, ended up making the money initially. Um, uh, on the, on the gym front, so it, it,

9. 28:10 – 31:12

   Starting your first business

   1. AAAli Abdaal28:10

      it seems to me like there's two leaps there. Um, leap number one is I want to do this thing, like i.e. start a gym maybe, um-

   2. AHAlex Hormozi28:17

      Mm-hmm

   3. AAAli Abdaal28:17

      ... and therefore I'm gonna work for free.

   4. AHAlex Hormozi28:19

      I wanna own a business.

   5. AAAli Abdaal28:20

      Oh, okay.

   6. AHAlex Hormozi28:20

      I wanna own a business. Yeah.

   7. AAAli Abdaal28:21

      I wanna own a business, therefore I'm gonna work for someone for free. That, that is-

   8. AHAlex Hormozi28:24

      Mm-hmm

   9. AAAli Abdaal28:24

      ... seems like a bit of a leap, uh, which these days seems very unfashionable to even say because everyone then goes down your throat for being... That's only available for the privileged, et cetera, et cetera. And then beyond that also-

   10. AHAlex Hormozi28:34

       What's available for the privileged? Working for free.

   11. AAAli Abdaal28:35

       Oh, the... Yeah, the working for free thing. It's, it's quite un- unfashionable to suggest that people work for free. Um-

   12. AHAlex Hormozi28:41

       Oh, all right

   13. AAAli Abdaal28:42

       ... at least in-

   14. AHAlex Hormozi28:42

       I mean, I was making four grand a month-

   15. AAAli Abdaal28:43

       Yeah. [laughs]

   16. AHAlex Hormozi28:43

       ... from my little online thing.

   17. AAAli Abdaal28:45

       Yeah.

   18. AHAlex Hormozi28:45

       So I made money from that. Now I offered to work for free, but I... he quickly was like, "I don't feel good about it. I'll just pay you." And so he paid me. He paid me, like, minimum wage, but I mean, I think I made like, I don't know, 2,800 bucks a month, whatever it was. I don't even remember what it was, 'cause I made more from the four hours a week on Saturday than I did from that. But I, again, the, the point wasn't to, to, to earn, you know what I mean? It was to learn. And I had saved up 50 grand, so I knew I could live for, you know, at least two years on that. Um, I tried to live on as... I was, I spent 400 bucks a month splitting a bedroom. Um, and then I ate n- you know, I spent $100 a week on food. I was eating... You know, I was spending nothing to live. And then the rest of my time was at the gym trying to learn.

   19. AAAli Abdaal29:26

       Just a quick message from one of our sponsors and we'll get right back to the episode. And this episode is very kindly brought to you by Shortform. Shortform is the world's best service that summarizes books. But it's way more than just book summaries. They almost have a whole study guide for every book that they've got on the platform, where they've got a one-page summary, and then they also have chapter-by-chapter breakdowns. And it's not just chapter-by-chapter breakdowns. Also in between the chapter breakdowns they have interactive exercises where you can engage more readily with the ideas in the book. Shortform covers non-fiction books from a bunch of different genres that you might be interested in. For example, they've got a load of stuff in the business world. So if, for example, you're an entrepreneur or you want to become an entrepreneur, that'll be great for you. They've got books in motivation. They've got books in education. They've got books in lifestyle and communication. Basically any genre of, like, non-fiction, personal developmenty, self-helpy stuff that will help you level up your life, it's all there on Shortform. Shortform publishes new book guides and articles every week. And if you're a subscriber, then you get to vote on what book they cover next. And in fact, through that system I have voted for various books. For example, one book I've recently rediscovered is On Writing Well by William Zinsser. Now this is a book I actually read absolutely ages ago, and I read it and I thought, "Oh wow, this is really, really, really good." And I'd actually forgotten I'd read it until I saw that this was actually covered on Shortform. And so I went on the app on my phone. I usually go on Shortform when I'm on the toilet if I'm feeling particularly productive. And I saw, oh my God, they've got On Writing Well on here. And so I revisited the key ideas, which I immediately applied to the articles and to the book that I'm writing. Anyway, if any of that sounds up your street and you would like to sign up to the world's best service that summarizes books, then head over to shortform.com/deepdive and that will give you a completely free five-day trial and you can try out the service to your heart's content. That link will also be in the video description and in the show notes. And thank you so much, Shortform, for sponsoring this episode.

10. 31:12 – 40:41

    Paying ignorance debt and side hustles

    1. AAAli Abdaal31:12

       The thing that's always struck me about you, like when I've, when I've heard other interviews, is that you're so matter of fact about all of this stuff and wh- whereas to me, like at every stage of the journey, I, I know people who are at that point who have gone the other way and decided, "You know what? Oh, I couldn't, I couldn't possibly leave my 40K a year job even though I'm living with my parents and I don't have any, any kids or anything. I couldn't possibly leave that and take a pay cut because th- that would be bad," and you're supposed to make more money as you go older rather than less and-

    2. AHAlex Hormozi31:36

       Yeah

    3. AAAli Abdaal31:36

       ... do you kind of get that pro- like, uh, I guess the sorts of people you speak to these days are mostly the sort of 3 to 10 million plus rather than the people that are struggl- struggling to get started. But I imagine most of the people that follow you tend to be in-

    4. AHAlex Hormozi31:48

       Yeah

    5. AAAli Abdaal31:48

       ... the beginner camp.

    6. AHAlex Hormozi31:48

       88%

    7. AAAli Abdaal31:49

       So I wonder if you can... How, how do you know that? [laughs]

    8. AHAlex Hormozi31:52

       Uh, we have a survey on our site.

    9. AAAli Abdaal31:54

       Oh, yeah. Nice.

    10. AHAlex Hormozi31:55

        Yeah. So 88% of people, uh, want to start a business, at least that follow me.

    11. AAAli Abdaal31:59

        So I wo- I wonder if you can speak more to this idea of like learn versus earn. Um, 'cause I think that's a good model, and th- this idea of paying down ignorance debt. I think, I think that's a great model that more people could, yeah.

    12. AHAlex Hormozi32:10

        It's the most expensive cost. Every- like right now everybody... It costs everybody... It costs me a billion dollars a year to not be, to not know what to do to make a billion dollars. Or I do know how to make a billion dollars and I just have to wait and pay down my time debt, which is what I feel like I'm doing right now, I'm just paying down time. And so I think understanding whether it's a lack of knowledge or, or it's just a timeline thing, like those are big differences. You know what I mean? At, at, at baseline, right? You could be doing the right thing but just be 10 years behind when it's gonna come to fruition. You will get outsized returns on the, on the information, right, on the knowledge and the lessons that you will learn. And so you wanna, you wanna pay that ignorance down as fast as you can because as soon as you have that knowledge, you'll be able to skyrocket straight to 20, 50, 100, 500,000 a month like very quickly because you know how to do it, right? So p- people are like getting obsessed about these micro changes when the big scheme changes, like this is why, in my opinion, all of the money that somebody spend... And like this is relatively controversial. Um, it's a whole S&P 500 versus SME 500, but like you will get a significantly higher return investing in your own ability to make money than you will in any, any market. And so if you look at all the, the vast majority of very, very wealthy people, they have tremendous earning capacity, right? They know how to do stuff that makes money, right? So it's like we gotta go get that. And so there's really not like... If you were to, if you were to dollar cost average $1,000 into, a month into the S&P 500 for, for, you know, 50 years, sure, you'd also not live a fun life. But you could do that if you wanted to. You could do that. You absolutely could, right? Um, or you could take that $1,000 a month, join a, a mentorship program every year. You know what I mean? This is why the, my whole argument against like college is not that I'm against college, I think it's just overpriced. And so you could take $200,000... Like you wanna, you wanna have, have a trippy thought? In co- like in the US you can get a student loan for the full amount of college. It's about $200,000 if you go to like a really nice private school. Like that's, that, that's what you can get subsidized through the government, $200,000, and you don't have debt payments for like a very long time. Here's a crazy thought: you could take that $200,000, you could buy a fucking rental property that makes you $4,000 a month, and then you literally exit the system before you even got into it with the money that they're giving you to become a, a worker, which is just fa- and you wouldn't even have to pay the, pay down the debt service for the real estate. A buddy of mine did this. He's a PhD student. He got grants to go to school. He still took out the student loans, and he finished, uh, finished his, his PhD with 20 homes and $10,000 a month-

    13. AAAli Abdaal34:38

        [laughs]

    14. AHAlex Hormozi34:38

        ... of income from, from doors that he didn't even have debt service on because it was, it was student loans. Crazy.

    15. AAAli Abdaal34:45

        Right.

    16. AHAlex Hormozi34:45

        Just as, as a fun side note.

    17. AAAli Abdaal34:46

        That's awesome. Yeah. That's-

    18. AHAlex Hormozi34:47

        I know. So-

    19. AAAli Abdaal34:48

        Yeah

    20. AHAlex Hormozi34:48

        ... but, but I won't even get into that one, but if we just think, "Okay. I'm paying $2,000 a month if I'm paying to- if I, if I, if I, if I'm working for... not working, if I'm going to school for $25,000 a year," so 100 grand for four years, whatever. "I pay $2,000 a month. Is there another place that I could spend $2,000 a month and get a superior return on my ability to earn money?" And my argument would be, yes, there are many places, most places arguably, will give you a better return on your money than a traditional four-year degree at this moment, right? And so you take the, you take the $2,000 a month, you go and you buy a six-month mastermind on placing ads. You buy a six-month thing on selling. You buy a six-month thing on making courses, whatever. Maybe it takes you 18 months. Well, you're still two and a half years ahead of the other guys, so what? You know what I mean?

    21. AAAli Abdaal35:35

        Yeah. I think this is, this is like a key, a key like mindset shift 'cause I'm, I'm just thinking there's so many conversations I've had with friends and people in my audience over the, over the years where it's like, you know, th- they've got like a regular job maybe earning 50K or something and they're like, "Oh," or, or even 30K, like whatever, and they're like, "I, I, I know I wanna make some money on the side, therefore, um, you know, talk to me about investing. I, I've, I like-

    22. AHAlex Hormozi35:57

        Yeah, it's stupid

    23. AAAli Abdaal35:58

        ... do I pick stocks or index funds?"

    24. AHAlex Hormozi35:59

        Yeah.

    25. AAAli Abdaal35:59

        And I'm like, "I mean, index fund, but like hang, hang on."

    26. AHAlex Hormozi36:03

        Like, bro, you're poor.

    27. AAAli Abdaal36:04

        Like how, how much money, how much money-

    28. AHAlex Hormozi36:05

        Yeah

    29. AAAli Abdaal36:05

        ... do you wanna make? Yeah. [laughs]

    30. AHAlex Hormozi36:06

        You're poor. There's no... Like you're not gonna make, you're not gonna make breathtaking... And the thing... And here's, here's the thing, is when you, when you do the dollar cost average thing, 'cause everyone likes to put it in the Excel sheet and everyone gets Excel rich.
11. 40:41 – 46:20

    Learning how to sell

    1. AAAli Abdaal40:41

       we're the girl. We, we wanna spend money on increasing our, our ability to earn more rather than trying to screw around with 3% returns in the S&P 500.

    2. AHAlex Hormozi40:49

       Yeah.

    3. AAAli Abdaal40:50

       So hence, uh, sort of when you're, when you're working for free and maybe, I don't know, taking a bit of a pay cut, apprenticing for someone else, you're understanding, you're learning how the business works, and you're learning how specifically that business works, i.e., the gym business, 'cause you maybe wanted to own your own business and-

    4. AHAlex Hormozi41:04

       Sure

    5. AAAli Abdaal41:04

       ... you were interested in fitness, and you're also learning how generally business works through like sales-

    6. AHAlex Hormozi41:09

       Mm

    7. AAAli Abdaal41:09

       ... marketing, operations, all of that sort of stuff. Um, so what happened next in, in, in your story?

    8. AHAlex Hormozi41:14

       Yeah, so I joined the mastermind, and then he quickly was like, "You know what? You're, I'm ask-" I- it felt weird for him to not pay me 'cause I was just there all the time. So he, he started paying me whatever it was, minimum wage. Um, and so I, I was there from 4:00 AM to 4:00 PM every day with him. So that was, that was what we did. So 4:00 AM to 4:00 PM, I was there with him every day, and then I, he would go home. I would stay for a few more hours to just like work out and hang out at the gym. So I was pretty much there all day, every day. And then, uh, for the next, I think, 12 weeks, that's what I did is I just, you know, hung around the gym, uh, learned, learned how to sell, learned how stuff worked, learned that ema- like learned, I learned sales was a thing. I didn't know the term sales. I didn't know email lists existed. Like I didn't know any of this stuff. Like I truly had no idea how any of this stuff worked. And so I learned a lot very quickly just from observing normal business happening, right? And I think small businesses are more useful for people to be at 'cause like corporate, it's so specialized because the corporations are so big. You have such a myopic view of how business works that you have no idea. You are actually the very special cog that does one thing, right? So you don't see the holistic view. Whereas small businesses, because everything's so shrunk down, you can see end to end how things work. It's like we do this, we do this direct mail piece, a certain percentage call, call the phone. We set the appointment. They buy a membership. They go to the trainer who helps them to... Like, you know what I mean? Like you can see the whole life cycle, right? So 12 weeks later, I was do it every weekend. I would go out and look for, uh, locations. Uh, when I found a location that I liked, I still had my 50 grand saved up. Um, and so then that's what I spent. I spent, I think, most of that to outfit the facility. I think I had 10,000 left over, um, 'cause I knew I had two months worth of rent, uh, saved up, which was 5,000 a month in rent. And I had, and honestly, in retrospect, it was one of the riskiest things I've ever done. Like I went straight to a $5,000 a month lease, and I had no idea what I was doing.

    9. AAAli Abdaal42:55

       That's a lot for rent. [laughs]

    10. AHAlex Hormozi42:56

        Oh, I'd never even made money before. I mean, like I didn't e- it was funny 'cause I can only think about this in retrospect, but like the, the, the online business that I had, I didn't have a reliable way of getting customers. I just like the people that I knew and I immediately was making money from that, but I wasn't keeping everyone always and it was starting to go down and I was like, "Ah, what do I do?" So I was like, "Oh, I'll just sign a lease for way more money than I've ever made in my life." Um, that sounds like a reasonable thing to do. [laughs] And so that's what I did.

    11. AAAli Abdaal43:20

        I wonder if we can zoom into the sales thing a little bit. 'Cause I think selling is a massive black box for a lot of people. And even for me, like when, when I first started actually selling stuff, I'd, I'd been doing YouTube for five years, but, you know, yeah, I, I didn't feel like I was selling anything for the first three because it was all, like, sponsorships and you know, you kind of... And, and then sort of two, two years ago when I had an idea for, like, a course that teaches people how to be YouTubers, um, I came up against so much, like, internal bar- like mental friction around the idea of selling and feeling weird about it and like-

    12. AHAlex Hormozi43:48

        Sure

    13. AAAli Abdaal43:49

        ... then realized sales is a thing. So I wonder, what was your experience sort of on the ground in the gym? How did you quote "learn how to sell"?

    14. AHAlex Hormozi43:55

        Yeah, I hated everything to sales and I'll... The, the side story in that was that when I quit my job, my dad's buddy was a, uh... or my dad, my dad's financial- his investor dude, right, the guy who manages his money, uh, was like, "Dude, you should just come work for me." He's like, "You can sell." And I was like, "Me?" I was like, "I'm an academic."

    15. AAAli Abdaal44:11

        [laughs]

    16. AHAlex Hormozi44:12

        All right? I'm a, I am a cerebral thinker. I'm a management consultant. Like, the- I am known for, you know, I am not a salesman. Like, that was my thing. And so I was like, I was- I thought it was beneath me. I really did. And so anyways, I got the job. Um, I got- I, I did the interviews, got the job, and I ultimately like, they told me what it was and it was like, "Here's the phone, here's names, bang." And I was like, "Oh, I don't want to do that." So then I started my gym and I realized that I had to pay $5,000 a month, and then it was like the first day and I was like, "Oh, fuck. How do I get people to give me money?" And I was like, "Oh, sales."

    17. AAAli Abdaal44:41

        Mm-hmm.

    18. AHAlex Hormozi44:42

        And so it was a, it was a forcing function. So I had gone to a, a weekend workshop that I spent $3,000 for, which was a tremendous amount of money for me at the time, um, to go learn how to, to run Facebook ads. This is 2013. So I learned how to run Facebook ads in that weekend. Um, and I ran Facebook ads for my gym, and that was when people came in. I signed up 27 people the first two weeks. Um, I charged 300 bucks a head. Uh, I think I spent 1,000 bucks on ads. So I made... You know, spent 1,000, made 8,700 or whatever it was. Um, and that was, that was how I, that's how I paid my first month's rent. And my, my selling was just literally I had an empty gym with no equipment. It was literally turf and a table.

    19. AAAli Abdaal45:25

        [laughs]

    20. AHAlex Hormozi45:26

        And they were like, "Are you gonna be here? Is this like a scam?" I was like, "No." And people just believed me. I was like, "I promise I will do everything to get you in the best shape ever." And they were like, "Are you sure?" Like, I'd have some people come back like two days later, like make sure I was still there, um, in the two-week period. And I also didn't understand a lot of stuff. Like I, I thought I had to open as fast as possible 'cause I want- I thought that opening meant that I would make money when really I should have had a really long pre-sale, just collected cash the whole time. Like I didn't know how any of that stuff worked. So I just tried to open as fast as I could. That was- That's how I had my first 27 clients and I tr- and I taught all the sessions. So I was doing six sessions a day. Um, and then I would run ads. I'd have sales appointments, then I'd clean the gym, and then I would do all my billing at night. Um, and then work the lead. Like it was, I was, I w- it was the hardest I've ever worked time-wise. Like I've never, I've still to this day never worked that hard. It was, uh-

    21. AAAli Abdaal46:16

        Okay.

    22. AHAlex Hormozi46:17

        Yeah.

    23. AAAli Abdaal46:18

        Let's, let's zoom in to some of these. So

12. 46:20 – 57:44

    Growing your first gym

    1. AAAli Abdaal46:20

       you had the idea of like, I want to start a gym. You worked in a gym for free for then minimum wage for a while, so you understand how, how a gym works. And then were you just like roaming around looking for a warehouse that you could convert into a gym?

    2. AHAlex Hormozi46:30

       Yeah.

    3. AAAli Abdaal46:31

       And then you signed a lease for $5,000 a month and you're like, "All right, cool. I now, I now have a box. I need to put some gym equipment in there." [laughs] So you put some gym equipment in there. You take a Facebook ad workshop over the weekend. You spend three grand on it. Um, and that helps you run ads in your local area that says, "Hey, by the way, new gym opening-"

    4. AHAlex Hormozi46:46

       Yeah

    5. AAAli Abdaal46:47

       ... something or other. And then people-

    6. AHAlex Hormozi46:48

       Mm-hmm

    7. AAAli Abdaal46:48

       ... walking through the door. And then what happens when people walk in through the door? Do you just say, "Hey, this is, this is a gym. Can you give me your money?" Or how, how does that process work?

    8. AHAlex Hormozi46:55

       Well, I had, I had an offer. I had an offer, which was a six-week challenge. I said, "If you lose..." 'Cause it was similar to my whole charity thing where I wanted people to like have skin in the game. So it was, uh, if you lose 20 pounds in six weeks, I'll give you your money back. So people would bet-

    9. AAAli Abdaal47:08

       Oh

    10. AHAlex Hormozi47:08

        ... it was 300 bucks. I would train them for six weeks, and if, if they lost 20 pounds, I'd give them their money back. So that was the shtick.

    11. AAAli Abdaal47:14

        So are you relying on then people not completing it to make money?

    12. AHAlex Hormozi47:17

        No.

    13. AAAli Abdaal47:17

        Or-

    14. AHAlex Hormozi47:18

        No, the, the real-

    15. AAAli Abdaal47:19

        What's, what's going on there?

    16. AHAlex Hormozi47:19

        ... real is that... Yeah, so, so you've got, you've got three buckets, right? You got people who don't hit it, right? Which is actually not the bucket you want people in 'cause then they're not happy. Um, the second bucket is people who hit it and then have more weight to lose or want to keep working out 'cause they just started this habit and want to keep going, which is the vast majority of people. I think we had just under an-

    17. AAAli Abdaal47:36

        Yeah

    18. AHAlex Hormozi47:36

        ... 80% success rate. And then the third bucket is people who want to lose the weight and then say, "I'll take my money please," right? And the sale is actually very easy. I mean, you're just like, "Hey, do you think that working out six weeks and then going back to not working out is, uh, is gonna be a good long-term solution?" "No." "Okay. Well, why don't I just take your 300 bucks and I'll credit it towards the next year staying at the gym because now you've started this habit. You don't want to lose it when you have the momentum." And they'd say, "Sure." Cool. And I had people commit to the year before they even finished the challenge. Halfway through I'd be like, "You like everything? Everything cool? You're 10 pounds down. Awesome. You're halfway there. So I mean, how much weight do you want to lose? 'Cause I promise you, once you're 10 pounds lighter than you are now, you're still gonna want to look diff- like, you're not gonna be perfect. I've yet to meet somebody who has a perfect body. You're still gonna have stuff you want to work on, right?" They're like, "Yeah, yeah, of course." I'm like, "Okay. So the question is, do you want to do it on your own? 'Cause that's what you were doing before this and that wasn't working. Or do you want to do it with me?" They were like, "I want to do it with you." And I'm like, "Cool. I'll take the money. I'll credit it forward. So you won. Congratulations. High five. Big hug. You won it, you get it, 'cause the point of the challenge is not for you to actually lose the weight. It's for you to understand it's a lifelong process, not six weeks." Done. That was it. That was the whole process.

    19. AAAli Abdaal48:36

        How did you do the transformations? Like, how do people lose 10, 20 pounds in, in six weeks?

    20. AHAlex Hormozi48:42

        It's all food.

    21. AAAli Abdaal48:44

        Okay.

    22. AHAlex Hormozi48:44

        It's just food.

    23. AAAli Abdaal48:44

        So you're giving them meal plans or what? Like-

    24. AHAlex Hormozi48:46

        Yeah, yeah. I would give them meal plans, grocery lists, food preparation instructions, eating out guides, the whole thing. I'd give them a whole custom thing and then they'd work out at the gym. Uh, originally it was five days a week and then I switched to three days a week. Um, but yeah.

    25. AAAli Abdaal48:57

        And so that's your offer. So the, so the offer isn't like a monthly gym membership. It's just like, "Hey, get into the weight loss challenge." You do the thing and then you're signing up people as they walk through the door.

    26. AHAlex Hormozi49:06

        Yep. I... And what, what happened is I li- and I still do like this in terms of businesses in general is I do like having defined end programs on the front end because it gives a very specific outcome, uh, for someone on a specific timeline. And what it really becomes is your onboarding process. So you can typically charge more for a one-time expense, usually three or four times more, than you can on a recurring basis. And so what that affords you is the ability to liquidate acquisition costs more easily. And so it's like if I can charge four times more for the first six weeks of service with somebody, I should do that 'cause it costs me more, A, to onboard someone, and B, to acquire them. And so I should make more money in that first period of time. It makes sense. And so structuring business models that way is... I've, I've almost done that in every business I have.

    27. AAAli Abdaal49:46

        Got it. Um, did you feel weird about selling initially?

    28. AHAlex Hormozi49:50

        No, I was begging for money. I needed the money.

    29. AAAli Abdaal49:51

        [laughs] Right. Okay.

    30. AHAlex Hormozi49:53

        I got over it very quickly. I mean-
13. 57:44 – 1:07:39

    Scaling your business empire and wealth

    1. AAAli Abdaal57:44

       we, at, at this point you are sort of in your early 20s, you've got your gym, you're paying 5K a month, and you're getting p- people coming in through, through the door to do your six-week transformation program, and you're upselling them on, uh, f- the longer term thing, I think after the fact.

    2. AHAlex Hormozi57:56

       Yeah.

    3. AAAli Abdaal57:56

       What happens next in the story?

    4. AHAlex Hormozi57:58

       The gym starts being successful. It grows by $5,000 a month for the first seven months. It goes up to $35,000 a month. By we- by month nine I had the whole gym outsourced, so I was just managing it. By month 15 I took the profit from that gym to open my second gym. Um, launched that one, um, profitably. Now this one I learned a lot at that point, so I pre-launched it at full capacity. Did, you know, did it the right way. Um, then I opened location three, four, and five, and then, uh, using the same concept. Then I went and, uh, I felt like I was stagnating. I felt like I didn't know what to do next. I joined an internet mastermind. Um, and they were like, "If you're really this good at business, you shouldn't be owning gyms. You should be, like, teaching people how you fill your gyms up so fast."

    5. AAAli Abdaal58:37

       Yeah.

    6. AHAlex Hormozi58:37

       And so then... And then I transitioned to the turnkey, like I fly out and do the thing, which I make 100 grand a month on with no employees. So I was like, "This is cool." So I did that for a year-ish. And then, um, there's a series of, a million series of unfortunate events that happens during this period of time. Lose all the money like twice. Um, I sell the gyms. I go all in on the new concept. We switch from doing the turnkey system to doing a licensing model, and then that was 2017, and that's when everything, that's when everything just took off like a rocket.

    7. AAAli Abdaal59:07

       What does it, like, so let's say someone's listening to this and they're into fitness and they're thinking, "You know what? I'd like to own a gym." What does, like is, is it something you'd recommend? Like i- can you make any money owning a gym these days? What's, what-

    8. AHAlex Hormozi59:19

       Yeah

    9. AAAli Abdaal59:19

       ... what's the deal with that?

    10. AHAlex Hormozi59:19

        You can. You can, you can make money owning a gym if you love, if you, uh, you have to love small business ownership, and it has to be about, um, really being in love with the product and the experience. It's just, like, you know, w- we have this kind of thing with a lot of the gyms is once someone understands how to run a seven-figure or multi-seven-figure gym, you now have the skill set to run a $10 million other business. It's just a limited opportunity vehicle. It's a great vehicle to learn how to do everything, because you have to do everything in a gym, and I think some of the best entrepreneurs, some of the best salespeople especially, learn how to sell in fitness 'cause you get so many reps. You talk to 10, 20 people a day, just rep after rep after rep. So you get very good at that. Um, and you have to deal with people 'cause it's an all service business, so you have a lot of headcount for very low revenue. Like, there's lots of things that are very good to learn. When I had the same headcount with the turnkey sales model, I had, uh, 30 employees and I was making four times the revenue. You know what I mean? And then when we went from there to the licensing model, I went from, I had took, I went from eight employees to, like, 30 employees that, just like that first year, and we did, like, 7 million and then the next year we did 26. You know, it was just like, it was just huge growth. So it's just more leverage.

    11. AAAli Abdaal1:00:28

        What does turnkey mean?

    12. AHAlex Hormozi1:00:30

        They didn't have to do anything. I would fly out. We'd do the marketing. We'd do the, we'd spend the money. We'd work the leads. We'd do the sales. Like, they didn't do, have to do anything. I just hand them customers.

    13. AAAli Abdaal1:00:37

        You were confident enough in your ability to get customers and convert them to things that they were just absolutely p- signing up for this, be like, "Hell, yes. You can transform my gym."

    14. AHAlex Hormozi1:00:46

        Yeah, they didn't, they didn't have to pay anything.

    15. AAAli Abdaal1:00:47

        "And I'll pay you 100 grand," or whatever. Yeah. Yeah.

    16. AHAlex Hormozi1:00:48

        They didn't have to pay me anything. I just took 100% of the cash I collected.

    17. AAAli Abdaal1:00:52

        Okay. So then w- what are they getting out of it? Oh, are they g- are they getting the recurring revenue?

    18. AHAlex Hormozi1:00:55

        Yeah.

    19. AAAli Abdaal1:00:56

        Levels of wealth. So you are very open about kind of net worth and money and stuff.

    20. AHAlex Hormozi1:01:00

        Yeah.

    21. AAAli Abdaal1:01:00

        And I, I just love the way you talk about it in a s- such a matter-of-fact way. Um, one thing that, um, I, I've been curious about is, like, what are the levels of wealth at, be- beyond which, like, you get significant diminishing returns? People say 75K m- is the peak happiness and then... But, like, clearly there are people that, you know, 300K is better than 75K. A million is better than 300K. Like-

    22. AHAlex Hormozi1:01:21

        Yeah

    23. AAAli Abdaal1:01:21

        ... have you, have you got in mind a rough sort of ladder of-

    24. AHAlex Hormozi1:01:26

        Yeah

    25. AAAli Abdaal1:01:26

        ... at what level of wealth s- unlocks certain, certain things?

    26. AHAlex Hormozi1:01:29

        Yeah. I think there's, like, the I don't have to worry about any basic needs. Level. Um, and then there's the I don't have to worry about discretionary spending level within reason. You know what I mean? Like, I can get, I can go out for drinks, I can go to a fancy restaurant, and it's not gonna, you know, affect me. I can buy appetizers and [chuckles] not just buy, you know, the cheapest thing on the menu with no appetizers, no alcohol, and call that the dinner. So Layla spends a lot more money than I do 'cause we just have different... But that being said, I spend money on other stuff. So, like, I spend a lot of money only on information. It's all I spend my money on is just information, access. Like, that's all I spend my money on. Um, and that stuff is expensive, you know what I mean? She offered one guy 350 grand for an hour, um, so I could just learn from him. You know what I mean? Just for context. So, like, we'll spend whatever it takes-

    27. AAAli Abdaal1:02:14

        Wow

    28. AHAlex Hormozi1:02:14

        ... to learn anything.

    29. AAAli Abdaal1:02:15

        My God.

    30. AHAlex Hormozi1:02:16

        Yeah.
14. 1:07:39 – 1:11:08

    Whats your goal and mission?

    1. AAAli Abdaal1:07:39

       What's the goal here? Is the goal to get to a billion? Like w- w- what is it that drives you?

    2. AHAlex Hormozi1:07:42

       The goal is to get to 10 billion. Yeah, the goal is to get to 10 billion. Um, but the, the mission is to just make real business knowledge available for everyone. And so that's, that's what I'm trying to do. And so everything I do aligns to that. That's why I make the books, that's why I make the courses, that's why we do the YouTube stuff, that's why we make the shorts, that's why we do podcasts, that's why we do all of it. Um, it's just to make real business education available to everyone. But I have to answer the question, "Why should I listen to you?" And I want to be unassailable in that perspective, A, and then B, I do believe that I'll gain more perspective as, as things grow. So it's more that I'm just curious what I'm going to learn going from, you know, a $200 million a year portfolio to a billion dollar a year portfolio to a $10 billion a year portfolio. And so I have wished that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Warren Buffett would come out with a course. Uh, wouldn't that be amazing? But they didn't. And so my goal is to just document the path that we learn along the way. Um, and you know, when I die, hopefully there'll just be a whole bunch of people who are younger than me who make way more money than I do at my age because they were able to just shortcut a lot.

    3. AAAli Abdaal1:08:43

       Why is that the mission, like, um, making business education available? Like w- w- where's the kind of emotional resonance with you for that thing?

    4. AHAlex Hormozi1:08:49

       'Cause that's what set me free.

    5. AAAli Abdaal1:08:52

       Free as in free from the corporate wage slavery-

    6. AHAlex Hormozi1:08:55

       Yeah, from-

    7. AAAli Abdaal1:08:55

       ... kind of stuff

    8. AHAlex Hormozi1:08:55

       ... everything.

    9. AAAli Abdaal1:08:56

       Yeah.

    10. AHAlex Hormozi1:08:56

        Not even corporate wage. Like I'm free. I can do whatever. I don't have to do anything if I didn't want to. So I just get, I just get optionality, which is all I want. I just wanna have options. And so I wouldn't have that if all of this stuff didn't exist, and I have had many mentors and many coaching programs and many courses. And so, you know, I would say that I differ from the vast majority of the talking heads in the business space in that I, to my knowledge, I'm the only one who came up through that world. Like you look at Andy Frisella, you look at Ed Mylett, you look at Gary, you know what I mean? Like there's, there's, they've... None of them came up through learning stuff on YouTube, going to seminars, going to coaching programs. I did. So I'm a huge advocate for the, for, for, for alternative education and, you know, paying for skills as fast as you can.

    11. AAAli Abdaal1:09:44

        To what extent do you think about the balance between, I guess, optimizing for freedom, f- uh, freedom, fun, flexibility, all of that, like living whatever life you want kind of vibes versus some people say that once you get to a certain point, you realize that, oh, actually more money, more status, more success, more freedom is not actually thing, and actually the thing I care about is investing in a relationship and like having a family and having kids and like buying a house and the sort of putting down roots versus having wings kind of vibe.

    12. AHAlex Hormozi1:10:12

        I have options, so if I change my mind, I can change my mind. Um, but as I see it right now from where I sit, the thing that lights me up every day is, is making business knowledge available to everyone. And, uh, I mean, I spend an inordinate amount of time, like s- I spend so much time on those books and presentations that I make when I give speeches and stuff. Like every presentation I make up to this point in my career has been custom, and that takes me like three days, you know what I mean, to make a presentation. So like if you've seen Last Dance, Michael Jordan, there's this, there's this moment where he says that he always has to bring his all because it's the o- there's some person who spent hard-earned money, and it's the only game they're ever gonna see, and he wants to bring his best for that. And so that's how I see it, you know what I mean? Like there's people who will never, you know, they spent real money to be there and it was like they're hoping that they can get one thing from this thing that's gonna like change their life, and I wanna honor that.

15. 1:11:08 – 1:12:05

    What does a day in the life look like for you?

    1. AAAli Abdaal1:11:08

       What does like a day in the life look like for you?

    2. AHAlex Hormozi1:11:11

       Oh, it's... I mean, I could share my screen, but it's, [laughs] it's, it's, it's, uh, I, I, I work on my own stuff until about 1:00 most days. Um, so usually 5:00 to 1:00 is Alex time to do whatever. Um, which is-

    3. AAAli Abdaal1:11:26

       5:00 or 5:00 AM to 1:00?

    4. AHAlex Hormozi1:11:27

       Yeah.

    5. AAAli Abdaal1:11:29

       Oh, okay.

    6. AHAlex Hormozi1:11:29

       Uh, PM.

    7. AAAli Abdaal1:11:29

       Cool. [laughs]

    8. AHAlex Hormozi1:11:30

       Um, and then usually from 1:00 to 4:00, 1:00 to 4:30-ish is when I do meetings, and then, um, that's it. Go to the gym, eat, and then I'm done.

    9. AAAli Abdaal1:11:44

       Sounds pretty chill. And w- w- where are you based at the moment?

    10. AHAlex Hormozi1:11:47

        We're all over right now. Uh, the hub is in Vegas, but we're here... We're all over. I mean, we travel a lot, so it's kinda like this is our in-between when we're traveling spot.

    11. AAAli Abdaal1:11:58

        I remember you just talking in an interview about like how you like your office to be very like sparse and not overly fancy and stuff, and

16. 1:12:05 – 1:20:31

    Your content creation process

    1. AAAli Abdaal1:12:05

       that's one of the things that really I, I really vibe with, with, with in your, in your videos, in that you seem to-

    2. AHAlex Hormozi1:12:09

       [laughs]

    3. AAAli Abdaal1:12:09

       ... I, I, I, ex- except until recently, uh, you seem to just-

    4. AHAlex Hormozi1:12:12

       Yeah

    5. AAAli Abdaal1:12:12

       ... be filming on some shitty webcam and just like spouting-

    6. AHAlex Hormozi1:12:15

       Yeah

    7. AAAli Abdaal1:12:15

       ... knowledge and it's just like mind-blowing 'cause you haven't got the f- and the, there's like a charm to the jankiness-

    8. AHAlex Hormozi1:12:21

       Yeah

    9. AAAli Abdaal1:12:21

       ... and it's just like, "Whoa, shit, I'm, I'm, I'm getting the real truth without any-"

    10. AHAlex Hormozi1:12:24

        Yeah

    11. AAAli Abdaal1:12:24

        ... "of the production value that like normally gets in the way."

    12. AHAlex Hormozi1:12:27

        Yeah. Yeah.

    13. AAAli Abdaal1:12:28

        Again, was that deliberate? Is that just accidental? Is that just how it, it's ended up being?

    14. AHAlex Hormozi1:12:31

        I mean, that's how it started. You know what I mean? Like I'm a big, I'm a big believer in just start and you'll... the path illuminates as you walk. You know what I mean? We now have... I mean, I started without a media team, so I just clicked record and I would send it. I mean, I had my media team at Gym Launch, but it wasn't, it w- that business wasn't built on content. It was built on outbound and paid ads. So I just said, you know, clip, you know, clip it, put a thumbnail on it, and post it on my YouTube. I don't even know how to, uh, upload them. Just to s- I'll show you how silly it was. I was like, "Just upload it." And so I would just put it in a Dropbox and they would upload it, and then that was, um, that was what I did for the first, I don't know, six, nine months. And then, um, we hired somebody to, uh, to actually do recordings with a camera. [laughs] Um, and so he's like, "You know, if we did it like on the couch, it, it would look a lot better." [laughs] I was like, "Okay, that's fine." So it took the same amount of time for me. Now I just had some more people who could, who could help, and it has shown despite, you know, as much as I would lament, you know, I, I would love to just do it like this. The a- you know, the audio quality's better, the video quality's better, um, and the newer videos definitely do better from a objective standpoint. So some people need to n- you know, can't focus as long, and so they need a little bit more, um- ... happening. And so we can now... Again, the whole point is to make it available to everybody, so that means that people who don't have the attention span, I need to make something available for them too. Um, so I'm just doing my best to... I'm just not gonna bitch and moan about the fact that, like, people's attention span's shortened. Like, some people are like, "I, I can't cover anything in 60 seconds." I'm like, "There's a hell of a lot you can cover in 60 seconds if you know what you're saying." So you know what I mean? Like, I, I'm just not, I just, I'm just not one to complain about what... It is what it is, and so I will do my best to match, you know, providing value to the context that, that people are consuming it.

    15. AAAli Abdaal1:14:16

        It seems like you're s- you're spending like, I don't know, half, half a million a month on content. Is that-

    16. AHAlex Hormozi1:14:20

        No

    17. AAAli Abdaal1:14:21

        ... fair to say? Or-

    18. AHAlex Hormozi1:14:21

        No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, not even close. I think we're spending about 100 grand a month.

    19. AAAli Abdaal1:14:25

        Oh, okay. But-

    20. AHAlex Hormozi1:14:26

        Yeah

    21. AAAli Abdaal1:14:26

        ... basically $1 per subscriber per month is what it's costing you.

    22. AHAlex Hormozi1:14:29

        Yeah, per year. I make a dollar per year.

    23. AAAli Abdaal1:14:31

        Oh, per year. Oh, okay, cool. I was thinking, like, per month. Oh, shit, that's a lot, yeah.

    24. AHAlex Hormozi1:14:35

        No, my channel makes, I think, as of today, like right now, it makes 41, 42,000 a month. And then Layla's... Layla also uses the same team. I think hers makes six or seven, something like that. So that's just that, and then the book, the book revenue comes on top of that, which I count those kind of the same thing 'cause I think that's where a lot of people find us. Those two things together, you know, are, are more than that. So I am... I technically spend a little bit less, uh, than I'm making, which kind of further reinforces the point. Um, just depends if we're just saying only AdSense or if we include the book, whatever.

    25. AAAli Abdaal1:15:05

        So what does 100K a month like, or what does, what does that look like at the, the backend of the content production engine?

    26. AHAlex Hormozi1:15:10

        Yeah, it's not huge. Right now we've got four in-house. Um, I still do Twitter, so I do Twitter full-time. That's still just me. Um, and it's 'cause I like it. I would do it anyways. We have a, a podcast vendor, a LinkedIn vendor, a YouTube vendor, um, a, a Shorts/TikTok/Reels vendor.

    27. AAAli Abdaal1:15:31

        And by, and by vendor, you mean, like, uh, a, a company that... Yeah, okay.

    28. AHAlex Hormozi1:15:36

        Now we have our internal components 'cause, like, my whole playbook is, is pretty simple, which is go find the best person who's already doing this at a high level, pay whatever to get them to do it, be clear that your intention is to take it in-house over the long haul, start doing it with them only, hire somebody to be the, the inner, inner, the interface between those two who has the skill set. And then eventually get to the point where you double your volume 'cause you do half from the vendor, half from the in-house person. When the in-house person beats the vendor, you fire the vendor.

    29. AAAli Abdaal1:16:05

        And so what does it look like to work with like an agency on, on the YouTube side? Are they telling you that, "Hey, Alex, we need to do a video with this title and this thumbnail. Go talk." Or like what, what does that look like?

    30. AHAlex Hormozi1:16:13

        So my team does it, so 'cause remember, 'cause I have an in-house team too. So-
17. 1:20:31 – 1:27:37

    Fitness & the accountability gap

    1. AAAli Abdaal1:20:31

       Final thing I wanted to ask you about. So y- I th- I think I heard you say in wh- in wh- one of the interviews that you've had six-pack abs since the age of like 16-

    2. AHAlex Hormozi1:20:37

       Yeah

    3. AAAli Abdaal1:20:37

       ... or something, something like that. Um-

    4. AHAlex Hormozi1:20:40

       Let's see if I still got them.

    5. AAAli Abdaal1:20:40

       W- what-

    6. AHAlex Hormozi1:20:41

       Still have them?

    7. AAAli Abdaal1:20:42

       No. Oh, love it. [laughs]

    8. AHAlex Hormozi1:20:44

       Still got them.

    9. AAAli Abdaal1:20:46

       I, uh, I- I've had six-pack abs on my kind of annual bucket list for the last several years and just never really gotten there. Uh, uh, w- is there like a single resource or-

    10. AHAlex Hormozi1:20:57

        Is it lack of knowledge or, or is it lack of knowledge or motivation?

    11. AAAli Abdaal1:21:00

        Motivation.

    12. AHAlex Hormozi1:21:02

        Okay. Well, that's, that's a totally different thing. You know what I mean? Like you might, you might also wanna be a trillionaire. You might want a lot of things, but like if you don't want it enough, it doesn't matter. I think it's just more accepting that you're not gonna have it 'cause you're not willing to pay the price, and that's fine.

    13. AAAli Abdaal1:21:14

        What is the price? Like to-

    14. AHAlex Hormozi1:21:14

        You like want to be motivated. [laughs]

    15. AAAli Abdaal1:21:17

        Yeah. I, I want-

    16. AHAlex Hormozi1:21:17

        What is the price of a six-pack? It's not that hard though. That's why I'm like-

    17. AAAli Abdaal1:21:21

        Yeah

    18. AHAlex Hormozi1:21:21

        ... um, and p- everyone else who's listening is like, "Fuck this guy." Um-

    19. AAAli Abdaal1:21:25

        [laughs]

    20. AHAlex Hormozi1:21:25

        ... I don't know. I've counted my macros for 20 years. Have you? Okay. Uh, so go away. Uh, but, [laughs] but it, it's just calorie deficit, you know what I mean? It's just-

    21. AAAli Abdaal1:21:34

        Right

    22. AHAlex Hormozi1:21:35

        ... it's like there's tons of people in Africa who have six-packs. They just don't see it a sign of status there. It's just everyone's, [laughs] everyone's skinny. You know what I mean? And so six-pack is purely body fat percentage. That's it. It's just body fat percentage. It just means you eat too much. That's all.

    23. AAAli Abdaal1:21:48

        And a six-pack plus being jacked is progressive overload protein. I've seen one of your videos where you sort of break, break that down, and then to get to six-pack abs you're just sort of calorie deficit and while training broadly.

    24. AHAlex Hormozi1:22:00

        It's l- I mean, truly that is it. And so-

    25. AAAli Abdaal1:22:02

        [laughs]

    26. AHAlex Hormozi1:22:04

        Like, I mean, h- hit every muscle group, do it three times a week. Add weight or reps over the bar over a long period of time. That's all you have to do. And then eat less than you burn. Do that for a long period of time. You'll gain muscle, you'll lose fat, and then you'll look up after 18 months and you'll have a six-pack. Like just that's it.

    27. AAAli Abdaal1:22:19

        Damn. When people are signing up to the weight loss programs or, or like a gym program and stuff, p- presumably they know this, so like w- w- i- is it that, like, uh, the motivation gap, the accountability gap, like what is it that is the, the, the quote secret sauce that makes someone lose the weight?

    28. AHAlex Hormozi1:22:33

        Yeah. So to your, to your point even of alternative education in general, when you say, "Hey, you could learn this stuff on YouTube," et cetera, et cetera, the issue that we're solving for is not that... it's not a knowledge gap. The issue is an accountability gap, is that people don't do stuff. Like that is the primary issue with all humans in general, is that they will not endure short-term discomfort for a long-term achievement. That is it. You hack that, you hack success. That's all it is. And so it's just w- how can I, how can I make it more inconvenient for them to not follow than to follow it? So I can still lean into their humanity and just say, "How can I make it more uncomfortable for them to not follow it?" That's... an element of that is accountability, is that someone says, "Hey, bad boy. Um, you had a cookie when you shouldn't have."

    29. AAAli Abdaal1:23:11

        [laughs]

    30. AHAlex Hormozi1:23:12

        "You feel bad. Feel bad. I am punishing you." 'Cause like the only way to change... You only have two things you can do to change behavior, right? You can reinforce or you can threaten, you can punish. That's it. You have carrots and sticks. That is literally it. And so currently they're getting reinforced by their, you know, by their current way of living. So think about it this way. What does not having a six-pack do for you? It does something for you 'cause you keep buying it.

Episode duration: 1:27:38