For When You Finally Decide To Lock In – Alex Hormozi (4K)

1. 0:00 – 4:22

   The Risks of Distraction

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Here we are again. Hard things are hard, that's why they're hard.

   2. AHAlex Hormozi0:02

      (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson0:03

      Another episode.

   4. AHAlex Hormozi0:05

      (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson0:06

      The biggest risk to your future isn't your competition. It's the distractions you insist on keeping in your life rather than doing the things you know you should be doing, but aren't. People delay doing things they don't like for longer than it takes to do them.

   6. AHAlex Hormozi0:28

      There've been so many times in my life where I knew I needed to do something and then I filled all this extra time not doing that thing. And then the moment I did it, I was like, "Wow, that took way less time than I thought it was going to take. And not only that, it took way less time than it took me to delay to actually get to this point." And if I had only started with just doing what I was supposed to do, I could have done four or five other things that I was also supposed to do by this exact same point. And so thinking about it from that perspective, I've tried to eliminate as much time between, "I think I should do this thing," and beginning doing it. And I think you get this positive reinforcement cycle that occurs every time you start, I call it pulling the thread. It's like, I just need to start pulling the thread. And then all of a sudden what feels really unknown becomes very tangible and you're like, "Oh, I understand the six problems I have to solve to do this big thing." But now I know the problems and then it feels like you can tr- you can wrap your arms around it and then you can start taking it one bite at a time.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:27

      The same thing works in reverse as well, that when you put something off, it makes putting it off more manana, manana, manana.

   8. AHAlex Hormozi1:34

      I used to define power by the distance between thoughts and reality. Um, meaning if you think about somebody who's omnipotent, so if God or the god-figure would be omnipotent, as he thinks, things are. So there's zero space between thoughts and reality. And so if we want to be more godlike in our lives, the distance that we can shrink between wanting to do something or thinking something should be done, and it being done is a direct indication of our personal power in our lives. And so that has helped me basically think, "Don't be a powerless bitch." (laughs) Like, just shrink the, shrink the gap. And I think that's why a lot of my, my little, like, personal hacks of waking up and then trying to shrink the time between when I wake up and when I start working, and shrinking the time between one task and the next task. Like, you don't need to take 30 minutes of getting ready to start working. Like, you can just start working because as soon as you get into it, you start pulling the thread and you're like, "Oh, here it is." And all of the time that I was getting ready to work, I was just using up my best brain power time on things that truly don't move the needle at all.

   9. CWChris Williamson2:41

      Yeah, I came to call that the productivity rain dance-

   10. AHAlex Hormozi2:44

       (laughs) Yeah, right.

   11. CWChris Williamson2:44

       ... that you sort of do this weird sacred ritual beforehand.

   12. AHAlex Hormozi2:47

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson2:47

       And we've spoken about this before, but it's, you know, there are certain things that you can do that will make, uh, success or productivity or focus more likely and better.

   14. AHAlex Hormozi2:55

       Totally.

   15. CWChris Williamson2:56

       That doesn't mean that you should disregard them. That over reliance on them makes a very fragile, um, uh, un-robust way to get into working.

   16. AHAlex Hormozi3:06

       I would delineate the difference between preparation and routine. And so if I'm preparing for a presentation, for example, I might assemble my notes. I might read some stuff about the audience ahead of time. I might read about whoever's, you know, doing the, the event and learn more about that. I see that as preparation for the thing, which I still see as work. And I think some people... I made a, a post about how preparation is, like, everything. I put a lot into preparation. They're like, "Oh, see, you have a morning routine." I was like, "No, no, no. I don't need to, to, you know, stand on one foot and do 17 cold plunges and write six affirmations," because none of those things are directly related to the work that I'm going to do. And so for me, if it's... Basically, preparation is just a stage of the work. And so if I need to prepare to work, then that's fine as long as it's related to the work that I'm going to be doing.

   17. CWChris Williamson3:55

       Well, we spoke about this yesterday, the difference between focusing on inputs and focusing on outcomes.

   18. AHAlex Hormozi4:01

       Oh, absolutely.

   19. CWChris Williamson4:01

       Right? If you optimize for outcomes, the inputs are always optimized, but if you optimize for inputs, you go, "What did I actually get done at the end of the day?" So the person that does do the productivity rain dance, and it takes ages, and... Uh, everyone's done this. Everyone's got a blank piece of paper in front of them, and they end up washing dishes that they never use, or, you know, the m- the weirdest tasks become alluring because of that.

2. 4:22 – 9:10

   Focus on Outcomes

   1. CWChris Williamson4:22

      Focusing on outcomes.

   2. AHAlex Hormozi4:23

      I... So we, when we brought this up, uh, it was perfect 'cause I had a whole thing that I was, wanted to talk to you about this. So I'm a big proponent of something I call the rule of 100, and I'm not the one who invented this, but it's basically 100 primary actions. So I talk about this within the context of advertising. So you make 100 minutes of content. You do 100 outreach if you're doing outbound. You do, you spend $100 a day on ads. You, or, and if you've already spent the money on ads, then you're doing 100 dol- 100 minutes a day of writing ad copy, looking at other people's ads, looking for hooks, and then trying to create more advertisements for your business. And the rule of 100 for most people takes about four hours a day -ish. And the thing is, is that's pure inputs, not output, but I've already taken the time to define what those inputs are that create the outputs. But later on in the book, 100 Million Dollar Leads, um, I talk about the rule of 100 on steroids, which is something that I learned from a guy who owned 13 or 14 really successful gyms, and he called it open to goal. And he said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." He said, "My managers work open to goal." And I was like, "What does that mean?" He's like, "So they work open until they hit their goal, and so sometimes that means they hit their goal by noon and they can cut out, or that means that they have to go from 5:00 AM until midnight that night 'cause that's how long it took them to hit the goal." And so I've seen this across a lot of high achievers across domains. So, like, "I'll keep shooting free shots until I hit 100 free, free shots. I will, uh, run until this happens. I will practice my presentation until I do zero mess ups," right? Or whatever that, that output is that you want for quality or quantity. And-... I think that you have to first figure out what the input is that most closely correlates or tracks with the output you want-

   3. CWChris Williamson6:09

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   4. AHAlex Hormozi6:09

      ... and then you jam as much as you possibly can into inputs. Because if I said, "Hey, go get me 10 customers," somebody... Yeah, exactly, you freeze because it's like, "Well, what do I do?" And so then, normally people start... They skew, like behavior skew, so it's all over the place, it's scattered-

   5. CWChris Williamson6:25

      Mm-hmm.

   6. AHAlex Hormozi6:25

      ... it shotguns, sprays. And then they eventually figure out one thing that works and then it's like, once you hit that, then you just jam that button as hard as you possibly can. And I think that I've been disproportionately successful in different domains of my life by ruthlessly focusing on one input. I mean, even when I was a kid when I played video games, it's like if you find a, a spawn point for zombies right before the end of the level, I would just sit there for like eight hours and just wait for the troll to s- come up and just slice him again and get my, my little diamonds and put it in. And I would just do that for hours because I was like, "Oh, I gotta level up my avatar." Um, but I think I play the game of business the exact same way. (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson7:05

      Andy Groves says, "There are so many people working so hard and achieving so little." And that's the lack of correlation between inputs and outcomes.

   8. AHAlex Hormozi7:15

      Yeah. I think the vast majority of business own- um, obviously I come from the business perspective, but the last- vast majority of business owners, um, work a fair amount. They just work on the wrong stuff and they do it the wrong way, and so they get so little for their effort that they wonder when they're at home empty-handed in bed, "Why isn't this working when I am working?" But if you define work, at least the way I do, which is, um, output... So I define work by output, and in order to get output it's volume times leverage, so how many times you do the thing times how much you get for each time you do it. And so that is the, do you work smart or do you work hard? It's you do both. You do as many reps as you possibly can and you are... you do it with the most leverage possible. So if I make 100 phone calls, the leverage that I can have there would be how skilled I am. So if I make 100 calls, I'ma get 10 times more, and so I worked more, I had more output than somebody who has less skill. But the only way you get skilled is by doing more inputs, by working more. And so it's this virtuous cycle of doing more and getting better and then you get more for what you do.

   9. CWChris Williamson8:18

      Yeah. Magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding all the time. Every single time that there is, "We're not making progress in this way, what is the highest pain task that's in front of me that I've put off the most?" It's always that one. It always is. Th- you know, after you spend enough time thinking about work and deconstructing the way that you piece your day and your life together, you sometimes believe that the answer is, is still out there, and what you actually realize is that you've already learned it. And it's like, it's that quote or that insight or that book. It's one of the first books you read. Because all of the big insights from productivity and personal development are the lowest hanging fruit, they're the ones that are repeated across the most books because they're the most reliable, scalable, and robust. It's like-

   10. AHAlex Hormozi8:59

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson8:59

       ... I don't need to be looking out there for most of the new insights. They're just shit that I already learned.

   12. AHAlex Hormozi9:04

       Yeah, we need to be reminded more than we need to be taught. It's one of my favorites.

3. 9:10 – 13:15

   Don’t Let Bad Things Ruin Everything

   1. AHAlex Hormozi9:10

   2. CWChris Williamson9:10

      "Bad things don't come in threes. Bad things happen, people don't know how to cope, and they allow one bad thing to snowball into more. Bad stuff sucks. The only thing worse is letting one bad thing ruin many good things."

   3. AHAlex Hormozi9:24

      I'm glad you found that one. Um, that was one o- on that list of things that, uh, you know, quotes I wish had gone more viral. Um, the amount of... I think it happens more when you're younger, but, you know, girlfriend breaks up with you. Okay. Then you go into work and you sulk because you're distracted and then you don't do the same level of effort and you're not enthusiastic and then all of a sudden, your work suffers and you get, you get put on a PIP or you get fired. And then now you're fired and you don't have a girlfriend and then you start gaining weight and you stop going to the gym and all of a sudden you're like, "Man, bad things happen in threes." It's like, no, bad things happen all the time, and they only become interrelated if you let it affect your behavior. And so, I think the equal opposite of that is thinking, "Okay, this bad thing occurred. What can I do to decrease the likelihood something else bad occurs in the meantime?" And then boiling everything down to activities or the actions that I have to take. And I think about that, actually, a lot, which is how... Like, if you think about from the power perspective of, okay, something bad happens, how much will it affect my behavior? Well, the person who's indestructible would have something terrible happen and then nothing would change. And I, I love that.

   4. CWChris Williamson10:31

      Or they'd get better.

   5. AHAlex Hormozi10:32

      Exactly. Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson10:33

      That's antifragility, right?

   7. AHAlex Hormozi10:34

      Yeah. The, um, the Sword of Gryffindor. "It only drinks in that which makes it stronger."

   8. CWChris Williamson10:39

      Ah. Fucking Harry Potter reference. Wasn't expecting that. Um, yeah, uh, w- the "people don't know how to cope" thing, especially with bad stuff is, um... It does explain why you end up with this weird spiral. Tiny little avalanche pebble at the top and then this huge sort of over exaggerated reaction downstream.

   9. AHAlex Hormozi11:07

      Yeah, people don't know how to manage their emotions. I think the, the more, at least for me, the more I've tried to create space between how I feel and what I do, the more consistent my outcomes have been.

   10. CWChris Williamson11:23

       What do you mean?

   11. AHAlex Hormozi11:24

       So if I need to create content and I'm not feeling it or I'm feeling tired or things like that, the more times I give into that excuse or that feeling, then the more superstitious I become about doing it in the future. Whereas a lot of times if I can just start when I am tired or when something is painful and then still execute about the same as before, I look at game tape or I look at video or I look at the content from those sessions, for example, and I see that I remember feeling terrible during the session-

   12. CWChris Williamson11:59

       Mm-hmm.

   13. AHAlex Hormozi11:59

       ... but you can't really see anything.

   14. CWChris Williamson12:00

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   15. AHAlex Hormozi12:00

       And I think the more times you get that loop going, the more you can separate how you feel and what is required. And the more times you do what is required to get what you want-... the more times you get ch- what you want.

   16. CWChris Williamson12:12

       I spoke to Huberman last year, I think it's called the anterior mid-singular cortex. It's an area of the brain. If I've got that right, fucking-

   17. AHAlex Hormozi12:21

       (laughs)

   18. CWChris Williamson12:21

       ... yes, bro! The best advert for Nutonic ever.

   19. AHAlex Hormozi12:24

       (laughs)

   20. CWChris Williamson12:24

       Um, uh, basically there is an area of the brain that tracks when you do something that you don't want to do-

   21. AHAlex Hormozi12:32

       Hm.

   22. CWChris Williamson12:32

       ... and you strengthen the connections in it by doing things that you don't want to do, especially when you really don't want to do them.

   23. AHAlex Hormozi12:38

       Hm.

   24. CWChris Williamson12:38

       So, you're hypertrophying. It's this exact-

   25. AHAlex Hormozi12:40

       Yeah.

   26. CWChris Williamson12:41

       ... sort of intuition that you've got, that, uh, y- some people would call it resilience or willpower or whatever, but there's a, it, this is, uh, neurologically represented in the brain. These, uh, connections get stronger. So, I think, it's so funny, um, gym bros will need a gym analogy in order to be able to believe that their brain changes.

   27. AHAlex Hormozi12:59

       (laughs)

   28. CWChris Williamson12:59

       But (laughs) it's, it's really useful to think, "Hey, you're hypertrophying this area of your brain."

   29. AHAlex Hormozi13:03

       Yeah.

   30. CWChris Williamson13:04

       Y- I snapped an Achilles, I had to do a very particular series of rehab movements in order to grow it back. This is just the same.
4. 13:15 – 23:48

   See Opportunity in Every Failure

   1. CWChris Williamson13:15

      people... This is kind of similar to what you were talking about, bad things don't come in threes. Successful people see opportunity in every failure. Normal people see failure in every opportunity. Both are right. Only one gets rich.

   2. AHAlex Hormozi13:28

      Yeah, so I was, uh, so this has been something I've been thinking about a lot, which is basically the shittiness of stuff, um, which is when you're growing in a business, it's very painful. When you're stagnating in a business and you're plateaued and you don't know what to do, it's very painful. When you're declining and you also don't know what to do, it's very painful. And so that means that all conditions of reality are painful. And so if pain is a prerequisite for reality, then it means it's just a signal that we are alive. And so in thinking about that, rather than pain is a problem, it is a signal that I'm breathing and then becomes irrelevant.

   3. CWChris Williamson14:13

      How do you ensure that you're not suffering unnecessarily? You know, pain can be a useful signal. It can tell you to move away from certain things that are suboptimal.

   4. AHAlex Hormozi14:21

      Yeah. I, um, I probably have relatively contrarian views on this. Um, but just even the judgment on pain, I relatively reject. Just like, pain is good, pain is bad. I mean, in the, in the gym, to give the, a gym, gym example, they found that the pain that you experience when you're going to work out, and there's a difference between, like, massive joint, you're like, "Oh, I just snapped a muscle," and, like, just feeling bad. But feeling bad has zero correlation to your performance in the gym. And so, I remember reading that for the Olympic, you know, weight teams, they talked about that, and I was like, "Oh, well if it has no correlation, then it's almost irrelevant, and I can just keep living my life." And so I think the ultimate version of the resilience that you're referencing earlier is rather than, you know, in the beginning you're like, "I feel bad," and then you think that that should weigh on the decision of whether you do the thing that you're supposed to do. And then you start realizing that you can do the thing even though you don't feel good about it.

   5. CWChris Williamson15:21

      In spite.

   6. AHAlex Hormozi15:22

      And you start hypertrophying it. But I think the ultimate version of the hypertrophy when the muscle becomes a tendon or it just becomes fused is when you don't even consider how you feel. It's just not a thought. You just keep... You just do it.

   7. CWChris Williamson15:34

      That's that movement from sort of s- type two to type one thinking, you know, from it being very conscious, very effortful to it's just a reaction. I get up and I start to write.

   8. AHAlex Hormozi15:45

      Right.

   9. CWChris Williamson15:46

      And, um, this-

   10. AHAlex Hormozi15:47

       And then you don't use up any willpower.

   11. CWChris Williamson15:48

       No, because it's just what you do.

   12. AHAlex Hormozi15:50

       Right.

   13. CWChris Williamson15:50

       There's a Rory Sutherland that we were talking about yesterday. Um, in his... He's the only guy that I've ever heard swear in a TED Talk and, um, (laughs) it, it, he gave me this idea, which is kind of related. Things are not what they are. Things are what we think they are. For instance, you're doing a hard workout which gives you a signature feeling. You're laid on the floor, panting, heart rate at 180, sweating from everywhere with the taste of metal in your mouth. This is oddly enjoyable. But if this exact same sensation was to spontaneously occur in your car while sat in traffic, you'd call an ambulance for fear that you're having a heart attack. Framing is everything. Rory Sutherland says, "Sometimes you just want to stand in the corner and stare out of the window." The problem is when you're not smoking and staring out of the window, you're an antisocial, friendless idiot. If you stand and stare out of the window with a cigarette, you're a fucking philosopher. The power of reframing things cannot be overstated. It's significantly easier to find a way to reframe your experiences as enjoyable while you improve them rather than waiting for them to be done before you give yourself license to be happy.

   14. AHAlex Hormozi16:59

       So, a friend of mine, she's a, a very, very successful therapist, uh, and she always asks her patients when they come to her and say some terrible thing happened, she said, "What would it take for this to be amazing?" And so, for example, lady comes, says, "We're getting a divorce." And she says, "So what would it take for this to be amazing?" And so it just completely shifts the reality of like, "Okay, how could this be an amazing thing that could happen to me?" And this is relevant for me shifting gears because I, we just had a big tryout inside of our company for a presentation slot that we have in an event. So we had a bunch of the leaders in the company. There was a-

   15. CWChris Williamson17:32

       It's like the fucking Hunger Games.

   16. AHAlex Hormozi17:33

       Yeah. We put a cash prize out.

   17. CWChris Williamson17:34

       Fight to the death, pitchforks.

   18. AHAlex Hormozi17:36

       No. We did. No, we put a big cash prize out there. Oh, oh, yeah. I totally did that.

   19. CWChris Williamson17:40

       (laughs)

   20. AHAlex Hormozi17:40

       I, I totally was like, "I'll have no ex- uh, no expression."

   21. CWChris Williamson17:43

       Just in a toga.

   22. AHAlex Hormozi17:44

       Yeah, exactly. And, um, and I could tell that some of them were nervous, and I thought about this 'cause, you know, I speak a fair amount, and I don't get a lot of nerves in general and have a whole bunch of thoughts on that. But, um, the most basic one is that if you're still feeling anxiety, which many of them were like, "Hey, I'm so nervous," or, "Hey, I have a lot of anxiety before going up," I thought about it and champions just interpret anxiety as excitement. And if you're excited to go up, then you're like, "I'm amped," versus, "I'm stressed." But it feels the same. The way you frame it totally changes how you feel when you're stepping on stage. Um-... but my two cents of if you are feeling lots of anxiety it means you need to practice more. That's just my two cents, and that comes for everything, whether it's to have a meeting or give a presentation or write an email or do a book. Like, if you feel nervous before you release it, then you probably didn't work on it enough. And I think the reality is that most people, to get not anxious about whatever they're doing, you have to do it so many times that by the last time you're doing it, you're bored of it. Like, you don't even wanna see the thing again. When you're sick of it is the point where you'll have no adrenal response to the stimulus because you've seen it so many times you could do it in your sleep because you hate it at this point. And then when you get up you're like, "Oh my God, let's just do this because I'm, I can breathe this thing."

   23. CWChris Williamson19:02

       I want it fucking over with.

   24. AHAlex Hormozi19:03

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson19:03

       What's the gap between your expectation of what is going to happen-

   26. AHAlex Hormozi19:08

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson19:08

       ... and the, um, requirement that you need to perform, right? This is where I need to be and this is how I think I'm going to perform-

   28. AHAlex Hormozi19:15

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson19:15

       ... as opposed to the other way. So I saw this firsthand when I did the live tour last year. So I did, I think, 17 shows in 28 days, three continents, right? Like proper tour.

   30. AHAlex Hormozi19:25

       (laughs)
5. 23:48 – 31:14

   Enjoy the Life You Have

   1. CWChris Williamson23:48

      This is my favorite one, I think, from you over the last few months. "You once wanted the life you have, and if you don't like the life you have, you probably won't like the one you want but don't have either."

   2. AHAlex Hormozi24:03

      Yeah, this one I think about all the time because I think about the life that I have now and I know that I wanted this life, but I obviously do a lot of thinking about this type (laughs) of stuff. Um, but the equal opposite of that is that when I was poor, I was pretty happy. I was okay with being poor. And now that I am rich, I'll put quotes on that, degrees, um...It's about the same. And so then it just goes down to, well then the richness had nothing to do with the level of contentedness, which means that my wants in past and present and future all go into the bucket of irrelevant in t- terms of their ability to affect my perception of reality in the present. And so in thinking about that, it makes my wants have less stake today. And so a lot of anxiety that I think a lot of people have is around things that haven't happened yet, either good or bad. Like, I hope this speech goes well, or I hope I get this job promotion. But the reality is that once you get the job promotion you wanted it, you resettle. And the negative version of this is, and I've, um, you've probably seen this stuff, but when handicapped people get handicaps, so they have a terrible accident, they get paralyzed or they lose a leg or whatever, there's a dip in their subjective wellbeing. But after three to six months, it typically restabilizes, which means that if I didn't get paralyzed or even if I did get paralyzed, I'd be just about as content as I am right now. It's like whatever is about to happen is probably not as bad as that. And so that's the worst case scenario, which is nothing. So, okay.

   3. CWChris Williamson25:37

      Good things aren't as good as you think they are. Bad things aren't as bad as you think they are.

   4. AHAlex Hormozi25:40

      Yeah, life is life.

   5. CWChris Williamson25:41

      Well, it's the, uh, it's the you've already achieved goals that you said would make you happy again. It's the other side of this. And, you know, the fact that we take for granted things that only in recent memory we would've begged to have had the opportunity to have been able to have, and now we're flippant about them. The new car that you thought about and you researched for 18 months and then you finally got it and you just curbed the tires yesterday and you go, "All right, whatever." And you're like, okay, so you reali- you spent all of this time thinking about it. The house that you were going to move into, the marriage that you were going to do, the holiday you were going to take. I told you about this last time, Morgan Housel steps out onto... After this huge, big build-up with his kids and his wife, steps out onto the balcony of this holiday that he'd taken and his first thought was, "Wow, it would be so good if we could come back here next year." That was, like, during the process of experiencing the thing, he was thinking about the next thing. And he caught himself and thought, "Okay, this means that success isn't a goal, a journey or a destination. When you get it wrong, it's a horizon."

   6. AHAlex Hormozi26:50

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson26:51

      Every single step that you take towards it, it runs one step further away.

   8. AHAlex Hormozi26:54

      Mm-hmm. So during my year off that I took after, you know, during the year of the sale when I couldn't, you couldn't, I couldn't really work on the business because you don't wanna change anything major when you're going through a sale. Um, but I didn't know Wi-Fi was going to be owning this business soon so I basically just had to do nothing, 'cause I also had to demonstrate that the team could do it without me so that it's still a sellable asset. So I basically just sat there for a year and that's when a lot of my, like, thoughts kind of caught up from, you know, when I had started years earlier. And that was when I kind of refined my kind of theory of living for me, which was that hard work is the goal. And so it's not like work hard so that X, because as soon as you have a so that, then the X is the thing. But if the goal is to work as hard as you possibly can, then the only real output we have is who we become along the way. And so in reframing that, then it's something that I can win or measure myself against every day in real time throughout the day, which is how hard am I working, because that is the goal. And then even s- I say this just for audio, but, like, everything else takes care of itself still puts the everything else as the goal still.

   9. CWChris Williamson28:08

      Mm-hmm.

   10. AHAlex Hormozi28:08

       It's just being vaguer. But if you just say, like, the only point is working hard because I know that whatever I'm going to get is stuff that I will become accustomed to. And the, I guess, opposite of the hedonic treadmill is like your, the resilience piece, is that my ability to work hard itself is growable. And so I just need to keep my RP, my rate of perceived exertion at eight or nine or 10 because I know that when I look back on my life, the days that I loved the most were days when I had nothing left in the tank. And there's this thing that, Jesse Itzler has this and I love it, I hate him for having it 'cause it's so fucking good. Um, but he has, he taught his, his kids, which is he has them, they have a little zero, means that there's nothing left in the tank. And when they finish a race or they do whatever, it's like, "Did you leave ni- did you leave anything in the tank?"

   11. CWChris Williamson28:56

       Mm-hmm.

   12. AHAlex Hormozi28:57

       And I thought about that. And the best days of my life were ones when I had nothing left in the tank. And so then the goal becomes to empty the tank, not what, where I drive, but just to drive the car as hard as I possibly can. And that means that in the beginning it's just straightaways and just seeing how high I can rev the engine. But as I become more advanced, it's like, all right, well now we've got turns. And then it's turns and elevation, and then it's turns and elevation without guard rails because we have risk. And so when I think about how hard I wanna work, the interesting thing about that is that the only person who can judge you on your success is you because you're the only one who knows how much left in the tank you really had. And the better you get, and you can resonate with this, you start winning exteriorly and that's when people are like, "It felt so empty." It's because they didn't actually work as hard as they could have. They just worked hard enough to beat everyone else. But that discrepancy between how hard you could have worked, to har- to work your hardest versus what was required in order to win, to me, that's the opportunity that shifting towards the work being the goal unlocks for you. And I work harder now than I did when I was poor. And I think it's because I've learned to enjoy it.

   13. CWChris Williamson30:09

       How do you ensure that the hard work focus doesn't detach you from outcomes and inputs? This seems like there's a little bit of a tension with what we started talking about in the beginning.

   14. AHAlex Hormozi30:21

       Sure. I- Oh, totally.

   15. CWChris Williamson30:22

       Just to... It's direction over speed-

   16. AHAlex Hormozi30:25

       Mm-hmm.

   17. CWChris Williamson30:25

       ... is the first one.

   18. AHAlex Hormozi30:26

       Mm-hmm.

   19. CWChris Williamson30:26

       But we're now talking about maximizing for speed.So how do we balance direction and speed?

   20. AHAlex Hormozi30:31

       So with the question, if the outcome that we're trying to have is being present, then the outcome actually is irrelevant because it's about how much you empty the tank. If we're talking about the science of achievement, then the outcome, the outcome does matter, obviously.

   21. CWChris Williamson30:44

       Mm-hmm.

   22. AHAlex Hormozi30:44

       Um, and so balancing both of those things, which is that if I want to accomplish all my goals, then I need to make sure that my inputs are tied as closely as humanly possible to the outcome. If I wanna be satisfied, it doesn't matter at all. And so I think it's marrying those two ideas where the perfect world, in my opinion, would be you work as hard as you pla- possibly can because you thought ahead of time, "What is the input that has the closest correlation with the outcome that I want?" And then you put your blinders on and you start digging.

6. 31:14 – 42:03

   How You Work When Nobody’s Watching

   1. CWChris Williamson31:14

      We don't rise to the standards we have when others are watching. We fall to the standards we have when no one is watching. The only work that really matters is the work that no one sees. It shows you who you really are rather than who you say you are.

   2. AHAlex Hormozi31:28

      There's this line that I heard David Goggins say on Rogan, and I can't remember who he was saying it to or what he said in response to, but he just said, "I'm David Goggins, bitch."

   3. CWChris Williamson31:38

      (laughs)

   4. AHAlex Hormozi31:40

      And I remember him saying it and I thought to myself, like, you wanna be able to say that in the mirror to yourself and not laugh at yourself.

   5. CWChris Williamson31:53

      Mm-hmm.

   6. AHAlex Hormozi31:54

      And the only way that I can do that is know that when no one's watching, I work harder than when they're watching. And thinking about it like that has given me this persistent and ever-present scorecard or third-party that's like, "No one's watching, which means now you have to work 'cause otherwise you're full of shit."

   7. CWChris Williamson32:15

      Mm-hmm.

   8. AHAlex Hormozi32:16

      And so it's this continuous (laughs) reinforcing cycle of the me and other me holding the whip behind me to see how much I can take, but with each lash of the whip that I take, learning that I can take it and continue to trudge on. And so as long as you keep going, you bear witness to yourself of what you are capable of. And I find that incredibly satisfying in the trenches of misery when you have to go through it because you're like-

   9. CWChris Williamson32:48

      It means that you're not full of shit.

   10. AHAlex Hormozi32:49

       ... "I'm still here."

   11. CWChris Williamson32:50

       It means that you're not full of shit. What it comes down to is s- I, I think I told you this story about when I was with Sam last year-

   12. AHAlex Hormozi32:57

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CWChris Williamson32:57

       ... uh, in LA. So, um, Sam Ovens used to make content on the internet. Now he's very much an operator rather than-

   14. AHAlex Hormozi33:04

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson33:04

       ... a front-facing-

   16. AHAlex Hormozi33:05

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson33:05

       ... which is funny to think about Sam the creator as opposed to Sam-

   18. AHAlex Hormozi33:08

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson33:08

       ... the operator. And I asked why he'd stopped making content. And he said, "Because I felt like I had to start living up to in private the things which I was saying in public."

   20. AHAlex Hormozi33:17

       Mm-hmm.

   21. CWChris Williamson33:17

       And he was beginning to feel discordance between the two. You know, he was making changes personally, but he created a brand publicly. But I think if you can get to the stage where the public version of you is the best version of you and then private you has to live up to the best version of you, and then you get to do this sort of self-reinforcing cycle, that's kind of the virtuous version of that, which I guess is kind of similar to what you're talking about here.

   22. AHAlex Hormozi33:43

       So I think what we're teasing at is authenticity. And so a lot of people feel like imposters because what they think, what they say, and what they do are completely different. Um, but from an operational perspective, because that's how I like to define a lot of words, which is, "What do I have to do to be that," right? H- what do I have to do to be authentic?" And you can describe someone auth- as authentic by saying, "How would you behave if there was no possibility of punishment?" And so if you could not be punished at all, that behavior is who you are authentically. And so, in my opinion, our degrees of freedom are predicated on how much, to what extent we act as though we could not be punished. And so if what we want to do and what we do have no possibility of punishment, that is what we are when we are our true selves.

   23. CWChris Williamson34:34

       Jimmy Carr talks about, um, nobody throws a Coke can out of the window with kids in the back.

   24. AHAlex Hormozi34:39

       Right. (laughs)

   25. CWChris Williamson34:39

       That means you're a fucking monster.

   26. AHAlex Hormozi34:41

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson34:41

       It's what you do when there's no one around. Your, uh, old one about authenticity, people are attracted to authenticity, but it's hard to define for me. Here's my best attempt.

   28. AHAlex Hormozi34:51

       Mm-hmm.

   29. CWChris Williamson34:52

       True alignment of what you think, what you say, and what you do. The hardest part is realizing that our thoughts are fucked-

   30. AHAlex Hormozi34:58

       (laughs)
7. 42:03 – 46:44

   How to Get True Revenge

   1. CWChris Williamson42:03

      If you want revenge for the bad things that have happened in your life, start with the version of you that hasn't lived up to your potential.

   2. AHAlex Hormozi42:10

      Mm-hmm. So I think a lot of us have the, the battle of the other self that we're, the, the lesser version of ourself that we're trying to kill every single day. And so a lot of times, we have this desire to point the blame finger externally. But wherever you point the finger of blame, power follows. And so whoever I blame for the life I have is the person who I give all the power over my existence, over my circumstances. And so it hurts, but if you turn the finger inwards and you start saying, "Huh, I don't like my life."... the person that I need to punish or get back at is the real person who got me here, which is me. And so you may be right that other people did certain things, or you got dealt a bad hand. It also doesn't matter because the only thing that you can control is obviously the actions that you take, and the only person who's in control of that is you. And so, the revenge porn is thinking about what the version of you who got you here did and then acting in the exact opposite of that as many times as you possibly can, and the pain that you feel by rejecting the thing that you used to do that got you into this bad circumstance, that's the real revenge.

   3. CWChris Williamson43:38

      It's kind of like, uh, the stoic fork, the dichotomy of control, but it's just taking all of that and just lumping it all on you. Yeah, it's, it's, you know, I mean, this is kind of the, the pushback against victimhood culture that externalizing the locus of control, it is the fault of the politics, or the economy, or it's the state of the dollar, or it's the patriarchy, or it's whatever. He goes, "Hey, look. You will get 100X, 1,000X your returns placing your efforts to try and change those things on you as opposed to on the world." Like, you, I think basically the best way to move through the world is to see your entire surroundings as immutable and you as mutable. You're the only mutable thing in the entire world. You're the only thing that can change. Everybody else, people, opinions, places, economy, politicians, policies, all of that, none of that's gonna change. You. You can change. That's it.

   4. AHAlex Hormozi44:38

      It's-

   5. CWChris Williamson44:38

      And then maybe some of the other stuff does, and that would be great.

   6. AHAlex Hormozi44:42

      It's a really interesting concept. So do we accept the world and change ourselves, or do we change the world and accept ourselves? And so it's a really interesting dichotomy when you ask the question because on, 'cause both of those sound right. You're like, "I should accept myself and change the world." But on the other hand, you're like, "Wait, no, I should accept the world-"

   7. CWChris Williamson45:05

      (laughs)

   8. AHAlex Hormozi45:05

      "... and change myself."

   9. CWChris Williamson45:06

      Yeah.

   10. AHAlex Hormozi45:07

       And so-

   11. CWChris Williamson45:08

       So good.

   12. AHAlex Hormozi45:08

       Yeah. 'Cause they're both pithy. (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson45:10

       Yeah.

   14. AHAlex Hormozi45:10

       Pithy aphor-

   15. CWChris Williamson45:11

       Aphorism pawn.

   16. AHAlex Hormozi45:11

       Right. And so, um, I think all of it come downs, comes down to when you change yourself, you will change the world because you'll change how you see it.

   17. CWChris Williamson45:28

       I think as well, when it comes to accepting yourself, do you want to accept you, uh, do you want to accept a version of you that you shouldn't accept, one that you're not proud of, one that doesn't live up to their word, one whose thoughts, actions, and, uh, intentions aren't aligned fully? You go, "Well, I mean, I, I can, but I don't particularly feel good about that. That feels like the higher version of me, the potential version of me that I want to live up to, is... I'm sort of derogating them." That i- i- it's, this isn't really the tribute to them that it should be. And yeah, that's why the self-acceptance movement, that's why people feel icky about it. People feel icky about the self-acceptance movement because they know that people are accepting a version of themselves which is falling short from what it could be.

   18. AHAlex Hormozi46:09

       I would say that they're not accepting themselves and saying that they accept themselves. So if I say, "Is there a version of yourself that's better than you are right now?" And most people, hopefully, would say yes. It's like, "Great. Accept that person." And I think that, to me, when we talk about the authenticity, accepting yourself is accepting the ideal that we can live up to. And that's, that is what we accept, not the shitty version of that that we are today. And I think that marries both sides of the argument.

8. 46:44 – 53:40

   People Are Jealous of the Trophy But Not the Work

   1. AHAlex Hormozi46:44

   2. CWChris Williamson46:44

      Jimmy Carr broke my brain with this one. "Everyone is jealous of what you've got. No one is jealous of how you got it."

   3. AHAlex Hormozi46:53

      I love that quote.

   4. CWChris Williamson46:54

      My God. People see the trophies, but not the training ground.

   5. AHAlex Hormozi46:59

      Everybody wants the view, but no one wants the climb. I love it. But the people who win love the climb, and the real mountain has no peak. And so the view is always present the whole way up the climb, and-

   6. CWChris Williamson47:21

      But it seems to me, to push back there, it seems to me like a lot of the time you're head down.

   7. AHAlex Hormozi47:26

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson47:26

      Uh, the pleasure comes from the climb, not the view-

   9. AHAlex Hormozi47:29

      Sure.

   10. CWChris Williamson47:29

       ... for you. Uh, again, maybe sort of, uh, non-typically constructed from a psychological perspective. So that was nice. That was diplomatic.

   11. AHAlex Hormozi47:39

       (laughs)

   12. CWChris Williamson47:40

       Um, (laughs) uh, uh, so what would you say... And this is something that I think, you know, with these episodes that we do, I often want to try and get you to push a little bit more to adapt your ideas and your insights for people who maybe do have a little bit more of that emotionality that comes through-

   13. AHAlex Hormozi48:00

       Mm-hmm.

   14. CWChris Williamson48:00

       ... to try and sort of soften this up. Look, I understand that people need more degrees of freedom than me, typically. I understand that people probably can't get themselves to the level of work that I can. So do you ever sort of play with that idea of, okay, what does a little bit of view-taking-in look like whilst we're climbing?

   15. AHAlex Hormozi48:23

       I think a lot of the discontent comes from the judgment people have about what they should or should not do along the way. And so they take my description as prescription for what they should do. So I describe my life, and then people think I'm prescribing what they should do, and it couldn't be further from the truth. If you wanna take a break at every two steps and take in the view, do it. I mean, in four generations, no one will remember your name. And so enjoy the view if you feel like it. I just happen to enjoy...... how much I can see that I can do. That's what I enjoy, and I, and I feel like I am most present when I work. And so I'm not gonna go onto work/life balance, whatever, 'cause we already know where that conversation goes. But people have a harder time accepting that someone can just work all the time and, and truly love it, and I define that by, there's nothing else I would rather do at any time. And so for me, I feel like I exer- exercise absolute freedom in my life, and freedom is reinforcing for all species, dogs, cows, fish, humans. Freedom is one of the re- most positively reinforcing thing that people have, that everyone wants freedom.

   16. CWChris Williamson49:44

       Everybody wants to be able to say, "Fuck you."

   17. AHAlex Hormozi49:46

       Right. But once you say, "Fuck you," you have to do something, 'cause you can't just stay at- stand there and saying, "Fuck you," over and over again for hours for the rest of your life. You start to do something, and that thing that you choose to do after you do, after you say, "Fuck you," is what you want to do.

   18. CWChris Williamson49:58

       That's an interesting point. So there are, um, certain things that you have to do to get to the point where you don't have to do things you don't want to do, and then when you're liberated, there is a whole new challenge now, because it's a completely blank map where you have to actually define that. That's one of the things, you know, about working for yourself, there's, there's a lot of derogation about nine-to-fives and university education and kind of the typical track and stuff. Like, bro, uh, you should be very cautious about criticizing people that have more normal salaried nine-to-five jobs.

   19. AHAlex Hormozi50:32

       Mm-hmm.

   20. CWChris Williamson50:32

       Because I look at most of my friends, and they can't not take their work home with them, so for certain psychological makeups, who's more free, the person that actually gets to shut their work laptop at 5:00 PM? In France, they've got this new policy now where you can't, uh, email staff, uh, after, I think it's maybe 5:00 PM or 6:00 PM at night in certain businesses to try and sort of enforce this work/life balance and stuff like that. Uh, so for certain pe- You're shaking your head. What's your, what, what have you, what's your problem?

   21. AHAlex Hormozi51:01

       I mean, my first thought was, well, France just took the, "It's irrelevant" economy and just made it less relevant.

   22. CWChris Williamson51:07

       (laughs)

   23. AHAlex Hormozi51:09

       And, and secondarily, the person who made that rule is somebody who fundamentally doesn't understand human behavior. So if they were to pass that rule for me, then what they did is they actually made my life worse.

   24. CWChris Williamson51:20

       This was the thing when Elon took over Twitter, so it's one of my favorite stories over the last couple of years. Elon buys Twitter. Elon finds out that 80% of the staff base just drink smoothies and go on hot girl walks all day, and he fires them-

   25. AHAlex Hormozi51:40

       Yeah.

   26. CWChris Williamson51:41

       ... and says, "This team..." It was him and a bunch of Asian dudes, uh, selfie, and he says, "This is the team that's gonna run Twitter now." And he puts a, I think, a job posting out, maybe on Twitter, and he says, "I want people who want to work harder than they ever have on the most difficult problems in the world," and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he got tons of shit for it, and they said, "This is a regressive policy for industry. This is taking people back to sending kids up the chimneys," and so on and so forth, and it's just a complete failure of theory of mind that there are people out there for whom that is the job advert. "I want to work harder than I ever have on the most difficult problems in the world at an intensity that would kill most people, because that's where I derive pleasure and satisfaction from. That's the best situation that I could hope for." And trying to take your model of, "Well, yeah, but what about my maternity leave?" and, "Yeah, but what about, you know, jeans Fridays?" and, "Yeah, but what about, y- y- you know, hot girl walks?" All of that is... Th- those are things that people don't want. Adding those in gets in the way of the thing that they do want.

   27. AHAlex Hormozi52:51

       I think a lot of the confusion around the people who are wanting to work harder than they are or don't like that I work hard or that you work hard think that... They, they take this statement as a judgment or a criticism on how they live their life, and it's because on the other side of that free line, you're like, "Okay, I'm now free. I have a blank slate." If I do something or you do something that they deem painful for them now or something that they don't enjoy, they then say, "You are suffering, and that is bad." And both of those things I reject wholeheartedly. First, you don't know that I'm suffering because you have no idea what's going on inside of me, comma, and also, what does your judgment mean at all to me?

   28. CWChris Williamson53:39

       There's a Tim

9. 53:40 – 1:01:23

   Finding Work That You Love

   1. CWChris Williamson53:40

      Cook internal memo that he sent. "There's a saying that if you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life. At Apple, I learned that is a total crock. You will work harder than you ever thought possible, but the tools will feel light in your hands."

   2. AHAlex Hormozi53:58

      So good. (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson54:00

      Chef's kiss.

   4. AHAlex Hormozi54:01

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson54:01

      Chef's kiss, Tim Cook.

   6. AHAlex Hormozi54:07

      I feel like you crushed that one.

   7. CWChris Williamson54:11

      I have a friend who worked for a very high-level, uh, recruitment company, C-suite execs for the biggest companies on the planet. I don't know whether it was some internal intranet thing or whether they actually saw these people or they'd maybe pool candidates with other companies, but he was able to see the break-down interviews with some of the best CEOs in the world. So he was able to see the summary of Tim Cook and Susanna Wasjewski, the lady, uh, and apparently the first line... So these guys are seeing everybody.

   8. AHAlex Hormozi54:48

      Right.

   9. CWChris Williamson54:48

      The best on the planet, right? And I was like, "Okay, so w- just explain to me the interpretation difference between the guys that are already triple A and then Tim Cook," and he said the first line of Tim Cook's summary just said, "Rockstar."That was the first thing. All it said was "rockstar." And he realized that in a pool of the best executives on the planet, people like Tim and people like Susanna still are heads and shoulders above the rest. I just thought that was so cool to, like, see these people in their nascent stage before they've got the thing that they're going to really magnify.

   10. AHAlex Hormozi55:28

       They had all the attributes. They didn't have the proof yet.

   11. CWChris Williamson55:31

       Yeah, they didn't have the playground, they didn't have the Petri dish to be able to show just how much they could multiply it.

   12. AHAlex Hormozi55:35

       Yeah. Which I think about that a lot when it comes to kinda, like, potential energy versus reality for people on their way up. And so there's this huge time delay between when we start behaving in a way that a winner behaves and when we start winning.

   13. CWChris Williamson55:51

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   14. AHAlex Hormozi55:52

       And the problem is that the bigger the mountain you're trying to climb, the bigger the W you're trying to get, typically the more delayed it is between-

   15. CWChris Williamson56:00

       The longer the lag.

   16. AHAlex Hormozi56:01

       ... yeah, between when you start behaving like a winner and when you start being a winner. And most people don't get the fast enough feedback loop to know that they're on the right path when they are taking these first steps in the right direction, because they have this really big goal but they forget that with that really big goal comes the even longer delay that it takes to get there while still continuing to act with no feedback from society-

   17. CWChris Williamson56:30

       No positive reinforcement, no nothing.

   18. AHAlex Hormozi56:31

       ... whatsoever. And I think that's... Like, if I actually had to put a real, like, what's, what's been, what has worked so well for me and why the input over the output focus has been so powerful is that I can extend the time horizon basically indefinitely, because the goal is me and then the external goals occur.

   19. CWChris Williamson56:51

       You don't need the positive reinforcement. I mean, everybody's seen an ex-

   20. AHAlex Hormozi56:54

       Well, no, I need the positive reinforcement, but the positive reinforcement's coming from me.

   21. CWChris Williamson56:57

       Internally.

   22. AHAlex Hormozi56:58

       I'm just being re- like, just, just 'cause I think it's important.

   23. CWChris Williamson57:00

       The positive external reinforcement that most people are looking for.

   24. AHAlex Hormozi57:03

       Right. But if you, if you are the goal, then the actions you take every day are reinforcing who you believe yourself to be. That's where the confidence comes from.

   25. CWChris Williamson57:11

       As long as they're directionally correct.

   26. AHAlex Hormozi57:13

       And if you just wanna be satisfied, then just work your ass off. (laughs)

   27. CWChris Williamson57:16

       Uh, yeah, I mean, everybody's seen one of those exponential graphs. And I, I, one of my good friends, George, bought me, uh... At Professor, um, bought-

   28. AHAlex Hormozi57:26

       He's great.

   29. CWChris Williamson57:27

       He's fucking fantastic.

   30. AHAlex Hormozi57:28

       Yeah.
10. 1:01:23 – 1:08:08

    Why You Shouldn’t Fear Criticism

    1. CWChris Williamson1:01:23

       This is from Mark Manson, "Why I hate being around negative people. Being an asshole is a weak person's idea of strength. Complaining is their connection. Never let yourself be held back by other people's fears. People criticize what they are afraid to do themselves because bold action reminds them of their own inaction. If you're afraid to be criticized, why do you care about the opinions of those who are too timid to do it themselves? If you are the criticizer, does tearing down someone who has the courage you lack make you better?"

    2. AHAlex Hormozi1:02:03

       Yeah. People criticize because it helps them justify the risks they chose not to take, in the hopes that it will dissuade you from doing it so that you can be in the exact same position as them, which then justifies that they made the right call.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:02:17

       This happened when I stopped drinking. Uh, you know, it was, uh, now going low and no on alcohol is kind of en vogue and super-duper common, uh, but as a club promoter in, whatever, 2015, 2016, that was pretty rare. And, um, I think a lot of the pushback that I got from the people around me, some of the people around me, was, "Your behavior is throwing my behavior into sharp contrast." And, you know, this is The Lonely Chapter, right? This is why the movement away from your existing friend group, this is Neo, you've already been down that road, you know where it leads, you know you don't wanna go there. It's all of those things. But because, at least for me, I always have such inherent uncertainty of my own opinions and such, uh, a sense that everybody else is balanced and actually knows what they're doing, that I give undue weight to the criticisms of others, "Oh, maybe they are right. Maybe it is stupid for me to stop drinking. Maybe this does make me boring. Maybe, uh, i- it is pointless for me to do, like, who even knows if meditation works? Fuck Sam Harris, right?" Like, you know, all of these doubts that start to creep in and that, like we were saying before, this is the discomfort that everybody feels whether you're launching a business or doing personal development or doing all the rest of it. And (laughs) as opposed to thinking about it as a bug, think about it as a feature, and a- as opposed to thinking about it as something that's a personal curse that's difficult, think about it as the selection criteria that everybody has to get over. That's the reason why so few people are equanimous and actually have peace in their mind, because meditation is hard and everyone thinks, "Am I doing it right? This kind of sucks, and I'm twitchy and I'm tired today." Why are so few people in sh- in shape? Because going to the gym and sticking to the gym is difficult. Maybe it's a tiny bit easier for some people that like it than others, but for most people, most of the time, it's really, really hard. Thinking about the challenges that you need to face as just a selection crite- the cost of doing business, right? This is just the cost of doing business, and I need to pay it.

    4. AHAlex Hormozi1:04:35

       It's rarely the information or the intensity that makes things hard. It's the sticking with it that makes it hard. And so the desire that we have to quit is simply breaking the consistency. And so that's why consistency's always been the hardest thing for most people to achieve, but the intensity of what you have to do to be successful is much lower than most people expect.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:05:03

       Mm-hmm.

    6. AHAlex Hormozi1:05:03

       And so, oftentimes they suffer significantly more in a short period of time than is required to be successful over a much longer period of time with a much lower intensity. And so it's just like if you walk for five minutes a day, you're gonna get, you know, 50% of the health benefits, probably more than that I'm sure, um, of just even exercising. You add 10 years to your life if you walked five or 10 minutes a day. Um, and the path of personal development is befriending uncertainty. And so I obviously sit from the entrepreneurial perspective, but almost all decisions that you make in the beginning, you have incomplete data, and you have to make decisions anyways. And so it's growing comfortable with taking your best bad guess and being directionally correct rather than searching for a perfect answer, because a perfect answer assumes perfect information, which you could only have after you begin. And so, in some ways, making a decision is the perfect answer so that you can get the information-

    7. CWChris Williamson1:06:05

       Feedback.

    8. AHAlex Hormozi1:06:06

       ... to then improve the quality of the decision later. And I think that one loop is what a lot of people miss out on, is they spend, they obsess for years sometimes on the perfect pick, the perfect business, the perfect job, the perfect mate, when most of the times beginning each step illuminates the next step, which means the information, the feedback that you get from walking gives you more about where to walk than trying to sit at the beginning in the darkness and pick a direction.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:06:35

       Well, it's the, the difference as well I think between people who are super advanced, super developed, super far down the line, and people who are beginning, it's like, dude, what have you got to, what are you risking by trying to do this thing? You've, you, for you, it's fine for you to spend 18 months negotiating with Sam on the-

    10. AHAlex Hormozi1:06:52

        Yeah.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:06:52

        ... school deal.

    12. AHAlex Hormozi1:06:53

        Yeah.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:06:53

        But if you are yet to do any business, that's probably not necessarily the right way to go about things. Uh, Tim Ferriss says, "In the short term, your success depends on your intensity. In the long term, your success depends on your consistency. Do not sacrifice the latter for the former."

    14. AHAlex Hormozi1:07:12

        Mm-hmm. What's wild about the fear that people have when they're starting out is that they say things like, "I have nothing going for me. I have no advantages. I have nothing to my name. I have no money. I have no network. I have no resources."But using Rory Sutherland's reframing, it also means that you have nothing to lose, which makes you incredibly dangerous. And I think people wildly underestimate how many shots on goal you can take when you have nothing to lose, whereas when someone has something to lose, they have to be more and more selective about the, the shots they take. And so, you have the perfect conditions for taking risk, because the worst-case scenario is baseline, is where you're currently at.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:07:53

        Correct. (laughs) Yeah.

    16. AHAlex Hormozi1:07:54

        And so that means-

    17. CWChris Williamson1:07:55

        The downside is this.

    18. AHAlex Hormozi1:07:57

        Which means that it's like going to the casino and playing craps, but they say that you can just keep playing until you win, but people are afraid to roll.

11. 1:08:08 – 1:20:49

    Investing Time More Wisely

    1. CWChris Williamson1:08:08

       Reminder for anyone internally debating weekend plans, if you don't wanna go, don't go. If they care whether you go or not, they don't care about you. And if they care about you, they don't care if you go or not. Just because you have free time doesn't mean anyone who asks for it is entitled to it.

    2. AHAlex Hormozi1:08:31

       I think the fir- the second part I wanna start with, which is, if you see that you have an empty calendar, most people assume that if someone asks you for that time, it's therefore theirs. And it's only not theirs when someone else has claimed it, which means that your time only belongs to other people. And then you're surprised by the fact that your investment of time has yielded nothing for you when you've given the only and most valuable asset that you have to everyone else, who often give a very poor return on it for you. And so in the beginning, if you don't have money, the only thing you have is time, and so that is the only thing that you c- it's the only currency you can spend to improve yourself or get closer to your goals. And so if that's the one currency you have, then why on earth would you give it away?

    3. CWChris Williamson1:09:30

       I think it's genuinely right to say that your calendar is a better measure of your wealth than your bank account.

    4. AHAlex Hormozi1:09:38

       It's also the easiest way to know where someone's gonna be in five years or even a year.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:09:41

       How so?

    6. AHAlex Hormozi1:09:43

       You just see what they're, where they're investing their time, and you can predict, like, more accurately what their life is gonna look like in a year based on what they're doing today. And it's a good thing, you know, for us, from a- uh, I- it's hard for me not to put the business stuff into it, but a reminder that the life that I'm living today is a result of the work that I did six and 12 months ago. And so if you were to look at my calendar six and 12 months ago, then you might extrapolate out to what I'm doing today. But just like people want the immediate reward, they also see their current condition as a result of the behavior they're doing today-

    7. CWChris Williamson1:10:16

       It's not.

    8. AHAlex Hormozi1:10:16

       ... when it's not at all. And so that's why I think having, in some ways, a very vivid imagination of... Like, this is where I think the, the benefit of, quote, "visualization" comes into play. I don't see it as much as a benefit for, like, "Oh, I have to imagine this thing to happen," but I think it's more powerful to think, "I'm doing this thing today, and I'm imagining it happening." So it's an approximation of the feedback loop that you wanna have, and so it helps you substitute and get through the period where nothing's actually happening.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:10:45

       This is (laughs) it was so cool to learn this. Going to the gym is one of the very few pursuits that you can do where, in the act of doing the thing, you get a brief window into what it will be like if you continue to do the thing.

    10. AHAlex Hormozi1:11:01

        Yeah.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:11:03

        If I go on Duolingo and try to learn Spanish, I don't briefly become much better at Spanish, like, where I'm going to be at in 6 months' or 12 months' time. But if I go to the gym and get a pump on, I go, "Hey, that's me, hopefully, flat in nine months' time." Like, how I look now at the end of the session is where I want to be m- toward the end of this year. And that r- reinforcement loop is so good. I think I genuinely th- No one's spoken about this.

    12. AHAlex Hormozi1:11:32

        The pump preview.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:11:33

        Yeah. But, like, that, I think, is the feedback mechanism that makes the gym so compelling. It's one of the reasons why it makes the gym so compelling. You get this brief window into a future version of you, and you go, "Fucking, dude, I look so... My delts look fucking awesome! I can't wait for that to be how I look when I wake up on a morning." And you go, "Okay, that's how I'm gonna get there." And that's why it's such a... It's so gratifying, right? It works in the moment, and it works over the long term.

    14. AHAlex Hormozi1:12:01

        So one of my closest friends, or my closest friend, Dr. Cashy, and I talk about this. But the difference between experts and beginners is that experts have more ways to reward themselves in a given condition. And so if you think about an expert salesman, there are so many interactions they can have that they are good at that they can find rewarding and positively reinforcing. And so the goal is to develop enough skill that your external environment and conditions can deliver enough positive feedback that it can become self-sustaining.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:12:36

        Give me a tangible example.

    16. AHAlex Hormozi1:12:38

        So if you're an editor, and you edit videos for a living, in the beginning, you have to... You know, you watch a video, and then you try the thing. And if it doesn't work, there's no, there's no... I mean, there is a feedback loop. It's null. Um, and then you go back, you try it again, and then you do get a positive feedback. "Oh, I'd made that transition happen," or, "I made that color grading occur," or whatever I'm talking out of. You get the idea. There are some roles, like sales and editing, where there's a lot of people who... Or music, where people become passionate because there's enough fast feedback loops in the beginning where they can try something and then get good. A master musician can pick up any instrument and have positive feedback loops everywhere. And so the more you master any skill, the more ways you can win. And so it allow... And that's ultimately what makes the rich get richer, is that because everything is so positively reinforcing, because they start to develop skills, then they do more and more of it. And as they do more of it, the rich get richer, the better get better, the better become best. And then everyone who's starting out is like, "How on God's earth does this guy have this work ethic?" But it's really that he has...... high levels of skill and... All right, I'm gonna go on a tangent here, but I think it's gonna be worth it. So I think about everything in terms of skills, and I have more or less divorced myself from the words like feelings, psychology, uh, intuition, whatever. I've just, I've just taken it out of my vocabulary and simp- character traits, and tried to focus ruthlessly on what are the actions that I can take to become patient. And if you say, "Hey, be patient," what does someone do? Right? They have to figure out what to do in the meantime. That's the definition of patience. If you say, "Hey, be more charismatic," the problem with that directive is that it's a bundled term. And so I say charismatic, but it, what it really means is 12 skills underneath of it that means that when you walk into a room, stand up straight. When you walk into a room, look everyone in the eyes. When you walk into a room, announce yourself, speak louder, shake people's hands and look at them while they're talking. When someone talks, nod your head. If you do all of these 12 behaviors or 15 behaviors, people will begin to describe you as charismatic. And in the path of personal development, we want to become more of these things, but we haven't chunked down the bundled term into the series of behaviors that create the description that people will then call us later. And I think by breaking things down, then it's not like, "Oh, I'm just not that insert character trait."

    17. CWChris Williamson1:15:26

        Mm-hmm.

    18. AHAlex Hormozi1:15:26

        It's really, "Oh, I have not mastered these 12 skills." And so by doing that, it demystifies-

    19. CWChris Williamson1:15:33

        Much more precise.

    20. AHAlex Hormozi1:15:34

        Exactly. This is from a business perspective, also really good for training employees. So like for example, on our team, I was like, Caleb was the first person who did video with me that I ever enjoyed. And so I was like, "Why?" And then somebody else came in and I was like, "I'm not having as much fun in these sessions. And I, I'd like to recreate the conditions of success. And so how can I make it so that I-"

    21. CWChris Williamson1:15:53

        Operationalize fun.

    22. AHAlex Hormozi1:15:54

        Exactly. And so-

    23. CWChris Williamson1:15:55

        The most Alex Hormozy thing I've ever heard. Hey, hey guys, let's operationalize fun for a moment.

    24. AHAlex Hormozi1:16:01

        And so we had to, but then the, this is the part that everyone misses, is that you then have to look with a microscope and say, "What are all the little things that Caleb does that other ones, other people don't do?" And so it turned out when he was behind the camera, he would be nodding his head. And if I said a banger line, he would, he would stick his thumb out. And so I would get these many positive reinforcement loops while I was recording. And then as soon as I was done, he would come over and be like, "Dude, that was fire." And then he would take out his phone and have all of these really interesting follow-ups because I could see that he was actively listening and he had thoughts. And so then when we retrained the team, we said, "Hey, when Alex is, is talking, nod your head slowly so he sees that you're actively listening. If he says something cool, do one of these. Give him a thumbs up." And then all of a sudden my recording sessions without Caleb became as good as my recording sessions with Caleb. And we op- operationalized Calebism, right? And so I could say, "I just need you to be more like Caleb," but that's not helpful to somebody. But if I said, "I need you to do all these things," then I can operationalize that. The reason I'm hitting on this so hard is because this has been such a core change in how I see the world, and it has been so useful in terms of making, bending reality to what I would like it to be, because there's this huge disconnect between what people want, how they describe what they want, and what it takes for that to occur. And by, by being able to look with detail about the character traits or the things that people who are better than you at a certain thing do, you can then stop being like, "Man, people think I'm a dick." It's like, well, if someone says, "Stop being a dick," not helpful. I mean, good to know that whatever I'm doing is not working, but doesn't give me any active directions. And so we just try to break down at acquisition.com, but in general and for myself, what are all, what is the 18 things that I have to do? And oftentimes, it's significantly more things, but they're also much easier than you think. If I just said, "I need you to nod your head while you're going on camera," it's not that complicated to understand. And so when you break it down that way, all of a sudden it become, you wrap your arms around it and you're like, "Oh, so this is what it takes in order for me to be an exceptional videographer. This is what it takes for me to be an exceptional podcaster." I'm sure, and we call it like, this is why I love living by checklists, but right now, if you were to, if I were to say, "Hey, what makes a good podcast?" you'd be like, "Probably about 128 things or more," right? But everyone on the outside says, "You're just so, you're so natural on camera. You ask such thought provoking questions." Like, "Man, you just get the best guests," right? And you're like, "Sure." (laughs)

Episode duration: 3:02:59