Success Is Just a Side Effect of Following These Principles - Alex Hormozi

1. 0:00 – 0:50

   Intro

   1. AHAlex Hormozi0:00

      If you suffer from racial inequality, if you suffer from gender inequality, you would be completely justified in the fact that you are not achieving the things that other people who didn't have those disadvantages have achieved. And I say this as a white guy who was born in America to a doctor father. But to the same degree, you have the opportunity that Chris nor I have, which is that you can be an inspiration to people who went through the same thing. Because I can promise that there is somebody who has had it worse and has done it better. (wind blows)

   2. CWChris Williamson0:24

      Alex Hormozi, welcome to the show.

   3. AHAlex Hormozi0:26

      Thank you for having me.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:27

      My pleasure, man. Uh, one of my favorite things to do is to scrape through people's Twitters that are aphorists and come up with little pithy statements and then break them down. So I'm going to go through some of the things that I've learned from you over the last year or so.

   5. AHAlex Hormozi0:41

      Oh.

   6. CWChris Williamson0:41

      Go into those.

   7. AHAlex Hormozi0:42

      On it.

   8. CWChris Williamson0:42

      And then there's some talking points that I don't think I've heard you speak about before as well I want to get into.

   9. AHAlex Hormozi0:48

      Amped.

   10. CWChris Williamson0:48

       Beautiful. So, the first one

2. 0:50 – 13:23

   The Advantage of Having Something to Lose

   1. CWChris Williamson0:50

      is, "So many lives would transform overnight if they realized, 'My life sucks, I have nothing going for me,' really means, 'I have nothing to lose,' and that makes you a very dangerous person."

   2. AHAlex Hormozi1:02

      So, in any kind of game position, so like in business, right? Every position has advantages and disadvantages and a lot of people look at the really big guys and they're like, "Man," they, uh, they, they, like, they'll look at me like, "Must be easy for Alex, right?" And I remember when we had, uh, Gym Launch when we had a very big company, I would tell the guys who were coming up, I was like, "If you're trying to compete against me," I was like, "you have advantages." I was like, "If you're on a sales call, you're like, 'Listen, you're just a number to Alex. You're never gonna talk to Alex,' right"

   3. NANarrator1:31

      (laughs)

   4. AHAlex Hormozi1:31

      "Here, with me, you're gonna get my attention. I'm the one, right?" I was like, "That's how you're gonna throw stones at me." I was like, "But on the flip side, if it's me marketing to the masses, I'm gonna be like, 'This kid's in his mom's basement and he has no idea what he's doing. He's been in business for 12 months and of course he has no idea.'" Like, wouldn't you want somebody who's thousands of success stories behind it because we'd made a system? Like, both sides have advantages and so what happens is, people are in this small position where they're more nimble, they can give more personalized attention to people, et cetera, and they see it as a pure disadvantage. And so you can flip the fact that you have nothing going for you with you have nothing to lose. And that means that you can take lots of risks very quickly and end up in the exact same position you are, which is nothing. And so if you eliminate downside, it should decrease your action threshold, meaning you should be able to do more things faster rather than do fewer things because you don't have a great life or things going for you. And so I think if people flip that, a lot more people would take action because they actually realize the advantage of their position.

   5. CWChris Williamson2:32

      Jack Butcher says, "You get rich by taking lots of risk with small amounts of money-"

   6. AHAlex Hormozi2:36

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson2:36

      "... and you stay rich by taking small amounts of risk with lots of money."

   8. AHAlex Hormozi2:39

      Yes. I wholeheartedly agree. I didn't know that was his quote.

   9. CWChris Williamson2:43

      Uh, he may have repurposed it.

   10. AHAlex Hormozi2:44

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson2:45

       Th- th- there's something called Churchillian drift. Do you know what that is?

   12. AHAlex Hormozi2:47

       No.

   13. CWChris Williamson2:48

       So it's a (laughs) a, a phenomenon-

   14. AHAlex Hormozi2:50

       Everything's Churchill at the, at the core? (laughs)

   15. NANarrator2:51

       (laughs)

   16. CWChris Williamson2:51

       It's, no, it... The opposite. It's that, um, quotes that weren't said by Churchill often get, like, erroneously attributed to him.

   17. AHAlex Hormozi2:58

       Oh.

   18. CWChris Williamson2:58

       It's like all quotes lead back to Churchill-

   19. AHAlex Hormozi3:00

       Yeah.

   20. CWChris Williamson3:00

       ... even though they didn't.

   21. AHAlex Hormozi3:00

       And Socrates. (laughs)

   22. NANarrator3:01

       (laughs)

   23. CWChris Williamson3:01

       Yeah, it's like, it's just one of those things where it's like, "I, uh, I, I think that Churchill once said-"

   24. AHAlex Hormozi3:06

       Yeah.

   25. NANarrator3:06

       (laughs)

   26. CWChris Williamson3:06

       "... that you get rich by making large amounts of..." It's like, no, he fucking... But there's another one as well, uh, that a good friend, James Smith, talked about which is, "If you're succeeding at a job that you hate, imagine how good you'd be at a job that you loved."

   27. AHAlex Hormozi3:18

       Mm-hmm.

   28. CWChris Williamson3:18

       And that's kind of the same... This person is starting from essentially zero. How much fucking worse can it get?

   29. AHAlex Hormozi3:24

       Right. It's the downside. If you can eliminate someone's downside for action, it's like then the bias, it should bias you towards taking action.

   30. CWChris Williamson3:33

       Why is it that people in that case, if they do have nothing to lose, still feel like they have lots to lose?
3. 13:23 – 19:07

   Changing Your Environment to Improve Your Life

   1. CWChris Williamson13:23

      of the other associated tweets that you did was, "If your life sucks, the easiest thing is to change your environment."

   2. AHAlex Hormozi13:28

      Oh, yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson13:28

      This is something that I saw moving from a very good life in the UK to now, uh, a a- as excellent of a life as I can imagine in Austin.

   4. AHAlex Hormozi13:36

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson13:36

      And I'd met about a million people throughout my time as a club promoter, and had a handful of friends. And I was like, "Fuck, like, I ... I feel like my people met to friend conversion should be higher than this." I feel like I'm ... the, the, the funnel is very wide and, like, the conversions are very low, to use your terminology.

   6. AHAlex Hormozi13:53

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson13:54

      And, uh, then moved out to Austin, and it's like, I have more friends than people I've met-

   8. AHAlex Hormozi13:58

      Interesting.

   9. CWChris Williamson13:58

      ... which is just fucking insane. So, definitely changing your environment. What other ways, given that not everybody could move to Austin, what other ways would you say, "If your life sucks, the easiest thing is to change your environment"? What other ways could someone do that?

   10. AHAlex Hormozi14:12

       I mean, the environment is ... I mean, s- like, you know, this is a ... I'm gonna tangent, then I'm gonna come back. So, have you ever heard somebody say, like, "Man, I hate Cincinnati. Cincinnati sucks." Right? Or they go some city and, like, they go there for two days and they make a judgment across the entire city, right? But it's like, okay, let's go really deep. You ate at three restaurants, and you saw seven total people in Cincinnati. Does Cincinnati suck, or do the two restaurants that you went to, or the seven people that you were with not ... are they not that cool? Well, it's so easy to just move, like, two miles down the street. It's the same reason people do staycations. It's like, you don't even need to change cities. You can be in the same city and still change the environment. Like, just moving out of your mom's basement (laughs) , you know what I mean? And just going into another place with four guys can change the environment. And so, like, that's the ... the thing that, to me, was so telling on this was, uh ... so, heroin addiction. Super addicting, I'll put it that way (laughs) . Um, and when a bunch of soldiers came back from Vietnam, they had been addicted ... I don't know if you've heard of this, right? 25% of soldiers who went to Vietnam tried heroin. It was, like, an insane statistic. And in the US, 90% of heroin addicts who go to clinics relapse, so they have a 10% longterm success rate. Tough. The stats are completely reversed from people who got addicted or did heroin in Vietnam and then came back to the US. Which then, you could make the ... you could draw the line which is, it's better to change your environment than to even do anything else, because what happens is you eliminate all the triggers and cues that are associated with the habit that you're trying to destroy.

   11. CWChris Williamson15:40

       Do you see that the American government was absolutely concerned that there was going to be an epidemic?

   12. AHAlex Hormozi15:44

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson15:45

       They were, they were adamant that all of these soldiers were gonna come home and they were gonna be these veterans that were all addicted to-

   14. AHAlex Hormozi15:49

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson15:49

       ... heroin.

   16. AHAlex Hormozi15:50

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson15:51

       Wild.

   18. AHAlex Hormozi15:51

       And there are, for sure. But proport- so much proportionally less than their, quote, "should be".

   19. CWChris Williamson15:56

       Yup.

   20. AHAlex Hormozi15:57

       Because the problem with the current system of ... and, like, for anyone who's listening, you can still extrapolate the principle or the concept. People are in the environment that they are addicted. They change environments and they go to a clinic. They change the environment, they change their behavior. And then they go back to the same environment, and their behavior changes yet again to match the environment. And so it's like, if you want to change your actions, the easiest thing you can do is just change the environment. Because if you can do that, a lot of times, a lot of the negative things you have, you just don't get triggered, you don't get the cue for the behavior. It just gets c- extinguished.

   21. CWChris Williamson16:29

       So, the way that I've worked this into my home working set up is I think I have six or seven different places that I can work at.

   22. AHAlex Hormozi16:37

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson16:37

       And I do different tasks at each one of them.

   24. AHAlex Hormozi16:39

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson16:39

       So, I've got a place ... I'm writing a book. I've got a place that I write my book. That's first thing in the morning.

   26. AHAlex Hormozi16:43

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson16:43

       I've got a place that I do my emails at that's a recumbent desk bike, which is fucking unbelievable, dude.

   28. AHAlex Hormozi16:49

       (laughs)

   29. CWChris Williamson16:49

       Zone two car- 180 minutes a week of zone two cardio, 180 minutes a week of emails with zone two cardio. Uh, the place outside, I've got my studio record inside, we've got two living rooms at different houses that I can go into. And I'm like, different spots for each one.

   30. AHAlex Hormozi17:01

       Yeah.
4. 19:07 – 30:33

   Distractions Come Dressed as Easy Opportunities

   1. CWChris Williamson19:07

      as easy opportunities.

   2. AHAlex Hormozi19:08

      Oh, yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson19:09

      This is interesting because as people begin to accumulate the success that they say that they want, this becomes an increasingly big problem.

   4. AHAlex Hormozi19:19

      Yeah. Um, I think it was Andy Grove who said this. Probably Churchill. Um ... (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson19:25

      Yes, there we are. Chalk another one up for Winston.

   6. AHAlex Hormozi19:28

      Um, it might've been Packard. I think it might've actually been Hewlett Packard. It might have been one, one of those guys. Um, he said that businesses die of indigestion, not starvation. And so they overeat. They're not starving. It's the entrepreneur that ... And this is ... Like, you go back to human behavior, which almost all roads lead back to it, but th- the entrepreneurs get reinforced for changing direction, because nothing worked, nothing worked, nothing worked. You change that direction, something clicks. And so what happens is you learn a lesson from that. You're like, "Oh, so if I change direction, good things happen." But that's not the right lesson, which is one of the, my favorite things about entrepreneurship is making sure that we learn the right lesson from the s- from the, from the instance or the circumstance. It's like, "I hired a sales guy. He did a bad job. All sales guys suck." Not the right lesson, right? But that's actually something that, uh, is pervasive in even the internet community of, like, lessons that people ... They'll tell the story and then they'll say the lesson, but sometimes the lesson... All we know is the facts of what happened, not necessarily the thing you took from it. Anyways, um, I was making a point. Churchill, starvation, yes.

   7. CWChris Williamson20:29

      Distraction, easy opportunities.

   8. AHAlex Hormozi20:30

      So, the, the, the higher up in business you get, the more attractive the opportunities that you have to learn to say no to. And this has been really hard for me because, at every level, like, I thought, "Great, I have, I can check the box on distractions. I've learned to say no to $10,000 opportunities." But then when you're, when you're making $100,000, then you have to be able to say no to $100,000 opportunities. And the thing is, is I call it the woman in the red dress, but the woman in the red dress ... Have you heard this, like, this little analogy I have?

   9. CWChris Williamson20:59

      No.

   10. AHAlex Hormozi21:00

       Okay. So this is, like, one of my favorite analogies. So, in The Matrix, Morpheus takes him through a training program to teach him one thing about agents. And so they're walking down the street, and there's all these people going, go- going, and he says, "Were you listening to me or were you looking at the woman in the red dress?" And he says, "Look again." He looks back and the w- woman in the red dress who walked by is an agent putting a gun in his head. And I see distractions the same way, which is that the better you become, the more attractive the woman in the red dress is. And so you can say no to a six, but what about a seven? And-

   11. CWChris Williamson21:32

       What about a 12?

   12. AHAlex Hormozi21:33

       Exactly. What about a hypothetical thousand?

   13. CWChris Williamson21:35

       Yeah.

   14. AHAlex Hormozi21:35

       Right? Like, that's r- that's really what it becomes because there is no limit on the upside. And so that's why having, like, some of the soft stuff of, like, "This is the vision, this is what we're trying to do, and there's 100 other things I could do, but each of the cost of those things is the one thing that matters most." And I think that one of the things that Layla's been so good at helping me with, and I think a lot of my success earlier on was propelled by the fact that, like, when I met Layla, I had a chiropractor agency, I had a dental agency, I had five gym locations, I had a gym launch business where we did turnarounds. I had all of those things going on and there was no CEO besides me, a CEO of all of them, 'cause I didn't understand how this stuff worked. And s- and I also made no actual l- I mean, I made money from all of them, but no income. (laughs) Like, everything was just enough to break even, and it was nine spinning plates and it's 'cause, like, I was so opportunistic. And it's very classic new entrepreneur to just say yes to everything. And Warren Buffett said that the difference between really successful people and the most successful people, this is me paraphrasing, is that the most successful people say no to almost everything. And I've tried to take that because it's so hard, and I think that a lot of the (laughs) ... you know, it's so simple and so hard, which a lot of success habits are, which is like if you do the same thing for a very long period of time, I think this is Neil, uh, Xuchang ... Ah, fuck, I can't remember the name, but I'll, I'll, I'll say the-

   15. CWChris Williamson22:59

       Churchill.

   16. AHAlex Hormozi22:59

       Yes, Churchill again. Um, he said, "Success comes down to doing the obvious thing for an extraordinary period of time without convincing yourself you're smarter than you are."

   17. CWChris Williamson23:09

       Mm.

   18. AHAlex Hormozi23:09

       And I just love that quote.

   19. CWChris Williamson23:11

       Why do you not need to convince yourself that you're smarter than you are if you're doing the same thing?

   20. AHAlex Hormozi23:14

       Because... I think it's because you think you can handle both and so you're like, "Oh, I got this."

   21. CWChris Williamson23:19

       Oh, okay, because if you did think that you were smarter than you are, you would then start to take on more stuff. There's a quote from John Maxwell, which I absolutely adore, that says, "You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything."

   22. AHAlex Hormozi23:28

       (laughs)

   23. CWChris Williamson23:30

       Which is just fucking perfect. And it's the co- it was th- so, uh, Greg McKeown's Essentialism is one of my top five books of all time, and it's for this precise reason, that it's an antidote to the type A fallout.

   24. AHAlex Hormozi23:41

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson23:41

       Right? Uh, I can do it all, I will do it all, watch me suffer and bear this burden. And you go like, "Look, you can do the hard work thing, right?" You can, you can do that, but the working hard and s- being spread thin are two different dynamics. And, uh, one of the, one of the, like, interesting idea I've been playing around with a little bit recently is periodizing, uh, work.

   26. AHAlex Hormozi24:06

       Mm-hmm.

   27. CWChris Williamson24:06

       So in the same way as your weightlifting coach will have the guys doing his sub max for 90 days, he is building up for 90 days, he has comp prep, he has blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is, mobility. Um, that's a much easier way to-... um, blend what we're talking about here is maybe a little bit earlier. I think you need to specialize more as you get bigger and bigger, because the distractions are going to be even greater.

   28. AHAlex Hormozi24:27

       Especially... How so?

   29. CWChris Williamson24:29

       So, if you are, uh, the CEO of your company and then someone comes in with... You've got so much more downstream from you, that if you get distracted, the repercussions, the ramifications of y- becoming distracted are magnified even more. What do you think about that? Do you agree?

   30. AHAlex Hormozi24:43

       I, I, I think the, the specialist piece is the piece that threw me-
5. 30:33 – 34:30

   Regretting the Opportunities Not Taken

   1. AHAlex Hormozi30:33

      (laughs)

   2. CWChris Williamson30:33

      Opportunities only look like opportunities in the rearview mirror. Today, they look like risk. How does someone get around this, this, um, asymmetry between the fact that in retrospect it seemed totally obvious, and yet the thing that you're looking at right now, looking forward, you go, "Oh, that might not be obvious in retrospect again."

   3. AHAlex Hormozi30:54

      (sighs) It's tough because, um, a lot of, a lot of the big wins, you know, like, like Uber is the classic example, right? Like, let's start a business where strangers pick up girls who are 16, you know what I mean, and drive them to their friends' houses. Like, that sounds like a terrible idea, right? Like, it just, it... But in retrospect you're like, "No, it'll be totally fine because there's gonna be a mutual rating system," and blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? Taking out the fact that there are people who have been captured and whatever. Anyway, we'll, we'll put that to the side, right? Um, and the thing is, is like just because we're on the investing side, what we found is that there are always reasons to say no to a deal. Like, you can always find reasons to say no, because there's nothing that's risk-free. Even treasuries have risk. The US economy could collapse and the treasuries could be worth nothing. Like, and you could create a really compelling argument. Lots of influencers spend a lot of time doing that, right? Um, is it likely? Maybe. I don't know, but it's probably less likely than, than a bank failing because if the US fails, all the banks by default are also failing. So, which one, you know, which of these is greater risk? So then it gets... Then you start comparing risks rather than trying to eliminate risks. And so if we're looking at opportunities, that's why, like, risk adjusted return is one of the things that a lot of investors look at, which is like, "Is there a way that I can appropriately adjust this risk to normalize different opportunities?" And I think that that single skill set is one of, if not the most import- important skill sets as an entrepreneur because fundamentally it's betting. Like, that's what we're doing. We're making bets. Every day we bet with our time, we bet with our money, um, with the limited constraints we have or limited resources we have against unlimited opportunities, because that's the hard part is that there... It's unlimited women in the red dress. Now, there's some fours and there's some sixes and there's some eights, but you have to both rate the girl, right, the opportunity, and then also how crazy is she, right? Or whatever, you know, whatever risk factor you want to, you know, associate with this. Is she going to stab me in my sleep? I don't know, right? Does she have a crazy ex-boyfriend I don't know about? I don't know, right? And so that's why we do the diligence process. But, like, the, the way that we... Because I just, just tied up this chapter in, in the book that's coming out, is w- when we're organizing opportunities that we're going to pursue with a business, we look at what are the ones that we have the absolute highest likelihood of success? That we ha-... We, we need no new skills and no new effort. If we can do that... Or the least amount of new effort and no new skills, that would be the first thing we're going to do. And then once we take off all the ones that take basically no effort and no extra skills, we're like, "Okay, which ones take more effort and still no skills?" (laughs) And then once we do that, then we're like, "Okay, now we can start learning a new skill. And of the different skills that we could learn, which of these is gonna give us the highest leverage, as in most output for the least amount of input?" And that's pretty much how we tick down which of these opportunities we want to pursue, because those have the lowest likelihood of not happening.

   4. CWChris Williamson33:27

      Does this work in the personal world as well?

   5. AHAlex Hormozi33:30

      Totally.

   6. CWChris Williamson33:30

      For someone that is an investor, that isn't in business, that's just thinking about life opportunities, do I want to learn to salsa dance or code?

   7. AHAlex Hormozi33:36

      I think that the investor frame is a qu-... Is, is simply people who have been scored and quantified on their ability to make decisions. And so I think that we can learn a ton from how investors make decisions overall. It's like why, why Ray Dalio's book, Principles, became, like, a bestseller even though 99.9% of people reading the book aren't even investors, or definitely not investors at his level. But the principles of good decision making are just quantified and we have a scoreboard for these guys being excellent decision makers, whereas most other people you don't have a, a real scoreboard so we can't tell how valid is their advice. And I think that's what makes, uh, taking advice from really world class investors who've been doing it for decades, um, as a great source of information because we can validate that they have a stack of undeniable proof that they are who they say they are.

   8. CWChris Williamson34:24

      Very nice. Okay, so this was-

   9. AHAlex Hormozi34:26

      Like Churchill.

   10. CWChris Williamson34:27

       Not Churchill this time.

   11. AHAlex Hormozi34:28

       (laughs)

   12. CWChris Williamson34:28

       So this was, this is something

6. 34:30 – 51:53

   Find Motivation in Difficulty

   1. CWChris Williamson34:30

      that I've actually relied on a little bit myself. Uh, whenever I get to a low point where I think, "Why do I even bother?" I just remind myself, "This is where most people stop and this is why they don't win." And this relates to another one, which is a reminder for the gladiators in the arena who feel beat up and scarred with no hope in sight. Building a business is hard. Hard feels shitty. This is what hard feels like, and this is why most people can't do it, but you can. "This is what hard feels like"-

   2. AHAlex Hormozi34:57

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson34:58

      ... is so fucking nice to lean on.

   4. AHAlex Hormozi35:02

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson35:02

      It is so nice to lean on. Take me through-

   6. AHAlex Hormozi35:04

      Okay, so-

   7. CWChris Williamson35:04

      ... that low point stuff.

   8. AHAlex Hormozi35:05

      ... there's actually a story. I'm getting a little goosebumps telling it. So, um, I was, way back in my day, um, like you, a party, party promoter, but I was in a fraternity, so I was president of the fraternity. This was-

   9. CWChris Williamson35:15

      Good man.

   10. AHAlex Hormozi35:15

       (laughs) Yeah. And this was my first semester being president, and so you have a pledge class, y- you get two pledge classes as a president, you get a fall and a spring and then that's your, your tenure and then another president comes in. And what we knew, and this will be really interesting for the audience from a human behavior perspective, is that like clockwork every time we'd start a new pledge class, within 14 days, 10 to 14, it was like clockwork, they would all get together and they'd revolt and they'd say, "We don't want to do it anymore. This isn't what we signed up for. This is way fucking harder than we thought it was gonna be. Like, we thought we were just gonna party with you guys. Like, that's what we expected." Which also shows you how long it takes people to adapt or acclimate to a very d-... A significantly dif- more difficult situation, right? I'll tell you what happens after, and then I'll tell you what happened in between. After we have this kind of talk that we had, and I'll tell you how I, how I explained it when I was president, um, all of a sudden it all vanishes because their expectations of reality have been completely reset. We break reality, like, in the first 10 to 14 days it's so painful for them because it's such a, a contrast from what they were just doing-

   11. CWChris Williamson36:14

       What are you having them do?

   12. AHAlex Hormozi36:16

       Not the fun stuff (laughs) .

   13. CWChris Williamson36:18

       (laughs) What's not fun?

   14. AHAlex Hormozi36:19

       Oh, my God. I mean, they can't drink, can't talk to girls. The only people they could talk to are brothers or each other, and we're mean to them, so they could really only talk to each other. And the whole point here is that we're trying to get them close together, because there's a bunch of dudes who don't know each other from different parts of the campus, right? And then we have to get them in 8 to 12 weeks to leave as one unit of people who know everything about one another, that trust one another, that know everything about the other people in the house. So it's like, how do you do that? Well, there's only X amount of communication you can have every day, so let's cut out anybody who's not us. Okay. And then if we really want them to be close together, we'll also reinforce that we're mean.... but part of what they had to do is they had to learn everything about everyone else in the house. And so, every pledge has to do something that would impress a brother, and then they get a signature from their brother being like, "I approve of you." And you have to get every single brother's signature by the time you're done, right? And so that's where each of those side quests become as insane as you might imagine, right? And there's lots of, you know, there was lots of hazing back in the day, which is not fun, and, you know, a lot of sleepless nights and things like that. And you go from, like, partying with girls, feeling like you're top of the world, all these brothers feeding you drinks, being like, being like, "You're awesome, dude!" To then, like, the next day, and this is literally how it happens, this is how, like, the break in reality happens. We do this huge party to, like, launch the new class, and the next morning they all wake up. They're all like, they all sleep at the house 'cause that's one of the- the requirements, and they're all hungover or got their ties, like, vomit in the corner, whatever. And we're like, "Great, clean it up." And they're like, "What?" Because up to this point, they haven't cleaned after a party, 'cause all they did is g- got to party, see the girls and then leave. But then all of a sudden they're like, mopping vomit in the corner and they're hungover and they feel terrible and they're like, "What the fuck? This is what I signed up for," right? So anyways, two weeks of this, they get together and (laughs) they wanted me to meet them, and this always happens 'cause they wanna meet on their- their turf. And I'm like, "All right guys, what's up?" And so it's just me, all right? And my vice president and like 25 guys. So there's like a s- you know, there's like a size comparison of like, just animalistically, there's way more of them than there is of me. And so I just asked them a couple questions. I was like, "Who here before pledging started was like, 'I wanna be a part of this house'?" And the guys were like, "Yeah, me." Okay, I'm like, "Okay, got it. Who here thought it was gonna be easy?" And I'm like, "Who here thought it would be hard?" They raised their hands. I'm like, "Guys, this is what hard feels like." And all of a sudden there's just like this big exhale in the room and they're like (exhales) . Expectations get reset. This is normal. You wanted this thing, you expected it to be hard. Reality now matches conditions. Sorry, expectations now match conditions. This is what hard feels like. And then all of a sudden it's like they got permission to feel shitty. And by getting permission to feel shitty, they stop feeling as shitty, 'cause they're like, "This is just my new world." And so then, you know, you're like, "Listen, you give eight weeks, you're gonna get three and a half years. Other people are gonna do- are gonna drive you around late at night. Other people are gonna clean after you." Like, it's a good investment, right? And that, it was a good deal. Like, you give one semester and you get the rest of them to just do whatever you want. Um, but that concept, like that quote on both of those came from that experience of having someone tell me, "This is what hard feels like."

   15. CWChris Williamson39:25

       "This is where most people stop and this is why they don't win-"

   16. AHAlex Hormozi39:29

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson39:29

       ... is also another beautiful, uh, bit of motivation. And given that I spent a little bit of time with Goggins and Cam Hanes-

   18. AHAlex Hormozi39:36

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson39:36

       ... two guys, I was telling you about this before, you said, "Must be nice," as we walked in.

   20. AHAlex Hormozi39:40

       (laughs)

   21. CWChris Williamson39:40

       So Cameron Hanes, bow hunter extraordinaire, lives in Oregon, uh, and he has behind the power rack in his garage where he lifts, he has, "Must be nice," written. And I was like, "Why, why, why have you got that put up on there?" Uh, and he was like, "It's because everyone says, 'Must be nice to be you, Cam.'"

   22. AHAlex Hormozi39:56

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson39:56

       "Must be nice to be sponsored by Hoyt and all of these like top level bow things, and go on Rogan."

   24. AHAlex Hormozi40:01

       Yep.

   25. CWChris Williamson40:01

       He was, uh, there was a video that went super viral of Goggins losing his shit after Jon Jones won-

   26. AHAlex Hormozi40:06

       Mm-hmm.

   27. CWChris Williamson40:07

       ... uh, last weekend. Uh, and the guy that he's hugging is Cam. So it's like, "It must be nice for you to be backstage at UFC, must be nice for this." And I've seen what that guy does, and that guy picks up a rock that weighs about s- 80 pounds-

   28. AHAlex Hormozi40:18

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson40:19

       ... and it's got the word poser written on the front of it 'cause people call him a poser-

   30. AHAlex Hormozi40:21

       Yeah.
7. 51:53 – 57:50

   How to Take the First Steps to Success

   1. CWChris Williamson51:53

      that person.

   2. AHAlex Hormozi51:53

      (laughs) Millions.

   3. CWChris Williamson51:54

      Thousands of people that are that person.

   4. AHAlex Hormozi51:56

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson51:56

      There'll be, there'll be a lot of people that are listening, don't worry, don't worry.

   6. AHAlex Hormozi51:58

      (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson52:00

      Um, that person that goes, "I f- I love when I hear these aphorisms and, and things and maybe it goes on the whiteboard that's on the front of my fridge for a couple of months." How does that person get from mental masturbation-

   8. AHAlex Hormozi52:13

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson52:14

      ... around it, to action? That this, this impacts my life in a tangible way that actually makes a difference to me. Any of the things that we go through today.

   10. AHAlex Hormozi52:22

       All right. Two things. One is knowing the input-output equation. The second is knowing what your fuel's gonna be. So if you can't define the inputs and outputs that are going to get you what you want, then there's no way to start, right? Because you don't know what you're supposed to do. So you have to define it down to like the most basic first actions. It's like if I wanna start creating content, then it means I have to post something. If it means I have to start doing cold... I always think in terms of business because that's what I'm in, but like, I'm either doing a cold reach out, I'm doing a c- cold call, cold email, cold DM, whatever that is. I have to make a piece of content. I have to post it, I have to make a podcast, I have to make a YouTube video, I have to make it short, whatever that is, make a blog post. Um, I have to run an ad, right? I have to, I have to run the ad, I have to press go, I have to spend the money. Whatever it is, like whatever that core initial action is that you put-

   11. CWChris Williamson53:02

       Go to the gym, lift a weight, put the shoes on, get in the car.

   12. AHAlex Hormozi53:04

       Yeah, yeah. Whatever the input is, you have to define what the input is that's gonna get you the output you want. Now once you know what that input-output is, the next one is, why aren't you doing it? Right? And so I think a lot of people are looking for something that is very hard to find, and so... And then they attribute their lack of success or lack of action because they don't have passion or motivation, right? And I was the same way. And so I'll, uh, the short story around this was that I, uh, I l- I watched all the TED Talks in college. Like that was like what I... I was like, "I'm not watching YouTube, I'm watching TED Talks." And I was like, and then I realized, and then I heard the term mental masturbation and I was like, "Oh, that's definitely what I'm doing."

   13. CWChris Williamson53:42

       (laughs)

   14. AHAlex Hormozi53:42

       Uh, I was like, "My life hasn't changed at all." And then I got my job, so out of college, and I would read all the self-help books. I read, like every night, that's all I did, I just read all these self-help books and I found one of them that said there are people who are wantrepreneurs and entrepreneurs. And I remember hearing that word wantrepreneur and I was like, it made me feel sad. I was like, "I don't wanna be a fucking wantrepreneur." I was like, "I'm not some bitch." Like, you know what I mean? (laughs) But like, but I, but I was like, "But what if they're right?" I am a wantrepreneur. I'm not an entrepreneur. I want to be one and I'm not. And from that point, it took me six months to quit my job to actually decide to do the entrepreneurial thing. And the thing, there are many things that contributed to me being able to leave, and I think a lot of it's not like people are looking for one thing. It might be a big bag of whys, a lot of them, right? That add up together to be above your action threshold, and I think in the early days people were looking for the big carrot. They want the big vision, they want the big passion, but they don't have it. But I wanna... I'll give you the first rule of entrepreneurship that I've learned which is, use what you have, and a lot more people have pain, a lot more people have anger, a lot more people have shame. And if you can use that as your gas in the beginning, you'll eventually get to a point where you can get out of that loop and then find something that you are really passionate about. But if you can't tie your shoes, you can't lift the weight, you can't send the DM, then you have to start with whatever you have. And so for me, it was hatred of my current existence-I hated being an entrepreneur. I hated being a wannabe. I hated being one of those people who, like, talked about all the things they were going to do and didn't do anything. Um, I hated living the life that my dad wanted me to live. I was, I was his bitch. That's what it was. I was his bitch. I was living his dreams out, not mine. And that was, you know, led to that other tweet which was, um, "Sometimes, your parents' dreams have to die in order for yours to live." And for me, I realized that the idea that my father had of me as his son, that image had to die in order for the image of myself that I wanted to be to live. Because I kept trying to quit my job and go be an entrepreneur and every time I'd have the conversation he'd be like, "Ah, come over. We'll talk about it, we'll have dinner." You know, and he'd always talk me off the ledge. It was always over and over again.

   15. CWChris Williamson55:54

       Good salesman.

   16. AHAlex Hormozi55:55

       Yeah. And, or (laughs) great authoritarian. Um (laughs) -

   17. CWChris Williamson55:59

       (laughs)

   18. AHAlex Hormozi55:59

       ... you don't need to persuade when you have compliance. Um, and so (laughs) , uh, and so everybody has that person or, or it, it might actually be somebody who's talking you off the ledge, um, or it might just be a voice in your head. It doesn't really matter 'cause tha- that, that voice in person that only happened once or twice probably keeps talking to you when you're at home.

   19. CWChris Williamson56:14

       Mm-hmm.

   20. AHAlex Hormozi56:15

       Um, but the big thing for me when I, when I decided to make the jump, and mind you, I was such a bitch about it that I, I had to drive across the country before I called him to tell him that I left.

   21. CWChris Williamson56:23

       Yeah, I remember this story.

   22. AHAlex Hormozi56:23

       Like, I didn't wanna... Yeah, I didn't wanna confront him, um, which he then, like, flew off the handle about. Um, but I just knew, and this is the Tony Robbins quote, but it's just the, "When the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change." And I think that, I think pain moves people far, far more effectively than pleasure does. Like, the easy thing to, way to prove it is, like, point a gun at someone's head and you have absolute compliance and they will do what they need to do. Right? Automatically, just like that. Like, death is the great motivator and the gun just reminds you. And so, I think that if you can create the figurative gun to your head of the pain that you're experiencing and then I'm, I'm a big fan of future casting out negative scenarios. So, people talk about, like, positive visualization. I prefer negative visualization which is, what if I keep doing what I'm currently doing for the next 10 years? What will my life look like then? That usually takes my current pain and then just magnifies it, and then that allows me to get my action threshold high enough that it goes over the edge so that I can take that first move. And so if you know what the inputs/outputs are of what you need to do, the guy who has the little quote on his wall, and you figure out whatever fuel you've got, not the one you wish you had but the one you've got, and you use that to do the first input, you've crossed the line. You're in the game.

   23. CWChris Williamson57:37

       I told a story on the episode that I did with Goggins about, uh, bullying in school.

   24. AHAlex Hormozi57:41

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson57:41

       And this is something where I, like, opened up about a topic that I haven't spoken about a ton because it made me feel weak and it made me feel vulnerable and so on and so forth.

8. 57:50 – 1:02:11

   How Alex Overcame a Difficult Upbringing

   1. CWChris Williamson57:51

      But one of the things that's only really recently happened, and it's actually been assisted by the guy that reached out and messaged me. This dude messaged and, and said that he was sorry for what had happened. His daughter was going to school and it reflect-

   2. AHAlex Hormozi58:02

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson58:02

      ... made him reflect on his time, um-

   4. AHAlex Hormozi58:05

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson58:05

      ... at, at school and how he treated me. And he was like, "Dude, I just wanted to say that I'm sorry. I don't even know if you're gonna see this."

   6. AHAlex Hormozi58:09

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson58:09

      "I'm happy that you seem to be happy, but, you know, I, I just had to get it off my chest." And that really helped. Not that I was carrying much-

   8. AHAlex Hormozi58:15

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson58:15

      ... but one of the questions w- you know, you'd spoken about your dad and this kind of-

   10. AHAlex Hormozi58:19

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson58:19

       ... like, authoritarian relationship and-

   12. AHAlex Hormozi58:21

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson58:21

       ... and living out that dream. How did you avoid or how have you got yourself to a stage now where you're no longer driven by a chip on your shoulder toward him? Because I think that there are a lot of people that go through challenges in their past-

   14. AHAlex Hormozi58:36

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson58:36

       ... that find fuel in it.

   16. AHAlex Hormozi58:39

       Mm-hmm.

   17. CWChris Williamson58:39

       And they go, "Wow, I am, I'm, I can be fueled by hatred."

   18. AHAlex Hormozi58:42

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson58:42

       "Phenomenal."

   20. AHAlex Hormozi58:42

       Totally.

   21. CWChris Williamson58:43

       "I, I can alchemize this toxic thing into something which is useful."

   22. AHAlex Hormozi58:46

       Totally.

   23. CWChris Williamson58:48

       But I would imagine that that has a, a shelf span, right? That if you keep on using that for long enough, there are more optimal ways that you could start to move perpetually under your own motion, transmute it into something else. How did you get past having this chip on your shoulder about the relationship that you'd had with your dad and where it had set you back-

   24. AHAlex Hormozi59:10

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson59:10

       ... or forward or whatever.

   26. AHAlex Hormozi59:12

       Um-

   27. CWChris Williamson59:14

       Or have you?

   28. AHAlex Hormozi59:15

       Yeah, I think I have. Um, I think my realization was, you know, first the goal was make as much as my dad. Then it was make more than my dad. Then it was make more than my dad had ever made. And I realized that the approval that I had, that I sought was always going to be moved, right? Um, I mean, I've told this story before but, um, maybe not to your audience. Uh, but like when I, when I, my dad and I didn't really speak a ton. You know, we'd text and then, you know, two-minute phone call. "Hey, how you doing?" "You're alive, okay, cool." Um, but for, that was kind of like for like five-ish years, um, after I left home, uh, to go do the Gym thing. And only once Gym Launch was like printing money, um, and so we were, I think I was taking home a million and a half a month at like 27 or something like that. And he gave me a call out of the blue and like my dad doesn't like cold call me (laughs) . Um, and so I'm s- I'm sitting at dinner and I, I step outside and he says, um, "Hey, you're gonna wanna sit down for this." I was like, "Okay." He's like, "I'm sorry." And I was like, "About what?" And he was like, "Everything." And I remember in the moment actually feeling nothing and thinking that was curious and then being like, "Huh, okay." And I probably should have just like accepted it for the olive branch that he was probably trying to like lean out to me, um, but here's what I said instead (laughs) . I said, "You know how people get up on stage when they win the awards and they're like, 'I just wanna thank my mom and dad for always being there, always believing in me'?" I was like, "I'm not gonna say that." I was like, "Because you weren't and you didn't believe in me." And right after that he was like, "Well, we'll see how long it lasts." And so-It was after that phone call that I realized that everything that I'd done to that point was to try and beat him at his game. Because everything my dad cared about, and not everything, he's a good guy, like, you know, we're fine now, but like, when I was growing up, and it's fairly common in most foreign families to be very, like, money driven, and I always knew that kind of subconsciously, and he would never say this, but, like, I felt it, because whenever he introduced somebody, he'd tell me how much they made immediately. He'd be like, "This is John. John makes this." Like, "This is Bob. He makes this." Like, it was just, it was just like the worth and the name was, like, immediately tied together. And so, I realized that I was trying to win his game rather than playing my game, and I think when that happened, it was the same instance of kind of like the blame finger, but just at a different level of saying like, "Okay, well, I don't blame my dad anymore, but I'm still playing his game." And so I'm winning, not my game, I'm winning someone else's. And so I think when I was like, "Okay, well then I have to define the game and the meaning of the game that I want to play." I have more responsibility now because I have to define the rules of what matters the most to me, et cetera. Um, but that was where I feel like I got... and maybe there's more that I'll unpack later, but that was kind of the next level, at least from my awareness of how I perceived what I was going after.

   29. CWChris Williamson1:02:10

       Do you remember you...

9. 1:02:11 – 1:17:10

   Balancing Success & Feeling Content

   1. CWChris Williamson1:02:11

      I think you spoke about people that break the law in an attempt to make money.

   2. AHAlex Hormozi1:02:17

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:02:17

      And you said, "We sacrifice the thing we want for the thing that's supposed to get it." So we sacrifice, uh, freedom for money in the hopes that the money will give us freedom.

   4. AHAlex Hormozi1:02:26

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:02:27

      Downstream from that, this is one of the best things that I learned for all of last year. And you created the framework and then I filled it in. So I talked about the tension between, uh, success and the desire to feel like we're enough.

   6. AHAlex Hormozi1:02:37

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:02:37

      I think that this speaks to what you're on about here. Success is a strange thing. Presumably, we want success because we think a more successful life will bring us more happiness, meaning, and fulfillment. Here's the problem: we sacrifice the thing we want, happiness, for the thing which is supposed to get it, success.

   8. AHAlex Hormozi1:02:52

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:02:52

      Failure can make you miserable, but I'm not sure that success will make you happy. And if you end up with an equation, if you could imagine, like we sacrifice happiness to achieve success in the pursuit of happiness-

   10. AHAlex Hormozi1:03:01

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:03:01

       ... like, if you just remove success from both sides of the equation, what are you left with?

   12. AHAlex Hormozi1:03:04

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:03:04

       It's just happiness.

   14. AHAlex Hormozi1:03:06

       Equals happiness.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:03:06

       Now, there are, um... We can't deny the fact that we're status full beings-

   16. AHAlex Hormozi1:03:12

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:03:12

       ... that we, you know, we require external validation. We can't just, you know, go and live in a cave and in peaceful bliss-

   18. AHAlex Hormozi1:03:17

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:03:17

       ... and all the rest of it. Like, there are things that we need to do, but I do feel like a lot of the time we overclock our lives with regards to success and the pursuits-

   20. AHAlex Hormozi1:03:24

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:03:24

       ... that we go through in an attempt to, to do this. And that, uh, we sacrifice the thing we want for the thing which is supposed to get it is like, I see that all the time. I always ask myself, "Am I over-complicating this? Like, am I, am I doing more than I need to do? Is there a simpler way to do this?"

   22. AHAlex Hormozi1:03:38

       Mm-hmm. I think, um, I mean, I think this is a, actually a game theory thing. Um, and you're famil- okay. So (laughs) I can, I can, I can go on it or I can not if you want. Okay.

   23. CWChris Williamson1:03:49

       Bring it on. Bring it on.

   24. AHAlex Hormozi1:03:50

       Yeah. So, I mean, Si- Simon Sinek popularized this, but you have finite and infinite games, right? Finite games where you have known, known players, agreed upon rules, um, and an outcome that, that wins the game, right? Uh, and then infinite game you have known and unknown players, no rules, and the point of the game is to keep the game going. And what happens is that people apply finite rules to infinite games and then they wonder why it's not working. And-

   25. CWChris Williamson1:04:15

       What's an example?

   26. AHAlex Hormozi1:04:17

       So, a finite game would be like baseball. Know the players, win at the end of the game, the person, you tally up the ones with the most runs and you win. And there's, you can't, you can't run, you can't hold the ball and run it around the bases. Like, there's rules of play. With an infinite game... The Vietnam War is an, a simple example of that Simon Sinek gives, which is basically the US lost the Vietnam War because they were, they were applying a finite structure, which is, "We're going to win this war." And the Vietnamese people were, were playing an infinite game structure, which is, "We're going to stay alive and keep fighting." And as long as someone is staying alive and keeping fighting, they will beat the person who's trying to end something. And so the infinite frame always conquers the finite. And the thing is, is that most of the games worth playing are infinite. And so if you're trying to get in shape, you don't win getting in shape. The point is to stay in shape for the rest of your life. You don't win at marriage. The point is to stay married. You don't win at business. The point is to stay in business and keep doing business. And the point of the game is to keep playing. I think if, if the succe- and I would imagine success, if you put all of those things together, it's an infinite game. And so the point of success is to do the things that make you successful. And so if you're doing the things that are making you successful, then you are by definition winning.

Episode duration: 1:46:05