How The 1% BUILD WEALTH (Copy These Millionaire Habits) | Alex Hormozi

Alex hermosi welcome to the show thank you for having me dude I cannot be more excited so I want to Dive Right In if somebody is starting from scratch what are the traits skill sets that they should be cultivating in order to up the odds of their success they should focus on one thing in general rather than lots of different things that you're not sure about because if you're starting out everything looks like an opportunity so the correct answer is all of them are opportunities but all of them won't work unless you pick one right

so you have to say no to all the other Mistresses so boom you pick one and then from there I always say six figures is sell something to someone that's it and if you want more detail sell something to someone so it's one Avatar one product one channel so you don't have to figure out how do I create 20 pieces of content across it's like just pick one channel one media Source whether it's Facebook Instagram YouTube you know whatever Twitter consistently start going on that whether that's cold outbound whether that's content whether it's running paid

ads whether it's Affiliates Word of Mouth whatever it is um start reaching out to people there to start selling your stuff and so if you can just do that consistently and I use something all right what's the skill set that's going to make somebody good and this is six figures still yeah so what's the skill set in that is it getting good at the outbound is it good and good at saying no to the other stuff like how do we translate that into a skill set you have to learn how to advertise which I Define

is the process of making known so how do you let other people know about the stuff you sell so you have to advertise there's six ways to do it I covered five just now so there's there's six ways you can do it and then once people engage with whatever advertisement you have you have to sell them so advertising is the first skill selling them is the second skill and then product would be the third skill which is the thing that you're ultimately advertising and selling okay so that gets us six figures what gets a seven

doing the same thing consistently so usually once people do it in the beginning they're sporadic they're not consistent with it just the act of doing the same thing every day usually gets people to 100 000 a month which sounds crazy it's probably people listening but most people who think that's crazy also haven't done it consistently for an extended period of time and so I use something that I call the rule 100 which is 100 primary actions whether that's 100 minutes of of content creation per day 100 reach outs per day uh 100 of AD spend

per day uh like you have to pick one of them but 100 per day and you do that for 100 days and I promise you'll have you'll be making six figures if you do that most people won't yeah I know you know that they will fail at something what is the most common thing that you see people fail so you give them the blueprint your ability to articulate a blueprint to success is insane legitimately insane dude when I so I'm gonna make a prediction right now five years from now in this space you will be

one of the biggest people on social media 100 guaranteed YouTube podcast whatever because your advice is real and I said I I was about to tell you something and I said I'm going to say it on camera and I will tell you right now I judge everybody that comes on the show by when I'm doing the research to bring you on which is a way bigger time investment than the interview itself did I actually learn something did I move forward did I enjoy myself dude it was awesome researching you was awesome it was good for

the business it was good for the soul good for the mindset everything so this is going to be incredible but where do people fall down because most people even knowing how articulate you are and know that people are still going to fail is crazy and I know that most people are going to fail so where where do people really struggle in that equation I think it's fear mostly um I know that's not a skill but I think it's a character trait and so people are afraid of Val you know not getting validated or they're afraid

of judgment that they perceive from other people that exist or don't exist in their lives um and so for whatever reason they have this second voice that criticizes everything they do that in reality isn't even there but it's constantly present it's like the antithesis of whatever the god figure is but just the negative voice and so I think that's the thing that stops most people from doing the stuff they know they need to do because if you think about like whether it's want to get in shape or I want to have a better marriage or

I want to make more money most people on some level at a basic level they know what to do and my proof point of like even making money right most of us have had a bill that came up that was unexpected a tax bill a car breaks down a health thing whatever it is and we find a way and so when it's for someone else people are will use the actual resourcefulness that they have to make the money but for whatever reason they won't use that same resourcefulness to make it for themselves and so I

think that most people know if they want to work out uh start to get in shape or to lose weight whatever they know they need to eat fewer donuts and move more in general but they don't right because they're afraid of getting started or they don't have the discipline to keep going which is they can't make the short-term sacrifice for the long-term achievement so big picture it's like there's usually some fear that's preventing from doing it and then how it looks from a behavioral standpoint is they do not make the short-term sacrifice of discomfort for

the long-term achievement independent of whatever path they're talking about you guys are going to want to say to the end I'm going to give you my favorite Alex quote but now I'm going to give you one that I actually think pertains to this so you said how to stay poor assume you're always right yeah and when I think about people failing it's because in fact there's another quote this one I didn't write down but I'm going to get close marketing is just a fancy nine-letter word for test and once people understand you're going to fail

and you're going to fail a lot if you can't deal with that failure yeah if you think that failing makes you a failure if you think that it's a permanent state of being and you're never going to get better then you won't do the things you need to do to ultimately be successful you talk about consistency but it isn't just consistency because if you do it wrong yeah consistently you're still going to fail right so this is you have to be in my own language willing to stare nakedly at your inadequacies yeah and if you

can stare nakedly at your inadequacies then you can actually get better if you're running the tests and you're like hey looking at the data did this work or did this not work 100 then you can actually improve but you went through this so in the beginning of your career and this is one of the things I find most interesting about your story is you failed you actually pulled your now wife aside and said I'm a sinking ship yeah uh and if you wanted to leave I would completely understand yeah uh how did you go from

that to like there was something you figured out yeah what what is that thing you figured out laughs I think at that point um the the reality of my situation was so Bleak that I I didn't conf I honestly didn't even process the reality of my situation because the more I thought about it like the sadder more hopeless I would feel and so I focused on the few things that were under my control which is like I can do these things and so when I talk about advertising I want to talk about selling I talk

about those things boiled down to the actual actions because I had to think of it in that way because it was the only way that it wasn't overwhelming it's like I just have to make a hundred reach outs or I just have to spend 100 a day and I have to look at the ads and I have to turn off the ones that are bad and do more of the stuff that starts to work um and and that that was the process of getting me from kind of like dark to a better a better outcome

but I mean from that actual point we did the only thing we knew how to do which was at market and sell and that was that was how we got out of that and honestly that that single skill of being able to generate leads um independent of the industry has been like my get out of jail free card um which has allowed me to fail over and over and over again until finally you know I got it right and even after that one when we were at the Rock Bottom there I had just you know

nine 90 days earlier got in a DUI my mom was in the hospital um really bad shape uh that's when I had just lost all the money which is when I pulled her aside but then fast forward six months basically repeated the cycle again which is I had we had started doing these launches where he'd fly out and and turn gyms around like Bar Rescue but for gyms and when we were out there uh all of a sudden we came back home and we saw like two of the gyms refunded all of the transactions they

just told the people they could just sign up through them and just do it for half the rate after we had already spent the money for the hotels and the flights and all the ad spent and every you know a whole month of work and so basically all the money that we had saved up in that like I think we're out of jail free lost it all again um and only then did we accidentally um pivot into the licensing model which ended up becoming the thing that was like the first very big success that we

had but like that whole period of time was five years of basically not having anything even though on you know on paper when I had the gyms I materially looked successful because we had six locations but I always just put all my money back into each you know each new location so I had very little actual cash I was asset rich and cash four I know that's real yeah all right and so but then when I lost everything after that because I sold them took the money put in the new Venture and then lost it

I was like wait I just lost five years because I had nothing to show for it and so that's probably what what has created a lot of the hypothesis I have now around I didn't lose the five years I lost the assets which were not the most valuable thing that I had earned over that time it was the skills the experiences the character traits because I still had those and then using those three things I was able to do the next thing unfortunately um yeah I'm obsessed with learning yes and it's interesting because I've had

the level of success that I've had and because I'm technically middle-aged it's just crazy to say I used to be the kid I swear to God uh it is it's really there's a gravitational Center in my brain that wants me to think that I have crossed some line yeah and that it's about looking backwards and it's really dangerous like you have to be looking for I mean God willing I've got you know another 40 plus years of life left and every time that I get in that trap it's I just re-anchor around wow I'm still

learning like all this stuff I'm 46 but I've learned so much I failed so many times and I've acquired so much knowledge and skill set and all of that and then you can think about oh cool like as long as I've got the energy to keep pushing to keep building because I have to your earliest point about what makes you successful it's the that is literally My Kryptonite is I have a very hard time accepting the fact that I can do anything I want with my life but not everything yeah and that I find deeply

distressing but like on a level that borders on mental illness yeah and by focusing cutting out the other stuff and recognizing okay I've reinvented myself again yeah but a lot of that knowledge is going to transfer it's going to be useful as I push forward but getting obsessed with learning yeah like that would be the gift if I could give to people and say okay you you want to be successful I get it everybody wants it right now but if you can stack these skills like then if you've got the skill set and the methodology

that you know you and others can really lay out incredibly well it's like now you can do something but if you have the methodology but not the skills or you don't have the mindset and so you're broken by the failure or you don't have the methodology if you're missing any one of those then you end up in a death spiral yeah it's interesting what you're saying with the learning thing because um I think a lot of people said like the early because I I also have like I feel like two parts of the audience is

that like follow my stuff I've got the business owners who are trying to scale their business Etc and then I've got all the people who want to start a business and usually they're a little bit younger and whatnot and I think there's a misnomer around like education and so a lot of them I don't know how explicit I can be but like they mentally masturbate so watching lots and lots of videos they you know want the pump up features they buy the tickets to the things and so they just learn and I think that they

think that exposure to information is learning and I don't think that's true or at least it hasn't been for me so definitely not sure so you know because I'm sure you get asked all the time like what are the books that you know transform your life and I've had a handful of books that have been useful to me but I would say 99 of the things that I have learned I've learned they're doing and so when I do the original rule of 100 and whatnot it's because I think it's the most effective way to learn

which is you force yourself on the one controllable that you have which is the activities that you can take and then it goes with the underlying assumption that you go off feedback and you're like well that opening message did not work yeah right and then I think most people have a dramatic underestimation of how much volume it takes to be successful independent of the thing right they're like okay I should go on five dates and then find the girl I'm gonna marry it's like what if it was 500. to find the right girl you're going

to marry or I want to you know start this this new channel or I want to honest become an influencer whatever it is and they start doing you know one post a day for four weeks and they're like why am I not famous yet and they find I mean real right true and they find out that like you know we ended up doing 400 episodes before we made it to the top 10 on the podcast thing and now we start doing you know 100 plus pieces of content a week and it's just this volume game

that you get the the skill from the volume the feedback from the volume and there's all these like little things I'm sure it's like from the exercise world because you come from that um like when you squat the first time you squat you're you're orienting yourself to your environment you're barely actually squatting you're just looking like you have a bar on your back but you learn so much between that first rep and your ten thousandth rep of squats and so I think for most people it's like if we can if I my goal like you

with the learning is like if I can just decrease the action threshold for people to begin and be okay with the fact that they're going to to suck and it is okay to suck it is you should expect to suck and it would be unreasonable for you to be good if you haven't done it before and so it's like are you asking the universe to be unreasonable for you by expecting to be good on your first try and I think that's where a lot of people it's the expectation that destroys their ability to be successful

because they expect to win on the first shot and no one does do you worry at all about people wanting to be on camera right from the jump because that puts an expectation to be good that oh yeah that's rough um I think it's so much like if we're so many so many feelings about this um so you've got you've got this whole Space right and you look at like if you're like I want to be a business influencer right well it's like we look at the guys who actually at the top of the business

game and virtually everyone you Andy Ed Gary all those guys have killed in business and most of them even Gary had gone to 60 million a year before he made his first content and so I think the issue is that people look at that and say I should make content like them when you don't have you can't answer the underlying question which is why should I listen to you which is always in the back of every audience is mine in my opinion at least that's what I think like when someone's like a relationship expert and

I find out they've been divorced three times I'm like yeah you know maybe not right I mean and as terrible as it is they might be giving amazing advice but it doesn't pass the first filter which is if I'm going to take military strategy from someone I'd rather have a general that has a winning record even if the other guy Napoleon said I'd rather have lucky generals so even if you had two that were even you'd rather have the lucky one and so to the same degree I think people use that filter because it actually

takes less effort to learn from someone that you trust and so it's like if you've got the the basement teacher that's telling you the dollar cost average of the s p and you've got Warren Buffett who's telling people to dollar cost average in the s p they don't want to listen to the teacher even if the teacher is better objectively from a constant standpoint because they just don't know if they should trust them so you have to have two filters I'm hearing the thing sure I trust the thing with Warren you can just plug into

whatever he's saying just take it as truth which takes less effort and so I think most people don't get that point and so I think you should make content but the if you're or you should advertise the stuff that you sell let people know about what you're doing um but it should be about the true expertise that you have which is oftentimes just talking about the stuff you're doing rather than saying you should be doing this this is what I am doing hope you find it interesting hope you find it valuable and I think that's

a big Dynamic which at first is like how to it's how I um just that little shift and I think a lot of people would get much bigger better audiences and actually make more money from the content that they're making because everyone else is like why should I listen to you yeah yeah with content like I'm I'm open anybody that wants to make it make it people will watch it if it's adding value hopefully they don't do what you were describing earlier which I'll call spiritual entertainment where they're just learning learning learning watching watching watching

getting motivated getting inspired they're not doing anything with it but my big concern with people creating content is that they will trap themselves because they're afraid to suck like when I got a new camera I was like wow I'm really rolling the dice now because my life has taught me one immutable truth I'm going to fail a lot and there's nothing that tells me that that period in my life is over like and and it was never interesting to me to like ride into the sunset on oh I sold Quest so I sold Quest and

then like [ __ ] Babe Ruth I said I'm gonna build the next Disney right yeah but I went on camera and said look honestly the odds are stacked against me the odds that I fail are way higher than I that I succeed right and so going into that I did not want to back myself into a corner where I was afraid to try things I was afraid to step into an area where I wasn't good because it's the only way that I know to get better right which I call the physics of progress I

call it the physics for a reason so I think it is truly the only way to improve yeah is basically the scientific method you come up with an informed hypothesis come up with a test that lets you actually try that out you test it you get results you stare nakedly at those results which will sting a little because it almost certainly did not work as well as you hoped yeah you will then get a little bit wiser you will reformulate a hypothesis you will retest and you just that's the loop right and you just go

go and you see what works and you see what doesn't but people are so interested in looking cool yeah that the content becomes the Trap that stops them from actually getting good it's the posturing it's the external validation that they need to feel like the success they're not having in reality can be made up for with likes and comments and perceive success talk to me about the so you said that you wanted to Vanquish your dad yeah so this to me is tied to that idea of like you you need something that propels you you

need something that pushes you to go through all of this but also trying letting your dad control your actions is probably not the best move yeah so like how is it useful and then is there getting to the other side of that yeah so um and you know to be clear dad uh the I would say that the vanquishing thing is something that I was able to kind of recognize in retrospect which was it was all about beating my dad earlier on so and a lot of that was because I felt like a lot of

the respect was withheld from me earlier on and it was always like a moving Target which is you know if you need to be this you need to be that you have to be in shape you have to date hot girls you have to be top your class you have to play all the Varsity Sports like all those things right be Editor to the newspaper be editor-in-chief of the of the literary magazine all those things at the same time and still if I got something wrong on a test it was like would you get wrong

you know rather than this is cool I'm not 99 right yeah I'm not boohooing about it is what it is it's made me who I am and I'm grateful for it um but that was kind of the the earlier part was I wanted to win the game that had been set out for me and you know first it was make a hundred thousand a year and then it was make uh the same amount of amount as my dad and then it was make more than my dad and then it was make more than my dad

had ever made his entire life and then once that happened I looked around and I was like I think I've been playing his game and not my game and so I wasn't really setting any rules I was just playing with the rules that were given to me and so and kind of thing like is this even the game I want to play and so that you know that took me you know a little bit of time to process um and I think that It ultimately to your question I think it did serve me a lot

and I don't know how much of these reinforced behaviors that I learned during that period of time still benefit me today but they're not fueled by the same thing so I still have these habits of how I work and and you know being dedicated towards goals Etc that I think were born of that but no longer are fueled from that now you lay out three traits of ultra successful people yeah I don't know if they're yours or if you know them somewhere they're not mine so so brilliant and when you said it you put words

to something that I have felt for a very long time yeah um if you don't remember them I have them here but if you remember I remember them yes uh and so it's there's three traits that people then they looked at because they were trying to find Habits of Highly Successful People and when they actually pulled apart it's not you know and I hope I'm not contradicting anything um but there's people who are really rich who wake up really late and work really late and there's people really rich who wake up really really early and

there's people who really rich who eat really healthy and there's people really rich who drink Coca-Cola and eat french fries every day and so there's all these things that we want to make as truths but there there's easy examples that counter those things so it's like what are the few things that are true or at least that seem to be present in all of the situations and it seems as though they were surprisingly fit and so the three common traits that they had that they had found were one that people have superiority complex they believe

they're better than others and they believe that they deserve more than everyone else does and that they can accomplish big goals right so they have a bigger Vision because they believe they deserve it or whatever it is that they were able to identify that the second thing that they would identify is that they had crippling insecurity and which which is a paradox of paradoxes they feel they'll never be enough um and they'll always be measured against the things that they've achieved and so you've got this crazy dynamic between they they think they're better than everyone

they think they deserve more they want to go after this big hill and at the same time they fear they'll never be good enough and they'll never actually achieve it and they actually suck and then the third piece which kind of adds the beautiful like mix of this is impulse control and so they're able to control their actions and focus on a single thing for an extended period of time and so if you put those three things together it's like you've got a big goal that's pulling you this way you've got this big fear that

you are running away from and then you've got impulse control to keep you focused on the one thing that matters yes and if you do that if you if you are the type of person who has the those traits then you are very likely to be successful what is up my friend Tom bilyeu here and I have a big question to ask you how would you rate your level of personal discipline on a scale of one to ten if your answer is anything less than a ten I've got something cool for you and let me

tell you right now discipline by its very nature means compelling yourself to do difficult things that are stressful boring which is what kills most people or possibly scary or even painful now here is the thing achieving huge goals and stretching to reach your potential requires you to do those challenging stressful things and to stick with them even when it gets boring and it will get boring building your levels of personal discipline is not easy but let me tell you it pays off in fact I will tell you you're never going to achieve anything meaningful unless

you develop discipline right I've just released a class from Impact Theory university called how to build Ironclad discipline that teaches you the process of building yourself up in this area so that you can push yourself to do the hard things that greatness is going to require of you right click the link on the screen register for this class right now and let's get to work I will see you inside this Workshop from Impact Theory University until then my friends be legendary peace out you gave me the chills twice while you were explaining that so this

is I'm often asked like hey you know what does it take to be successful or how did I get successful and I'm like from the time I was a little kid so I grew up lower middle class and but from the time I was a kid I told everybody I am going to be rich like you don't understand I'm going to be rich I was so angered by not being able to get the things that I wanted as a kid and I had a little problem with authority and so I felt like I was being

told that I had this box to stay and I was like no no I had always had these crazy dreams and I just believed I could make it come true yeah but I'm terrifyingly insecure that I'm not smart enough to pull it off yeah and I have something I need to prove to myself to my wife my father-in-law my own parents like I just [ __ ] no matter how much I achieve I still have this right so I I have this crushing need to validate myself and to feel like no you really did have

a kid yes and but I am psychotic at my ability to delay a gratification yeah like I can suffer and toil and grind and just like I don't need to eat the marshmallow for a hundred years right which is stupid in some ways but you put those three things together and you just go and go and go it's really again sorry yeah so to the marshmallow point because I think this is really interesting and I don't think it's talked about enough which is they they like to separate the kids into the two buckets right like

uh the kitty waits for two marshmallows and the kid who just says I want the marshmallow now but I feel like they should have a third bucket which says how long do they ask the kid to wait for the marshmallow right because it's not do you have like because I like to think of things and like a lot of times we have false dichotomies or we have binaries where like good or bad you know disciplined or undisciplined I'm honest or dishonest right when I think more reality is to what degree am I honest to what

extent am I disciplined to what degree am I you know loyal right oh God there's a whole conversation yeah yeah and so I think that each of those three that we just went over it's it's not do I have them or not for the people who are listening because people like to think yes I have it or like oh well I have all three of those it's not having them and I'm sure you've interviewed some of the most successful people on the planet it's how much do you have yeah right and so I think that

like your ability to delay gratification it's not just like oh I can wait a week or I can wait a month but it I made this tweet that went pretty viral it was like if you can wait a year you can make a ton of money like if you can do something for 12 months you cannot need for financial goodness pretty much for the rest of your life I'm not saying you're gonna be hella Rich right but you're not going to need for anything if you can wait 12 months if you can wait a decade

you're going to be above the one percent if you can wait 10 years for an outcome be able to do the doing without seeing the result for 10 years you will be able to be above any most achievement of most people and if you can wait a lifetime and you don't even need to see the result of your doing this even while you are alive but know that it may get done after you pass then I I believe that you can change the world and I mean that and so I think that if people can

just extend the time Horizon that they're measuring themselves on they can just do so much more I mean you've probably heard the Bill Gates quote where he says people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade I think it's the same thing just continue to draw it out and I think as I've as we've been able to you know achieve more leverage and make more money Etc my Horizon has extended and when I listen to the people who are the people who I want to emulate I

can almost tell by the measurement of money that they talk about and the measurement of time that they discussed how successful they are or how successful I think they're going to be like if I talk to a 25 year old and he's talking about what he wants to do in two decades and his whole plan of what he's going to do as long as he's not just blowing smoke because he's heard an interview from me um then I'm like this kid's got it he gets it he gets it and most people just don't think they

can't wait 90 days that most people can't even wait a month right they start a diet and 14 days later they don't have a six-pack and they can't wait but like if you do a year you can look whatever way you want for the most part you know by and large and if you wait a year for the ability to learn how to sell you wait a year for the ability to learn how to Market wait a year just providing value to a group of people for free and then delaying your ask you can do

whatever you want now and I don't know how you can react to this if we can separate that idea from being patient yeah so I made a shirt that said [ __ ] patience okay but yeah if you're not playing the long game you're screwed so my thing with patience is you have to go all out at a sprinter's pace totally and run a marathon at a sprinter's pace if you want to achieve something yeah that's where people fall down you'll find people that can wait but can they and this is one of my all-time

favorite quotes I'm pretty sure it's Winston Churchill though people often attribute things to him yeah who knows uh success is the ability to go from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm now there are people that can go from failure to failure but do they lose the enthusiasm can they attack it as hard I was telling you at the at the end of this year we have a plastic table that I'm going to smash the little pieces because it has come to represent like the hardest thing that I've built in my professional career they're

just all the [ __ ] problems that have been associated with it and but I'm still going after it is hard every day and when I think about like so because I've had success and I know how many people are chasing it I can just say people a lot of time it's not going to give you what you think it's going to give you so like don't bother chasing that kind of success yeah uh so an easy way to say it is uh don't worry about winning a championship ring worry very much about becoming capable

of a championship performance that will be a far more interesting life because you really do want to get that good yeah but in the pursuit of that thing in getting that good it's like it is going to take an inhuman amount of concentration willingness to fight through the pain and suffering and an ability to attach enough meaning and purpose to it yeah that you'll keep going when you're just getting kicked in the space over and over like it's crazy yeah and so knowing how badly people want that I want for them that thing like how

whatever it is and and I have a method that I can teach people how to do it but most people still won't do it which is to build the desire to create an association between the doing that thing yeah and the meaning and purpose that you want to have for your own life and that it's not going to seem self-evident you have to bolt it on it feels kind of fake in the beginning but if you really invest and it really is something that you care about it can't be fake but if it really is

something that you care about and you build that intense Association then you can fight through that but boredom kills more entrepreneurs than fear or failure ever will when you say boredom do you mean that they're starting something it's starting to work and then they just switch because they're add or no I mean that doing something where you don't get the result that you want and it's 10 years out and you're going to have to do what Jeff Bezos calls overhead right no matter how much you love your job there's always overhead there's a boring [

__ ] yeah and what I find is people they can't stay on task yeah I find in myself a strong desire not to stay on task because it is boring it's just boring or even worse if it feels bad yeah and you have to keep doing it and you have to wake up every day and face that like this is really going to be tough and it's going to be tough for a very an undetermined amount of time yeah so it's not even like I know it's going to be a year yeah it's there's an

unknown amount of suffering before me and I have to somehow continue to muster the enthusiasm and have faith yeah that this theory that I have is actually going to work out or that I'll get better right that maybe this Theory isn't the Right theory but I'll be able to figure it out it's interesting you say that because um we talk about need to beliefs when we're thinking about a company that we want to like invest in and so it's like what are the you know we try to have as few native beliefs as possible for

you know a growth thesis to happen um and then not only do we want to have as few as possible interesting need to believe like I need to believe that this is true for this outcome to be possible yeah so how do we have as few of those as possible and how do we have that those need to believe statements are as high likely as humanly possible right so it's like do like if we had a business that was reliant on and you know an inflationary period or something I'd say like okay well I believe

that that's you know High likelihood that it's going to occur okay so I feel okay about that one and if that was the only thing I need to believe for this whole business to be successful like where do I write a check this is the only thing right so it's how many of these are there right and if there's a lot of them then with each additional line or likelihood of getting the outcome we want goes down um and so I think that if reversing that for success for somebody who's coming along is like what

amount of action would it be unreasonable for me not to be successful and so for me it's like I I believe that if you do 10 000 cold calls you'll you'll get better like it would be unreasonable for you not to be good like after that level of effort if you if you run you know if you take half your paycheck every month or a 30-year paycheck every month and you say I'm going to advertising University which is I'm going to spend money actually advertising trying to get people to click on this thing and give

me their name and phone number if you go and you spend that amount of money on actually advertising after a year after two years you'll probably you'll probably be pretty good especially if you join a community other people who are doing the same thing right you see got mentors who are doing who who have done and give you Frameworks that you can just work off so you can shortcut your path to success it becomes unreasonable that you wouldn't be more successful in the future than you are today and so I like thinking about things in

terms of directionally correct rather than will I hit it or not right I think there's so many binaries because it's easy psychologically for us to say yes no honest dishonest Etc successful not successful um but it makes making decisions really hard because you're like is this the path for me is this the product owned the business I'm going to start where I was like well if I started something I would be more likely to be successful than if I did not start anything and from there I will gain experience in perspective to then make the

next iteration on the main thing and I was Quest your first thing ever first successful thing but you've done other stuff before that and failed and I I still I was referrals like I hope Quest wasn't his first thing um most people had thank God it wasn't right most people had a graveyard of failures before they had their actual first success and so most people spend all this time um a different tweet that went viral it said like with 20 hours of focused effort most people can be pretty decent at something whether it's guitar it's

singing even cold calling if you actually cold call it for 20 hours focused effort you'd be decent but most people spend years waiting to do the first hour whoa whoa and so it's like how can I decrease that action threshold and get someone to just just just embrace the suck and so it's like how can I normalize no's so it's like if I'm teaching somebody to sell it's like dude I need to get 100 of those all right let's get 100 for me okay with the S just get 100 no's and the thing is all

of a sudden if the no becomes the goal then they realize that it's about the process another outcome and then they will become better sales people because they stop being afraid of it the same thing like for training salesperson I want them to hear the gasp right which is like you say a price over the phone everyone's afraid of saying the price it's like dude if you didn't get a gasp you didn't go high enough right they're like what I'm like oh you failed terrible sale they didn't gasp they're like really and so then it

becomes it flips it and becomes a point of Pride it's like oh I got her you should hear the gasp on this one and so all of a sudden they stop being afraid we normalize we do like exposure therapy on things that people are most afraid of and I hope that with all the stuff that we do that we can do that in a microwave for at least a handful of people so they just start doing and realize that they're going to gain perspective and the light of their knowledge will give them the next foot

but the thing is they're stuck on the first one trying to pick the first path when they have no idea what they're doing was selling ever hard for you like the idea of selling not that I'm sure you were bad at it at one point but was the idea of trying to convince somebody to buy something yeah I uh so when I quit my job um my dad's buddy was in private Wealth Management in Maryland and so he called me up and was like hey you should sell for me and I to this day he

jokes about it now with me um I said ah sales I was like I'm not a Salesman I was like I'm an academic you know what I mean I just come for a you know on the bones and I thought you know whatever and um and then lo and behold I signed my lease I slept on the floor and I was like how do I pay rent and woman walks in the door and I was like I need to get her to give me money so I can pay rent and I was like oh this

is sales and I didn't know so for me it was just begging people to give me money in the beginning like I promise I'm going to give you the best results ever um but the idea of sales was very I I thought it was beneath me I thought it was scammy I thought it was used car sales you know just like the abhorrent black you know that'd be the right word but um yeah and then I through exposure I realized that it was and I ended up I in life's irony being something that I've really

fallen in love with there are there are people on the internet I will let them remain nameless that they give me the heebie-jeebies I am deeply uncomfortable with something in the way that they sell and I've actually never taken the time to figure out what it is and I probably should I'd make a lot more money but there are people that made me deeply uncomfortable and then there's something about you so I'd never heard of you somebody ping me was like yo you need to check this guy out and I looked at your stuff and

I'm like there's something about the way that you talk that is super matter effect it isn't the I have nothing to sell you because you're an incredible salesperson so even when I interface with the way that you sell it doesn't creep me out I've I've not thought about it enough to know why but I bet you have what is it that makes a salesperson creepy and why aren't you creepy why aren't you creepy the the best the best interview question I've ever had um so I I think a lot about this because I'm outlining the

next book which is so the next book is leads and I'm already done the draft and you know how that is where I'm like oh I'm not done that book but like I'm like I can't wait for the next book um and so I'm thinking through like what what is it that that sales is overall right it's structuring a conversation to increase the Liker that the person who's on the other side gives you money that's what it is it's structuring that conversation that way and structuring that conversation I heard you mention something that you call

and I I am so only vaguely aware of like proper sales oh but you said holding the frame oh yeah like it's not about the words you say it's how you say them and whether you can hold the frame is that what you mean by structure of the call all of it yes I mean so what is what is the structure what is holding a frame like what does that mean so in I have like I love sales so so when you're when you're when two people interact in general no matter what man woman child

whatever two frames Collide and I believe it's animalistic whatever it is there is a there's a decision of who is Alpha now the alpha is also contextual and so you can be Alpha in like the president United States is Alpha everywhere until he goes into a doctor's office he tells him to pull his ass and he sticks his finger up right frame right in that room doctor is King right he is the alpha in that setting in that context and so the ability to hold the frame for most for most salespeople is really having a

that sounds crazy having a clear agenda and controlling the conversation which is why are we here right because it a lot of sales is clear communication because if you clearly communicate because the biggest advantage that a salesman has is that the person that's already said they have a problem most times right so if someone responds to a Content piece and says hey can you help me they've already enunciated they have an issue they have a problem and so you already have the inherent advantage of the frame which is you said you needed help I'm here

how can I help you right and so it starts with that right it's it's being clear about why we're here and then we get agreement that we understood the problem that they said they had next and then from that point we have to turn the desire into a decision which is okay you say you want these things here's the frame that I want to give you to analyze the decision can we agree to this Frame right and so for example if I were selling marketing services and I so whenever we we rework a sales script

with any of the portfolio companies which is one of the things that we do to make them grow a lot of times they have all this gobbledygook right and so I like the shortest possible scripts we can because a lot of communication is wasted right so what happens a lot of times on a sales call is they say hello build rapport talk for 30 minutes see that there's time that's running out and then realize they have to pitch right and so then they motor mouth and then just awkwardly ask right and it is to your

point about it seeming icky right or sucking um is that it's not normal human communication and you're not providing value to the other person and so if giving Clarity to someone on a decision is tremendous value and so if you can sell in a way that clarifies a decision my objective always when I teach sales the goal is not to get the person to buy the goal is to get the person to decide and I believe that people don't decide for only three reasons and this comes from Albert Ellis this is not me but people

blame all the woes of their lives on circumstances other people and then ultimately themselves and so when we're overcoming obstacles in a sale we have to make sure that we are accounting for the circumstances which is taking away time as a reason they can't do it taking away money is a reason they can't do it taking away particular aspects of the product there's a reason they can't do it we have to make sure that they don't cast their power to other people and saying I can't make this decision someone else has to make it and

then finally when they're with themselves they want to avoid the decision they want to delay it they want to not make it I'm not going to think about it right and so the idea is that I believe that if you sell properly you can talk to an empowered person and you have to basically sift through the crap that they're telling themselves about why they can't decide why they have to talk to their husband why the circumstance of their situation matter and so I think that if you can do that and communicate that in a conversation

you are you have made someone feel powerful and you've given them the tools to make a decision and then in making that decision they take a step towards the life they want to have and so if you can structure a conversation that way it's not icky it's value additive and then ultimately you do make more money but you're not focused on that because you're focusing on helping them make the call and if we can do that you can sell whatever you want and I think that's like that's what I try and structure and that's why

I'm so excited for the sales book when it finally comes out but most of it's clear communication when I listen to sales calls because I still kind of do it because I like it um it's like therapeutic you know what I mean um there's so much there's so much waste there's so there's no there no people aren't direct it's like why are we here you and someone's like I just want to get more information that's an obstacle no you didn't you're not here because you want more information you're here because you're suffering from a problem

you don't just hop on sales calls all day to get information no you're trying to solve something right what are you trying to solve what are you in pain from got it so let me make sure I understand this label the problem right so it's like a lot of people just don't know how to talk and they just make face noise at each other and no one's listening and no one's talking they ping pong back and forth no one actually is listening yeah they're not communicating at all right they say a statement I mean someone

says I'd literally just reviewed a sales call yesterday guy says uh I'm not sure now's a good time salesman then responds with uh well you know I'm not sure if if you're a good fit if you're if you're not sure because it just goes off on this weird tangent and then there's a pause and the guy just asked another question no communication happened it was like I have a question you just said a bunch of words and I guess it's normal for me to say something else now and so then he just asked another question

right and so it's clear like what and then normally when you overcome these sorry I could talk about this forever but like when you overcome these obstacles with somebody's like I don't have time right I'll just give you a simple one because this is one this is for everybody who's listening because right now you're probably not doing something because you're like I'm too busy I'll start when it's convenient whatever if you say that as the excuse for not doing something then there's an assumption underlying that that says that if I get busy again in the

future I will stop and so do you want the success that you want to be long-term yes then do you believe that you'll never be busy again for the rest of your life no so that you might as well start when you're busy so you have the most support because if you learn how to do it and you're busy when you get when it gets quiet you'll succeed even more and when it gets busy again you know how to do it because that's how you start it right obstacle overcome and then one step closer to

make a decision and so what happens is in the even in the obstacle process when people are trying to sell stuff people start from the outside in so it's so easy to say I don't have time it's the easiest thing it's out of time after money right and then once you peel you you show them how that's a fallacy it's a logical foul it's a distortion of reality you peel that back you get one layer close to them my wife won't let me my partner won't let me my kids so you can feel like it's

it's closer to you right and you peel that out because how do you overcome that well five years from now if you didn't do the things that you wanted to do with your life and you blamed your wife the whole time because she wouldn't let you do it you're gonna play it her is that fair for your marriage for your relationship what do you think now so I think what you're doing is you're asking permissions instead of support all right let me show you how you have that conversation with your wife right so now we're

we're sliding the other side of the table and be like let's play this out right it's not going to go the way you think it's going to go because if you keep repeating this habit you're going to end up five years from now you're gonna look at your life the same way you're looking at now and hating it and who you're gonna blame now you're five years in you still kind of like your wife five years from now you might not so much because you've had 10 more times you've tried to do something she said

no so it's today the day right and so we peel one layer and then finally you're the person who's squirming there right because you've forced them to confront reality which is now they don't want to make the decision right because they're like I'm just going to avoid it I'm not sure et cetera et cetera and you're like hold on like I've got you you know what I mean like we're gonna get through this because you because you're just wading through this [ __ ] that people tell themselves right and so finally when they're in the

avoidance part the biggest fear they have is making a mistake right they don't want to be seen stupid they don't want to lose status as a result of this decision and so when we're when we're when we're dealing with that it's making them understand that you don't need time to make a decision you need information and if the only source of the information you have is May then let's talk what are the variables you can use to make the decision and a lot of people haven't even thought through that it's like well if you don't

know what they are why don't I walk you through four that might be useful does this thing solve the problem the way you want it to be solved yes or no yes do you want to work with us yes or no yes do you know someone you have access the amount of money to get started with this program yes or no yes great let's do it right and so you can walk someone through it and it's like oh like and like you feel like just one of this magical journey of like all these things of

why the reason they haven't they decided not to make decisions but so many people are stuck in that same spot for why they're not taking action whether it's selling a product or selling themselves and I think that those Frameworks of thinking through each of those problems and there's I have a zillion of them for each of those things um I had to develop because I use those on myself so I was like I have to give myself a compelling reason to start doing stuff I have to give myself a compelling reason to make decisions when

I don't want to I have to give myself a compelling reason that I can explain to a partner of why I made this decision right later and so by doing that it decreased the time between me getting information and acting and then It sped out my decision Loops in my life in general and then obviously I applied that to sales but I've applied it to everything when I say these beliefs I don't say these as a an affront to anyone who shares different beliefs to be clear um but for me a very core belief that

has been I think intrinsic to at least the material success that we've experienced has been a belief that meeting is self-ascribed so that there is no inherent meaning in the things that we do um or the actions we take or the outcomes that happen but only that which we ascribe to it and so because of that I feel like it's allowed me to the point of what you're saying about like the amount of pain and the amount of suffering that you have to go through in order to to achieve the things on the other side

I think it's been able to it's allowed me to reframe a lot of the discomfort into what if this just is how it always has been or what if this is actually amazing and what if this is exactly what it should look like and so I think a lot of times it's the it's the discrepancy between our expectations in reality that shape the emotions that we have in response to any given situation bad good Etc and so I think a lot of people can't control their state and I we deal with this with a lot

of the portfolio companies is it's like it's funny because I don't even necessarily want to get in this I want to talk about like the business and what's the strategy how we're going to execute the stuff but you know there's a big percentage of time where they're stressed and they think there's something wrong with that and so I feel like a lot of people feel like there's something wrong with experiencing human emotions and so they are stressed and then think there's something wrong with them or they are sad and I know this is the thing

that the keyboards are you know the fingers are right on top of it it's my belief it is contrarian I accept that that it's it's the beliefs we have about our emotions that are the things that drive us mad facts and so somebody's sad and then they tell themselves that they're they're bad because they're sad or they're wrong to be sad or they're a piece of [ __ ] because they're sad um rather than saying isn't this a beautiful thought about the human existence like if I could not be sad then I would not experience

Joy so like if I say that I don't want to be sad anymore then I would also have to give up Joy am I willing to do that no well then this is just a part like I can't say that I want sunny days if there are no rainy days like we don't say weather is good or bad it just is and so I think to the same degree The Human Experience is also that way too at least how I Define it and so I think having that as my backbone frame in terms of my

worldview although contrarian has helped me a lot in dealing with the things that often derail entrepreneurs on their path to getting what they want and so for me that's been very helpful so from a contrarian standpoint of like Bully you know Peter thiel's question like what closely hopefully do you have that most people don't agree with that's one of them um I'm scandalized by the way that that one is something that people don't hold I think that people get themselves in trouble because they believe the opposite of the following quote there is nothing either good

or bad but thinking makes it so yeah and they think that no there are things that are objectively good and bad and I'm simply recognizing the truth that is the that's certainly what I struggle with the most in my own life that I was simply when I had a negative view of myself or anything else that I was simply recognizing the truth of the situation not understanding how the belief I had about the thing was influencing my behaviors and my behavior is entirely determined My outcome and so then I was like well hold on if

if my behaviors are predicated on my beliefs and my outcomes are predicated on my behaviors and my outcomes are actually linked to my beliefs totally and so I've got to go in and make sure that I'm believing things that are effective and so my whole thing is I only do and believe that which moves me towards my goals now the next question that people ask is well then does that mean that you believe things that aren't true and the answer is unintentionally no and the reason is unintentionally no is because that to me something is

true based on its ability to increase your ability to predict the future and the outcome of your actions that that's what's true if I touch this hot stove it's going to burn me yeah I believe that to be true because hey I've touched hot things before and they actually do burn me and so when you can like in sales if I structure the conversation in this way it's more likely to lead to an outcome that thing is true just because you've run the experiment enough times to be like yeah that actually gives me the ability

to predict the outcome of these actions and when I encounter people that either don't even know what their own belief system is and so they they think this isn't a belief this just is true about the world I'm like no that that is a belief that you've chosen to believe in it's completely [ __ ] you up one of my favorite quotes I think if there were to be a quote that would be on my Tombstone it it's top three which I love a lot of quotes um it's uh Orson Scott Card he said uh

we question all of our beliefs except for those that we truly believe and those who never think the question yes and so it's because you truly believe it and those are the ones those are the pesky ones those are the ones I think um I was told because you get asked a lot I'm sure like hey I'm going to talk to a mentor what question should I ask them and I got this really good one which is what do I believe to be true that isn't whoa and so it's a great question right and because

I I'm sure you see it and if I talk to somebody I can tell like they they cast these views of what is and what isn't about business about marriage about health whatever it is and they say like and then they and then they operate off of that framework of assumptions which is might be patently false and then they wonder why what they're doing is not working it's like because the entire Foundation upon which you built this thing is just wrong right and so um the easy you know the easiest way to do that is

to get people ahead of you who tell you by the way I don't think that belief is true but you have to get in a place that somebody can actually communicate that to you and be open to it yeah and then you have to do something about it which most people don't otherwise you get one piece of advice and people like oh God you're not going to do anything with this yeah like that that's the hard part so yeah I have the saying impact Theory University where I always thought all I would ever teach is

business and I found yeah that to get people primed to do the business part I first had to deal with all the lies that they were telling to believe like the self-destructive behavior all that one once you could get past that then they had an actual shot at running the business but because success is the ability to go from failure to failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm and the ability to do that is predicated on the story you're telling yourself about yourself you believe that it was all like this [ __ ] mindset

like yeah Rat's Nest of like God if I can help you like peel this stuff back and be able to get out of your own way but most people can't but it's really interesting when you were saying that I was like part of what makes like when you hear somebody speak and they really resonate with you they give you the chills you get excited it's because they're either putting words to something that you felt but you didn't know how to articulate and now it's super Concrete in your mind or they make you realize you believe

something that wasn't true yeah and that's when it's like I you feel like you're being set free totally and that's like that's really exciting it's like a weight vanishes that's my that's what I like that's what I think sales is is that is that people have these beliefs and you have to know like the the process of being a good salesperson is being able to help people break the beliefs that they have about themselves or about the realities that are not true and so I think if you can basically just unencumber somebody then it becomes

very easy to sell someone because if you have the struggle we have the solution do you believe that buying the solution will get you more likely to get to the outcome you want yes what are we doing let's go you know what I mean just but talking to that person you have to Wade through all this stuff but like I believe that I'd like you know if I speaking that was like I believe that you could start a college be like you want to do it and then just start from there right like depending on

what someone's consumed beforehand um but I'll tell you one of the things that's that's shaped my life in terms of business stuff is understanding the concepts of of Leverage right and so a lot of people are limited um by either the skills the beliefs or the traits they have right and so the skill deficiency is the easiest one to fix it's like go do repetitions in a community of people who are also doing repetitions to learn the same skill and you will learn it quickly right that's the thing then you have traits and beliefs which

is a little bit more amorphous right and so from a from a beliefs perspective it's you need someone to tell you stories that you believe to be true that conflict with your view of reality and then their their the evidence of their story being truer than yours then that it's like a frame control that frame now wins and that becomes the new lens that you see everything through and so I had a friend who had a fitness app and he was doing 20 000 a month he was a CrossFit competitor really high up he didn't

win of course how like all he's like he didn't win so he didn't want to tell anybody that he acts he didn't think he deserved it he didn't deserve to have an app because he didn't want anyone to know because he's like how dare I make a fitness app because I was only fourth in the world you know what I mean or whatever and then all of a sudden he talked to somebody he got over it and then he just started just telling people he had a nap and he went from like 20 000 a

month to a hundred thousand dollars a month and so it's not that his skills changed it's not that his trades changed he was still just as hard working same looked the same Etc I was like it's just his beliefs right and I'm sure in the in The Entrepreneur Space one of the most common traits is is Focus right people can't do the same thing over and over again they just do all these half built Bridges and so I know for me my big explosion happened in my entrepreneurial Journey when I went from having nine businesses

that is not a misspeak nine as in one less than ten at the same time that I was CEO of all love so I had a I had a dental agency marketing agency I had a chiropractor marketing agency I had gym launch where we'd fly out and do gym turnarounds and then I had five gems of my own Jesus at the same time and I was somehow perplexed as why I wasn't making any money I was there's like everything was always on fire all the time and I always just sold my ass off enough to

be able to pay all the bills and have nothing left over that was the that was how I rocked it um and it was only you know when Layla came in and she was like you know I think maybe if we just did one thing you could win because she was like imagine imagine if all you had to do is make one of these businesses work how easy would that be I was like oh my God if I want to make one of the mark would be a joke and like I heard myself say that

and I was like you're an idiot why are you so dumb and so like the trait that I was missing at that point was Focus and or discipline I couldn't say no I didn't have that muscle so that was a trait I lacked and so it's like boom and then that blew up and so it's like sometimes the question is which of these things do people lack um and so since we don't always know because we don't have the perspective to judge ourselves often it's like you just got to keep moving in all of the

directions getting in those communities and then like that's ultimately like I'm a big believer in the alternative education space the whole Guru space that everyone you know laments and hates um I learned everything from that space that's going to go away there's always going to be fake people that people will be dismissive of but we're just in a weird transitional moment now where traditional college is people are beginning to realize a some of these degrees are dubious at best and then B and here's the thing that breaks my heart yeah a teacher 99 times out

of 100 has gotten good at one thing teaching yeah so people like why don't they teach us this in high school Finance mindset whatever I'm like because they don't [ __ ] know like they can't do it in their own life God bless them there are so many things that like I'm terrible at yeah and so I feel their pain they've gone down the path of being an educator and so what they know how to do is educate but they don't necessarily know Finance mindset whatever and if they did they would be off doing those

things and so getting somebody who's expert at that stuff to teach is next to impossible until now yeah like when I grew up you had to go to the library to like find a quote or something like that right it was insane how hard it would be just to find a cool quote you would literally just like find okay this philosopher and you'd flip anything cool on this page flip anything cool in this way and then you would find something you'd have to build like a whole argument around the quote you could find yeah is

crazy so nowadays you're able to get like when I stop and think okay hold on I've been in business now for 20 plus years I've had an incredible career already and feel like I'm just getting started and I pour my heart and soul into teaching everything I know as fast as I can [ __ ] talk and people can get access to that with a few clicks on the internet like that's bananas and so enough people that have a real track record are gonna put courses together that then help people go on to have a

career you know one of the things that happened recently I had this like big Epiphany moment so I'll share it with you but I was um I was talking to Caleb my video my my man um and he was like you know I I've I'm a competitive person um and so I look at the the grants and the garys and stuff I'm like man by the time I'm back at their age I was like I'm going to be way ahead of them right and I think it was Kayla who said it back to me he's

like yeah he's like yeah but Gary didn't have Gary hmm I like it like really like hit me right and so I think that there was because you know there's gen Z that's coming up and whatnot there's always these disconnects and there's there's I don't see Wars there's conflict between age groups Etc and the old guys are like these kids don't know what I had to go through they've got it so easy right and these guys are like these guys I was just saying three minutes ago yeah these guys are out of touch right but

at the flip side if you ask an entrepreneur what his goal is he's the work make the world a better place to have an impact Etc and it's like well if you want to make the world a better place doesn't that mean the Next Generation has it easier like doesn't that mean we did our job and so there's this this Con this competition that I used to feel towards like the older classmen if you know like think about it like entrepreneurial grades I should be like I'm gonna be further faster or whatever by that time

than that guy is but lo and behold those guys helped me so of course it would make sense that I get there faster and like I'm sure you've like there are guys in their in their mid-20s with nine-figure companies that and they're killing it and that wasn't it just wasn't how do I say it wasn't possible it was extremely extremely extremely unlikely 20 years ago yeah right but because of the access to information the information's out there and so somebody who's 26 can have the experience of somebody who's 60. yeah 20 years ago so they

can be as good at the game Real Talk as good at the game as somebody that much older it's because they've had Warren Buffett videos they've been able to watch their whole High School about finance and investing and Charlie marker talking about character traits and all these things that you wouldn't you didn't have you know what I mean like you might have the shareholder letter and that's all you got you just had to keep rereading it right and so anyways it's been a really interesting shift for me to also think about the fact that a

lot of times we think like I want to be the greatest of all time I'm sure a lot of people do right whatever but if I did my job I won't be because somebody else will be better than me if I did my job yeah and so that was like a really interesting point that I feel like shifted inside of me in terms of a competition and thinking like I shouldn't be competing against these guys who are ahead of me I should be thanking them because of course I'm going to be there sooner faster than

them I was like because I had them and they didn't have them they were just doing both because you should want to [ __ ] Crush all of us dude you're on such a rad pace and here's the thing the older guys owe it to themselves to to be thrilled that business is a sport that you don't have to age out of yeah so my knees going bad doesn't [ __ ] matter in business yeah and I should be able to capitalize on all the things that I know and all that so I should be

able to keep going until I run out of desire to do all this but my thing is I don't want people to give up on competition so I used to be afraid of competition because I sucked and I didn't think I could get better so with a fixed mindset okay competition was not interesting I there's only one thing that I've ever gotten a disproportionate return on and that is speaking so I've always been highly verbal yeah but when I was coming up ah how do you do something with that yeah I didn't want to be

an actor so it was like well there wasn't a lot of avenues it's obviously changed and I've been able to capitalize on it right now that once once I had uh something to say and a camera I wasn't an idiot I'm like I am so verbal I will perform very well on camera that was highly strategic nobody should feel bad for me so it's like cool I got to finally leverage that Talent so I love that the Young Bucks are coming up yeah it feels so rad my whole thing is I have had to learn

everything the hard way it's just the way that I'm wired whatever so it Stokes me out to be able to go okay I learned this through Blood Sweat and Tears a massive amount of pain and suffering I'm gonna tell it to you as fast as I can [ __ ] talk I'll do it for free like yes I have my page [ __ ] but I'm also like it's not like I'm holding anything back right now so I will give people all the information and my hope is that you come up but be aware I

want to compete I want to be on the field I want these young guys who think they can check a job like all right [ __ ] like we're in this let's go but it's a light energy it's an expansive energy like if somebody beats me passes me whatever cool I'm all for it as long as you're down for me to be on the field and go as hard as I can and want to win and constantly push myself like it's fun because I no longer one I know what success is and people end up

trapping themselves thinking it's money all that [ __ ] like they have a very painful Awakening mean coming their way which I had to live through and then also it's like being able to play is fun man and so if you lose sight of the fun and you're just worried like oh is somebody better than me are they outperforming me whatever you're gonna miss out I would say the the um the both sides of it right you've got the guys who are ahead who I used to be like I'm gonna do all this right and

the guy's behind them like they're so lucky right if only I had right that that thinking and I feel like at least it was just that that little quote like Gary didn't have Gary like that thought process for me I feel like for me like my competitive drive's never going anywhere like it's going to be there forever but the I feel like I was able it was more like doing honor to the game yeah that I'm going to bring to transform my potential into reality and drag it by the [ __ ] balls if I

have to to make it happen like it was more to honor the game and all the other players in it yep rather than me trying to like and it almost felt small-minded be like why am I going to pick this guy to compete against like how about just doing a service to the game about being an excellent player I love that as long as you don't lose sight of the whole Kobe thing like what made Kobe so interesting to me yeah was that he was just die hard dude yeah and so I'm not a sports

guy so never really thought about Kobe like that yeah but I was so inspired by the way he would talk about things I never got to meet him which I'm absolutely mortified by but the way he talked about everything I was like wow what a [ __ ] competitor like and as I had gotten older and really learned the power of competition and being willing to put myself out there and go For Broke and like really find my limits right and I want to die like I I can already tell you just the way that

I'm wired I will be horrified by the the personal limitations that I have because we all do we're 50 hardwired 50 malleable I'm gonna do the most that I can with my malleable I'm already traumatized by my limitations right but like you know I'm going for it but so watching Kobe I was like damn like I'm so inspired by the willingness to push yourself that hard to see like what do I have in me yeah and then that [ __ ] went from basketball into my Arena and he came into film and his first film

he won an Academy Award now I was like this [ __ ] guy but I was so inspired right and so I may be misinterpreting what you're saying but what hits me is Caleb's comment took it from maybe a bit of a dark energy to like oh that's actually pretty rad that I had an advantage that he didn't have it makes me appreciate the game makes me want to play with honor and honor these guys so it becomes this expansive thing but I would expect you to dunk on me if you can right and then

be like help me out bro let's run the All-Star Game you know it's all good like we both [ __ ] made it but at the same time like yeah I'm gonna be trying to dunk on you you know what I mean but like with a smile and like a handshake and the way that you hear like the guys that were on that first Dream Team yeah talk about each other and like repping the country which is to me what you say when you want to honor the game it's like hey we're [ __ ]

repping something in that case America yeah basketball yeah but we're here to win but we're also here to have fun and like that's my thing and what I always tell whether you're trying to be an entrepreneur or a better parent whatever is you've got to optimize for the game still being fun when you're losing yeah if you can't have fun when you lose oh man my heart bleeds for you because you're gonna lose so often it just is what it is yeah even people that win you just lose so many times whether it's a just

a lead funnel that didn't work or you go up on stage and it [ __ ] bombs whatever but there's going to be a lot of losing in your career it's like Jordan's whole thing about I've lost this many games taking this many winning shots in this law and I succeed because of all of that right so you've got to be able to have fun in the loss because I can guarantee the struggle I can't guarantee success so you've got to be able to love that but if you love that there is something about going

for broke that I'm so honored by even though that means that people are gunning for me yeah it's worth it it's funny because when I think about that I think about game theory in general which I'm sure you're very familiar with right and so it's um it's shifting from like the finite to the infinite perspective and so like how do you win at business you win by not stopping yep like from an infinite from an infinite you know what I mean and so um that's always been one that's that's been interesting to me but I'm

I'm super open to uh to what you're saying with the uh the competitiveness piece um and I probably share some of the similar things to you of I guess when you were younger or at least my age right um trying to trying to take the good of competition and cast out the bad of competition and so trying to like separate those things and I think this has been part of my attempt at doing that is reframing the game in that way um and trying to look at it from the infinite perspective of like there is

no number one like they're like is it is it because because if you're saying number one you say of what year over what time that's exactly right right is it by what metric is a buyer net worth is my cash flow is it by age age by net worth buy per unit of time you know what I mean if Warren Buffett had died at 74 no one would care right and I would just give people the punch line all that matters is how they feel about themselves and by themselves that's it please only chase that

now when you're chasing that at a grand scale it's amazing because you're like whoa here dude yeah I'm so curious to see if you agree with this so here's my whole thesis on life so first of all Chase fulfillment it's the only thing that's stable across Joy and Pain yeah process yep and then the best thing that life has off you the [ __ ] best there is no emotional Peak higher than the following you're working really hard at something and it's working and if you pull this off there there's huge upside yeah that moment

it's better than the actual huge upside like the the moments in my life where I'm like climbing it this perilous Cliff I'm [ __ ] looking down my fingers are just ice cold right and I'm I'm just clinging but I'm like [ __ ] I'm making good progress like I've really come a long way I can see the peak it's not that far and if I get up there there's like a crazy Vegas buffet and an orgy and it's like oh my God if I [ __ ] get there this is gonna be the best

yeah it's actually better than the buffet in the origin you know what I mean it's like it's that moment where you're like your fingers are freezing but you're gonna make it like that's the [ __ ] juice and so hey enjoy the food enjoy the orgy they're incredible but I promise as soon as they're over you're gonna be like where is that next thing that I can get my [ __ ] fingers freezing to death again it just is that's the Human Condition and when people understand the game when you understand that I can never

take a drink so thirst quenching that I'll never need another drink again there's no meal so amazing that you'll never be hungry again there's no sex so good that you'll never want sex again it just that's just the way the human animal is wired like when people are at peace with that ugh like then now you've really got a shot at loving your life understanding the cycles and that you're gonna keep doing the climb and so you better love the climb I love the uh the that moment before the moment that was like I was

I was thinking as you were saying I was thinking back to like the few of those moments that I've had like the first time you know you start running ads and like you start getting your first lead you're like holy [ __ ] it's working yeah like it's that you know I mean that moment or the first I remember uh when I got uh I hired my first sales person and they closed the sale and I wasn't there so as the first person that had made me money who wasn't me yeah and I was like

I pulled over the side of the road and I teared up because I was like it doesn't have to just be me anymore you know what I mean it's like I was thinking about all these these moments that I've had um I remember when we were Layla and I were sitting over the kitchen counter and we had just switched from uh flying out a sales team in person to do these turnarounds uh to switching the licensing and um I got on the phone to tell the guys who I was gonna launch the next month that

we weren't going to do that anymore we're thinking about switching directions and so I said hey you know what I can't do it but I'll I'll tell you how I do it but I'm not flying out there anymore and they were like oh that's fine how much and I didn't want to do it so I picked a super high number and then uh which was six thousand dollars at the time and uh the guy said yes and I was like and I remember that moment being like holy [ __ ] what just happened and I

had seven more calls a day and like that day I made like sixty thousand dollars and I had just been un like the story I was telling Let's Go full circle like I just been completely broken like in that moment like Jim launch hadn't been created yet there wasn't you know all these other things but in that moment I was like what if this keeps happening like are we out of it like did or like did we finally is this the one thing that's finally gonna get me out of like failure after failure after failure

after failure and so it's just like at what is the what is the event that gives you the biggest predictor of the future success so like there's micro wins of like hey the funnel's working I've got leads and then you have like a day of huge sales like what if this happened every day and then maybe you exit Quest and you're like what if I exit five more times you know I mean like so anyways I was just that was really cool for me just even thinking through like those those snapshots of moments yeah it's

very incredible and you start to learn like okay what is it that I really love yeah and so for me when we were at Quest and selling it and it was huge and it changes your life and I mean it was really bad and here's going back to money so Quest ended up being two bites of the Apple there was like a first bite where we took a small investment but the valuation was so big it was life-changing yeah that was the the biggest like Oh My God moment because I went from uh my wife

and I share one car it's a beat up Ford Focus with a leaky exhaust borrowing rides off my employees who had nicer cars me delaying gratification and all of that going from that to I now have a Beverly Hills mansion that was the crazy moment when I went from my starter Mansion to my big mansion that wasn't as cool no it wasn't his need of a moment even though it was actually a bigger dollar amount change it wasn't as like whoa I really feel this change and then thankfully I learned actually when I was still

not really making money on paper I was worth two million dollars yeah but I learned very quickly a the money's not making me feel better about myself which I secretly thought it would uh and then also there's a big difference between paper money and real money yeah um but I learned that lesson so I never tied my sense of self-worth to the money or anything like that which is something I constantly remind myself now not to let my identity get tied up in that because the world reflects that back to me all the time right

so whether it's um oh you sold a billion a company for a billion dollars or uh amazing house or even just oh my God like what you've built socially it's incredible it's like I have to really disconnect from that because I'm like all of that is transient it's all transient I have no idea if any of it will be here tomorrow so it's like you have to be really thoughtful what is it you think about yourself when you're by yourself what do you think about that like now you've been on both sides of the coin

you've changed your physique which is a big thing but you change it so early that I wonder how do you think about yourself what's your self-image what's it anchored to I think anyone's harassment I don't know I think it's um unless unless I'm misunderstanding the question but you know for me it's I think a lot of my definitions have been defined by my actions and so I am the person who has done these things and I will do things that will get me closer to the things that I want to achieve and so a lot

of my definition of self has always been based on evidence and so I think it was harder for me in the beginning because I didn't have evidence to support what I hope to be true about myself which at the time wasn't and so and what did you hope to be true that you could figure it out or was it always a result that you Associated it to I mean it was I want to make more money than my dad you know I mean that was that was the thing you know for me and that was

that was all I needed you know what I mean I didn't I didn't have there was I remember thinking uh in college because I you know it you're young in college and it's like be happy and all that stuff and I just remember being like [ __ ] happiness and that was like a moment for me I was like [ __ ] happiness I don't care about happiness I want to do this why didn't you care about happiness that's very counterintuitive even now super counterintuitive at that age yeah um because I was obsessed with how

not happy I was and so so the things you were doing that weren't designed to make you happy that's what's weird so I was I was so obsessed with like positive psychology and I was reading all these stuff and watching these TED Talks I remember the whole I remember this whole period of My Life um and I was constantly assessing my mood as a determination whether I was happy or not it became so obsessive that I was just like [ __ ] all of this I was like I'm just gonna do [ __ ] and

that's all I was like I'm just gonna do [ __ ] and hopefully it works out and did you ever Define what works out means if it isn't happening be less be less unhappy I would say was my my thought process it's which is like I'm just gonna do the things and so I shifted from a lot of introspection internal mood regulation and thinking and stuff and I think a lot of the reason that I have the World Views I have about you know emotions and whatnot have come from this kind of initial experience so

it's like I had that and then I just started working and then I found myself actually looking up after you know a decent period of time being like you know I'm actually I haven't thought about happiness in a long time and I think I might be and so I also don't really like the word happiness because it's circumstantial versus Joy but like I experienced Joy significantly more now than I did than when I was younger and I think it's partially because like you can be mournful and enjoy but we'll have to say like so like

if someone imagine someone like it's like an appreciation of The Human Experience like this is terrible but like even like even in the suffering there's Beauty in that you know what I mean because it's purely human yeah and so I think it was disconnecting interesting that that it matters to me as well but I've never had to articulate it what what is the connection to like The Human Experience that is so valuable that it's joyful even in mourning I think it's just understanding both sides of the coin I feel so like so like if there's

a few things that I believe it is that is that like uh right now they're you know there's things in my life that I don't like that I wish were better and there are things in my life that I really like and you know 10 years ago it was the same way and 10 years from now it'll be the same way and when I die there will be stuff that I will not have accomplished that I will wish I had there will be things that I wish I had done better that I will not have

done and there will be things that I have done that I am proud of and so like those things are not going to change and so if the only thing I mean this sounds hopefully not overly tried but it's like all I can do is just enjoy the game and it took me a really long time to get there like it took me a really long time to get there um or at least it felt that way or at least it felt like I suffered a lot on that process which is why I have a

heart for people who are like dude I'm you know I'm super sad I'm super depressed whatever it is because I judge myself so much on not being happy all the time because I thought there was something wrong with the fact that I wasn't happy that I drove myself insane not being happy rather than just being like you know what maybe I'm just gonna do the stuff and just [ __ ] happiness for a minute and so I think it's like when we have these uh like am I happy am I not happy I think my

my opinion is that you you have to rise above it so that you can just see you can feel the Spectrum which is just being present because I think again Alex's two cents um have been around that long uh if you are present you can you're present like most people aren't present ever and so it's like if I can just be present even in my suffering I'm there right then I can experience joy for being human and having this experience that I only get once and the biggest frame shift that I've had in terms of

my experience of living has been it's it sounds it sounds weird but it's so I call the grandfather frame which is I learned how to become apathetic right because that that took that took me time to stop feeling pain you know how the brain tries to predict the next word somebody's gonna say apathetic was not the word I was expecting you had to learn to be apathetic yeah because I cared so much about everything cared about what everyone thought cared about but I like like I cared about what everyone thought and I probably still do

just less you know what I mean I still do care just less right and so the frame of the veteran taught me that which is if this negative thing were to happen a thousand times over and over and over again how would I feel in the thousandth time well probably not that bad well why don't I just choose to feel that way now right and so that really helped me a lot just the frame of the veteran right whether it was traffic whether it was a breakup whether like whatever it was I could apply that

like I got broken up with every single day for a thousand straight days how much would have bought it I'd still be here you know okay and then I was like is there a way that I can think of a frame that would allow me to feel gratitude because it's something that I've I've struggled to feel right like I definitely get the drive feeling got that one done in Spades but gratitude not so much right I've done the habits and things like that and for me it didn't work I say it doesn't just for me

and so I thought of this Frame which was I call the grandfather frame but waking up if I went into a time machine I'm 85 years old right I'm like close to dying a little creaky you know I've got tons of money not a lot of time and I somehow sacrifice all the money I have just to be my age again as I wake up in the morning and I'm my 85 year old self living through my 30 year old body and thinking through that frame of how I would wake up and be like Oh

my elbow's daughter oh look I have muscles I haven't had those in forever right now look I'm like oh Layla she's so young I remember when she used to look like this and I look outside and I'm like man this is Vegas before they did all the helicopters and the flying cars I'm like look at it God has changed so much right then you walk downstairs you get like man coffee ah look at these mugs remember we had mugs didn't that crazy and so it's this weird frame where it just drills you it just begs

you to the present and you get to experience the current state from a future state for the first time and so it's been one of the things that's been really profound for me in terms of like dealing with dressers with getting into like when I get into one of these like my hold on I'm 85 I'm waking up like all of a sudden I'm like I remember when I used to stress about these business things I was like it works out it's fine and if it doesn't who cares I was like I'm gonna be 85

I'm gonna die I'm gonna give all my money away who cares and so and I'm like but isn't this cool that I'm like look at me all trying to play the game you know my God bud and so it's like it gets me into this really interesting place where I can feel like I can get above myself in the game and just be like and I I think for a lot of people if they can those frames have served me very well and I hope that other people can use those in some way in their

life to do stuff that they weren't otherwise going to do um so that was the that's my my two frames that have certainly wrong do frames of reference is everything this is actually what started impact theory in the iteration that it became So macquest and I've got a thousand employees that grow up hard in the inner cities but intelligence is evenly distributed right so just like you have Dumb Friends in an upper middle class neighborhood you can have Dumb Friends in the inner city but just like you have Smart friends you're gonna have Smart friends

and so there were plenty of people that I was like damn like you are smart yeah but your frame of reference is stupid yeah and the way that you view the world is so ineffective meaning it doesn't move you towards your goals or your goals are idiotic yeah and and I mean that if your goals lead you to suffer and you don't want to be suffering yeah I would say it's very plain that your goals are idiotic so anybody that that wants to write in the the feed that you know oh you can't judge somebody's

goals yes I can very much so uh because you either have goals and you're moving towards them or you don't and you're not and so I'm looking at it and I'm like wow this is a mindset problem this isn't a an intelligence problem you have the ability to process raw data which is how I'll I'll say intelligence is and they have that but the software that they use to process that raw data leads to such a bizarre frame of reference for how the world works or what they're capable of that their behaviors become ineffective yeah

so I was like okay so the thing I'm going to try to do is help people change their frame of reference now I used two really potent frames of reference for me one is very similar so I'll use a um a deathbed frame of reference to say okay how will I think about this now I don't get trapped though because I don't live for my deathbed I think that's a mistake and I think a lot of people optimize for something they're going to go through maybe it lasts a week maybe it lasts a year but

it isn't the bulk of your life yeah and so to over optimize for that I think is a mistake but to get the perspective of like oh my God I remember when I used to stress about that like come on this doesn't mean anything when you're facing your mortality so that's super useful um and then the other frame of reference that I use is the brain in a vat okay and so I'm like imagine that you're just a brain in the vat and that this thing you're really stressing because normally you're going to be worried

about something that that happened or you're obsessing about something that happened and what makes you think about or it could be the future but either case you can't change either of them because one's not real and one's in the past and I was like what if they're saying that I'm really worried about that's already happened that I can't change is really just context for this brain in this you know vat living in a simulation to just to get you moving and that all these memories that are trapping you they are fake yeah and there's something

about that that lets me off the hook I don't need to beat myself up over it it's just a frame of reference it's context to get me moving yeah and then I remind myself I actually am just a brain in a vat it just happens that the the vat is the chemicals that you know my brain is sitting in and the glass of that jar is my skull and so all of this really is a simulation even if it's it's an accurate simulation it's a simulation nonetheless yeah and I won't derail the whole conversation on

that but like it's it's very easy to recognize that the world really is a simulation because reality is the number of photons falling on an object but you perceive it as color or whatever not math and so putting myself in either of those like hey this isn't really going to matter at some point and oh that thing that's creating your sense of identity it could be made up anyway I don't think it is but like it's very helpful to remind myself that those are malleable things that's been I mean when we started the conversation it

was like why do you think people aren't successful why do you think people fail and it's I think it comes down to those things it's like it's the it's the fear of photons that fall on an object that prevent people from starting or when they do get hit one time extrapolate that out till their deathbed and say I will fail forever and therefore I will not continue and so I think that those like those frames are the things like if there's things that I would take with me until I die it will be the frames

because like you can lose it all and then you like if you lost everything tomorrow you'd be back in 12 months you know what I mean um and it's like that's I remember when I lost everything the second time um and I you know I just lost all the gyms and all the money and everything and I it was just like thinking that that was the thing that I had lost rather than the thing that I had gained that was non-material being the more valuable of the two um that was like one of my big

lessons and I feel like you obviously have far more of those than I do but that that one stuck with me it's interesting I have a a slightly different belief based on all that or at least way that I look at it which is if I lost everything tomorrow I might not ever gain it back it's entirely possible now I think I have a set of skills I'm never going to worry about money and all that but I really life has taught me that I cannot guarantee myself the success because I failed multiple times at

businesses so it isn't like oh it's guaranteed because I've had a success before it's guaranteed I'll never go hungry barring head trauma but it is you know it's it's an unknown and that's why I'm very careful not to let that be my Identity or like I don't know if you've ever read Stephen King's book The Stand however that one oh my God so there's this thing I'm so glad I read this when I was a kid because so one of the main characters is a guy who's just finally gotten famous as a singer and this

is back I've read this probably late 80s so getting famous was like the most insane thing you could do getting rich was Far easier than getting famous and so he finally got famous his songs everywhere on the radio and then the end of the world happens and nobody cares and I remember thinking whoa like you could achieve that thing The Impossible thing and then the next day it's just gone yeah and so especially at the moment we're living in now where there's a lot of uncertainty I'm just like don't tie your sense of Worth or

uh the thoughts you think are um useful because they have resulted in wealth the thoughts that I think are useful because they've resulted in fulfillment that's the thing like I really want people to Anchor around um but yes I certainly take that transparently I'm probably not there like I don't think I've like I'm not out of the guy I don't think I'm as optimized on that as like you are I think you have more of that than I do in terms of like optimizing around fulfillment I think I definitely still have a degree of my

self-worth wrapped in the things we do and the companies we own and stuff like that like I If all of those because the thing is like if in the magic situation where that all vanished it would there would be something that I had probably done wrong now there are occasions you know where you own a gym business in covet um where you're like man there's some stuff that would it be reasonable for me to have predicted this probably not okay I'm not gonna beat myself up with this one but like if barring a true Act

of God's situation and there were just good old-fashioned I'm the only one who loses everything and everyone else doesn't right um I probably would be upset um I'd be upset I'm not a [ __ ] monk I just I remind myself to yeah yes totally you're like how do you judge yourself when you're naked in the mirror at night of like well uh on that day I would feel badly you know I could just not feel good 100 but anyways um dude so I've got the final quote that I want to share with people that

is my favorite quote from you but first I want you to tell people where can they follow you um if you listen to podcasts you can just search my name Alex ramosie and you'll find the game uh if you are on YouTube you can search my name and you'll find my YouTube channel if you're on Tick Tock Instagram there all those places Twitter actually I'm super active on Twitter um you can find me there just by searching my name amazing all right now I want to give people a quote I'd love this so much do

not cast power to your excuses own your circumstances because no one else will so I think the difference between like rich people and poor people successfully people not successful people is the degree to which they attribute or give power to their circumstance right and so the difference between a self-made billionaire who started with nothing and someone who else started with nothing is not the resources obviously because they both started at zero so what else is it is there resourcefulness not the resources and so um if we give power to circumstance then we cast power outside

of ourselves if we give power to other people we cast power outside of ourselves and so it's you know it's controlling the controllable uh and when I you know when I say that quote a lot of that is is how that quote is how I see selling it's people cast power to their circumstances and my job is to get them to unfuck themselves around the power that they have just cast to something they cannot control and so if I can just get them to own even just own the fact that they suck that's good enough

because they actually can own it and there is pride in that you can take pride in the fact that you admit that there's a deficit right but there is the only thing you can't take pride in is casting and being a victim right like no one moves forward even if you're right it doesn't serve you right if you're born with one you know one less leg than you should you're right you're not going to be you have a disadvantage at being a sprinter like you have a disadvantage but it doesn't serve you in any way

to admit it and so it's it's owning the fact that like you are the only person who can actually change anything about your life because you may blame your circumstances but no one else will care I love that speaking of ways you can change your circumstances if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care peace my default place is to do this I think you have to know yourself I think if your default is to not do those things then yeah giving yourself a break and being

Kinder and gentler is the absolute worst thing that you could do to yourself in my case man it's been a lifetime I was never a child I was never a little boy that five-year-old I was literally not a child