Alex Hormozi's best frameworks for business and beyond

The highest returns on capital we get as entrepreneurs is talent. Like, full stop. Where else do you get 10x, 20x, 100x return so reliably? If I'm thinking from the, like, I really have to fill this role angle, it's like usually not the right person. If I'm thinking like, I don't even care if I have a role for this person, I have to get them in, it's usually the right person.

Once you get to like $5 million in revenue, that's what you have to become is a collector of people.

It's pattern recognition, but especially when it comes to talent. You have to grow fast, and I do think that's a virtuous cycle. The faster you grow, the more talent you get, which grows you faster. And so it can also be vicious in the other direction.

It's mostly vicious in the other direction.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm hiring for about 6 or 7 roles. What mistakes do you think I'll likely make?

Like if somebody comes in as a C-level exec and has no network of people that they've worked with in the past, that's weird.

Who have you hired recently that is significantly better than you or has taught you something? Who takes you to school?

This is something that I can only say now with 14 years of business experience, which is I just like, I think Sean does this as well.

You think in frameworks. I don't think like that at all. That does not come naturally to me. And whenever I hear you or we have a mutual friend, Ryan Dice, and Ryan was like, he was like making me feel like a jerk. He was like, you don't think in frameworks? Like how do you learn something and then think how you're going to teach it to your team or whatever? And I'm like, I don't know, man. I'm like a Neanderthal. Like I just kind of like float by life sometimes and I just like, I don't like reflect and think in a framework, but you do that.

I think frameworks happen when you have to reteach or reuse the same thought process over and over again. And so rather than rederiving the same decision set, you create a framework to give yourself mental shorthand. And so I think it's just like, like I created the scaling one, like you were at the implementation workshop, like the Mozi 6 or whatever. It's like more, metrics, market, model, money, and then underneath the model, there's, you know, 4 offshoots and then finally manpower. So it's like, these are the 6 reasons that people get limited in their business. Right. And that was because I had to think like, okay, I've done so many Q&A calls. There has to be, there is a decision tree. Like it might be more complex than I thought it was, but there is a decision tree that I'm going through. And so just actually crystallizing that. And so you, you totally think in frameworks, you just haven't documented them. That's my, that's my 2 cents. That's my opinion.

Well, like you had this cool, uh, like I've been watching your, I think I told you the other day I was watching your content, not on tactics of making money, but on tactics of leadership and management. And you had this cool thing called the diamond.

Yeah, it's great.

It was like basically for the listener, it was like, uh, if you have an employee who's not doing what you want them to do, they're either, they don't know what you want done. They don't know how to do it. They weren't motivated or they don't know, I think when that you want it done.

Yeah. Or there's something blocking them. Yeah.

And when you come up with something like that, is that something that you make up or do you read other books and you steal like, like cool bits of inspiration and you repurpose them for your need?

So honest truth, I really don't read as much as I probably should. Almost all my stuff just comes from like me doing it and then saying, man, there's gotta be an easy way to describe this. If I happen to come along some sort of, you know, if there's some coincidence, I see that as corroboration of an idea. But yeah, no, I really don't consume anyone else's stuff for, for like inspiration. I like, I have enough shit going on every day. I have tons of stuff to talk about. And so yeah, no, the management document was like, all right, fundamentally people don't do stuff for a reason. I have to figure out what that reason is. And if there's a way that I can have a framework that I can have for this conversation that makes it less like, how do I not attack the person? Right. Rather than say like, you are at least a piece of shit. It's like, that's, that's unlikely to be productive and also probably not the real cause of why they're not doing things. Cause most people do prefer to stay employed. And also prefer to do a good job, I think by and large. And so it's like, if we take that to be true and I want them to succeed and so do they, then like, what's getting in the way here? It's like, well, I didn't communicate that I wanted them to do this thing. Okay, well, that's on me. I didn't tell, like I told them, but then they're like, cool, I don't know how to do that. That's a training issue.

Okay.

You know, they didn't know there was a deadline associated with it. It's a when problem, right? And then it's like, okay, well, they knew when to do it. They knew how to do it. And they knew that I wanted them to do it. Then it's like, okay, well then is there something blocking them? Now the motivation one of like, they're not motivated to, is like technically correct, but it's the last one that I'll go to because most times people are relatively motivated to do it. Now, mind you, there's definitely times when that's just not the case, right? Or the how component has a more generalized skill that someone doesn't have. So I'll say it differently. Like if in order to do a role, My position is like, you've probably heard like attitude versus aptitude. And that used to bug me a lot 'cause I was like, well, that can't always be what it is, right? Because it's really just that there's a deficiency in someone's skillset to enter an organization to do a role. And so we want to hire for the small skill deficiency. If you're hiring for what people consider low skill labor, so if you run an Airbnb and need maids or you have a yogurt shop and you need to have people who do, you know, clean the counter and like check people out, that's very low skill. Technically, but in terms of hiring, you're gonna hire for attitude, not aptitude. And that's just because the amount of skills required to train someone on attitude far outweigh the skills it takes to take somebody who's already friendly, knows how to show up on time, can smile, say hello, makes chitchat, teach them how to use a cash register and clean the thing could take like 2 hours. Like it's not a lot of training in order to do that role. And so it doesn't make sense to hire someone for aptitude. Like I've worked a cash register before, but I'm a dick. It's like, well, that's not going to be very helpful. Like, I'm going to have to train you to not be a dick. It's not worth it. On the flip side, if you want to have the number one AI researcher in the world, if that guy's a bit of a dick, then you could probably work with him on being a little bit, you know, better at communicating with the team. You're not going to take the person who was, you know, the yogurt store cashier register, assuming they take no, you know, they're not on the side doing all this stuff, uh, and make them the number one AI researcher. And so it's like, we always just should, at least in my opinion, hire for the person with the smallest skill deficiency. And then we have to ask the question as the business owner, given that skill deficiency, is it worth us or worth our resources to train them? And so I take the position that I think every skill is trainable. It's just, is it worth training? Like, are there other people I get higher returns on? In which case, great, I'll use them. And that for me is fundamentally like why I would say that over my career, the biggest change in terms of my hiring practices is I hire far more for general intelligence. Now. The intelligence will allow someone to bridge the skill gap faster. And so it's a return on resources for where they are versus where they need to be, whether it's a, quote, attitude issue or, quote, hard skills issue. But I see soft skills and hard skills as just skills. One, you know, hard skills are easy to, easy to define and measure. Uh, soft skills are just hard to define and measure, but they still are definable and measurable. And so I want somebody who has high intelligence because I define intelligence as rate of learning. And so if I can get someone who has a high rate of learning versus somebody else, maybe that person starts a little bit behind, but in 6 months they're going to pass the other person who might have experience. And so again, it all depends on like what the timeline is. If I take a toddler, I can get them to be an adult in 18 years and be perfect, but I don't know if I have 18 years to wait. And so, you know, that's, that's kind of my general rubric.

When, uh, when you're hiring for smart people, how do you figure out if they're smart?

Really good question. Um, I think the quality, so Couple things. So the, the, the quality of the questions that they ask.

Let's go deep on each one. So the quality of questions that they ask. Okay. What's a high quality question?

So if someone said, hey, I noticed that you guys have this media brand here and you have this advisory practice here, what's revenue retention around that? Is there another vehicle that you guys have considered that, you know, isn't in the pipeline right now? I'd be like, wow, that demonstrated that they did a fair amount of research and they were able to take a complex thought between these two things and ask me about it. So like, that's a great question. Whereas if someone says like, you know, what's the 5-year vision of the company? I don't see that as a bad question. I just see that as like kind of a generic interview question someone might ask. And if that's not already answerable online, which, you know, the pros and cons of our situation similar to you is that a lot of my stuff is public. And so I expect somebody to come in with better than generic questions because I've already answered generic questions publicly.

Hey everyone, really quick. If you're enjoying this episode on CEO stuff, so delegating, having hard conversations with your team, hiring, then I've got something for you. So the team at HubSpot, they actually went and put together a bunch of best practices that Sean and I use in our own companies, and they put it together in something that's really easy to read and understand. And so if you wanna just save yourself 10 years of headache and heartache, then you should check it out. I wish we had this a long time ago. Would've helped me a lot. But there should be a QR code on your screen that you can scan or a link in the description. So check it out. It's totally free and totally awesome. Okay. And so what was the second one?

Oh, when they deconstruct a problem that they're solving in terms of what they're thinking with. So I mean, this is, to be fair, this isn't like my invention, but like, uh, in the consulting world, people do cases for a reason, right? They want to hear how, like, okay, if I need, how many, you know, how many ping pong balls fit on a 747, right? This is a common question they would ask. In a college interview, not because they care about the answer, they care about how you think through getting the answer, 'cause it demonstrates a level of horsepower. And so for us, I would say a practice that at acquisition.com we use is, especially at our higher level and leadership roles, is we actually, instead of presenting them hypothetical cases, we actually present them with the real cases. And so, worst case, we get free consulting. Best case, we get somebody who is capable of implementing that solution that they just came up with. And so if they can use frameworks that I wasn't aware of, experiences that I'm not aware of, those things will come out in that, you know, complex, you know, issue that we're dealing with. But it's also at least like way more interesting of an interview for me because now like they're solving my problems. So I'm like way more engaged.

So does that mean that like the hiring manager, or maybe you would have, someone at the company has like a generic description of the company and what some of the numbers are and maybe they're like fake numbers even. And then each role will have a specific problem that you need help solving for at the company. And they get like a Google Doc, like a 2-pager in advance. And it's like, prepare your thoughts, send it to me in advance. I'm going to read it and then we're going to have a discussion about it.

So I'll differentiate this by level of role and type. And so I'm talking, because right now I'm like knee deep in like C-level, like interviews. So that's like what I'm thinking with right now. If we're trying to hire an editor or a salesperson, those are roles that are super repeated and as a result have incredibly structured, you know, interview processes and whatnot. And so for those, like for a salesperson, for example, it's like, we're going to send a script to every candidate that we want to invite to a group interview first. And so they're going to get the script ahead of time and we want to hear them do, you know, a 1-minute, 2-minute soundbite of the script. So if they didn't even take the time to like go through it a few times, like they're going to sound horrible. And so immediately either they, they don't have the skill, they don't have the work ethic. Either way, we can weed those people out and we can tell within a couple minutes. So we don't need to waste a 30-minute call on somebody who wants to be a salesperson. We can have 10 people on the call, 1 or 2 minutes, and we can find out if someone's got a little bit of game. From there, it's like, okay, then we'll say, hey, you messed this thing up, tweak it, try it again. When we do that, we get to see how coachable they are, how much ego they have, and how quickly they can learn. Intelligence.

I actually read a book that you suggested. The guy who, uh, Founded HubSpot sales team, wrote that book, and I— we do the same thing here. And in the book, he actually says that IQ is the, is the number one. He was like, charisma is important, but it's not the most important thing. It's ability to learn quickly.

And I think part of that also, because like they were selling to business owners and, you know, so do we. And most, most of our portfolio is B2B. And so like if, if, if a salesperson is being like outgunned consistently by, you know, the people that they're getting on the phone with, The people on the phone feel like they're talking to somebody who's an idiot and can't actually help them solve their problem. And so, yeah, I think general intelligence is such an important part, but like, honestly, it's, it started there, but like, I kind of just see it across the organization. Like, show me exceptional organizations that employ dumber people. Like, it's, I mean, there are some, but especially in the, in the, in the work that we type, that we do B2B and higher level, uh, you need horsepower. So in terms of intelligence, like rate of learning. And we can actually demonstrate them learning on a small level. And that works, same thing with editors. We follow a very similar process. Here's some raw footage, send us a clip back with your edit. We can look at just the final output and that allows us to be more objective about, like some people don't present well, but that doesn't mean they're bad editors. And I think like interviewing itself is a skill just like anything else. And I don't need somebody who's great at interviewing. I need somebody who's great at editing. Right. And so trying to pull that apart and something that Leila's taught me that's been really helpful, like for me lately has been, um, She's like, some people are incredibly smart, but are not very good at communicating. And depending on the role, they might not have as much need for that level of communication. And so that's where it gets a little bit more nuanced, but I would—

Or the other way around, like I've actually talked to people that are very charming and they communicate wonderfully. And I'm like, I can't fall victim to this. You're actually an idiot. I don't think you know what you're doing. I've hired these people before.

What was it? There was a, it was a like always go for an ugly surgeon or something like that.

Yeah.

Uh, there's some, there's some razor, uh, that I just, I just wanted to put my little disclaimer out there, which is like, I by no means claim that we are perfect at hiring or anything like that. We just like everybody, we take our licks, but I would say the hardest ones are always leadership because you have fewer, like you might appreciate this. Whenever I, whenever I go into a room of entrepreneurs, I say, hey, who here is on more than is on their second business or beyond? And like almost the whole room raises their hands. I'm like, okay, cool. Now of those of you who are on your second business and beyond, Who here, your current business grew way faster or past, uh, your first businesses? And like almost the entire room raises their hands. And I always think like, so why is that? And so I think that at the most basic level, it's pattern recognition, but especially when it comes to talent. And so like, if you think about building like, say, a million dollar business, it's like, first you have us, you have some marketing function, you have some sales function, you have some delivery function, you know, whatever, uh, you know, across the board. And for the first time ever, when, as soon as, you know, maybe a million, maybe it's 3 million a year, whatever it is, like it's not you anymore. Like somebody else has to do some of this stuff. And so you fi— you get your first pattern recognition of like, oh, this is somebody who can do some advertising, or this is some person who can do some sales. This is a person who can do some low-level management. This is a person who can do some, uh, you know, some delivery or whatever. And so, and you basically keep struggling and keep plateauing at that level until you find that one person who's like competent. And then you're like, Oh my God, you could do the job. This is amazing. And then the business grows until that next level, uh, you know, that next constraint. And so then across the board by department, one by one, it's like you have these 6-month, 12-month periods where you go through interviews and interviews and hiring and onboarding just to see if this person's competent. And then whenever they're not, you're like, I have to start over again. And then the business basically stays where it's at. And so I think that, um, I think the, the, the more experience we've had on each of these roles of like, this is what you know, a SDR looks like, this is what an SDR manager looks like, this is what a closer looks like, this is what a senior closer looks like, this is what a closing manager looks like, this is what, um, this is what a director of sales looks like, this is what a VP of sales looks like. Like, it took me time to learn each of these levels and obviously do that across departments. But then after that point, when you go with these new, the new businesses you go after, you're not even building the business, you're just assembling it. Yeah.

And that's becomes, that's, that's actually quite frustrating. Um, not frustrating, but it's a hard lesson to learn because after if we had to generalize it, my guess is somewhere around $5 million or maybe like $1 million a year in profit or maybe $500,000 a year in profit, honestly. Like there's this— I grew up going to Catholic school and there's this like one of the most famous scenes of the Bible is like Jesus telling Peter, it's like, you are, you're no longer a fisherman. You're going to come and work with me and you are going to be a fisher of men. And I think like once you get to like $5 million in revenue, that's what you have to become is a collector of people. And that is jarring, right? Because that's not, typically why a lot of people have started their businesses. But in order to make something grow past $5 million, I don't know where that number is going to be, but you start just having to collect human beings.

No, and it's the game. And I think a lot of it is just the pattern recognition around behavior traits and skills where you have to just say like, oh, I know what this VP— I know what— like I had a VP of sales. They were awesome. What does this person look like here? I also think, and this is something that like I can only say now with like, I guess, 14 years of business experience, I'm just beginning to reap this. Which is the snowball of talent, which is like, if you've had multiple businesses and you've had good outcomes and you treated people well over an extended period of time, some people start following you from thing to thing, right? And then you start to have this core team that just like, they're like, they're good. Like, and then when you do the next thing, like they're all with you. And I think that like, I don't know, but I would imagine that in 20 more years, like the team of talent of those people who just prefer to operate the way we operate and like, like the culture that we have and like each other. It's more like, like if somebody comes in as a, as a C-level exec and has no network of people that they've worked with in the past, I'm like, that's weird. Like you don't have anyone from all the past roles who you've worked with who either A, you think is a stud, which is weird that you don't think anyone was stud, or alternatively you think they were stud, but they don't want to come to like your new thing because you're not a good leader. And so that's a great like litmus test in terms of like how good of a leader is this person is like, who do they have in their, in their black book because we need to build out this function quickly, and I'm expecting you to bring some of that to the table.

Who have you hired recently that is significantly better than you or has taught you something? Because you're in the role now where you have to do all the talking and a lot of the teaching for your audience and at your workshops and with the companies that you work with. Who takes you to school?

Sharon does. Sharon's, Sharon's junior president. He's so knowledgeable on I mean, he's so knowledgeable on a lot of different things, but like, you know, he said 2 plus billion dollar companies. And so obviously acquisition is, you know, the third that, you know, we're shooting for depending on, you know, when we have our third party validation. But basically it's like the bigger the company gets, I feel like the better he gets.

You know what I mean?

Like the more in his wheelhouse he is in terms of like data pipelines, infrastructure, real-time dashboards, how can we, like, how can finance get weaponized? I would say that Layla and I, like, Sharon's so good at the finance function and understanding just like, just tax ramifications, entity structure, like just a lot of the things that I, you know, for me, my acumen is on like, how do we let people know about it? How do we get them to give us money for it? And how do we make sure that they really like it and tell their friends? Like that has been basically the core of my skillset.

Does that include, is the last thing you said there, is that product?

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then, but like everything outside of that, Um, it's definitely not what I would say like my core core is like Layla is so good at that. Like a lot of what we were talking about there is me somewhat relaying Layla's, you know, zeitgeist or, you know, Layla's, uh, MO around people and people and talent, but Shron's so good at like enterprise value structuring, just like a lot, just a lot of the things that, you know, a public CEO would be good at. And that's, and that's what he comes from. Um, but he's also is like, and I would say like from an observation personally, like the true AAA talent, one, they're not employees. They are partners and they see themselves as partners. And if you don't see them as partners, then they are not A+, you know, how do you treat a partner differently than an employee?

Like, how would I know if I have a partner?

Well, I think if you go to them because you're not sure what to do and they're giving you advice, to me, that's a partner. If you're constantly directing them and saying, this is what we're going to do, this is what we're going to do. There's nothing wrong with that. but they're not a thought partner. And I also use that as a great litmus test for like the true C-level executives that we have is like, do I want to talk to this person about this complex problem? If I don't seek their advice, then it means that I don't see them as a value add. And so then they're not like, they're, they're not super essential, which is not good. But yeah, so he, I think that, and then the other piece, and this is something that again, I feel like I've learned more recently because I'm super deep in C-level stuff right now. But it's clouds to dirt. So vertically integrated, full stack skill sets. And so like, I think like the best sales leaders can go, like they can hop on the phone and get a cold lead to book an appointment from an SDR level all the way to building sales strategy of like, which starts to merge into marketing, right? It's like, what kind of messaging do we need to look at? What kind of avatars have the highest likelihood of buying our stuff? How can we weave that into our process and our scripting? How can we, you know, cut our training time and onboarding new reps? Like they're really thinking about the sales organization, but they can also do almost every job. And I just have yet to find like truly exceptional people that aren't full stack.

So you're right now because of your size, you're competing and the type of person you need, you're competing with a lot. You're in a very competitive industry in terms of talent. Yeah. And so I imagine you're competing against some of the AI guys. You're competing against a lot of tech companies. And the value and PE and the value that they provide. I had to guess it's just lots and lots of money, which I think you have the ability to do that. Yeah, we pay well, but they also have the ability to offer like equity for this, like lottery ticket maybe. I don't know what else, but I'm sure there's many things that they offer that you can't. What do you have to offer to them other than market rate or above market rate money? Yeah.

Um, it's growth and impact. Like if you were to ask everybody in the company at acquisition.com, what's the number one thing that they come for? It's growth. Like they, like none of those companies are growing, like not none. A lot of those companies aren't growing at the rate that we're growing. And so there's so much career advancement and opportunity. Um, we are very meritocratic. And so like anyone can come here and move up independent of, of age, you know, even, even independent of tenure. Like we had a guy who came here 90 days ago and got a very large promotion after coming in at a pretty high role already. Just because he demonstrated he was great. And we're like, great, we have this opening. We think you'd be the best fit.

And the growth is the, the revenue of the company, which then means you pull people up to higher roles. So then basically in order to attract A+ talent, you have to, you have to grow fast.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, exactly. You have to grow fast. And I do think that's a virtuous cycle, which is like the faster you grow, the more talent you get, which grows you faster. And so like it can also be vicious in the other direction.

It's mostly vicious in the other direction.

Yeah. Yeah. You're shrinking and you have no money to give people. Yeah. It gets, it gets tough.

Or like a lot of businesses are like growing only 20 or 20% a year. I don't know. Some like fine, but mediocre number. And it's like, where do they start if they don't have growth in order, not growth in terms of just the money to pay people, but growth in order to impress the right people to join them?

I think it all depends on what, like the opportunity and the level of tech, like the pool that you're competing against. You know, like if you are an AI, true AI, you know, company, You know, it is super competitive. On the flip side though, like if someone's going to start a new division for us, I can just say like, I can guarantee you demand. Not a lot of people can do that. And so like, it's not a question of whether this will work or not. Is it's, is this the best use of the demand that we have? And so it becomes an opportunity cost question, but a lot of people in some ways, it's like, it's less risky to come to ACQ because We have so much demand and there's just, there's so much opportunity. That's basically like, if you're working for Jimmy, he said, you know, use a different brand, like MrBeast, like he has virtually a limitless demand. And so if he's like, hey, can you help me spin up whatever, pick a random thing. If MrBeast was going to say, hey, let's start an umbrella brand. It doesn't mean like he for sure will sell umbrellas. It's just not the best use of his resources. Right. And so it's like, we need somebody who can come in and recognize the best vehicle for the demand that we have and then be able to obviously execute it on it. But a lot of people don't have that like built-in guaranteed, you know, they just don't have that. And so that becomes actually significantly riskier despite, you know, what other quote perks might exist. And so it's like you have guaranteed demand, you have basically guaranteed growth as fast as you can grow, we can grow. And that's, and we also still pay exceptionally well. And so with those, you know, those three things put together, we can get, very, very good talent. And there's also people that are just very mission-driven. Like we have a lot of people who come in and are like, I've consumed your stuff for years and I saw the recruiter reached out to me and I was stoked. And that was it. Like there's just, in some ways it's like, you know, private equity number 17. It's like, they're all, it's almost, it's just commoditized. Like their business is commoditized. It's just not that interesting. And so they have to compete on price. And so their price is their comp. Whereas if you have a value proposition, like what's the, what's the grand slam offer from an employee perspective rather than a grand slam offer from a product perspective? 'cause it's still the exact same process of acquiring talent as it is to acquire customers. It's just a reverse funnel.

What mistakes do you think most people make when it comes to hiring?

Oh man.

Or maybe you could say, maybe answer it differently. I'm hiring for about 6 or 7 roles. What mistakes do you think I'll likely make?

Well, what's the role? Or what are some of the roles?

Yeah, so we could say, what's like a really, a salesperson. That's a, that's a simple one. Um, but I'm hiring other roles. So I'm hiring, um, chapter leads. So we have 13 chapters that we, uh, my business is based in and we're having hiring people to manage each chapter.

I mean, the easy answer is settling, but it's so tough because there's, there's trades because these things don't exist outside of time. You know, it's like I have to fill this role and I want to find somebody, especially if obviously for us at the C-level, because that's what's top of mind for me is like, I have to have somebody that when I'm on the phone with them, I'm thinking, I have to have this person. And if I don't have that, but I'm like, man, I really need this role. And so if I'm thinking from the, like, I really have to fill this role angle, it's like usually not the right person. If I'm thinking like, I don't even care if I have a role for this person, I have to get them in, it's usually the right person.

Are you willing to pay them more than you originally thought was reasonable?

Yes, 100%. Not even a question.

Have you ever, have you ever been like, I gotta come up with enough money. Like I hope I can get enough sales to afford this person, but I have to have them.

I haven't had the second part because we're a super cashflow positive company. So like that hasn't been a problem. I mean, fundamentally, as long as I can just pencil out the ROI of the role, then yeah, I'll do it. I mean, it's just a return on capital.

What's, what, what's your desired return though?

Amazing. Oh yeah. Well, it's like, I mean, it's, I still think that—

Does Google Sheets allow you to put amazing in? Equals amazing?

Yes, mind it. I think the highest returns on capital we get as entrepreneurs is talent. Like full stop. Like where else do you get 10x, 20x returns, 100x returns and can do so reliably? Like talent is one of those places you can do it. I will also say that typically the higher up the org, the higher the arbitrage.

Are you fast to fire?

We continue to get faster. I'll say that. I think we get faster. I would say that our firing practices do somewhat rely on the constraint. So like sometimes, you know, Leila says this, but like some fires aren't kitchen fires. They're like the trash can in the driveway's on fire. It's like, it's a problem. Like we'll get to it, but it's not the thing that's limiting the business. And so if we have somebody who's not as good as they should be, but they're not in a role that's right now like limiting the company. It's probably not going to be our first priority to, to, to take them out. But as soon as that becomes the constraint, then it like quickly gets unearthed and then it gets handled.

Have you ever followed Dave Portnoy, Barstool Sports?

Yeah.

Yeah. Like, you know, he's quirky, right? He's crazy. He— one of his jokes, but it's not a joke. He's like, I don't fire people. He's like, I just— I don't want to fire people. And if they're a loser, I'll just keep paying them and they're going to sit in the corner and be a loser. But I don't fire anyone. And I kind of thought that was hilarious. It's funny because he's a content company and he can make content out of it and get an ROI out of like just making fun of someone who wants to fire. But I was like shocked that that would be his take on it because he seemed like a pretty brutal guy. Not brutal guy, but he seems like very blunt and he has no problem firing people. And he was like, I do. I suck at it. I don't like the confrontation. I don't like people feeling bad. And so I just don't do it. I'd rather lose money. And when I asked you about firing, I thought that you were going to be like, yeah, like I fire fast. But I sensed a small bit in your voice where it sounded like potentially you were slow to fire because maybe I'm reading too much into your sentiment or your tone of voice, but it was like, I just don't like it.

Well, I don't think anybody likes it. I think we're, we're fast to fire if it is the constraint of the business. And clearly that person is the one limiting us. Like we will not sacrifice the company's growth and the opportunity of all the people who've trusted us with their careers to not have a comfortable conversation. There's also levels of this. And so like, let's say there's like, you know, red, yellow, green, right? If someone's like, well, green, they're great. Fine. So basically you've got maybe like yellow, orange, red. Let's use that as the 3 levels. For me, like if somebody's just not, doesn't have the complete competence, but is not like, they can still do their job, but they're not doing it as well as they should. And they're definitely not going to grow and they can't take on new opportunities. Then that to me is like, A yellow. If they're like, for sure, like they can't actually do their, their, their role right now, that's an orange. If red is like, you can't do the role right now and that thing is required for us to grow. And so that's, that's kind of like, I would say like, we, it's, it's, it's a combination of like, what does the business need? And how incompetent is the person? And so the rates of firing, I think would depend on both of those things. Obviously we want to, like in a perfect world, we get everyone out who's not a fit as soon as humanly possible. It's just that sometimes some people do turn it around with good feedback and coaching. That probably happens half the time. Like, I guess asking myself the question, like, why do I feel bad about making this decision? And then trying to make sure that I'm not acting in the global bad for local good. Like local versus global. Like I think about that as like my way of trying to break through that like terrible feeling you have when you're like, I have to let this person go. It's like, well, if I don't, I'm choosing short-term comfort over long-term discomfort. And I think most of life can be boiled down to people doing that over and over again. As they take the local win, they take the short-term win for the global loss. It's like, if you do that enough times, you get a global catastrophe. And so that's what I try to avoid. And I just put the greater good as the frame as my like little, my little spiritual armor, if you will, of going into it, knowing that like this person might get upset. and this might even, you know, dramatically inconvenience this person's life in the short term, but like I owe it to the other zillion people who also have put their, you know, their careers, their lives in, you know, my hands to a degree from a decision-making process. Like I owe it to them. And so that's what kind of gets me over the hump to pull the trigger faster.

The Founders Podcast. You ever heard that by David Senra?

Yeah.

It's awesome. I love it. And I love reading biographies. Of like historical entrepreneurs. And a common thing that I get from the Founders podcast is patience and basically like doing something for decades. That's another thing that I've gotten from your content, which is like things take a long time. They take longer than you think. It's going to be harder than you think. And I believe that to be true. But then also I see people like you, and if you go to your YouTube, I think on every description it was like age 26, I was here. Age 27, I was here. Age— and I'm like, I don't think he was very patient. That doesn't read— that doesn't read like a patient person because I think you, if I remember correctly, I'm just making this up, I think you started acquisition.com at something like the age of 31 and then by like 33 or 34 you had the seminar business that you guys do and it was probably doing many tens of million, probably 8 figures, mid-8 figures in business and very profitable. And I'm like, well, that doesn't seem like something that was— I mean, that was pretty fast. How do you talk about being patient all the time? But you're moving at a wicked, a wicked pace and getting results quickly.

I think the patience is relative to the outcome that you're going for. And so, like, if you, if you're trying to climb Everest, right, your rate of ascension in terms of altitude is going to be significantly faster than somebody who's trying to climb a foothill. The percentage growth might, might be the same though. And so a patient person might be willing to grow at 1, 2, 3, 4% per year towards their ultimate Everest. But it's just that 4% of Everest is significantly faster than 4% of a foothill. And so the absolute difference will be different, but the relative difference, which is like what I'm quote measuring myself against, is where I feel patient. And I think that's where the whole macro, you know, Macro speed, sorry, macro patience, micro speed is super important. It's like we still need, we still have deadlines, we still need to move the ball forward, we still have to act with urgency. We still have to ask the question of like, what would it take in order to do this in half the time? What would it take for us to do this in a fifth of the time? And can we do that? Let's do that. And I think I honestly see a lot of the job of the manager or the driver or the operator, depending what term you want to use, as doing that, which is just consistently pulling, like pulling the future forward faster. And like when you're having it, you know, even at the tactical level, like you're having a team meeting and you say, hey, when can you get that done by? They'll give you a date. And then like the follow-up, like, you know, a level 1 manager, level 0 manager doesn't ask when there's, when the deadline is. A level 1 manager would be like, would just accept the deadline. Like a level 2 manager would be like, well, what else do you have that's blocking you right now from getting that done? And they might say, well, I have these 3 things. And at that point they might say, well, this is more important than those things. So do this first. And then with that new knowledge, what is your new deadline? And they might say like, okay, instead of end of week, I can get it, you know, 2 days earlier than that. It's like, okay, how many actual hours do you think this work will take? And they might say like, well, I think it'll probably take 4 hours. And it's like, okay, well, it's noon now. So why isn't it not 4 o'clock today? Right. And I think somebody who's willing to continue to ask those questions and they're like, well, I could do it, you know, today. And so I just wanted to give myself some time. It's like, well, why? Right. And so I think that's, that consistent pulling forward. And the thing is, it's almost like mini confrontational conversations that I think are required in order to move an entire organization at breakneck speed. I mean, I look at Elon a lot as an inspiration from a business perspective and all of his competitors talk about that, just like the maniacal sense of urgency that he carries. And I think a lot of it is that it's just like consistently challenging, like what would it take and is it worth us doing? Like, is it worth it for what it would take? And if the answer is yes, then let's do it. And a lot of people kind of like, they make their decisions within their frame or their realm of reality when that's not based on anything besides their own conjecture or some arbitrary timeline of what they think it should take.

I've always been like curious as to how people get to that level because like, for example, I was a track athlete in high school and college. And I remember thinking in high school, I'm the shit because I was so much better than like everyone else. And then you like get around Division I guys and you're like, oh my God, like I'm nothing. Like there are so many levels and then you like get risen up to that level or you don't or you get hurt and you just don't. You're like, oh, I'm just, I'm not good enough. And then when I'm hanging out with guys like you or when I think of Elon Musk who have these like super intense things, like I'll read something you put out, you're like, when I get a new lead, I call them in 60 seconds. And if I can't do that, I hire someone and her full-time job is calling someone in 60 seconds. And I'm like, That makes so much sense. Why did I think that calling someone in 15 minutes was adequate? And this is just a really small example, but then it goes all the way up to like building rockets, you know, where it's like, oh, I'm not, I'm not going to leave the warehouse for 3 weeks. So how do you think that people get their standards to be raised to this like extreme level? Like, were you around other extreme people and you're like, oh my gosh, there's so much more to do. That's now the standard. Or do you think that some people are just born extreme And, and they, they just get there and they bring others to that level.

I think it's probably a nature-nurture question. And to be clear, I don't know the answer. This is just my two cents. I've always been a really intense person. Um, like my, my father, my whole upbringing used to always say like balance. He's like, you're so unbalanced. You're so unbalanced because like, as soon as I'd find something, I would just want to do nothing besides that thing until I had like finished it or, you know, whatever it was. And so I do think there's a component of that. The other aspect though is like, I for sure have had call it beliefs broken, you know, frame shifts from people who were ahead of me. Like me even observing Elon, you know, it stretches the horizon of what, you know, I think we can accomplish. And, you know, it's actually in some ways very refreshing to think like, okay, you know, where was Elon when he was 36, right? Versus, you know, 56 or whatever, you know, however old he is now. And he had such an exponential crescendo in his career that to me, it's like, it's actually very like, inspiring that it just, it just takes time. And a lot of that, I think what takes time for entrepreneurs is there's just so many skills required to be a good entrepreneur. And you have to be like very good at all of them. That's why I see entrepreneurship as the single greatest path of personal development. Like you get real-time feedback that you suck. And then at some point, most of us on some level get to a level of success and then say like, this is enough, or I'm not willing to make the trade-offs beyond this point in other areas, because it depends on the entrepreneur that you ask, but I would say the vast majority of entrepreneurs want to win the game of life and business is a component, is one of the games within the larger game of life. Some people get lost to whatever game they're in or they just consciously choose that that game is more important to them. I mean, like Steve Jobs accomplished a lot. I think there's, there's been a lot that's been documented about his, you know, personal life suffering, you know, as a result of his professional career. You could make an argument that he was amazing, net positive for humanity, but on the micro level, he lived a harder existence. Elon is probably another one of those people. A lot of people don't, wouldn't want Elon's life. And he says, you wouldn't want my life. That's probably a lot of my, a lot of my free, like shower time right now is like, when you know the price of the thing you want, like it's okay to go into a store, see something you like, and then not buy it.

Why are you questioning that now? Is it because you just had this huge launch and you like hit a, hit a milestone that you're like, Oh my God, I wanted this the whole time and I finally got it. And maybe I didn't want it as much as I want. Or do you feel?

Well, I had a confluence of 3 things happen within 30 days. So I had, call it a 4-plus-year project come to an end, which was a lot of my shower time, was around the whole $100 million series and the culmination of the Money Models launch. So that was one. There was obviously a financial outcome that was quickly happened at the launch. That's the second thing. Then the third thing is my mother died within 30 days. And so it was a very interesting mix of different emotions within that period of time. And so I have, you know, I've had a lot of time to reflect on like, what are the things that matter most? And so like in writing, I mean, I think everyone's heard the advice, like write your own eulogy and then try to live that way. It's that most people don't actually take the time to write their own eulogy. But in writing her eulogy, it was, it was interesting to see like what portion, if we had a pie chart, of this eulogy is going to be dedicated to her accomplishments. And she was a relatively accomplished person, um, compared to the rest of it, which was about service and character. And the vast majority of it was service and character. And so in thinking about that, it's like, okay, well then if I were to apportion my time based on what my eulogy percentages would be, I would probably not have the same pie chart that I do now. That being said, You know, life is, has a lot of years. And so maybe that slice of pie chart, that's the first 2 or 3 sentences or whatever, might be 15 years. And then there's just another period of 15 years afterwards or 30 years afterwards that are different slices of that chart. Yeah. If you, if you live, right? If you live, like she had, she had a freak accident. So hers was a sudden death. And so, yeah. So that's what I think about a lot is, is the trade-offs because I think most of like, because obviously I have a lot of content that's going out there just because people tend to ask me stuff about hard work. And the reason I think I tweet so much about it is because it's always top of mind for me. So like, I don't have a, we talked about this at the beginning, but like, I don't have a content schedule or I don't have like a, you know, I'm looking at trending tweets and thinking, oh, how do I do my own spin on this? Like, that's not how I make content. I tweet whatever is top of mind and the things that come out are the things that I'm thinking about. And you can kind of like see the trends of whatever I'm thinking about in a specific season. But if you just take the aggregate of like a month of tweets, it's like, oh, Alex is thinking about this right now.

Yeah, you're like in a lawsuit and you're like talking about like being tough or having grit or like, you know, like overcoming an obstacle. Yeah.

Like people betraying you and like all this stuff has been a part of it.

Or you're making all this money and it's like gratitude, you know what I mean?

And so I think there's two things that I think make entrepreneurship hard. Number one is uncertainty. It's just the, the absolute kind of like soul crushing uncertainty that is always present throughout your day, every day while you're making decisions. And it's just always this idea like you might lose and you don't know. And then the, the other component that makes it so difficult is the known quantities that you believe that you're going to have to trade in order to get the unknown. I guess there is some uncertainty there too, the unknown upside. And so it's like we can always quantify the downside, the thing that we trade, and we cannot quantify the upside. And so I think about that a lot because I think a lot of entrepreneurship, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs that I see, especially common with like, you know, the lifestyle entrepreneurs, 'cause I get tons of flak from that community. And that's okay. Like I just, I just see that as like, we all get to whatever level that we're willing to trade, trade for. But I just see them as trade-offs. And I think most of the regrets that people have are wanting the upside from a decision or a path not taken without taking into account the downside that they didn't suffer.

What's the pie chart like now?

I mean, I think, I think for now it's, it's almost entirely business. I would say like I probably have 15% that's probably dedicated to like marriage stuff, like marriage Layla stuff, and probably 15% that's dedicated to like health stuff. So I'm probably like 70% work, 15% health, 15% marriage.

What do you think when you're in the— when you're thinking about what it should be, do you ever think like, well, I would like to try on this style or this?

Yeah, I think I would love to see a world where like 25 to 30% is business. I'd love to see what happens there. I also think that there might be like, and I say this understanding like the position that I'm in to say this, which is I'm approaching a point where more hours really doesn't like so much more of it at this point will be the leverage of the decisions that I make more than the work that I do. And so I think I'm feeling, I'm feeling that transition right now. And so it might be.

That could have been earlier though. I mean, I, you know, I just feel it now for whatever that's worth. He's got a good team, I guess.

Yeah. The team is, the team is getting, is getting better and better and better. We have a huge amount of true A-level talents coming in. Very excited about that. But yeah, a lot of the leverage is on the decision-making and maybe it's just that some of the bets that I made 5 years ago have come to fruition and have paid off, which then just give more, more leverage. right? Because I mean, fundamentally output is just volume times leverage. And so, I mean, I could maybe make the argument that if I did even more, Elon still works a lot. So if you do a lot of volume and with a lot of leverage, you build rockets and build trillion-dollar businesses. So like, you know, I don't say that thinking that I'm somehow immune to it.

25% business. What else?

Oh, it would probably just be a more even spread. It would probably be like maybe 25%, you know, I'd probably keep, I think health would probably be still around 15-ish percent. I might change what I do there, but I think I have an appropriate amount from the health category. I assume I'll just, I'll bucket Layla as just family, wife at all. I just think the percentages will change. You know what? I'll just say that. I don't know what they are. I think they will change from what they currently are. I feel confident in that.

What's a non-business pursuit that you'd want to put in there potentially?

I don't know. And I think I need to create the space in order for that to get filled. Like, I don't think I will have a difficulty in finding things to fill my time.

I think I don't know of you to have any, we're buddies, but We're not terribly close, but I don't— I've never—

like, we're not that close.

Well, we're like, we're like, I would say we're friends, but like, we've known each other for off and on for a couple of years now. And I've never seen you show interest in hobbies. Like, over the— like, I like history. I love— I like buying clothes. I think clothes are cool. I like cars. I like motorcycles. Like, I have, like, hobbies where I'm like, I'm passionate about X, Y, and Z. But I have never heard of you to like anything other than your wife and working out and business? And business.

Yeah, those have been my big three. I would say that I would define myself as for the first time in 15 years, not even 15, because I wanted to start making money when I was like 15. So it's, I guess it's been 21 years. It's the first time in my life where I've been open to having other priorities. I don't know what they are, like straight up. I don't know. I don't know what they will be. Um, and maybe I, maybe I'll just discover that I like the life that I have now, but it's the first time that I've been like, huh, I am open to this mix changing.

Uh, Andrew Ross Sorkin. Um, he's got this new book called 1929. I'm in the middle, in the middle of reading it. I think you read science fiction, right?

Yeah. It's just purely.

Yeah. I like science fiction. I like, uh, some of the more popular ones, but I'm a big history guy. And this book, uh, 1929, it's about the, um, Great Depression. And how it came to be. And basically credit had just become a thing. So credit— GM, uh, invented it so you could get a car on a loan, and then eventually other appliances on a loan. And then Sears was like, oh, we'll do a layaway thing, we'll give you credit so you can buy clothing. And then Citibank, which back then was called National Bank, uh, they said, let's do it for stocks and bonds. So you can borrow money and we will let you buy stocks. And they did it at a 10-to-1 ratio, meaning for every $10 of stocks that you have with Citibank, we're going to loan you $100. And so the Great Depression happened because when the market went under, which happens occasionally, happened during COVID it was just like a domino effect because everyone was incredibly overleveraged. And he tells this amazing story about it. And there's like probably 20 characters in the book and they're like the Jamie Dimons of the time. Yeah. And they give you the day-to-day life of these characters and it's really fascinating. And my biggest takeaway from this book so far— well, there's been a bunch of takeaways, but one takeaway is that the executives of these banks, they didn't work that hard. And they were like, they were the Jamie Dimons of the time and their income was the equivalent of $100 million a year. And like one guy had a routine where he's like, I'm up at 6, I exercise, I'm at the office at 10, I'm home by 5. Another guy had a similar routine as that, but then he would take off. He took summer off to go to Europe with his family. And going to Europe meant taking a 3-week boat. And same with Andrew Carnegie. Andrew Carnegie was popular in the late 1800s. He died probably in 1920 or so. He did the same thing where he would barely work. And I read about some of these, like, I think Brian Halligan, who's the founder of HubSpot, just tweeted, he's like, you don't move mountains working 9 to 5. And all these people, yourself included and myself included, talk about hard work. But I like see all these other examples and I'm like, isn't it crazy how much you can get done by actually not working hard? And lately I've been like interested by some of those examples. Have you ever read about that?

I haven't read about it, but I've definitely observed it with some people that, you know, are further ahead than I am. I think what's always difficult is like, do I model the top of the mountain or do I model the climb? Like, am I trying to extrapolate how someone currently lives for what they did to get there? And that one's always a really dangerous one that I try and catch myself on, which is like, you know, we're in different seasons. And so I have to make sure that I'm comparing this person's spring, uh, you know, to my spring, not, not my winter to their spring.

Well, like all these, like, I'm just, I can list so many people where I read these books and I'm like, you don't work hard at all. What the hell? It's like, what am I doing? Uh, like Ted Turner was another guy. He, he, Ted Turner, when he built CNN, which made him a multi-billionaire, he was also a professional sailboat racer where he was gone for 3 months at a time racing sailboats. Uh, and so anyway, I could, I could give you so many examples of that. It's just crazy.

Wait, let's, let's take that for a second. 'Cause I think that like, let's say, let's say like within your business, let's say that you could find the perfect Sam, just as a, a thought routine, right? The perfect Sam that you could hire and whatever you could pay the perfect Sam to do, and he could do everything you can do just as well as you can. It's like, so whatever your current profit is minus Sam's compensation, if you could do that, then you would have almost the same amount of money you have now. And maybe in 2 years, Perfect Sam would grow the pie so that you're making the same or more than you're making right now, but you're still not working at all. And so if that's the case, then it's like, we're always like in the hypothetical world, we're one hire away from somebody who could do 100% of what we're currently doing and the business would be able to continue to grow. I think to that point about patience is like, but most entrepreneurs are like, well, I'll find that person, I'll give it to that person and then I'll start the next job. Whereas some other people just say like, I'm just not going to start that next job and then just be willing to let the company continue to grow with the team that I've assembled. And I think both like fundamentally, if you work or you don't work, as long as the business performs these functions, it will grow.

I heard you say something kind of interesting. So a lot of people shit on course makers and I was thinking about my life and like I've bought a lot of courses actually. And many of them were, were not only great, they changed my life.

Yeah.

One of my good buddies, Neville Beddoura, had a copywriting course, changed my life. I took it, it changed my life. And there's been a bunch of others. Have you ever bought or taken any courses? And which one, if you did, was game-changing for you?

The biggest things that have really changed my life was actually like, have been, have been net, like networks of people. Um, more than anything, like getting in the room with people who are ahead of me. Within the current realm or even across realms from me, that was the stuff that really changed my life the most. For sure, from the tactical level, books, courses, things like that, workshops, seminars, like those things. Absolutely. Like I'm, I am a product of the alternative education world. Like I have no reservations about that. I am, some people were able to learn on their own. I was willing to pay to learn from people who are ahead of me. And it was more than, more than worth it. But I think that the biggest, So basically there's two types of knowledge, right? You have declarative knowledge, which is knowledge about stuff. And then you have procedural knowledge, which is knowledge how to do stuff. The courses and DIY stuff is predominantly procedural, which is here's how you set up a landing page. Here's how you write copy. Here's how you structure a video sales letter or whatever. Right. And then there's the, I see that the networks and affiliations. And when you meet people who are further ahead of you, those are where you get their quote beliefs broken. That's where you learn about stuff. That you didn't know was possible. And that about stuff could be like, I didn't know you could work 4 hours a week and make that kind of money. I didn't know that real estate worked that way. I didn't know that the insurance industry was so profitable or whatever it is. Right. And those were, I think, where I had my order of magnitude increases. So say like my incremental increases in, in business were always just, you know, developing more blocking and tackling skills. Like I have to learn how to do a webinar. I have to learn how to do a sales call. I have to, you know, all these things, but where the like increment, like the large step, step function increases have been through association with people that were just way further ahead and we were like, hey man, let me tell you what the next 5 years looks like. If you keep doing what you're doing, this is what you need to do instead.

Who's on your list of, of people who you'd kill to meet and spend and spend time with or shadow for a day?

Most of mine are the obvious ones. Like I would love to, I'd love to shadow Elon. I'd love to shadow Zuck. I'd love to shadow Bezos. I'd love to shadow, honestly, I'd really love to shadow Bezos like 10 years ago. Because actually I'm not even sure what his, what his Working, you know, what he's doing now, because he's got Blue Origin and he's got, you know, I think he's got other things going on, but like people who are in the thick of the game, I would love to, because a lot of it is just like, how are they like, what frameworks are they using to think through these decisions? Because they've made these decisions a bunch of times. So like, I would love to just get that framework because if I could apply that to my current state, then I would move faster.

I hear you learn these frameworks and I'm like, man, that is crazy that he is memorizing this stuff. But not just memorizing it, but he, when I hear him talk about it, I believe that he actually uses this in his day-to-day life. And, uh, I, I would like to get better at that. I'm just amazed at how much information you retain.

Thanks. I think that if you are not good at predicting what is going to happen next, life will be hard for you. And the better you get at predicting what's going to happen next, the more you will get what you want. And so then being able to predict what's going to happen. Requires an accurate framework of how reality works. And I think that that's where, you know, if you've lost everything, then you can rebuild it again. It's because you accurately review reality and it wasn't luck. You can redo it again. And so for me, I think a big part of it was like, or still is, I find like the most people don't know what they're saying most of the time. Like the vast majority of people spend their time regurgitating and re-parroting things that they never thought about and saying words that they don't understand. Because if you ask someone, when they say, hey, I think you should do this, I would just say like, define that. Or like, hey, my goal is I want to insert thing. Like, I want to feel great about myself. And I'd be like, well, what does that mean? And then they can't define it. I'm like, well, no shit, you haven't hit it. You can't even define what you're going for. Right. And so I think that the single greatest razor that I have for defining reality more accurately has been removing all sentiment, emotion, and quote psychology from the equation and only looking at it from a behaviorist frame of what can I observe? And just saying like, and so basically like if you were to, if you were to, you know, alien comes on Earth or a toddler, depending on how you want to see it and say like, hey, you know, what does trust mean? Right? Like, hey, you're not very trustworthy. I'd be like, well, what does that mean to you? Right? And most times people will just say like a bunch of nonsense back to you. And it's like, well, of course you don't know. Like, and so I find that that's most people and that's why they can't communicate well. And as a result, they don't receive communication well from the world because they don't— like it's two people saying words that neither of them understand. And then they're, and then they just roll the dice to see if they get what they want. And that's how most people live their lives, which is why they don't get what they want because they didn't define what they want. Like the beginning of every one of my books defines terms. The beginning of every legal document, there's a recitation of definitions. And it's like, you need that in order to be precise about what you want.

What's that mean? So like defining what a win would look like, what does success look like? What does a fail look like?

Well, that's, that, those are like the, the, I would say like the big obvious ones, but underneath of that is like the day-to-day life that you have. It's like you ask your wife, it's like, I'd like you to be more loving towards me. It's like, well, what does that mean? Like for real. Like, what is, what is you saying the word, I need you to love me better mean? Does that mean, hey, when I walk in the door, can you come and give me a hug? That's observable. I can see that a court witness could say he came in and did that. Right. And so, but like, again, this is like getting as granular as everything. If we just bring everything down to what is observable in reality, then we can all get to agreement. That's where, like, I think the content that I have somehow seems both the same and different from the stuff that's out there. They're like, man, I listen to Ramon Zuniga about marketing stuff. And like, he says things that I know, but he says it in a different way. And it's like, well, it's because I just think about like, okay, well, what is selling?

Right.

And then a lot of people are like, it's a transference of feeling between two parties, you know, over a bridge of trust.

Right.

And I would say something like that 15 years ago, and I would yell at it to salesmen. I'd be like, dude, sales is just a transference of belief over a bridge of trust. It's like, that sounds amazing. There's nice visuals. It's like, but what the fuck does that mean? Like, how do I go transfer belief over a bridge of trust? I'm like, go transfer belief over a bridge of trust. And they're like, I don't know how to do that. It's like, of course you don't. Of course you don't. I don't either. Right? Of course you don't. It's a bridge. I need a fucking bridge. Who's got a bridge? And how do I give them this belief? Right? And so it's natural to use shorthand with language because it's faster to transfer ideas, except neither party defined the term. And that's where a lot of quote miscommunications come from. And so I think to be an accurate communicator, it's like we have to define terms before we can actually engage in this conversation, which is annoying for some people, but it's also required if you want to have like effective communication. And so for that whole like salesperson thing, it's like, well, what is selling? It's increasing the likelihood that someone makes a purchasing decision. Done. That's all it is. We just increase the likelihood. And so that is your job is to increase the likelihood to make a purchasing decision. And we know that there's a number of variables that, that affect that, that, that percentage. And that's what the ones that. That we can affect, that we can observe. And I think we just leave it there, then we get all of this hullabaloo and all of the manifestation and the synchronicities and the energy and the men, you know, all this crap out of there. And maybe that stuff's true, but I can't see it. So, and so how do I transfer it? I don't know. And so I just talk about the observable world and it has made my life so much better and my ability to predict what's going to happen next so much better.

Dude, this is why I like, by the way, uh, Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Very tactical. So like the takeaway that everyone will have for that book, well, at least one of them will be you say someone's name, say someone's name, because that's the most beautiful sound in the English language. Very tactical. And another really tactical thing that I love reading that more people should do, particularly if you're, if you work in the internet world, old school direct response copywriting books. So Claude Hopkins, David Ogilvy is a little bit newer. Joe Sugarman's a little bit newer. Kennedy. I love reading those books. Those books are my favorite because they are the most tactical, but they also teach you about life.

They're also great writers.

You know who's the best? I think is Felix Dennis. Have you read Felix Dennis, How to Get Rich?

Yeah, dude.

The best, the best writing I've ever read. Or like Dan Kennedy, who is a copywriter.

Somehow he has books on like management, which I'm like, don't, don't read that book, dude.

He's like in the beginning. Okay, so in the beginning of the book, he's like, I don't have any employees because I hate employees, but let me write this long book about managing a company. And I read it and I'm like, you are a quack, man. But some of your advice is actually quite good. But he's so good at telling these stories and he makes 'em tactical, which is what a really good copywriter does. And so it becomes quite actionable. Maybe you're gonna take the wrong action, uh, but it's very, it's very actionable. Do you ever read those old, old school copywriting books?

No, I did when I basically, when I was, when I was in my like rocket cutscene of learning marketing, I read all that stuff. Stuff. I haven't read much of it lately because I feel like, you know, like the Midwit meme.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I feel like the Midwit meme is one of my favorite memes of all time because it just, it's, it's been so true for me in so many domains of my life. It's like, you know, when I started lifting, it was like, add more weight, eat protein, try hard, you know what I mean? And like, do it over and over again. And that was like, that was it. Right. And then I got into like, you know, periodization and like, you know, volume blocks, then, you know, peaking cycles and like, You know, you know, we have to have undulating periods. We have to have like, you know, this is better for hypertrophy, this is better for strength. I get all this like complexity, right? And then like fast forward now, it's just like, dude, just, just eat protein, add, add more weight to the bar and, you know, thank your parents for genetics, like whatever. Now, of course, the comments will be like, and Alex takes testosterone, which I've been public about, so deal with it. And so I think the same thing with marketing. And so like a lot of it is—

Did your testosterone make you more Persian? Was it Persian testosterone? I don't know.

Maybe I think it's all genetics.

Is that the PED? Is being bored Persian?

Um, if anything, I think, I think the testosterone would decrease the amount of hair I have on my head at least. But anyways, um, but yeah, but like with marketing, it's like, it's so much like no persuasion occurs in the vague. Like persuasion occurs in the specific. And so when it's like, all right, I knew he, he just like, if you can articulate someone's pain to them. More accurately than they can, they will buy what you have to sell without even hearing much about whatever your offer is. If someone describes every pain in your life in excruciating detail, you're like, if this guy knows this much about my pain, he has to know how to solve it. And what's also nice about pain specifically is that pain is more motivating than promise. And so it's also more compliant. Because if we think about like, what, like, what is a salesperson? What is marketing in general? Like, we just simply motivate someone to take action, right? We increase the likelihood that they see this message, they take a desired action. And so it's like, well then where does the basis of motivation come from? Which is a super complex question. And so for me, motivation comes from deprivation and we have to deprive the prospect or increase their perception of deprivation around the out, the, you know, the action that's associated with whatever thing that we want them to do. Or so the outcome associated with the action we want them to take. And so that comes from like when people are like, the pain is the pitch, which is one of my little isms is like, The pain is the pitch. Like if you, if you can accurately do that, and it's not about like fancy words, it's not, not at all. It's, it's, you know, it's short words, short sentences, clearly defined that it takes no brainpower to process. And yet it still has emotional resonance because of the specificity. So like, lose weight fast probably worked as the first weight loss ad in 1930. And then everyone was like, wow, that's short words. That's amazing. But then they had to get like more nuanced. And so it's like, you just have to keep breaking words down into like, what does that really mean?

Like, it's like, what is like, have you ever been like the overweight girl who, uh, wanted to take the photo instead of being the photo? You know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah. No. And that's real. Like, have you ever walked in the beach and your thighs chafed together? Have you ever always had a coverall when your friends were in bikini? Like, have you felt weird about, you know, you putting your own sunscreen on? Have you been like, In pictures, you said like, do you duck out? When you put your pants on that you used to wear, do you keep, do you find yourself holding your breath for longer and longer in order to put them on? Like those are spec, you know, specifics. Right. And like that's where copy is driven, which is why you have to know the customer, which is why in my opinion, some of the best marketers, like the truly goated marketers can advertise pain that they have not experienced. But the vast majority of marketers who are good in specific spaces, know the avatar because they are the avatar, or at least were the avatar.

One time we, I had this designer when I lived in San Francisco working for my company, The Hustle, and we had this like new product that we were testing. It was like $300 a year. And she made this beautiful page and I'm like, you guys are insane. The design of this means nothing. And they're like, what do you mean? Like, they're like, I spent so long on this logo. I'm like, oh my God, watch this. And I like wrote out a Google Doc and then I, at the bottom of the Google Doc, I had a link to an Eventbrite page because that was the fastest way I could create, like, I was like, this isn't actually an event, but it's just the easiest way that I can accept your money. And once I get your money, then I'm going to send you the product manually. The most jankiest thing ever. We drove something like $5,000 of Facebook ads to each of the things. The pretty one drove, it was like next to nothing. Just the Google Doc. I made $50,000 off of, I think, only $5,000 in ad spend. And, uh, I'm like, please listen to me. Copy matters more than anything. Now, if you can marry copy with good design, then that's, that's ideal. And I was like, go and look at like, I was like, I don't know, man, go look at like Apple's page for the iPhone. Like it's the most known product of all time. There's tons of words and also there's tons of images and an image, it really is worth a thousand words. Where I was like, go look at Kindle, go look at the Amazon listing for Kindle. You literally only see copy. There's 10,000 reviews and it's just copy, copy, copy, copy. Copy is the way to go. And I was trying to like convince my team and that was like the final example. I was like, I told you, just good words can sell way better than anything else.

Yeah, I agree. Also, I actually think that that's true with content as well. Like if you're an educator, to be clear, if you're an entertainer, that's different. But like if you're an educator, which most, you know, B2B, anybody who's a business, Uh, whatever. Most businesses are, if they make content, is more on the educational side. Um, whether you're a plumber or otherwise, like you tell people about toilets and then people buy your stuff, right? I did this experiment with my team because sometimes my, my editing team gets like, they get cute, you know, they get, they want to get fancy. So I said, hey, this next one, we're going to do the entire thing on an iPhone. All right. So the whole thing is on an iPhone. The audio is crap. It's shaky. A guy's holding it. No tripod. Like, no, that's all it was. But Um, it was just about like a concept that I knew was going to do really well. And it got like, you know, 1.7 or something, almost 2 million views, uh, from that video. And I was like, we spend so much time in post on some of these videos and like, it doesn't matter. Now it might matter a little bit. It might matter 10%, but are we appropriately allocating the resources towards the thing that's going to get us the highest return? And the answer is almost always no, because the words are the hard part. The words you have to think, and that's what most people avoid.

You know, last time we talked was about 10 days ago or something like that. And, um, I needed, uh, someone to— I wanted to talk to you today because I enjoyed our conversation and I was like, I don't want to plan. I just want to have a conversation with Alex. And like Ari made a joke. She was like, I want you to talk in soundbites. I was like, that's the exact opposite of what I want. I don't want you to talk in any soundbites. I just want to see what's up and just catch up with you. And I'm happy we did that.

No, I am too, man.

All right.

I'll, if you want, I can just read like 5 tweets in a row and then Sam can react.

Yeah. You're, you're a fortune cookie.

That's what you are.

You're a fortune cookie.

Would that be better?

I'll just, I'll just read. So is that really your writing process? Do you just like write like one sentence? One sentences?

Well, for tweets, yes. Um, that's exactly what it is. Um, like literally it's, it's 100%.

What do you use? ChatGPT?

No, no. I don't use any AI for the tweets.

Come on, dazzle me. Wine and dine me with some lines.

Either sell extremely expensive to a select few or sell something super cheap to everyone. The middle is where people die.

You're making me weak at the knees, Alex. Keep going.

Right. Poor people stay poor because they want a fast way to get rich. If you're in your 20s and want to stand out, do what you say you're going to do, even if no one is there to give you applause. The fastest way to stand out is to put in more effort than everyone else. Show up early, use names, do your research ahead of time, smile when you greet people, do more than your fair share, follow up quickly. Work ethic is the universal currency of respect, and it costs you nothing but can give you everything.

That was a Facebook post of yours the other day. I liked it.

Well, they repurposed it from my Twitter. Uh, you must first become misunderstood before you can become great.

Yeah, man, these are great.

Yeah. How to win. Realize no one is coming to save you. Take responsibility for your current position. Be willing to sacrifice who you are for who you want to be. The fastest way to become confident is to build evidence. Build yourself a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are. Do so much volume that you don't have to doubt whether you can do it or not.

That one broke the internet.

Yep. It's very hard to have a vision when you have bills to pay. I said that one at the workshop and like the whole room let out like an audible gasp. And so the team was like, all right, that one's pre-tested. We know that one won't work.

That one was a freestyle. That was a riff. You raw dogged that one.

A bunch of these were, but, um, that one was like word for word. I didn't change anything. Fastest way to change your life is to get around people whose minimum standards are your life goals. Kind of like what we were talking about earlier. Friendly reminder that feeling lost, anxious, and uncertain are good signs. It means you're pushing past where you know. They're called growing pains for a reason. Do the work tired, do the work nervous, do the work imperfectly, do the work even when you don't feel like it, because no matter how bad you feel when you start, you know exactly how you feel when you finish. You have to risk looking broke to get rich. You have to risk looking weak to get strong. You have to risk looking desperate to get loved. Egos hold back more dreams than failure and rejection ever will.

Everything you like, you just speak in like ad headlines. This is amazing.

Avoiding people who make it harder for you to achieve your goals is the highest form of self-care.

What do you write all this on?

I just, I just use like an automation tool, like just a generic one. Also, one of the ways that I'll do it is nicely, like a lot of my audience will like hear a livestream or whatever, and then they'll like, they'll tag me in a quote that they heard me say. And then I'll be like, oh, great. So I'll like quote them quoting me as my tweet. I'll be like, oh, they thought that was good. So I'll just say that.

It's like Michael Scott doing the Wayne Gretzky quote.

Well, I think some of it, like, because part of what we're talking about is rhetoric, right? There's the idea and then there's how you communicate it. And some of these things have like rhythm to them. So it's like when you have opposites, you have good and then bad, you have, you know, high and then low, uh, you have given, then get like there's, there's opposites that happen in, you know, contrast that happens in the words. There's typically power in threes. People like having threes when you have sets, repetition, um, alliteration. Those are all things that like, if you're thinking about like, okay, how can I say this in a way that would sound better than just like, hey, do, do hard stuff. What permutation of that can I, you know, combine some of these other kind of writing elements into it to make it easier to remember?

I think you were talking about the Midwit meme. I was joking with Sean where I was like, in the beginning of my career, I listened to all motivational stuff and self-help stuff. And then in the, like when I was building my first company, that kind of made me, uh, you know, get, get a little something. I did not do anything. I was like, no motivation stuff. I just need to get to it now that like, I call this like second mountain stuff, which is like, yeah, I'm now focused on thriving, but also raising a good family and like building a legacy of a company. I'm not particular. I mean, getting riches or making more money, that is a nice— I want that, no doubt about it. But it's like not number one. And once I'm in that phase of my life, which I am, I am back to the motivational stuff.

Totally. I think when we change goals, we become deprived around some other thing. Like we notice a discrepancy in our lives and I think we solve for the greatest discrepancy. So like in the beginning, like the biggest discrepancy was for me was like, I'm broke, dude. Like, it doesn't matter what, like I'm broke. I can't do anything. I can't make an impact. I can't support a family. I can't, I can't, I can't live where I want to live. Like I just, all of that. So that becomes the glaring hot pain in my life. And then like, once that's solved, it's like, okay, well, what I'm, I'm not pain-free, right? Like there's still pain. And so then you have other things that become the pains of your life and those become the things that you're deprived of. I do think that we're, exceptionally good at finding problems. So I don't think that's going to like go away. I think you just get different problems as you level up. And I will also say like on a personal note, I'm about as happy as I was 2 years ago as I was probably 2 years before that. Like I'm not, I'm not like materially different in terms of my like subjective wellbeing. And so I think I, it's like, well, what else am I going to do? And when I also think about these things that quote, you know, could potentially stress me out or even these opportunities that I want to pursue, I try to fast forward the present, which is like, I'll probably be just about as happy and content as I am now, which also eliminates a lot of the FOMO, which I think some people suffer from a lot of like regrets of like, oh, I should have done that thing or I should have done that up this opportunity or should have made that bet or I should have dated that girl or whatever your thing is. Right. It's like, well, you'd probably be about as happy or unhappy as you are right now. And that actually like has dramatically quelled down the amount of attention that I allocate to those paths not taken because they're just completely unproductive.

Yeah, but I think people get there. Like, I'm, I'm, I'm so happy. I've never been happier in my whole entire life right now. I like my job. I love my family. I'm happy with my fitness. I like living where I live. I love my unit, my apartment where I live. I love living near my in-laws. I like my team. And, you know, Aristotle has this idea of flourishing where he was like, you have to live a virtuous life. And like, one of the virtues is courage. On one end of courage is like being reckless. On the other one is being like a pussy. Like to be— I think that's what he said.

That's an exact quote.

Yeah. And there's like 14 virtues and like you want to like be in the middle, like, which is courage. Same with like being charitable. You know, you don't want to be like ostentatious and you don't want to be tight. You want to be charitable. And I was like, I'm, I'm kind of in that right now. I love that. And so I'm happier than I've ever been. And I think that you have to get— and what Aristotle also says is you need money. To do that. He was like, you don't need a lot of money, but you need enough money to own things that make you happy, that are beautiful. And you also need enough time to have leisure time, because leisure time's important. And what's interesting is like you were saying like that you're, you're, I think you said you're happy right now, but you said you're not going to be happier probably with anything else. I would argue it sounds like you're looking for leisure time actually, which is, I didn't really, I didn't realize that until just now since talking about Aristotle. Like that's the way, like the one thing, like hobbies. Is basically what he said. Like you need a hobby and business has been your hobby for a long time, but maybe like, maybe you're, that'd be kind of fun to see like what, what is actually your hobby going to be?

I think I'll probably, I'll probably like, I am happiest when I write. Yeah. And so I will probably write a book that has no real financial benefit for me. So I'll probably end up writing a book about some of the topics we talked about today around like learning and behavior, because it's something that I'm endlessly fascinated by. And I think that's like the defining terms. I think that will be something that I will write, and I think it has the potential to change more people's lives than all the other books put together, but we'll see.

Dude, I'm so happy you came on. Um, all right, that's it. That's the pod.