E200: 21 Harsh Truths Nobody Will Ever Tell You - Alex Hormozi - How I Invest with David Weisburd

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
What is something that billionaires do thatwould surprise the majority of the population?
Is they would probably be surprised by thelevel of agency that billionaires will
demonstrate.
Like, they're they come up to their ownconclusions on their own.
And if everyone disagrees with them, thengreat.
Because they got there by disagreeing with themasses.

(00:20):
And so, like, you can't have an exceptionaloutcome and also do what everyone else does.
Like, it's such an underappreciated,underestimated component of success to get
outsized returns.
If you only believe what you believe or act inthe way that you act because of other people's
approval or it was because someone else's idea,it's very difficult to maintain conviction for

(00:43):
an extended period of time.
And so if you find yourself waffling, it'ssimply because the ideas that you're adhering
to are not your own.
If the whole world shouts at you that two plustwo is five, and if you know that there's a big
pile of money, then you're almost excited thatmost people don't agree with you because you're
like, it's just gonna mean a bigger pot at theend.
Alex, welcome back.
Thank you for having me.
You say that entrepreneurship Yeah.

(01:05):
Is a game of the heart, not the head.
What do you mean by that?
I suppose everything could be boiled down toskills, but the ability to continue to persist,
some people would probably think of this as aspiritual battle if you wanna use, you know,
that language, but fundamentally just learningto have a long extinction curve on behaviors,

(01:26):
which is like, you know, many people neverknock and then a huge amount of people will
knock maybe once, but then very few will knocka 100 times in a row after a door not being
opened.
And I think that that's what it takes.
Because if you think about two naturalextremes, I think about this a lot, like, okay,
let's just take this to the natural extreme.
It's like, well, if you have somebody who'sabsolutely brilliant and another person who's

(01:49):
absolutely a 100% determined, I think it mighthave been actually Andreessen.
We're talking about this earlier.
It's like, if you actually, this Horowitz.
But, like, you start taking points fromdetermination and very quickly, you've just got
this philosopher who does nothing.
Right?
On the other hand, you take a few points ofintelligence and you can keep taking points
away and this guy's going to win.

(02:10):
And so I think about that as like, if you onlyhad two things, which is get better, don't
stop, winning becomes guaranteed.
It's just expanding the time horizon longenough to allow the win to occur.
And so if we think about entrepreneurship asthe infinite game, then the only goal is to not
stop playing, which is why I think it's more ofa a game of the heart than the mind.

(02:32):
Why do you think human beings systematicallyunderappreciate how long it takes for them to
be successful?
I think it's because time is actually reallydifficult to observe.
So if you think about like, I've been thinkingabout this a lot with regards to like, why is
it that when people come in person to work withLeila and I, the speed of behavior change is so
rapid and they're able to assimilate traitsvery quickly from us, whereas remotely, it's

(02:58):
more difficult.
And I think it's like like, for example,consistency is something that's incredibly
important for most human endeavors.
But you can't witness consistency unless you'rewith someone consistently.
Right?
Like, if you see someone practice like, can'tdo a montage of consistency.
You can't really experience it in ten seconds.
It actually has to like, you have to experienceconsistency with time.

(03:21):
And I think that's why it's so hard because theparts where people take pictures are the
beginning and the end, but the middle is wherethe race is won, and that's on your own.
And I think that's why it's so hard for peopleto transfer, like, for that skill to transfer,
which is why sometimes it's like, you know, Ilearned this from my dad.
Saw him every single day just going in.
Because, like, that kind of proximity is, Ithink, the only thing that gives you kind of a
window into the reality.

(03:41):
What other skills or advantages accrue to thosethat are around excellence?
So Angela Duckworth wrote this book calledGrit.
You might have read it.
What I thought was really like, one of the mostinteresting things I thought about the book was
if you wanna win, join a winning team.
Right?
It's because there's so many so manymicrobehaviors that exist on the team that just

(04:03):
become standard practice, and there's alreadyreinforcers in place for, you know, award and
punishment for all of these behaviors, which iswhy that team's a winning team, that you kind
of, by default, learn to do a 100 small skillsin order to be successful overall.
How do you know what you don't know?
This ignorant step that you talk about.
Oh, yeah.

(04:29):
It's a really good question.
I mean, spent the I spent I spent all the timeand all the money that I have to try and solve
ignorance debt.
And so I don't I don't know if there's asolution besides like trying to talk to people
who are ahead of you, who can help you lookaround corners and being it's it's I think I
think advice is one of the hardest things toeven think about because so much advice is

(04:50):
wrong because people lack context.
Right?
Or they have misaligned incentives, which ishuge.
Either they lack lack context, they lackconfidence, or they lack incentive.
And if you have any of those three that areoff, the advice is not necessarily good.
And so and that's it's common to have one of atleast one of those three off.
And so it's like advice is so tough because atsome points, like, you have to have a a
parallel kind of engine that's like, have to bewilling to take advice, but I have to run it

(05:14):
through some sort of filter that I'mresponsible for, which, you know, typically
would be some sort of, you know, firstprinciples reasoning of like, does this make
sense?
Given the the things that I absolutely know tobe true.
And a lot of people can't bridge that gap.
And so there are some people who actually dohave maxed out execution, but the problem is
they change direction so quickly because theywill just listen to different people who give
them different advice that's conflicting.

(05:34):
And not because anybody has bad intentions, butjust because they either aren't competent
enough or they don't have enough context orboth.
And human beings are wired they learn frompeople with higher social status.
They let somebody Yeah.
Achieve some kind of skill and they listen tothat person.
Tell me about that, and how does that act as aguide to contextualize information?

(05:57):
So really interesting question because it's soI think it's it's like what so I think many
people give advice.
Some people's advice is listen to more thanothers, which we could ladder up to, like, some
people have more influence than others.
And then it's then what then what are thethings that create influence that make your
advice more likely to be followed than others?

(06:19):
And so you have status, which is somebody whowho is controlling reinforcers.
So if you have money, you have fame, you havesomething that other people want and you
control that, and that gives you status in anyin any situation.
Right?
Like, you're a bartender in the bar, you havestatus because you control scarce resource.
As soon as you walk out of the bar, your statusdisappears.
But right in the bar, have power or sorry.
Excuse me.
Status.

(06:40):
You've got credibility, which is that you'vesaid something that would occur and then it
does occur.
You have power, which is say duecorrespondence, essentially, like, if I say,
hey, follow this recipe, and this is gonnahappen and it's a good thing, and then someone
follows the recipe and then that happens, thenthey're more likely to adhere to instruction
later.
And then finally, likeness, which is howsimilar are we?

(07:01):
Like, I'll tell you a story.
So I had so we had a a small event at ourheadquarters, and there's a a logging company.
It's like loggers, like lumberjacks.
And the guy comes up to me, the guy who'srunning it, and he's like, dude, I've grown
this thing from, you know, $2,000,000 a year to13,900,000.0 in the last four years just
listening exclusively to your content.

(07:22):
And I was like, that's awesome.
And he said, is there any way we can get apicture?
And so I was I was before I, like, had a chanceto answer, he said, just because you have a
hardcore following in the walking community.
And I was like, what do you mean?
He's like, we're all mosey nation.
But it was like it was like dead serious.

(07:44):
And we're thinking about that, and I was like,well, that makes sense.
I was like, I look and dress like this.
I was like, I have such similar likeness.
You know, like, just like I have that as abaseline, and then that's like for the whole
community.
And then the other three above that, it's like,I control some sort of, you know, reinforces
they want, which might be fame or money?
Sure.
I've got that.
Then it's like, okay.
Have I done did he do things that I told him todo and good things happened?

(08:07):
Yes.
So I had power.
That was checked off.
And so it's like, you can look through that asyour litmus test to how much much people or a
specific person will adhere to your directivesbased on that criteria.
So that's kind of how I, like, reverse engineerthat of, like, okay, how much influence do I
have in a given context?
And there's a fifth column, which is trulyfirst principles thinkers

(08:28):
Yeah.
Being able to take in information that you'regiving
Oh, yeah.
Apply kind of pattern matching to their ownexperience and saying, this guy knows what he's
talking about.
Yeah.
I see this as just like this is the psychologyside, the soft human side of human behavior,
and then there's the physics.
That's kinda like the art and the science.
Like, and then there's the physics side oflike, well, if we want to boil water and we

(08:49):
wanna boil water at a 100 degrees, it's notgonna happen.
So, like, if that's what was required to getthis water over there and has to be boiling,
it's only a 100, like, it's not gonna happen.
Because I found it really interesting and pairalmost paradoxical.
The your mo mosey nation in Silicon Valley ismostly the super successful entrepreneurs and
the billionaire venture capitalists.
And the reason, my theory for that, is they'reable to appreciate your first principles

(09:14):
thinking despite maybe a a pattern matching.
Because that does not match the Evan Spiegeland the Mark Zuckerbergs.
Is something that we've seen, me and my partnerCurtis see it all the time.
The smartest people are like, yeah.
I love I love Hermosia.
I listen to all this stuff, and the otherpeople are inadvertently saying, well, I don't
love the titles.

(09:34):
I don't love the packaging.
Like, it doesn't pattern match to what I thinkis is a great first principle.
Well, that just made my day.
So great.
I'm glad the billionaires in in in in the VCworld like my stuff.
So we alluded to ignorance stat.
Yeah.
Is ignorance stat?

(09:58):
Really good question.
I haven't defined it, and I should have.
I would say it's the delta between the behaviorthat maximizes your trajectory towards a goal
compared to your current behavior set.
And so the discrepancy between those two thingsis the amount of the debt.
And so obviously it's hypothetical because tosome degree, like, no one knows besides God or

(10:22):
whatever your, you know, creator being is ofwhat the perfect move is.
But that delta, I think, represents like, whereyou're at now versus what you should be doing.
And so I see ignorance as the as the differencebetween actual and should.
Another way that I look at it is the unknownunknown.
And what tools or measures can you use to knowhow much ignorance that you have in a specific

(10:44):
domain?
Man, these are really good questions.
My my gut my first initial, you know, thoughtresponse to that was how far away you are from
the top, honestly.
Mhmm.
Like, if somebody's like, I know everythingabout this, and yet they don't have any proof
that they have skills, they have no evidence,then it's tough to say, like like, I people

(11:11):
will probably dislike this, but I I do thinkthat people who are wealthier of the subset of
human beings who would like to make money,whatever subset of.
So if that is the goal, the people who are poorhave a less accurate view of reality.
Mhmm.
And so that distortion impairs their ability toget what they want because they take actions

(11:31):
that they believe will yield the outcome thatthey want and then it doesn't.
And so I see that's why I like entrepreneurshipin general because you have absolute objective
feedback from the marketplace and it's alsotypically very quick.
And so you have so many more feedback loops,which is tougher when you're starting out to
not have this feedback loops unless you're justtrying to start something for you, right?

(11:51):
But all that to say, like, do you know how bigyour IgnisBrad is?
It's just typically the earlier in your journeyyou are, the bigger it is, typically.
And the further away you are from the top ofwhatever endeavor you're going after, the
bigger it is.
The only caveat there is time.
Because some people are on the right path, theyjust haven't given enough time.
Sometimes they're growing extremely fast.

(12:11):
They may not be a billionaire, but they'remaking millions of dollars every month, and
they're they're on the same path.
They might even be growing quicker in wealththan the billionaire who's accumulated it.
And this is where it's really nasty.
So there's have you heard of the pasta towerexercise?
No.
Okay.
So basically, it's like you you take pasta, youhave, you know, marshmallows, gum, whatever it

(12:32):
is.
Right?
You have a couple things and you have to builda pasta tower as tall as you can in like sixty
seconds.
And when you when you do it, if you stop theclock, there's a number of questions that
happen afterwards.
Right?
Which is like, if if I give you ten minutes,would you have built it differently?
Okay.
If we had to build it to as tall as thisbuilding, what if what would you have done

(12:53):
differently?
Right?
And so there's a lot of, like, sub lessons thatI think come from it, but basically, like, the
fastest way to build a $10,000,000 business isnot the fastest way to build a billion dollar
business.
Mhmm.
And so that's where it gets really where itgets more kind of more nuanced.
Right?
So it's like, okay, well, I'm 20 and I'm doing$10,000,000 year.
That may mean that you have something thatcould become a billion dollars, or it might

(13:14):
mean that it's something that isn't reallygonna make more than $30,000,000 a year because
of the nature of how the business is set up.
So it's like, what foundation do we haveunderneath the building that that that were is
it is aligned with the kind of like thefootprint of what would then eventually become
this ultimate thing?
And so how do you recognize that when you don'tknow?
There's a concept in Silicon Valley called a $0business and a $0 business.

(13:38):
Yeah.
It's that same foundation.
Yeah.
And I think a lot of people think they'rethey're gonna make a million, then 5,000,000,
then 10,000,000.
But if
you look at OpenAI, some would argue they'rethey're not making any money, but yet they're
valued at hundreds of billions of dollars.
And maybe they still will end up not makingmoney, but that is the road map to making a
trillion dollars Yeah.
Versus just scaling kind of incrementally.

(13:58):
Totally.
And I think the only tough part that I thinknot only, there's plenty of tough parts, but
for for newer entrepreneurs is is the contextof the advice that's being given.
Right?
So like, if I'm if you're talking software andbillion dollar, trillion dollar companies,
like, there's a whole set of advice that makessense here.
Mhmm.
If you were trying to scale a lawn care servicebusiness, a lot of that advice will actually be

(14:25):
disadvantageous to what your ultimate goal is.
And so I think that that's again, that's thatfilter where how do you how do you know what
advice to listen to, what advice not to listento?
And a lot of times, because of nature of theInternet, you can't give context because it
kills the clip's reach.
And so you like, I think that that layer ofbeing able to judge becomes increasingly
important as the context is increasinglyremoved from most content that we consume or at

(14:50):
least that gets massive massive reach. Reach.
Reach.
So the truly niche knowledge is not beingshared and memed across the ecosystem.
Yeah.
So you have to find in other ways.
One way that I look at ignorance debt is if youwant to learn how to be a top YouTuber, you go
and spend time with the top 10 YouTubers, andthey will tell you the unknown unknown.

(15:12):
Mhmm.
So you probably don't know ahead of time whatyou're not doing, but they basically, being
around people that have actually done it arethe ones that'll that'll unchow otherwise, it's
very difficult to know the unknown unknown.
Super hard.
And, you know, so I was a management consultantbefore I entered this new life that I have.
But one of the ways that whenever we'd enter anew field where, you know, I'm 20 years old

(15:35):
trying to learn about space, cyber, andintelligence in the military, and make a
recommendation to the military, which isabsurd, right, as a 21 year old.
Right.
So it's like, how do you how do you becomecompetent at something really quickly?
And so the method that we always use, which Ithink the consulting method is, you know, we
would we'd ask the person who gave us the thethe project, who are the five smartest people
that you know about this particular issue?

(15:57):
And then we would ask every one of those fivepeople every question we could possibly think
of, like, give us the understanding of thewhole space, blah blah blah, all the way
through.
And at the very end, we'd who are the fivesmartest people that you know about this?
And so, eventually, we'd ask, we'd interviewevery single one of those people, and by your
twentieth or thirtieth of these interviews,like, you have a pretty good feel for what's
going on, and then when someone says something,you're like, but, know, so and so said this,

(16:17):
and how do you feel?
And, like, you could start kinda mapping thenetwork.
And eventually, you ask for five friends untilthe names become the same.
Like, it's the same names.
I've already talked to him.
I've already talked to him.
And so whenever I wanna do research on like anew industry, that typically is how I do it.
I still use the same exact method I did there.
It's just faster now because I can just pick anInstagram story and people can reach out.

(16:38):
But like, when I wanted to learn about likebanking and payments and credit cards, because
I was looking at investing in something there,I I did exactly that method over two weeks.
I had, like, 30 conversations with people thathad exit between 30 and 3,000,000,000.
Mhmm.
And I I learned so much, and I was like, oh,okay.
I no.
I don't wanna enter this space.
This sounds more interesting than what Ioriginally thought, but you don't know that

(17:00):
going in because you just you have a blankslate.
No context.
The only change to being around those people isyou could always delete or add things based on
your own personality and what you naturallywanna do.
People are kind of have this fear that they'regonna become this person just because they
learned whatever behaviors they're they'reusing, and I think it's, limiting.

(17:20):
Let's talk about a topic we're both reallyobsessed with compounding.
Okay.
So Yeah.
Why is it so hard for people to compound theirskills?
So compounding skills, I'm trying to thinkabout how to clearly define it for the
audience.

(17:43):
I would probably say it's when multiple skillswhen used together create an outsized outcome
compared to either of the skills usedindependently, just so we have a basis for
talking.
But beyond that, I think part of the difficultyis that you do not know what you're going to
yield and the perspective change that's goingto occur after you have a new skill that you

(18:06):
don't have yet.
And so it's like, if you understand accountingand then you learn e commerce, it's like, oh,
this makes like, you don't know what you weregoing to know.
It's a very unknown unknown, right?
Similar context we were talking about earlier.
And so that's in terms of, like, why do I thinkit's difficult people to imagine the upside
potential of having multiple skills that stacktogether?

(18:28):
I give this example all the time, but like, youthink about like Jay Z.
Right?
Yeah.
So in the beginning, he might have had a baselevel of like, call it rhythm.
That was like his what he maybe he wasnaturally inclined that way.
And then he started developing, you know,beats, and that was a skill that he, you know,
figured out.
And then he started, you know, rapping, andthen that became a skill.
And then from there, he learned how to promote.

(18:51):
And it's like, okay, that's that's a much morevaluable, you know, he if he only knew how to
promote and didn't have rap, like, it wouldn'thave been nearly as valuable a skill, having
both makes him a super successful rapper.
But then after that, it's like, okay, well,then he had to learn how to recruit other
artists and musicians.
And so it's like, okay, well, recruiting is adifferent skill than promoting, you know,

(19:12):
publicly, and doing deals is another skill.
And so all of a sudden, it's like these skillswhen stacked together become a label.
Right?
And then that becomes the next thing that he'sable to do.
But a lot times, like, you can only you canonly and this is Steve Jobs, but you can only
connect the dots in reverse.
And I think the one thing that I would say isconsistent among the people that I that I
frequent who are hyper successful is thatthey're just intensely curious about things in

(19:34):
general.
And so I'll see somebody who's a billionairehave a conversation with somebody who makes I'm
just I'm only using money here as a, you know,to to show the stark contrast, but, know,
somebody makes $80,000 a year, you know, fixinglights, whatever.
And they'll find a way to extract informationfrom this person and be like, so how does that

(19:56):
work?
So tell me more about that.
And they'll still be able to, at the end ofthat conversation, be better off than they were
prior.
And I think they're kind of bloodhounds for forknowledge.
Mhmm.
And I'd say that that is that is probably likejust something that I have witnessed.
But like, why is it so difficult for people toto do compounding?
There's the obvious answer, which is patience,and the other is that they don't understand the

(20:17):
upside.
How do
you balance compounding of skills with becominga master in one skill?
It's really good.
Well, you know, I would say that the differencebetween those two things is really just comes
down to how narrowly we define the domain.
So it's like, let's say you wanna be a quotemaster at business.

(20:38):
It's like, well, there's so many skills there.
It's like you've got marketing, sales, you gotrecruiting, you got finance.
Got, like, there's so many things
that Compounding becomes part of
the master.
Yeah.
It's like, so which yeah.
So where where where is the the skill versusgoing, you know, super deep on biotech.
Right?
Mhmm.
Now in the world of biotech and going deep onanything, it feels like you're still like, the

(20:59):
deeper you go in something, the more you feellike you don't know anything.
Mhmm.
And I certainly feel that way constantly.
Curse of ignorance.
The curse
of knowledge.
I I was like, I I have this we have this bigmarketing that's gonna that's gonna why my my
next book's gonna come out, and I have somesome big plans for it.
And I think it's gonna do big stuff.
And I was already, like, playing out, like,what I thought I'd be able to say afterwards,

(21:20):
which is, like, this is my letter to theInternet.
I still don't understand marketing that well.
Like, I just feel like there's so much that Ihonestly have no idea about.
Is it
because you don't understand the details, orare you still missing some of the bigger
picture areas?
Think it's just like there's so many things.
It's just like when I think about what hasgotten me success with marketing has been like,
there's probably maybe like 15 rules that Ipretty much follow and the rest is just like,

(21:44):
let's like the amount of times that I've beenlike, this is gonna be a winner and it bombs.
And something that we do in five seconds aslike a last second thought ends up being the
the home run advertisement or you know, anemail that just crushes compared to another
one.
I just I have I I've been I've been wrong somany times that I have, like, zero ego when it

(22:06):
comes to marketing.
It's interesting because a lot of people willdiscount and say that's just probabilistic, but
isn't.
When you put out a new video Yeah.
Hundreds of thousands of people are telling youthis is a 5.2% click through versus 7.2.
It it is not probabilistic.
It's just the wrong answer.
Yeah.
Meaning, there's some kind of ignorance debtthere.
Totally.

(22:27):
How could how could there be an ignorance debtafter you've done something so many times?
That's what drives me drives me nuts.
But, like, so to to this point though, it'slike so I see prediction and control as the
same thing.
Equals equal opposites at the same point.
Like, if you can if you could predict somethingwith absolute certainty, provided you have
influence over the variables, then you cancontrol the outcome.

(22:47):
Right?
And I see that as, like, intensely cool.
But, like, for us, let's say a salesconversation.
Right?
If we have one person here, I do believe thatthere is something that could occur that would
create a 100% close rate process.
The problem is it just might not be worthcreating that process because some people might

(23:08):
have to go back to their childhood andreeducate them on, you know, elementary math in
order to get them to understand this concept orwhatever it is.
Right?
So there's a certain amount of education thathas to occur in order to get someone to change
their behavior, or at least the way that wewant.
I'm gonna loop this back to the the themarketing thing.
But I see like, sales is just increasing thelikelihood that somebody purchases, right,
within a conversation.
Mhmm.

(23:28):
And so marketing serves more or less the samefunction just on one to many.
The amount of variables that exist inmarketing, I don't think anyone has even come
close.
I mean, maybe I AI will, but, like, humanbeings, like, I don't think any any humans have
come close to quantifying every single variablethat exists.
And so we can say, here's 15 things that I knowalways work.

(23:50):
Like, fast will pretty much always speed slow.
So you can control, like, 70% Yeah.
Exactly.
Of the probability, and then there's 30%variance.
That's exactly.
So it perfect.
You you you got to the exact where I was going,which is, like, it's if there's a thousand
variables, it's like maybe the the 15 that weknow that are the chunky ones, it's like maybe
that gets a 60% of the way, and then we stillroll the dice and it's just our downside's

(24:11):
truncated.
And I think it's just over time, we justcontinue to move up the median, at least
content from an organic content marketingperspective.
But the same thing, you know, same thing withwith paid ads, just different different beast.
Said another way, in the land of the blind,
the one eyed Yeah.
Man is king.
So you are the one eyed man.
Yeah.
Just willing to take
Which is a high compliment.

(24:32):
Yeah.
I'm I'm honored.
So there's compounding of skills.
There's also the compounding that accrues tosomebody that sticks to a domain.
Yeah.
Why do people systematically underestimatethat, and why can't people stick with one thing
for many years?
Man, these are these are all hard hitters.
So I think that luck surface area is somethingthat it's a very, you know, kitschy term.

(24:58):
Basically, if you have if you have if you thinkabout I'm gonna draw a little analogy and I
think it'll it'll make sense.
But like if you think about intelligence asaccuracy and determination as the number of
shots you take as you're shooting a target,then it's great to be intelligent.

(25:22):
But if I had to pick between unlimited shotsand perfect aim, I would rather have unlimited
shots.
Yeah.
Right?
And so the idea of the luck surface area thereis like, if we're shooting at least in this
direct like this general direct eventually, ofmy my heroes is gonna hit the target, and and
on a long enough time horizon, one of themgonna hit the bull's eye.
And so the advantage of sticking with things isthat you tip luck in your favor.

(25:46):
You just are around for more things to occur.
And by basically, the same concept of of this,there's a certain level of variability that's
going to always occur just within business,chance, whatever.
But if we're there the whole time, it's like wegive we give luck time to happen rather than,
like, if if you try to quote time things, it'slike you're you almost never get it.

(26:09):
But if you're there the whole time, then luckoccurs.
And so and those those lucky breaks are theones that typically, like, define people's
careers.
It's just you just don't know when it happens.
I mean, Ogilvy talked about this all the timewhere he said like, you know, I've wasted, you
know, 90% of my advertising dollars.
He's like, just don't know which ones.
Right?
Like to say, it's like the vast majority of thethings that we do in our careers are not gonna

(26:31):
actually make a meaningful difference.
And then a very small percentage make all thedifference in the world.
Just You don't know which one it's gonna be,which means that you just wanna maximize the
likelihood that it occurs.
But in business Mhmm.
You internalize.
Once you get a hit, you internalize You'relike, oh, I said this line in the sales script.
Now I get a scale it across all my salespeople.
Totally.
And we just
you do know in the in most cases of business,it just you don't know when your next knowing

(26:55):
is gonna come.
Yeah.
The next big breakthrough.
And then I think that's like kind of that thattruncated downside risk.
It's like, I used to say this a lot, but likethe bottom floor of the building of your
opportunities continues to get higher.
So like when I Mhmm.
When I quit my job when I was in my earlytwenties, my plan b if my gym didn't work was
gonna be I was gonna drive Uber and strip.

(27:16):
Yeah.
And so that's a pretty, you know, that's thatwas kind of a baseline, you know, floor of the
building.
Once I learned how to sell, I was like, okay,well, the absolute worst case scenario here is
I can keep my clothes on, and I don't have towork, you know, eighteen hours, or I probably
still work eighteen hours, but now I can cars.
Right?
Can sell something that's like high highvelocity.
Could I could probably make $405,100,000dollars a year just being top top car salesman.

(27:37):
Okay.
So that's now my baseline.
And then once I learned how to advertise andget leads, then it was like, oh, okay.
Multiple millions of dollars a year is kindalike the baseline.
It doesn't really matter what place I'm going.
If you know how to market, you know how tosell, you can drive business.
You're a rainmaker fundamentally.
And so it so like the bottom floor of thatbuilding because like when people are like, you
know, if you lost all of your reputation andall these things and you had no money, like,

(27:59):
what would you do?
I'm like, I've had that happen twice and I'lltell you what I did.
Like, don't have to that as a hypothetical.
I'll tell you exactly what I did.
Right?
Like, I went to a business owner and I said,hey, I'll bring you business.
Let me keep whatever I kill and then you getcustomers for free.
And most business owners say, sure, zero CACsounds good.
And then that's it.
And I've done that.
I've done it.
That's what I did both times.
And I was able to just restart and generatecash quickly.

(28:22):
And that was a few years into my career.
That was after I already had the marketing hat.
So I didn't have to go back to, you know, doingcar sales
or something like that.
So I've heard you use this analogy of levels.
Once you learn how to pass and beat the Yeah.
Level one boss and the level two boss, youcould quickly get to that level three, and then
you start from there.
Yeah.
It's tough because I think to circle back tothe question you had earlier about why do

(28:47):
people struggle with this, and I think it'sbecause you get it feels good to win.
Right?
And losing sucks.
And so if you know how to beat level one, two,three and you get stuck on level four, there's
a big part of you that after a sustained periodof time of not beating level four, you're like,
you know what, I'm just gonna start a newcharacter, and I'm gonna play the game slightly

(29:07):
differently this time.
And you and then the thing is is you have arapid feedback loop of things going well
because you're probably better, and you go youbreeze through one, two, three again, but then
you hit four, then you're still there.
But now four's hard because you're stillbattling level four on the other one,
typically, because you use because most peopledon't completely stop doing one thing.
They try to chase too many too many rabbits andthen they catch none.

(29:28):
And so I would say the single at least for me,the single hardest thing about entrepreneurship
is is focus, which I kind of see as like thethe embodiment of commitment, which is the
elimination of alternatives.
Like, that's how I like, how do you commit?
You eliminate alternatives.
Like, the most focused person in the world doesnothing but that thing.

(29:50):
Like, if we if we had to like a math.
The most focused person, most focused videogame player does nothing but play video games.
And and that would be, okay.
Well, the most focused person who plays videogames would die.
Right?
So then how how much extra stuff do we need tointroduce just to make sure he doesn't die?
So he has to eat, he's gotta sleep, he's gottahe's gotta drink water, and then he's the most

(30:11):
focused video game.
And if he has a girlfriend, he's not as focusedas somebody who doesn't have a girlfriend.
If he Mhmm.
If he works out, it's not as focused.
Right?
So it's like, how do we get it so that so whenif we think about that as the as the pinnacle
of focus, then the idea of all theseproductivity hacks is just like, in my opinion,
we were had a little chat Yeah.
You know, joke this morning about it.
It was like a complete and utter waste of time.
Like, people are like, how do I I wanna I wannafocus more.

(30:32):
It's like, but focusing more is about doing isabout removing everything that isn't the thing
you wanna focus on, not doing something else.
Like, it's such an American idea to addsomething in order to try and get more of
something And you say the
number one productivity hack is Yeah.
To say no.
Yeah.
It's it's the cheapest one too.
So so going back to this video game analogyYeah.

(30:53):
You're on level four.
Yeah.
You get tired of losing.
You start level one, level two, level three.
Certainly, in some skills like management orfundraising or leadership, you have to beat
level four.
But is there sometimes another game that youcould play where there is no level four and you
just go level five?

(31:17):
It's a really good question.
I think I think it it's basically, like, whatis, you know, what's the constraint?
What's the constraint of the system?
Most entrepreneurs, they are the constraint ofthe system, but fundamentally, a business has
has to have these functions occur.
And if you were the only entrepreneur in thebusiness, or only founder, sometimes they're
for sure, like, key people who can come in andcan help you out.
But if these things must occur, then, like,let's say you get to a point where you need you

(31:41):
need to get more leads for your business, justkeep it simple.
Right?
Mhmm.
Okay.
If I don't know how to advertise, advertisingmust occur.
It has to happen in some way, in some form.
And so if I never learn the skill, then theonly option I have is to go recruit somebody
who has the skill.
But what if I don't have the skill ofrecruiting?
Now, maybe the level four boss becomes a level4.5 or a four b, right, which is, okay, well, I

(32:03):
can I can get over this bridge multiple ways,which is actually really interesting because
this is something I've been thinking a lotabout, which is it's actually loops back to
what we're talking about with advice?
There for sure is bad advice.
For sure.
But I think there's also a lot of good advicethat is half heartedly executed, which then

(32:28):
makes it into irrelevant advice because theexecution nullifies the effect.
Mhmm.
And so I, as somebody who gets asked foradvice, I have increasingly spent my time on
how do I increase this person's convictionaround the advice and less on the advice
itself.
Because if we use the analogy of a mountain,there typically are multiple ways up the

(32:50):
mountain.
Like, you could make this thing a super viralproduct.
You could also, you know, have a super, youknow, heavy sales team and marketing.
Obviously, it depends on the goal size.
Right?
But, like, let's say somebody has a modest goalof hitting $8,000,000 a year or 10,000,000
year, whatever it is, not a trillion dollarcompany.
Sure, that'll have a more defined path.
But if if someone wants wants to make a$10,000,000 a year business, it's like, you

(33:12):
could do that a lot of ways.
But no matter what way you pick, you have to becommitted committed to it.
And so it's like, what are the few things thatmust be true, right, that you have to be
committed to, you have to be focused on onwhatever that thing is, you can get good enough
at it, you can get deep enough into it that youcan actually, like, break through level five of
paid ads, of organic.
But if you're if someone were to say, how do Imarket this, like, how do we market this

(33:33):
podcast, hypothetically?
Right?
Well, we could run ads.
Right?
We could go find affiliates who have audiencesalready, and then see if there's a way that we
could partner with them, have them promote it,or come on, whatever.
We could we could just get better at theorganic game itself and get really into the
nitty gritty of, like, retention curves andpackaging, click through rates, all that stuff.

(33:54):
Right?
And we could go on.
Right?
These are all these different ways.
And so could all of these things result in theviews of this going up?
Yes.
And so if someone says, which one should I do?
All of them would work, but they will only workif you do.
So then then the problem to solve is, which oneof these things does the person have the
highest conviction on?
And and the largest percent of of existingskills.

(34:18):
So sit in the inverse, the smallest skilldeficiency between proficiency and where
they're currently at.
And so that is typically what my follow-upquestions will be.
Well, have you ever made videos before?
Do you know a lot about this?
You ever run media before?
Have you ever done paid ads?
Do know anybody who's run paid ads?
Like or you're a natural networker?
It's like, I'm a natural networker.
It's like, boom.
This is gonna be the highest likelihood path.

(34:39):
All of these work.
And so it's like two people ask Alex, who bothhave podcasts, the same question, how to
promote podcast, and then there's differentanswers.
It's like, well, because they're differententrepreneurs.
And so I wanna have the shortest gap betweenwhere they are and what would be proficient in
order for them to get up the mountain.
So that's
I also think there's, like, a consciouslyunderstanding that you can't pass this level
and subconsciously going to the next shinyobject.

(35:03):
Yeah.
And just to give you two counterexamples tohaving it past the level, the most extreme,
Mark Zuckerberg.
Yeah.
I don't know if you saw any clips with him andTheo, but he still sounds like a robot.
He still has no personality.
Yeah.
And yet, he hasn't kept that from Yeah.
Building a trillion dollar company.
Yeah.
Sam Altman Yeah.
Realizes he's a genius strategist Yeah.
Has all these skills, OpenAI.

(35:24):
He realizes he sucks at hardware.
He just paid 6 and a half billion dollars forJohnny Eyes.
Right.
That's not gonna be a limit for him.
Yeah.
So there is a power to knowing Oh, yeah.
Which levels to play and which characters youwanna play in those levels as well.
Yeah.
I think it comes down to, like, what functionsmust occur?
And then it is my job to make sure that thosefunctions happen.
Now, the cheapest way, not the fastest, thecheapest way is to learn them yourself.

(35:48):
Right?
And so then you become increasingly stackedwith all of these different skills so that you
can solve them or your problems in thebusiness.
But if there's a gigantic skill that like, I Iwill probably never be the person who's head of
finance Mhmm.
In terms of, like, operational finance.
Like, I'm not gonna run the p and l's and allthat.
Like, I'm just I'm not gonna do that.
But somebody should.

(36:09):
We have to have that.
Right?
And so but, like, I could go learn how to dothat.
It's just but, like, it's easier for me to gofind somebody else.
And so I think we're basically, it's buyerbuild, but done on a n equals one.
Am I going to buy this and bring Johnny Ivy in?
Right?
Or am I going to build this within myself?
Or within, obviously, somebody else if youwanna train up the team.
But if we're assuming we're trying to go fast,you know, am I gonna try and learn it, or am I

(36:31):
gonna bring somebody else in?
You you just alluded to this, the smallestdeficiency in skills.
Yeah.
It's the one concept.
I've talked to many people about this.
You have very a controversial view that Ihaven't been able to square.
Okay.
And the idea that you could teach somebodyculture and teach somebody personality

(36:51):
personality traits versus skills versus hardskills.
Uh-huh.
Have you ever seen executed outside ofacquisition.com, and how do you teach a 50 year
old how to change their behavior?
Oh, so okay.
A couple couple things here just for definingterms.
So hard skills, soft skills, I see those theexact same thing.
They're just words that people use, but theyare fundamentally changes in behavior, so

(37:15):
across the board thing number one.
And how do you change a 50 year old's behavior?
It will take longer, they're less plastic.
But nonetheless, they're still teachable on along enough time horizon because the thing is,
some people so everyone is teachable.
The question is, is it worth it?
And that no.

(37:35):
It's that that's actually the real that's theorganizational question.
It's like, buyer build is an ROI decision.
Right?
Like, should I buy this and what's thelikelihood of success and and and somebody
coming in or emerge, you know, immersion intothe business versus me, you know, building this
capacity internally, how much does it cost andboth time and money?
Right?
And a lot of that's gonna come down to yourefficacy at transferring skills, at teaching
somebody else how to do something.

(37:56):
And so, what what part so what part wascontroversial?
I'm like, I'm so curious
as like is is you don't work, so you atacquisition.com, you recruit for people that
wanna develop themselves.
Sure.
You have a very special culture.
Yeah.
But for the average business, if somebody ifCFO comes to me and I wanna put them in a
public company Sure.

(38:17):
And I start telling them, like, should smilemore, you should wave more, that's gonna be a
very difficult conversation.
Yeah.
Is that practical, or am I missing something?
And how do you go about changing somebody's,what I would call soft skills, which you would
call Sure.
Another type
of Just a bucket of term of A bucket of term.
Yeah.
It's like, here's 28 small, you know, thingsthat you do can differently that will increase

(38:37):
likely people like you.
So I think it would be awkward if I demandedevery single person does this.
I don't demand that everybody smiles.
Mhmm.
If if somebody has a problem where people arenot listening to them and I think that they do
have the base skill set, but they're having,like, they're having difficulty with
influencing their coworkers, then I wouldprobably say, okay, well, let me give you a

(38:58):
remedial course on influence, which is here'ssix things that you're currently doing that
decrease the likely they listen to you.
So if we reverse these six things, we'llincrease the likelihood that the desired
outcome happens.
Like and the the the most difficult part aboutthis is actually the observation.
It's people will use a bucket of term todescribe somebody else.

(39:22):
Right?
They'll say, this guy has a lot of charisma.
But if you ask them, why does he have a lot ofcharisma?
That is where people get in trouble becausethere's so many things you notice that you
don't put words to typically.
Right?
Like, we have a of good pattern recognition,you know, for like, this guy's a threat.
This guy, I don't know.
He just gave me the wrong vibes.
Right?
It just really means that he did things thatremind me of other people who have wronged me.
And I don't like and so being more consciousabout it, this is where like watching game

(39:45):
footage and things like that become incrediblyvaluable because you can see like, he blinked a
lot and he was, you know, wringing his hands.
Now, if somebody comes in and a lot of peoplein the office are saying, I don't know, this
guy doesn't seem trustworthy.
The question is, is this guy trustworthy ordoes he behave in ways that remind them of
other people who are untrustworthy?

(40:06):
Which are two different questions.
And so if I just want to teach somebody how toact in a way that that decreases the likelihood
that people call him untrustworthy, then Icould say, hey, put your hands in your pockets
and do this instead.
Right?
And so, we always hire for the smallest skilledefficiency.
And so, the public CFO, for sure, is going tohave to have a massive, you know, skill set

(40:29):
that's going to take many, many years todevelop.
Right?
If I'm picking between two candidates and I'vegot a nice guy who doesn't know finance and a
guy who's a killer at finance and he's not anice guy, I can teach somebody to be amenable
and not that long.
Right?
But teaching somebody finance is gonna be amuch bigger a much bigger piece
to income.
Yeah.
The guy who's really good at finance that mightnot you rather hire a nice guy that's really

(40:52):
good at finance.
But if he's the Yeah.
Guy you have there is a way to change him.
Yes.
And then again, all the the thing about thisis, like, I think people hear this and think,
oh, like, Alex is a soft, like, let's go traineverybody.
Looks no.
A 100%.
Not at all.
It's it's an ROI decision.
Every so I see the the chief role of theentrepreneur is allocation of resources,
period.
That's what we're supposed to do.

(41:12):
Mhmm.
And I see strategy as prioritization ofresources.
So like, how are we prioritizing what we got?
We have limited resources, unlimited stuff, andbe able to make the decisions where we get the
most bang for the buck.
And so, if we can have somebody who has, youknow, tremendously, you know, deep, you know,
finance, success, finance savant, okay, great.
Is the deficiency that he has in theinterpersonal apartment something that's going
to cost us our culture?

(41:33):
And how little do I need to do to improve wherehe's at to make it at least not a negative?
Mhmm.
Right?
And so that's that's the I think there's thebasic calculus there that happens.
Now, somebody has like a massive ego, it'sgonna be tough Mhmm.
Because they're not gonna be receptive toanything, which means what you see is what you
get, and you've gotta be really happy with thatperson.
There's also a difference between somebody thatlacks self awareness and somebody that knows

(41:56):
that they're an hole and just basically doesn'tcare.
Yeah.
Thinks they're so good that Yeah.
They're not gonna change.
Yeah.
Some people are like, I am an asshole, and theyhave accepted that about themselves, and some
people had no idea that people thought theywere an asshole and would love to change that.
And I think the, like, the crux of that is is,you know, maybe the difference between somebody
you hire and don't.
You mentioned game footage.
Yeah.
For your last book launch, you practiced overthirty days.

(42:18):
You did over a 100 presentations of thepresentation.
Yeah.
You mentioned that early on, you got a lot ofbenefit, and then you were getting incremental
Yeah.
Benefits with each iteration.
Why keep doing that?
Why why do a 100 iterations of something whereyou're getting marginal returns?
So my my initial response is marginal returnsare still returns.

(42:39):
But beyond and I think that most most games areone at the edges.
Right?
They're one in the margins.
And so the benefits in most systems accrue tothe person who's number one.
And even if you're number one by a tenth of asecond, you're still number one, and you get a
disproportionate amount of the gains.
And so I've been rewarded so many timeshistorically for just getting a tiny bit better

(43:03):
with a shitload of work that I still it's stillworth it.
So I have I have diminishing returns in skill,but gigantic absolute returns in in what I get
for getting that incremental that very smallincrement.
And so, to put math behind it, if I have, youknow, 500,000 people who are signed up for, you
know, the book launch, if I knew that there wasgoing to be a stage that had 5,000 people, I'd

(43:28):
probably prepare.
Like, I'd probably prepare.
Well, imagine a 100 times that Mhmm.
Where each increment is an entire stadium, youknow mean?
Or or gigantic arena of people.
Well, if that's the case, then, like, I willget a good return on that.
Now, I'm gonna have a presentation in front ofa 100 people, if I get 1% better, maybe affects

(43:49):
one more person.
But if I get 1% better in front of 500,000people, it's 5,000 people.
Mhmm.
And so it makes sense there to so it's like,again, it's an allocation resources thing.
I will prep that much because it's worth it.
If it's not worth it, I'm not
gonna do that kind of preparation.
So it's efficiency equals
Yeah.
Work over returns.
Yeah.
Totally.
So in in in in other words, it's highlyefficient even though from the outside sounds

(44:12):
it feels inefficient, because you're justgetting just a little bit better, but it's
being magnified by
It's relative versus absolute.
So I had this decision, because we have thisbig, you know, book launch coming up, and we're
saying like, I won't share too much, but like,we have such big numbers that I'm expecting of
people who are going to be coming because lastone was awesome, and this is the third book,
you know.
Do you
have a date for that?

(44:32):
Yeah.
Yeah.
August 16.
Okay.
Yeah.
Just announced.
So it's not exactly on my wedding day.
That's great.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's not exactly on your wedding day.
We'll try to make it out.
And so the point though is that that if ifsomeone says, that's gonna be, you know, if if
we if we add that little, you know, you know,an abandoned cart sequence for the book, it

(44:53):
sounds like work.
It's like, dude, we're going to have a millionpeople register.
Mhmm.
So 2%.
Right?
It's 20,000 more books sold.
Mhmm.
Right?
Which is and I've got some goals that I havearound the book that I'll share after the
launch.
But, like, yeah, man.
It's worth it.
Like, except there's some businesses that doingentire campaigns that don't even come close to
that.

(45:13):
Yes.
We're gonna we're gonna hit all the littlecrumbs.
We're gonna hit all the little crumbs becausethe thing is just when you have that much scale
going through it, the crumbs become bakeries.
Right?
And so And I I would say, like, I I tend to bea maximizer more than optimizer in general.
And I want to double click on what you You youwanna share your goals after.
Talk talk to me the pros and cons of sharingyour goals ahead of when you're gonna do them

(45:35):
versus
It's a great question.
I say so I think of this is like, does sharingthe goal there's two components.
So one is or least two components that I thinkof, which is, does sharing the goal increase
the likely the goal the goal occurs?
And the second thing is, does sharing the goalgive me some other benefit?
So I think Babe Ruth calling a shot and thenhitting the home run accrues a benefit to,

(45:59):
like, for him calling the shot.
If he had just hit a home run, no one rememberit.
Mhmm.
And so there's other benefits.
Now, does him calling the shot increase thelikelihood that he hits the goal?
On one hand, maybe his adrenaline spikesbecause now he has way higher stakes, on the
other hand, maybe the pitcher pitches a littlebit nastier too and decreases the likelihood.
So there's a little bit of, you know, there'smultiple variables at play.

(46:21):
But I think that if I shared all the goals thatI have around it, I don't know if it increased
likelihood.
And for me, even if it's a null outcome, likeit doesn't increase or decrease, for me, would
take this take the spot of a differentmessaging that would increase the likelihood.
And so by default, the opportunity cost of theheadspace that it would take up to talk about

(46:43):
it in the prospect of the audience's mind isnot worth the real estate.
I'd rather fill it with something that's moresalient to them.
I know you hate the word manifestation.
Hate it.
Yeah.
Well, the word I've noticed I was to re
if I was to refact and I agree with you justfor the record.
If I was to repackage it into visualizationSure.

(47:05):
And also, comma, and also bring up the factthat Michael Phelps visualizes Sure.
Michael Jordan Sure.
People that have accomplished great things
Mhmm.
Use this tool of visualization.
Is there room for visualization?
So I think visualization and manifestation aredifferent.
So we would have to define the terms.
Right?
So, like and I've had a really tough time, soI've I've probably gotten in a handful of

(47:30):
heated heated discussions about this.
But I've yet to have anyone clearly definemanifestation for which is why I I like,
manifestation to me, as I define it, is a wordthat people say to other people that gets them
to nod and give them approval for saying theword.
And so
And not and also not take the actions Sure.
That is required to
actually get that.
And that's and that's and now some people thengo to, well, you have to change things in your

(47:54):
mind before they, you know, occur in reality,and then I would just say, like, how do you
know that?
And what what can we observe?
Right?
So I just focus on the observable world, and Ipretty much ignore everything else, and it's
been one of the most useful razors for,honestly, predicting reality much more
accurately.
It's like evidence based versus
not a percent.
Yeah.
Of course.
And and where does visualization obviously, youcould probably run a scientific experiment

(48:19):
Yeah.
But it it's not very evidence based.
Is there
So that's a tough one because I I I do thinkthat there's a decent amount of evidence that,
like, you can, like like, if you practice freethrows in your mind for like I think
there was a study that.
If you do it.
Yeah.
There was a real study on that.
Yeah.
And your your percentages go up.
Yeah.
And by, like, almost more than if you just do,like, it's and when you pair them, it gets it

(48:44):
gets crazy.
And the visualization exercise, I think, isreally interesting, especially for, athletes
because you have no joint wear and tear.
Mhmm.
And so it's risk free upside.
So so again, I'm I'm all for that.
Now, me telling someone, hey, you have tovisualize.
How do I know they did it?
Like so this is where I get into, like, I justtry to focus on the things that I can see.

(49:08):
And I'm trying to think, like, in what in whatcontext would I say visualization is the thing
that I would tell someone to do?
Mhmm.
Because they're not going to change realityuntil they interact with reality.
And so that's why I just focus on that.
So like, did visualization help people?

(49:28):
Sure.
And they still had to pick up the basketballand they still had to go do free throws too.
And so I think that's the that's the the yinand yang of it.
But for me, just focus purely on what we cansee and I think it makes conversation so much
easier.
And I do owe a disproportionate amount of, Ithink, the accolades that I receive from

(49:49):
content and whatnot, because I exclusivelyfocus on that.
And so people say things like, man, yourcontent's so digestible, it's so easy to
understand, it's because I just eliminateeverything that is not observable.
And then it becomes very clear.
And that I mean, that's the thing.
It's just repeatable.
And people use words
people use words that other people don'tunderstand.
People use words that they themselves don'tunderstand.

(50:10):
And so it's like, if we can't even define theterms that we're talking about, what are we
doing?
We're just making noise at each other.
And then one person nods, the other personnods, neither person knows what they're talking
about, but they've been rewarded for noddingand talking and making noise at one another for
a long time in their lives, and so they keepdoing it, and that's fine.
But it doesn't really change behavior.
And so I'm very obsessed with what changesbehavior.
Because if I change behavior, then I changewhat happens in reality, and that has a high

(50:31):
predictive function.
Which, by the way, circles back to what we weretalking about earlier, which is if you hang out
with you and watch you do content, you mayrealize what you thought was working hard on
content Yeah.
Is orders of magnitude away from what you'reactually doing.
You can't witness it.
That's that's that's what's been that's what'sdifficult.
It's like, I can say so there's a video thatI'm putting on one of the pages for the book,

(50:54):
kind of like marketing pages and whatnot, thatI've now done nine times.
And we have edited three versions of it.
Three, like, I've done nine recordings of it.
We've edited it and had edited it from scratchthree times.
And I saw the ninth version, and I was like,it's missing these two things.
And so a lot of people probably would ship itand it probably would do fine.

(51:14):
But again, 2% on a million people is a bignumber.
And so, yeah, I think I think that's that's thepart that people don't see is being willing to
do it again.
And that's intuitive, kind of the 2% multipliedby
Mhmm.
Millions of people.
Yeah.
It it's a real number.
What may be not as intuitive is why there'sthese zero sum dynamics in some of these

(51:37):
industries.
In sports, there's one champion.
You know, Olympics, there's one Olympian.
But you seem to think that there's kind of thiswinner take all in in many of the things you
do.
Why is that?
I think it depends on goal size.
If you want to, you know, make a milliondollars a year as a lawn care person, you don't

(51:58):
really need to worry about your competition.
Like you just need to go find 200 housesthat'll pay you whatever the math is to get a
million dollars a year.
Like, it's not it's not crazy complicated.
Right?
$400 a month.
But in the OpenAI world, right, like, there'sprobably going to be one model that ends up,
you know, winner take all or it'll just be likePepsi and Coke, but there's not gonna be a ton.

(52:23):
I don't know, like, I guess if there's anetwork, you know, effect that's going to
occur, then it makes sense to try to like getmarket share.
And I guess in the marketing world you couldcall them be attention share, but the so there
is a fixed amount of attention, like in theworld, take 8,000,000,000 people times twenty
four hours or times the number of hours they'reworking, like there's a there is that much
attention, right?

(52:44):
And I think technology has just increasinglyput advertise has stolen attention from IRLs,
know, in real life Yeah.
Things like friends and family, and put it in aplace that you can advertise.
And so from that's what I think from anattention perspective there, like there is do
we know what that number is?
No.
But it there is a fine there is a number and itis finite.

(53:07):
And so does somebody watching my video precludethem from watching your video?
No.
Because they could watch both videos.
But if they only have an incremental ten moreseconds that they're gonna watch one business
clip, then in that instance, the person whoright. Has
Has so that's that's kind of how how how Ithink through it overall.

(53:27):
But I just I think about a lot of life in inpercentage like likelihoods.
How how likely is this?
This is increasingly likely that this thingthat I want to have happen occurs.
And so that's that's basically all I do is Ijust try to make bets.
Looking back, reflecting on your career andyour inputs and your outputs Yeah.
Do you find that if you would have spent moretime on the things that did really well, they

(53:50):
would have done even better well?
Or would you have more diversified your timeand effort into different projects?
Man, it's a really interesting question.
So, like, the the biggest, like the biggestfinancial mistake I've made was I so I had Jim
Launch, and I started this company calledAllen, which was a software company that did

(54:11):
did lead nurture before all the AI stuff, andso it was just trees on response responses and
things.
If I had not done that and simply made a CRMfor Jim's rather than a lead nurture software
for Jim's, that company would have sold forhalf a billion dollars instead of for
$50,000,000.
And 46, to be exact.

(54:31):
I that was the biggest mistake that I made.
But when it comes to, like, would I have, youknow, gone deeper on one thing versus spread
out?
It's tough because I can't play out the otherthe other side.
Right?
Like, if I had never diversified, maybe I'dhave 500 gyms right now.
If I never got out of the first thing that Idid.

(54:52):
It's possible.
Right?
And like, maybe with 500 gyms, depending on howprofitable the gyms were, maybe I'd be richer
than I am now.
Mhmm.
I don't know.
Actually, 500 to be tested, maybe 2,000 gyms bynow, like some some some monstrous number.
So I think the difficulty is like we can't playout the other the other the other way.

(55:12):
What's been unique about the path that I hadbecause it's been so defined by my ADD, is why
I'm so focused, why talk about focus so much,is that like, I've had a B2C business, like
direct, you know, I've had a service businessthat was brick and mortar.
I've had an online service business.
The first business I had was an online onlinefitness business that I then turned into in
person.
I have had a physical products business waswhich was b to b to b to c, so I had to manage

(55:37):
both direct to consumer, you know, media buyingand ads, and also have kind of a wholesale
distribution to brick and mortar gyms.
I have had, you know, B2B SaaS with Allen.
I've had B2C SaaS or prosumer with school.
Right?
I have, you know, the the investing side.
And then from the exit side, it's like, I'vesold to a competitor.

(55:59):
I've sold to a customer.
I've sold to a partner.
I've sold to private equity.
I've sold to I've sold to friends.
Like, I've had I've had and I've I've doneseller finance deals.
I've done cash deals.
I've done, you know, leveraged buyouts.
I've done like, so this this very weird it'skinda like calligraphy for Steve Jobs.
Like Mhmm.
That became, you know, key to the Macintosh andkind of their whole vibe.

(56:23):
But for me, all of those experiences have mademe exceptionally good at what I do now, which
is I talk about business.
And so me being able to talk with like gooddepth on each of these things, because I
founded and started and scaled almost all ofit, not school, but, like, those companies and
deeply involved in them.
I have a I have a very good understanding ofhow these businesses work.

(56:44):
And so that like, maybe if I hadn't done any ofthose, the Alex from Moshe brand wouldn't be
what it is today.
And so that's why I have a tough time with,like, was it was it the right call?
Well, it's like, don't maybe maybe I wouldn'tbe doing what I'm doing now.
And what I'm doing now has worked really well.
So, like, I don't know.
You know what Peter Thiel says as his numberone regret in his investing life.

(57:05):
What?
He's actually not doing Facebook series a.
He did the seed round.
He was on the inside track.
He didn't do series a.
So sometimes really double downing
Yeah.
Double doubling down on your on your successescould could have really big returns.
I think Munger talks about that too.
And I mean, yeah, I think just like what'swhat's tough about, and I'm sure you've seen

(57:28):
this too, is that like the best companies arereally expensive.
Yeah.
Feel expensive.
Yeah.
They feel exact great great yeah.
Great correction.
Yeah.
Like, best companies feel expensive and stillyield higher returns Yeah.
Oftentimes.
And I have to be reminded of that sometimes,because like the, you know, I think a lot of

(57:51):
this is me, you know, I know you'll have a lotto say about this, but like, I think a lot of
investors who start investing their own money,you know, they almost have to re reinvent the
wheel.
It's like Warren Buffett talks about the cigarbutt businesses, where you just take your last
few puffs and and they're, you know, wonderfulprices and fair businesses, and eventually you

(58:12):
just get you feel like, you know, this is notworth it, like, we can get even better returns
and less headache if we just buy these, youknow, wonderful companies at fair prices or
even would feel expensive.
Right?
So I've had I mean, I feel like I'm still thegame's long, so I'm not saying I'm I'm I'm
developed there, but I've had to I've had tolearn that the hard way with just some of the

(58:33):
cigar bullets fall on your lap, and you'relike, oh, that hurts.
It's still lit.
Google Ventures.
This was like a decade ago.
Google's venture arm did the study on whatdrives returns.
And one of the biggest signals that they hadMhmm.
Was when a round a company was priced at a muchhigher round than the last round because it
felt so expensive, and yet there was a newYeah.
Person.
And even when the insiders were the onesleading that round.

(58:56):
Yeah.
So the insiders had this, like, there's thisfriction of increasing the price and yet if it
still got to that price, it was still probablyunderpriced.
Right.
Because and I think Teal talked about this, butit's like, typically if a company does have
this material change, let's say in like sixmonths, I think PayPal had like a 3x or a 5x or
something in terms of a change in valuation.
Yeah.
He's like, well, it's because they likematerially changed the risk profile.

(59:19):
Like there was some big thing that they wereable to solve.
And so if you have this, okay, I think this isa 10% likelihood outcome of getting to a
billion dollar company, and then the big thingthat takes away 40 percentage points there is
that there's a network effect that hasn'treally caught on where people are sharing, you
know, with each other, you figure out, youknow, your viral coefficient in terms of

(59:41):
virality, it's like, well, you get that right,then it's like, well, boom, we go to 50, then
it makes sense that.
Even though the time duration has been small,the problem was still solved, which is the
thing that created the discount Mhmm.
For risk that it's just like it's just, youknow, we all are like, it's not fair that six
months ago I could have bought this for

(01:00:01):
But actually, it is fair.
It was much more risky.
Yeah.
Yeah.
If it was much more risky, it's actuallyextremely fair.
Yeah.
No.
Exact exactly.
It's it's exact it's totally fair.
It's just the emotions
there's regret.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then you, don't wanna because you're like,if I buy it now, then I'm I'm if I buy it now,
I'm an idiot for not having bought it.
Yeah.
You have to acknowledge your mistake.
Yeah.
Exactly.

(01:00:22):
So now you just hope this thing dies so thatyou'd so that the first thing for when now you
hope it dies because you missing out when itwas one tenth the price doesn't feel like as
big of a mistake.
One of
the interesting things on Facebook Yeah.
The way that it all came together from investorstandpoint is Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman who
started LinkedIn and Mark Pincus from Zynga.

(01:00:42):
Mhmm.
And they had almost like mastermind.
They would sit around and talk about socialnetworks
Yeah.
I think, Reid Hoffman started outside ofLinkedIn.
Yeah.
Also started another one that before wasn'tsuccessful.
And they were in this small room of people thatended up being so huge in the space.
When you think about building out your peer setin your mastermind group
Yeah.

(01:01:02):
I know it's kind of a hokey word, mastermind,but how do you look about, you know, your your
peer group, and how do you build that out?
And tell me about your strategy there.
I would say it hasn't been super deliberate.
I would say that a lot of it has kind ofhappened organically, pun intended with organic
Mhmm.

(01:01:22):
Organic growth.
But I would say we sit at this reallyinteresting intersection between business and
content, which is cool.
Right?
Which is like, okay, there's this creator worldover here, and then there's this investing
money business world over here.
And so finding people that are on either sideof that, because because like in this room,
it's like I don't talk about clicks in YouTubeand retention curves and whatnot.

(01:01:43):
And then I go into this room and I'm nottalking about, you know, return profiles.
But I think understanding both worlds giveshuge alpha on both sides.
Because everybody on over here in the creatorworld is like, man, I just don't know how to
monetize.
And everybody over here is like, man, I justwish I could have way more deal flow.
Yeah.
And so it's like marrying those two creates ahuge, you know, it creates huge benefits on

(01:02:05):
both sides.
But in terms I'd say my, you know, I'd say it'sless about masterminding and more like, if
there's IOUs that I can collect for the future,I'll do it.
If I think that I might need or want to cash itin later.
And so it's like, if I can help somebody out, Itend to have that slant of like, I'll help if I

(01:02:28):
can, because you never know when you'll needsome.
And so I just try and like dig the well beforeI'm thirsty.
I And would say that that's probably been thestrategy that I've used for the vast majority
of my career, just like give first as much as Ican because those IOUs have been incredibly
valuable for me at in times of need.
But, like, what am I basically, who am Iactively, like, recruiting in my my head right

(01:02:51):
now?
It's not a lot.
I would say that I'm I'm trying to get moreinto the tech side of things, because, these
two sides I feel like I understand okay.
And that's, you know, with all the AI stuffthat's going on right now, I see that as some
deficiency.
Like, I'm not deep in you know mean?
Like, I have the same Yeah.
Ignorance.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
I have huge ignorance debt.

(01:03:12):
And so I'm just I think
people even deep in the industry have ignorancedebt, and they most of the people don't know
what's going on, and they're all runningaround.
And then if you're not in the industry, you're
For sure.
Yeah.
You're more disorganized.
You're like, mean, no.
I I I use catchy pity.
Right?
Of course.
Right?
It's like I I try not to think about that toomuch because it makes me depressed.

(01:03:34):
You're the
most methodical person I think I've everobserved or look looked at, and yet you said
your networking strategy is, you know, I liketo give and do IOUs and see what happens.
Yeah.
So double click on your strategy there, andtell me about your thinking.
I'm sure you've thought deep on this.
What's your thinking in terms of the give andtake in in interpersonal relationships?

(01:03:57):
So I would say that the earlier on in yourcareer so this is me going to the audience
more, but like the earlier on in your career,the more generalized you should be in your
giving because the variety of things that youwill need will be very diverse in the
beginning.
And unpredictable.
Yes.
And so you just wanna give to as many people asyou can.
At some point, you will exceed your capacity togive, and then if you gain skills, then people

(01:04:19):
will want you to give to them, which then meansyou start to shift the supply demand curve in
your favor in terms of favor giving and favorreceiving.
And so, like, when I I remember the first orthe second, the second kind of like peer group
that I entered, I actually won an award.
They invented an award for me, which was likemember of the year, and it was because I met
with every single person, and was just like,hey, I'm really good at these three things, I

(01:04:42):
can help you with these three things.
And so I would just do that, which at the timewas just like sales and marketing.
And so I would just be like, cool, I'll helpyou with, you know, build a sales team, or help
you script this out, or help you, you know, putthe sales motion in place with this process.
And they'd be like, can I do anything for you?
And I'd be like, honestly, no, but I'm sure,like, I'll need help with insert whatever thing
that you're good at, at some point in my life,and, you know, that, you know, maybe I'll hitch

(01:05:06):
up.
And a lot of the businesses that I had, like, Ido those, like, deep dives in industries, I'll
call up somebody that I talked to five yearsago that I did a favor for him, like, hey, you
got an hour?
I I just want to understand more about thisparticular thing that you're involved in, and
they'll give me a huge amount of informationreally quickly.
And that's because you gave them something ofvalue.
Yeah.
It's not because you tried to give themsomething of value.

(01:05:26):
Yeah.
Tried versus actually.
Yeah.
For sure.
Yeah.
I think even trying still buys you something.
Do you ever remind them of what you did forthem?
So they they basically subconscious ly havealready integrated that that you've provided
Yeah. Value
Value
And I will so this is me just being transparentbetween different stages, right?
So like in the beginning, had nothing I hadonly the only thing I had was skills, I had
very little money, and I was just like, I'mgood at this, and so that's that's what I gave.

(01:05:51):
As I became more materially successful inbusiness, people wanted to talk to me in
general just because I was pretty good at, youknow, stuff that they wanted to get good at.
And so I guess the level set of the skills kindof increased.
But, and so not to contradict my earlierstatement, but like, I think where I focus my
attention now is like, pretty narrow in termsof the people that I will regularly interact

(01:06:15):
with because the it's like the path that like,I have, I think to use Naval's, it's like I
have significantly less exploration now andsignificantly I'm on I'm in exploitation mode.
Mhmm.
Like, I know what I'm good at, and I'm and I'mpretty clear on what the path is ahead.
Right?
There's some degrees of variance, but it'sstill super narrow.

(01:06:37):
And so
Which is basically getting even better at whatyou're already doing.
Yeah.
If I like, right now, it's like if we have,call it 15 or 20,000,000, whatever it is, you
know, followers across platforms that are inbusiness, it's like, if we get to 50, then
that'll be better
What's than the TAM of small business owners orhowever
you want?
Well, there's 32,500,000 in The US and that'sif we define those people who have an LLC.

(01:06:57):
But we're like, my audience right now is Ithink 55% ex US, so non US.
Mhmm.
And so take the rest of the world, there's ahuge amount of people there.
So I'm obviously cool with sticking with US andEnglish speaking for now, but we'll probably
quickly, not quickly, but probably in the nextquarter or two we'll be transitioning to.
Everything will be all languages.

(01:07:18):
Yeah.
I mean, AI obviously Yes.
Enhances that, for sure.
Guessing you're not learning 10 differentlanguages.
Actually, I'm really curious of your take onthis.
So like, I have held back even though, like,the tech has been there for probably two
quarters for us to do the translations anddubbing in in different languages globally,
especially on like YouTube, we can do it all.
I haven't because I actually don't want dealflow from countries from people that I don't

(01:07:44):
speak the language for.
Now Yeah.
Maybe the the the two point o version, this isprobably me being shortsighted, but like the
two point o version of this is like, we're bothtalking through AI mics to one another, and
we're both listening in, you know, in in ourown languages and whatnot.
But I just haven't done any any internationaldeals.
Mhmm.
And so that's why I haven't I haven't reallypushed it.
And also, it's not like we can, you know, givethem services in a language they don't under

(01:08:07):
you know what mean?
So that's that's why I'm curious
to your your take very thoughtful.
I think it makes a lot of I think also one ofthe areas that AI is gonna Yeah.
Really help is is deal flow, analysis.
Yeah.
So you're gonna be able to if you don'talready, you'll be able to to process hundreds
of thousands of deals Yeah.
To find the one or two that matter.
That being said, you don't want a market aproduct in the market that disappoints 99.9 to

(01:08:31):
the twelfth power Yeah.
Of your audience.
So I think I think that makes a lot of sense.
Okay.
No.
That's interesting.
Yeah.
The to your point though, some of the AI stuff,it's like resume, like resume screening.
Right?
Like such a like, just upload job descriptionand say, here's here's 500 resumes.
Tell me which one are the ones that you wouldselect, and then what questions would you ask

(01:08:52):
these people?
And it's
exceptionally exceptionally good.
Good.
I I wanna wanna put a cap on this giving andtaking
Yeah.
Because I think you're really good and you havebeen very giving to me.
I just wanna understand your strategy and whatare some of the mistakes that you made?
I'm sure you gave too much to somebody or youmade an ask too quickly.
Yeah.
Like, what are the best practices there?

(01:09:13):
You know, I actually don't think I've made anask too quickly.
I tend I'm maybe I tend to be, like, too in askinsecure of, like, I wanna make sure that
there's like yeah.
Leave no doubt that
I have people talking to
each I have given enough here that I can makethis small ask.
You know, I would say that honestly, of my oneof my best skills has been that.

(01:09:38):
Like, you know, I've never actually identifiedthat until like this moment right now, but it's
probably one of my one of my strongest skillsskill sets has been knowing when to invest and
when to pull back in relationships.
Mhmm.
And people will probably see me astransactional.

(01:09:58):
I just believe everyone's transactional, andsome people are just better at defining it.
Fundamentally, like you if you have a like ifyou have a relationship with someone and like,
man, we, you know, we used to be homies and,you know, I gotta be loyal to that, to me,
translate that into human behavior is, I have ahistory of reinforcement with this person and I
have a belief that that reinforcement willreturn on a long enough time horizon.

(01:10:18):
And so I'm willing to incur some cost in theshort term, and obviously the relationship that
they've had the strongest and longest periodsof reinforcement for, like a spouse, you're
willing to give longer periods of time wherethings suck in order for things to, you know,
come back to being good or different.
Or the payback is your ego of being somebodythat never defriends your homies or is always,

(01:10:39):
like, friends with the same person.
True.
That's your payback.
Yeah.
You
you get to see yourself as such a good person.
Totally.
Yeah.
You get
to be an idealist.
I got a definition for you.
So I call a friend somebody that provides morevalue than he or she detracts Mhmm.
From you in your life.
Yeah.
So A lot of people don't fall into thatcategory for many people.
A lot of people don't fall in that category.
Also, it's also two two sided.

(01:11:00):
So you could have somebody completely crazy
Yeah.
That you would never even wanna associateyourself with
Yeah.
But that's comes through for you when you needthem.
That's a friend.
And somebody that's there every day and just,like, you know, making you depressed
and Yeah.
You've known for thirty years would not be afriend.
No.
No.
That's really good.
And what's interesting is that if you if if ifyou keep a relationship, right, then it means

(01:11:23):
you you do have reinforcement this person.
The question is, what are they reinforcing?
Mhmm.
So like, maybe you hate being alone.
Mhmm.
And so even though you don't like being withthem, you prefer being with them than you
prefer being alone.
Or to your point about the, like, you have somestory that you tell yourself about how you are
x person, and you get to tell yourself thatstory over and over again every time you see
this friend.

(01:11:44):
And so, this person, having this relationshipserves you in some way, and it's usually just
not in the way that people expect that they'rebeing served.
But to try and put a nail on on the originalthing, I think one of the big like, I I I wish
I I wish I knew where I read this, but Iremember being completely engulfed in this game

(01:12:07):
theory book about basically the Prisoner'sDilemma, where they they played out different
give to take strategies within the Prisoner'sDilemma.
And they proved that the best give to takeratio was eight eight out of 10, give to take.
Because if you're 10 out 10, you get walked allover.
Right?
And if you if you're on the other side So eightgive, two takes?

(01:12:27):
Yeah.
Basically.
Mhmm.
And and they even went so far as, like, it'seight out of 10, and they factored in
forgiveness and learning between all theplayers with the different Yeah.
Give ask ratios.
And so it was like, somebody who learns, butdoes not let someone wrong them.
Yeah.
At an eight out of 10.
And so it's this really, like, it's prettyprecise in terms of and I think the the

(01:12:51):
reasoning behind it, because they wrote thiswhole thing about it, was basically the eight
out like, you have to give first most of thetime because that's what opens up doors of
opportunity.
If you're tit for tatter, so the five out of 10Yeah.
Like, give and take, then you don't Wait forthe other person
to give and then you give back.
Yeah.
Those people don't get nearly the exposure ofthe eight out of ten people on the givers,

(01:13:11):
because they open up so many more doors bygiving first.
The never askers just never, they neverbenefit, right?
And so, there's a sweet spot which isdisproportionately giving, but you still have
to know when to ask.
And I think this is really, this is, I thinkabout this a lot because this, it's, it's
actually very akin to people who get good atsaving, saving money, just in a basic term

(01:13:33):
withdrawals and and deposits.
Right?
There's I call it the fallacy of the thirdmarshmallow.
Say, the marshmallow test, you know, they theyhave you know, take one now and take two two
later.
People have this pathology where they believethat if I wait forever, I'll get a third
marshmallow, like an even bigger out outcome.

(01:13:53):
And that's not the truth.
Right?
Like, there is a point in your life where youshould start spending more money than you make,
which is frightening for high achievers andearners who've spent way more time always
earning more than they spend, but it's like,then at the end you have this big big pile of
crumbs as an ant and then you die.
Yeah.
And so like, you didn't get any of the so thereis this sweet spot, obviously, it's difficult

(01:14:13):
to get to, to balance that because most peopledon't even know how to like save.
Yeah.
So it's like, so this is only for highachievers that I'm talking about here, but I've
had so many doors in my life and sofunctionally, what I think organic content did
for me was it allowed me to do that at scale.
Mhmm.
Was those like so as I as I prior to making memaking content, like, Leila existed in my life

(01:14:39):
to be the yang to my, like, yin of give first.
So she was like, you just like, Alex would benonstop just like, let's do this dinner.
Let's do, like, let's let's I'm gonna hop onthe phone for three hours and help this guy
redo this thing.
I'm gonna I'm gonna help this guy with thiswhatever the things were that I was trying to
help somebody with, I would just always dothat.
And she would be the one who was kind of like,and that's why I think Laila and have been such

(01:14:59):
a
good
partnership.
And she'd be like, I think you're about to gettaken advantage of here.
I think you're I think they're just they'rejust using you at this point.
Yeah.
And so it was right that she would kind of pullme back.
But as soon as I was transitioning to makingcontent, that allowed me to it's the same
energy for me.
Like me making content is the same energy aswhat I used to do for one person, all that

(01:15:20):
effort and for like helping someone solve aproblem.
I now just do that same thing and then justmany people benefit.
And so that's where the huge leverage on giving
You've what instead of fighting your yourintrinsic traits, you've weaponized it into
scalability.
One on one.
And then
so that, like It reminds me of a quote thatNaval says.

(01:15:41):
He says, my brand is my value add.
Yeah.
He'll invest and he'll say, my value add isthat Naval Ravikant Yeah.
Has now invested in your business.
That makes it for you, your brand is your valueadd.
Yeah.
And your and your content is your value
add.
Yeah.
And ideally, you know, someone's had such astrong history of reinforcement from consuming
stuff that and using the stuff that I gave themthat I'm already in the green.

(01:16:04):
You know what I mean?
Like, if they do a deal with me, they're like,already paid for
yourself.
A surplus.
Right.
You've even talked to them and realized.
Exactly.
And so my cool giving strategy, I know this isprobably deeper than you expected, but it was
actually a a awesome question because I hadn'tthought about it.
But my strategy has remained the same.
I give to as many people as I possibly can.
It's just that as soon as technology anddistribution came into play with media, I was

(01:16:26):
able to put that on absolute steroids.
And so I do I do significantly less these, youknow what I mean?
Like Like one.
Yeah.
And those those ones are But there's also theaudience.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah.
That's what I'm saying.
Like, so it's like, it's they're still in a,you know, they're still in a choose.
Right?
Scale.
But if but that's but if I'm if I'm going tochoose at this point and I'm sure you have the

(01:16:50):
same issue, which is there's just a supplydemand of your time.
Right?
There's just a such a limited amount and assupply sorry.
As demand increases, the supply is fixed.
And so it just becomes so so so precious.
So you have to just almost be path you have tocompletely switch, which is what's been tough
for me, but I have learned it, is you have toalmost pathologically say no to everything.
No is the default.
How many messages in box?

(01:17:11):
A
lot.
I'm always very conscious to text you because II feel bad because you're probably have
That's fine.
Thousands of messages.
But what's where where it gets when you take itto the national extreme is, like, you don't
actually owe someone a response.
Yeah.
Just be like
because Especially since you've already giventhem so much of your content.
So it's not that they haven't done anything foryou.
It's like you've already done so much for them.

(01:17:33):
Just the time.
Like, if I so right now, probably get somewherein neighborhood of like a message every like
three minutes across social media.
It might be it might be hard.
It's probably in that neighborhood.
Right?
And so like, if I were because I remember I Ithink it was right after the book launch.
The the yeah.
Right after the book launch or or my offersbook, maybe it was an offers book came out.

(01:17:53):
I manually DM'd anybody who who tagged me inthe book, and I said, could you please leave a
review?
Manually being you did
Yeah.
I I I did it.
And I remember finishing my inbox, and then theresponses from the people who I DM'd plus the

(01:18:15):
new DMs that had happened in that same periodof time were greater than when I had started
like, it's like you have to paint the bridge bythe time you get finished painting, except it
would be like the bridge now extends.
It's like, it was literally impossible for meto actually DM every single person because by
the time they had responded, there was evenmore that I had to to respond to their
response.
So I had to just get I did it for four days.

(01:18:38):
That's all I did.
So I wanted to get
It's another efficiency thing.
Yeah.
It seems hyper inefficient, but yet Yeah.
It probably made your your book rise and it hassome
It got to a few 100 you know, I think it'll getto 605 stars within the first few days, and I
was like, okay.
That's now it's an Amazon book that it doesn'tlook like it has five, you know
Yeah.
Five star five stars on it.
But all that to say, in the beginning, you haveto say yes to everything, and in the end, you

(01:19:04):
have to say no to everything.
And so being able to manage that apparentdichotomy comes down to resource allocation,
which is still the core entrepreneurial skillset.
Like, where is it worth it?
What got you here?
Won't won't get you there.
One one tip that I Sure.
That I've learned, and I I think I came up withthis.
I can't remember where where I learned this,but how somebody treats you in the first day,

(01:19:27):
in the first week of how they when they meetyou is how they will treat you over the next
ten years.
Because it's not about you, It's about them.
Some people are naturally givers.
Some people are naturally takers.
No.
It has nothing to do with you.
They're formed individual.
They might be a 30 year old.
They have thirty years of conditioning.
Just because they met you doesn't mean youYeah.
You change their behavior
It's not about you.
Your
in your biology.
So I tell everybody, notice how somebody treatsyou in the first day because that is how they

(01:19:53):
will treat you for the rest of of their lives,and that that's very telling.
That's super good.
I'll give one more I'll give a tactic too thatthat I found is never decline or cancel the
first meeting.
Because, like, you meet at a you meet atsomething, someone makes an introduction, you
have a text convo, whatever, and someone says,hey, you know, can can you meet at seven?

(01:20:17):
Or can we do this dinner?
Can we do this call?
Things come up because, especially, a newconnection is very has low typically has low
ish value to you as a person.
So, like, almost anything that could come upthat is not that, you probably might be willing
to move the the call or the meeting forward totake the thing that you know has more
importance or whatever.

(01:20:38):
I I have found that it's very difficult to getthe second con like, the second conversation or
the second meeting after the if the first onegets canceled for whatever reason, especially
last minute.
Mhmm.
And so I have, like, an increased priority onmaking sure that if I do meet somebody who's
new and I think they're worth meeting, thatthat meeting takes a huge priority to one,

(01:21:00):
happen quickly, and then second, that itactually occur.
And the flip side of that is that I'm actuallywilling to be very flexible for first meetings
because I think that typically even just tothat one meeting, it's like, it transforms from
being like, someone introduced us to like, wehave had a conversation and I have a good
feeling.
I have some feeling about this person.
Strong signal Yeah.
Exactly. Gonna be
Gonna be
my And even from one meeting, I can I canprobably call somebody up a few years later

(01:21:25):
because like, we had the meeting?
If we didn't have the meeting, it's useless.
Mhmm.
And so I try to prioritize that.
One other kind of Yeah.
Relationship hack that my friend Max, whoworked at Goldman for many years, he said,
always be willing to fly out even if it's 3,000miles for a single meeting.
Yeah.
And because it's that powerful.

(01:21:45):
If it's an important meeting, flying out andspending a day or two days.
It goes back to this efficiency thing.
It seems hyper inefficient.
Yeah.
But yet if you calculate efficiency as inputover output, it's actually highly efficient.
And especially because there especially there'sthe assumption that if I'm flying out, I'm not
going to somehow work on a plane when I whichis like, it's almost so Or meet other people.

(01:22:07):
Yeah.
Some people like just choose to fly becauseit's the most efficient working.
So like, it's really just the meeting takes thesame period of time.
Like, the only inefficiency is the drive fromthe airport to the meeting.
Like, that's the actual inefficiency in that inthat process.
And I'm I'm so on board with that.
You are one of the best communicators I've evercome across in real life or Thanks.
On YouTube or podcasts, etcetera.

(01:22:30):
How have you become such a good communicator?
Break that down for us.
I'd I'd love that the response starts withFiller. Filler.
Filler.
Filler.
Filler.
Right.
Yeah.

(01:22:52):
It comes down to every everything that we'vetalked about, which is you have to define the
terms.
That's, like, that's really it.
Like, if we think about communicate like, iscommunication?
Right?
So what is so what is the objective ofcommunication?
So I would ask that, and I'll To
communicate information.
What do you think what do you think so what isthe output of communication, if I were to ask
you?
It's interesting because when you say thatYeah.

(01:23:13):
My head goes to two different things.
One is sounding really smart
Sure.
Yeah.
And very charismatic.
Another one is transferring knowledge.
Okay.
So so for me, the purpose of communication issolely to change behavior.
That's it.
It's the only reason only reason that wecommunicate anything to somebody else is to
change their behavior.
Now if we wanna sound smart, it's because wewanna change their behavior around how they

(01:23:34):
treat us in some way.
We want them to treat us like they treat peoplewho they think are smart.
Right?
Are an elevated status.
Sure.
On the flip side, what was the other one youhad?
So one was the being smart,
the only transforming thing makes of it.
Right.
And so essentially.
Yeah.
And so if I if I wanna transfer information, Idon't actually wanna transfer information.
I wanna get someone to do something.
Mhmm.

(01:23:54):
Right?
So either of these situations is the purpose ofcommunication is to change what they do.
And so if if we if we if we say that is the thepoint of communication, then being very clear
about what I want someone to change makes itway more effective.
And so you waste so few words when you'reclear, which is what I want you to do.

(01:24:17):
And so on the flip side, I listen with thatfilter, which is I had a I had a meeting with a
VC, so they're on the board with one of thecompanies that we're invested in, and they
wanted to touch base.
And I was like, okay.
And I asked five times during the meeting.
I said, what would you like me to do as aresult of this meeting?
And they're like, well, we just wanted to, youknow, just get your perspective.

(01:24:39):
And I was like, what is going to change aboutreality as a result of us talking?
And there wasn't really a clear answer, andthat for me just drives me bananas.
And so then I have to infer what I think thebecause obviously, there is a point for the
meeting.
Mhmm.
And so there you know, I'd like, there is apoint, and there's either they're gonna tell me
or I have to figure it out.

(01:25:00):
But that's that's allowed me to make suchstronger predictions on on what someone wants
from me, and also if I want something to occur,asking, like, even as simply, like, if you have
if you have an employee who's who messessomething up.
Right?
The natural instinct is you wanna punish themin some way because you're just upset that they

(01:25:22):
mess something up.
Right?
It's a very human thing to do.
But if I think to myself, what would I like tohave happen?
What do I want to occur?
It actually fundamentally changes what I'mgoing to say to this person.
I'll give you a perfect example of this.
So, gosh, I want to say six, seven years ago, Ihad I launched a company called Done For You
Meals.
So we had our distribution of gyms and Ithought, man, we could do done for you meals.

(01:25:45):
I partnered with a white labeling, you know,company that did it and then we launched it,
right?
So this was a huge launch for me at the timeand we had 4,000 gyms who had signed up to, you
know, attend the launch.
So 4,000 locations saying that they wanted todistribute meals is a lot of locations, like
that would have been really big.
And so the day before the launch was supposedto happen, my call it my secretary sent out the

(01:26:08):
text at noon saying, we're live, twenty fourhours early.
And so now all 4,000 of these people are like,I thought it was tomorrow, but people are like,
well, they said they're live, and so they starthopping on this Zoom after like probably a
million dollars in advertising and months andmonths of prep for this And so she's like, what

(01:26:29):
do I do?
And I was like, you need to hop on the Zoom andyou need to have a sign that says, you know, we
messed up.
And so people hopped on and were like, goddamnit.
Hop dong.
I was like, just over and over again.
And she just stood there with the sign tellingpeople, my bad.
It was there tomorrow.
And so after that, you know, onslaught, she youknow, I I I met up with her and she said, don't
worry.
I'm packing my stuff.

(01:26:50):
Like, you know, I'm I'm sorry.
I'll I'll I'll get I'll get out.
And was like, what are you talking about?
And she was like, well, I'm assuming you'refiring me.
I was like, well, does this increase ordecrease the likelihood that you're going to
make a mistake again in the future?
And she was like, well, I mean, I'll never makethis mistake again.
I was like, right.
So you're technically more valuable to me nowthan you were before.

(01:27:13):
And so I was like, I just paid a milliondollars for you to learn this lesson and never
make the mistake again.
I was like, I will always trust you with mylaunches because you will never have this
happen again.
Now if somebody has a history of many, many,many mistakes, which this person didn't, then
it might have been maybe different.
But this one, was like, I was sure, I mean, shewas hor she was the type of person that would
that would she would, like, die of anxiety andshe actually doesn't I won't even get into it,
like, had huge anxiety issues around thisstuff, and so for her to make this kind of

(01:27:34):
mistake was, like, gargantuan.
And so thinking about it from that perspective,of course, was upset.
But what is it me yelling at her increases thelikelihood that she makes a mistake again in
the future because she's stressed.
So thinking always through that filter has hascompletely Double click on that.
Why would that increase?
So let's say there's a launch three monthslater Yeah.

(01:27:56):
Why is she let's say you yelled at her thefirst time.
Why does that increase the chance?
Well, I think that she'll just she'll just haveincreased anxiety, she already had too much
anxiety.
If anything Anxiety leads to errors.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Why is that?
That, I don't know.
I would just say that I've observed people whoare very stressed out in like, you go on stage
and you're very stressed, you do worse than ifyou're relaxed, I would say in general.
And so people don't do as well when they havesuper high adrenaline.

(01:28:17):
That would be my my pseudo scientific guess.
But that has been my filter and that has hasled to, like, such higher percentage goal
achievement and behavior change in thedirection that I want.
And so this also works with relationships, likeif you have your wife and it's like, you're
upset about something, but it's like, does thisincrease or decrease the likelihood that she

(01:28:38):
wants to talk to me?
Does this increase or decrease the likelihoodthat she does this thing again in the future?
And that has, I'm telling you, like that hasbeen, so you asked the question of like, why
are you such a clear communicator or a quote,good communicator?
It's like, number one, I define communicationas changing behavior.
And number two, I'm very clear about whatbehavior I wanna change, and I only think in
service of that goal.
And that's it.

(01:28:59):
So said another way
Yeah.
What you say in a YouTube video gets people tochange Mhmm.
And that ties it back to their consciousness.
That ties it back to your content versus Imight listen to somebody else, and it sounds
really smart, but it's not actionable
Yeah.
And doesn't change my life as much as a Hermosyclip.
And that's what you would attribute to yourcommunication, not some kind of stylistic No.

(01:29:23):
Ways of talking or some rhetorical device.
Maybe there are some.
I would say they're not super conscious.
I'd say some rhetorical devices might be, like,alliteration.
I know, like, if I can say something thatalliterates it, like, people tend to like it.
Give me an example.
Shoot.
I don't We just look at my Twitter, you know,like, but like, if I say, know, if say if you
if you repeat words in a sentence or if youhave, you know, flips of, it's more sentence

(01:29:49):
structure.
It's not the x to the y, it's the y to the x.
Right?
That's almost always gonna be something that'sgoing to convert no matter what the the x's and
y's are, if if the sentence still makes senseMhmm.
In both.
So you, like, kind of look for those, like,isms that make sense.
Words that are similar in nature, you know,exploration and exploitation, Nivolt talks

(01:30:14):
about that.
It's like, he used those words because theysound similar and they start with the same
letter.
Right?
And so, so because if if it rhymes, it meansit's true.
Mhmm.
I'm joking.
But like we do remember that.
Right?
Like so where this gets really nasty in a coolway is that if you want to change someone's

(01:30:34):
behavior, the most effective way to changetheir behaviour is for them to think it's their
idea.
Mhmm.
For them to think it's their idea means theyhave to remember it.
And so by making things that are memorable,people will forget that you were the one who
said it, but then they will think that theysaid it or they thought it, and then they will
believe it's true, and then they will act onit.
And so having rhetorical style increases likelythat you change someone's behavior, basically

(01:30:56):
vis a vis that, that pathway.
So that's on the stylistic part, but I stillthink the vast majority of it to what you
originally brought up is, if I can give peopleclear instructions on what to do, and then they
do those things, and they get the outcome, itwill increase the likelihood that they'll
listen to my instructions again in
the future.
And then somehow their brains are are linkingit.

(01:31:18):
So the dopamine's are getting released ahead ofthe time that you're even talking because the
last three times that they've listened to you
History of reinforcement.
Yeah.
It's history of reinforcement.
It's not really what you're saying.
It's the history of providing value addedadvice to people Mhmm.
That basically makes people just encapsulatewhat you're saying.

(01:31:38):
And I'll give you I'll give you an example.
So of I had this happen to me.
So I'm not a huge I don't I don't consume verymuch, we talked about this earlier, but I I saw
this clip by Huberman.
And I don't listen to much biohacking stuff ingeneral, but he said this thing, it was like,
how to get rid of hiccups if you have hiccups.
And I watched it, and I was I'll remember that.

(01:32:01):
And then I had hiccups like a month later.
And then I remembered the clip, and then I didthe thing in the clip, and my hiccups went
away.
And in that instance, in that moment, he gainedinfluence over me.
I am more likely to listen to something else hesays in the future to solve a future problem
that he prescribes a solution for.
That happens whether you wanted to or not.

(01:32:22):
That What's
more nasty about that for you to even rememberthat clip?
You already had some level subservience orstatus to him speaking.
Enough to try it.
We we there have a was a study at Queen'sUniversity.
We have 6,200 thoughts per day.
It's a lot.
Used to be there's there's this old tale that'slike 60 to 80,000, but 6,200 per day.

(01:32:44):
So we and we forget almost all of
them.
Yeah.
You don't even remember all the thoughts thatyou forgot.
The fact that you even remembered Yeah.
To try it itself, there was status, and thenand then you were reinforced.
Yeah.
And so so fun functionally, is all I'm tryingto do within a very narrow audience of business
owners, which is if I can give and this iswhere it separates from, I read this book, I

(01:33:04):
thought it was good, and I read Hermosy's book,and it made me this much money.
Mhmm.
That is what I am going for.
And if I do that, like, there's I think it wasBoardwalk Empire.
He says, nothing says sorry like money, ornothing makes friends like money.
I can't remember what the saying was, but Ijust I remember hearing that and being like,
that's cute.
I will remember that.

(01:33:25):
And so it's like, well, what do most businessowners want?
Well, most of them wanna grow, most of wannamake more money.
Well, why don't I just give them instructionsthat I think will increase the likelihood that
occurs?
Now, I do that over a massive population,there's going to be a good percentage of people
that will be better off from directly followingthat thing.
Like, think Martha Stewart was one of the mostinfluential or was the first female
billionaire, self made, because of the natureof her content.

(01:33:47):
So the reason that entertainers havesignificantly less influence than educators is
because entertainers never give you anything todo.
They just distract you.
Point, like, what
is They never let you disappoint yourself.
Right.
What is the output of entertainment?
The output of entertainment or what's the pointof it is to continue to be watched.
That's it.
The the only point of entertainment is to beconsumed.

(01:34:09):
Now, the point of education is to changebehavior.
Now, can these two things occur at the sametime?
For sure.
Right?
Like, if you watch the Avatar movie, plenty ofpeople at the end of the movie felt more green
earth Yeah.
And might have, you know, changed their changedtheir behavior.
So in that instance, it would have, you know,changed some some some percentage of the
population.
But if you are a pure educator, then you gainmore influence because you have given people

(01:34:33):
instructions, they have followed thoseinstructions, and they have improved their
lives.
And so when they want to improve their livesagain, and you give them instructions on how to
do it, which might be buying your thing,they're more likely to do so.
And so that is why these you have these massiveTikTok accounts, you know what I mean?
They have 20,000,000 subscribers and theylaunch a popcorn and no one cares.
Whereas you have this micro influencer, I havethis this this lady that I met, 5,800 followers

(01:34:58):
on Instagram.
She only makes content about how to moreeffectively bill insurance as an RD, a
registered dietitian.
That's all she does.
She just talks about how to better billinsurance for registered dietitians.
For 5,800.
Yes.
5,800 people.
And she's doing three I think it was 3 it was 1or $3,000,000 a year.
Can't remember.

(01:35:18):
But it was between 1 and $3,000,000 a year inthat business with 5,800 followers exclusively
sourced from her from her Instagram.
And so you say that to like, an entertainer,plenty of entertainers have a 2,000,000,
5,000,000 followers and barely make a milliondollars a year.
She has 5,800 and she's making over a million.

(01:35:39):
And so to me, that the difference there, thedifferential is just influence.
Now does it make sense for the, you know, thethe the Logan Pauls and the MrBeast to have,
you know, these brands that then, you know,they confer some some status to whatever, you
know, companies.
I think the the greater value is that they getex they increase exposure to the product.

(01:36:03):
And the more, quote, on brand it is, the moresimilar it is to things that they have
reinforced our audience for, then the morelikely it it works.
But this is something that I think a lot Imean, obviously, I think a lot about it.
Like, why do some entertainers' products bomband other ones succeed?
To me, it comes down to this.

(01:36:24):
Let's
say you want you needed to start a YouTubewithout your face.
Had AI replace your face with just some randomperson nobody knew.
How long would it take for you to reestablishand to get rabid fans for that?
I think it was still work, and I actually Ijust it was so weird you you asked this.
I was thinking about this this week, and I haveproof that it's not because of my my dashing

(01:36:48):
good looks looks and my high my high sense offashion.
It's because, like, when I started my firstbook that I wrote, 100,000,000 Dollar Offers, I
had no I had virtually no following.
Mhmm.
I had enough following to make a post to say, Iwrote a book.
Go check it out.
But then that book, every single month, soldmore and more copies than the month before.

(01:37:08):
And that was before I had an audience or beforeI was making content.
And so it was the quality of the ideas.
It was a book.
They didn't even see me.
It was just text.
Right?
The quality of the ideas, the clarity of thecommunication is what people were attracted to.
People read it, applied it, got results, toldtheir friends.
Yes.
And to this day, offer still continues to sellmore and more.

(01:37:30):
And the brand was actually the book.
It wasn't even human.
People don't know that.
Yeah.
I start I'm I'm a writer first.
Like, x is my is my so all content that you seefrom the Alex Ramosy brand is written first.
So, like, this is gonna get wild.
I post on x probably thirty, forty times aweek.

(01:37:53):
I post all the time.
Mhmm.
From the posts that do well, those becomeShorts that I then say those those tweets.
Mhmm.
They become carousels that are just differentversions of the exact same tweet.
They become the captions of all of my images.
And so if I have a one tweet about friendship,they'll just search friendship of my, you know,

(01:38:16):
six, seven thousand tweets that I've made, andthey'll just find another friendship tweet and
post that as the caption.
My LinkedIn is multiple tweets string together,just in longer format.
My YouTube videos are like 20 to 30 tweets puttogether that are high performance.
27
With transition lines.
Truths or
100%.
100% that are transition lines.

(01:38:37):
Every single thing that comes out was startedwritten first.
They're like, how can the like, how have youbeen able to get so much content out when you
are, like, don't control it?
Well, I have one pot that I put my my effortin, which is x, and then every that feeds
literally
everything.
Literally goes in and repackages.
Our paid ads are my organic content that arehigh performers, which came originally from

(01:39:00):
Twitter, and then or from x, and then we juststaple CTAs on the end.
And the principle there is that if the atomicunit of the tweet is good, putting them
together will create something even better.
A 100%.
And then you
put in a bunch of lights and a bunch of crazygraphics, and it's gonna be even better.
What's interesting is that it doesn't work inreverse.

(01:39:21):
So if you have a viral clip, and then I takethe transcription, and then I post it, it it
may or may not do well because there's so manyother variables.
But if the foundational need of just black andwhite text, the idea, the words are interesting
or compelling or clear, you can do it inanother format, it works.
When you have an original idea, how much of itis something you've heard before No.

(01:39:47):
Said other words?
Or Yeah.
Is there such a thing as a truly original idea?
I would say that the the majority of my tweetscome in response to things.
So either it's something that will come outorganically, like, we'll have this conversation
and my team will be right there, they'll belike, you said these three things, we wrote
them down for you.
Mhmm.
And then I'll just tweet those out.
Out.
Or I'll scroll, I'll see something that'lltrigger some sort of, like, well, that's

(01:40:11):
retarded.
Mhmm.
And and then I'll basically tweet a response tosomething that I won't call out.
And so that's sometimes my tweets areemotionally charged, just because, like,
they're typically me responding to eithersomething that happened, you know, like
somebody shows up late and says something, andI'm like, people wanna get these because, like,
I'm like, this person wanted a promotion and hedidn't show up he showed up late to a meeting.

(01:40:32):
I'm like, what are we talking about here?
Right?
So then I probably have some, you know,triggering tweet about being on time and how
they people don't even do that and they wantthe world.
Right?
And then that would probably get some peopleupset on LinkedIn and now they're like, you
should you should, you know, whatever.
And so that's that's the core of how everythingthat I have is spread.
But to loop to the original of, like, if I hada faceless account, would it work?

(01:40:55):
I think so, because it's the ideas and clarityof communication to your point.
Do I think it's original?
No.
I think the thing that makes the content maybeslightly more slightly differentiated from
other people's is, number one, is I always tryand state the facts and tell the truth, and
focus only on the observable, and I talk interms of behavior.

(01:41:17):
And so the nice thing is that if you have thosetwo filters and you apply it to all content,
you can filter out the vast majority of contentcontent because it's mostly noise.
People just like, quite literally, people justmaking noise with their face and just saying
words that they've never defined and tellingand not telling people to do anything, and
mostly entertaining when they think they'reeducating.

(01:41:39):
And so it serves as a as a wonderful filter forconsuming information, but in terms of
dispensing, the word condition becomes so muchtighter that the quote value per word or value
per second goes way up because you actually cando something with this.
One of the topics you talk a lot about is doingthings that other people may not approve of.
Yeah.
And now with your social network, you're aroundmany billionaires

(01:42:02):
Yeah.
And you
get to observe them.
What is something that billionaires do thatwould surprise the majority of the population?
I don't know if it would surprise them, but itmight I guess it would probably be jarring for
many of them in in close quarters, is theywould probably be surprised by the level of

(01:42:22):
agency that billionaires will demonstrate.
Like, they're almost all of them are just theythey come up to their own conclusions on their
own, and if everyone disagrees with them, thengreat, because they got there by disagreeing
with the masses.
And so, like, you can't have an exceptionaloutcome and also do what everyone else does.
Like, it's their antithetical.
Like, you can't.
Mhmm.
And so you're, you know, kind of by definition,going to get people who reason for themselves.

(01:42:47):
And I think that that's like it's such an it'ssuch an underappreciated and underestimated
component of success to get outsized returns.
You can get you can get beta.
Right?
You can get the normal returns.
And I say not just from an investingperspective, but just from, like, a life
perspective.
If you just, like, like, get life beta.
Right?
If you just follow the norms, like, you willget a normal outcome.

(01:43:07):
If you don't want a normal outcome, then bydefinition, you can't follow the norm, which
then means that you will be will be an outcast.
You'll be in the out group.
You will be not the norm.
And then people have to, in some way, resolvethat discrepancy or that apparent discrepancy.
And so and the more outsized the return youwant, typically, like, almost like the more

(01:43:35):
willing to disagree or, you know, willing todisagree with with comment, with convention,
you have to be.
And so I would say that that's probably the ahuge through line for all of them.
Beyond that, they focus on leverage, focusreturn on time, return on effort, I see that as

(01:43:56):
a huge thing.
And if you are able to make decisions foryourself and get the highest returns possible,
which is only enabled by making decisions foryourself, then you typically get better returns
than people who don't.
I've interviewed now eight billionaires.
I found two two necessary components.
Yeah.
One is going nonconsensus, doing something awayfrom everybody else Totally.
For many years Yeah.

(01:44:16):
Typically.
And two is some compounding.
Either it's network effects where it's likeFacebook every new user Mhmm.
Or it's a marketing advantage or some financialadvantage.
So it's literally like running in the oppositedirection.
Everyone's walking in one direction, you're notonly going in the opposite, you're sprinting
You're
all in.
Yeah.
Like 90 miles per hour.
And everyone's looking at you like you're amaniac.

(01:44:37):
No.
And and I think And and for, like, nine years.
And people I think that's one of the things.
Yeah.
People do not realize how painful that is fornine years.
This is why I think that first point that youmade and I just made about, like, being willing
to buck consensus or reason from firstprinciples, reasons for for yourself is that if
you only believe what you believe or act in theway that you act because of other people's

(01:45:01):
approval or is because someone else's idea,it's very difficult to maintain conviction for
an extended period of time.
And so if you find yourself waffling, it'ssimply because the ideas that you're adhering
to are not your own.
If you derive something from zero and built thefoundation of whatever reasoning you have for
whatever outcome or conclusion you have, andyou believe in all the math or, you know, the

(01:45:22):
reasoning that you're basing the decision on,if someone just if the whole world shouts at
you that two plus two was five, you're like,it's here I mean, here's two bottles and here's
two bottles and one, two, three, four, that'swhat it is.
You're and if you know that there's a big pileof money, if you're right on that, then you're
almost excited that most people don't agreewith you because you're like, it's just going

(01:45:43):
mean a bigger pot at the end.
And so I think that it's so difficult for mostpeople because thinking is very hard.
It takes it takes effort to think.
You almost need to create a bunker of likeminded people that believe in what you believe,
and you could basically, like, stress test eachother's theories or have somebody stress test

(01:46:04):
and be like, are you seeing what I'm saying?
Mhmm.
Oftentimes, have the same thing.
We're merging media and limited partners.
Literally, trillions of dollars of people havegone on this podcast.
We're at 5,000,000,000,000 now.
That's amazing.
And now it's become a little bit moreconsensus.
In the beginning, people are like, why are yourunning a media business?
Why not an asset manager?
We're like, this is that this is the right towin.
This is a competitive advantage.

(01:46:25):
So it's it's the most obvious things, ifthey're nonconsensus, consensus, it see could
seem like you're you're an idiot.
Yeah.
You're like, well, explain to me how thisdecreases the likelihood that I get more deals.
Yeah.
Like Or explain, here's my logic.
Poke holes in
the logic.
Figure out
what everybody else is doing, but here's kindof my business plan.

(01:46:46):
Yeah.
And sure, like, I wanna actually improve, whichwhere are the big holes here?
Yeah.
Assumptions yeah.
What assumptions am I basing this on that youthink are wrong?
Because there's obviously going to be someassumptions that we're not gonna prove, and so
some of them going to be wrong or could bewrong.
And how wrong can I be and still be right?
And how many of them can be wrong and I stillbe right?
And so I like, we call them need to believes,but it's like, if we have some big bet, it's

(01:47:10):
like, what are the need to believes for thisfor this to work?
And if we're comfortable with the like, there'sreally only one need to believe and we we think
it's likely, then it's like, well, hell, like,let's let's push.
Let's push our chips in.
This rooting of conviction, I think, is themost underrated thing.
One of the most underrated things in investing.
The joke is people ask when to buy.
They never ask when to sell.

(01:47:30):
Yeah.
And I'll give you a good example.
Let's say your friend told you to buy Bitcoinat a $100 Yeah.
A decade ago.
You probably would have sold that $1.40 once itwent down from $1.60.
Yeah.
Right.
So you could have bought Bitcoin.
Yeah.
But if you had spent, you know, ten, fifteen,two hundred hours really understanding Bitcoin
and stress testing understanding the strengthsand the weaknesses, you might have hold Yeah.

(01:47:56):
Or huddled because you actually had conviction.
So I think Yeah.
It's this investment of time and understandingand rooting of conviction that helps you
weather any kind of storm.
And I think the only way that you can have thatlevel of conviction is either you're
delusional, or you have it in some soundargument that you reasoned.

(01:48:16):
And I will also say this is probably like onewrinkle that I would add to the the two
elements of like high agency, some sort ofleverage or compound, you know, some element
that speak gives them better returns, is thewillingness to change on a dime if something of
some part of their reasoning reasoning wasproven untrue.
So it's not like they're romantic with thetruth, not romantic with their process of

(01:48:42):
getting the truth.
And so if if you said here, these are the theseare my five points, and this is why I'm going
all in on this thing.
If someone says, well, I think this one'swrong, and here's my evidence, my experience,
the people that I've seen that are mostsuccessful will just look at that.
They'll take like a big long, you're right.

(01:49:03):
We need to change everything.
And it's just like and then they action.
Right?
Because they're like, wow.
This whole pillar that I that I base thiswhole, you know, thesis on is actually
incorrect, and so I need to change everythingnow.
Andreessen Horowitz defines this as strongconviction loosely held.
Yeah.
I love that.
The ability to have very strong conviction, butyet be able to revise them when new data comes

(01:49:23):
up.
He's great.
He's a g.
I love his ex.
We're both big Elon fans.
Mhmm.
I sent you some clips on Elon's specificportions.
I've been going down this rabbit hole of how hemanages his companies.
How do you explain how a human being can manageseven companies and now also run Doge and all

(01:49:43):
the other things that he's doing?
I can't.
You know, I mean, I think he gets he has like,he obviously gets tremendous return on his time
and operates with huge operational leverage.
There's, you know, the thing is I have I havevery little insight besides the clips that I
see, you know, on on Instagram is likeSexuality.

(01:50:09):
I mean, decision making is probably some of thehighest leverage thing that you can do.
And so it's like, it's probably just what isthe minimum amount of context that is required
to make an accurate decision?
And then he just is a decision making machineand is able to spot problems, pattern recognize
and quickly correct course on the mostimportant things across that many companies.

(01:50:30):
I mean, it's obvious that he has some I mean, Ithink he said it was like some sort of genetic
mutation, some likely thing that his brainworks better, faster, stronger than most
people's.
But from what I understand, he just basicallyworks until he's exhausted, then plays Diablo
for, you know, a bunch of hours, and then likethat's what we get some dumb luck, and then he
like starts again.

(01:50:51):
He obviously has a bunch of lieutenants in eachof those companies that he has, you know,
absolute trust with and they know kind of likethe Elon way.
And so I'd say probably a large degree is hisability to reinforce behaviors within the
company that are conducive to value creation.
And so that has to happen from the top down interms of like what culture exists at SpaceX or

(01:51:14):
Tesla or The Boring Company, where they operatewith this, you know, in his words, a maniacal
sense of urgency at all times.
And I think a big part of that is, you know,one of the things that I think Elon has been
exceptional at, which is something that I'm I'mit's actually a deficiency of mine, something
I'm working on, is like he's very good atpainting a very clear vision for the future,

(01:51:37):
which is typically like a big amorphous wordfor, you know, someone like me to say, but, you
know, we're trying to make human life multiplanetary.
Okay, that's a gigantic goal.
And in order for that to occur, we need to havesolar power.
In order for that to occur, we would need tohave cars that work on electricity.
In order for that to occur, we need batteries.

(01:51:59):
In order for that to occur, we would need, youknow, tunnels, tunnel tunnel technology.
In order for that to occur, we would need tohave that freedom of speech.
And so he has he has somehow, because of thismassive thing that he wants, linked every one
of his companies to we're saving the world.
Mhmm.
And I think that people will bend overbackwards and work a 100 times harder to save

(01:52:20):
the world than they will for just aboutanything else.
And they will also sustain and enduresignificantly more pain.
So there's this this study was done, I wish Icould remember what the name was, but basically
your ability to endure pain on behalf ofsomebody else is like five times greater than
your ability to endure pain on your own.
So like, if Jessica's in the other room and sheit was like, you take a shock or she takes a

(01:52:44):
shock, your ability to sustain higher andhigher levels of shock is is like,
supernaturally higher if you know you're savingher from the shock.
If it's just you, you tap out way sooner.
And so I think that that can be generalized to,like, I'm I mean, people storm the beach of
Normandy to save the the world functionally atthe time.
Right?
And so I think that he has he has created thatenvironment where everyone feels as though

(01:53:10):
they're saving the world and acts in accordancewith that.
And so if we think about a vision and cultureor values as very large bundled direction sets
that included within them have hundreds ofbehavior sets underneath of them that orient
behavior, then they are some of the highestleverage things that you can do in a company as

(01:53:34):
the leader of the business.
It's just difficult.
There's not it's rare.
It's not common that like, our bank is savingthe like, we're gonna have to have banking in
space.
Like, know, like, how do you tie that?
You know, like, my fund is gonna get a goodlike, how do you really get everyone that level
of motivated?
And I think that to me is like, obviously, he'sgot the deep technical expertise.

(01:53:56):
Obviously, he's he's a he's a maniac with histime and all that stuff.
But I think that he's able to get that level ofbehavior change across hundreds of I don't know
how many employees he has, lots, because of howhow that how everyone's oriented towards that
goal.
Do you want me to take a stab at this one?
Please.
I'm I'm like I'm like the one eyed man in inthe land of the blind eye.
Had probably dozens of conversations.

(01:54:19):
So I've seen a couple aspects.
Yeah.
One is he fundamentally redefines what in theCEO title.
Mhmm.
He even had this whole tweet how CEOs are madeup titles.
So when you when you, apply for Delaware ccorp, you there is no CEO title.
So it is fundamentally made up.
Yeah.
So he doesn't he doesn't do things likeoperations and things like that.
He there's probably for everything that hedoes, he doesn't do a 100 different things.

(01:54:42):
So first of all, fundamentally focuses on acouple things.
What he focuses on is really his brand.
Mhmm.
His brand allows him to recruit the very topengineers in the world.
Mhmm.
I interviewed Jamie Gull, who previously workedat SpaceX.
And one of the things I said that there was alot of people at SpaceX that were lifers
because they couldn't find a bigger mission.

(01:55:03):
Yeah.
You know, they they believed, and I thinkappropriately so, that human beings going to
Mars was important for for the for the speciesto survive.
So so one aspect is he uses brand andrecruiting.
The other thing, the most interesting tacticalthing, which was, popularized by Marc
Andreessen Mhmm.

(01:55:24):
Is he goes into his companies and he out withone issue a week.
And he sits down with people, five to fifteenminute meetings, and he says, what is your
number one issue?
Yeah.
And he helps them solve that, which has twoeffects.
One is they're constantly getting rid of theirconstraints.
They're constantly removing their bottleneck atspeed.
And and and this kind of leads into the fourthaspect is he is a player coach.

(01:55:46):
Yeah.
He is in the cockpit.
He is working the hundred hour weeks.
Yeah.
He's not telling people, this is this is mymission.
Now you go, and I'll be on a yacht.
Sure.
He is in in the arena battling, battling thebulls with everybody, and I think that really
has huge effect on the culture
I agree.
Huge effect on recruiting.
I think the more interesting question is howdid he start SpaceX he was Elon?

(01:56:11):
Kind of like, how did you start with a$100,000,000 offers?
Yeah.
You know, I have theories on that.
But today, he just keeps on leveraging hisexisting, which is recruiting and brand, and
those are inter interlinked.
And when you go when you go to these highlytechnical problems, there's actually the most
finite resource is actually not money.
It's actually engineering.
Talent.
The
top top engineers in the world.

(01:56:32):
Yeah.
The 10 x or the 100 x engineers, and he has alarge market share of that.
Sometimes they even, transfer companies.
That's what I've been able to No.
I love together so far.
I love that.
And so I took so two things, then one add on.
So the doing you know, helping them solve inthese five or fifteen minute meetings, whatever
the one problem is, also force functions themto prioritize.

(01:56:53):
So if
you're gonna bring one to Elon they're oneproblem.
Yeah.
Exactly.
It's like just that that alone probablygenerates a huge huge alpha for for the
business.
The the plus one piece, as you've heard of eElon's algorithm?
I don't think so.
Oh, gosh.
Yeah.
It's like I probably use this all the time.
Like, it's like the most useful thing that I'vegotten from Elon of all the things that I've

(01:57:14):
consumed.
So it's the five step process that they applyat SpaceX, but they apply it to everything.
And he now just refers to it as the algorithm,which is question the requirements requirements
Mhmm.
Mhmm.
Delete all the unnecessary or dumb rules orrequirements, optimize, then pull up timelines,
then automate.

(01:57:35):
And so it's like if you're trying to fix amedia department, you come in and you're like,
why do we do this that way?
Okay.
Well, we don't need to do these 28 things thatyou guys are currently doing because it's dumb.
Alright.
So how do we get the best guys to do the thingthat that makes us the most money or gets us
the most views?
Optimization.
So we're out reallocating resources towards thehighest return.
Okay.
Great.
Now that we're doing that, how can we do itfaster?

(01:57:56):
Great.
Now how can we automate it?
And walking through that process has been likeit's been the back of my mind for when I'm
fixing something because it's just like reallygood.
And especially the question of requirements,which was one of the hardest ones because it
forces unconstrained thinking, which is youhave to be like, well, why do we do that?
And a lot of people don't know why they do whatthey do because it's how we've always done it.

(01:58:19):
And most it's so funny how how humans are soeasy to add things, kinda like we referenced at
the very beginning.
Like, we add things so easily and we're andwe're so afraid to remove things.
We're just remove steps, remove processes, andwe almost develop this mythology around around
process.
We've always we don't do it that way, and Ithink that's a survival brain.
Right?

(01:58:39):
Well, it has it has worked.
We haven't died doing it this way, so we shouldjust keep doing it this way and wear pink
socks.
Right?
It's like Behavior.
But why?
Right.
Totally.
You know what the greatest thinkers in theworld and seven year olds have in common?
What?
They always ask why.
Yeah.
And if you just listen to a seven year old andthen just say why, and then they'll say
something, and then they'll say why why did youdo that?
Yeah.
And you lead to some really good questions.

(01:59:00):
Yes.
I ask even on the podcast, I ask some very funamong, like, are you diversified?
Yeah.
And if it's a very high level thinker, they'llactually, like, think really deeply on it.
And because it's like, how do you know you'rediversified?
By what vectors?
It's like How do you define it?
Dumb questions could end up being quite quiteinteresting answers.
One of my well, no.
My my closest friend who's basically a brotherto me, he has a saying, which is the shorter

(01:59:24):
the question, the longer the answer.
Like, what's the meaning of life?
Like, well.
What is it that I I wrote of I didn't have muchtime, so I wrote a very long letter.
Yeah.
No.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A 100%.
I think it I think it was Pascal who said that.
But Another
concept SpaceX has specifically is responsibleengineer
Mhmm.
Which you mentioned as high agency, which isthe engineer in charge of the part.

(01:59:48):
They are fully responsible for everything withthat part.
Yeah.
And the exam example they give internally is ifsupplier hasn't delivered any of the parts, why
aren't you on the plane going to that supplier?
Right.
It's your fault.
And and a lot of the employees burn out aftersix months because they can't deal with this
level of agency.
Agency has a cost.
Yeah.
There's a reason why everybody is in highagency.

(02:00:09):
It takes a lot of Yeah.
Mental and physical power and emotional
Yeah.
As well.
Yeah.
It's so funny.
The the question that requirements like, Iwon't even get because I could tell poorer
stories of the times where I've like walked inand been like, why do we do this?
And it's like, oh, that cost us $500 a year forthis one department and we don't even need it.
Like, I'll I'll tell you one.

(02:00:29):
So we bought for media.
Right?
We bought a bunch of really expensive camerasthat looked really nice because, you know, the
team's like, alright, we're gonna build thestudio or whatever.
And so then I was like, why so it started with,I was told we were gonna build the studio so
that it would be faster for me to record, sothat I could just, like, literally walk across

(02:00:50):
the hall and then just record.
Right?
But then I I realized months after the studiowas built, because we'd always done it that
way, that I would have to say, hey, I wanna gorecord.
And then they'd be like, alright, we'll beready in two hours.
And I was like, why why is this taking so long?
And This is your new studio?

(02:01:11):
Yeah.
And and and so they said, well, we have to setup the the lights or whatever.
And I was like, I'm always in the same spot.
Why are we why do we have to reset up thelights?
And they're like, well, we use the same lightsin your office as we do in Layla's studio.
And I was like, well, how much do lights cost?
And they were like, it's like $2.
And I was like, so I spent $500,000 on thisstudio and we didn't think to spend $2,000 on

(02:01:39):
the lights, which confers the main benefit ofhaving the studio, which is we don't need to
set it up and break it down.
I started with the idea that the the expensivecameras.
Right?
Here's another one.
After the the the videos were happening, I waslike, why can't I was like, tell me what stops
us from posting it within twenty four hours,because I had two week lead times on my videos.
Was like, this is absurd.
Like, why is this taking so long?

(02:02:00):
And they were like, well, you know, it actuallythere's a big part of it.
It's like uploading and download the files isactually this big pain in the butt.
And I was like, okay.
Why are do why do we need big files?
And they're like, well, because we have thesenice cameras.
And I was like, why do we have nice cameras?
And there was no real answer because I havetons of videos.

(02:02:22):
Nicer than the not nice Right.
Right.
And because Higher.
Because all the people who who are buying orpeople who are, you know, media dorks and love
Yeah.
Love cameras and audio.
Right?
But the reality was, I can have an iPhone andsay the same video, it'll crush.
Because the only thing that really matters, atleast in the education space, is the quality of
the information, not
The behavior change.
Yeah.
It it doesn't matter.

(02:02:42):
It almost matters zero.
The effects and the the lighting and the like,none of that matters in terms of video
performance.
And so when when when I when I brought that up,it was like, okay.
So we have these massive 16 I don't Somemassive, very expensive cameras, and I just
said, like, we're not gonna use them.
Put the I was like, put iPhones up.
And so I got so upset about that I went on aplane and I was like, we're doing this whole

(02:03:06):
thing with an iPhone and you're gonna post itin twenty four hours.
And we did that.
I saw that on the Jetway.
Yeah.
That's exactly what it was.
And That's good.
Yeah.
That video got almost 2,000,000 views.
And so it was to prove the point.
I'm like, guys, this is not what matters.
And so I had to, like, I had to go through eachof these elements of like and and and so so
walking through this, it's finding theconstraint within a process, and I think that's

(02:03:28):
what the algorithm is so effective at.
It's like is and so we ask this also withcompanies, like, of my favorite questions is,
okay.
So what stops us from 10 x ing the current ourcurrent deal flow?
Let's say it's demand constraint.
Yeah.
So like, what what stops us from from doing 10times more what we're currently doing?
And they say, well, we couldn't do that becauseand then insert reason.

(02:03:48):
And if that reason's solvable, then it's like,well, why haven't we done it?
Now, if there if that reason is obviouslysolvable, why haven't we solved it?
And then they'll bring up this other reason.
And so you keep asking why Yeah.
And eventually you get to like, oh, HR justhasn't put out the rec for that person yet.
And I'm like, why?
Because we have these other three roles thatdon't matter nearly as much, but this is the

(02:04:08):
one constraint of the business.
So this happens all the time businesses, and Ithink part of it is because it's so rare to
have people who actually do, I call it, like,pulling the thread.
It's like, just keep pulling the thread, like,what happens next?
What why is this preventing us from from doingultimately the thing that has the greatest
leverage on on the growth of business?
And a lot of people just don't know.

(02:04:29):
And I think part of that is because they don'thave enough business acumen or business context
to see, like, no.
When like, this is the tip of the spear.
Like, if we if we need three times the salesguys to triple the business, and let's say
that's aligned with the business objective,then us not have like, why haven't we just
hired 10 recruiters, vendors to just go placeall these roles immediately?
Well, you know, we have one recruiter.

(02:04:51):
I'm like, yeah, but it'll take us two quartersat our current rate.
I was like, when we could fill it in sevendays.
And so the cost, and this is what I have tooutline, like the cost is what three x sales is
over two quarters.
So if we tripled revenue because we tripled thesales team by you know, because let's say we
have sufficient demand, it was like the let'ssay it's a million dollar a month company for
simple math.
It's like, okay.

(02:05:12):
So it would cost us $12,000,000 of lost gainsbecause you didn't wanna pay a recruiter 20 k
times whatever the number of sales guys is thatwe need to triple revenue.
Do you feel like that's a good decision?
Like, we don't wanna pay 200 to make12,000,000.
That seems seems dumb.

(02:05:32):
We should not do that.
But people don't boil it, like, people don'tpull the thread.
Do you solve that on an individual level, or doyou find ways to get people to be a high higher
agency?
So what I'm gonna say is probably gonna be alittle controversial, but I do think I do think
a a big part of it is actually just, like,mental horsepower.

(02:05:54):
I think some people don't have it.
Like Can't cope with that.
With multiple variables.
Yeah.
Multiple variables.
Actually being able to sustain like multiplethoughts in your help mind at the same time and
play out scenarios, I think is really tough fora lot of people.
Yep.
And and that's where
It's not that they don't they want to beinefficient.
Yeah.
No.
I don't think anyone wants to be efficient,inefficient.

(02:06:14):
I that's where that's where it gets intocompetence.
And so like, is that trainable?
Maybe.
I don't think horsepower is trainable.
I do think that skills trainable.
To what degree is that a skill?
I don't know.
I probably have
to think more about it.
But Skill is almost in it.
Reallocation of horsepower.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's where it's like, what behavior change?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I can have someone follow a process, but itlike if it yeah.

(02:06:35):
Anyways but that that piece though, I I think alot about.
And I would say the I would say the one commontheme that's occurred in my business career has
been that the quality of talent that I bring inhas literally gone
up.
Mhmm.
That is like one constant in terms of, like, myincome has been directly correlated with the

(02:06:55):
quality of the people that I bring around bringin and what I'm willing to pay them.
Because I'm I mean, every every person has theit's almost like this limiting belief of, like,
what you can pay somebody.
I mean, shoot.
They just paid, you know, John Ivy
6.5 Yeah.
6,500,000,000.0.
So like, there's a price.
Right?
There's a price to get the best in the world.
And and
and AI OpenAI stock.
Yeah.
No.

(02:07:15):
I mean
Not cash.
Good on the AI.
I mean, that's a big commitment on both sides.
Yeah.
But I mean, if they do go to the hardware thing
It's a very rational deal.
It's a it's a completely rational deal.
Because if he actually unlocks the hardware,then they combine Apple with their I mean, they
they just murder.
And I think they will.
Are you familiar with David Deutsch's conceptson memes?
He's the person that popularized memes thatElon passed.

(02:07:38):
And I think everything in kind of memeticbehavior, humans are basically follow these
memes.
Mhmm.
You mentioned one earlier that's so ingrainedin Silicon Valley that startups change the
world.
That's actually a meme.
Yeah.
That's that's there's there's no rationalitybehind it why a fintech company is changing the
world.
Yeah.
It's just something that's that's repeated.
One thing that I found in a lot of the top CEOsis that they have these meme the specific

(02:08:02):
specific type type of of meme meme calledcalled folklore.
Folklore.
Mhmm.
So do you know about, like, the Nordstrom tirememe?
So Nordstrom, back in the day, was number onein customer service, and they used to tell the
story that this angry customer come came in,and they wanted that had been using a tire for,
like, ten years and they wanted to change thetire, and Nordstrom has this unlimited return

(02:08:22):
policy.
Yeah.
And they gave them back the money on the tire.
Mhmm.
And the joke is Nordstrom doesn't even selltires.
Right.
Yeah.
And there's this extreme version to show thatthe customer's right.
Yeah.
And if they were to go around and say thecustomer's right, it may not resonate.
Yeah.
The tire story
Yeah.
Kinda and then you see this over and over.
Yeah.
Amazon has the meme of the two pizza teams.

(02:08:44):
Mhmm.
And these are, like, really useful packaging totell these beliefs.
So maybe that is a story as maybe the lightstory becomes a meme at acquisition.com and you
tell it to people.
And then they may not think from firstprinciple, but they might remember, oh, like,
is this, the light thing?
Why is there a company we could make a$100,000,000 from and we won't pay for their
lunch because it's not in the budget orExactly.

(02:09:05):
This this it could be memed into into theactual culture.
No.
I love that.
I love that.
Yeah.
And I see that exact like, so I see these typesof folklore stories as coming with series of
behaviors that that they seek to change.
Right?
So it's not just one thing.
It's many sets of behaviors.
So I'll tell you oh, I mean, I could tell azillion of them, so I'll I'll I'll pause.
But, like, yes, I love that.

(02:09:27):
I wanted to get your advice on my own businessand just brand building.
A lot of what were built was inspired by youand just, like, giving content for an audience.
Outside of just doing more,
we're
seeing some really great early results.
Amazing.
What are some other kind of practical guidesfor somebody wanting to build their brand in an

(02:09:48):
audience, whether niche or not?
If I want somebody who's between their theirthey want to start a fund or they already have
done their first and they wanna their second orthird.
Yep.
Right?
I'm then thinking, like, what do these peopleconsume?
What is the what are the biggest problems thatthey're dealing with right now?
Mhmm.
And then all of my content seeks to solve allof those problems.

(02:10:10):
I mean, that's it.
So create the reinforcement loop of listen toDavid, problem solve.
Listen to David, problem solve.
Yeah.
He's this guy's helped me so much.
That's the hermosification.
Yeah.
Well, what a what a business owner strugglewith?
They struggle with marketing, they strugglewith sales, they struggle with cash flow, they
struggle with fixing their product, decreasingchurn, you know, recruiting.
So these are all because obviously, like, we'rewe're operators.

(02:10:31):
We actually run a business.
So, like, that's what they struggle with.
And so I make my content for business ownersbecause that's what I'm trying to attract.
So the two side the two sides of your businessYeah.
Just to distill what's made you so successful.
One is you're reinforcing, listen to Alex andgood things will happen.
Yeah.
And two is actually you're building you you'rebuilding a surplus of of goodwill.

(02:10:53):
So there's both goodwill as well as trust inyou as an operator of businesses to make you
more successful.
You know, interesting because the trustingabout the like, so, like, I would get into
those seem similar to me, both those bucketsMhmm.
And probably derive from the same action set.
And I think it just comes down to, like, doesthis increase the likelihood that someone would

(02:11:17):
would would do something with me for me?
And if they have a history of positivereinforcement for me, then that increase that
that likelihood increases.
That's that's I just leave it there.
That's about it.
Like, goodwill, I just would redefine as ahistory of positive reinforcement.
That's it.
And so there's this big misconception, I think,in the kind of creator world.

(02:11:40):
You've probably heard the, like, give to askratios, you know, that kind of thing.
But it's interesting because when you when youread Steve Jobs' autobiography, he talks about
this.
Or not his biography by Isaac Walter WalterIsaacson.
Thank you.
Thank you.
He he he talks about how, like, he still sawthat withdrawal deposit concept within Apple,

(02:12:04):
but with v via every product.
And so he saw some like, he he believed that ifthe product was great, then we've deposited
into the person's bank account, right,figuratively.
Yeah.
Whereas a creator feels like if they ask formoney, they have withdrawn from their quote
goodwill.
But the underlying assumption there is that thething that you sold them was not good.

(02:12:28):
Because if you were a creator and you came upwith an iPhone Yeah.
Then people would be lining up around the blockfor the next time you sold something.
So it's this zero sum mentality where I'veprovided all this, and now you spend your
money.
You spend you spend something that you don'treally
need.
Reciprocity.
Yeah.
You don't really need it.
Whereas your second trade would all also beaccretive.
Exactly.

(02:12:48):
And I think that is a fundamentalmisconception.
I think the reason for that is because creatorstypically don't know how to make products that
are exceptional.
And they typically don't put not always, but,like, they don't sometimes have enough capital
or they are, you know, aren't good at makingproducts.
They're gonna make a media.
It's just a different skill set.
So just
to double click on that Yeah.
For acquisition.com.
So you give all this content.

(02:13:08):
They love it.
You help them go through 1 to 10,000,000.
They come to you 10,000,000.
Yeah.
They're lucky enough for you to invest.
You could take them to a 100,000,000.
Mhmm.
So you're not taking 30%.
You're saying this is mine for helping you.
Right.
You're actually Yeah.
You're helping them even further.
Everybody wins.
You're like, give
me the opportunity to help you further.
And the reason that you can believe that I canhelp is because I already have.
Mhmm.

(02:13:29):
So it also self selects because if they if theyif they adhere basically, if if they have
changed their behavior based on the contentthat I have, then it's likely that they will be
able to respond favorably again in the futureto the same types of direction.
Right?
Then now the nature
of And also likely that they're grateful andthat they're aware that you helped them.
Because some people will be helped and justnever never attribute it to it.

(02:13:53):
We'll just internalize it.
So that's actually a super interesting one.
Yeah.
Attribution's very interesting.
Most like, think about it's think about howtough it is to have something amazing happen in
your life and say that wasn't me.
That was that guy or that was something else.
Like, we usually take the opposite approach,which is everything that's good is because of

(02:14:13):
me, everything is bad is because of otherpeople and circumstances.
And so it's actually that's true in successfulpeople?
I think it's true in humans.
I think there's just degrees.
Like, not binary.
I think it's just a continuum.
Probably some people are more this way, somepeople are that way.
But no.
I a 100% getting attribution, the the the andthis is why I think having directives that are

(02:14:34):
so specific is so important.
If I if I gave vague, vague directions, right,that somebody has to derive behavior change
from, then basically, the more derivatives theyhave to to do, then I think and I think
rightfully so, the more they should attributethat to themselves.

(02:14:55):
If I said, on this podcast, make it thisheadline, and I will give you the thumbnail,
and then it outperforms the click through rateYeah.
If you thought that was because your team didit, I would be like, that feels a bit odd.
If I said, I think should be you and me andboth of our faces kind of, you know, big in the

(02:15:15):
middle and this you know, let's start it withthe the tweet that we know already, you know,
performs best.
Maybe that's a middle.
Like, he gave us some insight.
It was kinda helpful, but, like, we still madeit.
Yeah.
Right?
And that it's that last like, will we stilllike, whatever that part is, it's like the less
gap there is between whatever your your youradvice was and the action.
I think the smaller the gap, the more theattribution will be there, which is why I am so

(02:15:37):
specific with with the the stuff that
I put out.
And would you would a good criticism of mystrategy be, it's always podcast.
It's always with LPs or GPs, and there shouldbe more talking heads?
Or if people are this and getting the gettingthe value from the actual guest, that's fine.
Do I have
to go to a talking head as well?

(02:15:58):
So thinking about this from, like, a shortform, long form, how do I translate this into
action for us?
Right?
Short form, let's say somebody watched oneshort a day for me for a year.
Okay?
And let's say that as short as thirty secondsfor simple math.
Alright?
So I have 365 shorts, that's a hundred or ahundred and eighty ish minutes.
Right?
So that's three hours that they watched fromme.

(02:16:20):
Now, we know that most shorts are not thirtyseconds.
It's probably probably a third of that.
Yeah.
Right?
So if they watched a short every day for ayear, it's probably an hour ish of content.
Okay.
I would, for sure, rather have someone justwatch I mean, I would probably like that
frequency of exposure, like, if it was one hourto one hour.
But if I had to pick, I'd rather have a onethree hour podcast versus that.

(02:16:43):
But that's to me, I see the purpose of
short form of people.
Podcasts are underrated medium.
Because you have one listen, but it could betwo hours, and it it goes pretty deep.
I've thought about this a decent amount.
So, like, I see podcasts actually as emaillists.
So with the exception like, true podcast, thisis like YouTube plus pod like, you have you you
repurpose there.
But the the vast majority, I would bet, of thechannel growth comes from YouTube.

(02:17:06):
Mhmm.
And then it sustains on the audio.
Right?
If you did audio only, it's very difficult togrow audio only because there's very little
suggestion.
Spotify is beginning this, but Yeah.
For a very long time, people had to only growoff of word-of-mouth sending podcast to to
friends and family, whatever.
And so if we see podcasts as a an email list,then when someone comes to me and says, hey,

(02:17:28):
I'm thinking about starting a podcast to growmy business.
I'm like, that's like saying I'm thinking aboutstarting an email list.
Like, that's not gonna grow the business.
Now unless you have a way of getting, you know,exposure to it, then that's the way that it's
going to grow.
But if we look at, you know, percentage likelyto conversion, a podcast listener who
subscribes is is more valuable than any othersubscription.

(02:17:50):
If we just think about percentage of timeshare, if you will, which is the average
person, I think, has, like, five or seven fiveto seven podcasts and like that that they
subscribe to.
You think about Instagram, it's like mostpeople have, like, a thousand people they it's,
like, not even close.
Order of magnitude is different.
You go on
a lot of other podcasts.
Tell me about the calculus.
Why would you go on somebody else's con podcastas essentially you're building their their

(02:18:12):
listenership?
Sure.
Tell me about the thought.
So I don't do a ton.
I almost exclusively do it with people that Ilike, it's something that I actually do really
wanna have a conversation with.
I would say that's probably the biggestPsychology.
The biggest factor?
Yeah.
It's the biggest yeah.
It's like, I'd seen you conversationsfascinating because you have such a different

(02:18:36):
perspective from the from the, like, super LPside.
You know what mean?
Like, that always brings such fresh eyes to towhat I'm thinking about, like, in the super
kinda, like, operational side.
That's probably the biggest thing.
From a from a, like, return on timeperspective, I think it's like, clips will
generate that's, like, what's the the onlyupside for me realistically is probably, like,

(02:18:57):
clips
Mhmm.
And relationship.
Right?
Those are those are the two kinda, like, alphasfor for doing it.
It's not because you get to talk to a whole newaudience and part part of them will convert to
you?
With your audience, it's it's it's so niche andunique, like, there's definitely value there,
because you have a superstar audience.
I would say asking as a general, like, why whydo I select them in general?

(02:19:22):
The audience that I have is the audience that Iwant.
Yeah.
And so when I'm going with someone else'saudience, I'm basically trying to, like, I I
don't even think about it this way, but I guessyou could you could imagine it's like, of the
peep where's the overlap of business people wholisten to Chris Williamson Yeah.
You know, in Modern Wisdom?
Okay.
Like, I'll some of those people will thenstart, you know, following my stuff that they

(02:19:42):
hadn't heard about me before that.
But if that were the case, then I woulddefinitely be maximizing, like, only new
podcasts rather than doing the same podcast AndI tend to do the same podcast over.
So if I'm looking at my behavior rather thanwhat I would like, so my behavior would dictate
that I usually just go to people that I enjoytalking to.

(02:20:03):
Well, Alex, this has been a pleasure to catchup.
How should people follow you?
On on whatever platform you watch or listen tothe most, can just type type in Hormozi, and
hopefully, I'm there.
But I do have a book launch, though, August 16.
So if you wanna come you can go toacquisition.com.
Actually, I don't know.

(02:20:24):
I can't I can't tell the link yet.
So just you'll find it.
Find it.
Alex Tremozi, new book launch.
And for those that have only watched theYouTube videos, I did read the book.
They're they're exceptional.
They're exceptionally well written.
So highly recommend it.
The third one's gonna be the best.
Awesome.
Looking forward.
Thanks, Alex.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Thanks for listening to my conversation.

(02:20:45):
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