$100M Business Strategies w/ Alex Hormozi

21:23Then let me put some stuff together for you so I can give you a much more informed answer, but I think we can really help you. Can I ask you a question before you do that? Do you get any commitment from them? Like if there's, if I can end up helping you, are you open to me solving the solution for you? Or do you not get any hook close at that point? Yeah. We call it the integrity tie down. So yeah, we, um, yes, we have, uh, we have this big checklist that we call the lead nurture checklist, but it's like 17 things that we, that we do whatever, like we take on a portfolio company. Um, we always look at their show rates on appointments and we can usually take all show rates, even in the coldest prospects to 85%.

21:51but it's, it's like, everyone's like, what's the one, there isn't one thing you have to do like 17 things that each bump you by five to 7%. But I like it. So you're going to end the conversation there with some probably minor commitment calls that if you can solve the problem, they're going to move forward when you get back together. A hundred percent. And so then when you go to the second call, we still go through CLO again and you'd be like, again, you're like, sure will. And you just dive a little bit deeper into all of them. And then you go SER. So S is sell the vacation. And I use this acronym, uh, this moniker, because I say, you want to sell the vacation, not the plane flight.

22:22And so a lot of people, when they want to sell stuff, they talk about the widgets, right? They talk about TSA. They talk about checking their bag and taking their shoes off and who they're going to sit next to on the plane and the seat and how long the flight's going to be and the modules and the services and whatever. But people just want Maui. Yes. And so you should be describing the beach and the ocean and what they're going to experience the moment they get into the hotel room, right? And they can open up the curtains and they look out the window. Like that's what we should be describing, not how they're going to get there.

22:47So you sell the vacation and then ER is explaining what their concerns. So once you sell the vacation, that's when you make the ask. And then E and R is, okay, if they don't say yes immediately, totally reasonable. Most people don't expect no, but train for no, because that's where you make the money. And then we explain what their concerns. And so, you know, for us, I train on three major obstacles, which is they correspond to the distortions of reality from Dr. Albert Ellis. And so you've got people who are upset at the universe. So circumstances, that's on the outermost layer. And then the next level underneath, and this is like an onion.

23:27So if someone says no, and they say time, money, this isn't the perfect fit for me, all of those are circumstantial. And that's the easiest thing to say. And that's the first thing people say when they say no. The second level underneath of that is other people. So first people are upset and distorted about the universe. Everything's unfair. Nothing goes my way. The next level is because of insert person, blame finger goes out. My kids, my husband, my coworkers, my mom, whatever it is, won't let me do this thing. And so they put all the power in the other person. And so we have to break that apart and get somebody who's in power who can actually make a decision.

23:59And usually, I am a big believer in sales being an actual empowerment conversation. Because if you're talking to an empowered decision maker who's informed, that's the only person you want to talk to. And I believe a well-structured sales conversation can increase the number of people who are that person. And so the final layer, the deepest one is, is themselves. Right. And so they, they have their own fears that they have to overcome and doubts about what's going to happen. And so we work through those, those layers until we eventually have a person who has now made a decision. And so when we can do that, I'm a big believer in like, try and get yes and no, not, not to be, not to be like hard closing, but just so that if someone doesn't give a decision, then we want to walk them through how they make decisions so that they can make a decision about your product.

24:50And so as we're going through it, so that's, that was basically just like the explain away concerns. And then finally R is that the person says yes, and you reinforce the decision. And so a certain percentage of sales, especially in high, high volume transactional sales organizations, people back out, they get cold feet, et cetera. And so what we try and do is the moment someone closes, we want the next 24 hours to be unbelievably choreographed. And so like, and we're talking immediate. So the moment they signed or the moment the credit card goes through, they get a text from the onboarding person, or we do a warm handoff.

25:19Like, Hey, this is Shirley. Shirley's going to be taken from here. Like I said earlier. And so what we want to always do is set expectations, meet expectations, set expectations, meet expectations. And I have changed my tune about this. I used to always say over deliver, but I've, I've come to the point now where I genuinely believe that if you just keep your word, they will trust you more. And ideally, and this is a little hack for everyone. If you're any, any type of services business, let's say you're an agency that does SEO, whatever. And it takes you 14 days to on-ramp somebody rather than saying, we're going to touch in every week, right?

25:52Which would be fine. And that's what most people do in that week. You probably do like 25 things, right? But you're going to have one meeting. If you want to be really clever every day, send an email that says, Hey, no need for reply. Just want to let you know, we did these three things. We'll recap at the end of the week, but I just want to let you know where we're at. If you send progress supports every day, what happens is you create multiple reinforcement cycles. And so you're setting and completing, setting and completing. And so at day seven, when normally your competitor has only talked to them, this is the first time they talked to them since the sale, you had a warm handoff and they've received communication from you every single day.

26:25So this is like the eighth touch point for them. And now their trust in you is so much higher, which then translates to way lower backouts, way higher ascensions into whatever your next revenue thing is or the next product or expansion revenue and more referrals and testimonials. And so we try and choreograph that process and that's the R. And so close your framework, clarify where they're there, label them with a problem that you can solve, overview their past experiences, the pain cycle, sell the vacation, not the plane flight, explaining where they're concerned and then reinforce the decision.

26:56Okay. A lot to unpack there. Okay. So hang on. First off, this is one of those notes, It's a segment on the show. Rewind it and go listen to it again. Go rewind seven minutes back or whatever that was and listen to it again because there's genius in there. I just want to unpack a couple of the things. Most of you make the mistake in whatever it is that you're doing. You even do it with your kids. You are selling the plane flight. You're selling the process. You're selling the steps as opposed to the beach. That's a biggie. Number two, this notion of the 24 hours post. I cannot get over how many people think the sale just got closed.

27:26I'm done. I cannot get over it. Number one, you're probably going to lose the sale. Number two, you're definitely diminishing the amount of leads you're going to generate from it. I just did a very significant transaction with somebody. I had a very laid out process in my company. It's a very major exit type decision for somebody. Okay. I told my team, the second we hang up this phone, he is going to begin to doubt this decision. If he's an airplane, he's freaking losing altitude. We need to be doing X, Y, and Z, but it's already a predetermined process. I was just taking them back through reminding them why.

28:00Some of the businesses you have, it is just a 24-hour process. Some of you, to your other point, it's a week or eight or 10 days and whatever it might be. Sure enough, what was supposed to happen the next morning didn't. By midday, we were behind. Then he messages us with a question, which we replied to. Then he messaged with another one. When the second question came in, I messaged the entire team. This deal's over. Yeah. We're losing this deal. No, no, no. We can get it back. We've lost the deal. He has switched. He's got downward momentum and it's our fault. Sure enough, massive, like close to nine figure mistake.

28:38That was a process that was involved. Some of you are making a$800 mistake when this happens. Let me ask you a hard question because this is something I've done in my career. It's not process driven, but it's important. You went through this process. Sometimes I think that somewhere in that flow tell me if intuition works or you just stick to the process somewhere in that flow before you get to close i've had the intuition this person's ready right now i can go to this step that's not necessarily something that's able to teach on scale you know what i'm saying yeah but i've also watched a lot of people go you have them here and now you're beginning to layer objections in it and it's taking longer than their tolerance level is i see a lot of people especially the longer they're in sales, they unsell them.

29:22They give them more. Let me tell you one more thing. One other thing you should know. One other thing. By the way, my checklist says step four is I then do this. Do you, because scaling this isn't as easy as, but I also know the real world. Should someone still have sensory acuity when they're in the process and go, we're ready now? So the way that we train sales is that one, we start, you might love this. So we try to think back to front, which is if someone, a lot of people train rapport building first, they train the script top to bottom. But if someone knows how to do the first half of the script and they don't know the second half of the script, the likelihood that they can close is zero.

29:54Yes. If you train people from the back of the script to the front of the script, if someone doesn't have rapport and they don't know the opening questions, but they know how to close, the likelihood they could close is greater than zero. 100%. And so - 100%. And so for us, my belief from a selling perspective is that if you follow the closer, right, clarify whether they're all we're doing asking questions, labeling them is just asking for agreement on one statement that they have the problem. Overviewing past experience is just questions. We haven't said anything else. We're just asking questions.

30:18And then the only time you actually make a statement is when you sell the vacation. And then after that, you ask. And so for us, the E only comes out after they've said no. And so we explain it through obstacles and objections. And so objections, as I see them come up after the ask, obstacles come up before the ask. And so if someone says, I'm just here for more information, that's an obstacle. So we handle that up front. if you know like an upfront again it's like is there any other decision makers that need to be on the call and we ask that in the nurture process before we're on the call and we'll reaffirm that at the beginning because if they say no or yes i do need someone then like cool let's just reschedule there's no point in going through this objections happen which is universe like time money fit uh i need the other decision maker or i don't know how to make a decision which is the personal thing the doubt part and so then we walk them through making the decision making process but each one of those we always loop back.

31:11So they give us the thing, we overcome it and we say, great. So now you're ready or make sense. Fair enough. Let's ready to move forward. Do you have your idea on you? Whatever the closing question is.

31:24And so that way, as soon as someone says yes, that is when we stop selling. So that's the big, to your point of the unselling is because people then get like really excited. It's like, dude, take credit card. Like as soon as they say yes, great. What card you want to use yeah by the way I know my audience is like dude this is hardcore today which is exactly no no no this is exactly what you bring to the table and it's actually the stuff like you know look it'd be great we could do another episode today if you want like hey guys you be positive positive manifestation right like we could do that or we can actually give you teeth okay here's something you do very well this is where I think the offer and the lead things sort of marry one another totally I'm watching you I listen to you and you either do this unconsciously, which I doubt.

32:11The best people that I know that are entrepreneurs of any type, okay, you can even go to jobs and I can argue he was great at it. You can go to Musk. I can argue he was great at it. You can go to a hardcore selling person like Ellison or whatever. Okay. They know how to frame. Okay. Alex, you're an incredible framer. Okay. You know how to pre-frame something before you do it, you know how to create the frame when you're doing it, and then you know how to post frame. I'm amazed, blown away. Like a great speaker walks out on a stage. They pre-frame what's going to happen there today. Then they sit in the frame with you.

32:50Then they tell you what just happened. Okay. This is just something most people are oblivious to. And if you're not good at it, you may get a close and not get leads. If you're not good at this framing stuff, your ad's going to suck. If you're not good at this framing stuff, your affiliates aren't going to offer it correctly. So all of this fits in there. I'm good at very few things. I'm a really good framer. No, no. I'm a really good framer of messaging. I framed you in the beginning of the message. I just framed the complicated thing you just called it. So I reframed what it means. Are you conscious of that?

33:23Do you teach it? Do you think it's something that most entrepreneurs and salespeople, entrepreneurs and or salespeople are not aware of enough yes um in terms of teaching it i don't i think that good for i think framing to your point using a different word just contextualizing i think it's i think it's a teaching skill and so what we're saying is like i said this this is what this means it's like i'm translating this because you might speak in techno jargon for whatever the thing that you're selling is and they're like you just said a lot of words you're like it means your house is going to be protected right that's what this means you can sleep well Can I give you another example of a frame?

33:59Your launch. Yeah. You framed it as, here's everything that's going to be, everything that's going to be, here's going to be, and then, and it's free. Yeah. So you created a particular frame, and then you stepped out of it and shocked them. Yeah. But what you did is, first off, you have a generous heart, and that's why you really did it. But let's also be honest. You created this massive value frame. Yeah. This would cost you this. Yeah. This is how I did it. This would do this. This would do this. And then emotionally at the end, because you were emotional about what you were giving them and believed in it so deeply, But then you kind of stepped out of the frame and went, all that?

34:30Bam. And now you're back in a new frame, which was a value, gift, generosity. Now everybody leaves the launch. This is super important. I don't even know if you know you did this. I mean, I know you know what you were doing, but I don't know if you know what that led. You have built a reputation of being someone who brings tremendous value. Okay? That's one thing. Tremendous value. Well-prepared. Articulate. You know, cutting edge. Clearly does this. Isn't talking about theory. That was the frame that was going on the entire launch. And then you stepped out of the frame and became a Jesus figure.

35:03Literally, your frame changed. Kind, generous, giving, philanthropic. And so you get this great value frame and then you stepped in. You guys all know what I'm saying. In other words, you create a great value. Then he stepped out of the frame and gave it to you. And that's, to your point, an irresistible offer when you do it that way. Were you conscious of that? And when I explain it back to you, do you see what I'm describing? You usually use two frames there. Yeah, 100%. Punking the game. Is that what you call that? Well, just a phrase I like for it. And it was so good, Alex. It was so good.

35:42It's going to make it really hard for anybody else to launch a book. Hopefully. No, it's going to make it really hard. You changed what that frame looks like now. And honestly, I wanted to honor the book because of how much time I put into it. And so I put, I put probably 200 hours into the presentation. Um, but I put, I put 2000 hours into the book. And so it was only 10 % of my work from the book went into the presentation, even though the presentation was a, you know, a big, a big thing. Um, but to your point with the contextualizing, like if I said, here's this thing, enjoy it. People don't know how to process that.

36:16And so it's breaking it down so that they can understand how, how this will actually benefit at their lives. And if I can, my hope was that people would at 12 ,000 at 5 ,000 at$3 ,000 as I price dropped during the, during the pseudo pitch that people, and I got messages after being like, dude, I was there at five. I was, I was in. And so it's different than giving a free gift. I wanted to give a$12 ,000 gift to every person that was there, but I had to justify why it was a$12 ,000 gift and why everybody would have paid that, but then instead got it for free. But Alex, what I'm saying is that it was brilliant.

36:49And by the way, very generous of you. but this is something in the sales process. I don't think most people, they're giving away their product. They've not created a frame of its value before it's reduced to the access point that you can get it at. And that's something all of you, just the concept of what we're describing, you've all got to start to understand or you're not going to be as great as you could be. You're not going to be the goat at what you do. I want to go to some of the things you've, here's something a guy said recently. This dude said, there's a moment when every boy realizes is no one's coming to save him.

37:22And that's when he becomes a man. And some boys never get there and stay children forever. That guy was you that said that. And it's important when we step out of this, like this stuff matters because no one's effing coming to save you. No one's going to make you better at your business. No one is going to get you to be a better persuader of people or framer of people other than you. And I just feel like that's one of the more profound philosophical comments. There's a lot of grown men and women that are still boys and girls because they think someone else is coming to change their life. You say otherwise.

38:01What would you say to someone who's still living in that delusion? wake up i mean reality probably stares them in stark contrast to what they want so they're like it's i use the blame finger a lot which is that power power follows blame and so if you blame the government who you think is supposed to save you or you blame politicians who you think is supposed to save you or blame your company that you work for who you think is supposed to save you or you blame the market doesn't really matter where your parents the the whoever you blame is the person you ultimately give power to. And I find that really interesting because when I was that my moment of figuring this out was when I was 19 and I was really resentful of my parents, specifically this instance was my mother.

38:43And I blamed her for the way I was acting. I was like, well, she parented me differently. I wouldn't be this egotistical and arrogant and whatever. And I realized that I actually was giving the person that at the time I disliked the most in the world, all the power over my behavior. And so I was like, so that idea sickened me that the person I disliked the most, again, at the time was the one that I was actually giving my leash to. And so I was only acting in response to this leash and then, and willingly voluntarily giving her all the power of my life. And all I was doing was reacting to what this person did or what the government does or the politicians do.

39:24And so the first, I mean, I've said this before, but the first two words of getting out of poverty are my fault. And the thing is, is it doesn't actually matter if it is your fault, but it is your problem. And so you have to solve it because no one else will. And so that, that, that allows you to actually do something about it. And so that, that's been, I'm a big believer in operationalizing and only thinking about things through actions rather than feelings, because the feelings come and go, and also they are justified or unjustified, it also is irrelevant. Because if you make 100 cold calls, whether you hate it or you love it or you're meant for it or you never want to do it for the rest of your life, you make the calls and you practice the script, you'll get business.

40:09And you can also get business and make money even if you don't deserve it, which for me was actually a really comforting point because there was definitely moments in my life where I had tons of self-loathing, didn't think I deserved anything, blah, blah, blah. But the idea that I could still have it anyways and not to serve it if I only did the things that got it was like, it was kind of like in the, in the weightlifting world that the iron is the iron, whether you're black, you're white, you're a woman, 500 pounds, 500 pounds. And so like the actions that create success are often are kind of the same way, which is like the hundred phone calls or the hundred pounds on the bar, the work just needs doing.

40:40And it doesn't, and I think it's, it's incredible for me, it's really inspiring that anyone can do the thing and get the result no matter how they feel about themselves. And I think that's really freeing. And so to the person who is still, you know, plugged in and waiting for someone to save them, someone will save you, but it's you, future you, the better you, the person that you've been waiting to become. Bro, you almost look like a somber look on your face when you say it. Do you say that because like you think so many people just aren't going to get that? Or do you say it because it's just so obvious to you at this point?

41:12I think it's because I've been there you know and so that's I think that's that's why you know my tone probably changes when I talk about that stuff but like I mean the reason I make this the all the content that I do is because like I get it like it was I mean it's tough like I mean the thing the rocky cut scene lasts two minutes in the movie but it can last five years in real life and it's not and there is no background music you know what I mean and there's no audience waiting to cheer for you and you don't know that you're going to beat Apollo Creed. So you're in it for five years. And I think the hard part of entrepreneurship is the uncertainty that you don't know if it's going to work out.

41:51But taking to the other natural extreme, if you did know and you were guaranteed that it was going to work, it wouldn't be worth it. So we want something from a world. We want to guarantee from a world that doesn't give any. And the fact that it doesn't give a guarantee is what makes it worth it. Bro, bro. my nephew's got an auto detailing business he just started and uh he calls me he goes uncle eddie i just don't know whether or not my business is gonna work and happen and uh i said well i don't know whether it's gonna work or happen as well but i know that if you did the work it's likely to happen yeah and i go but are you willing to do the ugly yeah he said what do you mean i said the ugly ugly he goes well you know i said so your existing clients do you have an affiliate a program where they can refer you people he goes actually i do for every one of these they get 25 or whatever it was i go that's really good i said how many are you getting from that and he goes well i only have like you know 18 clients so like three of them have sent me somebody i go well if that's all you continue to do you're probably gonna have a difficult time to your point of the paths and he goes well what would you do i said i can tell you exactly what i would do it would be inevitable um what do you do on saturdays and sundays you doing cars he goes no i don't have any cars to do i said well i'd go print out a whole bunch of flyers and i go knock on doors where people have cars.

43:06Yeah. And he goes, oh, really? I go, yeah, I'd knock on 100 doors a Saturday. I'd give him my flyer, let him know about my business, give him exposure, let him know what a great job we do, give him a list of my Instagram, and they can see the other cars we've cleaned and the other things that we've done. And in any way, what happens is the more you have a specific plan like this where you're willing to do the ugly and run the numbers, your fear level diminishes to an extent. The notion that it's going to go away completely isn't true. But there's something about doing the ugly thing that reduces fear.

43:34It not only increases your chance of winning, but you're like, the possibility mathematically of me losing now is rather small. But when you're not doing these things, the reason you're living with so much fear is, you know, the possibility of you not winning is rather great. And so you're living with a fear that's self-imposed, self-induced, and your fault because you're not willing to do the ugly. And I think that's why sometimes when I look back at those days, I have that same look you have. There's also an internal part of me that goes, man, I actually did those ugly things. when I didn't want to, when I didn't have any desire to, and I wasn't sure it was going to work, but I was actually almost ensuring it was going to work based on the math part of it.

44:15You know what I'm saying? A hundred percent. One of my favorite like math equations to figure out is the input output equation to what I want. And so like, as soon as you can boil down whatever goal you have into like the most simple version of the action, which is like, I need to dial this many things, or I need to send this many emails, or I need to send this many direct messages, or I need to post this many posts of content, or I need to run this much per day in advertising or PPC or SEO or whatever it is. As soon as it boils down to that, then it's plug and chug. And then what happens is action alleviates anxiety.

44:50And so I'm going to give two polar extremes here. So this is something I'm working on. But so I was saying earlier that I like operationalizing words and like what they mean, right? And so sadness comes from the perceived lack of options. That's why it feels like hopelessness. You don't know what to do. That's why you feel sad. And you can solve that with knowledge, right? Because sadness is actually an ignorance issue. You just don't know. So if you did know what to do, then you wouldn't be sad anymore because you know what action to take. Anxiety is the opposite of that, which is you have many options in front of you, but you don't know which to take, which is a lack of priorities.

45:31And you solve that with a decision. And so usually you have lots of decisions that you haven't made, and then that's why you have anxiety. And so you need to confront decisions you need to make. And so there was a point that I was getting to, and I totally forgot because I got really excited about this stuff. No, it was a fact about action and reducing fear when you don't know you lose hope. Yes. And so once you have the clear path of like you solved it, which is why you're listening to this podcast, you read the books, so you can go from ignorance, not knowing, to knowing what you need to do, then it's literally just saying the first six hours of my day, every day, and I still do this.

46:08just so you like this habit, like I was asked once, what was, what's the biggest ROI habit? Now everyone has different things, but for me, it's that the first six hours of my day, every day is dedicated to the activities that I need to do to move the business forward. I don't take meetings. I don't take calls. It's just me. After that six hours is when my day starts.

46:31So that's when I do, I take my meetings, I take my calls and whatever. And so in the early days when I had customers, then that meant that I would work from four to 10 and then I would do all my customer stuff after that. Now where I'm at now, I don't have customers per se. And so I wake up a little bit later and I work from six until, and the way that my team schedules my calendars, they actually work from the back of the day forward. And so if I have like three meetings, they're going to start them at, you know, the last one will be at 4.30, 4 and then 3.30. And so I have from the moment I wake up until 3.30 in the afternoon to move my stuff forward.

47:04That's how I work, but I'm not an operator. Layla, my wife is stacked meetings all day long because she's running the teams and she's keeping cadence on stuff. And I say that because if you were the entrepreneur, then in the beginning, your responsibility is to let other people know about your stuff. If more people know about your stuff, more people will buy it. That is a promise. You can take that to the bank. And so like, if you think about it, the absolute natural extreme, if every person on planet earth knew about your business, you would make more money. And so the question then just becomes how to let more people know about my stuff.

47:34And that's why I wrote the book, but it's like, and I wanted to make it action oriented because either you did the reach outs or you didn't either you posted the content or you didn't either you ran the ads or you didn't and you switch who you're advertising to. So we're talking about affiliates. You can post content to get affiliates. You can do warm reach outs to get affiliates. You can run paid ads to get affiliates. You can also do all those things to get customers. And what do you think recruiting is? You do cold reach outs to get employees. You run ads to get employees. you like the process of making something known is the same whether you're recruiting employees recruiting customers recruiting affiliates recruiting an agency how do you find out about agency it's the same process of making known and so right now if you're not getting the amount of leads that you want you're not advertising enough period and so and again with the leverage thing is that you don't need to be like we got 500 ,000 leads you know to come for the event register for the book launch, I didn't get 500 ,000.

48:29I did. I'll tell you what I did. I hired someone who is a director of people who then hired a director of brand who organized my media team, if we're really talking about this, right? Who organized my media team, who posted 300 pieces of content a week leading up to the launch of the book. My director of people hired my internal director of marketing who reached out to six agencies and picked the one that he thought was best suited to run our ads and they ran our ads for us. My, and mind you, all of this came off of one thing for me, which was just, we hired a director of people who then hired people who then got the thing.

49:06And so 500 ,000, mine was more or less like, we're going to follow this playbook. Yes. And then down it went. But if you're like, well, must be easy for you to say yes, but it still starts with the first action, which is like, I hadn't hired that person. I would have had to move one level down on that level of leverage. And so if you're that solopreneur or you're a salesperson who works in an organization and you need to get your own leads, whatever it is, there are only four things that you can do to get leads that you yourself, you reach out to people you know, you reach out to people you don't know, you post content and you run ads.

49:39That's it. That's all there is. And if you're not doing those four things, whether it's to get affiliates, to get customers, to get employees, to get agencies, it doesn't matter because those are the only four things that one person can do to let other people know about their stuff. So if you're not getting enough leads, you're not doing enough of that, period it's not good it's outstanding it's truth by the way sasha have we really been going 45 or 50 minutes 50 minutes i literally think we've been doing this for 15 minutes i have never i mean dude i've done 500 podcasts i have never looked up at the clock and gone it said was 50 minutes i thought it was like 15 i'm not exaggerating and i'm not letting your ass go just yet bro i'm not exaggerating That is the fastest freaking 50 minutes in the history of my life.

50:24I can't even get over that. That's nuts to me. That's how you know something is good. You mentioned Layla. I'm not going to let you out of here this time without talking about her. First off, one cool thing people don't know is like almost every single time you've reached out to me, which I love. And by the way, I totally want to do. I've had to say no like three times to him. It's like this dude whose brain I love picking and I think he likes picking mine too. He just always asks me when I can't do something. And it's all sometimes like, what are you doing tonight? Yeah, that's horrible. Once in a while, there's a little of those, right?

50:55But it always includes her. Yeah. And I meet, look, you're brilliant, okay? Let's just be honest, okay? You are. And then I watch her stuff, and I'm like, dude, she's freaking unbelievable. And I know you play different roles, but I actually posted something about today, and I just want your take on it. By the way, one of those other pointing at the other person as their objection for their life, if some people point at their significant other as their reason, right? You're giving somebody advice about that. Like, hey, you're going to have a running mate necessarily or not a running mate. What are some of the things you would recommend from your own experience with her that are most important or something that's even happened with you and her?

51:36So I'll give my first frame, which is we've only been together seven years, married six, and so I realize that I'm young in this game, so take this for what it is. I think Layla and I practice acceptance very well, which is that the reason that I married Layla was that she never wanted to change anything about me. And that was what I wanted. I just wanted to be me. And I felt like a lot of times I had to compromise or I felt like I needed to compromise who I was or what I wanted to do for a middle ground. And I think there are plenty of marriages, to be fair, that do that and they do it exceptionally well.

52:13And this isn't me saying that that's good or bad or whatever. I'm only sharing what has worked for us is that Layla is Layla. And if she wants to wear the nicest clothes and drive the nicest cars and be in the nicest penthouses and stuff, then if it doesn't bother me, let's do it. And at the same time, if I want to wear, I look like an electrician, you know, like, um, then she doesn't try and dress me a certain way or make me, you know, like, Hey, it'd be really cool if you were just scruffy, you know, or I I wish you cut your hair like this. Like she's, she just doesn't, you know? And I think the big thing for us is that we are absolutely aligned on the big mission and we're absolutely aligned on the values, which is so where we want to go and how we want to get there.

52:56And I think the third, the third piece that we look at is lifestyle is like, what do you like to do in the day-to-day or interests? I remember when I was debating whether I wanted to be with her or not, I had a coach at the time and he said, well, tell me about your stats. And I was like, what do you mean? and he's like your stats he's like since you came in your life are you making more money are you in better shape like how do you like how do you feel like do you have more energy like are you doing more stuff are you getting close to your goals and i thought about it i was like well yeah i am making way more money and i mean shoot she makes me money because she was working for me i was like she literally she's not she's not a liability she's a she's an asset you know she's making money um and so i you know and it's like and she's really fit and so she like cooks healthy and she's getting meat eat a little healthier than i you know because she's cooking and i'm there Right, right, right.

53:40And she goes to the gym more than I do. So I was like, you know, if I see her go, I'm like, I should go, you know. And so when I thought about every one of the stats in my life, they all went up. And so I think that, and I've said this before, but like Layla and I didn't have a romantic chemistry fireworks beginning. My first date, I asked her to work for me and I said, this might not work out, but like you should totally work for me because you have a skill set that would make a lot of sense. And that was my proposition. and she said no I just met you from the internet but you know three weeks later she quit her job and she joined me at gym launch and so I think it's just been absolute alignment of where we're trying to go how we want to get there and the interests we have and absolute acceptance of not trying to change the other person or their goals now if there was ever a time in the future where she said like my goal differs from yours then it might not make sense anymore but I think our goal is big enough and wide enough and because we are exposed to the same stimuli I think I have a tremendous amount of respect for people who don't work with their spouse because that's what I do.

54:40And I can't imagine it another way. Now, I'm sure people in reverse say the same thing. But we get exposed to the same hardships. And so in a lot of ways, I feel like we continue to grow together or at least in parallel on the same path. If you're exposed to a lot of different stimuli and stressor than your spouse's, they're going to respond to the stressors and adapt just like any other organism would. And sometimes that means you grow apart. And so I'm very grateful that we can work together and transparently that my wife has a skill set that is consistently incredibly valuable. Because real talk, if Layla wasn't an exceptional CEO, then Layla wouldn't be the CEO.

55:16You know what I mean? But she just is – people don't know this from the content, but I would argue that Layla is a better CEO than I am, quote, visionary. I think the ideas are easy. doing it is hard and she has made me look exceptional by making crazy ideas like a 500 ,000 person launch actually happen yeah like anyone can say sure let's let's do an affiliate program let's do a referral program let's do this let's do let's get some agency like I say all that stuff and then she's like got 168 item a son you know list and then she starts dealing you know what I mean dealing and shelling these things out and then all of a sudden I get all the credit it, which is, you know, a burden I have to bear.

55:59Are you happy right now? Me? Yeah. I'm loving it. I'm in the game. Yeah. And like, oh, no pun intended, but so you, you are happy right now. This is the best, this is the best version of me I've had so far. Um, but I, I realized for me that my, when I look back on the, my short life, um, the times that I have, that I look as the good old times were always the times where I was in pursuit, not when I was in achievement. And I absolutely now have a massive bone that I'm chewing on. And there's nothing like, if I have three days in a row on a long weekend and I have nothing planned and a big cup of coffee and a big ass goal I'm working on, like there is nothing in this world that makes me happier than just being able to just pull a thread and just keep pulling it on my own and working through something complex, like writing the book, like organizing the launch or scripting the ads or coming up with the affiliate program that aligns every party associated with it.

57:00There's nothing I'd rather do. I don't have hobbies. I get flack for this all the time. They're like, don't you think you're unbalanced? I'm like, why? I like this. I like what I do every day. It's interesting what we share. By the way, I just did content that I released today that said, if you're trying to change the person you're with, you're wasting your time. I just did that. The other thing is that I have tried golf and I play a little bit, but the truth is business is my sport. Yeah. Business is my hobby. Changing people's lives is my passion. Yeah. And like, of course I'm happy doing it.

57:29It'd be like, if you love golf and you played golf all the time, wouldn't you be happy? Like I love doing this all the time. It makes me happy. I, um, I cannot get over how quickly this went. I almost feel like I would like to spend the night with you. Can I add one caveat to the question that you asked about the happiness thing? Yeah. Yeah. So happiness is a really tricky question. And I think I'll give a reframe for the audience that might be helpful, which is like wanting to be happy from a word perspective is in some way saying like, I want to eat a meal so big, I'm never hungry again. It's a misnomer.

58:04And I prefer to use the word joy that I experienced joy or that I experienced meaning in the work that I do, because like you can mourn and be joyful, at least in my two cents. And so I think that the idea that I think inhibits or prevents a lot of entrepreneurs from continuing down the path is that they are like, I'm not happy. But like happiness, a lot of times it's just a circumstantial response to whatever external thing. But if like joy is a lot more internal and you can be in the thick of it and working on your auto detailing business on the 37th door of that day, and you have a little tick mark and you know, you got to get to a hundred and you had the last 36 slammed in your face, but like you can be joyful if you reframe the joy around the person you are becoming by doing the hard work.

58:52And the thing that has, I think right now been my biggest area of interest in terms of my own performance has been truly divorcing outcome from winning. And like, it's, It's really easy to say and really hard to do, but I want to be the father that when Timmy wins 10-0, I can look at him and be like, I'm disappointed in you. Not because of the outcome, because I know you could have tried harder. And on the flip side, if he loses 10-0, I want to be like, Timmy, you worked your ass off. You left it all on the field. I'm proud of you. And I want to be Timmy to me and judge myself by that. And I get in the most flow in the work when my metric for success is how hard I worked for it.

59:40And that has made joy feel like it's under my control more than anything else. And so that is what I've been practicing on a daily basis and I think has, for me, unlocked a level of productivity and work that when I was more external and outcome focused was more ephemeral. Because like, you know what, I could have had the book launch and the internet could have gone down for the whole city of Vegas. but if I know that I had done everything in my absolute power to prepare, then I could still be proud of me and I would have earned my approval. And so it's more like that has been my consistent process of like, if I can just respect me for the work I did, then that is enough.

1:00:19That's another level right there. You just described me to me better than I've ever described to me, bro. Okay. By the way, everyone on my team, just so you know, that's a social media clip right there. The last minute and a half. That's the best description I've ever heard of how I've lived my crazy life. And it explains me to me. Let me tell you what you just did in the last minute there. Two minutes. You helped. I'm being honest. I'm older than you. And I'm still richer than you. Barely. I say that. You know what I mean. You're definitely. No, I don't know that anymore. But you just described me to me.

1:00:57You just helped me understand myself very well. There's a depth to you, bro, and a dimension. My favorite people are really multidimensional people. And you online sometimes make yourself seem like you're just entrepreneurial dimensional. But what makes you such a creative, skilled, visionary entrepreneur is the dimension that you have, is your depth. Is your depth. And you just exemplified it right there. I've just had somebody a lot younger than me just explain me to me better than I've ever understood myself, what you just said right there. And that's why I kind of look at you like a young son or a brother.

1:01:31Because that's exactly how I am. It's exactly, Alex, how I am. And it's made me understand why I actually live pretty joyfully most of the time, yet it's not something I'm going to go get and I'm going to slow down and cool down and then it's all going to rain down on me in those times. It's been the pursuit. It's been the growth. Bro, such a great conversation. It is the fastest one in, I guess now, like an hour and 10 minutes or whatever it's been that I've ever had. And I just feel like I feel this sense of like real accomplishment. Yet I'm empty because I know we like barely scratched the surface.

1:02:06What we should just do is like, let's just have you back every six months when you're in town and we'll just dig deeper into your brain. Thank you for today. Thank you. You guys, he's awesome. I don't need to sell this one to you. Like you've just shared this with anybody who's ever got a business in your entire life. He's Alex Hermose. You should be following him on social media. I fully endorse him, by the way. And you should go get$100 million leads. $100 million leads, how to get strangers to want to buy your stuff. Go check out acquisition.com. If you need help growing your business, Alex might be a dude you want to see as well.

1:02:37Can I add one thing? So just as a gift for you guys, if you like podcast stuff, I put both of my books on my podcast for free. So if you're like struggling right now, you don't have money, you're like, you know,$20 is going to kill me. The game is called the podcast and it's high five hundreds. I can't remember the actual episode, but$100 million offers and$100 million leads, the audiobooks, I put them all in my podcast so you can just listen to them. Yeah, it went to the number one podcast on the planet when he did it. So you guys go get it. He's not doing it because he wants another download.

1:03:05He's doing it. I can promise you that. All right, guys. Alex, thank you. Thank you. God bless you, everybody. Max out. This is the Ed Milad Show.

1:03:25«Be En характер».