Eliminating self-doubt, talent-stacking, and is hard work toxic? 5 important lessons from Alex Hormozi on Diary of a CEO
The 5 most important takeaways from Alex Hormozi's appearance on Steven Bartlett's Diary of a CEO podcast
Entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist, and growing social media presence Alex Hormozi amassed a net worth of $100m by age 32. Given his decision to quit his secure government job at age 22, this rise over the decade from 22 to 32 highlights his aptitude for business, and evident knowledge of the business world. His appearance on Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO podcast in April 2023 provided all listeners with a multitude of anecdotal experiences, and subsequent advice, he accumulated along the way.
So, what were the 5 most important lessons or takeaways from the approximate 2 hour long episode?
The Importance of asking ‘why?’
Critical thinking is often cited as a hallmark of intelligence. In many cases, the most successful and wealthy people in the world have made their career by asking ‘why?’. In the podcast, Hormozi illustrates this through Elon Musk. He is a prime example of why an inquisitive and critical nature can be so important. Sometimes the establishment is only existent based on history and what people have reinforced… often this can be outdated or wrong. Elon Musk’s Space X is built upon the questioning of the space exploration industry - ‘why can’t we make another planet habitable?’. And yes, sometimes there are very valid reasons as to why things cannot be done however, having the mindset which questions until ideas are proven, means that less opportunities will go overlooked due to acceptance and compliance.
What makes a good entrepreneur and sales person?
As an incredible successful entrepreneur, Alex Hormozi is certainly qualified to answer these questions. His book $100m deals emphasises the importance of sales - without sales, business doesn’t exist. Simply becoming a better sales person and making more sales, he believes, boils down to one quote “make an offer so good, they’ll be stupid to refuse”. Whilst this seems very surface level and obvious, his breakdown of the term ‘value’ teaches us more about how to provide customers, and potential customers, with more of what they want. He states that value has four variables… (1) what is the dream outcome of the customer? (2) Perceived likelihood of achievement (3) Time Delay (4) Effort and Sacrifice. When we’re trying to make a deal better or offer better value, we must try to attempt to optimise for these variables. An ideal could be: satisfy customer with what they desire, have proof that you are very likely going to be able to deliver, aim to minimise the time delay between the agreement of the deal and the provision of said agreement, and attempt to minimise their effort and sacrifice required for the deal to complete. Realistically, those four variables are going to be nearly impossible to optimise for in unison however, by thinking about those variables it is increasingly likely that you will make an offer so good that the customer will feel unable to refuse.
Hormozi also touched on the characteristics of good entrepreneurs with the two hours. Once again, he provided the listeners with a four-point breakdown of a few of the best traits. The power to influence, tremendous drive, impulse control, and the ability to boil their business down to inputs and outputs. These traits are not revolutionary and we have likely all heard them before but, it is the final one which I think is most salient. Drive, ability, and influence are all idealistic goals we can have but, inputs and outputs are how we can all quantifiably improve our life. It reinforces the idea of ‘whatever gets measured gets managed’… if we don’t have a tight grasp and knowledge of what is going on, it is very hard to see what is going wrong or even where the success and potential leverage is within business.
“Go shadow the best guy, and work double the hours”
Creating self-belief and eliminating self-doubt
Confidence and self-belief is something that an incredibly small minority of us are born with. Instead, we must accept that it is something that requires time and effort to build. Indeed, we need to understand that we will not wake up one day and have this magic confidence. Hormozi’s idea of self-belief is that it is built up over time by giving yourself a reason beyond reasonable doubt that you will succeed. The aim should be to provide yourself with so much proof of your hard work and progress that you will find it very difficult to doubt your success and worth.
In order to find that path to more belief, Hormozi once again turns to inputs. He states that we must find the required inputs for the desired outputs and ‘just get to work’. He illustrated this through his experience with the Harvard GMAT when applying for his MBA. Initially, he saw a graph which displayed the direct correlation between GMAT practice and test score average. Simply, those who did more practice tests scored higher on average. There it was… the required inputs for this desired outcome. After that, he bought 16 packed-out practice test books and practiced questions for 4 hours a day AFTER work. Unsurprisingly, he scored in the top 99th percentile.
The moral of this story is simple… know your objective, find your inputs, work incredibly hard on those inputs, and allow the outputs to follow.
Is working hard toxic?
This is an interesting, and growing, question. Has working hard become toxic? Should a work-life balance be promoted more?
During this segment, Alex outlines his distaste for the word ‘should’. Indeed, his is a proponent of getting the rid of the word entirely. Especially when addressing somebody else. Again, he shares a personal experience to show this. This time, his mother-in-law makes a remark to him… ‘I wouldn’t want to have your life’. Presumably, this was made in relation to the amount of work he does, as Hormozi himself will admit to. He works all day, he doesn’t have other hobbies outside of his work… “and that’s okay”.
Instead, he believes the question shouldn’t be ‘is working hard toxic?’, it should be ‘are you happy doing it?’. If so, continue. If not, look at different options.
There is a tendency to over-analyse things when we’re looking for answers to problems or trying to find where the problem is. Hormozi offers may great quotes in this segment, another being “I hardcore reject there’s a right way to do things”. This whole conversation should be reframed to one with more emphasis on relative happiness. Do you work hard? Yes. Are you happy? Yes. Fine. The End.
To me, the concept of working hard being toxic is just ridiculous. If someone has a passion, a goal, and the drive to match it, who is anyone else to say that their work rate is toxic. It links back to the idea of being under rested and not over worked. ‘There is no such thing as being over worked, just under rested’.
The concept of Talent Stacking
Similar to that of habit stacking, this idea emphasises and highlights the importance and power of compounding. Hormozi simply defines this with “1+1=5” - similar to synergy between people. You take one skill, learn and layer that skill on top of your existing skills which compounds quickly into something very big.
“Learn the skill find the next skill”
Indeed, Alex stressed how sometimes it doesn’t matter how different the skills are. At some point in your life, it will hold utility and help in a situation. Even if not, the process of applying yourself to learning a skill will transfer to other areas. We can use maths as an example. We all learn maths from a very young age at school. Take GCSE Maths, build to A-Level Maths, do an undergraduate degree in Maths or a related field like Economics. Build in some financing skills learnt at university and learn accounts. Stack some skills related to business and financial deals and you could be a rainmaker which would be very financially prosperous. This was all built upon GCSE, and even early, levels of Maths. This rejects validity for people who think that what they did in school was pointless. It all layers, stacks, and helps to lay the foundations for higher leverage skills as time and experience progresses.
An important point to know for this too is what Steven Bartlett alluded to - “have you have the skill and know what market to apply it to”. This comes with experience and networking with others in different fields to find niches and areas of less saturation. Bartlett spoke about the time when he was looking to float his company and was consulted with some advice to move his shares to the NASDAQ - in turn 4x’ing the value of his company just by being on a different stock market. He then added upon this knowledge and gained more experience in IPO (initial public offering) where he added billions worth of dollars of value for companies looking to sell shares publicly.
Another podcast full of insights from an incredibly successful entrepreneur. What stands out for me about Alex Hormozi is his authenticity in struggle. He hated his life before going into business, but left a very stable job which shows his drive and passion for a higher purpose. Indeed, his YouTube channel offers a multitude of business advice FOR FREE which is part of his aim. It cannot be understated how lucky we all are to have such ease of access to such valuable information… there really is no excuse.
Sam