Transcript [EN]: The Most Valuable 64 Minutes You'll Spend This Year (Hormozi x Mylett)

I had this great piece of advice from a mentor who told me I said yeah you know had a couple good days and she said I'm pretty sure the secret to life has dream as many days in a row like that as you can and it was one of those very tactical pieces of advice that I've actually taken with me forever which was so when I looked back on my whole year I was like okay what were the top 10 days of this year and I I started thinking through them and I would say that like if you think of a day as a microcosm of your life it's like I would like to end end this life being like I gave I left it alone ironically then people look at you and think guys so skilled as an entrepreneur or what a great speech maker or but it's actually happened through emptying the tank all these days. I also don't want to fall into this I get you call it like bro culture hustle culture notion of like the funny clip of me saying I work a million hours a day and I can change time. However, what what I don't want to sound like is like that that's that there's no meaning in other things. It's [snorts] about maximizing output of unit of time total. But if I only had 24 hours, then yeah, take as many stimulus as you can because you only have 24 hours to work. But that's not how the world works. You have and for the the games that we're trying to play decade plus, it's like not only that, you actually have to be alive from a meeting purpose perspective. That's a really good point. Maybe one of the best points I've heard on a podcast in probably 10 years. >> Welcome back to the show everybody. So here's who I have with me today. Somebody that I admire a great deal. I wish I spent more time with um I think he's one of the great American entrepreneurs actually worldwide entrepreneurs. He's um I told him this privately on a conversation I don't know about six, eight weeks ago. I think he's the best in the world at teaching people how to be better business people and better marketers. I think he's number one in the world and I say that as somebody who does it myself and so I have a great deal of admiration for him. Um most importantly his brain is huge but his heart is bigger. That's the one thing I think most people online would not know about this young man. He's got a heart of gold. He's a kind person. He's a humble person. And he still is curious and still wants to learn. He still actually asks for advice from time to time. And so, um, you're going to get his advice today on the Ed Mlet Show with the great Alex Hermosi. Welcome back. >> Thank you for having me. And my only goal in this podcast is live up to that introduction. [laughter] Oh, >> you you'll do great. So, uh, you got a lot going on in your life. Congratulations on the potential the the sooncoming fatherhood for you. How has it changed you at all? like just the thought of it, just knowing it's coming. >> I'd say the thought has changed my life maybe in two ways. One is that I'm actively really um trying to get ahead on education for my son and thinking like what inroads do I need to do so that I can set >> him up education wise because I don't like the system obviously. >> Um I'd say that's one. I would say two is that I feel like I've had a little bit of a shift in terms of up to this point I've just only had I would say I have had reverence for the game and that is why I continue to play it. Um, but I've had a weird shift where I was like, oh, I guess I am going to leave this to someone because until this point it was just I'm going to write it to charity in one check and let it go to like the Acumen Fund or some of these really good institutions that know how to deploy capital in a charitable way because I was just like this was just chips to play the game. >> Um, >> but so that's I would say those are the two things that have changed about in terms of like what has what new weights are waiting my decision-m those are those two. um I'm more I'm more likely to respond to a a student outreach, you know, like something student related. >> Um but beyond that, in terms of my like >> internal stuff, um I'm here to support Ila. >> Um and I expect the emotionality of it'll probably come when he's >> born. Yeah. But I know you and I have had enough conversations. I think it's more than that with you. I think it's changed your overall look on everything. I mean, you've asked me a few questions in different ways, but but >> I you appear to, at least to me, it seems to have almost I don't know broadened your perspective, made it bigger. Uh, >> totally. >> In what way? Like if if we're using my terminology because I think it's important. You have a lot of young people that follow your content. You have a lot of people that follow your content, but a lot of them are guys like me when I was coming up, guys like you when you're coming up, and they're not at this stage of their life yet. I wonder knowing what you know now about you're going to be a dad, would it have changed anything you were doing or thinking prior? >> Leila and I got really serious about having kids when I was 28 >> and we [clears throat] were like really going to do it and then we were like you know what let's not. But there was like you know a few month period we're like let's do this. Um and I think that we could have like again I can't replay life but like I think me doing it at that point I was 28 and she was 25 >> might have been like that would have been good. I probably would have been easier to have more kids. >> Um because I think Leila and I are very all like all or nothing. Um and so as soon as we found out that she was pregnant with um our son, >> um we're like, well, I guess we're going to have a lot more than one or at least that's the goal. So it's either like none or have a soccer team, you know, that's kind of [laughter] like >> and we have settled on Edward. That is his name, right? >> One of the great names of that. >> Yeah, he's going to be Edward. I got to tell you, when he told me about the the the blessing, I I think you would agree. I was almost as excited as if my own son. >> And the reason is I just want to tell you and then we'll get into content that everybody wants. I've long thought you'd be a great father. >> And I've told you that. I told you that before this happened. So, I'm just really happy for you. I just want you to know that. I'm really >> say that for people I mean, everyone who listens to this already knows you, but like Ed's even better in private than he is on these podcasts. And um >> thank you. >> It's one of the one of the rare gifts. I think I had someone ask me like, "Hey, what are the people of all the people that you've met >> um that were, you know, different in person versus their content?" And I was like, "Ed, for sure." And they were like, >> "Oh." And I was like, "No, he's just way better." >> Oh, thank you. >> And um and yeah, it's just like there are very few people that I that I like if I was like having something that was kind of complex. like you have this very great depth of understanding from both like you have the business acumen but you have this great balance of of humility without having any judgment and I think that's super rare. >> Thank you. So do you by the way it's what I admire about you. We both at our stage are important people to know we're both still curious. We still both want to learn. You're the smartest guy in the room most of the time but you don't ever act like it. And that's one of the things that I really love about you. You made me think about my own content. So I want to go into some stuff. I want to ask you about some stuff. You've challenged my own thinking. So, I was probably one of the early on way back in the day morning routine, evening routine guys. >> Creating structure. >> I probably made it sound as if I was a little bit more dialed in than I really was on any given day. You know how content can come across that way. >> But you've sort of taken a different perspective on it. And frankly, you've persuaded me, you're probably more right than I was. And so, I've actually not really gone back to the old way that I teach this stuff. Meaning I think there's a lot of things that are ritualistic we do >> that are just time fillers now that are wasting time. So share with the audience kind of your view on morning routines and what is what really matters to get a day started in a business going. >> I I I basically see the time that you wake up after any period of sleep even if you take a nap right afterwards is where your your processing power is going to be the best. And so the morning typically is where you're going to have the the best thinking if you can use the morning ideally. Some people can't get the time, fine. You can do late at night. It's okay. Um, but because of that, my goal is to compress the time from when I wake up to when I begin working as fast as to as little as possible. And so for me, it's basically >> wake up, uh, stimulate, meaning caffeine, nicotine 8, proteinate, you know, creatine 8, do all my stuff, my stuff, and then just basically go right into it. Um, I think some people having like maybe a 10-minute meditation or something like that because it calms their, you know, emotionality, attack the thing, that's fine. I think anything, you know, much longer than that, like for example, I love training. Um, but when I'm trying to be my most productive, I train at the end of the day. >> You do? >> Yeah. Okay. >> Because my brain is exhausted, but my body is still fresh. >> Um, but if I use if I train the way I want to train, which is two hours, I'm using the first two hours of my day on train, which if I don't if I'm not in a go- go season, which happens plenty, um, I'll train first. Um, because I'll use all my juice there. But I'm definitely more fatigued because I train pretty hard. >> Yeah. I'm interesting. I I've had a Let's talk about this for a minute. I think it's a little bit of and debate this with me a little bit. One, my routines were too long. You're right. It was >> two hour an hour and a half or two hours of stuff to just get going. Yeah. >> And frankly, as I step away from it, >> I don't even believe any of that in real life. You don't have to be perfectly prepared to do anything. In fact, you're never going to be. >> Some people is it not? You don't think it's more like know thyself? Like the most successful high performers I know know their peak cognitive time of the day. >> So, are you saying that you think for everybody it's their morning? Cuz for me, >> I'm with you. I'm probably best like not not 5:00 a.m. morning, but I'm probably best my best meeting should be taken hardest meeting should be taken between 9:00 and noon for me. >> The basis 10 a.m. meeting. >> Yeah, that but do you think that it's more if you're giving advice to somebody, it's it's become self-aware of when your cognitive peak is. >> Yeah, I think there's the um the like population versus n equals 1. And so I think population wise most people when they're the freshest is like after they wake up. Now I'm not saying like you get shook out of bed now write an essay. That's not what I'm saying. But 30 an hour once your cortisol comes up and you're like alert um usually at that point you're you're freshest now n equals 1 everyone's different and so if you had a scatter plot of humans it's like in general that is where it is going to be if you don't know where to start where you're going to be more productive start in the morning if you have if you're like I for sure I'm a night owl then be a night out like I I think both like I have no dog in this fight whatever you want >> right agreed >> I think the only thing that I I would say that I am adamant about that I would you know what sword would I would actually fall on is that I would never want my routine to become a crutch in that if it if I didn't have it, it would make me less capable. >> And so it has to be something that I can win >> without it, but if it's there, it's additive. So it's a preference, not a requirement. >> And so I think um one of my favorite lines in Invictus, which is like this weird movie with Morgan Freeman, >> he's talking to uh Matt Demon, who's the lead South African player. they have some exchange and he says, you know, I um I wish we could have played better this year, but you know, we we weren't 100%. And Morgan Freeman, who's supposed to be Nelson Mandela, says no one's ever 100%. >> And I it was this really great exchange that um I've always thought a lot about, which is like a lot of like champions and winners win despite imperfect conditions. >> Amen. >> Not in the s pursuit or effort of creating perfect condition. >> I want to talk about that. By the way, in about something ironic, my drive over here with my Uber guy, I can't say why, but but I have a recent engagement with Morgan Freeman. I spent the last 40 minutes driving over here talking about Morgan Freeman of all human beings. And now you bring up that name in the interview. I want talk about effort and conditions. Here's the thing I think that you have. >> I want you to discuss this with everybody. I think for most people, effort >> is conditional. Like when I'm working with athletes, you know, I'll go to these college football teams or these, you know, professional teams and if the guy's starting and he's first string and it's, you know, 10 to seven in the fourth quarter, you're getting 100% max effort from that person. But if he's second or third string in practice on Thursday, he knows he's not going to play in the game or it's 21 to nothing. Effort changes for most people based on conditions. >> And I think someone like yourself who's had long-term success, you've made effort unconditional. Meaning regardless of the conditions, winning, losing, pregnant, not pregnant, an exit, a deal that falls apart, effort is not based on conditions or even how the people around you are behaving. >> Do you believe that that's a key? >> A thousand%. >> Yeah. >> For for two reasons and I think the second you'll appreciate more. So I'll actually start with that one. >> If you are somebody who starts to win, right? So this is maybe only talking to the 10% or 5% of people who are listening to this. You can't you can't make your effort conditional on winning anymore because winning the bar is too low >> because starting to outco compete other people who aren't as prepared who didn't realize how much effort you're going to put in ahead of time like you actually end up sacrificing your potential >> um in just trying to beat them >> rather than saying like and this is why I love Andy's uh Andy Fcella's 100 to zero that that like leave no doubt. Y >> um so it's like we have to only be playing against ourselves especially once you get past a certain level. >> What a great point. >> Um and so I'll say that it's like thing one. I would say the second part is that I think I had a year off when we sold the company and going through that whole process and it was one of the most miserable of my life. Um and I derived from that period uh this concept or this mantra of work is the goal. And it was the idea that a lot of times even we hear the coaches say, "Hey, you know, work super hard, the score takes care of itself." But even adding on the the score takes care of itself. Still makes the score the objective or the goal. >> If we could just say work as hard as you can, period. And I will judge you by how hard you worked relative to how hard you could work. >> And what's difficult about that >> is that the only person who actually knows how hard you can work is you. >> Wow. And so that is both uh gratifying and also terrifying because >> you can win and in [snorts] the world's eyes and still lose in your own if you use that as your as your metric. >> Yes. >> And so >> Wow. Very good. >> What was what was interesting about the So we did this book launch in August of last year and we >> I heard you made a little money on that. >> It worked out. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> Um so >> he made a hundred million bucks. So the whole the whole idea was, you know, the record was Prince Harry's record, which was uh 1.4 million copies sold in 24 hours, which is roughly like $43 million in 24 hours. >> And so we we ended up breaking the record within the first like 3 hours or something like that. >> That's crazy. >> And but we still had we still had 21 more hours. >> And so this was the 100 to zero concept of like, well, let's we're not going to stop now. Like let's let's run up the score. And I think my team was even surprised when I like took a water break 7 8 hours in >> and they were like, "Okay, so you know, what are we going to do now?" I was like, "We're going to keep going." >> And like I had almost no celebration. Um, yes. But part of it was cuz I was like, "I'm not going to waste this." Like we put all of this time, we gathered all of this attention and we're going to deliver as much value as we possibly can during this period of time and then we're going to go for 100. So it wasn't even like don't don't beat it. Yes. >> Like put a whole new marker for what you think is possible. And we had done the math or I had done the math prior to which is why the hundred million dollar launch was the idea. But it was like I think we can do this. And so that becomes the standard rather than the world standard of just winning. >> You know, first off, this is why I love talking to you because you make me think and but I I want to stay on this just for a second. First off, we've unpacked two gigantic lessons. One is how to prepare for your day and when to take your best meetings and to be self-aware. The second one is this idea of unconditional effort. But when you're saying something, are you like this too? I have actually not really celebrated nor have I enjoyed what I think the world would think are really normal big like life events like the day of an exit or like the day you had the $100 million day. Yet on the other hand, I've I've had massive personal celebrations on days where I have, no pun intended, but like maxed out my potential possible effort in a given day. Meaning almost this is this is really counterintuitive for most people but so important because this isn't on social media. It's not on most podcasts. I don't think I've mentally the last year played like a results game even though I am outcome focused. >> I am much more process andor effort focused. And I celebrate to the extent that I'm capable of doing that. The max effort days, not the the actual result day. And by the way, my celebrations are pretty weak and suck too. >> We both have had this. >> We both have this time privately, right? But share your thoughts on that. >> So, we're all trying to feel healthy, right? But here's what most people miss. your liver health. It affects literally everything. Your energy, your digestion, how your skin looks, even your metabolism. It's time you show it some love. Dose for your liver is a clinically backed liver health supplement. This isn't just another capsule or powder. Dose is a liquid supplement. It's taken in a 2 oz shot and it tastes like fresh squeeze orange juice. It's yummy. It helps you reduce sluggishness, get rid of those midday crashes, supports your metabolism, even aid in your daily digestion, and there's a connection between your digestion and your cognitive health as well. It gets real results with double blind placeboc controlled studies showing its positive impact on liver enzyme levels. Ready to give your liver the support it deserves? Head to doseaily.co/mylet or enter mylet to get 35% off your first subscription. Your body does so much for you. Let's do something for it. That's d o s e d ai ly.co/mylet for 35% off your first month subscription. Um, when I looked back on that year where I was like, "What are the what are the the happiest days of my life?" Because when you have you have your your monetary itch scratched, you're like, "Okay, well, what what am I doing the what the rest of my innings for?" >> Um, I had this great piece of advice from mentor who told me um after I had this particularly good weekend and I was in a good mood and um uh she said, "You're a good mood." And uh I said, "Yeah, you know, had a couple good days." And she said, "I'm pretty sure the secret to life is string me as many days in a row like that as you can." And it was one of those very tactical pieces of advice that I've actually taken with me forever, which is so when I looked back on my whole year, I was like, "Okay, what were the top 10 days of this year?" And I I started thinking through them and I have this written on my wall, which is so there's like two things written on my wall, three um that are my my constant reminders. One is focus is subtraction. The second is my good day formula, which is um >> work out with people you like, >> eat with people you like, and write something. >> I've heard this is good. And so if I can do those things, because when I looked back at my days, >> when I did those three things, those are my best days. >> And so I was like, how can I do that as much as I possibly can and organize my day to do that? >> But that last one, which I would say is not on that list, but is kind of like the result of the list is to have nothing in the tank. >> Yeah. It's like when I when I've earned my shower, when I feel like I have nothing left to give. And I would say that like if you think of a day as a microcosm of your life, it's like I would like to end end this life being like I gave I left it all on the field. >> Emptied the tank completely. >> I left it all on the field. There was no one who's like he could have done more. It's like [ __ ] just squeezed from places we didn't know existed. >> That's what I would like every day to be. And of course, it's an ideal. It's not something I hit every day, but I strive to. >> So do I. It's funny because you reach levels of capacity and talent or what people think are skill, at least me, through doing that. So, ironically, then people look at you and think, man, this guy's so skilled as an entrepreneur or what a great speech maker or but it's actually happened through emptying the tank all of these days. How do you navigate? Because you if we're not careful, you and I fall into this trap of the people that you also hear on social media that you and I privately discuss sometimes too. Like I can't believe with no offense why someone's listening to this person if they've actually never produced anything. But I've also I I also don't want to fall into this I get you'd call it like bro culture hustle culture notion of like the funny clip of me saying I work a million hours a day and I can change time and caveman lived a million years ago or whatever was a little uh misspeaking there. However, what what I don't want to sound like is like that that's that that there's no meaning in other things and that rest is not also okay. So I just want to give you a forum so that people don't think that of you also like what are your philosophies about rest or recuperation or reflection because for me a lot of times these big efforts I make a lot of the the growth actually happens in reflecting on what took place and what I learned from it and you do do that more than most people know. >> Totally. So if you so uh so tactically if you were to look at my calendar my five days out of seven have almost nothing on it. I do one day I do a half day of meetings on one day and then I do one one filming day a week. So today was my filming day. Um and then if you include the weekends those two days I have three during the week and then two two weekend days that are almost always completely empty. >> Interesting. >> Um okay. >> And so that is that is how I work most effectively. And it's because I think that two weeks ago I could not know what was going to be most important today >> but today I will be able to do that. And so I I have faith that I can pull things together. Like I I put together this deal on a Sunday once after like Yeah, I'm sure you had one of these days where somebody calls you and you're like, "Oh, I think I can put this together." >> And it was six straight hours of calls and we ended up putting like almost a $400 million stock deal together. >> Oh my goodness. >> But it was just like just but if I had had appointments all day, I would have missed that and that wouldn't have happened. And so there's just huge value to that. So that's like thing one in terms of organizing time and trying to create space and that's just how I function. The second um is I think it's it's extending the time horizon in terms of what we're thinking about output. So if you if whenever you shrink the time horizon then it always creates a false narrative of extremism. And so for example, if I said if you're going to die tomorrow, you change your behavior a lot today. But if I say you're going to die in a week, you change it for sure a lot, but it would be slightly different. If I said you're going to die in a month, it would still be different. Die in a year, it's for sure going to be different. And then beyond that it's too far for human consciousness real in reality. And so as a result it's like we have to think how do I maximize my output over a year or two years or 5 years or 10 years. And so if we take let's say even a 10 year horizon >> then for sure we need to rest >> because like >> it's like if I worked out every hour every day you're not going to get stronger. You're just going to break down your muscles too much and you're just going to look terrible and be exhausted and overtrained, right? And so like there obviously has to be some recuperation that that exists. And so it's about maximizing output of unit of time total. >> But if I only had 24 hours then yeah take as many stimulants as you can because you only have 24 hours work. That's not how the world works. You have and for the the games that we're trying to play decade plus it's like not only that you actually have to be aligned from a meaning and purpose perspective because we assume that we're going to win to a certain degree. So it's like we have to find ways to make it worth it and also not sacrifice the other reinforcers we have in our life like family, wife, kids, whatever. >> And so I think it's it's it's navigating how do I have the highest output over the longest period of time which allows for a much more I'll call it >> balance with quotes approach but it still comes into seasons and I think again when we think in this longer term when how you work in your 20s is going to look very different than how you work in your 40s. >> I agree. So would you say that that schedule you're running now with those open days, you more almost had to adjust to your current circumstances, but if it was startup Alex or Mosy in the gym, >> you're probably >> Oh, all day. Yeah. My the my startup schedule, I'll tell you what it was cuz I I still remember it. So basically, I take my I did Hold on. >> But I I did split it into thirds, kind of like you. And so I I I bake it into I would do all my um my innovation stuff first because that's when I was freshest. So I would work until like from 4 to 10ish, so I got sixish hours. And then at that point I'd have customers and the fires of the day would happen. Um I would spend the middle of the day on uh promotion and sales. So I basically do marketing and meeting with sales you know >> customers to try and sell them our stuff. >> And then the back end of the day was all the admin stuff. So that was billing and finance and you know fixing broken equipment and all that stuff. But I slept at the gym. But it was basically if you think about it from a pure big big perspective, you got you know attraction, you've got conversion, you've got delivery. That's kind of like how you're you're breaking down the business. Mhm. >> Um, and I just would say that that has to happen throughout the day, but you have to take some block every day, at least for me, that's working on it rather than in it. How do I build the assets that can rep, you know, replicate a trainer, replicate uh the front desk girl, replicate the sales process, whatever. >> Um, >> but yeah, that was that was that was 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. I've been able to do uh 12 hours a day, six days a week, taking one day off as like I can do that for a very very long time. I'm also not saying that's right for everyone. I can do that. But I have to say, and by the way, I'm not saying that's right for everyone either, but that's exactly what I did. That's exactly what Andy did. What the three of us have in common. You slept in the gym, he slept in the in the store, and I slept in the office. I'm not saying you got to sleep in your building either. >> But and the idea of this time thing, poorly chosen words in some of these clips, but you're really compressing time, meaning you're trying to do things that most people think take two hours in 30 minutes if you can. Not all meetings need to be an hour, and that's why having a day broken up matters. Now my hardest thing at the highest level of entrepreneurship like when I'm talking with people that you know that have done something really significant there's this really interesting dance you have to have as an entrepreneur I want you to help me understand your view on it okay and it's this I think most entrepreneurs I am as a human I have become a control freak meaning I try to control about you're better at this than me of giving um of separating from tasks and trusting people you have to handle things I'm still not great at that. I think I'd be >> because you're so good. >> Well, thank you. I think though I think potentially I'd have been a wealthier man had I given a little bit more autonomy to people. I think I squeezed them a little bit when I was younger. >> But because I am a control freak. So it's this interesting dance I've had my entire career and even to this day of I'm a control freak yet I know the key to my progression, my growth, my expansion as a person and as an entrepreneur is my capacity to deal with uncertainty simultaneously. So, how do you navigate that? Wanting to control an outcome, >> yet we I want you to discuss the concept of your ability to be out of control theoretically and deal with this mass a massive amount of uncertainty more than most people think they can handle. >> So, I think there's two parts to this at least that I that I think of immediately. So, the first is one of my favorite and I think underrated quotes as an entrepreneur from Jack Dorsey. He said um perfect all the details, limit the number of details. >> [laughter] >> And so I think that is like in a sentence so elegant for like I think it's like I absolutely am a control freak >> at the thing that I think has the absolute greatest point of leverage in the business. >> And so I keep that flexibility in my schedule so that I can go fool in an attack three levels down, seven levels down in the company and be like, okay, what are we doing here? >> What are like what show me the texts that we're sending for this very particular campaign and then I can scoop back out and then go somewhere else. Um, so I would say that from the the the maniacal control, I think Elon's been an example of like he kind of has he's delegated everything and also nothing. But I think his his perspective is uh he's always attacking the rate limiter. That's the the verbage he uses. I use constraint, but whatever. It's the same idea. Like there's a bottleneck somewhere. There always is one. And I think your ability to identify where the bottleneck is is in some way predicated on your ability to recognize patterns and your skill as an entrepreneur. M >> but if we think about entrepreneurship in general as our we are allocators of resources and so we have limited resource extremely limited when you compare them to the resources of the world >> time money energy the limited uh attention to the team we have this tiny little reservoir of resources and all we have to do is we have to just continue to get higher returns than everyone else does on this tiny bit of resources which is for the most part why the second thing on my wall is focus subtraction is how do I how do I subtract what can I cut away what can I prune from this tree in order to keep it growing. Um because left unchecked, everything becomes weeds. Everything becomes cancerous. Everything overgrows because people want to take on more stuff. And I think that successes entrepreneurship has three traits that are completely antihuman. It's something I've been thinking a lot about recently, which is one, we like new [ __ ] Sorry, you don't here. >> We like we like new stuff. >> Mhm. >> Number two, we like um we like stuff now. >> Um and number three, uh we want things easy >> and low low energy. Mhm. >> And it is the exact opposite of what it takes to be successful as an entrepreneur because instead of wanting new stuff, you have to uh be willing to do the old stuff for a long time >> over and over and over. >> And instead of uh so it's basically focus, one thing, patience for a long time, and then frustration tolerance, which is that if if at first you don't succeed, you try again. And if you at first you don't succeed 100 times, you try again. Which is why I love the one mantra. >> Thank you. Um, and so if you have those three things together, if I were to say, I have this entrepreneur in front of me, he's actually a dum dum. But once he starts a task, he has a really hard time abandoning it. And he has an unlimited time horizon in terms of how he's thinking about doing this. And he wants to do this for the rest of his life. He's keeping all of his assets in there. He's never going to sell it. And we knew that to be true. >> And [ __ ] cannot fail because every time he does, he just gets better. >> Yeah. >> It's hard to beat that guy. I those are the guys I bet on, the people I bet on. >> And and what's interesting, and you've seen this too, is that like almost all of those things have to do with behavior patterns and very little to do with intelligence. >> Yes. >> And so when I think about that, like your business isn't scaling off for lack of information, for lack of character. >> And I think when you when you think about it that way, it's like, wow, when I'm presented in these conditions, I make the wrong decisions because I've I've I've been reinforced for doing new things too much. >> Gosh. And so when I when I try to adapt that for my own uh to to answer the to loop back to the original question of uh the maniacal control um I think a lot of the control is actually in trying to get the team to do less and do fewer rather. >> Um and I think that's where a lot of my call it exertion they I they should feel better when I come in because I can tell them what not to do. >> Right. I know exactly what you mean. >> That's a terrible idea. We should not do that. >> Yeah. I do you think the uh this idea that you said you said it twice and I'm >> it's what I do when I coach people. >> So I'm wondering what you I want you to elaborate on it. I think great entrepreneurs have pattern recognition. >> Um even people we've already discussed here today that are mutual friends of ours. They're really good at seeing patterns. I'm pretty good at seeing human behavioral patterns. Right. But just step away from that. How important do you think if you were coaching an entrepreneur is it to to to get them to see both patterns in the business world, patterns in the economy? um trends. That's a pattern recognition to me. And also human behavioral patterns at the same time. >> If I had to if I had to have them pick one, I would rather have them be amazing at human behavior patterns because if you can do that, you can pretty I think I think humans are how you unlock everything despite the world of AI and all the things that we talk about. Um because humans unlock everything like so you might find this I think you might actually I was I was really excited to talk to you about this specific. So this is perfect. Um, >> I I'm going to guess, and I don't want to go out on a limb here, but I'm going to guess you're not spending 12 hours a day vibe coding. >> I [laughter] am not. >> And what's really interesting is that you probably made more money than the vast majority of people by a very large margin last year. >> Just to just to put it out there, >> right? >> And so when I was think I was thinking about you specifically and I was like, how do I reconcile this apparent uh contradiction with >> uh we're so cooked AI is we're etc. with the fact that a lot of the people that I know that are extremely wealthy >> um are not necessarily AI maxing themselves. >> And so it got me thinking around the concept of leverage, which is one of my two favorite topics in the world, supply and demand and leverage. That's what the logo is built on. Okay. >> Um >> and so I think one of the big misconceptions that entrepreneurs are having right now is that >> AI is somehow the only form of leverage. >> But it does not erase the other forms of leverage that are also multiplicative. So for example, if I make a decision that we say we're not going to do this gigantic initiative, the amount of time that I get back from my company is larger than us trying to AI max that initiative that was incorrect. >> What a good point. >> Right? If we think about it from a boiling it down to brass tax perspective. >> Wow. >> We're going there's so many entrepreneurs right now that are using AI to do dumb things very fast >> because they have more capacity. They are choosing to take on more and as a result are less focused than they were before. And if we look at the output of their business, they are not making more money. They're only spending more money on tokens. Wow. >> And so when I >> Very good, Alex. >> Very good. >> And so when we think about the different the different types of leverage, it's like this is leverage. We can record this one conversation. Millions of people can watch it. Uh you know, obviously software has, you know, different types of leverage, but um picking one good person has tremendous leverage. So to the idea of like, okay, well, Ed's not AI maxing, >> but do we think that AI that Ed can find somebody AIAX? >> Correct. >> Probably. And do we think that Ed has leverage in other ways that would attract or incentivize that person to want to do their special gift within this larger business because it was designed well earlier on? >> Yes. >> And so these technologies come, but the game has remained unchanged. It's just another tool of leverage that exists. Now, to be clear, it's it's an amazing tool and we use the hell out of it at ACQ, but it's understanding where it fits in the toy box >> because we still have to make the right call. And as of right now, AI still sucks at making decisions, at least from the ones that I look at, because you can pretty much make it say yes or no based on how you prompt it. >> Um, and so that is something that I've given a lot of. >> That's a really good point. Maybe one of the best points I've heard on a podcast in probably 10 years. It's a really good point because that's exactly what's happening. It's actually become almost burdensome for people that are doing nominal tasks, adding more to their plate. It's really, really good. In fact, that's one of the clips I'm going to use from the show. I don't hear you talk a lot and maybe I've just missed it, but you know, I'm a huge fan and follower and friend. >> I don't hear you talk about in terms of yourself as a leader. >> In other words, I almost feel like sometimes you look at business as an operator and and correct me if I'm wrong, okay? But what are you like as a leader of a company? Like that's not a lot of the content that I've seen you discuss. So, how do you view like leadership? Because it's a it's a overcooked concept and topic, right? Yeah. But you're very technical, very strategic, very tactical. >> But if I worked for you or with you and someone asked me his philosophies on leadership or what type of a leader he is, would he even does he see himself as a quote unquote leader and what is what does that mean to you? >> Um, so a couple things. So one, Leila had just finished her book on leadership and you know, I got to edit and you know, and help out. Um, and so I have a ton of concepts from that book, but I think I've I've deferred to Ila for for most things and you know Ila well and Ila will never get the credit that she deserves for the for the able to build. >> Um, but Ila is the internal leader of the business and I would say that I am the external leader of the business and that is more or less how we've managed our our working relationship. I have >> one direct report which is my father-in-law. So virtually I have no direct reports in the business which allows me to have um the schedule that I do and we've just found that that has worked really well for us. I would say um >> I would say to if there are if there are 12 core activities of leadership >> um the first one um which the others are all predicated on is that we have to define what good looks like. >> Okay, >> in behavioral and observable terms. And so the second step of leadership and I won't go through all of them. I'll let do her thing. But the second one is that we have to model what good looks like. >> And so there's a famous story of Gandhi where um a mother comes to him and says, "Hey, can you get my kid to stop eating sugar?" And he says, "Uh, yes, but come back in 30 days." And so she comes back in 30 days. Um she brings the kid to him and he says, "Stop eating sugar." And she's like, "Why did that take 30 days?" And he was like, "Well, I was eating sugar when you asked me the first time." [snorts] And so he had to quit sugar for the 30 days to make it. And so it's it's a great little a great little story, but I think that's like leadership is caught not taught, >> right? And it is of course taught, but it's taught through modeling and it's taught through red flag, right? And so um where I fit in this leadership paradigm is that I believe that I number one, I hold the standard. >> Yeah. >> Um >> one of the things that I get feedback from from the team because I see the surveys of the people who at least work in my vicinity more so than work directly for me is that they're like, you know, I've watched the content. I've been, you know, I've been seeing everything for all these years, but like it was only when I came when I came to the office and realized that Alex was literally always here at 4:30 in the morning every single day, six days a week. >> Um, >> that I was basically very difficult to witness consistency unless you are also consistent. >> Jeez. Yeah. >> Like you cannot witness consistency, right? >> It's good. And so um I would say that that I say holding defining the standard and then modeling the standard is where where the majority of my my work from a leadership perspective is. I think the rest of the leaders in the company do a lot of the other stuff. >> Um and then I'd say that I am more of a strategic decision maker um than than true true operator because I think it would it would um it would take away credit from the people who are actually doing the stuff. Is there a void of any type of um emotional leadership in your businesses? >> No, that's Leila. Okay. Like Leila [snorts] is she provides it. >> And I think and this is something that I would say like what is what's taking up my time right now is >> managing the transition of her becoming a mother and completely stepping away from the business, which is our intention. Um >> Okay. >> Yeah. So she's she's completely going to going to check out >> um for an extended period. And so I'm I'm reoriented because >> the business works with the the dichotomy, you know, between the yin and the >> Yes. Yes. >> And when she's not there, I'm softer. >> And uh and when I'm not there, she's a little tougher. >> And it's and we've had this dance that's worked really well. And I'm going to have to relearn that and I'm going to probably crack some shells and mess up a little bit. Um I'm sure. >> Uh but that's something that I'm I'm really paying attention. >> I'm really watching you. You know how much I've always appreciated you and admired you. You've grown a lot the last few years. >> We talk on the phone, but we haven't done this. And uh you're at a different level. You're at a different level. And one of the reasons is is you're you're willing to take on more and more risks still. And I want you to talk about this. I've never heard this before. Only you. >> And I'm like, gosh darn it, he's right. I wish he wasn't right, but it's just sort of like the law of the universe. People look at me or you, but I'll just speak from my own perspective and I'll let you comment on yours. And they do sort of go like we're recording this now in the middle of I've been giving speeches and doing business meetings here today and I've got another one tomorrow which is a Saturday and you're cranking you'll be in here and I'm blah blah blah and they're like the old when's enough's enough and all that other stuff. And I'm like, I really don't feel like I'm working. But having said that, my capacity has expanded over the years to the extent where I feel like I have to take on more almost in order to remain challenged, but also to live up to the blessings and and honor the >> perspective, nuances, wisdom, and skills I've developed theoretically. Right. So, this thing you discussed lately about risk and capacity and ability and the correlation between the two, do you know what I'm talking about? No. Okay. I heard you say something recently where you said, "My ability to take on risk is almost connected to the fact that I'm better and better, and in order to continue to grow and expand, I have to take on more risk." >> That for sure. >> So, I never even heard this before. >> So, um, well, what So, I've I don't read it, so I don't want to pretend like I read all day or something like that, but there are moments where I do punctuated reading. And I think my favorite type of reading is autobiographies of ultra rich people because usually, especially at the end of their career, they don't care at all about being politically correct and they actually tell you what they finally tell you. They finally and so was really interesting that I found between Paul Getty >> um who was the richest man in the world for like 30 years. Uh Rockefeller and Elon Musk um and just take these guys objectively. Don't don't >> whether you like their whatever >> you can you can appreciate that they are wealthy [laughter] fact. Um, >> right. >> What I found is this very recurring theme is that they had multiple moments of call it like local maximums where they then looked around and said, "I'm pushing all my chips back into the middle of the table again." >> Yeah. >> And so I I kind of see it like and in some ways as much like it is necessary for the to take a bigger swing to get a bigger payoff, but it's almost more necessary to keep the game interesting. >> Yes. And so like if and we're in Vegas so I'll just make it a Vegas theme. >> If you're playing $10 hands and let's say at some point you get good enough that you have this gigantic stack of chips at some point you have to up the ante otherwise you just don't care anymore. >> Yes. >> And so a billionaire playing $10 hands it's like he literally loses money playing a $10 hand. >> Oh so good. And so um one of the things that I think is a little bit of a mindset shift which I don't like using the term but like we behave differently in different scenario is that your risk tolerance has to concurrently increase with the size of opportunity that you want to pursue. And it's of course in the beginning you don't need to take a there's lots of risk and also no risk because you don't need to put money down. You can start a business for for almost nothing. But >> if you want to start SpaceX you need to put money [laughter] in on the table. You know what I Like there are some like there and and the thing is is capital in some ways becomes a gigantic moat because other people are not willing to risk it. And so you start to develop more sophisticated frameworks for understanding risk and reward which is that like not only will I take my expertise and my track record and my network but I'll also take $100 million and put that on the line because that's how I can get to 10 billion. >> Okay. I want to just jump in here. I don't even think you know how big this could be a book you do. Okay. Even though I know it's not the but how big this is. And by the way, listening to you on this, >> how many people do you and I meet that have gone from zero to a little bit and then they're stuck and they're so frustrated. They're like, I just I can't get past 400 grand a year. I'm at a million a year or whatever it is. >> And what what's interesting is what happens when you have nothing and then you get a little bit. you become very risk adverse and you don't know that potentially the key for you to become unstuck is actually to take on more risk and that's the stimulus to go to the next level. Do you know how big of a deal this is what you're talking about? Cuz it's the thing most people stall at 100 or 250 gooseies right when they stall it's because you're still in the same risk tolerance category you were before and you've mastered your domain to some extent. >> Okay. So I have given a huge amount of thought to this. So there's this bull because we see entrepreneurs every single week that come through. There's a bullet of entrepreneurs between$1 and $3 million and for whatever reason there's this swamp there and I think there's a couple of factors. So number one is that usually between$1 and $3 million of revenue, you've actually made enough money to satisfy personal needs. You can pretty much go to every dinner, go to every hotel, take the vacations and like you're good to go. And to be fair, nothing wrong with that. However, if you want more, >> right, if you do, >> then you have to change the way you play. And so what's very interesting is that we call this the swamp at acquisition.com. It's 1 to three, maybe 1 to 5 million. It's right there. And the reason it's the swamp is that it takes more risk to get out of the swamp than to get into it. >> Oh boy. So true. >> And so you take some risk to quit the job to whatever. But when you start your first zero to a million for most business, especially service, which is 80% of the US, it's you and maybe some helpers, but it's almost all margin because it's just you working really hard. >> In that one to three, maybe one to five range. You have to make some decisions of like, okay, I can't service any more customers. My time is becoming my biggest constraint. And then there's the question of am I going to bring help on? Am I going to in am I going to get a vendor that's going to be a legit vendor that's going to cost real money? And I think there's one there's the emotions of like well I'm already comfortable. So we're sacrificing something that I know I I need to achieve all my personal goals to get money that I don't need in the future which is a big it's a big like it doesn't necessarily mean it's rational to do this to be really clear like it's in some ways >> right? >> But if you decide yes I want to do this. Here's the math behind the second layer of difficulty, which is, let's say it's a $2 million business, 20 20% margins. If you have 20% margins in the business at this point, you got $400,000 to play with. All right? Now, you're going to leave maybe 100 grand in the account because you want to like have some safety net. So, maybe 300 grand. If you, let's say, need somebody who's going to run client success or be, let's say, your first real leader in the business, a director level, not just a manager, you're probably looking at high ones, maybe mid twos, you know, as a small business owner. So that means that on this one hire or maybe a vendor, you're going to risk half or more of your profit on one bet. >> And because most people are unwilling to do this, and arguably logically, >> um, they stay stuck. And so there's these points where you have to increase your bet size. You have to be able to go from spending $1,000 a day on ads to $10,000 a day on ads. You have to be willing to spend go from like I'm only going to spend $1,000 on Indeed to recruit these people to say I'm going to pay a head hunter $35,000 because I think I really need this role and it's specialized, but if I have it, it unlocks a huge amount of capacity. >> And so one of the I'll give you a couple tactical things for the audience. There's a couple tricks to um getting a business through that without using as much to get them into that like 5 to 10 range million a year >> so that then they have more cash flow so they feel more comfortable in the bet. So I can only resolve one of the two risks but it's still there which is that You have to increase the leverage on one or multiple of the three elements of the business. So we have to increase leverage of demand. So it's like how can we uh create some sort of content wheel within the business so that when customers come in they make us content that we can then use to get more customers and you service customers every single day and then boom we have more leverage demand. The second kind of wheel of this is the leverage conversion. And so whether you're selling like basically there's three ways to scale the sales. either you have a big big sales team uh you sell one to many or what I prefer which is you create order takers and so my combination of solution is how do I sell one to many and preload the customers with as much information as humanly possible so that my sales people only have to make six in putts >> right rather than drive and chip and then wedge and then go all the way right and so by doing that it's much easier to attract to to to recruit somebody and just say I just need you to make drop the ball six inches from the hole and make this you can train that person up in a week whereas if they have to be a coach a therapist a product expert uh a teacher to a customer and then also a relationship manager. It's like it's so hard to find them and if they already do come preloaded with all those skills, they're way too expensive, right? And so we have to have leveraged uh leverage conversion, right? And then the third process is leverage delivery. Now, one of the thing I think one of the big misconceptions on delivery for service businesses is that whatever way you started that got you to one or three million in terms of your service delivery, you say, "Well, this has worked so far." And I am a big advocate of doing more of a work, don't get me wrong, but there are some tweaks that you can make in your um agreements of what you plan to deliver to a customer that dramatically expand the leverage that you have in the business to deliver without in any way really changing how likely they are to buy. And so, for example, if we said, you know, we have support that is via phone call at any time, you could say, we're going to do email, we're going to do chat. Um, and all of a sudden that increases leverage on the supply side. Mhm. >> We could say, "Hey, instead of having scheduled calls, we're going to do it asynchronously." And then that allows you to batch all the work together. You can review all of the accounts. Let's say you're a marketing uh you know, agency, you could do them all at once and you can do them in 11 minutes rather than having a 30 minute call and wasting it. So it's like great, that might triple the leverage. We can change whether components of the service are done live or done recorded. We can change whether it's in person or it's done remotely. Um we can change the delivery ratio so that it's instead of one-on-one, it's one on small group or one-on-one to many. Um, and so there's a number of these levers that we can do on the delivery side that if we at each of these points, if we expand a little bit of leverage on the demand, expand a little bit of leverage on the conversion, so we give people a couple videos with some proof before they talk to a salesperson, all of a sudden the sales take less time, and there's fewer of them. And so all of a sudden, my sales, my utilization per sales rep doubles or triples. And so I don't need to hire the extra rep. I can still double or triple the business if that's the constraint. And so in each of those situations, usually one, two, or all three of those things, depending on where you're at, is where you need to employ. Notice none of them were AI because you can still make good decisions and increase leverage of the business, not necessarily using A. And to be fair, I'm a big AI advocate, but I'm also an even more common sense advocate. >> It's Alex, this is so good. I when I coach and even when I've watched your content, it is funny though because by the way, those of you that feel stuck or know someone that's stuck, send them the podcast today because this is probably why you're stuck. It's the risk adversion. You don't you're looking at all these other mechanisms. It's the risk aversion. But what's really funny about it is I'll even watch it on your stuff and when I coach you, I'm like, "Well, no, you're going to have to hire that 250 person or you're going to have to triple your ad spend." And you watch their face when you say it >> and they're immedi they're immediately in their mind trying to process, is there any other way I can get out of doing this? Now, you've given a couple great hooks here that mitigate some of that risk, but you watch the the the reason this is so important is the tendency at this stage, even when given the counsel, is to try to find a way out of that room and not have to take it. And if you're going to get to that next level, you're going to feel unstuck. And here I am, an older guy, 55 years old. And it is, I think, the key as to why I'm still pretty fresh and in the hunt and going and excited and not stuck. Is I've And by the way, I think you would agree, it's a muscle you also build over time. Your first risk you take to start a business does not require the muscle because you're moving from nothing. It requires a muscle over time to continue to throw. Like you said, Musk earlier, whatever you think of the guy, are you kidding me? The amount of risk this dude's willing to take on over and over and over again. been compensated more than anyone. >> That's right. He's he's adequately compensated for the risk he's willing to take. >> What about We don't have much more time, by the way. So good. Like we need to agree we're going to do this at least once a year. >> And I need to expand the format of the show when you're on to like two hours. >> We can roll late and then we can do a second a second half. >> Oh, that would be really good. It would be really good. I uh there's a lot holding someone back and I'll visit on my channel if you want. >> Okay, I love that. Whatever you want. I I there's a lot holding someone back from this risk adversion at any stage >> and I don't know that I've been very good at getting somebody to sort of deal with it. Now what I used to say and then I want to have your version of it because like yours is frankly I think better. I used to go, you know, this like boogeyman when I was a little kid, I thought there was a boogeyman. And my dad when he would come back from his drinking binges, I'd be up. But I created this boogeyman and my dad would literally have to come in my room when I was a little boy and open the closet and go, "Eddie, look in here. The there's no boogeyman in the closet." But I had this great book. If he would open it and show me, all of a sudden, a lot of my fear was reduced. And as an entrepreneur, a lot of these fears you have, they're real things. But even if you lost that investment you made, even if the business crumbled, the boogeyman's probably not quite as bad as you think it is, you can come back, right? You teach people that have fears to actually put it down, right? Can you talk about this because I think this is a great tactic to get above or be self-aware of your fears or or their limitations. >> So, it's my it's my position that um emotions exist in the vague, not the specific. um meaning fear exists in the vague like because basically we abstract things to death because we're evolutionary beings and like we don't want to die okay but we think if if this does not work uh I will fail I will go bankrupt my wife will leave me and I will die and I will die right >> but when you actually define out no like let's re let's sit in it because we're so afraid to look at what would happen that even the fear of looking gets people to not >> crystallize it and it's like listen first thing you can do is prepare for failure at least >> but in preparing for failure you decrease the likelihood that it happens because you actually know what's what what happens next. And so I remember when I when I started the gym, I had to write down my plan B, which for me was um well, I didn't have any real skills. I was in shape uh and I had time. And so I said, I'll drive Uber and I'll strip. Um and that way if I fail, I'll drive Uber 12 hours a day and I'll strip at night and I'll be able to like in a year probably make $250,000 and I'll and I'll do it again. You know, like I'll start back. But the goal was to get back into it again. And so one is like when you really play out your failure story, maybe you're sleeping on a on like you will only lose status in the eyes of people around you who are not taking the risk that you're taking, >> right? >> And >> so true >> and you don't want their lives. So why would I care about their opinions? And we just have to expand the time horizon because like not to sound tright here, but like failure and success are on the exact same road. It's just that failure is an earlier exit. M >> and so one is a requisite for the other. But the thing is is that thinking about success leads you to failure. Failure >> leads you to success. >> Yeah. >> And so it so failure is closer to success than thinking about successes. >> Wow. >> Which is ironic. >> Ironic. >> And so the idea is like like one of my favorite things to tell sales guys especially especially in the cold calling outbound side is like let's get some nos today. Right? If we can make the failure a success a mile mark. How many nos we collect today? Right? It stops having this emotional charge because we're saying, "Wait, we're not making no mean something. >> We're saying we're making no mean something good." >> And so, if we know that um >> wow, >> the the failure that we're going to have is going to teach us something like the $250,000 pet that we're talking about with this operator, right? We this person who's incredibly in fear, how do we get them out of that out of that fear? is that if you don't see another way and maybe that maybe you pulled all the levers that we just talked about and and still there's no other way. You have to take the risk >> then you take the risk. >> Yeah. >> And and you know and you do that knowingly because what you are building is the thing that we were talking about earlier which is pattern recognition. So, let me tell you the story of how entrepreneurship really works, which is if you've ever played a video game, you played and the first time you play the game, you get to a level, it's hard, you got to beat the boss, you got to figure it all out, you find out there's a sword under the stone, whatever, right? And then you get to the next level and you trial and error, trial and error, you get it. Now, if you go back and play that game again, it's a straight line. How fast? Now, the character itself can't play faster because it's it's controlled by the same algorithm, the video game. But how does it take you a tenth of the time to get three, four, five levels deep? Because you know exactly what to do. Why? because you recognize the patterns. >> And so if you've ever had multiple businesses, which a lot of people are entrepreneurs, like by the way, you know, spoiler alert, you're going to have more than one business. You're getting into it and you have this fear that this will be the perfect one. Um >> the second business you start almost always grows faster than the first business you start because you you go you blow through all the bosses you had on the first one and then you get stuck at the same point and then you move as slow as you can which is trial and error again. It's you get into the slog again. And so the the failure that you're experiencing is is create is the creation of pattern recognition. And so I remember for me just to give an analogy that might make sense for people >> the first time you hire a sales manager or even the first time you hire a saleserson right >> you go through you hire one person and the most expensive hire is a sales person your first salesperson because you're losing that person doesn't close you lose all the business. I mean it's horrible right? But you have to make the bet at some point and so you hire them and maybe that person doesn't work out. Okay so we hire another one. maybe that person doesn't work out. Now, eventually you will hire one and it won't work out. And then at that point, you're like, "Oh, I know what this looks like now." >> Pattern recognition. And so, when the next ones, you're like, "I need to get them to look as similar to this as I possibly can." And then all of a sudden, your failure rate starts dropping and going down and down and down. Then, you're like, "What if I train harder?" And then all of a sudden, you start increasing your percentages. But the same thing happens when you're like, "Now I need a sales manager." And you repeat that process. And so I think a lot of what the call it the the better entrepreneurs in the world versus the the non the the lower entrepreneurs is that it's just every single role in the business. You have to know what good looks like and you have to fail at each one of them until eventually you find the one that works and then that forever becomes your pattern of this is >> and to be clear there's different ways to run sales teams but I know this way works and I know this type of person works for the way I like to run sales. And so that then when you when you create the next business and this is I use different verbiage for it which is at a certain point you don't build businesses anymore. You assemble them. >> Wow. You're so right. >> You're so right. >> I had to change my language because I was like I'm not really building this business. I'm just putting the we're just assembling. We're putting all the piece I know this is going to work. And also, which one of the advantages that you don't that we don't talk about as much because it's only applies to a small percentage of people is that the longer you do business and if you if you do business well and you do right by people, you develop this network, this rolodex. And if I'm going to start a new thing or Ed's going to start a new thing, it's like I got 10 people I can call who are like, "Oh, you're doing something. I'm in, man. Let's go." >> And failure was one of the reasons you've actually built all of these relationships, this in this uh human capital that you've actually developed. >> And then you can deploy that capital. Now, I wonder if that has more leverage. >> Mhm. That's what you said earlier about AI and me not having to do that. I've actually got so many other resources at this stage of my life that I can deploy AI or get access to it without having to fiddle with it myself because of these relationships. >> You have the benefits of AI. >> You're I have the benefits of it. This is so good. I want to do want to finish on one thought and by the way, I'm just going to finish in the middle because there's so many things we could cover. But this idea of pattern recognition, it's not talked a lot about and the video game analogy is perfect. So, it's going to give you a a little runway to answer two things at once. Okay. What pattern recognition's given me, if we're giving the video game analogy and the reps that I've had in business, some of them were successes, some of them were failures. But what's happened is about this idea of assembling a business is the absolute truest thing you'll ever hear. By the way, at some point once you kind of understand the mechanics and the mechanisms of putting these things together, it's an assemblance rather than is of a building. He's completely right. He and I have actually talked privately about doing a a type of business together. And I I just know that if we did it together, it would be successful because between the two of us on that human rolodex and what we know, we would just assemble the parts. Here's the thing that pattern recognition has given me over time that a new entrepreneur gives them needs to give themselves some grace to develop. And that is that I now as I'm building businesses, there are days where I react. There certainly are. They're just things that happen. I spend some of my time reacting. When I was a young entrepreneur, I spent most of my time reacting. Now that I have pattern recognition, human pattern recognition and also just trends, I anticipate more often than I respond and react. So I want you to talk about anticipation as a skill >> as a skill like the thing you and I have talked about with banking. Let's just be honest, right? Like okay, so the anticipation aspect and then inside the answer to that final question, what do you anticipate about the world of business the next two to five years with AI as a factor in it? So why is anticipation matter and what do you anticipate? >> Man, that's a really hard question. >> Um, so I think I think anticipation matters a lot from an entrepreneur perspective because it it it reverts back to the people who get the best returns on their resources. So why like why would anticipation even be important? Well, it means that if I allocate resources to a new thing, let's say it's a new platform emerges for social media and I'm one of the first people on it because I anticipate that it's going to grow because it has all the stuff that looks right. If I'm a first mover in that situation, then the minimal amount of resources that I deploy towards that, I'm going to get a way higher return. And then when people are lagards or later, they're going to have to deploy more resources to get even less out. And so anticipation is another form of leverage. And if we just define leverage, I know we're late on defining it. But it's just getting more for what you put in. High leverage at least. Low leverage would be the opposite. >> And so if we're trying to deploy as much leverage as we can, getting the call right >> allows us to get more for what we put in. And so the anticipation I think is >> a lot of it is uh call it macro pattern recognition, right? So I'll tell you I'll tell you something that I heard >> I want to say 12 years ago or something. I had a Gary Vee clip >> and he said one of the biggest regrets he had was that when he was printing money on Google PPC or Adwords uh for the wine business that he didn't spend more talk about the risk thing at that point now he's a way better bigger entrepreneur now and he has way higher risk tolerance but at that point spending 10,000 20,000 50,000 a day whatever it was was a lot of money >> and I remember hearing that clip right um in the early gym launch days >> really >> and we were printing on on Facebook and meta ads and these were new newish ads. Um, and I was like, well, I don't want to make that mistake. And so we're like, how do we spend more? And so that became the question is what would it take for us to spend more rather than >> I sure if I want to spend more, right? What would it take? Which is one of my favorite questions in the world to ask. It assumes the success then you work backwards. >> The second thing was um what is, you know, what is it going to look like uh in an age of AI? Um I will give an unsexy but accurate answer of what I'm actually doing. Um, I like basis's frame a lot on this, which is the future is very uncertain and one thing that is true is that we are notoriously bad at predicting it. >> And so he prefers to ask himself, what things do I knew know will not change. And so he's made all of those gigantic bets in the business based on the few things that he knows will not change. And so he says, I believe in the future people will want cheaper prices still. I believe in the future customers prefer more selection to less selection. I believe that customers will in the future prefer things to get them faster rather than slower. And so there are bets that you can make in the business based on human behavior that we know will be true. >> Do I think that in the future humans will eat food? Yes. Do I think that they will need shelter? Yes. And so [clears throat] >> the bets that we're making in the business um I would say and this this one thing about risk which I think is important is entirely personal because I get the question a lot and I'm sure you do too. one, when do I push and when do I pivot, >> right? >> And the second question is, how much should I take out of the business to save for a rainy day versus double down? And both of those are unanswerable questions because they're entirely personal. Ask Elon, he'll say, "Put it all on the line." If you have a wife and kids and you don't want to do that, which I respect, >> don't do that. >> And so those are dials for you. Um, but back back to the point, I'll just share what I'm doing is that >> I take chips off the table and put them into these places that I think are boring that will still be here. So we have lots of real estate and things like that, but the big investments that I make in the business on call it big swings I think have been predicated for at least me on making sure that my oxygen mask on is there for me and my family. People are different. Elon doesn't need that. I maybe he does he's already so rich. He knows enough friends that he's never actually going to starve. Um, but I think that what has served me very well was that I very aggressively lived cheap when I was younger so that I could save what I believed to be a nest egg. And that nest egg has changed in terms of what the size of it has been. >> But always having one allowed me to take gigantic swings and do things like the school deal or do things like the book launch or do things like some of the other things that we're talking about and be okay because the worst case scenario is that my my life doesn't change at all. Me too. Identical exact same thing. This is my favorite interview we've done. My favorite interview. Um >> can I do one more little bit >> please? >> So one thing in terms of the specificity of risk. So we talked about um like what would it actually look like? >> Yeah. >> One of the things that's been even more micro for me is what changes about my day. >> And so this is both upside and downside. So, if I'm considering like, hey, should I take on this investment or should I do this anything? The question that I ask is like, what will this change about my day? >> Do I have to now do something that I don't want to do? Do I have to do I have to stop doing stuff that I do want to do? And most decisions um don't actually affect my day, which then means that it's actually not there's no real stakes here. It's all made up. It's literally just it's it's in the air. Now, every once in a while, there are some things that when I actually run it through that that filter. For example, if your wife's pissed at you, >> that is going to change my day >> or week or month more than just about any negative business consequence will. Honestly, just about more. >> And so, it actually has helped me truly redefine priorities. >> Wow. >> In a way that's actually much more tactically relevant to how I experience life. >> Wow. I'm glad you added that. That's probably best for me of the entire conversation. No, because a lot of the risk that I have in my mind is made up. Yet, the risk I most fear is that it would alter my day and then I would have to do things I don't want to do anymore or actually stop doing the things that I do want to do. What a great formula. >> Turns out you're pretty smart. >> Turns out you're pretty smart. Um I'm real proud of you. Thanks, man. >> You know what I mean? And I'm grateful that you're in my life and uh I'll always be here for you. And um I love Leila, too. And uh you're really important in the world. I just want you to know. No, I meant what I said in the beginning. There's a lot of people that are really good at this business stuff. You're you're on a level that is yours. So, continue to expand because your capacity is even greater than this. Proud of you. Great job today. >> Appreciate it. >> All right, everybody. I don't have to tell you to do this one. Share this episode. You know where to find Alex. He's everywhere. And max out your life. God bless you.