Alex Hormozi joins Sam and Shaan to discuss his frameworks for hiring, leadership, and business growth — including the management diamond, why he hires for general intelligence over experience, and how to think about firing. The conversation widens into life philosophy: work-life pie charts, macro patience vs. micro speed, the role of precise language in business, and what Alex is thinking about now that several major goals have converged at once.
Speakers: Alex Hormozi (guest, founder of Acquisition.com), Sam Parr (host, founder of The Hustle), Shaan Puri (host, founder of Milk Road)
Talent Is the Highest-Return Investment [00:00:00]
Alex: The highest returns on capital we get as entrepreneurs is talent. Like, full stop. Where else do you get 10x, 20x, 100x return so reliably?
If I’m thinking from the “I really have to fill this role” angle, it’s usually not the right person. If I’m thinking “I don’t even care if I have a role for this person — I have to get them in,” it’s usually the right person.
Shaan: Once you get to about five million in revenue, that’s what you have to become: a collector of people.
Alex: It’s pattern recognition. Especially when it comes to talent, you have to grow fast. I do think that’s a virtuous cycle — the faster you grow, the more talent you get, which grows you faster. And it can also be vicious in the other direction.
Sam: It’s mostly vicious in the other direction.
Alex: Yeah.
Sam: I’m hiring for about six or seven roles. What mistakes do you think I’ll likely make?
Alex: If somebody comes in as a C-level exec and has no network of people they’ve worked with in the past — that’s weird.
Shaan: Who have you hired recently that is significantly better than you, or has taught you something? Who takes you to school?
Thinking in Frameworks [00:02:30]
Alex: This is something I can only say now with 14 years of business experience — I just… I think you, Shaan, do this as well. You think in frameworks. I don’t think like that at all. That does not come naturally to me. Whenever I hear you, or our mutual friend Ryan Dice, they make me feel like a jerk. Ryan was like, “You don’t think in frameworks — how do you learn something and then teach it to your team?” And I’m like, “I don’t know, man. I’m like a Neanderthal. I just kind of float by life sometimes.”
Shaan: I think frameworks happen when you have to reteach or reuse the same thought process over and over again. Rather than re-deriving the same decision set, you create a framework to give yourself mental shorthand. Like the Hormozi 6, or whatever we called it at the implementation workshop — metrics, market, model, money, and then under model there’s four offshoots, and finally manpower. Those are the six reasons people get limited in their business.
That came about because I had done so many Q&A calls. I thought, there has to be a decision tree here — it might be more complex than I thought, but there is one. And so just crystallizing that.
You totally think in frameworks. You just haven’t documented them.
Alex: That’s my two cents. That’s my opinion.
Shaan: You had this thing called the diamond. I’ve been watching your content — not on tactics for making money, but on tactics for leadership and management.
Alex: Yeah, the management diamond.
Shaan: For the listener: if you have an employee who’s not doing what you want them to do, they either don’t know what you want done, don’t know how to do it, weren’t motivated, or don’t know when you want it done.
Alex: Yeah. Or there’s something blocking them. And when you come up with something like that, is it something you make up, or do you read other books and steal bits of inspiration and repurpose them?
Honest truth — I really don’t read as much as I probably should. Almost all my stuff comes from me doing it and then saying, “Man, there’s got to be an easy way to describe this.” If I happen to come across some coincidence in other material, I see that as corroboration of an idea. But no, the management diamond was like — all right, fundamentally people don’t do stuff for a reason. I have to figure out what that reason is. And if I can have a framework for that conversation, it makes it less like “you are a lazy piece of —” and more like, well, that’s unlikely to be productive. Most people do prefer to stay employed and prefer to do a good job, by and large.
So if we take that to be true, and I want them to succeed and so do they — then what’s getting in the way? Maybe I didn’t communicate that I wanted them to do this thing. That’s on me. Or I told them but they’re like, “Cool, I don’t know how to do that.” That’s a training issue. Or they didn’t know there was a deadline associated with it — that’s a when problem. And then if they knew when to do it, knew how to do it, and knew that I wanted it done, then is there something blocking them?
The motivation issue — “they’re not motivated” — is technically correct, but it’s the last one I’ll go to, because most times people are relatively motivated to do it.
Hiring for General Intelligence [00:09:00]
Alex: I’ll say it differently. You’ve probably heard about attitude versus aptitude. That used to bug me, because I thought it can’t always be one or the other.
If you’re hiring for what people consider low-skill labor — if you run an Airbnb and need cleaners, or a yogurt shop and need people to check customers out — you’re going to hire for attitude over aptitude. The amount of skills required to train someone on attitude far outweigh the skills it takes to take somebody who’s already friendly, shows up on time, can smile and say hello, and teach them how to use a cash register. That takes like two hours.
On the flip side, if you want the number one AI researcher in the world, and that person’s a bit of a jerk, you can probably work with them on communication. You’re not going to take the yogurt shop cashier and make them the number one AI researcher.
So I take the position that I think every skill is trainable — it’s just a question of whether it’s worth training. Is there someone I can get a higher return on?
The biggest change in my hiring practices over my career is that I hire far more for general intelligence now. Intelligence will allow someone to bridge the skill gap faster. I define intelligence as rate of learning. If I can get someone with a high rate of learning, maybe they start a little bit behind, but in six months they’ll pass the person who had experience.
It all depends on the timeline. If I take a toddler, I can get them to be a perfect adult in 18 years, but I don’t know if I have 18 years to wait.
Shaan: When you’re hiring for smart people, how do you figure out if they’re smart?
Alex: The quality of the questions they ask is one. If someone said, “Hey, I noticed you guys have this media brand here and this advisory practice here — what’s revenue retention around that? Is there another vehicle you’ve considered that isn’t in the pipeline?” I’d be like, wow, that demonstrated real research and they connected two complex things. Whereas if someone says, “What’s the five-year vision of the company?” — I don’t see that as a bad question, it’s just generic. And if it’s not already answerable online, that’s a problem. Since a lot of my stuff is public, I expect someone to come in with better than generic questions.
Sam: What’s the second one?
Alex: When they deconstruct a problem they’re solving, in terms of what they’re thinking with. In the consulting world, people do cases for a reason — they want to hear how you think through getting an answer, not the answer itself. Like, how many ping-pong balls fit on a 747? They don’t care about the number. They care about your horsepower.
At Acquisition.com, for higher-level and leadership roles, instead of presenting hypothetical cases we present real cases. Worst case we get free consulting. Best case we get somebody capable of implementing the solution they just came up with. If they can use frameworks or experiences I wasn’t aware of, those come out. And it’s just a more interesting interview for me, because now they’re solving my actual problem.
Sam: So it’s like: the hiring manager gives them a description of the company, some numbers — maybe even fake numbers — and each role has a specific problem they need to solve, delivered as a two-pager in advance, and they send their thoughts before the discussion?
Alex: I’ll differentiate by level and type. For highly repeated roles — editor, salesperson — there are incredibly structured interview processes. For salespeople, we send a script to every candidate we want to invite to a group interview. They get the script ahead of time. We want to hear them do a one- to two-minute sound bite. If they didn’t take the time to go through it a few times, they’ll sound horrible. Immediately we can tell either they don’t have the skill or they don’t have the work ethic — either way, we weed them out in a couple of minutes. Then we tell them, “You messed this thing up, tweak it, try it again.” And now we get to see how coachable they are, how much ego they have, and how quickly they can learn.
Sam: I actually read the book you suggested — the guy who founded the HubSpot sales team. We do the same thing here. He said IQ is number one. Charisma is important, but it’s not the most important thing. It’s ability to learn quickly. And it makes sense, because we’re selling to business owners, mostly B2B, and if a salesperson is being outgunned by the person they’re on the phone with, that person feels like they’re talking to an idiot who can’t help them.
Alex: General intelligence is so important, and I kind of just see it across the entire organization. Show me exceptional organizations that employ dumber people. There are some, but especially in the B2B work that we do, you need horsepower.
Same thing with editors — we follow a very similar process. Here’s some raw footage, send us a clip with your edit. That allows us to be more objective. Some people don’t present well but that doesn’t mean they’re bad editors. Interviewing itself is a skill, and I don’t need somebody who’s great at interviewing. I need somebody who’s great at editing.
Something Leila’s taught me that’s been really helpful: some people are incredibly smart but not very good at communicating. And depending on the role, they might not need as much of that.
Shaan: Or the other way around — I’ve talked to people who are very charming and communicate wonderfully, and I’m like, I can’t fall victim to this. You’re actually an idiot. I’ve hired those people before.
Alex: And I just want to put my disclaimer out there — by no means do we claim to be perfect at hiring. We take our licks like everybody else. The hardest ones are always leadership.
The Collector of People [00:18:00]
Alex: Whenever I go into a room of entrepreneurs, I say, “Hey, who here is on their second business or beyond?” And almost the whole room raises their hands. Then I ask, “Of those of you on your second business and beyond, who here — your current business grew way faster or past your first business?” And almost the entire room raises their hands.
So why is that? I think at the most basic level, it’s pattern recognition. Think about building a million-dollar business. You have a marketing function, a sales function, a delivery function. For the first time, someone else has to do some of this stuff, and you get your first pattern recognition: oh, this is someone who can do some advertising, this person can do some sales, this person can handle some delivery. And you keep plateauing until you find that one competent person, and then the business grows until the next constraint.
The more experience you have on each of these roles — this is what an SDR looks like, this is what a closing manager looks like, this is what a VP of sales looks like — after that point, when you go after new businesses, you’re not even building the business. You’re just assembling it.
Sam: And that becomes quite jarring. Because I grew up going to Catholic school, and one of the most famous scenes is Jesus telling Peter, “You’re no longer a fisherman. You’re going to come work with me. You are going to be a fisher of men.” I think once you get to about five million in revenue, that’s what you have to become — a collector of people.
Alex: And it’s the game. A lot of it is just pattern recognition around behavior traits and skills.
I also think — and I can only say this now, with I guess 14 years of business experience — there’s a snowball of talent. If you’ve had multiple businesses, had good outcomes, and treated people well over an extended period of time, some people start following you from thing to thing. You start to have this core team that’s just good, and when you do the next thing, they’re all with you. I don’t know, but in 20 more years, the team of people who just prefer to operate the way we operate, who like the culture, who like each other — it starts to look like a core crew.
And if somebody comes in as a C-level exec and has no network of people they’ve worked with in the past — that’s weird. Either you don’t think anyone was a stud, which is weird, or you do think they were studs but they don’t want to come to your new thing, because you’re not a good leader. That’s a great litmus test — who do they have in their black book?
Who Takes You to School [00:24:30]
Shaan: Who have you hired recently that has taught you something? You’re in the role now where you do most of the talking and teaching — at your workshops, at the companies you work with. Who takes you to school?
Alex: Shiron does. He’s Acquisition’s president. He’s so knowledgeable — he’s helmed two plus billion-dollar companies, so Acquisition is the third that we’re building toward. The bigger the company gets, the better he gets. More in his wheelhouse — data pipelines, infrastructure, real-time dashboards, how finance can get weaponized. Sean is so good at the finance function — tax ramifications, entity structure, a lot of the things I’m not naturally strong at. My acumen is really: how do we let people know about it? How do we get them to give us money for it? How do we make sure they like it and tell their friends?
Sam: Is that last thing product?
Alex: Exactly. And everything outside of that is definitely not my core. Leila is so good at a lot of the people stuff we were talking about. And Sean comes from a public CEO background — enterprise value structuring, all of that.
I would also say the true A-plus talent: one, they’re not employees — they’re partners. And they see themselves as partners. If you don’t see them as partners, they’re not A-plus.
Shaan: How do you treat a partner differently than an employee? How would I know if I have one?
Alex: If you go to them because you’re not sure what to do and they’re giving you advice — to me, that’s a partner. If you’re constantly directing them and saying, “This is what we’re going to do, this is what we’re going to do” — there’s nothing wrong with that, but they’re not a thought partner.
I use that as a litmus test for my true C-level executives — do I want to talk to this person about a complex problem? If I don’t seek their advice, it means I don’t see them as a value add. And then they’re not super essential, which is not good.
The other piece — and I feel like I’ve learned this more recently because I’m super deep in C-level stuff right now — is clouds to dirt. Vertically integrated, full-stack skill sets. The best sales leaders can hop on the phone and get a cold lead to book an appointment from an SDR level, all the way up to building sales strategy that starts to merge into marketing. What kind of messaging do we need? Which avatars have the highest likelihood of buying? How do we weave that into our scripting? How do we cut training time for new reps?
They’re really thinking about the sales organization holistically, but they can also do almost every job. I have yet to find truly exceptional people who aren’t full-stack.
Competing for A-Level Talent [00:31:00]
Alex: Right now, given your size, you’re competing in a very competitive talent market. I’d guess you’re competing against AI companies, tech companies — and the value they provide is lots and lots of money, plus equity as a lottery ticket.
What do you have to offer beyond market rate or above-market rate money?
Sam: Growth and impact. If you asked everyone at Acquisition.com what’s the number one thing they come for, it’s growth. Not a lot of companies are growing at the rate we’re growing. So there’s tremendous career advancement and opportunity. We’re very meritocratic — anyone can come here and move up independent of age or tenure. We had a guy who came in 90 days ago and got a very large promotion because he demonstrated he was great.
Alex: And the growth of the company means you pull people up to higher roles. So to attract A-plus talent, you have to grow fast.
Sam: Exactly. Virtuous cycle — the faster you grow, the more talent you get, which grows you faster.
Alex: And vicious in the other direction.
Sam: Yeah. You’re shrinking and have no money to give people. It gets tough.
Alex: Or a lot of businesses are growing only 20% a year — fine, but mediocre. And where do they start if they don’t have growth to impress the right people to join them?
It all depends on the opportunity and the level of the pool you’re competing against. If someone’s going to start a new division for us, I can say: I can guarantee you demand. Not a lot of people can do that. It’s not a question of whether this will work — it’s whether this is the best use of the demand we have. That becomes an opportunity cost question.
It’s also, in some ways, less risky to come to Acquisition because we have so much demand and so much opportunity. If Mr. Beast said, “Let’s start an umbrella brand” — that doesn’t mean he’ll definitely sell umbrellas. It’s just not the best use of his resources. But the point is, the demand is there, and the risk profile is completely different.
Hiring Mistakes and Settling [00:38:00]
Alex: The easy answer to hiring mistakes is settling. But it’s so tough because these things don’t exist outside of time. It’s like, I have to fill this role. And especially at the C-level — if I’m thinking from the “I really have to fill this role” angle, it’s usually not the right person. If I’m thinking, “I don’t even care if I have a role for this person — I have to get them in,” that’s usually the right person.
Sam: Are you willing to pay them more than you originally thought was reasonable?
Alex: Yes. One hundred percent. Not even a question. As long as I can pencil out the ROI of the role, I’ll do it. It’s just a return on capital.
Sam: What’s your desired return?
Alex: Amazing. [laughter]
Sam: Google Sheets allows you to put “amazing” in equals amazing.
Alex: I think the highest returns on capital we get as entrepreneurs is talent. Full stop. Where else do you get 10x, 20x, 100x returns — and do so reliably? Talent is one of those places. And typically the higher up the org, the higher the arbitrage.
Firing and the Red-Yellow-Orange Framework [00:42:00]
Shaan: Are you fast to fire?
Alex: We continue to get faster. Our firing practices do somewhat rely on the constraint. Some fires aren’t kitchen fires — they’re the trash can in the driveway. It’s a problem, but it’s not the thing that’s limiting the business. If we have somebody who’s not as good as they should be, but they’re not in a role that’s limiting the company right now, it’s probably not our first priority to take them out. But as soon as that becomes the constraint, it gets unearthed and handled.
Sam: Have you ever heard Dave Portnoy’s take on this? He’s like, “I don’t fire people. If they’re a loser I’ll just keep paying them and they’ll sit in a corner and be a loser.” And I was shocked, because he seems so blunt. But he was like, “I do. I suck at it. I don’t like the confrontation. I don’t like people feeling bad. I’d rather lose money.”
When you said how you fire, I thought you were going to say “I fire fast.” But I sensed a small hesitation in your voice — like maybe you’re actually slow to fire.
Alex: I just don’t like it.
Sam: Well, I don’t think anybody likes it.
Alex: I think we’re fast to fire if it’s the constraint of the business and clearly that person is the one limiting us. We will not sacrifice the company’s growth — and the opportunity of all the people who’ve trusted us with their careers — to avoid a hard conversation.
There are also levels. Think of it as yellow, orange, red. Yellow: someone who doesn’t have complete competence but can still do their job — they’re just not going to grow or take on new opportunities. Orange: they can’t fully do their role right now. Red: they can’t do the role right now and that role is required for us to grow.
Obviously in a perfect world we get everyone who’s not a fit out as soon as possible. But sometimes people do turn it around with good feedback and coaching — probably half the time.
The way I break through that terrible feeling when I know I have to let someone go: I ask myself, “Am I acting for local good but global bad?” Local versus global. I’m choosing short-term comfort over long-term discomfort. If you do that enough times, you get a global catastrophe.
So I put the greater good as the frame — my little spiritual armor going into it. This person might get upset. This might dramatically inconvenience their life in the short term. But I owe it to all the other people who have put their careers, their lives, in my hands. That’s what gets me over the hump to pull the trigger faster.
Macro Patience, Micro Speed [00:50:30]
Sam: The Founders Podcast — you ever heard that by David Senra?
Alex: Love it. And I love reading biographies of historical entrepreneurs. A common thing I get from that podcast is patience — doing something for decades. I believe that to be true. But then I see people like you, and on your YouTube every description was like, “Age 26 I was here, age 27 I was here.” You don’t read like a patient person. You started Acquisition.com at something like 31 and by 33 or 34 the seminar business was probably mid-eight figures, very profitable. That was pretty fast. How do you talk about being patient all the time but move at that pace?
Alex: I think the patience is relative to the outcome you’re going for. If you’re trying to climb Everest, your rate of ascension in altitude is going to be significantly faster than somebody climbing a foothill. But the percentage growth might be the same. A patient person might be willing to grow at two, three, four percent per year toward their ultimate Everest — it’s just that four percent of Everest is significantly faster than four percent of a foothill. The absolute difference will be different, but the relative difference — which is what I’m measuring myself against — is where I feel patient.
That’s where macro patience, micro speed is so important. We still have deadlines. We still need to move the ball forward. We still have to act with urgency. And I honestly see a big part of the manager’s job as consistently pulling the future forward faster.
Even at the tactical level — you have a team meeting, someone says they’ll have something done by end of week. A level-zero manager doesn’t ask when. A level-one manager just accepts the deadline. A level-two manager says, “What else is blocking you from getting that done?” They might say, “I have these three things.” And you say, “Well, this is more important — do this first. With that new knowledge, what’s your new deadline?” And they say, “Okay, instead of end of week, I can get it done two days earlier.” Then you ask, “How many actual hours do you think this work will take?” They say, “About four.” And it’s noon now, so why isn’t it done at 4:00 today?
That consistent pulling forward. And honestly, it’s almost like many confrontational conversations that are required to move an entire organization at breakneck speed. I look at Elon a lot as inspiration from a business perspective — all of his competitors talk about his maniacal sense of urgency. A lot of it is just consistently challenging: what would it take, and is it worth doing? If the answer is yes, let’s do it. A lot of people make their decisions within their realm of reality, when that realm is based on nothing besides their own conjecture or some arbitrary timeline of what they think it should take.
Getting Around People With Higher Standards [00:59:00]
Sam: I was a track athlete in high school and college. I thought I was incredible because I was so much better than everyone else. Then you get around Division I guys and you’re like — oh my god, I’m nothing. There are so many levels. And then when I’m hanging out with guys like you or thinking about Elon Musk, who have these super-intense standards — you put out something like “when I get a new lead, I call them in 60 seconds, and if I can’t do that, I hire someone whose full-time job is calling in 60 seconds.” And I’m like, that makes so much sense. Why did I think calling someone in 15 minutes was adequate?
How do you think people get their standards raised to this extreme level? Were you around other extreme people and realized there was so much more? Or do some people just come that way and bring others up with them?
Alex: It’s probably a nature-nurture question, and I don’t know the answer — this is just my two cents. I’ve always been a really intense person. My father always said, “You’re so unbalanced, so unbalanced.” Because as soon as I’d find something, I would just want to do nothing besides that thing until I’d finished it. So there’s a component of that.
But I’ve also had belief frames broken by people who were ahead of me. Even just observing Elon stretches the horizon of what I think we can accomplish. And it’s actually refreshing — where was Elon at 36 versus whatever age he is now? He’s had such an exponential crescendo. To me that says it just takes time.
A lot of what takes time for entrepreneurs is there are just so many skills required to be a good entrepreneur, and you have to be very good at all of them. That’s why I see entrepreneurship as the single greatest path of personal development. You get real-time feedback that you suck, and then at some point, most of us reach a level of success and say, “This is enough” — or “I’m not willing to make the tradeoffs beyond this point.” Because it depends on the entrepreneur, but I would say the vast majority want to win the game of life, and business is one of the games within the larger game. Some people get lost to whatever game they’re in.
Steve Jobs accomplished a lot. A lot has been documented about how his personal life suffered as a result. You could make an argument that he was a net positive for humanity, but on the micro level, he lived a harder existence. Elon is probably the same. A lot of people wouldn’t want Elon’s life. And he says, “You wouldn’t want my life.”
Life Tradeoffs and the Pie Chart [01:08:00]
Alex: A lot of my shower-time thinking right now is: when you know the price of the thing you want — it’s okay to go into a store, see something you like, and not buy it. I think I’ve had a confluence of three things happen within 30 days. A four-plus year project came to an end — a lot of my focus was on the hundred-million-dollar series and the culmination of the Money Models launch. That was one. There was a significant financial outcome at the launch. That’s two. And then my mother died within those 30 days.
So it was a very interesting mix of emotions within a short period, and I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on what matters most.
Everyone’s heard the advice “write your own eulogy and try to live that way.” Except most people don’t actually take the time to write their own eulogy. But in writing her eulogy, it was interesting to see — if we had a pie chart, what portion would be dedicated to her accomplishments? She was a relatively accomplished person. And what portion to service and character? The vast majority was service and character.
In thinking about that, it’s like: if I apportion my time based on what my eulogy percentages would be, I wouldn’t have the same pie chart I do now. That being said, life has a lot of years, and maybe that slice that’s the first few sentences might be 15 years, and then there’s a different 30 years afterwards.
She had a freak accident — sudden death. So that’s what I think about a lot. The tradeoffs.
Shaan: A lot of your content is about hard work. And I think you tweet so much about it because it’s always top of mind. I don’t have a content schedule. I don’t look at trending tweets and think, “How do I do my own spin on this?” That’s not how I make content. I tweet whatever is top of mind, and the things that come out are the things I’m thinking about.
Sam: Yeah. You’re in a lawsuit and you’re tweeting about grit and overcoming obstacles. You’re making all this money and it’s like gratitude.
Alex: And so I think there are two things that make entrepreneurship hard. Number one is uncertainty — the absolute soul-crushing uncertainty that’s always present throughout your day while making decisions. You might lose and you don’t know.
The other component is the known quantities you believe you’re going to have to trade in order to get the unknown upside. We can always quantify the downside — the thing we trade — and we cannot quantify the upside. So I think a lot of entrepreneurs, especially the lifestyle entrepreneurs I get tons of flack from, are making tradeoffs. And most regrets that people have are wanting the upside from a path not taken without accounting for the downside they didn’t suffer.
Shaan: What’s the pie chart like now?
Alex: Almost entirely business. I’d say about 70% work, 15% health, 15% marriage.
Shaan: When you’re thinking about what it should be?
Alex: I’d love to see a world where 25 to 30% is business. I’d love to see what happens there. And I think I’m approaching a point where more hours really don’t matter as much — more of it at this point will be the leverage of the decisions I make, more than the work I do. I’m feeling that transition right now.
Sam: That could have been earlier, though.
Alex: I just feel it now, for whatever that’s worth.
Sam: He’s got a good team, I guess.
Alex: The team is getting better and better. We have a huge amount of true A-level talent coming in. But yeah, a lot of the leverage is in the decision-making. Maybe it’s just that some of the bets I made five years ago have come to fruition, which gives more leverage. Output is just volume times leverage. Elon still works a lot. So if you do a lot of volume with a lot of leverage, you build rockets and trillion-dollar businesses. I’m not claiming I’m immune to it.
Shaan: What does the pie chart look like if you were designing it?
Alex: Probably 25% business. Health stays around 15%. I’ll bucket Leila as family. I think the percentages will change from what they currently are. I feel confident in that.
Shaan: What’s a non-business pursuit you’d want to put in there?
Alex: I don’t know. And I think I need to create the space for that to get filled. I don’t think I’ll have difficulty finding things to fill my time.
Sam: I don’t know of you to have any — we’re friends, but not terribly close, and I’ve never seen you show an interest in hobbies. Like, I like history, I love buying clothes, I like cars, I like motorcycles. But I have never heard of you caring about anything other than your wife, working out, and business.
Alex: And business. Yeah, those have been my big three. And I would say — for the first time in 21 years, maybe — it’s the first time in my life where I’ve been open to having other priorities. I don’t know what they are. I straight up don’t know what they will be. Maybe I’ll discover I like the life I have now. But it’s the first time I’ve been like, “Huh, I am open to this mix changing.”
On Patience and the Climbing Season [01:20:00]
Sam: Andrew Ross Sorkin has this new book, 1929. It’s about the Great Depression and how it came to be. Credit had just become a thing — GM invented it so you could get a car on a loan, then other appliances on a loan, then Sears did layaway. And then City Bank said, “Let’s do it for stocks, at a 10:1 ratio — for every $10 of stocks you have with us, we’ll loan you $100.” And the Great Depression happened because when the market dropped, it was a domino effect — everyone was incredibly overleveraged.
He tells this amazing story through about 20 characters who are like the Jamie Dimons of that era, and gives you their day-to-day lives. One of my biggest takeaways: the executives of these banks, the Jamie Dimons of the time making the equivalent of $100 million a year — they didn’t work that hard. One guy was up at 6:00, exercised, at the office at 10:00, home by 5:00. Another took the entire summer off to go to Europe by a three-week boat.
Same with Andrew Carnegie — barely worked. Brian Halligan, founder of HubSpot, just tweeted: “You don’t move mountains working 9 to 5.” And yet I see all these other examples and I’m like, isn’t it crazy how much you can get done by not working hard?
Alex: I haven’t read about it, but I’ve definitely observed it with some people who are further ahead. The question that’s always difficult: do I model the top of the mountain, or do I model the climb? Am I trying to extrapolate how someone currently lives for what they did to get there? That’s a really dangerous one I try to catch myself on. We’re in different seasons. I have to compare this person’s spring to my spring, not my winter to their spring.
Sam: Ted Turner was another one — when he built CNN, which made him a multi-billionaire, he was also a professional sailboat racer who was gone for three months at a time. You can list so many people like that. It’s crazy.
Alex: Let’s take that for a second. Let’s say within your business you could find the perfect Sam — whatever you could pay the perfect Sam, and he could do everything you do just as well. Whatever your current profit is minus Sam’s compensation. And maybe in two years, Perfect Sam would grow the pie so you’re making the same or more while you’re not working at all.
If that’s the case, we’re always one hire away from somebody who could do a hundred percent of what we’re currently doing and the business would continue to grow. Most entrepreneurs say, “I’ll find that person, give it to them, then I’ll start the next job.” Some other people just say, “I’m not going to start the next job” and are willing to let the company continue to grow with the team they’ve assembled. As long as the business performs the required functions, it will grow.
Courses vs. Networks as Learning Vehicles [01:29:00]
Sam: I heard you say something interesting. A lot of people talk about course makers, but I’ve actually bought a lot of courses — many of them were not only great, they changed my life. Neville Medhora had a copywriting course that changed my life. Have you ever bought or taken any courses that were game-changing?
Alex: The biggest things that changed my life were networks of people — getting in the room with people who were ahead of me, even across realms. That was the stuff that really changed my life the most.
From the tactical level — books, courses, workshops, seminars — absolutely. I’m a product of the alternative education world. I was willing to pay to learn from people ahead of me, and it was more than worth it.
But there are two types of knowledge. Declarative knowledge — knowledge about stuff. And procedural knowledge — knowledge of how to do stuff. Courses and DIY stuff are predominantly procedural: here’s how you set up a landing page, here’s how you write copy, here’s how to structure a video sales letter.
But networks and affiliations — when you meet people further ahead of you — that’s where you get your beliefs broken. That’s where you learn about things you didn’t know were possible. I didn’t know you could work four hours a week and make that kind of money. I didn’t know real estate worked that way. Those were my order-of-magnitude increases. My incremental increases were always developing more blocking-and-tackling skills. But the large step-function increases came from association with people who were just way further ahead and said, “Let me tell you what the next five years look like if you keep doing what you’re doing — and here’s what you need to do instead.”
Sam: Who’s on your list of people you’d kill to meet and spend time with?
Alex: Most of mine are the obvious ones. I’d love to shadow Elon. I’d love to shadow Zuck. Bezos — especially 10 years ago. People who are in the thick of the game, because a lot of it is: what frameworks are they using to think through these decisions? They’ve made these decisions a bunch of times. If I could apply those frameworks to my current state, I’d move faster.
Sam: I hear you learning these frameworks and I’m just amazed at how much information you retain.
Alex: Thanks. I think: if you are not good at predicting what is going to happen next, life will be hard for you. And the better you get at predicting what’s going to happen next, the more you will get what you want.
Predicting what happens next requires an accurate framework of how reality works. If you’ve lost everything and can rebuild it again, it’s because you accurately view reality and it wasn’t luck. You can redo it.
I find that most people don’t know what they’re saying most of the time. The vast majority of people spend their time regurgitating and repeating things they never thought about and saying words they don’t understand. If you ask someone when they say, “I want to feel great about myself” — well, define that. And they can’t define it. No wonder they haven’t hit it. They can’t even define what they’re going for.
The single greatest razor I have for defining reality more accurately has been removing all sentiment, emotion, and quote psychology from the equation and only looking at it from a behaviorist frame. What can I observe?
If an alien or a toddler lands on earth and asks “What does trust mean?” — most people will just say a bunch of nonsense. And so I find that’s most people, and that’s why they can’t communicate well. Two people saying words that neither of them understand, and they just roll a dice to see if they get what they want.
That’s why every one of my books begins by defining terms. The beginning of every legal document has a recitation of definitions. You need that to be precise about what you want.
Sam: What does that mean at a practical level — like defining what a win looks like, what success looks like?
Alex: Those are the big obvious ones. But underneath that is the day-to-day. You ask your wife, “I’d like you to be more loving towards me.” What does that mean? For real — what does “love me better” mean? Does that mean: when I walk in the door, can you come give me a hug? That’s observable. A court witness could say, “He came in and she did that.”
Getting as granular as possible. If we just bring everything down to what is observable and agreed upon — that’s where I think the content I have seems both the same and different from stuff that’s out there. They say, “I listen to your marketing stuff and you say things I know, but in a different way.” Because I think about: what is selling, really? A lot of people say, “Sales is a transference of feeling between two parties over a bridge of trust.” I would have yelled that at a sales team 15 years ago. And they’d be like, “How do I transfer belief over a bridge of trust?” And I’d be like, “Go transfer belief over a bridge of trust.” And they’d be like, “I don’t know how to do that.” Of course you don’t.
Sam: Use a bridge. Who’s got a bridge?
Alex: [laughter] And how do I give them this belief? It’s natural to use shorthand in language because it’s faster to transfer ideas — except neither party has defined the term. That’s where most miscommunications come from.
So: what is selling? It’s increasing the likelihood that someone makes a purchasing decision. That’s all it is. We just increase the likelihood. And there are a number of variables that affect that percentage, and those are the ones we can observe and influence. And I think we just leave it there — we get all this hollow blue, all the manifestation and synchronicities and energy — maybe that stuff’s true, but I can’t see it. How do I transfer it? I don’t know. So I just talk about the observable world. It has made my life and my ability to predict what’s going to happen next so much better.
Old-School Books and the Midwit Meme [01:44:00]
Sam: Dude, this is why I like — Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Very tactical. Say someone’s name because that’s the most beautiful sound in the English language.
And another really tactical thing that more people should read, particularly if you work in the internet world: old-school direct response copywriting books. Claude Hopkins, David Ogilvy, Joe Sugarman, Kennedy. I love those books because they’re the most tactical, and they’re also great writers.
You know who I think is the best? Felix Dennis. Have you read How to Get Rich?
Alex: Yeah.
Sam: The best writing I’ve ever read. Or Dan Kennedy, who’s a copywriter. Somehow he has books on management, which is —
Alex: Don’t read that book. [laughter] In the beginning of the book he says, “I don’t have any employees because I hate employees — but let me write this long book about managing a company.” And I read it and I’m like, you’re a quack, man. But some of your advice is actually quite good. He’s so good at telling stories and making them tactical, which is what a really good copywriter does. So it becomes quite actionable. Maybe you’ll take the wrong action, but it’s very actionable.
Do you ever read those old-school copywriting books?
Sam: I did when I was in my Rocky training phase of learning marketing. I haven’t read much of it lately because — you know the Midwit meme?
Alex: Yeah.
Sam: That meme is one of my favorite of all time. It’s been so true for me in so many domains of my life. When I started lifting: add more weight, eat protein, try hard, do it over and over again. Then I got into periodization, volume blocks, peaking cycles, undulating periods. And now it’s like: just eat protein and add more weight to the bar, and thank your parents for your genetics.
Alex: [laughter] Does your testosterone make you more Persian? Was it Persian testosterone?
Sam: I don’t know, maybe. I think the testosterone would decrease the amount of hair on my head, at least. But yeah — with marketing it’s the same thing. No persuasion occurs in the vague. Persuasion occurs in the specific.
If you can articulate someone’s pain to them more accurately than they can describe it themselves, they will buy what you have to sell without even hearing much about your offer. If someone describes every pain in your life in excruciating detail, you’re like, “If this guy knows this much about my pain, he has to know how to solve it.”
Pain is also more motivating than promise. More compliance-driving. Motivation comes from deprivation — we have to increase the prospect’s perception of deprivation around the outcome associated with whatever action we want them to take.
“The pain is the pitch” — that’s one of my little isms. If you can accurately do that, and it’s not about fancy words — short words, short sentences, clearly defined, no brain power required to process, yet still with emotional resonance because of the specificity. “Lose weight fast” probably worked as the first weight loss ad in 1930. But then you have to keep breaking it down into what that really means.
Have you ever been the overweight girl who wanted to take the photo instead of be in the photo? Have you ever walked with your thighs chafing? Have you always worn a cover-up when your friends were in bikinis? When you put on pants you used to wear, do you find yourself holding your breath longer and longer? Those are specifics. That’s where copy is driven. Which is why you have to know the customer. Some of the best marketers can advertise pain they have not experienced. But most good marketers in specific spaces know the avatar because they are the avatar.
Copy Beats Design [01:53:00]
Sam: One time I had a designer when I lived in San Francisco working for my company, The Hustle. We had this new product we were testing, like $300 a year. She made this beautiful page. And I’m like, “You guys are insane. The design means nothing.” They’re like, “What do you mean? I spent so long on this logo.” I’m like, “Oh my god, watch this.”
I wrote out a Google Doc, and at the bottom I had a link to an Eventbrite page — not an actual event, just the fastest way I could accept money. The most janky thing ever. We drove something like $5,000 of Facebook ads to each.
The pretty one drove essentially nothing. The Google Doc: I made $50,000 off of $5,000 in ad spend. And I’m like, please listen to me. Copy matters more than anything.
I was like, go look at Apple’s page for the iPhone — the most known product of all time. There are tons of words. And then go look at the Amazon listing for Kindle. You only see copy. Ten thousand reviews and it’s just copy, copy, copy. Copy is the way to go.
Alex: I agree. And I actually think this is true with content as well. If you’re an educator — and most businesses, whether you’re a plumber or B2B, make educational content — design matters less than you think.
I did this experiment with my team because sometimes my editing team gets cute and wants to get fancy. I said, “This next one, we’re going to do the entire thing on an iPhone.” Shaky, crappy audio, no tripod. But it was about a concept I knew would do well. It got about 1.7 million views. And I was like — we spend so much time in post on some of these videos and it doesn’t matter. Maybe 10%. But are we appropriately allocating resources toward the thing that gets the highest return? The answer is almost always no. Because the words are the hard part. The words require thinking, and that’s what most people avoid.
The Friendship and What’s Next [01:59:00]
Sam: The last time we talked was about ten days ago. I wanted to talk to you today because I enjoyed our conversation and I was like, I don’t want to plan this. I just want to catch up. And Ari made a joke — she was like, “I want him to talk in sound bites.” And I was like, that’s the exact opposite of what I want. I don’t want you to talk in any sound bites. I just want to see what’s up and catch up.
Alex: And if you want, I can just read five tweets in a row and Sam can react.
Sam: You’re a fortune cookie. That’s what you are. Wait, is that really your writing process — do you just write one sentence at a time?
Alex: For tweets, yes. Literally, that’s a hundred percent what it is.
Sam: Do you use ChatGPT?
Alex: No, no. I don’t use any AI for the tweets. Come on, let me give you some lines.
Either sell extremely expensive to a select few, or sell something super cheap to everyone. The middle is where people die.
Sam: You’re making me weak at the knees. Alex, keep going.
Alex: Poor people stay poor because they want a fast way to get rich. If you’re in your 20s and want to stand out, do what you say you’re going to do, even if no one is there to give you applause. The fastest way to stand out is to put in more effort than everyone else. Show up early. Use names. Do your research ahead of time. Smile when you greet people. Do more than your fair share. Follow up quickly. Work ethic is the universal currency of respect. It costs you nothing but can give you everything.
Sam: That was a Facebook post the other day. I liked it.
Alex: They repurposed it for Twitter. You must first become misunderstood before you can become great.
Sam: Yeah, man. These are great.
Alex: How to win: realize no one is coming to save you. Take responsibility for your current position. And be willing to sacrifice who you are for who you want to be.
The fastest way to become confident is to build evidence. Build yourself a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are. Do so much volume that you don’t have to doubt whether you can do it or not.
Sam: That one broke the internet.
Alex: It’s very hard to have a vision when you have bills to pay. I said that one at the workshop and the whole room let out an audible gasp. The team was like, “All right, that one’s pre-tested. We know it’ll work.” That one was a freestyle. A raw riff — word for word, didn’t change anything.
Fastest way to change your life is to get around people whose minimum standards are your life goals.
Friendly reminder that feeling lost, anxious, and uncertain are good signs. It means you’re pushing past where you know. They’re called growing pains for a reason.
Do the work tired. Do the work nervous. Do the work imperfectly. Do the work even when you don’t feel like it. Because no matter how bad you feel when you start, you know exactly how you feel when you finish.
You have to risk looking broke to get rich. You have to risk looking weak to get strong. You have to risk looking desperate to get loved. Egos hold back more dreams than failure and rejection ever will.
Sam: Everything you say sounds like an ad headline. This is amazing.
Alex: Avoiding people who make it harder to achieve your goals is the highest form of self-care.
Sam: What do you write all this on?
Alex: Just a generic automation tool. Also, sometimes my audience will catch something from a live stream, tag me in a quote, and I’ll quote them quoting me. They thought it was good, so I’ll just say that. [laughter] It’s like Michael Scott doing the Wayne Gretzky quote.
Sam: Like quoting yourself through someone else.
Alex: Well, a lot of this is about rhetoric — there’s the idea and then there’s how you communicate it. Some of these have rhythm. Opposites — good and bad, high and low, give and get. There’s typically power in threes. Repetition. Alliteration. If you’re thinking, “How can I say this in a way that sounds better than just ‘do hard stuff’?” — what permutation combines some of these writing elements to make it easier to remember?
The Second Mountain [02:07:00]
Sam: I was thinking about this — in the beginning of my career, I listened to all the motivational stuff and self-help stuff. Then when I was building my first company, I stopped completely. I did not do anything with motivation. I was like, no motivation stuff, just get to it. Now, what I call the “second mountain” phase — focused on thriving, raising a good family, building a legacy — I’m back to the motivational stuff.
Alex: Totally. When we change goals, we become deprived around some other thing. We notice a discrepancy in our lives and solve for the greatest discrepancy. In the beginning, the biggest discrepancy for me was: I’m broke. Doesn’t matter what else — I can’t make an impact, I can’t support a family, I can’t live where I want to live. So that becomes the glaring pain.
Once that’s solved, it’s like: okay, I’m not pain-free. There are other pains. And those become the new deprivations. I do think we’re exceptionally good at finding problems — I don’t think that goes away. You just get different problems as you level up.
On a personal note: I’m about as happy now as I was two years ago and two years before that. Not materially different in terms of subjective well-being. So I think: what else am I going to do? And when I think about things that could stress me out, or opportunities I want to pursue, I try to fast-forward the present. I’ll probably be about as happy and content as I am now. That eliminates a lot of the FOMO — the regret of “I should have done that thing, should have made that bet.” You’d probably be about as happy or unhappy as you are right now. That has dramatically quelled the attention I allocate to paths not taken, because they’re completely unproductive.
Sam: People do get there, though. I’m so happy right now — I’ve never been happier. I like my job. I love my family. I’m happy with my fitness. I love where I live. I love my team. And Aristotle has this idea of flourishing — you have to live a virtuous life. Courage is in the middle. On one end is recklessness, on the other end is being a — and I think that’s an exact quote.
Alex: [laughter]
Sam: He lists like 14 virtues, and you want to be in the middle of each one. That’s what I’m trying to do right now. I love that. And Aristotle also says you need money to do that — not a lot, but enough to own things that make you happy and are beautiful, and enough time for leisure. Because leisure time is important.
What’s interesting is you’ve said you’re happy, but probably not going to be happier with anything else. I’d argue — just now, listening to us talk about Aristotle — that sounds like you’re actually looking for leisure time. That’s the one thing. A hobby. Business has been your hobby for a long time. Maybe that could be kind of fun to discover — what is actually your hobby going to be?
Alex: I think I’ll probably write. I am happiest when I write. So I’ll probably end up writing a book that has no real financial benefit for me — about some of the topics we talked about today, around learning and behavior. It’s something I’m endlessly fascinated by. The defining of terms, the behaviorist frame. I think that will be something I will write, and I think it has the potential to change more people’s lives than all the other books put together. But we’ll see.
Sam: Dude, I’m so happy you came on. All right. That’s it. That’s the pod.