How To Level Up In Business – Understanding Tradeoffs

Summary

• Sometimes we choose socially acceptable paths to avoid confronting the real challenges of life or business. Ensure your decisions align with your true goals, not just what's considered safe.
• Ask yourself what you want to achieve from any major decision, like college or career paths, and evaluate whether the steps you're taking will genuinely lead to that outcome.
• Facing the fear of failure is crucial. Understanding that failing at a task does not make you a failure as a person is key to moving forward in entrepreneurship.
• Real-life business school involves doing actual business. If you're an entrepreneur at heart, investing time and money into your business can be more beneficial than spending it on traditional education.
• Sacrifice is often required for greatness. Be prepared to give up short-term pleasures for long-term achievements. I was willing to sacrifice anything, including my social life and hobbies, to succeed in business.
• Having a balanced life is often contrary to achieving exceptional results. Great achievements usually require extreme effort and sacrifice, at least for a season.
• Reflect on the sacrifices you're willing to make for your aspirations, and understand that some periods in life will be unbalanced in pursuit of a goal.
• Clarity comes from understanding the emotional drivers behind your decisions. When you recognize them, you can navigate choices more effectively, aiming for what you truly desire rather than avoiding fears.
• Your past decisions and the stories you tell yourself shape your identity. Be mindful of the narrative you're reinforcing with your choices.
• When assessing decisions, consider the opportunity cost and potential returns. For instance, comparing the investment of $200,000 in college versus the same amount in starting a business can help clarify which path aligns with your goals.
• Share your thought process and decision strategies with those around you who might be facing similar choices, to help them navigate their own paths.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest taking a hard look at the paths you are considering, whether it's college, a job, or starting a business. Ask yourself, "Will this really get me where I want to go?" Weigh the costs, like money and time, and the outcomes you hope to get. If you dream of running a business, then putting what you would spend on college into your business might be the smarter move.

To face fears of failure, remember that failing at something doesn't make you a failure. It's about learning and improving. Be ready to make sacrifices, even if it means having less fun or putting aside other interests for a while. This doesn't mean you give up everything forever, but being willing to work hard for something important usually pays off.

Write down the sacrifices you feel you need to make. For example, if you like watching sports or TV, consider limiting it so you can focus more on your business. Talk about these plans with friends or family who might understand or be making similar choices. They could offer new perspectives or support.

Always remind yourself why you're making these choices. It's not just about avoiding fear or doing what people expect. It's about building the life you want. Understand what drives your decisions. This way, your choices become clearer and you keep moving towards your goals.

Remember, exceptional results often come from exceptional effort. So think about what you're ready to do, what you're ready to give up, and what story you want to tell about yourself. Then go for it, and keep learning and growing along the way.

Quotes by Alex Hormozi

"I will not outwork everyone, but instead I will out sacrifice anyone"

– Alex Hormozi

"The stories that we tell ourselves create the identity that we have"

– Alex Hormozi

"If you fail, it does not make you a failure, it means that you failed"

– Alex Hormozi

"I don't believe that anything great was ever accomplished by someone who is balanced"

– Alex Hormozi

"It takes extreme effort, it takes unreasonable sacrifice to achieve things that are unreasonable"

– Alex Hormozi

Full Transcript

you a story that may be applicable to you if you're an existing entrepreneur or new entrepreneur or somebody's about to make a big decision in life yesterday i had a conversation that transpired between me and an 18 year old who's now a freshman in college and i think there i wish i could have recorded it but there are a lot of kind of decision points and lessons and thought processes that we walk through together that i think will be valuable for for many because it's the same it's honestly the same decision-making process whether you're making a multi-million dollar decision or you're making a you know relationship decision or whatever it is and so um this 18 year old kid is my neighbor i think i've referenced them before and he's entrepreneurial he did a little car washing business he's done a little uh e-commerce business that he started on his own and and it's and it's worked out you know pretty decently well for him but because of the pressures that he's had on himself and from outside he decided he had to do college and so he started his first semester in college and to make a long story short he did something he wasn't supposed to do and now he's in trouble and that may jeopardize his future in college and so he's obviously really wrecked about this and so i i said hey let's go for a walk and so on this walk i said you know what's what's your plan he's well i think i'm you know i think i'm gonna try and fight this thing um and uh you know give college another shot and um i i wanted to walk him through this because i wanted him to make any decision for the right reasons right and so i said you know do you think like what do you what's the outcome you want to have from giving another shot at college right because he didn't really like high school that much he's like well you know i just want to i want to give it a try i was like okay again what do you want to have happen or what do you think is going to happen what is the positive outcome that you're potentially looking forward to the negative outcome that you think could happen he's like well honestly i don't know and i was like okay now we're getting somewhere so do you think that taking you know genders literature studies and history of aztec culture whatever is going to be more interesting to you now than the stuff that you studied in high school which was again general literature is that going to be interesting to you it's like well probably not i was like okay then what's the real reason that you want to go to college it's like well you know i feel like i you know i'm a kid and i should experience you know having fun and all that kind of stuff and i was like okay having fun's fine do you feel like you can have fun without going to college do you think that you could not spend 200 000 in four years of your life and still have fun in that same period of time if you weren't at college but still with other people who are your age he's like well yeah i guess so i was like okay cool then i'm assuming that's not the only reason you want to go to college what else is there he started thinking he's like honestly i don't really know and so um to give you a little bit more context before what i told him next i asked him what do you think because he's doing his entrepreneurs he's starting a new entrepreneur thing right now with real estate and he hasn't he hasn't cracked it yet right and so i said do you think it's possible that you want to go to college because it's a it's a it's a socially acceptable shield for you not being successful in entrepreneurship do you think do you think that that might be a reason because if you're in college then you you're not seen as a failure if you're not winning at the thing that you're doing right it's your side hustle it's your side gig he's like well maybe yeah and i think first off you know kudos to him for being able to realize and admit that but i think that that was is such a core issue for many of us is that we present these socially acceptable solutions to ourselves when deep down the reason that we're doing them is not for the right reason and so in this instance he's using it as a foil to protect himself against having to confront the realities of life of business of the marketplace of not being good enough right yet and so i said all right well what do you want to have happen in your life do you think you want to have a job and he was like no i don't want to have a job like what do you want to do he's like i want to have my own business and i was like what do you think business school looks like in the real world he was like well probably doing business i was like okay so if you have four years and 200 000 if you invest that in college versus investing two hundred thousand dollars in four years into learning into trying to start your own business which of them after four years do you think will get you closer to your goal it was like well probably the business one and i was like okay so then right now what you have is a clear logical logical outcome in terms of which decision path to make but then now we have to start looking at what's the emotional driver that's preventing you from doing it right and so for him going all in means making the first real trade-off he's ever made in life right because if you're newer or you have a job or you're you know it doesn't matter where you're at in your life there a lot of times especially when we're younger there's there's fewer big branch points right but as we get older we have to commit and trade off something else right it's this for that and i think excuse me sorry um i think that a lot of times we have to frame these things in terms of the things that we're willing to sacrifice and so i told him the story of uh when i was starting my gym the mindset that i approached it with was i will not outwork everyone but instead i will out sacrifice anyone and so what i meant by that is i'm willing to put everything and anything that i have on the altar of my success and that's what i started from a mindset standpoint so i wasn't like i'm gonna be smarter or i'm gonna do something else i just knew that anytime my competitors or other people were going out or they were you know seeing friends or playing video games or watching football games which i used to do all the time before i started a business or or sleeping in or just all the many things you know even honestly my fitness even suffered during that period of time i'm not saying it's perfect but i'm saying i was willing to do i was willing to sacrifice anything to get to where i wanted to go and i introduced that kind of concept to him of like you tell me you want these things and yet when it comes time to sacrifice to pay the piper to make the trade-offs that are that are necessary to have that outcome that's when you're faltering and so do you are you willing to sacrifice for the things that you want in the long run i was like because he's my neighbor and we live in a nice neighborhood i said like i'm the age i am and we live here i was like i sacrifice my 20s straight up i sacrifice them and i'm not saying it's the right path but i want to make sure that whatever decision you make you make it for the right reasons if you want to go for four years in college do it by all means but understand the reason you're doing it is because you believe that four years of from college and spending 200 000 is the best use of your time and then having the story that you'll have to tell yourself about the type of person who makes these types of decisions and then you'll have to live with that because the thing is is the stories that we tell ourselves create the identity that we that we have right one of my favorite scenes in the matrix is in the third one i know people don't like the second and third i like all three um is when morpheus is standing in front of all of humanity and he says i can tell you that i stand here truthfully unafraid not because of the path that lies before us but because of the path that lies behind me and i think that's such a such a deep message because where we are is because of the stories that we have that have led us to be who we've become and when we make these choices i think just as important if not more important is the story that we are telling ourselves about why we made the choices and what that tells us about who we are and so i wanted to clarify the decision for him in terms of is this what you want yes or no of these two paths which one will get you closer to that thing yes like this one or this one cool now why are you not making it which now goes from logic to emotion and then at that point saying okay i think we've discovered the root issue which is that you're afraid is being seen as a failure if you're not immediately successful and so what i wanted to give to him was if you fail it does not make you a failure it means that you failed and part of entrepreneurship is failure and being able to deal with failure and how you come back from failure and i said right now you're in this instance where this is the first real big hit life has ever given you right everything's relative but in his life at this moment this is the biggest thing worst thing that's ever happened right this bad issue that he had with his school and so i said the story that you now get to tell is what you do from here right do you use this as the catalyst to realize that you actually don't aren't interested in the school stuff and you never have been and have always wanted to do the entrepreneur thing but it's been a side hustle and you've never fully committed to it i was like is that is that the story you want to tell or do you want to go and try and fight this thing and try and beat it and then spend you know another three and a half years spending more money and then be another 3.1 student that graduates from pepperdine right which one is the story that you want to tell and so i think i wanted to share this story with you because i don't know where you're at or what decisions you're facing but i think there was a lot of many things that we kind of covered in that conversation and unearthed and so many of us know what we need to do but have some emotional trigger that's stopping us from doing it and i think digging deep and saying like what am i afraid of happening what's my biggest fear because if i know this is what i need to do then why am i not doing it and i think if you can simply name the fear of what you are afraid of it allows you to face it and it removes the power it has over you because then you you have clarity and then it's simply am i willing to let my fear of failure stop me from having what i want to eventually have in my life or would i rather let that have me walk down a path that never actually helps me realize my potential and so when you think about a maybe versus a never then i'll take a maybe over and never any day of the week and so like i said i don't know where you're at i don't know what trade-offs are facing i don't know what sacrifices you may have to make in order to get to where you want to go but i think literally listing those things out of what you were willing to give up there was a point in my life where i i wrote down all the things that i had to additionally give up because i was at a point of just rubber meeting the road and i had to push harder and this was probably three or four years into my entrepreneurial journey and i remember making this video about that where i i actively gave up football on sundays which was like a thing that i enjoyed you know watching um i know that i gave up all tv of all kinds even like the wind down tv um i gave up any kind of going out and i'm not saying that you have to do that i'm just saying that that's what i did and i know that this kid's father was like hey you need to have balance you need to you need to be able to enjoy life you're still young and my father when i was younger really hit on that really hard and i really pushed back and i still pretty much do because i don't believe that anything great was ever accomplished by someone who is balanced i think that it takes extremes it takes extreme effort it takes unreasonable sacrifice in order to achieve things that are unreasonable and so you know and i was telling him yesterday uh the kid not my dad if you were competing against someone else who was a coder you guys are both coding software right i was like and you're going to college you're having fun you're going out on weekends and you know you code a couple hours a day versus the kid who drops out of college codes 16 hours a day doesn't go out doesn't see his friends just codes for three and a half years it's like who do you think will be further along he was like well the other kid and i was like right like how much further along he was like probably a lot further i was like right do you think it's reasonable or unreasonable that he would be further ahead than you he's like reasonable and i was like so why would you not want to take the reasonable bet that you will be so much further ahead by making that choice and so all that to say i don't know any people who are really successful who don't approach things in an unbalanced way and i think that there's a differentiation between seasons and your entire life what you do for a season of life doesn't have to be forever but sometimes it does have to be for that season and sometimes you are uneven and so sometimes it's difficult to look you know at what i do now versus what i did to get here right if i you know i sacrificed my fitness for periods of time right i'm not saying it was good i'm just saying i did um there were times where i did not sleep as much as i probably should have there were times where i did not see i didn't do anything social at all four months i'm not saying it was right i'm just saying that's what ended up happening and when i hear stories of many people who kind of go through the who go through their rocky balboa period the rocky cut scene almost every hyper successful person that i've seen goes through a three to five year period where they just get hit in the face day after day after day after day you know some of the some of the great marketers some of you guys may have heard of you know russell brunson pitched for five straight years on stages unknown before he became russell brunson you know billie jean did cold calling for two three years dan kennedy did face to face door-to-door sales for three years right i did four thousand one-on-one consultations over a four year period selling fitness doing 15 20 appointments a day right and the thing is is like i wasn't alex ramosey then i was just a dude who was selling and just getting better and better and the thing is that there's this unreasonable amount of effort this unreasonable amount of sacrifice that usually has to go in to get the unreasonable goal and yet people are not willing to make the sacrifice to do it and so i think if we can simply look at what is the decision that's going to get me to where i want to go which of these do i think will be better and then what is the sacrifice that's required and am i willing to make that sacrifice then i think it it makes much simpler decisions and we know why we're making the decisions we are so that decisions are not made for us by life so anyways i hope that was valuable for you it was just top of mind because i had the conversation yesterday and i thought man i wish i had recorded this but i don't know where you're at in your life and i don't know what decisions you're facing but hopefully this provides value for you so lots of love keeping amazing and i'll catch you in the next vid bye [Music] [Music] [Applause] foreign