The Actual Secret Behind Mastering Sales & Marketing

Summary

• I didn't start reading extensively until after I had already made a significant amount of money, which meant I had more time to enjoy reading and explore its benefits.
• Before starting my first business, I was constantly searching for something to change my life, and during this period, I read incessantly, especially self-help and personal development books.
• I realized reading alone didn't change my life; actions were necessary, leading me to decide not to read another book until I had executed everything in the one I was reading.
• This approach made me selective and led to reading fewer books multiple times. "How to Win Friends and Influence People" was the first book I practiced repeatedly and I believe its principles alone can lead to phenomenal success in business.
• For developing skills like marketing and sales, I didn't rely on books or training; I learned by doing. I started by trying to figure out how to get people to sign up for my gym.
• Too much time can be spent in "productive procrastination," believing that you're getting better when you could gain more by actually doing the task.
• After achieving success in sales and managing teams, the first sales product I bought didn't change my fundamental ability but reinforced my existing knowledge.
• The key to selling is conviction and truly caring about your prospects, believing in your product, and convincing prospects it will help them.
• People often struggle with sales when they don't believe in their product or care for their customers, leading to moral dilemmas and burnout.
• When wanting to learn a new skill, I would buy a course and then apply what I learned in the course while doing the task.
• Learning comes from application. There’s no point in reading about something without testing it in practice.
• I benefited from one-on-one training with experts who could help me break my beliefs about what was possible and push me to acquire skills through experience, even though this often means failing at first.
• Perfectionism leads to procrastination and avoidance of failure. It's better to start and learn from the experience.
• My advice for learning sales and marketing is to get out there and start doing it. Reading about it will make more sense once you have experience.
• Setting a "learning budget" or "slush fund" can help you invest in learning new skills without stressing about immediate success. It's an investment in education and trial and error.
• Most of my wealth was made before I became an avid reader. I focused my efforts on doing, applying, and then seeking specific solutions only when encountering actual problems.

Video

How To Take Action

A good way to learn and succeed is by taking action, not just reading about it. Here's my plan for you:

1. Pick one skill you want to improve, like sales or marketing. Start with that. Don’t try to learn everything at once.
2. Instead of reading lots of books, focus on one that really matters. For example, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” can teach you a lot about business success. Read it several times and make sure to really use what it teaches.
3. Practice the skill you're learning. If you want to get better at sales, you need to start selling. Learn by doing.
4. If you need guidance, find a course that's all about what you want to learn. Buy it, follow it, and apply it. Learning comes from putting lessons into practice.
5. Consider working with someone who knows more than you. This can help you see what's possible and learn new things.
6. Set a “learning budget.” Allow yourself to spend a little money each month to learn and experiment. It's okay if you don't get it right straight away. This money is for your growth.
7. Believe in your product and care about your customers. That’s the key to good sales. And if you don't believe in what you're selling, it will be hard to sell.
8. Don't wait for everything to be perfect. Start now, make mistakes, and learn from them.

Remember, I made most of my money by doing and applying what I learned, not from reading books. So, get out there and start using these skills. You'll get better as you go.

Quotes by Alex Hormozi

"I wouldn't read a book unless I executed everything in the book"

– Alex Hormozi

"I think a lot of people spend way too much time in the like the deliberation stage"

– Alex Hormozi

"If you truly talk from a space of genuine care about a prospect you won't convince them to do something that they shouldn't do"

– Alex Hormozi

"You would get so much better just doing it"

– Alex Hormozi

"Give yourself a learning budget which is how much am I willing to 'blow' this month on failure so I can learn the skills faster"

– Alex Hormozi

Full Transcript

what's going on everyone happy whatever day it is that you are watching this um i get messages all the time all the time um and comments about what are your favorite books and maybe in another video or podcast i will do uh do an exploratory you know what i mean of the the books that have been most influential but if i'm being honest uh i didn't really start reading a ton until after i had made a lot a lot of you know a relatively high amount of money right and uh and i started reading when i had more time right so so it would be kind of backwards for me to say hey these are the things that created my success when in reality i feel like i started reading when i had the time and be like ah this is really interesting and so um i think that to to kind of make this story full circle before i even started my first business i was definitely a seeker uh which is like you're just looking for something you're searching for something that's because you just realize that something's wrong with your life right and that's kind of how i felt when i had my my consulting job which is what i took after college and during that time period i read all the time and i remember realizing after six or 12 months of just reading book after book after book of self-help and you know personal development and like all that kind of stuff that my life was literally the same and i remember this was like kind of like a jarring moment for me because i just sat there i finished a book and then i thought to myself and it was like the happiness advantage or some you know whatever right and i was like uh my life is not any different than it was before i started reading these books and so i thought about it for a while and i also realized that half the books contradicted each other and i was like man this is really difficult and so what i ended up my conclusion was i wouldn't read a book unless i executed everything in the book and so what ended up happening next was i became very very selective about what books i would read because i would i wouldn't get another book until i have felt like i had executed that and so the result of that was instead of reading lots of books i started reading a handful of books a lot of times and so that was um really transformational for me i think the first book that i read a lot of times was how to make friends and influence people and i still think to this day if you just did nothing else in business but just practiced what is in that book you would be phenomenally successful like it's you know to me like if you just did the things that are in that book you'd be phenomenally successful um but that's kind of more like personal you know personal traits and character traits and whatnot which i think are very important for you know growing developing but in terms of skills right and i would say the number one you know number one and number two things that i get asked about are like hey how did you develop your skill of marketing and how did you develop your scale of sales and truth be told i never did a single sales training um i never read a single sales book uh before i started selling and so that's i wish i had like a really sexy answer for you but i don't um i just started selling and i didn't even know that what i was doing was selling i was just like how do i get people to sign up for my gym and give me money like i didn't even know that term was sales at the time i was just like i have to get them to give me money and so um i think a lot of people spend way too much time in the like the liberation stage and like they're trying to there you spend all your effort in the i would say like productive procrastination space of just like thinking you're getting better but you would get so much better just doing it right and so only like and people now respect what i have to say about sales because i've sold so much not because of how many books i've read on sales right and so um i think that once i was considered very good at sales i had you know i was managing multiple sales teams and we were doing you know a few hundred thousand dollars a month that is the first time i bought a sales product like think about that and i went through it i was like oh this is good stuff you know like there's there's stuff in here that we can use like neat but like i don't think it fundamentally changed how good i was at selling um and i think that that's because so much of selling is about conviction it's about how much you believe in the product more so than like the the judo chops right it's about how much you care about the prospect and how much you hear about the pro and convince that the product will help them because if you truly talk from a space of genuine care like genuine care about a prospect you won't convince them to do something that they shouldn't do and if you genuinely believe that your product or service is going to help people then making the sales very easy because it's like i really care about you and i really know that this product works and so let me just like help you connect these two dots and so that's like ultimately like that is what selling is and should be the problem is most people don't believe in their product and they don't care about their prospects right and so because of that they come into all this cognitive dissonance meaning like they believe themselves to be good people but at the same time they need to make money and then those two things become at odds and that becomes really difficult to sell because now you're you're faced with a moral obligation um to like your family you know to try and provide and then against yourself to be ethical right and that becomes really hard for people that's why a lot of sales guys get burned out when they find out more about whatever they're selling and so that's why a lot of times sales guys will start start out hot and then crash just because they find out what they were selling with the what they were sold to sell is actually not what it really is cracked up to be and then once they find that out then all of a sudden um that's that's why in my belief there's way more churn in sales people than would otherwise be necessary if they were all selling something they believed in right so back to the main point which is what do i do if i don't like if i have no way of you know practicing well i mean honestly when i when i want to do something what i do is i buy a course about how to do something and then i follow the course and do it so if i wanted to make a webinar then i bought a course on making webinar and then i followed the course to make the webinar and so i learned the skill while i was going through the course i don't think there's a lot of productive time and usage in in learning stuff for the sake of learning like it's like and i don't even i would even make the argument that you don't even truly learn it until you've applied it and so like how do you know if you read six books on sales and they have different strategies which one is is the right one because you've never tested it in the battlefield right it doesn't make any sense and so um like the same thing with marketing i never i never bought a copywriting course i never bought any courses on how to build landing pages i never bought any courses on how to run ads the only thing i did was i spent um i spent money one on one to get someone to train me literally how to click to run ads for my gym but i learned a little bit i learned enough on my own and so that's the thing is like i think there's definitely a space for one-on-one training i think the biggest gains i've made have been from investing in people who are above me to break my beliefs about what was possible because the people were above you most of times are not going to like they're not going to hold your hand and teach you how to write copy this is not going to happen i mean like they might edit you know copy you have if you have like a one-on-one relationship something like that but for the most part like it's going to be up to you to go acquire those skills and most of the time acquiring those skills comes from doing them which means you're going to suck for a while and i think just most people aren't aren't willing to try because they think that if they are perfect they'll somehow not fail the first time which is stupid because even when you're really good you're going to fail so it's just people like procrastinating and reading books about something that they haven't done is a productive way of feeling accomplished without actually doing anything and so um i say all this to say for the many people who who ask me what are my favorite books on sales and marketing my favorite book on sales is to get out there and start selling right because if you start selling and then read a book on sales it will make far more sense to you than trying to read a book on sales before you start selling because you won't even know what they're talking about right same thing with marketing right like if you if you want to go and learn about marketing the best thing to do is start you know learn how to run an ad you run an ad to a landing page and then start getting some people who give you their contact information and then pick up the phone and call them like you know what i mean and the easiest thing to do in my opinion is the advice that i got from ezra firestone years ago which is give yourself a slush fund right give yourself a learning budget which is how much am i willing to quote blow this month on failure so i can learn the skills faster and whatever that percentage is might be ten percent of what you make every month maybe five percent it might be 25 it just depends on who you are and how stable your income is but if you just say i'm willing to give 500 a month to learning the skill then you don't have this like emotional attachment to whether or not you crush it your first time because you're seeing this 500 a month investment is truly that an investment in your education your investment in trial and error rather than uh you know like i bought this question copywriting i'm not a millionaire what's wrong right when in reality you just have to get out there and start doing it so um anywho that's my that is my two cents i i made most of my money before i started reading a lot of books i would say like seriously i read maybe 30 books before we you know were deca millionaires you know what i mean um and so i wish i had something better for you but i i focus most of my time on doing and applying and when i start applying then i will go read for specific solutions to a bottleneck that i have rather than trying to learn an amorphous topic by reading words from multiple books and trying to get perspectives different angles on problems i've never even encountered yet right i think it's much better to encounter the problems than start seeking the solutions than trying to cover every solution to every problem before you've even started the race so anyways hope you found that valuable hope that made sense lots of love keeping awesome and i'll catch you guys soon bye