How Loving the Work Fuels Unstoppable Success | Ep 714

This episode delves into how passion for one's work and relentless effort can drive extraordinary success and fulfillment.

1. Success is more sustainable when driven by passion for the work rather than just the outcomes.
2. Excellence requires deep focus and commitment to a single area or skill.
3. Long-term happiness and fulfillment arise from the process and challenges, not just the achievements.
4. Continuous personal and professional growth is a key to long-lasting success.
5. The mindset of relentless improvement can transform both personal and professional life.

1. Introduction

Alex Hormozi introduces the theme of finding success through passion for one's work. He shares insights on how deep commitment to work can lead to remarkable achievements.

• Alex Hormozi: "The wealthiest people in the world see business as a game."

2. The Joy of Mastery

Discusses the importance of focusing intensely on mastering one skill or area to achieve excellence.

• Alex Hormozi: "You can't be exceptional at very many things because of how limited our inputs are."

3. The Role of Challenges

Explains how embracing challenges is crucial for growth and satisfaction in work and life.

• Alex Hormozi: "Strength doesn't come from doing what you think you can, but from doing what you think you can't."

4. The Value of Persistence

Covers the significance of persistence and the mental resilience required to pursue long-term projects, especially in creative endeavors like writing books.

• Alex Hormozi: "Really good books are one of the hardest projects because you get almost zero reinforcement."

5. Conclusion

Summarizes the key messages of the episode and encourages listeners to pursue their passions and embrace the challenges that come with them.

• Alex Hormozi: "If you want to be better, the only way is to do the work that you know you should do."

1. Identify what you are passionate about and direct your efforts towards excelling in that area.
2. Embrace challenges as opportunities for growth rather than obstacles.
3. Set long-term goals but focus on the daily work and improvements rather than the end results.
4. Learn to find joy in the process of your work, regardless of immediate outcomes.
5. Persist through difficulties by reminding yourself of the larger purpose and potential impacts of your work.

“The goal is to have nothing left.” Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) explores the power of setting challenges and striving for excellence in both personal and professional life, emphasizing the importance of dedicated, hard work for continuous improvement. He proposes that true fulfillment and success are achieved through the pursuit of meaningful work and the joy of the process, rather than focusing solely on the outcomes.

Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.

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Alex Hormozi

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Alex Hormozi
I think that you can win either way. I absolutely think you can win either way. But it definitely changes how long you can play. If you want the challenge, then you basically create goals to create challenges.

The wealthiest people in the world see business as a game. This podcast, the game is my attempt at documenting the lessons I've learned on my way to building acquisition.com into a billion dollar portfolio. My hope is that you use the lessons to grow your business and maybe someday soon partner with us to get to $100 million and beyond. I hope you share and enjoy.

If you want to be exceptional at something, it means you have to put a lot of input into it. And you can't be exceptional at very many things because of how many inputs you have and how limited they are. So if time is an input, we all have the same amount of time. And if it takes a huge amount of that time to get good at one thing, then if you take that as the assumption we're basing this on, then there's just not many things you can get very good at. And so then it takes some level of selection to be like, what thing do I want to get good at?

You know, it's so funny. I saw the background in my gym. It said, that picture that I posted of one of my first video content, it said, the back of the wall, I made this quote up. I painted it. You can see how ugly the paint is.

The back wall, it says, strength doesn't come from doing what you think you can, but doing what you think you can't is what I think it says, which I don't agree with the word strength. It should be growth. But anyways, I like the idea. And so I think that one of zero is very much like that, which is one of one is doing something that only you can do. One of zero is doing something that you've never done before and that ideally no one else could do.

And so it's an amount of work that most people just don't comprehend. And it's really hard to even describe it because like I can say I spent 6 hours a day for 18 months on this one project, and people nod their heads, but spend six fucking hours on one thing once, then do it 500 times, and then like, you'll start to see the soul crushing amount of effort that it takes to stick with it. Now, I've been able to extend how long I work on projects because you can have a short project, you get a win. I can work a little longer the next time I can work a little longer. The next time.

Really good books are one of the hardest projects to do because you get almost zero reinforcement. It's very punishing for most of the time until, quote, the end. But the process itself, there is some sort of joy in being the type of person who is able to endure that. I have a lot of entrepreneur friends who are like, oh, I just finished my book. I'm going to write a book just like you did.

I was like, no, you won't. No, you won't. They're like, it worked well for him. I'll do that, too. His book was so good.

I'll write one, too. It doesn't work that way. They've never even written anything. So they're starting at, like, where I was when I was 15, and I would say the same degree. It's probably like, people who look at MrBeast now or like, oh, I'll just go make YouTube videos.

Like, he started with 13, and he's been spending more than 6 hours a day trying to make videos since then. And so there's just, like, so much depth of knowledge that you can get that just takes time. But the thing is, from the happiness perspective, I find a lot of joy and excellence, and I think that work well done provides dividends forever. So if we were to think about, like, subjective well being or like, purpose or meaning or utility or usefulness, any of those, whatever one you want to optimize for. I am proud of the first book I wrote.

I'm proud of the second book I wrote. I'm proud of the third book I wrote, and I'm proud of the book that I'm writing right now. And when I look back on them, every time I see them and I see people benefit from them, I get a reward for a one time input, even though it was a year, for the rest of my life, I will get rewarded for that effort. And so it just encourages me more and more to do things the right way. And I think people who build exceptional products think about products the same way, which is like, it has to be right.

It just has to. It's all the hundred details. It's not the big idea. It's the hundred details that make the difference between, like, the MrBeast videos versus other people who try to be like, mrBeast. It's 100 details that make his videos better.

It's not just the thumbnail, right? Like, it's not that it's a hundred things. I see joy a lot as just being present in the moment, because I think you can joyfully mourn. Like if someone's, you know, died. I think you can find joy in a mourning experience if you're consoling someone else.

I think it's just being present and being okay with experiencing life. That's how I see Joy now. I haven't defined it, and I'll probably spend more time defining the words, but I just see it as being present. I experience joy when I am present. Like, I'm enjoying this.

I feel very present right now. As soon as you give up the goal of happiness, or even meaning, then it stops being this thing that's outside of you. And so it allows you to be present in the moment and do what you want to do or do what you need to do. If you always have this thing that you're measuring against one, there's always a delta between where you are and where it is. But I think oftentimes it'll optimize for the wrong path.

And I think happiness for most people is pleasure seeking. So they call it happiness, but it's really hedonism. And most, I don't like to appeal to religion, but in terms of old ideologies, most people have found, and I'm sure there is some science that I don't know, that people who pursue hedonistic lifestyles tend to be the most empty and the least fulfilled. And so I think people have just swapped the word happy or hedonism for happiness. And they think they wouldn't want to say that.

But if you look at the actual activities they're pursuing, they're almost purely pleasure seeking. Most pleasure based activities are their pleasure now at the sacrifice of goal or something later. To be fair, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I'm just saying know what we're optimizing for. So there was this big philosophy website, and then naval quoted that site, and it was a desire as a contract we make with ourselves to be unhappy until we get what we want.

And I mean, I fundamentally agree. Whenever you want something, it means you don't have it. And you basically create deprivation within yourself to motivate behavior. So if you see motivation as the equal opposite of deprivation, you are hungriest. When you havent eaten for a while, you have a huge motivation to sleep when youre exhausted.

If we want something, we create deprivation within ourselves to motivate ourselves to get it. But by creating deprivation, we basically create. Now he calls it unhappiness. But I dont know if I necessarily agree with that as the I think we create deprivation, but I think the way to skirt that is wanting a challenge. And so if you just genuinely want to fight bigger and bigger bosses, then the fact that you get the gold at the end becomes like, if anything, the gold at the end is irrelevant.

You just want to find the next boss. And most of the champions that are out there that I've seen you live, the Michael Jordans. I mean, a lot of Olympians have huge depression after they get a gold because now what? And I think you can see how people react to victory tells you what motivated them, or rather what they were deprived of. So if the goal was to be exceptional, then that person hits the gold, sees it as a foregone conclusion, and is just excited to move on to the next thing.

If they made their entire life about getting the gold, then they have no idea what to do because they were married to the outcome, not the process. And again, I think that you can win either way. I absolutely think you can win either way. But it definitely changes how long you can play. If you want the challenge, then you basically create goals to create challenges, create goals to achieve goals.

You set new goalposts just so that you can have the trial. Someone's like, what happens when you hit a billion? I was like, I'll make it ten. And when I have ten, I'll hit 100. It doesn't matter because I'll die, and I'll give it all away anyways.

It's relevant, but it's just like, I want to be better, and the only way to be better is to do the work that I know I should do. And so that way, every day, I'm doing the work. And at least for me, that has worked. Do whatever you want. That has worked for me.

It's this whole fallacy around being done. It's this whole idea that we can finish. We can work so hard, we never have to work again. We can eat so big, we never have to eat again. We can sleep so well, we never have to sleep again.

It's just a fallacy. It's not true. And people lose their lives trying to find that one meal or that one sleep or that one goal that'll satisfy them for good. And it never does. Hey, guys, love that you're listening to the podcast.

If you ever want to have the video version of this, which usually has more effects, more visuals, more graphs, you know, drawn out stuff, sometimes it can help hit the brain centers in different ways. You can check out my YouTube channel. It's absolutely free. Go check that out. If that's what you are into, and if not, keep enjoying the show.

So when I was selling gym launch, there was basically a year where I couldn't really work. Mostly because if I worked in the business, then it would look like I was a key man to the business, and I didn't know if we were going to sell. So I didn't want to start another company. So I basically just had to, like, subsist. I could even start new endeavors or initiatives within the company.

So I just had to do nothing, basically. And so for me, it was the most depressed I've been. If you look at some of the videos during that time period, a lot of them are me being pretty sad and being like, what the fuck is life about? But it's just that for me, again, I'm not religious, but I do find it interesting that the first thing God gave Adam in the Bible before giving him a wife was giving him a job. Work, tend to the garden before he gave him a wife.

And I find that really interesting. I don't like religion aside, we're built to work. And so for me especially, I'm built to work. And so if I'm working, I'm good. And the days that I enjoy the most are the days that I work the longest.

And so I just try and remove everything that stops me from doing that. Most people envision heaven, like, the one meal that's going to be so good, they're never going to eat again. They're going to be so elated to just be singing with the angels. It's like, yeah, but play it out. Like, then what?

Like, okay, got it. We sang with the angels from nine to ten. Then I had a feast. You know what I mean? From ten to eleven.

But I got to keep my. My idealized body, my glorified physical form. I got to keep that the whole time. It's like, okay, well, now it's noon, now what do I do? Well, dogs are all there because all dogs go to heaven.

Great. Good to know. But if your wife dies, then it's like, you have three wives up there. You're like. I mean, technically, we were at different times, so it's like, how do we deal with that?

Whatever. God's figured it out. But again, I think it's just this fallacy of work life balance. I think heaven is literally just an extrapolation of work life balance as a concept, which is I will just be able to do life and no work. But the first thing God fucking does in the Bible is give someone work.

And so I think so many people would be helped out if they just stopped labeling it as a bad thing and started seeing it as the way to get what they want and then eventually to make it the thing they want. And this is like a little bit of an abstract idea. So it takes a little bit more processing power to conceptualize this. But there's goals, and then there's working to hit the goals, and then there's the idea of love the process, but there's the subscript of so that you can hit the goal. But in my opinion, it's just work, not so that you can't.

It's just work. And it's like. What do you mean? It means, like, working is the goal. Like working as hard as you can and learning how hard you can work and how well you can work and how right you can make things and how well you can do them.

Like pushing that, expanding my capacity to work, not so that I can. Like, expanding my capacity to work so that I can work more. Like, if you can do that, then you have the self fulfilling loop, and then you also become completely divorced from the outcomes, which, ironically, when you do work that way, you do have outsized outcomes compared to everybody else. But you do it because you work so fucking hard, because you're addicted to working and you like that game, and the goals just happen as a consequence. But I don't even like saying the goals just happen as a consequence, because it still gives the idea to the listener.

That's the point. And it's not because even if your goal is to be the richest man in the world, okay, let's say that's your goal. For how long? Every richest man in the world is the richest man in the world. For they touch the top and then boom, something changes.

The economy, whatever it is. And then another richest man in the world comes up, like, who was the richest man 20 years ago? Actually, 30 years ago? A bunch of japanese guys. And then Japan's economy crashed.

No one even knows their guys names. And so it's like making the goal even as audacious as those guys goals were. Right? Let's say you're number two, but even let's say you're number one. For how long?

And so that's why I think that the work is the goal, not so that you can just the work is the goal. And learning how hard you can work and being proud of yourself for how much harder you work today than you did yesterday. You've already hit goals that you said would make you happy. And I might have put years ago or something like that in there. But it's just fun to be like, years ago, you set goals that today you've hit and you said you would be happy, and yet you're not.

And so it's because the concept of setting these goals presumed, like, the ultimate unhappiness equation is if I get x, I'll be happy, right? Like, we all know that one because that's the guarantee of it not happening. Because it automatically. The entirety of your existence is outside of yourself. And then the moment you hit it, then what?

You set another one and then it's outside of yourself. Right. And so if the goal doesn't change your entire life, then you can basically be achieving it every day. If the goal is to work as hard as you can, every day you can work as hard as you can. The goal is the state of being that you have when you work exceptionally hard, when you do hard work worth doing.

And, you know, if you left some in the tank. And I love. I think this is Jesse Itzler says this, but I really love it. There's a handful of, like, sayings that I've gotten from other entrepreneurs that I really love. I'll give you three.

Right now. I'm side questing, but just deal with it. One is Michael Dell says, play nice, but win. I just love that. The second one is Andy Frisell has 100 to zero, which I really, really like, which is basically society.

When you're up in football, let's say you're up 30 to nothing and it's half time. Society says, put in your backups, put in your third strings, take it easy and play. And he's like, no, fuck that. 100 to zero. Step on their throat and fucking kill everyone.

And I like that from a perspective of. Of, like, don't let off the gas. Just because they lost doesn't mean that you now have to dilute yourself to lower yourself to their standard. And so it's like, yeah, so what if it takes this much to win? I don't care if it takes this much to win.

I want to be here. Because if you then change how you play because everybody else isn't as good, you lower yourself. You don't raise them up. That society, trying to make it appear as though people are better than they are. And I'm a big fan of, like, they should know they lost 100 to zero.

They should know how much room they have to improve. And also, to the same degree, I should know how much further ahead I am. I'm going to keep playing the way I play. If we happen to finish at 100 to zero, we happen to finish at 1000. But I'm not going to let off because that's who I am.

And the third one was Jesse Isler has this thing where he has with his kids, which I really like was after they do a marathon, because he's really big in endurance sports and so his kids are too. And so whenever they finish, a lot of them pulled up a zero, which I really like, and it means nothing left in the tank. He said, I dont care if you win. Hes like, I just want you to have nothing left. I think about that as the goal.

So the goal is to have nothing left. And I think that on the micro level and on the macro level, my favorite days are the days that I get into bed and Im fucking exhausted but proud of the work that ive done. Ive nothing left. Ive left it all on the field. And so thats the goal.

The other stuff society chooses to measure me by. But when I measured myself that way, it distracted me and I didn't enjoy my life. But just living that day as many times in a row as I can until I die is my plan. And at the end on the macro, being able to hold this up and be like, I got nothing left, I'm used up. But until then I will continue to try and be useful.

I like all three of those statements and they to me kind of embody a lot of the values of one of zero, which is not just doing only what you can do, but doing things that you didn't know you could yet. Alex, what if my goal isn't work? The goal is always work. It's just what you're working on. And so whether you're like, I want to have the best marriage, then cool.

It takes fucking work. If the goal is to have the best kids, then parenting. Is that not fucking? It's fucking work. If the goal is to have the best physique, it's fucking work.

If the goal is to have the best career, it's work. If the goal is to just be the ultimate version of you, it's work in all those arenas and being mindful of what you want to optimize for in terms of how many hours you want to allocate to each. It.