You're Not Behind: My System for Outlearning Everyone | Ep 719

This episode explores how individuals can cultivate a mindset and system to accelerate learning and ensure personal and professional growth.

1. Success is often more about the mindset than the quality of external inputs like education or training.
2. Individuals can control their success by adopting a proactive and positive approach, regardless of the circumstances.
3. Learning from every experience, positive or negative, is crucial to personal and professional development.
4. The ability to replicate success before trying to innovate is a key step in understanding and mastering new skills.
5. Transforming one’s approach from passive to active involvement can significantly change outcomes.

1. Introduction to Competence Levels

Hormozi outlines five levels of competence, emphasizing the importance of attitude in learning and success. He encourages listeners to adopt the highest level of proactive positivity. Alex Hormozi: "The highest level of competence involves proving why it can work for you, not why it can’t."

2. Real-Life Applications

Detailed examples illustrate how different levels of competence play out in real-world scenarios, particularly in business settings. Alex Hormozi: "Even in a failing system, winners can emerge based on their mindset and approach."

3. Strategies for Success

Hormozi offers practical advice on achieving success by shifting one's mindset from passive to active engagement in learning and execution. Alex Hormozi: "Replicate before you innovate—master the basics fully before trying to improve upon them."

1. Assess your level of competence: Regularly evaluate where you stand on the competence scale and strive to reach the highest level.
2. Embrace every learning opportunity: Whether positive or negative, every experience offers a valuable lesson.
3. Focus on replication first: Master existing methods before attempting to innovate to ensure you understand the foundational elements.
4. Turn challenges into opportunities: Use difficult situations as a chance to prove your ability to succeed.
5. Maintain a positive mindset: Believe in your ability to succeed, which will help navigate through setbacks more effectively.

"Winners win and they win because of who they are, not because of what happens to them." Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) explores the five levels of competence and their impact on individual success in business, programs, and self-improvement. Highlighting the importance of a positive mindset, continuous learning, and replication of successful behaviors, he emphasizes how personal growth (not external conditions) determines success.

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
What makes it that some people succeed with programs, with education, with customers, with vendors. Why do some people win and others don't? I break down the five levels of competence as I see it and how it can apply to different domains in your business and how it can use that framework to level yourself up and get your customers more successful, get your employees more successful, and make yourself more successful, and break down the reasons that the business might not be growing, that you're identifying with yourself as the reason that you're not winning rather than the reason you have to win. I had someone say this recently to me. They're like, you know, how do you know what programs to buy?

How do you know what workshops to go to? How do you know what courses to listen to or what channels to watch in order to learn? Right? And they're like, how do you know that it's gonna work? And I think that's the question that always gets asked, is like, how do you know it's gonna work?

And I think that fundamentally asking that question shows that it won't work because it is never going to be the thing that works. You are going to be the thing that makes it work. And so when I look back at my history as a student of and continue to be a student, but a student of the game of business, the. I have yet to have a negative ROI on any purchase that I've made, whether it's tutoring courses, workshops, and to be fair, I've bought from. From bad people, I've brought from some scumbags.

I've bought from bad teachers, but I have absolutely Roi every single purchase that I've made. And so whenever I hear someone say, like, I bought something in it and it didn't work, it kind of grinds my gears. And I think I've had it and heard it enough times in the last month or so that I wanted to make this podcast about it. And so this is. This is what I want to kind of Zoom out on, is that I want to give you a top down approach in terms of levels of competence and then a bottom up approach from a skills perspective.

And I think if you combine both of these things together, you will make a lot more money and you will be more successful at the things that you try to learn. And so if you're, like, trying to learn how to make TikTok ads to start a second acquisition channel for your business, then this would apply to you. If you're a customer of an agency, then this will apply to you. If you're trying to be a student and just get in the game, then this will apply to you. And so the first thing is understanding the levels of competence.

And so, at the top, the best and the highest level of competence is something that I will call positive, active. All right? So you've got the inclination, and you've got active or passive. And so there's five levels. All right?

So the top is. And the characteristics of somebody who has this belief set is that no one has proven that it cannot be done. And they ask other people to prove to them why they can't do it, and they think, I will be the best student that this person has ever had. No matter what, no matter how incompetent of a teacher they are. I I will make it happen.

I will win, because that's who I am, not who they are. Basically, the idea that we make our success dependent on the quality of the teacher puts the power in their hands rather than ours. And so, on the flip side of this, the reason that basically any single program in the world will still be able to get positive reviews of some sort is that no matter what, some percentage of real winners will always go into everything. You just look at the public school system, like, more or less a dog shit system, but there are still winners that come out of it. And it's not because of the quality of the teachers.

It's because of the mindset of winners, because winners will win. And so the highest level of this. This example of, like, Elon, where he's, like, breaking down to physics, he's like, if you can't show me that it's physically impossible based on the laws of physics, that we know that it is possible, and I'm gonna go do it. It's the same concept as Roger Bannister running the first four minute mile like, no one had done it before. And he's like, well, physically, it's not impossible.

It's not breaking the laws of physics for me to run a four minute mile. And so that is positive, active. Now, underneath of that, you've got the second class of competence, which I would consider positive passive. This is all the people who ran the four minute mile after Roger Bannister. They're the people who say, okay, he did it, so I can do it.

And to be clear, this is still good. There's still winners. Absolutely. That can do that. And when I look at the people that I've worked with, customers, employees, anything I can identify, and these are, honestly, these are your.

These are your a minus players. Like, they're like, okay, he did it. I can do it. And honestly, that's a great perspective. Like, it's not impossible.

I just need to do the same stuff they did. And that's awesome. That's the, that's the replicate. Before you iterate, they're like, I'm going to just do what they did and get what they got. And that's an awesome perspective.

Now, there's three more levels to this. And as we go down, some of you will start nodding your heads as either, like, you are this person or, you know, someone who's this person. The third level of competence here is what I'll call neutral passive. And so this is somebody who just says, well, it's worked for other people. Let's see if it works for me.

So it no longer goes from, I will, like, prove to me why I can't make it work. Level one. Level two. Okay, someone has made it work, therefore I can make it work. Two.

Let's see if it works. You're passively accepting whatever happenings, and you're just open. Now, this is where the majority of people are. This is where most people just sit. They just live their life passively letting things, quote, happen to them.

And they're sometimes mediocre customers for, for, for an agency or a vendor. They're mediocre customers for you. This is the person who goes into the gym. And it's like, we'll see if your program works for me. Like, I'm, you know, we'll see if it works.

Now, underneath of that, you've got level four. All right, this. Now we're going down. This is. It might work for other people, but it probably won't work for me.

This is negative passive. So they're still in the passive seat, but they're negatively inclined. This is the person who half asses. And I'll give you a story about this that happened recently. So we had a business owner who came out, a salon owner.

Okay, so a salon hair salon owner. And the guy said, hey, I used your gift card campaign and it didn't work. And I was like, all right, bro. Like, so I just went through it. I was like, did you get a referral from all the people?

Did you write the name down of. He's like, well, I didn't do. I mean, I asked them and I told them that they had to use the card on other people, but they came back in trying to use the card for themselves. I was like, well, that's not the play. He's like, well, I told them that, and I was like, well, obviously you didn't tell them well enough, because that's not the play, so.

And the thing is, I says, let's just stop. I was like, do you want me to take accountability for the fact that the gift card play has worked for so many businesses and just not yours? I was like, do you want me to just say it's my fault? I was like, would that make you feel better? And he was like, well, no.

I was like, that's what you're coming for. You want me to say that it's my fault? I was like, you didn't do it. You didn't do it, right. So you just did something else.

And. Yeah, that something else didn't work, because that's not what the program is. That's not how the gift card play works. If you don't know, I'm talking about. It's on my YouTube video.

It's a whole play. And so eventually it got up to be like, okay, I just didn't do it. I was like, cool, guess what? Now you can do it again. And you can do it right.

Cause you know what? You messed up. You had to let them know it was for somebody else, and you had to get the referral, and you had to get the three way introduction. Otherwise, they're gonna try and use it on themselves, not bring new people in, and you're just giving away services for a discount. That sucks.

Don't want to do that. He's like, okay, fine. And so we had a little moment, and he got over it. Okay, but that's negative, passive. That's like, it might work, but it probably won't work for me.

Hey, and by the theme of this podcast, if you want to be the best student ever out of all of Mosey Nation, I have two books, uh, they actually. Audiobooks that are for free, that I have here, uh, on this podcast starting at 579, it's my $100 million offers and $100 million leads. They have sold over a million copies. 26,005 star reviews on Amazon, if you like hard copies. But if you actually follow the steps, I've got courses on the site that are also free.

Acquisition.com, forward slash training. If you just follow the steps, prove why it will work for you, and it will. Now, here's the fifth level. This is the bottom of the barrel, all right? This is the.

This is your one star customers. This is a. This is. This is the customer you sign on who just genuinely sucks at everything, and they take an active role. All right?

So this is negative active. I can prove that this will work for everyone but me. I have bad luck. Nothing works out for me in the end. I am the special snowflake that nothing works for.

My body is different. Calories don't affect me. I could starve to death, and I'm immune to death because I could not eat for years, and my body would still hold on to fat because I am special. And so what's interesting about this is some of you guys may be laughing about this right now, but some of you are this person, but you just might not be this person in business. You might be this person with your weight, but you're not this way in business.

You might be this way in your marriage, but you're not that way in business. Or you are that way in business, and you're not in your marriage. You're like, but you know what? Oh, this way of communicating, it's not going to work for us, not in our relationship. But I'll prove it.

I'll go to your fucking sessions. I'll follow your little framework for communicating with my wife or my husband, and I'll prove to you that it won't work because we're so special that nothing works for us. You want to prove it? And what's interesting about this is that it, because it underpins a whole set of beliefs behind this that your identity is attached to. So it's so much harder to say, listen, I've been fat my whole life, and it's my fault.

It's so much easier to just not have it be that way. It's so much easier to be like, you know, I've always struggled with, with women or our, you know, our marriage has kind of been on the rock, but that's kind of how it's always been that way. Right? And so we. It's so much more difficult to accept that all of that pain and suffering that you've been through is 100% your fault.

And so instead, it's easier to just try and actively prove that it won't work. Now, there's some good, there's some interesting stuff about number five. I actually find number five people very, very interesting because they, in my opinion, have the highest potential to jump from five all the way to one. And I've had so many experiences in my life. This is the one star becomes the five star.

This is the. The person that all of a sudden, like, something switches. And the thing is, they go from negative active. They have the active. They're trying to prove it, but they're proven the wrong thing.

They're trying to prove it wrong, but all of a sudden, sometimes, if you can get it to swap, they just try to prove it right, and then they become absolute fucking animals. And so I'll tell you a story. So there was a gym owner, uh, at gym Lodge, and he was. He was definitely one of these number fives, right? He was like, it's not like my gym's in a different market.

The people, the people here are different. My weight loss leads are different than everyone else's weight loss leads. My market's different. My zip codes, the corner that my gym is on is different. But all of a sudden, he'd been on enough calls, and I probably ranted at him or something on some.

On some live call. And he was like, you basically just called me a pussy. And I was like, yeah, probably one way or another. And so he said, I just decided, what if it did work? And what if I took the same energy that I'm doing to try and prove myself right and try and prove this system works?

And what if I just did everything as though I. As though it was going to work and I assumed it was going to work? And so he did that, and he ended up becoming one of the top facilities out of the thousands that we had. And then we ended up hiring him because he completely outsourced his gym, made it profitable, made it make more money using the setup that we had. And the interesting part here, and this is what's crazy.

Same system, same gift card play, same advertising, same gym model, different approach, different level of competence showed up and executed an entirely different way. I'll give you a different example. I had a lady. This is one of my first, probably 50 customers at my gym. Her name was Autumn.

So autumn came in, and she had the nothing works for me. I have a special thyroid, you know, whatever. You know, if calories, I could starve myself forever and I'd still live. I defy the laws of physics. And after, like, two, three, four weeks, all the people that she had started with started losing weight.

And of course, now, normally in that level five, she'd be like, well, that's. Of course. Of course. That's what, because I'm different than them. I'm special.

I get myself identity from being special. And I just was like, listen. I was like, do you want to be right and fat? Or do you want to, or do you want to? Do you want to get skinny?

I was like, which one matters more to you? Being right or being thin? I was like, I just had a, I had to have a sits on with her. And I was like, just to be real, if being right is more important to you, I was like, then, then you can be right. I was like, but which one's more important to you, being right or being thin?

And she was like, I want to be thin. And I was like, then fucking do this. And so she did. And of course she lost a bunch of weight, and then she became one of my top clients. And then she started referring everyone.

And the thing is, is that when you see a level five turn into a level one, you're like, oh, my God. And the thing is, they become absolute ambassadors, brand champions for you because you help them get over that. And so I say this from a business owner perspective, because don't lose hope on those people. Sometimes you just have to say, do you want to be right or do you want this outcome? I'm cool either way, but you're the one who has to live with it.

And so she decided that she wanted to be thin, which is awesome. And so it's kind of one of those, it's kind of like, it's interesting that. So matrix and Star wars are probably two of my favorite kind of universes of movies, but Morpheus and Yoda sit in very similar positions in terms of the guide for the main character. And so there's a, there's a point in the dojo where Morpheus looks at Neo and he says, stop trying to hit me, and hit me. And so the point there is that when you, it's basically the difference between going through the motions, acting as if versus actually trying to succeed.

There's trying to do the things that looks like success versus actually trying to win. So replace, stop trying to hit me and hit me with stop trying to win and win. Stop trying to make ads work. And make ads work. Stop trying to hire the sales guy.

And hire the sales guy, right? And so it's the idea that, like a no fail situation where there, there's absolutely somebody, this is like the founder who says, no one can sell. Like I can sell. Yeah, no shit. There's people who sell way better than you, right?

You just haven't found them yet. Okay. That means that it's possible. So what are you complaining about? You just need to go do more.

Stop trying to make your marketing work and make your marketing work. Stop trying to prove yourself right, that you're special and win. It's the same reason that Yoda says there is no try, there's only fail or do. And not do. And so it's the same concept because the reason that try is such an insidious concept is because it allows the possibility of failure.

It basically says that there is a way that this won't work. But if you fundamentally believe that if, like, even at level two, if someone else can do it, so can I, then there is zero possibility of failure. Because if they can do it, I will do it. And obviously, the level above that is, even though no one has done it, it is not impossible, and therefore I will. And so that's the top down approach that I would approach.

I said there's two levels of this in terms of thinking through becoming the best student. Is that, where are you on that pyramid? Are you level one? Are you level two, level three, level four? And are you in different places in different domains?

Are you some way in your fitness life or some way in your marriage or spouse life or some way in your business life? And notice how you approach it differently. And then look at the one that you're most successful. Cause you're probably gonna be better, hopefully better at one of those domains than the other. And think about the thought process you have when you approach it.

And use. Try and think about using that set of beliefs and systems on the one that you fail at the most. And that has been helpful for me. Now, the question that I always like to ask, because obviously, I've been in the education world, and I like education a lot, is, why do we have unequal outcomes? Why is it that you've got 100 people who start, and you've got one guy who murders it, one guy who tanks, and then you've got all these people in between?

And so this is the bottom up approach in terms of thinking about this is the number of skills someone has going into an education process, program, whatever predicts their success. So let me explain. So if you. And this. This happens all the time.

This is the. I went through three different things, and then I did this thing, and then it finally worked. But what you didn't know is that you were building this bridge towards an outcome. And the first thing you did give you the first five bricks, and the second thing you did give you the second five bricks, and the third thing you'd give the next five bricks. And then the last thing you did just gave you the one last brick you needed to finish the bridge across from where you are to wherever you wanted to go.

But the thing is that we attribute all of the success to the last brick just because it was the most recent, not because it was the most important. It's the same thing as like, it's kind of weird in the world of like education and business education. It's like, oh, man, I used to think this guy was good. Now I learned from this guy. But it's like saying, yeah, my kindergarten teacher taught me a simple edition.

And then my algebra teacher, wow, he really taught me. That guy who taught me, you know, simple addition's an idiot, is like, no, he taught you what you needed to get to where you're at now because skills and education build on themselves. And so you were able to be successful with the algebra teacher because you had the simple arithmetic teacher beforehand. And so we have this weird thing where you get to an advanced level and you think that the person who taught you the basics was somehow wrong. They were just at a different part in your process in the stage in building the bridge.

And so the reason that some people are successful and you are the last brick, if you're a business owner for that particular business, is that they were able to assemble all those skills at a time. Now, the more skills someone comes in with, and also the more meta skills that someone comes in with, the more likely they are to be successful. And the reason for that is the vaguer the instructions can be. And so, for example, someone can come to me and say, hey, Alex, can you build a nose strip company for me? And I would say, sure, because I have that skillset to build.

I have all of them, right? Like, I know how to market, I know how to sell, I know how to get product. I had to do logistics, all that stuff. They can just say that vague of instructions that I can go do it because I have that skill right now, that stack of skills, rather, the meta skills you have allow you to bridge the gap where things are vague. And the vast majority of education basically has to meet people at some level.

Because if you truly start at zero, then it has to be like, here's how a computer works, here is how a phone works, here's how you use the Internet, right? And of course, most things that you do in education aren't at that level. They're higher up than that. But the thing is, is that you might be a level four of education here, but a level one at one of the steps, and then all of a sudden it, quote, doesn't work for you, but it's because you actually are have a remedial level of education on that step. And that's where having the metacon, meta skill of, like, I mean, as simple as this is like, shoot, 30% of people can't read good.

Like, they're just. They're not even. They're not even literate. And so, of course it's gonna. They're gonna have a harder time trying to learn anything.

Cause they can't even have the ability to learn, right? And so I think about this. And so if something has filled for you in the past, rather than blaming the thing, blaming the fact that you did not have sufficient skills to make it work, and even in the most counterexample, where something's absolutely, like, just absolute dog shit because it does happen, right. I think you can still learn what not to do. Some of us had phenomenal examples of what not to do in a marriage from our parents.

Some of us had exceptional examples of how not to parent from our parents. We've had exceptional examples of how not to boss from our bosses. We've had exceptional examples of how not to deliver a product from a business. And so sometimes it's using inversion thinking of, like, okay, what are all the things that made this horrible? And then do the exact opposite of that.

And I think that that's why you can always roi every single experience you have, because there's. You can always either benefit from it or benefit from the inverse of it. And I think both. Like, if you have. If you have such a terrible experience, you're, like, new and innovative ways to ruin my experience.

Wow. I didn't even know this existed. Well, if I can do the inverse of that, then that still will give me the benefit of learning from this experience. I still. As much as they wanted to make me fail, I still got better.

I still will win. And so I'll wrap this with a scene that I like a lot from Invictus, which is a movie from 2006. It's Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman's. Nelson Mandela and Matt Damon's, like, the head of the rugby team. And it's right during the apartheid, when it's the whole racism is that it's Max or whatever.

And he says, I'll read you the quote. He says, how's your ankle? Is it healed? It's one of the first questions he asked him. He's like, I heard that your ankle was hurt.

Is it healed? He asked the head guy, and he said, the truth is, sir, this is Matt Damon responding. He said, the truth is, sir, you never played 100%. And Mandela responds, as in sports, as in life. And I like that a lot.

I remember hearing it and being like, whoa. That, like, for whatever reason, it just hit me when, when I heard that. Because we have so many times where we blame the conditions for the lack of success, but the reality is that the champions create success regardless of the conditions. And so they don't look at the education system, they don't look at the thing that the teacher gave, they don't look at what the vendor provided and think, well, I'm going to prove that they were bad so that I can be right. They just win no matter what.

And so I think it's like, kind of like Tom Brady of like, okay, well, he can go to a different team and still go to the championship, still change the conditions because he forces the winning to occur. And that's why, like, that is the, like, that is the quintessential thing that, like, if you look at your team, if you're a business owner, you're like, who on my team is a level one? Who's a level two? Who's a level three? Who's a level four?

Who's a level five? Who wants to just, like, prove that my thing's not going to work? Who's just like, we'll see if it works. Who's like, I think this can work. Other people have done it, we can do it, too.

And who's like, we will be the first to do it because there's no reason we can't. And I think it's a great way to measure and assess your team. I think it's a great way for you to measure and assess yourself and apply it between different domains. And so I think, as I think about these things for myself, I think the biggest thing that I've been fortunate with is I hate the idea of someone making me worse and I hate the idea of, quote, not getting better from something I invest time and money into. And so I've always had the desire to be the number one person in anything that I ever try and learn.

And so it's like, even if this guy's mediocre, I'm going to be the best student he's ever had, no matter what, which has come to bite me in the ass because every single person I've ever bought something from has claimed that they're the reason for my success. But the thing is, is that I'm just going to get real nasty with you. I've been more successful than every one of their customers and them, so, like, fuck you. And so I've always taken it from the approach of replicate before you iterate. So I don't try and get fancy so this is.

I'm shifting gears out because I just got a little. A little passionate about this. But, like, I. I will do everything they said to the t to replicate what they've done. So if I want to learn something from them, they have been able to do it, and I will do exactly what they did, and then I can get the same result.

And then once I've replicated it, then I'm like, all right, here's seven ways I can do this better than them, and then I will iterate. But I think one of the other issues that happens is people try to iterate before they replicate. And the thing is, unless you've learned to replicate, you don't know why it worked to begin with. And so you have to retrace the steps. You have to pick up the breadcrumbs and be like, okay, that's.

We did this because there's that hole there. Okay, we did this because there's that problem there. Okay, got it. Got it. Now, I have a good lay of the land now, with the other skills that I have that the person who taught me doesn't have, I will make this better.

And that's how I think you can stair step your way, learn from as many people as you can. And when you learn from your third teacher, you can pull from your first and second teacher to try and make what you learn from the third teacher better. But the thing is, is that in any of these paths, you just have to start learning and be willing to know that no matter what happens, as long as you execute, you will learn either what to do or what not to do, but you learn either way. And I think that gives you a no fail situation as a student because it means you become an inevitability. Like, I will win.

Whether it's with you, the next guy, the guy after that, I will win. I will figure this out. Because there's no way that this is impossible. There's no reason that Facebook ads can work for other people's businesses, not mine. There's no reason that doing a direct mail campaign, if I can get it into the right business owner's hands, that I cannot find a way to monetize that there's no way that somebody else can be, have a.

Have a billion dollar roofing company, and I have a roofing company that's only do a million dollars a year. I don't need to change industries. If they can do it, I can do it. There's a way, and I just don't know how yet. But that's a me problem, not a universe problem.

And the thing that everyone keeps messing up about this is that they're trying to think that, like, they're proving the system right or they're proving their teacher right or proving the guru right. But you're not doing any of that. You're proving to yourself yet again that you can win no matter what. And I think that's the big difference because some people, like, don't want to win because they want to prove that the teacher is bad. It's like, that's.

That's like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. It's one of the dumbest things I can possibly imagine. Like, you want to sacrifice your outcome, your success, because you want to show that someone else is bad. Like, the best way to show that someone else is bad is to beat them and then just keep winning and move on with your life and get them to shrink into irrelevance as you grow into your potential. I really wanted to give you a sexy outro for this podcast, but at the end of the day, winners win, and they win because of who they are, not because of what happens to them.

That's it. See you next week.