In this episode, Alex (@AlexHormozi) shares a brutally honest truth that you should consider. If you've been doubted, if you've lost a sale, if a conversation didn't go your way... That maybe it's not someone else's fault. Or the circumstance. Or a bias someone has against you. If you want to have the impact you say you want, maybe you need to get better.
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.
Timestamps:
(0:40) Examples of "needing to get better"
(3:17) It might not be because of bias
(4:35) Examples from when I needed to get better
(8:17) Get honest with yourself
(15:58) "What would it take?"
(21:30) Beat your victim mentality away
(22:00) Closing remarks
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If you've ever not gotten the deal, or you've ever not had someone believe in you, you've been doubted because of the way you look, how old you are, how young you are, what gender you are, where you're born, where you're not born, the way you dress, the way you look, the way you talk, then the question isn't whether that bias is true because it may absolutely be true. But the question is, what do we do about it anyways? And how can we confront the other alternative reality that might be true, which is what if you're just not good enough? Now what? There was a lady who made a post and she said, I quit my job to start doing this because my boss didn't respect me because I was a woman. And so because of that, I quit my job to start doing this. And I had this immediate thought in my head, what if you're just not good enough? That was the thought that came through my mind when I read that message. And it got me fired up because the amount of times in my life that I've seen this victimized mentality hurt people is far more than it has ever helped. And so the reason I want to talk about this is because it applies to employees and applies to business owners. And I have so many stories of this that I want to drive through this, and then I want to drive to the two natural conclusions that end up coming from logic. And so this is the same thing as the kid who says, hey, I started this marketing agency, and I've got these services, and I'm trying to get these business owners. And they're saying, well, they're not buying for me because I'm a kid, right? I'm too young, right? I had a family member who had a restaurant, and he opened it up in the wrong part of town. And he was like, well, my restaurant's not working because people don't want to come to this side of the this side of the neighbor. They have bias against this side of the neighborhood. And I'll give you another one, which was Jacob, who was my neighbor, my little 15 year old neighbor from way back when I walked in on him trying to sell a wholesale deal. And he got off the phone and he'd been trying to sell wholesale deals for a month because he read some stuff on the internet, watched some YouTube videos. And I was like, so how's it working? And he was like, well, no one's really buying yet. And I could tell that on some level, it was because he thought that he was too young and people aren't taking him seriously. So one of our portfolio companies had two people who were in a conflict. All right. So there was a white guy and a black guy and they were peers. And they had to work together and they didn't like each other. And so finally, we had to be like, y'all need to get along, figure it out. And so the white guy sends the black guy a song and it's his like way of trying to make amends. And the song was a rap song. And it had some lyrics in it that offended the black guy. And he said, you know, this is not racially sensitive, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he then asked for the white guy to go through racial sensitivity training. And here's where this gets interesting. The black guy is married to a white girl and has mixed kids. And the white guy is married to a black girl and has mixed kids. Do you think he fucking needs racial sensitivity training? No, he just doesn't like you for the content of your character. And so there's a very significant possibility that it might not be because you're too young. It might not be because you're black. It might not be because you're a woman. It might not be because you're a Republican. It might not be because you're a Democrat. It might not be because you're trans. You just might not be good enough. And the thing is is that even if you're right, even if there is a fucking bias, because biases will exist, I'm not even going to deny that they absolutely exist. And they will always exist. And the reason they will always exist is because this is how human beings learn. You learn and you create judgments to wish for a world that doesn't create bias, wishes for a world where humans don't learn. If you go and you're a waitress and you serve a table and it's all people with red faces and those red faces leave you zero tip. And then you go to a table with green faces and the green faces leave you a big tip. And then you do that again and again and the red faces leave you lower tips than the green faces and the green faces leave you big tips. What will you do? You will begin to expect that red faces leave you no tip and green faces leave you big tip. Now replace red and green with tall white Asian woman, whatever. The point is that people will learn. And as long as there are stereotypes that exist because people do behave in a certain way, then people are going to learn those things. Period. But the thing is, let's say you're a red face and you do tip well. And you hate the fact that when you walk to a place, they don't treat you a certain way, right? And the thing is that biases exist everywhere and I want to be clear. When I got into the gym space, I was young. I was so young looking that I knew no one took me seriously. And so I lied about being the owner. I lied. So when people came in, I just said I'm the owner and I worked out a deal that I would potentially earn in my ownership. So I had this whole backstory that I made up in the beginning because I look so young that no one would believe that I was the one who owned the gym. And so I'm saying this because I get it. And to be fair, I look the way I look. If I have a tank top on, like we moved into a very nice penthouse, my neighbor's immediately complained about me. He literally sent to the email to the front desk of the building and said, is what is this Beverly Hillbillies who moved in next to us? I'm not kidding. And so the thing is is that, I mean, I thought it was fucking hilarious. I died. I thought it was great. But the thing is to say, what does that mean? He is a bias against people who look like me, right? Who wear wife beaters and walk around like that on a regular basis. And he thinks, wow, this guy, I've had negative experiences with people like him. And so the thing is, is I have a friend from college way back when black guy and he hated that there was a stereotype that black people don't tip. He hated it. And so rather than try and say, this is unfair, the world is unfair. This bias exists. You know what he did? He was always really nice. And he always overtipped. That was what he did. He overtipped because the thing is is that, let's play out the scenarios. You bitch in moan and you say, you know what? This person didn't buy because I'm young. This person didn't buy because I'm a woman. This person didn't buy because of whatever. And the thing is, is let's say you, you do some empirical study and you prove it right. Now what? Great. You prove that you have a disadvantage. Okay. Again. Now what? Hey, if you want to get around people who are actually winning, who look like you, who smell like you, who talk like you and are doing what you want to do, I'd like to invite you to the school games community at school.com/games. I take calls in there. I put content that's like this and more personalized inside of that community. And I drop a huge amount once a month and eight hour training on how to actually take this stuff and win anyways. And so if that's entertaining school.com/games, see you in there. The thing is, is that arguing for proving a bias is good for society, bad for the individual. And as far as we're concerned, this is a single player game, life. And so we've got to go through it with the assumption that nothing's going to change. And what are we going to do about it anyways? Because no one gets better by feeling sorry for themselves. No single person has ever gotten better by proving that they were the victim of something ever. And so whether you're an employee and you feel like you're getting passed up for the promotion, the amount of times that we get this to like, I'm a business owner, we have a lot of businesses, we have a lot of employees. And the thing is, is that if someone gets passed up, maybe there is a bias because biases will always exist. But the only thing you can do is be better than the bias. You have to be better than the bias. You have to be so fucking good that you have to be, you have to overcompensate. He didn't tip normally. He tipped more than normal so that he could be one light on the bad dots that he felt that the people who had served him in the past had experienced. And so to give you a story that I had with Jacob, so he was the young kid, he sounded like a child on the phone. And the reason they weren't buying the deals from him is because he sounded like a fucking child on the phone. And the thing is, is that what if they're right? And I think this is where people get even more offended, is like, what if the bias that you have, what if, what if, what if the bias that you've experienced against, what if it's true? And this is where people get, what if I do act like a hillbilly? What if I do, what if, what if I did act immature? Because I was young. Now what? And so the thing is, is that one, if you prove that there's a bias, again, so what? Now you've proven that there's a bias, your life's not any better. Version two, what if they're right? So one, you're proving that there's a bias and you don't act that way. The next, the next vein of thinking is what if, what if they're right about it? What if you just, you are exactly the stereotype? What if I am immature? What if I don't show up on time? What if I am emotional? Because I'm, because I act like a child, because I haven't matured yet, because I haven't in an experience in life. Now what if I'm not consistent because I haven't learned that skill yet, which most more young people have that than old people? Old people are notoriously consistent. They love their routines. Eight, how many 80 year olds do you know don't have routines? Hard to not have one when you're 80, right? You have to break the stereotypes of old people by, by being spontaneous, right? And so the thing is, is like these stereotypes exist because biases exist because we're going to always learn, we're always going to make judgments. But it comes down to whether you're restaurants on the wrong side of the street, whether you have a red face or a green face or you're short and girls, girls don't like short guys. Okay, if you believe the bias, then you make it true. You make it real. You give it more power rather than less. And so I look like this. I look probably, in terms of like my look, I probably look right leaning. I probably look a little bit hillbilly-ish. If I take, if I put the wife beater on, then I definitely look dumber in general. I mean, when I had my gym, people, I had many people ask me if I was literate. But as soon as I open my mouth, it became apparent that I was educated. And so the thing is, and here's, here's my silver lining for this, is that if you have a bias, you actually have the opportunity to stand out even more by being against it. If, if a green face tips more than a red, like, then it just tips a lot, then it's like, well, I expected a green face to tip more. But if a red face tips a lot, you're like, whoa, I noticed that if a guy in a suit sounds literate and sounds educated, you're not really surprised there because it's what you expected. But if a jack guy in a beater who looks like a hick, and maybe doesn't have hillbilly views of the world, isn't a racist, might have a more articulate way of expressing things, then all of a sudden you pause and that person becomes more interesting. They start to break the bias. They start to be better than the bias. You start to create a category that's separate for that individual. So there are many red faces, but this one is John and John's cool. John tips well. The thing is, is that I think all of us have the opportunity to be John or Sarah, who, who is a red face, who there are, there are biases that exist, but we can be better than the bias. And I love this. I love this quote from Andy Fersell. It's so good. I fucking wish it were mine. I said, personal excellence is the ultimate rebellion. And I just fucking love that. And so the question is always, what are you going to do about it? Proving that it exists does nothing. You just prove that there's, you have a disadvantage. Okay, we all have disadvantages in some way to some person. Like if I go into a place that has had a lot of guys and flannels who said racist things to them, as soon as I walk in the room, there's going to be a bias against me. They're not going to like me by right at the onset. And so what can I do? You can play into the bias. I can complain that there's a bias or I can overcompensate. I can tip more than anyone normally does. I can be more kind, more understanding, more literate. I can work harder. And so I'm going to wrap this to Jacob because I'll tell you the story. Obviously, I said, listen, I think you suck at sales. I think it has nothing to do with the fact that you're young. And so you got to learn. And he's like, well, how do I learn? And it's like, well, you got to do more than everybody else. And I'm going to give you the advice that I told him that I would say that he says has changed his life. And so I will share it with you. And this goes for the employees. This also goes for the business owners. It works for everyone, which is I said, volume negates luck. I said, if you want to be the best, find the best guy in my company. So I got him an interview. I said, I will not get you the job. I said, I can get you an interview because the guy who's going to be hiring you, I was like, it's up to him. And he's got 10 other guys he's interviewing. And so he decided to give him the job. He gave him a shot, right? That's, I mean, at gym lunch and sales, like getting a job is getting a shot. That's all it is. You still got to work your leads. You still got to go generate, you got to generate sales. And so he got on the phones and I said, go find the best guy. Look at what he does and do twice as much because you have to do twice as much because he's better than you. You can't do as much as the best guy because he's always just going to get ahead. You have to do what he's doing and another full day's work so that you can start catching up. And so he started doing twice as much as what the best guy was doing. And so over time, he became the best guy on the outbound team. And then he became, and then he moved up to the middle sales team and became the best guy on the qualification team, which is the second, the second highest level of sales guys that we have. And then from there, being the best guy. And here's the thing. Here's the fucking thing. Because he was so young, he's 18 years old, 18 years old, all the guys who were my closers were all men with families. Like they were professionals. It was a strong team, still a strong team. And the sales manager, a man with a family, said he was hesitant. He had a bias against him because he was young. He said, listen, I'm not going to just let you on the team. Now, he had objectively had better stats as a setter and anybody who had been 30 years old or the family would have absolutely gotten put on the closer team. But he said, I want you to go self-generate end to end, click to close. You go find someone in the fucking world, bring them all the way and close them yourself before I let you on the closing team. He had never asked anyone else to do that. And so he did. After he did one, he was like, I need you to do another one to make sure it wasn't a fluke. So he did another one. And he said, you know what, just because I want the team to be really sure because you're young and he had the bias of, oh, Alex knows you. So you're getting special treatment because Alex knows you. You're the friend of the bosses, right? And so he's like, you got to do another one. So he had to do another one. And then when he got on the team, where did he start? Low man. Low man on the totem wall. He was young and he had the bias of, oh, your boss is pet, right? He had to have both of these biases against him because nobody likes that guy, right? And I told him that. I said, they're going to not like it because you're young, and they're not going to like you because they know you know me. And I was like, you need to leave no fucking room for doubt that you earned it. I was like, and so you're going to be left of center. You're going to start six feet underground before you can get your head over. I was like, that's what it is. And I was like, either you can bitch and moan about it and you can lose and be right and be right about the fact that you're going to have a bias against you, or you can win. Win anyways. And so what did he do? He became the top performing sales rep with all the grown ass men and their families. Was there bias? Yes. Did he have to do more to get on the team? Yes. Did he have to prove himself in ways that no one else had to? Yes. And so if you're in that position and you feel like you have this bias against you, here's what I would ask if you're an employee. And this is what I would encourage the business owners who are listening to this. Ask this question. What would it take? What would it take for me to get on the team? What would it take for me to be the manager? What would it take for me to be to the director? What would it take for me to get a raise? What would it take for me to get a promotion? If I'm the business owner trying to get the deal, what would it take for us to do business together? What would it take for you to say yes? What would I have to do objectively? I get that you've got some you've got hesitation. I understand that I'm young. I understand that I got in here because I had some other guy who tapped somebody else's shoulder and got me an interview day one. I get that. I understand that. So what would it take? Well, let me compensate. Let me not just tip normal. I'm not going to tip 20 because other people who look like me don't tip 20. I was like, I'll tip 100. Just tell me what would it take to change your mind? What would it take for me to not look like a hick or for you to not think that I'm completely illiterate or uneducated? What would it take? No one benefits from the excuse. You hurt you more by accepting that the excuse is real because what the excuse of the of saying that there is bias and that the bias is the reason that you have not moved forward is that it gives you an excuse for not succeeding. It's all it does. It gives you a nice warm blanket to say, I'm not winning, but this is the reason why because the alternative reason of saying I'm just not good enough hurts your ego. And to be clear, I am not saying that bias doesn't it absolutely exists, but we have to live in a world that it does exist and win anyways. And so I'll show you, I'll show you a note that I leave myself because I get in the same, everybody has everybody's got shit. And so I'll show you what the background on my phone is right now because this is the season I'm in. You can see that it says just win. That's it. It says just win two words. At the end of the day, winners write history. And if you win in the end, if you become the top performing sales rep, that's all that matters. And the only people who care about the biases are the ones who lose because those are those biases are the things that soften their head when they when they put their head down on their pillow at night because it makes them feel okay. It doesn't hurt their ego as much and say, you know, if I didn't have this bias, I would have won. But no one remembers them. How much stronger of a story is it that you win despite the bias? You win despite the disadvantage. Oprah will always have my eternal respect for being the first female black billionaire who builds a media fucking empire in the fucking 80s. No one else can do that. And so that's the thing is that the number of biases that you have stacked against you becomes the more compelling story that no one else who doesn't have those biases will ever be able to tell. And if there's if there's anything that gives me hope, it's that. It's that you get the opportunity. You have this one unique opportunity that you get to be an example. You get to be an inspiration to other people who have red faces, who have green faces, who are too young, who are too old, because those biases, like, I didn't get hired for the tech shock because I'm too old. You're not going to fix bias because it's wishing that humans won't learn. And that's never going to happen. But you can still win by simply asking what would it take and accepting the only thing that you can control, which is that there is bias. And the reason I did not win is because I'm just not good enough yet. I'm just not undeniable enough yet. Now, I might be good enough if I had a green face, but I'm not good enough if I have a red face. So I got to get that much fucking better. It's the only thing that you can control. And so whether you're a business owner and that restaurant that's on the wrong side of the street, if you have the best pizza in the city, people will go to the hood where it's unsafe to get the pizza. Everybody knows a restaurant where you're like, it's kind of on the wrong side of town. It's a little bit seedy, but man, that Indian curry is fucking off the hook. Everybody, you know that spot. Now, do they have to be better than other places that are in safer and nicer parts of town? Yes. But it doesn't mean that it's impossible. It just means the bar is higher. And the only thing that we have control over is whether we're willing to make the fucking climb. And so I saw that post and I was feeling spicy about it because the thing is just like she was using that as the catalyst for her quitting her job to start a business. And I'm all about that. That's fine. That's awesome. Take your life into your own control. But do not for a second, because I know that that belief will not serve her. Her saying, I didn't get promoted because I was a woman. I didn't get respected because I was a woman. And believe me, I know Layla doesn't get nearly enough credit for all the stuff she doesn't act as a child. If she was a guy, if she was just a dude and it was just Alex and Dan, and Dan was a 50/50 partner of mine, Dan would get shitload more credit than Layla. Layla is a woman and she's my wife. And so the bias that exists against her is that how many business guys have their wife, they say she's the CEO and really she's just she's just a secretary, right? She's just a helper. Really just has some doing some admin tasks. So many people to this day, we show up to a business conference and other business guys treat her like that. So what's she going to do? She's just got to be that much fucking better. And if you knew Layla, which many of you guys don't, if you really knew Layla, she loves it. She loves it. She's like, we're going to fucking murder him. Layla's way more hardcore than I am. You guys just don't know that. Layla's got fucking dark side. You guys just don't know, which is great. I love it. I think letting some of that dark side out and beating the shit out of that victim mentality that you have that because we want to, we want to lean into it. It feels so much better to say, I didn't win because of outside thing, because it makes us feel better. I'm good. I'm good enough. Just but there's this thing, my restaurant is good enough. It's just on the wrong side of the street, right? I really am good at sales. I'm just, but they don't give me the advancement because I knew Alex or because I'm too young and I'll just wait a couple of years. What would it take? What would it take for me to become undeniable, for me to be bulletproof? I want to have no chinks in the armor, nothing that anyone can hold against me to say that I am not the best for this thing. And if there is a deal that you need, and there's a guy who was beat the hell in high school from guys who had flannels, and he hates those people, and I don't get the deal. Guess what? There's other people that will give me the deal, and you just keep moving forward.
