"Knock on a F*cking Door!" Why Broke People STAY Broke | Alex Hormozi

- So you're going to be a dad? - I'm going to be a father, hopefully, everything works out. Yeah, tell me about it. - To be honest, I haven't really given it a tremendous amount of thought. I kind of do what things as they enter my queue. Laila is the one who gets, her life is changing significantly more than mine is in the short term, I think once the baby comes, I'll adjust when it comes. Yeah, I mean, new information, new priorities. I'm really not that worried about it. I mean, I think big picture, there's been what, a hundred billion new humans, 85% of humans have a child by the time they're 45. Or after 40, whatever. By the time they've finished their ability to have children, it's like 85%. So it's not something that's like really that rare of a thing. And so I think I'll do what's at the best I can. And you know, my dad gave me a pretty good example of what being present looks like. And so I'll take as much as I can from that. - You're kind of known as the guy who optimizes everything. - I would say maximizes. - Maximizes. - I'll just get the most for the least. Maximizers get as much as they possibly can. - With a kid, what are the inputs you can actually control as a dad? And what's the output or outputs that you've already accepted is out of your hands? - Well, I think the question is a nature and nurture question, which is, okay, how much of it is gonna be genetic? And I don't know, I think most of the science is 50/50, half genetic, half is you know, you're upbringing, et cetera. So then we get into the question, how does a child learn and how does behavior get shaped? Which, you know, the primary ways are gonna be modeling, like me doing something and getting good outcomes in front of the child. And the second would be teaching the child directly, which I would say through demonstration role playing, practicing training repetitions. And that can be from like, say please, say thank you. All the way to learning more complex skills, you know, over time. I mean, I like teaching. And so I look forward to teaching the child, the things that I know and what it will teach me about things that I don't know. I guess in a different way, like how do you decide, like these are the things I'm going to teach, these are the things that are unimportant, like what's a framework for thinking about that? 'Cause you always talk about like, well, this is what I would do. Or like this is what I would do in my own life. So like when you have a child kind of creates this different dynamic when you have responsibilities in some way, but you also want to allow a kid to have freedom. You know, I think a lot of people derive you to, you know, purpose for utility. And so I would want the child to have as many skills as possible so that it could navigate the most diverse number of conditions it's exposed to. So there's a lot of, I mean, life presents a lot of different variables. And so it's like if I can prepare it for those variables, so it makes choices that are aligned with getting what it would want that I see that as a W. I mean, I think the hard part, like there's two things that I would say that I've struggled more with defining, which is what is the, what is the measure of parenting? How do you know if a parent is good? And so I'll give an example of both extremes. So it's like, there's many stories of entrepreneurs and others who had terrible upbringing and then succeeded. And so do we say that those parents were good if it created the outcome that was good if we judge it by its outputs? Kind of interesting. Like would Michael Jackson have become Michael Jackson if he didn't have that upbringing? I don't know. I don't know if he knows, I don't know if we can ever know. And so I think that's an interesting one. And the other is what we define as a successful child. I would say that modern society defines success mostly as happiness. They like to do it makes you happy. I just want my kids to be happy, things like that. I'm not sure if I'm 100% subtle in that. Because I think that when you have somebody who tries to optimize or maximize happiness, it's a very selfish worldview. And I think that when it's one of those things that if you seek it, you never find it. It only happens as a consequence of other things you do. At least that's been my experience. And so, I mean, I've talked plenty of times about this but I have gotten more fulfillment out of being useful than I have out of trying to be happy. And having it happen as a consequence of like helping other people has helped me more than me trying to help myself. And so I think a lot of things we gain by giving up. It's like in a lot of religious texts it's like you gain your life by giving it away. And I think those two questions, how do we define a successful parent and how do we define a successful child? I think are the hardest things to define. Because once you define those, then the rest of the actions are fairly straightforward. And I think that getting alignment on that is probably the hard part. And again, it's like, can you have a parent that has an unsuccessful child that did everything perfectly as a parent? I don't know, we don't have any perfect parents. And so the, I would say what I have settled on is, I will do the best I can with the resources that I have available to me to equip the child with as many skills, life skills as I possibly can so that it can succeed in the most diverse set of environments. What's the one skill you hope your kid has before they turn 18, courage? I mean, I think it's kind of the gateway trait to all other traits. And also, if you have no courage, the other traits become neutered because you can't do anything with them 'cause you're too afraid. And so, I think teaching the child to act and do the right thing or act in accordance with its values despite short-term consequences that could be aversive or bad or painful would be what I think would be the hallmark thing of, I mean, it's very hard to look at somebody who's courageous and nuts, like, I see that as a pinnacle trait. I would be proud of a child if they always did what they believed was right in each circumstances despite what other people thought, despite their short-term consequences. And I think that that core trait is something that generalizes to basically every domain, like, how do you learn something? You have to have courage. You have to be okay with failing. You have to be okay with being wrong. You have to be okay with being made fun of. All of those things are come from courage. And so, I think that's probably why I would put it at the core. Is Layla excited? Yeah, of course. Layla's thrilled. Layla's, I'm very happy and excited. And I don't say Layla's even more happy and excited. And I think part of that is because she has an actual human inside of her and I do not. (laughing) And so I think she thinks about it more often than I do because it reminds her that it exists. Whereas, you know, just like you have your phone buzzing in your pocket, you don't have something kicking your stomach. And so, like, I'm very aware of my phone existing. I'm less aware of the baby existing. And so, I think that's just partially just the logistics of it. No, she stoked, though. Now, the world your child will be born into is very different than the one you grew up in. The value of college degrees has changed. Jobs are being eaten by AI. And young people are lonelyer than ever. Mechanically speaking, what's changed in the system that makes it challenging in a different way for young people to make money today? Well, today versus when my child is an adult, I would say, are different situations. I would say for today, it's never been easier to make money. Because we have these tools that are giving tremendous leverage to people who have work ethic and skill. And so, barriers to entry are getting completely flattened, which is amazing. It's democratized access. But what it's really done is also just made it more competitive. And so, one of my favorite lines in the wire is Cuddy, who was a hitman, comes out of prison after 15 or 20 years. He's an older guy, doesn't know what to do. Goes back into the game. He then is told to go do a hit with some other guy. And it goes the wrong way, or they're sitting in the back of the car. And he says, man, he's like, the game's changed. And Slim Charles looks at him and says, not bad. He's like, the game hasn't changed. The game's the same, just more fears. And so, I see that in a lot of ways. It's the way that the economy, the way that business, the market, hasn't changed. The fundamentals are still going to be the same. It's supply and demand. Scarcity is still going to drive behavior. It's just that the variables around the core fundamentals will change. And so, that's why I think adaptability is a core thing to learn, which I just see that it's like being able to change behavior quickly when new conditions arise. And so, today, a lot of money can be made digitally, without nearly the amount of labor as before. And you can run it a lot more efficiently, which I think just-- there are more people entering entrepreneurship than ever before, which I see as largely a good thing. Because the most efficient organizations are a single person run. If you just think there's so much waste in larger organizations, because of coordination of people. And so, you know, like a perfect world of the. efficiency would be that every single person has a business that requires someone else, that everyone have their own freedom, everyone delivers valuable services to other people. That's awesome. I think there's a world of more and more of that that will happen in a world where humans have no inherent value from a quote utility perspective that a robot cannot do. I think that we'll do what we've always done, like we'll figure out something else. You said 18 years from now, it will be radically different. If you had to gas, what might that look like? I have no idea. I think my guess is it would be the same as me making up a reality. And I don't think there's too many variables. I mean, let alone, it's like trying to predict what stocks can go tomorrow. There's so many things that can happen between now and then. And there's also some things that I don't think are necessarily going to change. For example, I think basis is a question which I like thinking a lot about, which is rather than saying what is going to change. I think it's more viable for someone today to ask what is going to stay the same. And so I think that humans will still fall in love. I think that humans will still value stakes, so we'll give you a simple example. If Mr. Beast makes a video and he puts $5 million in the middle of an island and invites 10 influencers to go compete for it, those influencers can't be AI influencers. They can't be fake. And if that $5 million doesn't actually $5 million, and you just have cartoons competing for fake money, I don't think anyone cares. And there's also some things that people want to see humans do. So like we have cranes. We still want to watch who can lift the most weight. We still have, you know, robo chests that can beat any chest player on earth, and chests has never been more popular. And so we will still be attracted to human things, drama, story, narrative stakes, things like that, that I think that humans want to see how humans are reacting to those things. So I don't think that's going to change. I think humans are going to eat. I think they're going to need to sleep. They're going to have to, you know, have shelter. All of these things, I think, will remain relatively unchanged. Will there also be AI entertainment? Absolutely. Will there be our first Star Wars epic? I mean, we're seeing it. I think you've probably been attuned to this, like, they've been three big box office hits that are like 100 million plus movies that have come out from just like YouTubers. And that necessarily isn't all AI, but it will be like these tiny, tiny teams being able to generate huge blockbuster quite literally outcomes. And so it's like, again, it's just going to have a thing to boss at this. But it was technology democratizes consumption and consolidates production. So if you get, for the best in the world, you get to do it for everyone. And so AI will, will YouTubeify a lot of things. So what I mean by that is, when mobile phones had videos, video making used to be a luxury thing. And then everyone was able to make a video. And then YouTube gave everyone a platform to post those videos on. And so it's like, oh, everyone can vibe code. It's like, well, yeah, but everyone can make videos, but not everyone's Mr. Beast. And so just like always, like, it will still have, like, we'll, like, when there's more supply, we'll index on quality. And so what are the human things that are the non-replaceable things, which I think are stakes. I think it's narrative. I think it's reality. And reality creates the stakes for any of this type of stuff. That's why reality TV is still a thing because we know it's real, you know, to the degree that it's real people, right? And there's some sort of money or whatever that's on the line. People still watch. But yeah, I think there's a world where there's a robot that cuts your lawn. For sure. Right. What's something I was thinking about was this idea of reality TV for some reason has the highest mode in the next 10 years as far as content, because it just seems as though AI is able to amalgamize education type content so well in like documentary type content so well. Do you have any thoughts on that specifically that the info business content creation is going to be limited? I think it assumes that people didn't already have infinite access information. They have that. So I think that when people buy, like sure information, yeah, tough. I think everything that comes around that, again, that's stakes, like people, people know to, like you just recently lost weight, right? So people know they need to, whether you know anything about fitness, you know you need to stop eating shit and move more. Okay. Great. Your version of eating shit and moving more will be different, but fundamentally you have an idea that you do that. People still don't do it. Why? Because they don't have enough stakes and enough motivation around it. And so like there's still be plenty of IRL and I would say human-based interventions that will still work to drive those stakes and drive that motivation for people. You said the richest you ever felt in your life was when you and Layla hit your first $100,000. You've since talked about a goal that you have where you want to help 100,000 young men make $100,000. I think it's small, I think we'll do a lot more than that, but yeah, you might have already done that. I mean, real. The difficulty is, how do you measure it, right? If I already give a meal to every person, I give a meal, you check a name off and that's it, right? You can ship them out and it's done. If I have to teach someone to do something and then have to have them make money and then have a way to know that they've reached past this point, like when I announced that I've gotten so many DMs of people like, dude, I'm one of those people. I've made $1,000,000 because you've made $10,000 because of you. I'm one of those people. I appreciate it, man. Awesome. Thanks, man. What do I do with that? A schoolman. I mean, school is 27 million users, so 100,000 is like a rounding error. I think we'll do a lot more than that. I've a lot of other things in the works too that will come by the end of this year that'll make that more evident. Yeah, I mean, I met what I said, I think that in order to change the world, you have to start with changing in generation. I don't think old generations change, so you have to start younger. And I think that the best system we have right now is capitalism. It is flawed. It is just the best fault system we have. And so in order to get people to buy into something, you need them to be reinforced by it. So they have to have a good outcome as a little bit. And so I think all you have to do is look at every other country that has not had the system and look at their outcomes over a longer period of time to be like, okay, well, that system doesn't work. And to think that it somehow is going to, like, this time it'll be different is ridiculous. It's like the, you know, the abuse of husband and the wife and, you know, he hits her and he says, I'm sorry, it'll be different next time. It's like, no, man, that's the pattern. And so we don't need to like wait for a dictator to take over to know that that's how it's going to end. And so I'm a big lever in free markets. And I'm willing to deal with the downside consequences of free markets, because I see them as superior problems to the downsides of communism, socialism, and dictatorship, which are not necessarily all the same, but often I've had a lot, I mean, if money exists, it would make sense to me at least that capitalism is the best system. What is capital ism? It is a system that allocates capital most efficiently. So it would make sense that it is the best at generating. I know this is something you've probably been asked before, but things are so different now. If you had to go from zero to a hundred thousand dollars in the next three months, how would you do it? Maybe if you could break it down for me in five steps, sure. So in a thousand total or a hundred thousand a month or ten thousand a month, a hundred thousand total in three months, no employees, just you, but it's not me though. It's my skills, but not me. Yeah. Okay. Right. You can't post content. And I have no network and I have no connections and I have no any of that. I don't have my phone with me. You can use cloth. So when you were starting out, you want every customer to be worth it. And so I think one of the mistakes that happens when people are earlier is they don't sell expensive enough stuff. And so like if it's very hard for you to get a customer, then you better make sure that customer is worth it, which means instead of thinking about scalability, we think about how basically potential money made from every person is what you want to maximize. And so that means that potential value created has to be maximized, which means that we might do unscalable things in the short term in order to generate cash flow. And so I'll give you an analogy and then I'll give you the steps, but, or not an analogy story. But when I started my first gym, I did personal training with one client and that client came 90 minutes a day, five days a week, which is a super, like a super client. And I ended up making I think was like four or five thousand dollars a month in total from that one client. And that client and that model of me just doing one or one like that obviously doesn't scale, but I was running my gym, the business all around that. And the gym, I would just take the cash and basically reinvested more equipment or I'd spend more and add to get more people in whatever it was, but like I lived on the five thousand dollars a month that I was getting from the personal training client. And so the fastest way to go to a hundred thousand dollars is not the fastest way to get to a million or ten million. And so this is the bid misconception with the question. And so like if I wanted to get to a hundred thousand dollars, I would go to a business and say, and the thing is, it's like, I have already done this because I've already lost my money before and had to go do this. So this is what I did. I went to a local business and I said, what are the packages you have? And then I said, what's the cheapest that you're willing to do deliver this package is for? And I said, okay, if I go get you customers and I sell it, can I keep this person? percentage of what I sell if I go get them and I sell them and then you get the customer for life after that. And as soon as I had some businesses that said yes, I then got them customers and I kept the money and then they delivered the services and got customers for free. And so when I lost everything, I made $100,000 the first month after I lost everything. And so within the example, it's like I did that in 30 days. And so you can absolutely do that. It's just that you have to work like a maniac. And fundamentally it was, I had an offer that worked, that I knew worked for a specific local business, which was a gym. So I knew I could run a weight loss challenge and I knew I could spend money on the ads and I didn't have to spend a lot because, you know, if you can get 10 to one, you spend a hundred bucks, you have a thousand and then after you have a thousand, you spend one, you make 10 and you're good to go, right? And so that was, so then I would just limited by the facility's ability to handle customers. So I would try and find the most empty facilities because I knew I could sell them till they were full, usually within three weeks. And so that is literally what I did. So step by step, I had an offer, number one, number two, I had ads that I could record with my phone. Step three, I posted those ads and pushed them to a landing page. Step four, the landing page, this is at the time, just went to a Google sheet. Six, I called the leads on the Google sheet to make sure that they got scheduled. And then I think I'm going to step seven, I would meet with those leads and I would present the offer that I advertised to them. And then I would get them to give me money for that offer. And then I let the business handle the delivery of the services and I get the cash, the easiest business that you can run. It's one person. It's functionally an affiliate business. If you were going to think of the easiest offer right now, what might it be? I mean, because I think a lot about Winners Effect and how people, I like to give people, I don't know, those tactful gins, even though they're not useful long-term because long-term is just the fundamentals, but to establish some type of Winners Effect. Well, the nature of the offer is going to have to be sent. So one is you have to decide whether you're B2B or B2C, right? So am I going to sell to consumers or are you going to sell to businesses, right? If I had no knowledge of anything and I just knew just basic AI stuff, it's not that difficult to go into a normal business to say, "Hey, can I observe your business for free?" And come up with an AI plan that saves you at least $100,000 and would you be willing to give me a third of the savings or 20% of the savings that I get you if I can demonstrate that it will save that amount of money. Most businesses would say yes. And if it's nothing upfront, I just need these commitments. And then someone might say, "Okay, well, how do I get in touch with those businesses? You've got two feet and two hands, you can knock on the fucking door." You have a phone with, you've got two thumbs, you can text people, you can DM them, you can call them, you can email them, you can post content about it. There's a hundred ways. You've got to let people know about it. And the thing is, is that an in-demand service right now? Yes. And so the issue is more that people just don't have any skills. If you have skills, making money is not that hard. You do something for somebody else that they don't want to do. So that means you need to learn how to do shit. So learn how to do stuff and then do it for somebody else who doesn't want to learn how to do stuff. Which really just comes down to like, you have to be willing to work. What's the one thing people waste most of their time on that doesn't actually make them money? I mean, everything that is not the work. Like I have one plaque on my wall, it's his focus is subtraction. Like everything that is not the thing is a distraction. So if we define commitment as the elimination of alternative, people are not committed. And so the most focused person in the world, most focused video game player in the world would not eat, would not sleep, would not drink water, they would only play video games at anything that is not video games would them be less focused. So if you drink water, you're less focused than the guy that plays a hundred percent. Now, is that sustainable? No. But for the period of time that person was playing, that person would be the more focused person. And so there are a very small number of activities that generate money. And most of everything else is just noise. Like you have to let people know that you exist. You have to make them an offer that solves a specific problem in exchange for money. You have to get agreement from them and you have to exchange money for services and then you have to deliver that product or service to them. Like it's, it's, I don't know what else there is, like I don't know how it gets that complicated. Like that's it. And people get, I think, I think really what it is is like people get paralyzed by trying to pick perfectly. They turn things like, I want to have the perfect business. Well, like unless you're Bezos or Zach, who actually started their first business and they're still in their first business as a gazillion dollar company, the vast majority of entrepreneurs that I know, your first business is not your last business. It is your first stepping stone. And so I just try to give people a constant get a stranger to give you money to do something or for something that you make for them. That's it. Like that's, that's all of business. That's literally just accepting money from a stranger. So you like, you need a way to process money. You need an LLC if you want to use credit cards. You can do it for cash and not have any of that shit. Like I actually, I struggle with the question because I'm like, what part are we missing here? And I think it's because there's so many people who are saying a lot of words that they don't understand and confusing a large percentage to people. It's like, well, you have to start with a morning routine. It's like, bro, you don't need to do any of that. You need to let somebody know that you can do something for them and ask them if they want you to do it for them for money. And then do it. I don't really have a, do it, but like, it sounds about right. Yeah. I mean, a lot because I think about, I think about like my business because, I know it's not the typical business, but I think people focus on similar things. Like, with my business, I sell to advertisers, right? And I'm the majority of my time is spent on building the product to sell to them in a way, which is the content and building like, oh, this is the data. This is the data. This is the data. Here it is. And we spend so little time on selling because it's so important to present the good data. So how do you go about selling it? Let's do this. How do you go about selling it right now? Reach out to every single person at the company I want to sell to a set up a call with them. Show them the data. You run ads on your podcast, right? You don't do any ads, but how do you make money right now? Just add. Oh, I thought you meant like advertising the podcast. Yeah, yeah. We do a bunch of ads. Yeah. Can I give you a little trick? Run an ad for yourself. After this, say, hey, by the way, if you are joining this podcast and you would like your business and an offer to towards whatever price and service you have, I have this available. We get this many views per month and this is our demo. Reach out to me here. We'd love to connect. Fair play. You sell media. You use it. You already have it. Right. You have something that's free. You don't have to spend money on ads. You can literally just advertise on your own platform. Right. Yeah. Okay. I'm a customer. One million to five million from that one. What else we got? Hey, really quick. I'm going to take some Alex's advice here. And if you're someone that happens to have a company, I have a really dumb idea for you. So instead of you explaining to me what a KPI is and writing me a creative brief and trying to hope that I somehow convert, I'm just simply going to make you money. Now, I'm not going to read you all my stats. That's insulting. And how many viewers and listeners we have, that's all at JackNeil.com/sponsor. I'll wait. Disgusting, right? And a good way. Now here's the offer. You give me the product. I put it in front of the most engaged audience of young men on the internet and you make a bunch of money. But the downside is there isn't one. I'm really good at this. Like if you haven't noticed, I dressed up for an ad about an ad. This is my wife's tank top and the sharpie on my nose is going straight into my brain. All of this was for you. So again, if you want an influencer that will make the ad for you or do the ad exactly how you want, knows that a KPI or an LTV to CAC ratio is just go to JackNeil.com/sponsor and contact me there. You can also hit the first link in the description, but anyway guys, back to the podcast. Why is it so important to build a data centric business and the age of AI? Well, you can't have AI without a data layer first because AI is trained off of data. So if you want to have a unique mode in some way to a business and obviously the frontier models are all trained on all of the free available information. So in order to have any kind of edge on those models, you need to have proprietary information. You have to have data sets that they don't have access to or that they don't have like call it clones or similar data sets because if you have a unique data set, but it creates the same outcomes as a different data set that is not the same as yours, it actually does not have the same edge. And so you need to have unique data. That's if you wanted to have some sort of AI product as a thing that you would sell. If you want just to use AI within the business, which I think is 95% or 99% of businesses out there, it's more in order to have, let me zoom out, if I wanted to have an employee come in and do a job, I would have to train the employee on that job. In order to train the employee, you would have to document steps to doing the right behaviors. The documentation of those steps and the when done right, it looks like this. That is all data. And so the more documentation you have around the process, as you have in the business, which is what are the inputs on the outputs and what is basically the manufacturing. process step by step that takes inputs and turns into outputs and how do we know output is good versus bad, which fundamentally is just reinforcement training which works for humans and worse for machines. We need to have that so that we can get the most out of the tools. That is all. Like it's just so that you can get more out of the AI versus having a generic out of the box AI, we have a, this is how Jack likes to run the AI. Do you record yourself like all the time? Not all the time. I would say that I record myself. I mean, I don't record myself. I have a team that records me technically. And yeah, when I do stuff, I record it. I was just thinking like every single meeting, every single conversation I have with people just documented data, turn into the model. I think that, if you think about the digital world and the real world, it's two different places. So if you have a Zoom call, emails, everything that's digital is almost already pretty recorded. So your emails are already recorded. Your Slack message is already recorded. The only thing you have to add is for your meetings, your Zoom meetings, those get recorded and transcribed. If you do that, especially if you're a remote business, almost all your interactions are already recorded. So that's not that difficult to have access to. When you have an IRL business, you have to have more effort that goes into the recording. That being said, I think a lot of sums of data can be a little bit richer. But yeah, so I would say that when, if I'm interacting with customers, then it is recorded. If I'm interacting with my team, it is recorded. If I'm not doing either of those things, I'm hanging out, not with a camera. What's the real reason most businesses die? I think depends on how we define businesses dying. Because most businesses die because the entrepreneur quits. Because the entrepreneur doesn't quit, then it's very common for businesses to evolve and change models and change structures and change pricing. I can't remember, but there's a number of examples of I want to say it was like Mitsubishi or Samsung. It might be Samsung started as something completely different from electronics, but it started there and it just continued to evolve. And so I think it depends on how we define businesses dying. If we say this is bankrupt, it's more like why do entrepreneurs quit? It's almost the question because businesses come and go, products come and go, the market changes, technology changes. It's normal for those things to occur. But if it's more like, if the question is why would someone start and not succeed, most of the time they don't persist. And their definition of starting is what most people who are successful entrepreneurs would be like, you didn't even start. I had a couple of years ago, but I had a dinner with a friend of mine's kids and they were all college aged. They said they liked entrepreneurship and so I razzed them a little bit. And they were like, okay, I'm going to start the business and those are awesome. And so I think six months later, I saw them again because I was hanging out with Simprin and I was like, hey, how's the business going? And they were like, oh, you know, I'm just working on getting the LLC set up. And when I heard that, I was like, what? Like the LLC, I was like, that's like 30 minutes, man, tops. Like, go online, go on legal zoom, go on whatever the hell you want. Like, it's all automated. And then like, take the LLC, start a bank account. Like, okay, now what? Like, that's Saturday. What else did you do for the last six months? Nothing. And so it's like, the vast majority of business owners fail before they start because they never start to begin with, which is why I think courage is such an important thing. Like, you have to start. And a lot of times it's like a lot of newer entrepreneurs convinced themselves they did more work than they really did because they sat in sort of a computer and messed around. But like, did you figure out something to sell? Did you let people know about it? Did you ask them for money to do it? Where do you fail there? Like, and if you have a service business, which is 78% of the US at least, you can always collapse service business down to just the person who started it. And so like, there's no reason for a service business to ever really fail. Because your main thing is headcount. That's going to be your main cost. You might have some capital expenses for equipment, maybe, right? But like, the vast majority of the person doing thing for other person. Okay. So like, you can collapse all that down. Like, if you if you've gotten trouble, it could still be you doing shit for money. So did that business die? Might downsize, but it might not die. It dies if you stop. On the physical product side, you might have hard costs in order to sell something. That one is where like, the core economics of the thing matter a lot. And so it's like, we have to sell it for not just a profit, but enough profits to fund the rest of the business in growth. And that's where pricing can be obviously really important and brand and distribution things like that. But that's a little bit further down the road. And that's not really why most people fail. Right. Most people just give up because, you know, it's honestly, I don't even know that many people who have failed at business realistically. I don't. I know people who've changed businesses many times over the years, but like, maybe you don't really give up. Most people just don't start. On August 16th, last year, you launched your book, $100 million money models, which changes various systems people can use to build on ticket businesses. No, not ticket businesses. I never promised that. To be able to build a business. Yeah. What's the smartest thing you did when you launched your book that almost no one talked about? We added 70,000 users to school. Then we can. See, don't talk about pretty show. I gave a bunch of all my stuff away and also showed how to use money models in school because a lot of people who follow my stuff do have businesses, but also there's plenty of people who don't have business. I want to start a business. And so school provides a very easy platform for you to get started in business like you can accept payments in 30 seconds and you don't have to even go through the LLC stuff at all and it processes the payments for you. So you can literally just start one about whatever you like, whatever you're passionate about and then invite other people like you didn't invite them to a party. It's just online. And you have a balancer at the door, which is a checkout page that clicks cash. It's very simple. And so I just put all the stuff from the books, applied it to that specific business and said anyone can get for free for 90 days, try it out. If you like it, you can keep it for nine bucks a month and that has all the software you need to run an entire business with nothing else. And so 70,000 people grab that. 70,000 users like consumers are like people, no, people starting communities, people starting communities. This is a rumor. But did you break TikTok shop? I heard this internally. So we, so basically TikTok shop had a feature in how it did payouts that miscommunicated when a refund occurred. And so we had, there was, I think there was an influencer. I mean, it was, obviously it was happening across all accounts, but I'm just somebody that people can attack. There was an influencer that I think had made like $47 in total sales, something like that. And the sale that she had had, which was of the book, somebody had refunded it or something like that. And the, she got a deduction from her, which by the way, this is all TikTok. I didn't build TikTok shop. I used it just like everyone else does. But she had a deduction in, I think, commissions, or she didn't get paid a commission because she, she basically had a debt on her account, which is like, okay, we paid you 17, but you always 17 in this next commission that was going to go out, goes against this debt or whatever. There's some reconciliation happened. But the way that TikTok communicated it to her was Alex is not paying your $17 commission. And so then she made a video saying that Alex is trying to, you know, take money from me or whatever. But no, what they did do, though, is that this went all the way to the top of TikTok. And they corrected the mistake. So they actually changed it so that it was clear that this deduction occurred because a customer, not the business, refunded. And that is what's being holding it's the commission. It's interesting. Yeah. So I don't know if I broke TikTok shop, but the volume that we did exposed a flaw that they were able to fix. How much volume did you do? When I had it, I stopped doing it after that because I was like, it's just not worth it for me. But I think we were doing like 300 and they're like 350,000 a week the last week, I think, and just book sales. But no, it was just, it was one of those were like, it's not worth my reputation to have anyone think that I would not, like I always pay my debts. Like it is something that I, like, I will always fucking pay my debts. I do not want to owe anyone anything. It's very like, I just, it's just, it's so quarter. I had paid it that. I like, in my office book, I talked about this, but I had $23,000 in my account. I had a sales person who did $100,000 in sales. I owed them 20%. I paid, it was like $22,000, only that out of my account when I had 23 before I received the $100,000 that ended up almost all getting removed because I never want someone to think that I, I do not, I do not keep my commitments. What's the big this downside of building yourself into the type of person who can become a billionaire. I think it's very common that the pattern of behavior that creates financial success can create life dissatisfaction, because what you are looking for when you are building a business is what's wrong, how can this be better, how can I fix it? And so it's a constant raising of the bar so that the business can grow. But when you do it that way, it often creates this constant sense of deprivation of never achieving what you wanted to achieve, because by the time you do, you realize you could have done better. And so I've got my team who suffers from this. And we joke that like, hey, if you go to this thing, if it's great, you should have gone harder. And if it's not great, well, there's all the reasons you messed up. And so there's basically no good outcome. But I think that that's just a big part of it. And I think it's learning when to use that pattern of behavior and what not to. And so it's like, what conditions is this pattern useful and what conditions is it hurtful? It's just hard. Do you think you should ever meet your heroes? Why would you not want to meet your heroes? Disatisfaction, like you have an expectation of what someone is. So would the question be, would I rather live in a dream world than reality? Yes. No. I live here. And more information about reality always helped me better understand reality, which is where I live. I can understand. I mean, this is fundamentally the question of the Matrix, which is, I mean, my favorite movie, you know, cypher decides to unplug and wants to go back to the dream world. I think it's very difficult to know that there is reality and decide or opt out. I think I think some people do though, like, and I also put no moral judgment on that. If you want to keep living in a dream world, go for it. It's just not, for me, it has not been what has proven useful. Like, if you live in a dream world, you were constantly surprised because you're a model for predicting how reality will work as flawed. Do you feel as though there's like an opposite of that? Because I think a lot of people live in this optimistic dream world, like, I'm the best. I'm a 10 out of 10. I'm going to make a million dollars. But there's also people that are like, never enough, never going to be rich, it's never like going to hit like, are there two sides of the same coin and there's reality in the middle and you constantly try to adjust to that? I think it's more, what do you want to have happen? And then what actions do you need to take in order to make that happen? If you saying you live in a dream world makes it more likely that you take actions that align with what you want to have happen, then do that. If you living in what you call base reality, these are super vague terms. But if that's what, you know, we say, I want to understand truth so that by understanding that, I will take better steps towards getting what I want, then you should do that. But I mean at the end of the day, the only thing that will matter is what actions you take and whether those actions have I likely to have getting what you want. I think that they are less likely to get what you want if you do not have a model of the world that is accurate. Would you want to win the lottery? Really interesting question, I do have the answer to that. So I bought a power ball ticket when I was 20, 20. And I remember I bought it with my college girlfriend at the time and it hit over a billion at the time when a billion dollars used to mean something. And I remember when the drawing was going to happen and then I felt this incredible feeling of tread of like, oh my god, what if I win? I don't want to win. Because the thought that I had was if I win this billion dollars, I will never have been able to prove to myself that I could do it and that was truly horrifying for me because it would literally be opting out of the one thing that I really wanted to do, which is to prove to myself that I could do it. Which I know, zillion people will make their comment about how that's ridiculous and I understand but like, you live your life all of mine, you know, I want to do things my way. And I think it's the same. It's the same as, and this is, I mean, actually the question that you ask is really, really timely for me because for my child, they're going to have been born into winning the lottery. And it's something that I'm acutely aware of. And I'm thinking, I would say like, that is actually where the majority of my thinking has gone on in relation to parenting, which is what you started with this with. Which is like, how do I? How do I give them the opportunity to feel as though they have earned their place when they already are born into just such extreme material, you know, situations, success? And so that's something that I think I'm thinking a lot about. How am I going to manage this? Are we also going to change our lifestyle so that they have a more realistic world? Because I think that also a large degree of like why people who are born into wealth, I don't succeed as much as because their view of reality is actually not accurate. And so like the vast majority of millionaires are self-made, not inherited. And I think it's because they have a better view of base reality. If you're born into wealth, you think the world is different than it is. And so you act as though the entire world is like you and it is not. And so I think it's like people who have traversed worlds have the most accurate view. They see heaven and hell together as one thing and they're like, okay, these are the different conditions that exist and I need to be able to navigate all of them. And so that's what I'm, I'd say like what I'm thinking a little bit about. And also, you know, if I have a son trying to make sure that he doesn't feel like he has to beat me, to be worthy and making sure that he would know that I am proud of his effort above all. And that to be fair, I mean, I'll still have super fucking high standards for effort. But that is how he wins in my honest and shows courage and shows persistence and consistency and things like that. Those are the things that I'm thinking about right now. And to loop around to the original question, that is why I don't want to win the lottery. And it's also, I think, a bit of a world view question because if we see life as the path we take and who we become along that path, then it's like saying, would you like to have a video game and as soon as you open the game, it says you won. That would be a bad game. And so it's like saying, do you not want to play anymore? That being said, in my current condition, if I were to win the lottery, I already have the credibility that I can build things and I know how to make money and all that stuff. And so it would really just act like a, you know, just a lump sum, you know, called loan that I don't have to pay back from the university to just like move, you know, five years forward, which would be nice, which I'm totally fine with. But at that moment, when I didn't have it and I didn't have the proof, I didn't want it now. So anyone wants to hand me a billion dollars you're walking to, in cash, totally good with it. But it's just because it serves, it serves a different objective now. And it doesn't prevent me from walking the path that I have to want to get here. Because personally wins the lottery, who has nothing is very unlikely to have the skills. Like there's a magic card that I have, it's my favorite magic card of all time, it's called Burning Wish, instead, they wish for a weapon, but not for the skilled to wield it. And so like just getting a billion dollars, that's why whatever it is, 80% or whatever of lottery winners have lost all the money by the time by five years or something. It's because like, it's just potential. But if you don't have the skilled to wield it, it's nothing. I want to touch back on something you said a moment ago. You grew up with a dad that pushed you hard. You said the moment your dad was proudest of you was when you were your saddest, yeah. How do you make sure your child's happiest moments are also your proudest ones? I would say that I would reject the premise just because it assumes that that must happen or should happen. And I don't necessarily subscribe to that. But because this is what I said at the beginning, like all of this hinges on what do we define a successful parent as and what do we define a successful child as? If a successful parent means that they have a happy child, then that is one definition. If you have a successful parent is a useful child that contributes society, that is another definition. Those are not mutually exclusive, but can be. And so I think it all under, like that's why I'm saying like that is what I'm thinking the most about right now. So how do I define success in these roles? Because I think once that's clear, at least clear for me, and people for sure disagree on whatever I come on because they'll have their own permutation, which I would say by all means live your life, then I'll try and optimize for that. I would say that the vast majority of, like when you have a happy parent and a sad child, it is typically because it's focused on outcomes on behavior. Like how could these things be mismatched, right? Fitz. I will. want the kid to work as hard as possible, to achieve their goals, in what condition would the kid be happy that I would not be proud? You said sometimes I think shame was invented by people who have to prevent people who have not from taking action. Do you think shame is an illusion? I would say shame is a feeling that people experience, and in order to know shame has occurred, I would say that you broke other people's rules. So guilt is when you break your own rules, shame is when you break other people's rules. You can feel guilt and shame if you break your own end other people's rules. You can feel just guilt, the things that you do on your own that you feel guilty about, that you don't feel ashamed on the flip side, the things that you do on your own, you are ashamed of, but you don't feel guilty about. So if the things you do on your own, if other people would find out that you might feel weird about it, that weirdness is the shame, but if the fact that you do them means that you don't have any issues with it, you just know other people have issues with it. And so it's just navigating basically who's rules am I listening to? And so it's a great signal to know who's, who's rulebook am I following for my life? Who benefits from someone feeling shame? Oh, I mean, it's a status thing most of the time. So like if, so shame has uses, like shame is not bad. If someone does something fucked up and it hurts lots of people, they should feel ashamed. And so it's a very powerful punishment mechanism that we as a group of humans do to get other humans to act in a pro-social way, like we shame them. And it feels so bad because back in the day, you getting ostracized from the group meant that you could die. And so it was a big point, like, you know, don't, don't do shit, you're not supposed to do. According to our rules. And if you don't listen to our rules, you will know that you didn't listen. We will shame you. We will ostracize you. We will ignore you. We will say bad things to you about you. And you will no longer have access to the resources that we have. So I think shame absolutely has a purpose. The difficulty people have now is that like the stakes are different. That's not about life and death, but it still feels the same. If someone woke up tomorrow with no shame, how would their life change? Well, I think that they would do a lot of stuff that, so I think there's a reason that a lot of really successful entrepreneurs have, you know, called it touch by the Tism or a hint of Asperger or whatever you want to call it. It's like they have less social feedback loops. And what that allows them to do is just think purely from first principles, rather than reasoning through other people's judgments. And so if you were like, I don't know if this is a goddamn, it has 10 people. Getting 10 people to agree is a great way to a stay normal and be do nothing. And so you have to, you have to be willing, if you want an outsized outcome, you have to be willing to do things that the vast majority of people disagree with. Now, Larry Ellison said this, and I think it's very good, which is if you do what other people disagree with, either they are right, which is the vast majority of the time, and you're wrong. Or they are wrong and you're right. And in those instances, if you base businesses around them, you make tremendous amounts of money. It's when you see something that other people don't see. And the way to do that is to be willing to accept it in the short term people disagree with you. And so that is where I would say, shame does not pay off in the world of innovation. But in the world of social constructions and like behaving, I think shame is a very good thing. That's fascinating. Yeah, it's not good or bad. It's under what conditions. Same thing with guilt. People should feel guilty about stuff. You broke your own rules. You shouldn't do that. I'm trying to think through this in real time, but just as a mechanism to find like business opportunities and innovation, like should you be looking toward the places, which people typically have a lot of ideas and opinions around and try to see if anyone's actually thinking from first principles? I mean, I think a different way of thinking about it is just like, what is, you want to find people's trash? What are people, what is people think? Like, I'll give you a simple example. A way to spot a good investment is a team that enters the playoff and is the 16th seed out of 16 seeds and you're like, that is way too low of a seed. I think they're way fucking better than that. That is where you bet on the fact that you're right. Now, that's truly sports betting, which I'm not condoning, but that idea is how you translate that into the business setting. People are really sleeping on old people in shirts or whatever. I don't see like nearly enough, but like, I'm looking at the math, the population's aging. If I look at where wealth is distributed, it's all here. When I look at new business being started, it's all targeting here. I'm going to go there. It's just looking at the numbers and saying like, a lot of times the co-missed opportunities are supplied amid mismatches. So where is there significantly more demand? How many more people want this thing versus how many people are supplying that thing? And looking at those. They're like, why are peptides exploding? Why is Metsbots still a great business to get into? Because they're still more demand than there is supply and the people who have demand are getting older and need it more and have all the money. But I think I want to just make this one point for anyone who's listening, especially the younger part of your audience. You do not need to have something that is brand new. 99% of businesses are just businesses that already exist that you just need to, you could literally just do the same and make money. And if you do better, you'll make a lot of money. It's like, if you want to have a multi-billion dollar or a trillion dollar outcome, yes, you'll need to do something that's truly net new, that being said, those things typically cost a lot of money up front, which means you have to get into the racing capital game. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just a different way to play the game. That is how the truly de novo ideas can sometimes come to be. But I think that's very limiting. So like, I took an entrepreneurship class in college. And remember, it was like, everybody had to come up with a business plan. And like, almost all the business plans were like inventions, like almost all of them. And what's wild is that like, that's not like we were to take a random slice of the United States economy. The best majority of businesses are not inventions. They are just like mowing your lawn, cleaning your clothes, like, you know, selling cars, selling insurance. It's like, what are the things that people like the easiest way to look at like what opportunities exist, especially for customers who are like you, is just look at your credit card statement, look at everything you spend money on. You are the customer. It's like any of these things are things that I'm interested in and I think that I could do great. They back to start there. And a lot of those businesses don't necessarily require a lot of startup capital to get going. You have a weed whacker. All right. Say, you know, save a little bit of money and you get a weed whacker. It's like, there's, you don't have to start really big. I think that there's this whole, again, this is fallacy of the perfect pick that like the one business you start is the one that you're going to have the rest of your life. And that's just not the case. You're going to have a market. You're going to sell. You're going to have to deliver. You're going to have a higher. You're going to have a fire. You're going to have to train. There's all these skills that happen, even at a small local business that then you can translate to much better opportunity when you have a little bit more foresight, a little bit more capital. And then you can take bigger bets. Yeah. I'm shocked to have it met any people my age that are just like, I have a couple of laundromats, you know, it's like no one's looking in those places. And it's the same thing with what you said with old people insurance, like probably a great opportunity. You know, if you are to do your behavior since we last spoke, what's one behavior that moved the needle for you and what's one behavior that you've deleted? Think about what I've deleted. I'll start with what we've added. We've fully incorporated AI into our content creation. And media has a business. And so our content output has probably doubled, maybe more. You guys would know more than doubled in terms of total posts. Yeah, maybe tripled with same headcount. So I'll say that's moved the needle. Doubled is big. How many pieces of content? It's a lot. It is a lot. It is a tremendous amount. Hundreds a day, a thousand. It's not thousands a day. It's it's at least a hundred a day, for sure. Yeah, it's over a thousand pieces a week. Yeah, do more, Jack. So that and that's only possible because of because of a AI with the headcount that we have. From a deletion perspective, it's more it's less than I think I've deleted things and more that I've automated away tasks that I was doing before. And so like there are things that I was doing year ago that I no longer do that are still getting done. Is there any like one tactical thing about AI cloud in general that you see people doing wrong? There's nothing you learn recently. I think people use AI to do dumb things very fast. So like it still doesn't like because at least for now the models are very agreement biased. So they just agree with whatever you're saying most of the time. I think people just like get their cock and many ideas confirmed. And so then they just take lots of wrong action. And so it's basically just because AI says this is a good idea. It doesn't mean it's a good idea. And so there's still judgment that's required today. at least to make good calls and yeah. And the thing is just that like no AI will give you more leverage than making a good decision. Like a decision can still have more leverage than AI. And there are still old men right now that don't use AI that are making way more money than the kids using AI. And so it's like it is a form of leverage. It has not replaced all leverage. Like I've got, I have some older friends who are phenomenal business people and I'm asking, you know, I've asked them like, I don't know, we're operating AI. And they're like, I mean, my teams are. They're like, but I'm paid to take risk. How does it change for you higher? Like what people already have, I mean, think about like this. Do I hire people today or let's rewind the clock five years ago? Would I hire somebody who doesn't know how to use the internet? Would I hire somebody who doesn't know how to use Excel or Slack or email or calendar or Zoom or the basic tools that you used to run a business? No. Do you test people's proficiency in like prompting? A lot more than that. Especially for the role that's super high native. That's fascinating. You built an AI version of yourself. It recruits for you. It trains your team. It can coach people one on one. What's left that only you can do? Well, I'm here. So there's this. I think it actually ladders up to the things I was saying earlier. I, someone still has to make the call. Someone has to still be responsible. As of right now, no AI is responsible for anything. Now, maybe that'll change in the future, but like they don't have currently, you know, you can't start an LLC as an AI and then start processing payments and file taxes as an AI. That currently doesn't exist. Maybe we'll in the future. But right now, a human needs to take the risk. And so I am compensated for risk. I'm compensated for the decisions that that that I make. And even if you have AI to assist you, you still are the one who ultimately makes the decision. They make a suggestion and make a recommendation, but you make the decision. Me existing in reality is still something that only I can know. So if people come to a conference and they want to see me speak, if there was a robot of me speaking, they probably wouldn't be that happy about it. And it's like, well, I mean, you could just, you know, stream recording of you. It's like, we've had that tech for a long time. And people still don't care. And so it's just like the robot test thing. A lot of it comes down to stakes. And risk is that version of that from a business perspective. But yeah, there's, there's a world where I could have an AI doing my live streams for me, answering questions the way that I would. But I still think part of it requires some level of, I don't, I don't know if the audience would be happy about that. Like, are you just going to hop on a live stream of an AI, Alex? I don't know. I don't know if I would. And so there's something that there's something real about live that makes this thing anything good happen, right? And that creates the intrigue and interest. And it's unedited. It's raw. It's not changing anything. What God said to me recently said, anticipation is the number one emotion that sells. And I do think that AI, when it comes to content creation, like, kind of, councils out that level of anticipation. What do I mean? Just it becomes predictable, right? It depends. I mean, I think that an AI, like, in the future, when it's a little bit better, can write an exceptional story. And you might have anticipation of the story, even though you know the story's fiction. Same reason we read fictional stories now. So I think you can still build anticipation even if something's not true. The question is just whether things that are real, people will still want to watch. Like, there's a big foot account, you know what I mean? That's on Instagram and I think it's hilarious. But everyone knows it's fake. It's entertaining. If someone's saying, "Hey, let me give you advice on how to organize your taxes," there's higher stakes involved in that decision. And you might be less likely, not unlikely, but less likely, than maybe like a beauty influencer. Like, if there's a fake AI that's teaching you makeup tricks, the stakes on getting that wrong are very low. You do your makeup wrong. You wet your face off, right? Maybe you buy a pencil that's not as good as you thought, okay? Not the end of the world. You find your taxes wrong. You go to jail, right? Or you get a big bill in it sucks. So like, it's just as the stakes increase, the credibility of the person giving advice. And again, this matters more for educators than entertainers. Entertainers are, I think, going to be super bifurcated, where if your entertainment style is something that AI basically has no stakes, then AI will completely wipe you out. And to be fair, there will also be human influencers that will also be AI influencers that can just pump out more. On the education side, the higher the stakes of the thing that you are educating on, the more likely that proof of credibility will be important. And so like, why are there no. Like, someone could take 100% of my content right now. I mean, shit, that this already happens. They take the content and they just say the exact same words, and it's them, rather than me. And their accounts don't do well. Why? Because, I mean, they're not even AI, they're H.I., they're human indulgence, right? And they're doing the exact same thing. So why doesn't it work? So they're not me. They don't have proof. They don't have the proof. If they also had sold a 46 million dollar business and also had a portfolio of $205 million a year, they also had, you know, 300 million in real estate. If they also had those things, then maybe the videos would perform. But the first question that anyone asks when they're about, before even want to risk the time capital to invest in consuming content, you ask the question, why should I listen to you? And AI will not have the answer to that for the higher stakes things in the shorter. And as far as implementing stakes, like what variables can you play with to implement stakes into content? Which is cost, right? What? So if you think about content, this is funny that we're going this direction. But people will consume, this is specifically, people will consume content. It's a good deal. So if I do 100 dates in 12 minutes, that's taking a full season of the bachelor and putting it in 12 minutes, that's a good deal. It's a good return on your time. If I do 10,000 phone calls, and I compress my learnings from 10,000 photos that I document me doing those calls, and I say these are the three things I learned. And I feel like, imagine, imagine I had a time warp camera. And I show myself it has a little counter of all the calls I do while I'm doing it. And at the end, I say, I'm learning these three things. I'll do it again tomorrow. That content would perform because they're getting a day's worth of value compressed into a few seconds, or at least their perception of that. And so that happens it all the way up, which is like, okay, I built a business over this period of time all these years. These are the lessons that I've learned. One of my top five videos is just like 13 years of business lessons and like an hour or whatever it is, right? And so it's just like people want compressions of time. And so it usually comes down a time. Money is another version is a is a tradable asset for time. So if you can save some on money, you can save some on time. You can save some on risk. They're trying to get a deal. That's fascinating. I mean, you've talked about that concept, I believe. Maybe it wasn't you just that money is units of human energy. It's compressed time. And I guess content viewing is just kind of the same thing. It's just a different way of the trading time for it. I think you might reject the premise, but if you built everything around being useful. So maybe entertain this exercise with me. Right. So if it's all handled, layless set, your child's happy, the mission's done, the legacy secure, and there's nothing less that needs you. Is there anything you still want? I think that assumes that I can no longer be useful. And I don't think that's true. At the most basic level, let's say all those things are true. Can I help someone across the street? Then I can provide. I can provide by you. Like all we do is do that, which is a lot more leverage. So you can serve soup as a soup kitchen or you can build a million soup kitchens. Both are useful. Do you think if you were the most useful human in existence, you would still create to be more useful? Yeah. Why not? I would not want to help more people if I could help more people. Is there any part of your life that can't be optimized, you said, maximalized, that you kind of just have to feel your way through it like everyone else? What is a relatable component of my life? All these two different extremes. So one answer is like I go to the gym and I train hard and I train often. Not much of that is documented. That is mostly because I just want to be present training. It's one of the few things that I just truly enjoy for the sake of doing it. We had an idea for a show a couple of years ago called Between Sets. Maybe I'll do something like that in the future because usually it's between sets where I actually do a lot of my best thinking because you're fully present. I think the reason I've always been attracted to lifting weights in general, especially heavier weights is that it's a forcing function for focus. If you have an amount of weight that if you drop it, you die. You have to be present and I think that that's why I've always loved training so much. much. And so, yeah, there's no, like from an optimization perspective, it would make a lot more sense for me to record content during that time period. Because, you know, it's me doing, it's modeling a behavior that a lot of people would like. I'm actually pretty good at it. And it's me demonstrating equities and something like all of these things would be good for the brand. I just don't, because I honestly just enjoy it so much. Maybe in the future, I'll do like, I'll peel off a couple days a month that I train and, you know, I'll have a camera there and whatnot. But I like it the way it is. So that's like an example of being inefficient and that's purely for enjoyment. On the, you know, the relatability side, yeah, but like I get indigestion sometimes. I, you know, I get pains and aches like everyone else does. I, you know, traffic hits me the same as it does everybody else, like, yeah, I mean, I don't know if that one was what you're looking for, but that's, I love like, like everyone else does. I mean, there are daily inconveniences that have been removed at the degree that I can, but there are some things that, I mean, maybe I should take a helicopter home. I don't know, it's still going to take me time to travel. Like, there's, there's something, but like, it's, it's also like, I don't really see it as like a negative. Like, I'll give you a different example. Like, when, when, when Laila and I were dating, I was driving, we were talking about something, and I missed an exit. And she's like, I, you know, that was, that was the exit. And I was like, great, we get more time to hang. You know, and so it's like, does it have to be a bad thing, you know, these inconveniences that we deal with? I don't know. Laila said before that when you two went out on your first date for frozen yogurt, her tattoo was visible on her back. She implied, maybe you weren't the biggest fan. I'm guessing you've been able to pass that. We were married, so yeah. If you absolutely had to though, what tattoo would you get? Oh, I don't know. There was one tattoo that I considered when I was 21, 22. When I, when I set the Maryland State record, junior state record, for, I think it was, I think it was, I think it was bench and squats, a bit like that. It's sad to even, I don't remember which one it was. It's Googleable. I thought about getting like a USAPL, the logo, which is like a cool kind of like abstract half barbell, like here. And then I just said, all right, well, I'll give myself a year. And if in one year, I still want it, I'll get it any year later. I didn't want it. So I didn't get it. And then that was pretty much like the end of my tattooism or like desire to have a tattoo. Right. You once quoted Idris Alba. Yeah. Saying men fall in love with what they see. Women fall in love with what they hear, which is why women wear makeup and men lie. What do you think makes a man feel addicted to a woman? Like what's the one behavior that makes men fall in love with women that has nothing to do with looks? Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new groupie setting mist from Mavily New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours with flexible all day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue. Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new groupie setting mist from Mavily New York. Maybe it's Maybelline. So if we define respect as allowing someone to maintain their original function or basically you reinforce them for being who they are. So like someone comes into your house. Let's say you normally ask people to take their shoes off, but it's an old man. You show them respect by just saying like you're good men. You show deference. You basically reinforce them for doing what they're already doing, right? And so I think that men in general, I think they've done surveys on this, but like more men would rather be respected than loved if they had to pick one. More women would rather be loved than respected if they had to pick one. It's like 70, 30 either way. Which is kind of interesting. And so I think that it's not one thing, but it's more an outcome. It's more the set of behaviors that show respect. Something you said as well on this, if you want to add any part of it was said was making him feel important as well is the number one love drug, something like that. What are the behaviors specifically that you would guess would be looking at? And I see respect is a lot like that. You know, I mean, like if if someone shows you deference, like they're saying that your your ways of behaving supersede the rules of the establishment of the rules of your personal preferences, you basically take their preferences over yours, which in a different way of saying like they become more important, right? But that is functionally what happens, which is like someone comes in, let's say they're tired after day of work, rather than like unload all your shit on them, you allow them to maintain their current state and reinforce them for doing that. What else can I get you? And like, and again, this is not like a servant type thing. It's more that like I think that that is what a lot of men crave. Now to be clear, I think you have to also earn that. And so that's the that's the trade. I also think that there are times when because this goes both ways, right? Like if you have unconditional love, I think you also need to have unconditional respect. Now people get weird about that. But I think that like if we show up both ways, right? Now it would be less popular in current society to say like is there ever a time that a woman or man does not deserve love? Now deserve becomes a hard word. It's like do we deserve it just because we live because we breathe because we exist? I don't know. I I maintain zero of these premises, but I just say only that that we if we take it to its national and do it look that way. I think that a lot of relationships do come down to do serve the other person and do you allow them to do maximize the likelihood that they're goals. So I see support as minimizing the likelihood of failure. So someone supports you, which also means that has nothing to do with intentions. So I'm going to have bad intentions and support you. If they do things that it's like you like the people who hate on you, right? If they tell their audiences that they spend all this time working for about you, a percentage greater than zero will find you and like you. And so they promote you. What a gift, right? And so they support you. They minimize your likelihood of failure. And so you just have all these people who just advertise you. Yeah. For free, which is crazy. It's amazing. So anyways, if we see support is minimizing the likelihood of failure. And from a behavior perspective, like I think, you know, I'll just instead of saying most men, I'll just say me, I value Laila as a woman. And I value Laila as a partner. And I value and she has different behaviors that she does in both the settings that she's also my business partner. And so we have almost these parallel tracks and no one really sees like our married life much at all. But our business life is just us being business partners and we have a very good cadence on how we communicate about business. And we have lanes where I'm like, this is your call, like you know, this better than I do. And there's some things that she's like, this is obviously your call. Like what do you think? And we might weigh in on each other on on a normal marriage setting. I would say Laila and I have far more traditional gender roles. And I think part of that is like both of us, you know, luckily came from same Middle Eastern background. And so even though we're both born in the US for both first generation. And so we've adopted a lot of it to like very traditional views from that perspective. And so it's, you know, it's a lot of small things like Laila still likes making me dinner. Like Laila still, you know, she'll, you know, rub my back. I'm stressed. She'll, you know, she'll, it's little things like she'll clear plates or she'll just like, hey, I'm on my way to whatever do you want to drink or something. Like it's just very small stuff. Besides like taking care of all the details of everything. Besides that stuff. But I think above all else. So this is your one thing. I think every man's and now I'm going to go back to generalizing. I think every man was a woman who believes in them even more than they believe in themselves. And I think it's having someone who on your worst day is still like you fucking got this. You know, it's like your jack fucking kneel. You got this. And it's like if you're a wife, the person that you care and respect. And the thing is it's like this is where it's tough because I think there's a lot of men who are married to women that they don't respect. They love them but they don't respect them. And that's their problem. You can do whatever you want. That type of statement means a lot less from somebody to respect. But when the person you you are married to is something that you actually respect. When they say you fucking got this, it means a lot more. And so I think like I think at least Laila and I have a balance of love and respect both ways. And I think that it benefits both of us because it also goes back the other way. Or if I'm like, you're Laila fucking Ramosie. You got this. Like I'm not wearing it all. Right. And so I think that if we if we see marriage as a partnership, then it's do we have aligned goals? Because I think there there are unpopular, you know, let's take marriage out of it because there's a lot of taboos. Take a business partnership. There's a lot of reasons that I think people wrongfully end business partnerships. There are a few that are the right reasons. One of them is that we want different things. It's very hard to optimize a machine around two different outcomes. If you want to go and change the world and the other one doesn't want to leave the house, you will both compromise and both be probably pretty miserable. Again, that's a choice. You can do that. But I would say that would be a reason to, I would go back to marriage, but in a general business partnership, then that would be one where I'd say this probably this partnership shouldn't exist because we actually both are not supporting the other person's schools. We are maximized in likelihood of failure. But if we have aligned outcomes that we want, and then underneath of that, we believe in this way of doing things, these behaviors is how we want to achieve this outcome. Then the likelihood of conflict is significantly lower, and the likelihood that the person can support the other when they deviate from the pattern of behavior that we've said is the pattern that we want to espouse or that we want to live by. Then you basically have two guardrails on the bowling ball going towards the pins. If you only have one person that's holding it up, you only have one side, and then maybe it shoots off the other. But if both of you have a guardrail and you have an outcome, all you got to do is roll the ball, and if the guardrails are tight enough, you knock them down every time. I think that is what a good marriage looks like. I love all that. I've heard you say bits of those things, but never altogether. Every guest gets to a point in my podcast where they won't tell the truth about something. There's a line they won't cross. Here's my version of it for you. What's the one thing about money? You believe that you've never sat in a video. I have very much struggled to answer that question because I feel like I've scrubbed every surface of money that I've seen. You don't even mean how to store it, how to keep it, how to make it, how to multiply it, how to get people to give it to you, how to give it to other people. The upsides of money, the downsides of money. And a lot of it is just because money isn't even a thing. It's just a generalized means of exchange. That's really it. I don't think there's some deep dark secret of money. It's just a unit of measurement for us to measure value. That's why fundamentally, you don't even make money. You earn money by exchanging it by giving value and getting money as a monetary exchange for you giving something and then not giving you anything back so they have to give you money. If you do something for someone else and they provide value back, you don't need to exchange money because hopefully the value is equal. If the value is in equal, you have some value and the rest is made up with money. It's just the way that we balance accounts more than anything. Many of the talking heads that I see on the internet talking about money will use vague terminology and try to anthroporphize money in terms of trying to make it human or some sort of amorphous thing or they'll add mysticism to it or manifesting it or attracting it where there's energy. Money has a frequency. They make up all this stuff and I think it's because they cannot be clear with their language in observable terms and it is easier to confuse people with rhetoric in terms of words that sound good when set together than the reality of what money really is. And so because they cannot be clear about giving instructions because they are not good enough to do it, there's a quote that I was told a lot when I was younger, which is I don't agree with it. It was said by somebody that I don't particularly enjoy. But the individual said, if you cannot impress some of your intelligence, confuse them with your bullshit and I would say that, like I would say, I left my life in the exact opposite of that of do not try to impress people with your intelligence and also do not speak bullshit, just tell the truth, state the fact that it's the number one thing that we say in this marketing department above all else. But the thing is that it's the whole truth. That's the hard part. It's all the way down. It's six layers down truth, how true can this be? I'll give you a story to illustrate this example. There was a guy who had a hit a company that taught people how to trade stocks, which is like a little, okay, day trading is probably not the, and he's teaching day trading. And so he asked me and I was like, I was very skeptical of this conversation to begin with. Okay, I want to grow this business and I said, you have a big flashing Vegas lights above your head, which is, if you're so good at trading, why should I listen to you? And so he's like, well, I have $100 million in verified earnings from trading. And I was like, okay, this is, by the way, why I took my conversation. I was like, okay, that's fine. Then why are you selling courses on it instead of just like going making trades? And he's like, well, I want to make, I want to impact people on what I was like, they don't do it. No, you don't. What do you, like, please tell me the truth, because I will be able to help you if you tell me the truth. This went back and forth for a little bit. Until eventually he was like, I, I couldn't sleep. I lost weight, the amount of stress that trading it ruined my life. I couldn't find anyone to date because I had to trade 24 hours a day and it just ruined my health and my dad died at 50. And I just saw myself going to the same path and he was like, I've made enough and I don't want to keep doing this as my main thing. And I was like, that's the truth. So in your marketing, you need to tell the whole truth, which is, you need to say that, which is trading ruin my life. It's also the only thing I'm good at. And so if you want to make enough money to ruin your life, I can show you at least how I did it. I can't promise it's going to happen for you. And my hope is that you make enough that you stop doing this and you can do something else. That is a compelling marketing message. Is it believable? Much more. I would buy that because I-- Of course. 'Cause you believe it. Yeah. 'Cause you believe it, though. And so that's the thing. It's like, people look for these angles in marketing. But like the rarest stuff out there is the whole truth. Yeah. Do you want to do something really hard? You tell the whole thing. You tell the whole thing, the whole truth. And that is what will make compelling advertising. So the whole truth of money is more so that people who lack skills around money make up words that sound good, that mean nothing, and confuse many people. And as a result, they take action on things that do not result in any money making. And are confused as to why it doesn't work because their model of reality is flawed. And I would say that the vast majority of the content that they put out there, the reason I define terms so aggressively before I make statements or before I answer a question and it's like, well, are we agreeing on these terms? Because unless we agree on terms, the reason every agreement that makes any sense, the first part of every agreement, which means that we have communication that has stakes is a recital of fucking definitions. What does territories mean? What does non-compete mean? What are, like, we have to define these terms. And so it's funny because I was at a podcast the other day, and they were like, well, what do you mean by that? And they like try to throw it. I mean, I was like, I will define anything that I say because I stand by the words that I'm saying. Because these words for a reason, when someone asks a question and then I ask them, what do you mean by that? And then they get flustered. I'm like, well, then you're asking me to answer a question for a word that you cannot define. So how am I supposed to get you what you want if you don't even know what you're asking? I had an exchange recently with someone in this company that, not that recently, but that they made a request that I speak to them more politely or kinder. And I said, I'm super happy to. What does that mean to you? And so it ended up being that they wanted me to put a prefix before I made statements. So it's like, could you just ask these as questions rather than as statements? And so to be clear, if I do, if I say it as a question, instead of a statement, you will deem that kindness and playtas has been checked. And they're like, yes, I was like, don't. And literally, as soon as I started doing that, they were thrilled to tears. I was thrilled to see your suit because I want to communicate in the way that is your preference. If your preference doesn't cost me anything to do, then I'm happy to oblige, right? But the thing is that so many people will use these words and these words are used every day. It's politeness, empathetic energy, you know what I mean, vibe. Until we define what they mean, we're just making noise at each other, assuming the other person knows when we don't even know. When someone says, I'll know when I see it, that just means that you haven't defined it. If you want to see it more, tell them what you want to see. And that takes work because you have to think, I mean, Susan's so lazy, you're like, what makes why she lazy? What did she do to cause you to say that? And then eventually, it gets really down to like, she's pretty slow on Slack to respond to shit. Okay. Well, if you want, Susan to not be a lazy Susan, then we just need to say, hey, Susan, just respond to Slack faster and people start to stop thinking you're lazy. That's it? Great. It's just like, when you drill down, it's like you can become clear with your communication. So I would say that the vast majority of my communication around money, my attempt at all has been absolute truth and truth is I define it as an observable reality. And I try to use only terms that I can say that I can see with my eyes so that other people can also see what their eyes and do with their hands and feet. On our last podcast, I asked you what words you would leave to the world if all your work was erased from history. Some people liked what you had to say. I'll change the premise. Alex, you regularly talk to the 85-year-old version of yourself, Solomon, the one who's already lived everything and is at the very end. This question is for him and the answer is for you and everyone else, Solomon. What do you understand now that you couldn't see when you hadn't hit your number? Match and setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new groupie setting mist from Mabelie, New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all-day comfy grip. Try new groupie setting mist from Mabelie, New York. The easy answer to that question would be that it wasn't worth it, or you were going to accomplish it anyways because you're the person who is the accomplishment. Those would be the answers that people would applaud and be happy for, but for me, specific numbers did change my behavior. And so, I would say, outcomes, accomplishments, material success, it is meaningless if it changes nothing about your life. If it changes your day-to-day, then there was a purpose for it, and I tend to try to find my goals almost exclusively by what will this change about my life. And so, if it doesn't change my life, then I likely won't make it a goal of mine. And so, right now, I have, I don't have a tremendous amount of insight on it because I'm actively in pursuit of the things that I have wanted, and the things that I have achieved up to this point I also wanted, and in achieving them, the things that I thought would happen have. And so, I never set out on the journey that I have to somehow reach some magical Nirvana. I never expected that, and so that's not what's happened. I expected that I would become more useful and help more people as I gained more skills on my bridge, and that's been true. And I'm good with it. And so, I would say that I have not had a magical revelation. I would say it's been largely that the things that I hoped would be true came true. Do you suspect 85-year-old Alex will care so much about being valuable? Yes, I just think that value will change. It's just that the way that I will be valuable might change. That said, typically Arthur Brooks talks about this. Basically, there's these two mountains in life, where the first mountain is basically all based on fluid intelligence, it's just like how sharp are you, how good your memory? And a lot of achievements in basically the domains that require the most fluid intelligence like mathematics. And so, after you're like 30, no one has ever gotten a Nobel Prize. That's like all of it is in teens and 20s, which is like everyone's peak, and after that, they just go down. You just don't have the processing power. And then there's these different career paths that they peak later and later and later. And the career path that has the latest peak that basically doesn't really have an end is historians. And so, the people who have the largest contexts of just pattern recognition, and so you look at the Warren Buffets and their study years of huge amounts of data, and they synthesize decisions, right? And I would say that the role that I'm currently in and that I continue to move more in that direction of is translating things to the masses, which is powder addition, teaching, explaining, breaking things down. And those are skills that get better as you get older, not worse. And so I would see an 85 year old version of myself as having more proof than I currently do, having more track record. I would say that I'm very open to change. Like I think there's a lot of people who see snippets on the internet and make a caricature in their mind of what the rest of this person's reality is. And that's just the nature of the internet, it's short form and that's fine. But as a result, I will get questions that are like this, which is basically to this caricature of me, which is not reality. Like I have very strong beliefs loosely held. If there's new information, I'll change. If the day my kid is born, I want to do nothing else but hang out with the kid, I will do that. Why? Because I can't. Like I optimize for freedom for a long period of time, which is like how can I maximize my optionality? I do think that there are times when you choose to actively go against optionality in order to make commitments to have dependencies, right? Like having a family removes optionality, but I don't see that as bad. It's it. You want to like, you want to have options, but not to always just have options. You want to be able to have options so that you can select the option that you want. And so I think this is probably one of the big issues that this might be the most valuable piece of the podcast for young people. So let me just make this point. Right now, I would say the youth of at least the Western world is obsessed with the idea of independence, freedom, and optionality. They want to do it their way and have all options open. They never want to get tied down. They don't want to commit to a career. They don't want to commit to anything. It's because like, I don't know if something's going to change. But the optionality that we earn, it's like just making a ton of money, but never spending it. And if you die at the end of your life with a big pile of money, never having spent it, you wasted your life. It's like the ant that saves for winter and saves its entire life, but never actually eats this big breadcrumb. And then they're gone. And so options are like money, which is that the only time that they have values when they are spent, when they are used. And so in the short term, you'll have those options. But you need to like, the part of growing up is making commitments, which is eliminating alternatives, which means you make, you walk through and weigh doors, knowing that you can't walk back. And like, I see that as a big sign of maturity. As you've taken these steps because you've decided, and decadering, right, the loudness to cut off, you cut off options, because you say this is more meaningful to me. And it's because people are unwilling to make trades. Like all decisions, like, there are no solutions, there are only trade-offs. So like, you will sacrifice novelty for loyalty when you get married. That's a trade. And at some point, it will be worth it more for you to have loyalty, the novelty in your life, right? And so there are many trades like this that we have to make. But the ultimate trade is the one that we don't make when you basically get neither thing that you want, because you sit on the sideline with your big stack of money, your big stack of options, never having to use them. Because some doors also do close, because at a certain point, you do lose options by not committing. Right. If you were a girl and you want to wait for your options, if you're 60, the likely that you're going to be able to have kids is very low. If you didn't have kids by the time you're 60, I'm using that as an extreme example here, because I don't feel like dealing with it, then you're probably not going to have kids. And it's because that option is now gone for you. And so some options have an expiration date on them. And so sometimes we just have to decide and realize that we will not get everything alive. And I think that is probably one of the biggest things, I would say, like, what has changed about me from a maturity perspective is realizing that you cannot have it all, like, very viscerally. Like, if you want a house that has a mountain view and is on the beach and is also secluded, but walking distance from grocery stores and shops and shopping, you can't, because you can't be in the mountains and then also have the shopping malls and all that stuff. And you can't be on the beach, but also have the mountain view. It doesn't, like, these things sit separately. And if you want to also have the beach, but also have skiing, like, there is no place that has those things. And so we want everything in our unwilling to sacrifice anything as a result, get nothing. And I would say that's probably the biggest thing that has changed as I've gotten older is that I'm willing to make trades. Beautiful. Well, everyone, this has been your guest, Alex, or mostly. This is the Jack Neal podcast. Where can people find you? The internet. Search my name. You can find whatever you want. I've got books. You can read them. They're free. If you want a hard copy, they're obviously not free, but the digital ones are free. I've got lots of courses on my side too. They're also free. You can just watch them. You don't have to opt in. I've got full stuff on the YouTubes, and I've got a podcast on my own and you're welcome to check it out. The game. Cool. Appreciate it. Beautiful. Thank you. Imagine setting your makeup. Then forgetting. It's even theirs. Meet new grippy setting mist from Maybelline, New York. Try new, groupy setting mist from Mavily New York. Maybe it's Maybelline.