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Podcast

If You Want 2026 to Be the Best Year of Your Life, Listen to This Podcast | Ep 928

The Game with Alex Hormozi

Source ↗ ← All highlights
  • Use Time And Pain To Pull Your Future
    • If you’re broke, your main asset is time and willingness to endure pain to pull the future toward you.
    • Alex frames success as brutal, repetitive work that compounds into skill and wealth over years. (Time 0:00:00)
  • Say “My Fault” And Reclaim Power
    • Own every failing: say “my fault” and make yourself the source of change.
    • Stop casting blame — wherever you point blame you also point away your power to improve. (Time 0:14:04)
  • Audience Pushback Demonstrates Victim Trap
    • Alex describes a woman at a conference who listed six reasons something wouldn’t work, illustrating a victim mindset.
    • He used that to show being ‘99% right but 100% wrong’ if you stay in the victim frame. (Time 0:21:43)
  • Drop ‘Because’ Stories, Change Behavior
    • Stop blaming past labels; define current behaviors, gather evidence, and choose actions that serve future goals.
    • Replace ‘because’ stories with present actions you can change today. (Time 0:23:41)
  • Spend Early Gains On Skills And Experiments
    • Spend most early excess capital on learning useful skills and experiments, not lifestyle upgrades or premature passive bets.
    • Treat failed bets as paid-for experience points that raise your level. (Time 0:25:59)
  • Make Small Bets To Buy Experience
    • Expect startup experiments to cost money; use small bets to buy experience and iterate quickly.
    • Lower barriers today make experimentation cheaper, but you still must cross the bar with action. (Time 0:28:18)
  • Tools Change Costs, Not Foundations
    • Today’s tools lower startup costs, but core foundations—ownership, accountability, repetition—still matter more than flashy shortcuts.
    • You must still accept responsibility and grind to reach compounding success. (Time 0:28:35)
  • Start By Selling Value You Don’t Own
    • Sell value: trade something valuable for money, start by selling others’ products or simple services to learn selling mechanics.
    • Affiliate/referral models let you practice sales with fewer upfront costs. (Time 0:29:59)
  • Buy Skills Early; Buy Time Later
    • Learn one skill deeply, then stack complementary skills and buy other people’s time once you earn excess income.
    • Skills compound: sales plus marketing plus product drastically expand options. (Time 0:31:04)
  • First Dollar At A Pizza Table
    • Alex sold his first nutrition consult at a pizza place and got paid $200 by surprise.
    • That first-dollar moment taught him the value of being useful and showing authority in a niche. (Time 0:32:24)
  • Be The Best Student To Accelerate Learning
    • To speed learning, be the best student: ask mentors for status, do the work they advise, and give something in return.
    • Use mastermind rooms to accelerate by avoiding others’ early mistakes. (Time 0:35:19)
  • Measure Progress By Skills, Not Dollars
    • The first dollar matters psychologically but measure progress by skills gained rather than immediate cash amounts.
    • Focus on acquiring marketable competencies; money will follow as skills compound. (Time 0:36:37)
  • Use Whatever Fuel Gets You Moving
    • Use negative emotions (anger, shame) as fuel when needed — don’t wait for passion to start taking action.
    • Do the work even when intentions feel impure; outcomes depend on actions not motives. (Time 0:37:48)
  • Future-Pace Pain To Spark Action
    • Future-pace pain: imagine the worse future outcome if you stay the same to make present discomfort feel preferable.
    • Use catastrophizing the alternative as a motivational tool to choose disciplined action. (Time 0:41:03)
  • Trade Youth Energy For Experience Points
    • In your 20s, trade energy for experience: normalize long focused workweeks and learn through repetitions.
    • Be patient with outputs, obsessive with inputs, and expect to compound skills fast by volume. (Time 0:48:25)
  • Live Below Means, Invest In Skills
    • Live like you plan to win: cut spending hard, save aggressively, then invest excess into skill-building.
    • Wait 36 months while being impatient with inputs and patient with outputs. (Time 0:53:50)
  • Make Future Pain Scarier Than Present Sacrifice
    • To change, make the future pain of staying the same feel worse than present sacrifice; use concrete images to compel action.
    • Contemplate the social consequences you prefer and choose the trade that increases goal probability. (Time 0:54:35)
  • Master Sales Through Volume And Feedback
    • Learn high-volume sales skills: door knocking, cold calling, or frequent in-person conversations build transferable competency.
    • Volume plus feedback = skill; practice until behavior becomes automatic. (Time 0:55:51)
  • Deliberate Iteration: Copy Top-Performing Elements
    • Do high-volume deliberate practice: create checklists, review top performers, copy what works and remove what’s failing.
    • Iterate by studying top results and doing more of those features in each repetition. (Time 0:56:27)
  • Use Small Rituals To Bring Energy To Calls
    • Use high-energy rituals to improve performance before interactions (e.g., bounce briefly to energize sales calls).
    • Tone and rapport before calls boost attendance and conversion; inject positive energy intentionally. (Time 0:58:15)
  • Mistakes Are Experience Points, Not Stigma
    • Being inexperienced is not stupidity: mistakes are expected and necessary repetitions toward mastery.
    • Rapidly make errors, extract lessons, and iterate so experience points accumulate into competence. (Time 1:02:23)
  • Action Alleviates Anxiety — Do More Inputs
    • When anxious about output speed, use action to cope: action alleviates anxiety and accelerates learning.
    • Replace rumination with measurable inputs you can control each day. (Time 1:04:42)
  • Patient Outputs, Impatient Inputs
    • Winners are patient with outputs but furious with inputs: focus on doing the work, not obsessing over immediate results.
    • Action alleviates anxiety — use inputs as your coping mechanism for impatience. (Time 1:09:30)
  • Use Data Over Opinions To Improve
    • Use data to learn faster: compare top vs bottom outputs and replicate their shared features repeatedly.
    • Let metrics and footage guide improvements in ads, calls, and product features. (Time 1:09:56)
  • Find And Fix Your Current Constraint
    • Map your business stage and constraints using a scaling roadmap to spot your biggest bottleneck.
    • Solve the current constraint before chasing unrelated growth hacks. (Time 1:13:04)
  • Physical Fitness Amplifies Every Outcome
    • Improving looks and fitness raises outcomes across dating, pay, promotion, and confidence.
    • Getting in shape early costs time, not money — buy that advantage while young. (Time 1:14:15)
  • Go To Bed On Time To Win
    • Sleep on time: set alarms to go to bed and prioritize rest as a competitive advantage.
    • Getting in shape costs time not money; do it now while you have fewer responsibilities. (Time 1:14:25)
  • Skip Nightlife During High-Intensity Seasons
    • Avoid social drinking and late nights while pushing for big goals; dodging nightclubs increases odds of success.
    • Sleep earlier and keep consistent routines during high-intensity growth seasons. (Time 1:18:02)
  • Be Humble To Learn Faster
    • Humble yourself to learn from those ahead; status is earned by results not posturing.
    • Spend ego points to become the biggest success story in any program you join. (Time 1:20:17)
  • Swap Labels For Practice (20-Hour Rule)
    • Replace identity labels (‘I’m bad at math’) with actions and practice to rewire capability.
    • Spend deliberate hours (e.g., 20) to learn a new skill before quitting prematurely. (Time 1:22:06)
  • Future-You Is The Best Opinion Filter
    • People value opinions of those close to them, but those opinions usually reflect others’ preferences and risk aversion.
    • Use future-you as the final litmus test, not family or friends who want different comfortable outcomes. (Time 1:24:12)
  • Keep Friends Who Raise Your Ceiling
    • Choose friends who increase your probability of hitting goals; cut the rest ruthlessly.
    • Ask: does this person make my goal more likely? If not, remove them. (Time 1:26:41)
  • Commit By Eliminating Alternatives
    • Eliminate distractions, pick one big thing, and commit by removing alternatives; commitment equals elimination of options.
    • Make the hard trade now to create future optionality and fewer regrets later. (Time 1:27:06)
  • Invest Savings In Yourself Continuously
    • Invest in yourself repeatedly until you can’t spend it all; reinvest savings into education and skill acquisition.
    • Treat skill-building as buying future time and higher earning power. (Time 1:28:37)
  • Swing For The Fences — Big Bets Pay Off
    • You only need to win once: take bold experiments because the long-tailed payoff can outsize many small wins.
    • Treat failures as paid experiments that increase future hit probability. (Time 1:31:44)
  • Build Confidence By Building Evidence
    • Confidence is evidence-based, not feeling-based: build confidence by stacking proof through repetition.
    • Build evidence (skills, results) first; confidence will follow as a prediction of repeat outcomes. (Time 1:32:26)
  • Make Your Phone Hard To Distract You
    • Reduce phone friction: grayscale, disable notifications, use Do Not Disturb to protect deep work.
    • Make interruptions hard and focus the default environment for sustained output. (Time 1:34:08)
  • Delay Gratification To Unlock Long-Term Wins
    • Learn to delay gratification: the meta-skill that enables outsized long-term gains.
    • Stick through the boring early period until feedback loops produce outsized reinforcement. (Time 1:34:59)
  • Balance Is Seasonal, Not Instant
    • Balance is seasonal, not constant: accept seasons of imbalance to compound advantage.
    • Work intensely now; rest later — trade concentrated seasons of effort for long-term freedom. (Time 1:40:03)
  • When It Works, Hit The Gas
    • To accelerate growth, when something starts working, double down immediately before competitors replicate it.
    • Move faster than imitators; urgency protects early advantages. (Time 1:40:14)
  • Build A Failure Resume, Then Win Once
    • Build a failure resume intentionally: failing cheaply and often increases eventual success probability.
    • Each failure improves future bets; play more experiments to reach a single big win. (Time 1:43:51)
  • Turn ‘Demons’ Into Skill Deficits
    • Translate ‘demons’ into skill gaps: define the exact behaviors, gather evidence, then fix the utility problem.
    • Use logic, evidence, utility as a three-step framework to solve behavioral issues. (Time 1:43:55)
  • Pay Down Ignorance Debt First
    • Pay down ignorance debt by investing in education and mentors; treat learning as the best compound investment.
    • Buy skills early — they compound and multiply your future earning power. (Time 1:49:14)
  • Remove Quitting From The Menu
    • Decide not to quit: remove quitting as an option and persistence becomes the default path to win.
    • The last person standing usually wins; don’t let quitting be your choice. (Time 1:56:53)
  • First Sales Call Mistake Turned Lesson
    • Alex’s first sales consult ended with the prospect saying she’d return with a credit card, and he thought he had closed it.
    • He learned selling by watching others, iterating, and getting many repetitions until he improved. (Time 2:00:54)
  • Outwork Competitors By Doubling Inputs
    • To beat competitors, do more input (calls, reps) than they do — double or triple their volume until you surpass them.
    • Measure leading metrics (calls, reps), not lagging outputs (sales) to control progress. (Time 2:03:23)
  • Play The Infinite Game — Outlast Rivals
    • Adopt an infinite-game mindset: staying in the game (never quitting) makes you the long-run winner.
    • Define winning as leaving nothing in the tank each day rather than a single finite victory. (Time 2:09:03)
  • Track Inputs Not Just Outputs
    • Measure and improve inputs: track activities (calls, calories, hours) because you can control them; outputs follow.
    • If you do the right inputs every day, on a long enough horizon the outputs will match. (Time 2:12:05)
  • Listen To People Closer To Your Goals
    • If your reference group lacks the life you want, ignore their advice and model people who already have your goals.
    • Your friends’ opinions reflect their preferences, not objective truth — choose whose voice you heed. (Time 2:14:54)
  • Reframe Trauma As Fixable Behavior
    • Trauma is a behavior-changing stimulus; reframe past events as skill gaps to be fixed, not permanent identity labels.
    • Define behaviors precisely, gather evidence, then solve utility (who cares?) relative to your goals. (Time 2:17:56)
  • Trade Lengthy Routines For Work Hours
    • Cut long morning rituals that consume hours; replace them with work sessions to produce tangible progress.
    • Prioritize actions that directly move your goals rather than routines that make you feel prepared. (Time 2:25:32)
  • Invest Your 20s In Skills, Not Comfort
    • Your 20s are for building skills; trade present comfort for future optionality by compounding learning early.
    • Start now — the second-best time is today; don’t treat age as an excuse to delay. (Time 2:29:24)
  • Make Product So Good It Markets Itself
    • Focus on product and brand: great product plus reputation reduces the need for constant marketing and unlocks compounding sales.
    • Spend more time making the product exceptional; distribution becomes easier once it’s too good to fail. (Time 2:34:09)
  • Keep Future-Focused Friends Only
    • Keep friends who talk about the future; drop those who only reminisce about the past.
    • Future-focused friends increase your likelihood of growth; past-focused friends anchor stagnation. (Time 2:46:25)
  • Vote With Your Time And Money
    • Eliminate distractions, automate investing, and make visible daily commitments to your goals.
    • Vote with your dollars and calendar; what you spend reveals who you are becoming. (Time 2:53:35)
  • Practical First Steps For The Very Broke
    • If you’re starting out, stop eating out, buy discount groceries, attend only free events, pick higher-paying jobs, and outwork the hardest worker.
    • Wait 36 months: be patient with outputs, ruthless with inputs and daily disciplines. (Time 2:57:36)
  • Pay In Full With Time Or Skill To Buy Future Help
    • Invest in learning even before you have the full business — Alex paid for rooms he couldn’t yet exploit to accelerate the right start.
    • When you can’t pay money, pay with your skill: do the entire favor as if they were a paying customer (train their team, write their scripts).
    • Treat favors like purchases so people reciprocate and you’ll build a rolodex of people you can call when you need help.
    • Use barter and reciprocal favors to access complementary skills (webinars, ads, funnels) without cash.
    • Focus on buying access to what exists (declarative knowledge) and then trade to acquire procedural know-how from specialists. (Time 5:26:20)
  • Buy Time Like A Rich Person Buy Stuff Like A Poor Person
    • Alex warns that chasing status early (watches, cars, houses) impresses people below you, not those above you.
    • To impress richer people, outwork them; to impress poorer people, you outspend them.
    • Status inflation adds zeros over time, but it doesn’t change who respects you.
    • Instead of buying status, prioritize buying time (outsourcing, paying for learning or leverage) while keeping material spending modest.
    • Commit earned income to skill and time investments to accelerate long-term progress rather than short-term signals. (Time 5:32:11)
  • Why Aiming For A Million Changes Your Solution Set
    • Hitting $100k usually forces people to trade time for money (hourly wage or salary), which makes it hard to scale.
    • Thinking bigger (a million or $10M) forces you to use different tools and develop different skills, letting you achieve far more in less time.
    • Money itself is neutral — “just potential energy” or “bottled time” — and can be used for harm or huge good depending on intent.
    • Fear of making money is really fear of power and its potential misuse; if your goal is to help others, money amplifies your impact.
    • Shift your identity from loving money to loving the process of making money and the skills that enable it. (Time 5:44:48)
  • Focus Is Saying No To Almost Everything
    • Alex defines focus not as an amorphous trait but as the number of things you say no to.
    • The most focused person says yes to one thing and no to literally everything else.
    • Lack of focus spreads effort thin (e.g., nine businesses) and prevents meaningful progress toward asset-building.
    • Building assets that generate passive income requires concentrated time and focus up front, not scattered side projects.
    • Focus scales outcomes massively — the difference between rich and poor can be 100x, not 2x. (Time 5:52:27)