The Reason You're Not Successful Ep 411

Alex Hormozi discusses the necessity of embracing 'boring work' and the 'violence of action' to generate business growth through his personal stories and marketing insights. He emphasizes the importance of volume, skill, and time (v x s x d) in achieving success and highlights the four primary activities to acquire new clients: reaching out to known contacts, posting to known audiences, connecting with strangers, and advertising. Hormozi shares anecdotes, including his flyer distribution and content creation experiences, to illustrate the underestimation of effort required for significant outcomes. He argues that a high level of effort, even in repetitive tasks, builds skill and leads to compounding effects over time, ultimately increasing business throughput. Hormozi, the owner of acquisition.com with a portfolio generating $85 million annually, concludes by encouraging more action and effort to achieve desired results in business.

• Emphasizes the importance of doing the "boring work" in marketing and lead generation.
• Mentions the concept of "violence is the answer" as a metaphor for aggressive action in achieving goals.
• Asserts that increasing activity will result in more gains.
• Highlights the four key activities that generate business: reaching out to known contacts, posting to a known audience, reaching out to unknown contacts one on one, and advertising.
• Introduces the equation "v times s times d" (volume times skill times duration) as a flywheel for generating more business outcomes.

"The first thing is there's a saying in our community called do the boring work. And a lot of times we don't confront the work that must be done because it's not exciting or sexy and it feels somehow like it's beneath us."

This quote underscores the common avoidance of mundane tasks in marketing, which are essential but often neglected due to their perceived lack of excitement.

"Violence is the answer. Sometimes when you have this outcome that you must achieve in your life because of the goals and insecurities that we have set upon ourselves, that just being violent with the level of activity that we are doing will ultimately get us much closer than the nuances and the skill that sometimes we like to project and pretend matter more than just physically doing a sheer higher volume of work."

This quote metaphorically suggests that intense and aggressive effort, rather than finesse or skill, can be more effective in achieving marketing goals.

"If you do more than you are doing right now, you will get more than you currently have. And that is a promise."

This quote is a motivational statement asserting that increased effort leads to increased results.

"Do what matters most first... there are only four activities that will actually generate more business for you, period... reaching out to people you know, posting to an audience that you know, reaching out to people who you don't know one on one, and advertising."

This quote identifies the four essential activities for business growth and emphasizes prioritizing these tasks.

"So volume times skill times time. And this is kind of a flywheel that feeds itself... the more volume to do, the better you are at it. And the longer you do it, the more throughput you will ultimately have."

This quote introduces and explains the equation for success in lead generation, highlighting the importance of consistent effort, skill improvement, and persistence.

• Describes a virtuous cycle where increased activity leads to improved skills, which in turn leads to more activity and enjoyment.
• Discusses the compounding effects of consistent marketing efforts over time.
• Suggests that as one gets better at a task, they will engage in it for longer, leading to even greater compounded results.

"The more we do, the better we get. The better we get, the more we do because we like it. Because we're better at it, right? And the longer we do something, the better we get. The better we get. The longer we do it, the longer we do it, the more of what we did compounds on itself."

This quote encapsulates the principle that practice and persistence in marketing efforts lead to compounding benefits over time, reinforcing the importance of consistent action and skill development.

• Volume is a critical factor in achieving success in various endeavors.
• Doing more increases visibility and opportunities for compounding effects.
• Volume, skill, and time are interrelated variables that feed each other, starting with action.
• In business and fitness, a common mistake is underestimating the necessary volume to see results.

"And so, in this way, each of these three variables, volume, skill, and time, feed each other. But it all starts with doing."

This quote emphasizes the interconnectedness of volume, skill, and time, highlighting the importance of taking action as the starting point for success.

• The speaker shares an anecdote from when they started their gym, highlighting the importance of testing at scale.
• A friend's advice revealed the speaker's initial flyer distribution was insufficient for meaningful results.
• The friend's successful approach involved testing with 5000 flyers and scaling up to 100,000 monthly, achieving a significant return rate.

"I don't even test for less than 5000 flyers."

This quote from the speaker's friend illustrates the concept of testing marketing strategies at a significant scale to gather reliable data and achieve better results.

• In fitness, people often fail to see desired results due to insufficient training volume.
• The speaker suggests increasing the number of sets significantly to achieve muscle growth.
• The idea that more effort leads to more visible results is reinforced.

"Try twelve sets six days a week, and I guarantee your arms will grow."

This quote provides a specific recommendation for increasing workout volume to achieve muscle growth, exemplifying the broader principle that effort correlates with results.

• The speaker discusses another example with a paid ads agency owner struggling to scale lead flow.
• The agency owner's content output was revealed to be much lower than what the speaker's company was implementing.
• The speaker's creative department was testing 30 pieces every three days, highlighting the underestimated level of output required for success.

"We're testing 30 pieces every three days."

This quote reveals the speaker's aggressive approach to content testing in paid advertising, suggesting that higher volume can lead to better performance and scalability.

• Many people underestimate the amount of work needed to achieve financial success.
• Understanding the necessary level of output can be a game-changer, especially for those starting out or looking to expand into new channels.
• The speaker aims to adjust the listener's perception of the volume required to make money.

"Most people dramatically underestimate how much work it takes to make money."

This quote captures the core message that achieving financial success often requires a higher level of effort and output than most people anticipate.

• In the initial stages, one must compensate for low skill levels with high volume of work to kickstart the learning and compounding process.
• A high level of effort is required to achieve the desired outcomes and to set the compounding process in motion.
• Extraordinary volume of work is necessary to learn the skill and begin the compounding process for throughput or outcome.

"need to do a lot more because your s in that equation, your skill level is low and you have no time that has compounded for you. So you must compensate with extraordinary volume so that you can learn the skill and then begin the compounding process that will give you the throughput or outcome that you desire."

This quote emphasizes the need for a significant amount of effort when one's skill level is low and there has been no prior compounding of experience. It suggests that a high volume of work is crucial to learn and improve skills, which will eventually lead to desired outcomes.

• Grant's content strategy does not rely on a specific framework but on taking massive action and striving for omnipresence.
• Grant posts frequently on social media platforms, significantly more than the speaker, which contributes to his success.
• The speaker realized the importance of increasing their own content frequency to grow their platform.

"And he said that he wasn't saying it in a pejorative way. He meant it genuinely. He's like, dude. He's like, we just take massive action. He's like, we just try and be omnipresent."

The quote highlights Grant's genuine belief in the power of taking massive action and being omnipresent as a content strategy. It suggests that success in content creation is not about following a set framework but about being actively present and prolific.

• The speaker experienced a substantial increase in organic growth after increasing their content output frequency.
• The increase in effort led to improved skills, and the additional content created a synergistic effect, enhancing overall growth.
• The concept of volume is nuanced, involving not just quantity but also the level of effort.

"My growth organically 40 x from a seven x increase in effort. So there is a multiplicative effect here because sure, we did more, but we got better at the doing."

This quote illustrates the speaker's experience of achieving a disproportionate increase in growth as a result of increased effort. It demonstrates that the benefits of increased content production are not linear but multiplicative, as improvement in execution also occurs.

• The speaker acknowledges that while quality often trumps quantity, a combination of both leads to the best results.
• A significant amount of time invested in creating high-quality content can lead to successful outcomes.
• The speaker's most successful video required extensive preparation and effort, reinforcing the value of investing time in quality.

"And the thing is, and I realized that quality most times trumps quantity, right? But quality and quantity trumps just quantity, right? Or just quality."

The quote conveys the speaker's understanding that while quality is crucial, the combination of both quality and quantity is superior to either alone. It suggests that for content to be successful, it must be well-crafted and produced in sufficient volume.

• Re-evaluating and redoing work can lead to improvements in quality and skill.
• The process of working diligently on content or tasks serves as a means to develop one's character.
• The ultimate reward of hard work is not the material success but the personal growth and betterment achieved.

"your work works on you more than you work on it. The thing we are developing is our character, because that's the ultimate prize that we get at the end of the race, right?"

This quote emphasizes the transformative power of work on an individual's character. It suggests that the true value of work lies in the personal development it fosters, which is considered the ultimate reward.

• The importance of putting in a high level of effort and commitment is emphasized.
• The speaker suggests that success requires more than the average effort.
• The difference between good and great outcomes is often due to the extra effort put in.

"And so that's why the level of effort and giving a shit for lack of better term and really working like violence is the answer."

This quote highlights the speaker's belief that intense dedication and effort are crucial for achieving significant results.

• The speaker shares their personal experience with writing and editing a book.
• Writing the book took two weeks, but the editing process took a year.
• The speaker is currently on the fifth version of their second book.

"It took me two weeks to write it, took me a year to edit it."

This quote illustrates the disparity between the time taken to create a draft and the extensive effort required to refine it through editing.

• The speaker reflects on the disproportionate relationship between effort and outcome.
• A small increase in effort can lead to a significantly larger improvement in results.
• The concept that most things, including products and businesses, do not meet high standards due to insufficient effort.

"But you don't realize the difference between an eight and a ten might be five times the work, but also the difference between an eight and a ten might be 100 times the outcome."

The speaker explains that a small increase in effort can exponentially increase the quality of the outcome, making the additional work worthwhile.

• The speaker recounts a personal anecdote from their time as a legal intern.
• A senior lawyer criticized the speaker's understanding of what real work entails.
• Over time, the speaker realized the importance of focus, eliminating distractions, and consistent practice.

"You don't even know how to work."

This quote conveys a pivotal moment for the speaker, where they were challenged on their understanding of work ethic and effectiveness.

• The speaker introduces the VST framework: Volume, Skill, and Time.
• These three elements are said to work together multiplicatively to increase productivity and success.
• The speaker encourages increasing the volume of work as a means to improve and achieve goals.

"And so in that way, the v, the s and the t, the volume, the skill and the time work on each other and then yield you a higher throughput because they are multiplicative, not additive."

This quote explains how the interaction between volume, skill, and time can lead to a greater overall output.

• The speaker, Alex Mosey, owns acquisition.com and has a substantial annual portfolio revenue.
• The speaker emphasizes the need to do more work to achieve desired outcomes and has no products to sell.

"Our portfolio does about $85 million a year, and I have nothing to sell you."

The speaker provides their credentials and assures the audience that their advice is not a precursor to a sales pitch.