3 Signs You’re Going to Be a Successful Entrepreneur | Ep 997

**Alex Hormozi** (0:00)
So there's three reasons that entrepreneurs do not succeed that are not technical. So what I mean is this, I get questions a lot about tactics, and I have tons of tactics, and I've walked through lots of videos, and you can watch the other videos for that stuff. But when I talk to entrepreneurs, and I talk to plenty of them, because we have people come out every single week here in Vegas, and this is to be clear, not small entrepreneurs. So we're talking, you know, 1 million, 10 million, 50 million, that's kind of the range of the people who come through our headquarters. So legit businesses, right? The things that limit them are not the tactics they seek. And so there are 3 things that are required to be super successful in any business. And the reason that I think most people cannot do it is because they are anti-human. So hear me out. And also when you see some of these really successful CEOs and billionaires and whatnot, and they come off almost robotic, I don't think they started that way. I mean, in fact, sometimes if you look at some earlier videos, they seem more robotic there than I do now. It's not just on purpose. But the issue is this, is that we as humans want new stuff. We want it now, and we want it to be easy. And those 3 things are actually the antithesis of what is required in order to be successful in business.
We need to not do new stuff, right? We need to keep doing the old stuff. We need to not pursue shiny objects, right? That's what focus is.
We have to be willing to delay gratification and not get it now, but be willing to work now, get no reward, and hope that we will get something later.
And when we fail, which we inevitably will, along the way, we have to be willing to continue and not question our original, is it worth it to begin this pursuit? And so when you back that out, the three I would say character traits, which would just say behavior patterns, how you behave in a number of different conditions, are focus, you have to be able to do one thing, patience, you have to do it for a long period of time, and frustration tolerance. You have to be willing to get kicks in the nuts, or the face, or whatever, the gonads, there you go. That's co-ed, for extended periods of time. And so I say these things because when I talk to entrepreneurs, they always seek the tactics. But I have decent pattern recognition at this point. I've talked to a lot of entrepreneurs. And I can usually guess, I'd say what range of entrepreneur they are, by how they behave.
And that's because all businesses can get very big. Not all entrepreneurs can get very big.
And it's because they can't stay focused, they are impatient, they quit too easily.
And that means that you do not lack tactics, you lack character.
And I find that to be really interesting. And so the question then comes, okay, well, if that's what's required, and I don't think anyone's going to really argue with me on this. Like, yes, I should be more focused. Yes, I should be more patient. Yes, I should be more long suffering, enduring, being able to continue when things become frustrating. I don't think anyone's really going to fight me on this. So the question is, how do you do it? And so I think, taking a different perspective of, if I were the worst or the most dangerous competitor, somebody who I would not want to compete against, what would that person do in my specific situation? And interestingly, when you, I think it's called third-party bias, there's some fancy psychological term. But basically, when you are not trying to live your life through your own eyes, and you try and give someone else advice, you give way better advice than you follow for yourself. And so, like, why is this? And I think this is called the Solomon Paradox. There we go. But we give better advice than we adhere to because we do not have an emotional tie to the situation. And I think that that is kind of that robotic thing that I was referencing earlier, which is like, as much as Hollywood and the movies always try to make it seem like, you know, the humans against the robots, and then the humans somehow pull it out in the end. It's like, no, like, try have humans go against a robot in chess and humans lose literally every time. And I would imagine that in cockpits for, you know, airplanes, like, humans will lose against AI fighter planes, right? Like, it's not reality to think that we're going to win. Like, we do a memory contest, computers win, right? And so the idea is that the things that it takes to be successful in business does not necessarily make you more human. And so I think that is kind of like an interesting notion. We have to behave more logically. And I would say this, if your emotions encourage you to take an action, and that action is aligned with logic, then great. But it's not the emotion that caused it to work. It's just that the logic was out and it was just also aligned with how you felt. But being able to make the correct decision independent of how you feel, I think is where it becomes more difficult. And so this is the kind of tactic that I'll share with you, which is embracing emotional discomfort and not making the fact that you were uncomfortable, in pain, frustrated, have this feeling, this itch to take action on something because you feel bad, because you want to change how you feel, you feel like you need to change your business, and that in changing your business, it's going to change how you feel on the inside. Now, you taking action oftentimes does alleviate anxiety, but it doesn't mean that the action was still correct because it might take time for us, or for that to play out, right? And so, while you're in it, you feel better, but then you look back at the carnage or the rubble of you breaking your business yet again and shifting your team's focus and say, well, they said it was this priority last week, and then the next week, it's this next priority, right? Is that you're constantly whiplashing everyone, including your customers, which more realistically looks like very confused messaging and marketing, which means that you stand for nothing because no, no is because you change your mind all the time, right? And so, and that's because you read an article, or you watch a video, or whatever, and it's like, actually, this is the most important thing. And so, you have to be able to stick with things for extended periods of time and not start new projects. So, you can see things through, because fundamentally, like all great things come from doing more work in a very narrow place that other people are willing to do.