If you want 2026 to be the best year of your life, listen to this podcast | Ep 928

**Alex Hormozi** (0:00)
I've put together the most valuable lessons that have helped me achieve more out of my life. Hopefully, they're useful for you too. Enjoy. This is brutally honest advice for poor people. I've been there. I had to fucking pay rent. Every night, I would think if I didn't wake up tomorrow, I would be okay with it. And I don't want that for anybody. I get it.
I was just going through all these old files yesterday, and I saw a goal that I had written, which was to make $10,000 a month income. And so, it was 13 years ago, and so like, I viscerally remember what that was like. And I know I was in so much pain during that time that I get it. And so like, the reason we make this stuff is because I've been there, and I don't want that for anybody. You know, like, I missed my 20s. Like, I didn't have them, as people traditionally say it. You know, like, it's weird, because in today's like internet culture, like, I started my first brick and mortar business, like store front. I was 23 Like, I didn't know shit about fuck. Like, I knew nothing. And like, I didn't know you could hire employees. Like, it wasn't a thought. Like, I didn't know anything. And so, like, I cleaned, I did the billing, I did the sales, I taught the sessions. Like, I fixed the equipment. Like, I did everything. Because I didn't know you could, and I didn't know, and I didn't have the money, frankly, to afford anything else. And so, I get it. Like, I get, I get, I get it. But to get out of that, you have to take steps. And the first step is saying that it's my fault. The second step is that you have to use what you have. And so, in the beginning, I would, I would, you know, I was reading the self-help books and all this stuff, and none of them really hit for me, because a lot of it was like power of positive thinking, and like affirmations, and like all this stuff. And the reason I make the cut that I do now, which has now almost become like a shtick, countering that, is because it didn't work for me, and I'm not trying to speak to everybody. If that works for you, then like, awesome. Like, awesome. People mistake me saying, this is what worked for me, with this is what I think everyone should do. And it couldn't be further from the truth. I'm saying if what you have been doing hasn't been working, then consider this. Which is that, like, I remember, because I just read this yesterday. The intro in the book, I say, I wish I could tell you that the reason I was able to make it out of the gym was because I was like really passionate about changing people's lives, and I loved fitness, and I loved my clients' faces when they would light up and they'd step on the scale and they'd lose weight, they'd be able to fit in their high school clothes again. It was none of that. It was just the sheer anger that I had, but the idea of being wrong, and having the people back home be right about everything. And I just couldn't, I couldn't, I mean, I still can barely tolerate it. And so, I mean, I took, in some ways, and this isn't a, I don't know if woe is me is the right term, but like, I had an otherwise very successful career. Like, I was in a white collar job, and sometimes it's hard, like, I mean, hey, I don't know, I haven't been the other situation, but taking a step down and humbling yourself to minimum wage after you've been in a white collar situation, not easy. And I remember I had clients who walk in and be like, oh, did you go to college? And they were saying that patronizingly. And mind you, everyone here, at least, this channel knows that I don't give a shit. But they were saying it to basically, like, when I was going to write something down, like, am I literate? And in those moments, again, it was like, I could be red or be rich. Like, I could try and humiliate them back because the pain of what they just said made me feel. They probably didn't even intend that. Or I can be like, yeah, yeah, I went to school. I'm very grateful for it. You know, like, so what are your goals? I could just move right past it. And so you develop that skin because I had to, because I had to fucking pay rent. And so, I mean, I tell stories about having a kid draw a marker on the wall while I'm trying to close his mom. And he's writing in permanent marker. And I'm trying not to lose my shit over the fact that I'm going to have to repaint the wall because she doesn't know how to parent a child. But I needed to close the card to pay for the paint. And so, it's like I can scold the kid and lose the sale, or I can close the sale and keep my cool, and then eventually clean the wall. And so, like, you only get that stuff by doing it. And so, if you're in a place right now where you don't have a lot, you only have one thing, which is time. And so, you have lower leverage. I'm not going to lie to you and say that you, like, there's this one play, this one secret. No, it's just sheer brute force. Like, you have to will yourself out of it. Like, there's, you have to do, it's a huge amount of soul-driving energy that you have to do outside of what you normally do. So, it's like, you have to live one person's normal life. You have to do your normal work, your normal job. You have to eat, you have to sleep, you have to clean, you have to do whatever else. And then, then the workday starts. So, that is how you eat today, but you're trying to get ahead, and you have to eat tomorrow. And so, you have to, you have to, you have to eat the glass so that you can take the pain today, and you're trying to take as much of the pain from tomorrow as you can today, so you can get ahead. And like, even the concept of getting ahead, I like, I think about this visually, which is like, if you have this, this timeline of life that you can pull towards you, and it's glass in the beginning, and then it's slightly less, less coarse, and then less coarse, and then it gets neutral, and then it starts to get a little bit sweeter, and a little bit sweeter, and a little bit sweeter, but you have to get through that glass period where you pull towards you. And I do have this theory that, like, on a long enough time horizon, if we could live a thousand years, everyone would eventually be successful, but people wait too long, and they die too early. And I say die too early on a long timeline. And so I want, I have to live today, and tomorrow, and the next day, so I can live three days at a time, so I can get to my second and third life's benefits now. And so that was what, like, I remember the only times that I took off when I was at the gym. And one of the biggest things that I was grateful for with the gyms is that I moved across the country. And so I knew no one. I was at Huntington Beach, I was from Baltimore. Like, no one. And what would happen, so one of the gifts of that was that, once the week was over, my Saturday sessions were done at, like, noon, and my phone didn't ring. No, like, in some ways, very sad, because, like, no one wanted to see Alex. You know what I mean? Like, no one is inviting me out. But I was like, fuck, like, I gotta make this work. And so I would just, I'd sit there and I'd be like, how do I sell memberships? How do I market? How do I, everything, you know? But I would, but that was how I got ahead. And so I tell the stories of, like, I remember when I had, when I stopped watching The Ravens, and I was from Baltimore. So that was like, like a tie to home.