The Game with Alex Hormozi
How I Lost Everything Twice and Kept Going (Rachel Hollis Interview) | Ep 880
Tue, 06 May 2025
In this reshare of his interview on The Rachel Hollis Podcast, Alex (@AlexHormozi) opens up about the painful personal sacrifices, betrayals, and brutal lessons that shaped his journey, from losing everything twice to rebuilding with more clarity, discipline, and drive than ever before.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast, you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned and will learn on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Wanna scale your business? Click here.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition Mentioned in this episode:Get access to the free $100M Scaling Roadmap at www.acquisition.com/roadmap
Chapter 1: What is the reality of hard work and sacrifice?
Welcome back to the game. This is a guest spot on Rachel Hollis' podcast. Main things I talked about in this podcast are the reality of hard work and sacrifice. You can't get around it. Learning from some of our failures and investing in companies in the early days of acquisition.com. And I also mentioned a little bit, as is the Hormozy way, talk about death to gain freedom of mind.
There is a little bit of my story in this one. And so if you are somebody who's heard my story, then I would, you know, skip forward a little bit. And then you can get to the mini stuff that is not my story that you've probably already heard. All right. Rock and roll. Love you. Enjoy.
Okay, so I know this is annoying but I do feel like we have to give a tiny bit of your backstory to the audience who has not met you before because a big part I'll just like lead you down the garden path in advance a big part of what I'd love to talk to you about today's mindset because what I'm so in love with in your story is how many times
it has all fallen apart and that you've rebuilt yourself. Because I feel like the world is in a place of really needing that conversation. So will you take the audience on a backstory of how you got to where you are today?
Yeah. And I will highlight my exceptional proclivity for finding a way to lose everything. You know, pulling defeat from the jaws of victory. Yeah. The quick story is that I was a management consultant out of college, got to what I would consider a rock top experience where I was 22.
I owned my own condo on like a pretty nice high rise, had a balcony, I was looking over the city and I was like, is this it? Like, I just do this until I die and maybe marry somebody. And I was like, this feels terrible. And so I quit. That whole quitting process took me six months from when I decided that I didn't want to do this anymore until I actually quit.
And I still think to this day that was the hardest decision I've ever made. Because I think in the beginning it's like you have to forego what you know for something that is unknown. And so you can quantify what you have to lose but not what you have to gain. And I think that's what makes the decision so hard. Now, obviously, on the other side, it's very easy in retrospect.
Like, I can't believe it took me so long. It's like, yeah, but you didn't know.
Yeah.
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Chapter 2: How did Alex Hormozi lose everything twice?
And I now, you know, I'm friends with a lot of the people that some people might consider like, I mean, like in the M&A world for private equity, it's like we share a deal flow. Like, hey, this is a company that's probably not as much of a fit for me. Like maybe like you might want to take a look at it. And I think
You just get a lot more out of collaboration, and I think the world's significantly larger than most people give it credit for.
Absolutely. Well, also, if you're an entrepreneur and you have that kind of scarcity mindset, you're fucked.
Yeah.
Truly. No, I agree. You're only going to see the most basic level of opportunity and you're going to burn out. Yeah.
So I learned all this stuff. I spent three months kind of being like a mini apprentice, just like watching everything, soaking it in. The guy who sold the mentorship group just allowed me to be his like EA essentially.
Working for free or actually getting paid?
I got paid minimum wage.
Okay. But honestly, I think that's a really good tip for if you're listening to this and you don't have responsibilities, you don't have a family and you have the opportunity to go apprentice for someone. It is it's a goldmine and you're going to learn stuff you would never learn otherwise. Anyway.
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Chapter 3: What sacrifices did Alex make for his dreams?
Yes, it is nice. Second answer. It wasn't always that way. And so what I, the reason I, I mean, partially that I wake up so early is because I come from the fitness world and it's just like, I think that habit dies hard. But the guy that I, that I did that little mentorship with, and I came from a job that started at 10 AM. So there's a totally different like shift for me.
And I got to the gym at four and So it was a totally different perspective. And so he worked 12 hours a day and he had multiple kids, but he was a family man too. And so he just figured out, he's like, I need to work 12 hours a day though. And so he would work four to four and then he'd go home, pick the girls up from school and then have dinner with them and be present and be dad or whatever.
And so I would get to the gym at four. And so I basically just would know that between 4 a.m. and noon, I would get all of my moving stuff forward done. And then afternoon, I just knew my day was shot. I was like, I'm just going to be doing fires and doing everything else. And so I think that split has worked really well for me.
And like to this day now, if for whatever reason something has to get booked on the calendar and it's like on an empty day, they book back to front. And so it'd be like the first appointment would be at like 4.30 in the afternoon so that I have uninterrupted time until then. And the second one would be like at 4 to 4.30. And so they book me back to front.
And so those few things have helped tremendously for getting things done. The larger, so I said that was gonna be really tactical in terms of like the work. Bigger picture, I think what's really interesting about entrepreneurship is that it is always hard. And I think what makes it hard is that you don't know the nature of the sacrifice that you will have to make to get to the next level.
And so a lot of people, myself included, I always and I still I always like make this fallacious thinking process where I think like, oh, whatever I have to do to get the next level is just more of what I'm currently doing. And it's just what's hard about the next level for whatever it is, is you have to sacrifice something different.
Yeah.
And so the currency changes to get to the next level. So it's like you're paying in pesos and then you're paying in dollars. You're like, I have to pay more dollars. It's like, no, no, no. Now you have to pay more. So you have to pay more euros. And you're like, wait, I have to pay more euros? I didn't think I would have to give euros up.
Like I have to pay – so it's like you actually – the currency of the thing you pay for changes. And so like in the beginning, you know, the first person you have to conquer is you, right? And I don't think that ever really ends. But like, you know, you have to get over yourself. And then the next one is like you have to conquer, you know, not being beholden to the desires of friends and family.
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Chapter 4: How can you convince others to support your dreams?
If you were those people, we would already know. There's this great quote. I was a little nervous. I was on my run this morning. I was like, Jesus, I hope I don't accidentally quote Alex to Alex. I listen to so many podcasts. But I heard this thing the other day that was like, if you're the guy, you don't have to tell anybody you're the guy.
Like, if you're her, you don't have to tell anybody you're her. We already know. So, yes, good advice. You're not Elon, so pick one freaking thing.
The next is overexpansion. I just opened my second location. And I'm just talking brick and mortar terms with the supplies for everything. And it's almost like the shiny object one, except the businesses are interrelated and it was the correct next step, just not now. And so typically overexpansion is actually a function of being under-talented. And so, yeah.
Someone just got punched in the stomach right now. Someone's just like, oh, I needed that.
And so, and when I say under talented, there's two components to that. One is there's you, right? The other side of it is that the talent on your team is just insufficient. And so like, could you have gone to the second location? Could you start that second product line or the second service line? Absolutely.
If you had enough bandwidth for you, which you can only get back with somebody else who's good, right? And so that's, it's usually a who issue for overexpansion. Number five is you're serving too many different types of customers. And I want to be clear. It's super normal in the beginning for you to have one qualification for a customer, which is credit card impulse. So I guess that's two.
Very normal. The problem is as soon as you start selling a little bit more, you're like, oh, my God, I have so many different things that I have to deliver. And this guy's a little bigger. This guy's a little smaller. But my product's not that. Whatever. You have to pick. But, and obviously this, again, these are rock and hard place scenarios, but this is half my business is this type of avatar.
At some point, I'm fast forwarding a little bit, but usually it's between one and 3 million is where you have to start being like, I have to be narrow on my avatar. And the fear is, and for each of these, the fear is logical and also wrong.
Mm-hmm.
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