Throwback: 13 Things I Wish I Learned Earlier | Ep 617
episodePreviously titled “Throwback: 13 Things I Wish I Learned Earlier | Ep 848” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 2, 2026
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What are the 13 lessons Alex Hormozi wishes he learned earlier?
In today's episode, this is a throwback, but I'm talking about 13 lessons that I wish I had learned earlier. This is definitely more from a business owner perspective, but just some hard learned stuff that people seem to have really liked a lot. So enjoy. 13 lessons I learned after graduating college from the real world that I wish I had learned earlier. The first is that you make better decisions and you learn more by assuming that you're dumber than everyone else. And the reason this was something that took me a long time to learn is that when I was in college, it was all about showing how smart you were. It was about talking more in the group meetings. It was about raising your hand more in the classroom and proving how smart you were in every way that you possibly could. And so I took that and started translating in the real world. And I realized that I didn't learn very much because I was the one talking all the time.
And it only took a few times of me getting introduced to somebody, because I wish I could just tell you it was once, but it wasn't. Or I get introduced to someone, someone would introduce us, and I would basically spend the whole time blabbering on about how great I was and how much I knew, only to find out later that this person was way above me. in business and whatever things that i was pursuing at the time and then i felt tons of shame and embarrassment about how stupid i was for doing that and so i had to shift the way that i talked to new people and the way that i entered rooms and i'll be real i still talked probably too much but at least being aware of that lesson as early as i as it could i wish i had learned it earlier but
fundamentally, you can't learn if you're talking. It's obvious as it is. And so if you're trying to learn, then not talking is the first requisite for doing that. And if you want to make better decisions, then you need to learn. And so if you talk less and listen more, which is why this is somewhat of a platitude, it's easy to understand and hard to do. And tactically, when you're in situations, when you're meeting new people, this was a big epiphany I had, was that I got introduced once to somebody. And I was walking peripherally after I had left and somebody else went up to them and was like, do you know who that guy is? And in that moment, I realized that my positioning was now sky high because I didn't have to be the one to say it.
And so the idea that I realized was how can I get other people to edify me? Because what I had to allow people to do was to make the same mistake that I used to make, which is that someone young, someone inexperienced, someone less aware, whatever, would come up and then start posturing themselves and blathering on about everything that they're doing in me, I might be way ahead of them, but I would listen and see if there's anything interesting. And so on that conversation, I learned more than they did. I learned what type of person they are. I learned where they're at with their career. If they had anything interesting, that would be worth following up with. They learned nothing. They felt good about themselves.
And then later would feel bad about themselves when that other person went over and told them. And so I was like, of these two scenarios, which would I rather do? Would I rather have someone have a conversation with me and then not know who I was and then never know who I was, but be able to learn? Because that's the worst case scenario, right? Or would I rather blather on, learn nothing, and either I am above them and then they're like, well, fuck that guy, he brags, or I'm below them and I'm the moron. So those are the only two alternatives in the scenario where you blather on about yourself and try and position and try and sound smart. So I stopped doing that because the scenarios of me not saying as much and listening more, I got...
I learned more. And if the person found out who I was later, I was positioned. And if they never did, I still just learned. So those are the upsides and downsides versus both. And that shifted my behavior. So that was lesson number one. Lesson number two was that the hardest respect to earn is one's own.
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Chapters
2 chaptersSpeakers
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