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When no one's watching, I work harder
Alex Hormozi delivers a powerful motivational speech on relentless hard work, overcoming pain, and the reality of success in entrepreneurship.
Key Takeaways
- Relentless hard work and discipline are essential for lasting success.
- Pain and struggle are natural parts of growth and should be embraced.
- Success is rarely recognized during the struggle phase but only after achievement.
- Focus on mastering a few skills over many to achieve excellence.
- Efficiency and starting work immediately improve productivity significantly.
Summary
- Success requires working harder when no one is watching and maintaining relentless discipline.
- Pain is a natural signal of being alive and a prerequisite for facing reality and growth.
- People often support your dreams until you surpass them, revealing true social dynamics.
- Overnight success is an illusion; years of unseen hard work precede visible achievement.
- Hard work is continuous focus and attention to detail that separates mediocrity from greatness.
- True mastery takes 5-7 years and requires choosing a few key areas to excel in.
- Starting tasks immediately and minimizing delays maximizes productivity and brainpower.
- Working smart means combining volume (reps) with leverage (skill) to maximize output.
- The 'open to goal' mindset involves working until a specific target is met, regardless of time.
- Motivation often comes from reminders rather than new teachings; action beats procrastination.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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than when they're watching. And thinking about it like that
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has given me this persistent and ever present scorecard or third party that's like, no one's watching, which means now you have to work because otherwise you're full of shit.
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The sign of success is the hate that you get along the way.
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The only person who can judge you on your success is you. You're the only one who knows how much left in the tank you really had.
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When you're stagnating in a business and you don't know what to do, it's very painful.
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When you're declining and you also don't know what to do, it's very painful.
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And so that means that all conditions of reality are painful. If pain is a prerequisite for reality, then it means it's just a signal that we are alive.
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Rather than pain is a problem, it is a signal that I'm breathing.
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It just doesn't matter. You can work every hour of the day.
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The person who loves walking walks further than the person who loves the destination.
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I work all the time. That's all I do, and I work until I can't work. They're like, that's not healthy. I'm like, define healthy. I do as much as I can of the thing that I want to do with every minute of my day. And I work harder now than I did when I was poor, and I think it's because I've learned to enjoy it.
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And most people say, I wouldn't live my life that way. You're always working, you're always doing these things.
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But it's like, I'm actually always spending my time in pursuit because in pursuit is my button for enjoyment.
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I will do enough work that there is nothing left to be done.
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Everyone believes in the American dream until it comes true.
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And I remember because what had happened was, everybody when I when I was sleeping on the gym floor, right? Like, you know, I was the I was the underdog.
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You know, my clients were all like, oh, good for you. You know, you're going after your dream. They'd see my blanket and my pillow in the corner of the gym, and they knew I was sleeping there, and it was evident, you know, I I I lived there.
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And everybody was like pro me. And then people would come in, they'd sign up, like, I'm going to I'm going to support you, right?
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And then within nine months, I had hired people, and I had a manager, and I pulled up.
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And I remember I walked in the lobby, and all the same, the same people
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were like, oh, boss man's here. Oh, you're you're not too good for us now, right?
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And I remember being so jarred by the experience, and I was like,
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you guys rooted for me. And I was like, and now I did what
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you said you were rooting for me to do. And that was when I realized that
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people want you to do well, but not better than them.
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The reason the goal isn't coming at you fast enough
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is because every person you've seen accomplish the goal, you only see it
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the moment they accomplish it. And the reason that it hurts so much
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when people are like, must be nice. Oh, that happened overnight is because
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every time you fail, no one cares and no one sees.
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But when you finally win, people take notice, discredited.
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But it's the only time they notice is when you actually win.
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And so to even further reinforce the point,
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the fact that everyone looks like an overnight success
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means that the ten years where they sucked, no one saw.
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And so the fear that you have about people noticing the fact that you fail
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is ridiculous because they're barely going to notice when you succeed.
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The difficulty with personal development and entrepreneurship
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is that you don't know when the end is coming, but you still need to fight.
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And the only certainty that I can give you is that it's the same thing
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that every other person who got through that period went through.
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But I think the thing that everyone who's who's listening
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lacks is the context on how hard hard work is.
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Not in that it's complex, but just in that it's a continuous
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and unending focus on one thing and noticing the details
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that separate mediocrity from greatness. And if you're like, I don't know what the difference
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between those two things is, that is the opportunity that hard work reveals.
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And most people expect that is hard work because that's the hardest
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they've worked, not the amount of hard work
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that is required in order to get the level of outcome
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that they say they want or that they expect.
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And until you get great, because as soon as you get great at one thing,
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you realize just the tremendous amount of hours and work
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that it takes to be great at one thing. And then there's this oh shit moment
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that I can express personally, which is you realize that there's so few things that you can be great at.
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And then the discipline comes down to saying, what are the two or three things
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that I can be really good at in my life? Because it will take me five to seven years
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to be exceptional at this one thing.
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I am okay being a beacon of relentless hard work.
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And that's the never ending cycle of excellence.
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Oh, I just have to figure out what to do.
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When I wake up every day, there's only one voice I have to listen to.
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And so then it's like, just do it for me.
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Yeah, we need to be reminded more than we need to be taught.
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It's one of my favorites.
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There have been so many times in my life where I knew I needed to do something.
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And then I filled all this extra time not doing that thing.
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And then the moment I did it, I was like, wow, that took way less time than I thought.
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And not only that, it took way less time than it took me to delay
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to actually get to this point. And if I had only started with
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just doing what I was supposed to do, I could have done four or five
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other things that I was also supposed to do by this exact same point.
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Waking up and then trying to shrink the time between when I wake up
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and when I start working, and shrinking the time between one task
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and the next task. Like, you don't need to take 30 minutes
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of getting ready to start working. Like, you can just start working
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because as soon as you get into it, you start pulling the thread, and you're like, oh, here it is.
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And all of the time that I was getting ready to work,
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I was just using up my best brainpower time on things that truly don't move the needle at all.
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The vast majority of business owners work a fair amount.
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They just work on the wrong stuff, and they do it the wrong way.
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And so they get so little for their effort that they wonder
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when they're at home empty-handed in bed, why isn't this working?
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When I am working, but if you define work, at least the way I do,
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which is, um, output, and in order to get output, it's volume times leverage.
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So how many times you do the thing times how much you get for each time you do it.
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And so that is the, do you work smart or do you work hard?
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It's you do both. You do as many reps as you possibly can.
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And you're you do it with the most leverage possible. So if I make 100 phone calls,
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the leverage that I can have there would be how skilled I am.
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So if I make 100 calls, I might get ten times more.
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And so I worked more, I had more output than somebody has less skill.
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But the only way you get skilled is by working more.
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And so it's this virtuous cycle of doing more and getting better,
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and then you get more for what you do.
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I talk about the rule of 100 on steroids, which is something that I learned
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from a guy who owned 13 or 14 really successful gyms.
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And he called it open to goal. And he said, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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He said, my managers work open to goal. And I was like, what does that mean?
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It's like, so they work open until they hit their goal.
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And so sometimes that means they hit their goal by noon and they can cut out.
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Or that means that they have to go from 5:00 a m. until midnight that night.
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Because that's how long it took them to hit the goal.
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And so I've seen this across a lot of high achievers across domains.
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So like, I'll keep shooting free shots until I hit 100 free shots.
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I will run until this happens. I will practice my presentation
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until I do zero mess ups, right? Or whatever that
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that output is that you want for quality or quantity.
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And the more times you do what is required to get what you want,
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the more times you get what you want.
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But when no one's watching, I work harder
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than when they're watching.
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Thinking about it like that
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has given me this persistent and ever present scorecard
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or third party that's like, no one's watching,
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which means now you have to work because otherwise you're full of shit.
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And so it's this continuous reinforcing cycle of me
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and other me holding the whip behind me to see how much I can take.
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But with each lash of the whip that I take,
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learning that I can take it and continue to trudge on.
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As long as you keep going, you bear witness to yourself
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of what you are capable of. And I find that incredibly satisfying
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in the trenches of misery when you have to go through it.
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Hard work is the goal. And so it's not like work hard
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so that X. Because as soon as you have a so that, then the X is the thing.
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But if the goal is to work as hard as you possibly can,
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then the only real output we have is who we become along the way.
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Then it's something that I can win or measure myself
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against every day in real time throughout the day,
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which is how hard am I working? Because that is the goal.
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Because I know that when I look back on my life, the days that I loved
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the most were days when I had nothing left in the tank.
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And so then the goal becomes to empty the tank,
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not what or where I drive, but just to drive the car as hard
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as I possibly can. And that means that in the beginning,
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it's just straightaways and just seeing how high I can rev the engine.
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But as I become more advanced, it's like, all right, well now we've got turns.
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And then it's turns in elevation, and then it's turns in elevation without guard rails,
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because we have risk. And so when I think about how hard
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I want to work, the interesting thing about that is that the only person who can judge you
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on your success is you, because you're the only one who knows how much left
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in the tank you really had.
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There's this huge time delay between when we start behaving
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in a way that a winner behaves and when we start winning.
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And the problem is that the bigger the mountain you're trying to climb,
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the bigger the W you're trying to get, typically the more delayed it is.
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Longer the lag.
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Yeah, between when you start behaving like a winner
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and when you start being a winner. And most people
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don't get the fast enough feedback loop to know that they're on the right path
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when they are taking these first steps in the right direction.
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Because they have this really big goal, but they forget that
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with that really big goal comes the even longer delay that it takes to get there.
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When you're growing in a business, it's very painful.
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When you're stagnating in a business and you're plateaued and you don't know what to do,
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it's very painful. When you're declining and you also don't know what to do,
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it's very painful. And so that means that all conditions of reality are painful.
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And so if pain is a prerequisite for reality, then it means
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it's just a signal that we are alive.
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And so in thinking about that, rather than pain as a problem,
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it is a signal that I'm breathing.
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And then becomes irrelevant.
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You know, in the beginning you're like, I feel bad, and then you think that that should weigh on the decision
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of whether you do the thing that you're supposed to do.
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And then you start realizing that you can do the thing, even though you don't
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feel good about it. And you start hypertrophying it.
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But I think the ultimate version of the hypertrophy when the muscle becomes a tendon,
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or it just becomes fused, is when you don't even consider
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how you feel. It's just not a thought. You just keep, you just do it.
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Champions just interpret anxiety as excitement.
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And if you're excited to go up, then you're like, I'm amped.
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Versus, I'm stressed. But it feels the same, but the way you frame it
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totally changes how you feel when you're stepping on stage.
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But my two cents of, if you are feeling lots of anxiety,
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it means you need to practice more. That's just my two cents.
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And that comes for everything, whether it's to have a meeting,
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or give a presentation, or write an email, or do a book.
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Like if you feel nervous before you release it,
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then you probably didn't work on it enough.
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And I think the reality is that most people to get not anxious
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about whatever they're doing, you have to do it so many times
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that by the last time you're doing it, you're bored of it.
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Like you don't even want to see the thing again. When you're sick of it is the point
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where you'll have no adrenal response to the stimulus
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because you've seen it so many times. You could do it in your sleep
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because you hate it at this point.
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And if we think of confidence as the percentage of likelihood
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of what we think is going to happen, will happen as a predictive metric.
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Then in order to be more confident, we want to have more proof
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that what we think will happen, will happen.
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And so the easiest way to do that is to do it a lot of times.
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And so it would be reasonable to say that you're confident that it will go the way you want
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because it has gone the way you've wanted.
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The leading indicator of a successful person is the ability to act
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without anything happening. And when you continue down that path,
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it happens slower than you expect, and then faster than you can imagine.
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And I think that's the part that everyone misses is they expect the faster they can imagine,
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and they imagine really big. And so then their explanations are
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are really big, really fast. But they've they take the intensity
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and they don't apply it to a timeline that's appropriate.
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The path of personal development is befriending uncertainty.
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You always have to be the person who roots for you before everyone else does.
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And it's usually a single clap in the auditorium
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for a very long period of time. It is a slow clap.
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That's just you rooting for you.
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I think most people feel really lonely when you want something
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that doesn't currently exist. And so some people call that dream.
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Some people call that goals, whatever it is, you're trying to pull something
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from your mind into reality, and you want it done a certain way.
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And if it's not done that way, it's not what you imagined.
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And so people on the outside will throw stones and call you names
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that they think will change your behavior and get you to stop.
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And the more I have been the person trying to pull things into reality,
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the more I've tried to weather and build kind of defenses against those things.
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So that when those stones get hurled at you by being called a control freak,
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or by saying you micromanage things, or that you
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have incredibly high standards, the answer is yes,
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because I want it done right the first time.
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People criticize because it helps them justify the risks they chose not to take.
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In the hopes that it'll dissuade you from doing it,
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so that you can be in the exact same position as them,
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which then justifies that they made the right call.
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There's this period of discomfort when you change anything,
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because everyone around you wants you to fit within the label that they are comfortable with.
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People don't like that. And so they're like, no, no, I like you in this box.
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So just just and they just want to shove you back into it.
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And there's there's a lot of uncomfortable conversations
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that you have to have where it becomes really socially awkward.
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If you're going through that right now, and like I promise you,
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every single person who wants to do something with their life
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and has done something with their life, has gone through the exact chapter
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that you're going through, and it's the lonely chapter.
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It's the chapter where you you don't fit in with your own friends,
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but you don't have the outcomes yet to fit into a new group of friends.
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And you're doing this thing, you're consuming content on the internet.
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And you're going through this and you're like, am I is this even worth it?
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Because you have no signs of success, right?
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But if there's anything that you can take away from what we're saying right now,
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is that the sign of success is the hate that you get along the way.
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And what you can't do is bend the knee to their hate
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and fit back into the conformity because it's comfortable and it's warm.
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Because you've been down that road and you know exactly where it leads.
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And I know that's not where you want to be.
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It's like the best way to guarantee to not have the life that you want
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is to do what everyone else is doing.
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Unless you want what everyone else has, which no one does.
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The skills that you develop along the way,
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those early days, that little trench winning in the weeds,
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oftentimes gives you these huge advantages later on,
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because you have more context than anyone else.
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And so rather than lament them and hate the fact that you're going through it,
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remembering that these will be arrows that you put in the quiver
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to slay the future, bigger dragons.
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And so expecting it to be easy is what makes it much harder
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than it ever is. My personal goal is to squeeze every ounce of potential
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out of whatever I have. And I think that if you feel like
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you have potential left over, then it will eat you alive
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until you do something about it.
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I'd say one of the strongest mental frames that has gotten me through
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my hardest times is thinking, this will be the story that I will one day tell.
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And that means the harder it is, the bigger the dragon,
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the more epic the story, and by consequence,
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the more epic the hero. And if you think about the difference
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between winners and losers, winners define themselves
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by what they made happen. And losers define themselves
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by what happened to them.
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And the difficult part of the lonely chapter is
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that the Rocky cut scene lasts 90 seconds in the movie
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and lasts five years in reality.
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It's rarely the information or the intensity
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that makes things hard. It's the sticking with it that makes it hard.
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And so the desire that we have to quit is simply breaking the consistency.
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And so that's why consistency has always been the hardest thing for most people to achieve.
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But the intensity of what you have to do to be successful is much lower
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than most people expect. And so oftentimes,
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they suffer significantly more in a short period of time
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than is required to be successful over a much longer period of time
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with a much lower intensity.
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Many people want to be exceptional, but they're afraid of being an exception.
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I think it's wanting an outcome without the requirement
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that the outcome has. And so we can't do
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the same thing that everyone else approves of,
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and then somehow get a different outcome than everyone else does.
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A great portion of our identity comes from the proof that we give ourselves
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of the things that we've done and said in the past.
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And so if we want to build towards a different version of ourselves,
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then it begins with stacking evidence
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that aligns with that future self.
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And so in some ways, take the shot, get rejected.
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It is a zero loss game by choosing to begin.
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And the business never works until it's the one that does.
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And the episode doesn't take off except for the one that does.
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And whether it's 10 or 10,000, eventually one does.
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Because when you do more, you get better at doing.
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Which is why not quitting is the best skill.
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And the only thing that matters. Because by default, with an infinite game perspective,
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the point of the game is to keep the game going. It's the only objective.
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Because even if your goal was to be number one at business,
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it's like by what metric? Enterprise value, growth, profit, revenue.
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All of a sudden, okay, maybe it's richest man in the world. Okay, for how long?
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Look at the history of mankind. Not one person has ever been richest man forever.
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And so you get to touch the top, even if you're that one guy,
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for a moment, and then it's gone again. And so you can't have that as the
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the endpoint because it is by its very nature finite.
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But the competitor whose objective is to continue to play,
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can't be beaten because by playing he wins.
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This is why I think everybody that starts off has this huge amount of escape velocity
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that's needed to be accumulated. The starting from total inertia,
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lifting off where the gravity is strongest, going past all of these
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the disbelief and the criticism and the lonely chapter and all of this stuff.
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So they've had to go through all of these trenches and get over all of these hurdles.
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And then they finally get to the stage where they're in a little bit more light altitude.
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They're floating out there a little bit more, and maybe the velocity gives them
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or the the fuel give them more returns in terms of their velocity.
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And now people say, oh, must be nice for you.
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And you go, dude, fuck you. Like if you could have seen
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how much criticism and hard work and lonely nights and all of this stuff,
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when nobody was watching and I was unsure of myself,
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chronically miserable, and I criticized, and all my friends took the piss out of me,
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and I did all of these things. I had to go through all of that
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for you to now say, must be nice.
Topics:Alex Hormozimotivational speechhard workentrepreneurshipsuccess mindsetdisciplineproductivitypersonal developmentovercoming paingoal setting
