Why Winners Say No | Ep 988

Alex Hormozi made his first million at 26. A decade later, his portfolio companies generated over $250 million in aggregate revenue last year. He's 36 now. The advice he wishes someone had given him earlier? Stop networking.

The Two Seasons: Exploration and Exploitation

Hormozi draws on a framework he credits to Naval Ravikant: there are seasons of life. In the beginning, you're in exploration — tasting lots of things, figuring out what you're good at or have some proclivity toward. Later comes exploitation, where you go all in.

The broad period is never the period where you're going to make money. "This is the part you have to get," Hormozi says. From when he started until he really graduated from exploration to exploitation took about five years. It's less a binary switch and more a continuum.

In the beginning, you have to say yes to things. You say yes because you're bad, you're scared, you never want to say yes. So you learn to say yes a little bit, then more, then more. And then very quickly you learn to say yes and get overwhelmed. The only way out of this yes trap is to start practicing saying no.

"If you're like, 'wait a second, that means that I have to change what I do' — welcome to entrepreneurship. You have to learn, you have to evolve, you have to grow."

The Work Comes First