It’s helped him make important life and business decisions, and keep a long-term focus on his billion-dollar goal. Steal it below.
I listened to Alex Hormozi speak to Graham Stephan on the Iced Coffee Hour podcast. The podcast is worth a listen in its entire 2-hour run, but one particular part stuck in my brain — Homozi’s relationship with his “future” self. Which I will come to later in the piece.
Context: What do I mean by billion-dollar decisions?
Well, Hormozi wants to be a billionaire before he dies, that is one of his key business goals. He takes a long-term view and sometimes does things that don’t necessarily make sense to us mortals looking for our first million.
For example, he did a huge webinar series recently and “gave away” millions of dollars of value. Some folks reckon he could have made $50m off the webinar, instead, he made it entirely free. He is more interested in increasing his brand value in the long term than in a quick cash grab. His bet is his brand value will increase drastically by giving away so much content to people that will allow them to change their lives.
In the end, it was also to promote his book $100m Leads so he still will have come away with a huge amount of cash. The point is he takes a long-term view, partly because he can, and partly because that is what he wants to do. Things become easier when you take a long-term view.
How he manages to keep the long-term focus is pretty cool and something I am planning to try here’s how:
Alex Hormozi: Letters to Soloman
Whenever Hormozi is faced with a difficult decision in his life, he sits down and writes down a conversation between his current self, and a version of himself that he hopes to be at 85. He named this person Soloman as he is so wise. Hormozi reckons most people are better at giving advice rather than taking it. By writing out the conversation he can reach the answer he needs to hear. It sometimes takes a while, but Soloman always finds a helpful conclusion to the problem. By talking to an older version of himself, he naturally thinks more long-term and focuses on the things that are important to him (both inside and outside of business).
Hormozi has designed Soloman with his future goals in mind, so each decision naturally moves him closer to the person he wants to be. Be it health, wealth or relationships. It also gives the benefit of perspective, helping Hormozi not to be distracted by the daily noise.
This is not an unusual framework, but the simplicity struck me as a really neat way to go about it. It’s similar for example, to Jeff Bezos’ famous decision-making framework “regret minimization”. He used this when deciding to leave his comfortable and lucrative finance career to sell books from his garage.
What’s your framework for life decisions? Will you try this conversation with your future self?