https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaNX49ygr0I

1 00:00:00.000 --\> 00:01:00.000 the hardest respect to earn is one's
own over the years my wife and i created acquisition.com which portfolio
of companies does about 85 million a year and i have nothing to sell you
i get questions all the time in terms of like how do you create these
businesses how do you sell stuff how do you live your life all of those
kinds of things and i was talking to a good friend who'd come back into
my life briefly we actually started at the same time together there was
a there was a period of time that he did significantly better than me
just from a financial perspective and then i ended up passing him and we
met back up a few years later and he was a little bit down and the
conversation that we had was really enlightening for me and the
conversations we've had since and so i wanted to share that with you the
main purpose for this video as i'm getting to it is to underline how do
you actually do the stuff that creates the wealth the empire the status
all that stuff and i think that this is where people get really tripped
up the reason i say that is there's kind of three elements to the the
goal right so you have the external result that you're looking for which
might be make more money get a six-pack

2 00:01:00.000 --\> 00:02:00.000 whatever you've got the processes
behaviors activity that result in that goal right being achieved which
would be like doing the work the third aspect is being the type of
person who does those things so basically identifying with those types
of behaviors or being the type of person who does those types of
activities which then creates the reward right i think james clear talks
about this in his book atomic habits but there's a lot of behavioral
psychologists who've touched on this point and you probably have heard
be do have at some point in your personal development journey and if you
haven't welcome to the game and so one of the things and this is what i
wanted to give to you in this in this video is a keystone habit that has
served me very well and it's only been in retrospect explaining it to
someone else that i kind of had more clarity on it which is why i'm
sharing it with you when i have something that i want that i do not have
so i have a desire which means i've made a contract with myself to be
unhappy until i get what i want right and so i have this thing that i
want externally and i think i've had enough experience with this to know
that simply writing

3 00:02:00.000 --\> 00:03:00.000 down the goal means nothing and so i
think this is contrary to common belief or practice which is like people
write down their goals are more likely to succeed sure i mean having a
direction is more likely to achieve them than not having a direction so
i'm not going to disagree with that but here's an interesting statement
that um may hit you which is that winners and losers have the same goals
right everybody olympics has the same goal everybody who's in business
has the same goal right they want to increase how much money they're
making you sell more products get more customers etc so the goals are
actually not that unique and so the fact that we're writing them down
sure it's a first step because we have to have a direction in terms of
what are we trying to accomplish sure but i think that what you'll see
that is different because if you look at two people with the same goals
and one person achieves them the other person hasn't then it can't be
having the goal that is the main driver of success right right and so
then you get you know you dive a step underneath that and you look at
what are the behaviors that created that goal and now we get much closer
to the things that are actually driving the progress what gets more
interesting at least to me is if we know the activities that are going
to generate the result we want so

4 00:03:00.000 --\> 00:04:00.000 maybe it's we want to get more
customers which means we need to advertise more and i use advertised by
the definition of what the word actually means which is to make known
and so if we do activities that make our products and services known
like doing more private communications which would be one-on-one reach
outs 101 cold calls 101 dms 101 emails etc prospecting or one-to-many so
public communication which should be uh you know broadcasting across
different platforms for media right so you have radio you could have an
email list you could have um actually that would be an example of a high
version of scale of the original so i apologize there but like making
posts on social media things that are public forum where people can find
out about it right if you do more of those things more people find out
and that would be the activity that's associated with getting more
customers right but the thing is is that people will know what that
activity is right they will know that inherently they should be doing
more of it and yet they don't and so that is kind of the purpose that i
wanted to drill down in this short video today is why not and what is
the way that we can try and correct that or fix that i wanted to give
you the simplest single hack that i have used

5 00:04:00.000 --\> 00:05:00.000 inadvertently and seen a tremendous
amount of success that is asking myself the question what would a person
who does this type of thing do in this instance the one that i'll tell
you that i've repeated a lot to myself over the years probably over the
last five or ten years has been the repeated chorus of what would a wise
man do i think it's because i did not consider myself to be very wise
and i acted many ways that were unwise um earlier on in my life and i
still continue to do so uh but i try to do less of it right and i think
that and i'll borrow this again from james clear's book your identity is
much more of a weighing system actually this is not from this book but
like it's much more of a voting system where you you cast votes in
either direction based on your activities of what type of person you
want to become and i think the simplest distillation of that concept is
simply asking the question what would this type of person do if you can
use that as the refrain that you come back to over and over again the
chorus of your day that gets repeated over and over again i think it's
much

6 00:05:00.000 --\> 00:06:00.000 easier than trying to remember the
50-point checklist of all the activities that you need to do to achieve
the goal in the the friend that came back in my life um where we were
having this conversation i just distilled it down to like what would a
billionaire do and so when we're confronted with these crossroads right
you wake up in the morning and you're like i don't know what i should
start it's like what would a billionaire do and so basically what you
can do is have a certain refrain or chorus that you ask yourself what
would this type of person do and that type of person when you ask that
question is who you will eventually become as you continue to cast votes
that reinforce the stories that we tell ourselves about who we are and
those are the things that create long-lasting deep change and what's
more about this is that these changes when they become internal when
they become ingrained in our behavior they become effortless but it
takes time and so i think that the mental cue that i have given myself
inadvertently over the years i don't have a lot of choruses that i
refrain to or that i come back to

7 00:06:00.000 --\> 00:07:00.000 over and over again and so i tweeted
about one and it got shared a zillion times but is what would someone 10
times smarter than me do in this situation right and a different way of
saying that is what would a billionaire do and and word in whatever way
that resonates with you but i think rather than having that big
checklist you can put just a little post-it on your computer or wherever
you work that's a reminder to yourself that this is the type of person i
want to become and in order to become this type of person i need to do
these things because those actions will reinforce the thoughts that i
say about myself because the whole concept behind affirmations that i do
not like right which is i am a you know i'm a lion i'm a tiger i'm a
whatever right just saying them doesn't make them true unless you're a
crazy person and most of us are not crazy i think right there's plenty
of crazy if you don't get me wrong but if you're probably watching this
channel you're probably at least semi-same right if we have you know
this degree of sanity that's on our side then what we have to do is
create something else which is evidence we have to give ourselves
evidence that we are this type of person in order to become that but how
do you

8 00:07:00.000 --\> 00:08:00.000 have evidence that you are going to be
this person when you have none well it starts with activity it starts
with doing the stuff and as an added correlator depending on the goal
that you have it might be what would a person with a six pack do what
would a pro champion bodybuilder do what would an amazing husband do or
what would the best husband in the world do and so you can use this
framework of asking the question of what your ideal self would do in any
given circumstance to apply to a vast number of scenarios so rather than
trying to fix for the habit fixed for the being and then the habits will
take care of themselves in accordance with the type of person that you
have stated you wish to become and so then the goals we have become
becoming the person we want to be once we know who we want to become
then that can direct the types of activities that will be in accordance
with that and the reason i like this better too is that if we're trying
to reinforce an identity or an identity trait about ourselves this is a
really good habit i think that i've picked up over the years but
breaking down the etymology of words is really really cool and i think
really

9 00:08:00.000 --\> 00:09:00.000 teaches us a lot about the words we say
and words matter a lot because they are the things that encapsulate
thoughts a classic one which is like i didn't really like the word
philosopher because i thought it sounded really fluffy when i found out
the etymology behind the word which is filet which is to love her to
like and then sophos which is knowledge or wisdom it's lover of wisdom
and i was like well shoot i am a lover of wisdom and so now i actually
have a very positive association with the word and to the same degree
identity um comes from like uh i don't remember the actual latin word
but entity is being right like just beingness and it's in and of itself
and identical which is repeated so repeated beingness is what your
identity is so what your actions what you do literally becomes who you
are which means that we can actively change who we are by changing what
we do but it is a reinforcing secular path of like i am this type of
person and therefore i do these things and because they do these types
of things i am this type of person right and so it's the chicken or the
egg but at some point we need to take action in order to do that and so
i think the simple and easiest cue that we can use to change who we are
to change

10 00:09:00.000 --\> 00:10:00.000 character traits that we find
undesirable is to simply ask ourselves when we're confronted with the
decision what would this type of person do and then act in accordance to
that and i find it much simpler than having the lists and having the the
daily routines and the things like that because if you are this type of
person you will do the types of things that that type of person would do
and that also comes down to the many decisions we haven't accounted for
yet you're going to be confronted with situations that you have not
predicted in fact the vast majority of us don't predict things well in
general it's because there's far more variables than we can possibly
comprehend i think it's much more useful for us to think about ourselves
in terms of if i were to encompass all of the things that i would like
to be right and that's why i think the the what would jesus do was such
a powerful statement in the christian community overall and candidly
people outside of the christian community could use that same exact
thing which would jesus do in this instance and probably get the right
activity and become more like jesus

11 00:10:00.000 --\> 00:11:00.000 right which is the entire goal of the
christian faith and if it makes it easier for you to think in a more
tangible sense when you're asking yourself the question i think the
reason the jesus thing was so powerful is that it's there's a very real
identity that they're associating this decision with um the ones that i
asked are what would king solomon do which he was considered you know
one of the richest and wisest men which is why it's someone that i i
revert back to and the other person that i asked myself was what would
they do in this situation is warren buffett and charlie munger when i
asked myself that question and it depends on the scenario which person
i'm going to draw on to answer the question depending on what suits best
you know what best suits the objective etc but i think if you can if you
can if you don't know someone that you can make it the value or the
version of yourself with that value or you can just use an external
person that embodies a lot of the character traits that you hope to have
and that can be equally as effective so it just depends on who you are
but i think any of those are good strategies that you can employ to
maximally use this kind of tactic for

12 00:11:00.000 --\> 00:12:00.000 self-improvement and self-change what
we repeatedly choose to ask ourselves which creates our identity which
then creates the tasks that we do in the activities we spend our time on
reinforces the story that we tell ourselves about who we are right or
what type of person we are what i shared with this individual i said you
know what do you want to become and if it's like a billionaire it's like
cool then what would a billionaire do and always asking ourselves that
question and the reason that this was important when i was talking to
this individual i'll read you the text that i had that i had said to him
because they got shared all over instagram when i when i tweeted them or
whatever is that after you left i said here's a thought for you so i was
just like thinking about the conversation we had and he had felt kind of
shitty and what's interesting about this is like as you level up in your
life and this is just an observation that i've had is that like you will
simply change who you compare yourself to and i think jordan peterson
talks about this in some talk he had but i find it very true which is
you just change who you compare yourself to and so you always find a way
to make yourself feel terrible and even if you're the best in the world
and stuff you'll just look at people who are better at other things than
you and

13 00:12:00.000 --\> 00:13:00.000 compare yourself to them to make
yourself feel bad this is what i said to him and i'll share it with you
i said every winner and every loser have the same goals what separates
them are the activities they commit to committing to the activities that
is the goal so commit to the activities that is the goal when you make a
lot of money one month you've achieved nothing because the goal is the
activities and then later i said do me a favor instead of writing down
your goals just write down what would a billionaire who lost it all do
or what would a billionaire do to keep it simple or whatever version of
herself you want to be the doing and the outcomes will happen as a
result of the main internal identity shift which you can reinforce many
times a day by asking yourself that question at each crossroad and so i
i think that was uh relatively you know i i think it's a good point to
end off on which is the only tactical ask that i have for you is to
simply write down what type of person do i wish to become and then make
that the chorus that you recite to yourself when you're at your your
crossroads when you're at your decision points that are going to create
who you are on a repeated basis every single day and i think going back

14 00:13:00.000 --\> 00:14:00.000 to that refrain will be
all-encompassing in terms of what would jesus do applies to a zillion
scenarios but everyone at least in the christian faith and i use it
because it's a very simple catch-all would want to become more
christ-like right and so whatever the christ version is for you we can
steal from that concept and continually reinforce it by asking ourselves
those questions and if you ask yourself the next joshua question which
is well alex i don't know what a billionaire would do or i don't know
what an ifbb pro champ would do or i don't know what uh okay well
there's two ways you can see this number one is that most people know
what they need to do to lose weight but they don't actually do it so i
think that i could push back on the vast majority of people and say no
you probably do know that and i like this saying a lot which is we need
to be reminded more than we need to be taught most people know they
should be doing more than they're currently doing in order to achieve
their goals and i think an example of that is if your if your family
were kidnapped you would probably act differently right when you were
trying to uh save them because you would take significantly more massive
action in order to do so right you would take huge action in

15 00:14:00.000 --\> 00:15:00.000 order to accomplish the goals which
also means that you're the type of person who wants to save their family
which is actually kind of a total side note here right but um in in
doing that you already knew what to do all along you just weren't taking
the action now that's if that's the vast majority of situations is
covered with that example but if you're in the minority of situations
right which is like well i don't know how to become a billionaire right
well what are the things that would lead you towards that right which
might be like maybe you need to lower it a little bit which is what
would a millionaire do and if it's not that then what would somebody
who's trying to become a millionaire do and they would probably talk to
millionaires or whatever or talk to people like the thing is is if you
really want the goal bad enough you can ask the question in such a way
that you would be able to answer it and make progress right and then the
the nature of the question itself can develop over time as you discover
what you believe you need to do and i really will say this again the
vast majority of us know what we need to do we're just simply not doing
it and i think attacking why we're not doing it is a much more fruitful
conversation than trying to discover the

16 00:15:00.000 --\> 00:16:00.000 the secrets of the universe because
the people who achieve the really extraordinary things do the uncommonly
obvious thing for an inordinate period of time and that is what
separates them is that they are doing it because it is who they are
rather than something to achieve an outcome that is fine and external
that they don't have control over because if you are doing it for who
you are you will continue to play the game indefinitely which will give
you the outsize returns versus the person who is doing it to make money
which means that when they do make money one month they pull back on the
gas because they accomplish their objective of doing the external thing
rather than being who they are or more of who they want to be and so if
you're new the channel by the way welcome my name's alex like i said
earlier my wife and i own acquisition.com it's a company that buys
minority interests in uh service-based info coaching uh digital products
type businesses and then helps them scale to like 30 50 million and
beyond and that's what we do full-time but i do this stuff uh just
because i struggled a lot on the way up and i don't want other people to
struggle and i don't want my pain to be in vain and so that is why i
make these videos so um welcome to moseynation lots of love and i'll see
you guys the next

17 00:16:00.000 --\> 00:17:00.000 video bye
