The speaker challenges the traditional definition of work and introduces a new definition of work as outputs. The chapter emphasizes the importance of understanding work in order to make more money.

Defining Work and Productivity

The speaker discusses the key inputs for growing a business, such as getting more customers and making them worth more. The chapter emphasizes the importance of focusing on activities that directly contribute to business growth.

Maximizing Business Growth

The speaker emphasizes the importance of finding time for productive work and provides practical advice on habits and time management. This chapter also discusses the concept of maker time and manager time.

Finding Time for Productive Work

The speaker introduces the concept of buying time by outsourcing non-essential tasks, such as cleaning and laundry, in order to free up more time for productive work. The chapter emphasizes the value of investing in time to work on activities that drive business growth.

Buying Time for More Productive Work

The speaker addresses the balance between work and personal life, emphasizing the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance while prioritizing productive work. The chapter also discusses the speaker's approach to fitness and fun outside of work.

Balancing Work and Personal Life

Discussion on business constraints, problem-solving strategies, and the importance of solving the right problem.

Business Constraints and Problem Solving

Exploring the concept of finding elegant solutions, using hypotheticals, and cycling through different problem-solving frames.

Elegant Solutions and Problem Framing

**Maximizing Your Productivity and Growing Your Business**

If you're a business owner or work for one, this presentation may be the most tactical thing that I can do to make you money. I think this one's going to be a really big hitter, which is why I wanted to do it live with you guys. So let me ask you guys a question. Who believes that you have to work hard to make money? Real question. OK. Who believes that no one can outwork them? OK, good. I have at least some honest people in this room. Well, I'm going to attempt to prove some of you wrong who believe that you can never be outworked, because I see that on the internet all the time, and it drives me bananas.

**Defining Work and Maximizing Output**

So, what is work? How do you define it? We can use the science definition, which is work equals force times distance. But that's not very useful for knowledge workers for what we do. Do we use the time on clock definition? Time spent working as our inputs? Problem is, you work 16 to 18 hours a day. And so if everyone is already doing that, then how can one person work harder than another? So then do we define it by how hard you tried? So the effort that you expend is the work that you do. Well, do you want participation trophies and people just saying like, yes, you tried your hardest? Is this how you want your employees to get to themselves? Well, I tried really hard even though I suck. It's like, well, okay. And so if it's not just the time you put in or how hard you try, then what is work?

My definition is work equals outputs. And outputs equal volume times leverage. Fundamentally, that's what it is. How many times you do something times how much you get out of each time you do it. And so the next question that follows is, well, then how do we work faster? How do we do more work per unit of time? That's volume times leverage divided by time. And the plain speak is output per unit. This will help you produce the most per unit of time.

**Making Time for What Matters Most**

So how can we get more out of the time we put in, which in the game of business is money? You can eliminate everything else that isn't aligned with your goal. And that's how you can actually do your day job as the manager while also giving yourself the time to do what matters most as a maker. Those 96 hours, you can take those 4 hours a day, and it's there. That's just from the stats. That's not just me. It's right there. You can have it. And so this trading up for time is buying time, and it's less valuable work that you trade money for, for more free time to do more valuable work that you then trade to get more money. And you just never stop. This whole process never ends.

**Finding Time and Buying Time**

So, how do we find time and buy time? There are 2 types of work that every entrepreneur has: maker time and manager time. Maker time is long blocks of uninterrupted time, 4 to 6 hours, and it's low urgency, high importance work. Manager time, on the other hand, consists of small time blocks, 5 to 15 minutes, and you have 100 of these plus per week. It's important to fill your calendar with these slots if you're in your manager time.

You can also buy time by investing in your most valuable employee, which is yourself. For $1,500 a month, you can get 96 hours per month back. That's 2 full work weeks every single month. And if you can make more than $15 per hour with your time, you should make that trade 7 days a week, twice on Sunday, and once for your mom.

**Maintaining a Work-Life Balance**

The majority of my fun is in work. But I take like 1 or 2 vacations a year that are like 3 or 4 days. And we try to do it with friends of ours because most of the friends that we have don't live where we live. And so most of the friends that we have, not most, all the friends that we have are all pretty high level entrepreneurs and they're really busy too. And we try to have company there while we can all talk about business and talk about what we're excited about. And that's what works for us.

**Elegant Solutions and Problem-Solving**

We just do what we want to do and so I always hesitate with those those questions because the people take it as gospel and I just like we really really spend a long time trying to not care about what anyone else thinks about what we do. Your business constraint doesn't change that often once you get it right. And so once you know it's like okay I need to advertise more, you just keep doing that until you break something else. And sometimes you can do that for a very, very, very, very, very long time. The big thing that will matter is benchmarks, is understanding, like I think we were talking earlier when the guys were there with the Med Spa, he had a LTV issue. He didn't have a leads issue. And so it's making sure that we're solving the right problem. I see a lot of business owners really obsessing trying to drive down lead costs. And I find it to be more easy to just fix the sales process and add a 0 to your price. And then all of a sudden, all your lead problems go away. There's usually a more elegant solution if you just take a second. And I like asking hypotheticals of, like, what would it take to? Or if I had to make something more valuable in a tenth of the time, what would I do? If someone 10 times smarter than me had the same problem, what would they do? And like, cycling through those frames helped me attack the problem differently, and that helps me a lot.

**Conclusion**

The key to maximizing your productivity and growing your business is to understand the value of your time and eliminate everything else that isn't aligned with your goal. By finding time for what matters most and buying time, you can compress multiple lifetimes of growth into one. This is how you can actually do your day job as the manager while also giving yourself the time to do what matters most as a maker. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions on this? Was there anything that was unclear about their presentation? Go for it.

"Unlocking Your Productivity Potential for Business Growth"

Work equals time spent working as our inputs

Clearing the input that grows your business the most and removing everything that isn't that from your life

Improving customer service and product quality

Expanding into new markets and diversifying products

Working late at night after kids have gone to sleep

- The speaker discusses the definition of work and how it relates to making money
- Work is defined as outputs, which are determined by volume and leverage
- The focus should be on increasing traffic and improving conversion rates to grow a business
- The key is to prioritize and focus on the most important tasks to achieve growth
- Developing skills through repetition and feedback is essential for success in business

- The key to success is mastering a skill, which allows you to do more in less time and gives you leverage
- Focus on the 4 things that grow your business: sales, marketing, product, and delivery
- Differentiate between maker time (long blocks of uninterrupted time) and manager time (small time blocks for coordination and communication)
- Develop habits to find time for important work, such as waking up early, eliminating distractions, and working on weekends
- Consider buying time by outsourcing tasks that drain your energy, such as food prep, cleaning, and laundry
- By reallocating time and energy to important tasks, you can significantly increase productivity and grow your business.

- The speaker emphasizes the importance of investing in things that save time and increase productivity
- He suggests spending $1,500 a month to save 96 hours of work
- He discusses the balance between maker and manager time and recommends prioritizing tasks that grow the business
- He also talks about his personal routine, including fitness and work-life balance
- The speaker and his wife, who are both co-managers of their business, prioritize discussing business and have limited leisure time outside of work

- The speaker does not see their advice as a prescription, but rather as their own approach to business
- They emphasize the importance of identifying and addressing the business constraint, which may involve finding new acquisition channels or adjusting the sales process
- They advocate for finding elegant and efficient solutions to problems, rather than working hard for the sake of it
- The speaker encourages the use of hypothetical scenarios and different frames of thinking to approach problem-solving in business

The speaker discusses the definition of work and its relation to making money, emphasizing the importance of increasing traffic and improving conversion rates to grow a business. They stress the need to prioritize important tasks, develop skills through repetition and feedback, and focus on sales, marketing, product, and delivery. They also recommend differentiating between maker and manager time, developing habits to find time for important work, and outsourcing tasks that drain energy. The speaker emphasizes investing in things that save time and increase productivity, and advocates for finding elegant and efficient solutions to business problems.

Editor note: Our microphone was dying during filming and the audio sometimes clips - so we added subtitles!

Want to SCALE your business? Go here: https://acquisition.com 
Want to START a business? Go here: https://skool.com/games 

If you’re new to my channel, my name is Alex Hormozi. I’m the founder and managing partner of Acquisition.com. It’s a family office, which is just a formal way of saying we invest our own money into companies. Our 10 portfolio companies bring in over $200,000,000+ per year. Our ownership stake varies between 20% and 100% of them. Given this is a YT channel, and anyone can claim anything, I’ll give you some stuff you can google to verify below.

How I got here…

21: Graduated Vanderbilt in 3 years Magna Cum Laude, and took a fancy consulting job.
23 yrs old: Left my fancy consulting job to start a business (a gym).
24 yrs old: Opened 5 gym locations.
26 yrs old: Closed down 6th gym. Lost everything. 
26 yrs old: Got back to launching gyms (launched 33). Then, lost everything for a 2nd time. 
26 yrs old: In desperation, started licensing model as a hail mary. It worked. 
27 yrs old: "Gym Launch" does $3M profit the next 6 months. Then $17M profit next 12 months.
28 yrs old: Started Prestige Labs. $20M the first year.  
29 yrs old: Launched ALAN, a software company for agencies to work leads for customers. Scaled to $1.7mmo within 6 months. 
31 yrs old: Sold 75% of UseAlan to a strategic buyer in an all stock deal. 
31 yrs old: Sold 66% of Gym Launch & Prestige Labs at $46.2M valuation in all-cash deal to American Pacific Group. (you can google it)
31 yrs old: Started our family office Acquisition.com. We invest and scale companies using the $42M in distributions we had taken + the cash from the $46.2M exit.
32 yrs old: Started making free content showing how we grow companies to make real business education accessible to everyone (and) to attract business owners to invest or scale their businesses. 
34 yrs old: I became co-owner of https://Skool.com to help the many people who want to start a business online do so.

Today: Our portfolio now does $200M/yr between 10 companies. The largest doing $100M/yr the smallest doing $5M per year. Our ownership varies between 20% and 100% ownership of the companies. Many of them we invested in early and helped grow (which is how we make our money - not youtube videos).

To all the gladiators in the arena, we’re all in the middle of writing our own stories. The worse the monsters, the more epic the story.

You either get an epic outcome or an epic story. Both mean you win. 

Keep crushing. May your desires be greater than your obstacles. 

Never quit,

Alex

*FULL DISCLOSURE* 
I make content to make money - just - on a longer time horizon than most. I want to build trust with business owners so we can find the best ones and help them scale. And if they’re awesome, write them a check and go all the way as partners.

If you're a business owner or work for 1, this presentation may be the most tactical thing that I can do to make you money.

I think this one's going to be a really big hitter, which is why I wanted to do it live with you guys.

Who believes that you have to work hard to make money?

I have at least some honest people in this room.

Well, I'm going to attempt to prove some of you wrong who believe that you can never be at work, because I see that on the internet all the time, and it drives me bananas.

And the reason this is so important defining work is that all of us claim to work every day, and yet most of us can't even define the word.

So we can use the science definition, which is work equals force time distance.

The problem is that that's not very useful for knowledge workers for what we do.

Problem is, you work 16 to 18 hours a day.

And so if everyone is already doing that, then how can 1 person work harder than another?

So then do we define it by how hard you tried?

So the effort that you expend is the work that you do.

Well do you want participation trophies and people just saying like, yes, you tried your hardest.

Is this how you want your employees to get to themselves?

Well I tried really hard even though I suck.

And so if it's, if work isn't 4 times distant, if it's not just the time you put in, if it's not just how hard you try, then what is work?

And so we better be clear on what it is we're trying to do to make money, right, if we're going to do more of it to make more money.

And so this is my definition, which is work equals outputs.

So some of you guys have seen this from me before.

And the plain speak is the number of times you do something times how much you get out of each time you do it.

And so the next question that follows is, well, then how do we work faster?

And so that's volume times leverage divided by time.

And so the plain speak is output per unit.

And so if you want to produce the most per unit of time, please pay attention, because I do think that this will help you.

And so how can we get more out of the time we put in, which in the game of business is money.

And so now everyone's like attention, you know, perks up.

So volume is the number of times you do the thing.

Leverage is how much you get out of each time you do it.

How many times you do it times how much time you get equals your output.

And so some quick examples and you guys can tell me whether it's high or low.

All right, is this high output or low output?

It's very hard to do that with very low leverage.

Highest, because we have a lot of volume on good leverage.

You can either do more activity, do more stuff, or get more for it to get higher output.

And so normally, I spend the vast majority of my career talking about leverage.

But today I actually want to talk about volume.

And the reason for that is because I'm talking to a lot of businesses and I have taken for granted that people do all the volume stuff.

And it turns out, after talking to many of you, that is just not true.

And so here I am talking about leverage, because I just assume you work your ass off.

And that's fundamentally false for most of you.

And I'm baffled by how little people actually work when they think they are working.

Number 1, clear on the input that grows your business the most.

2 is removing everything that isn't that from your life.

My disclaimer is that this is for business owners and specifically your highest level employees.

And so if you're like taking notes and you're like, hey, I want to send this to my team, I would recommend it because my team saw these slides beforehand and I had like 2 guys being like, I'm going to change a whole bunch of stuff.

And that's my sign for good presentation.

Let's say that you want to grow your business.

You can either get more customers, or you can make them worth more.

You either sell more units, increase LTV.

So breaking this into actions, for customers, you either get more traffic or you convert a higher percentage of them, of the traffic you have.

Making them worth more, you raise prices, decrease your cost of goods sold, get people to buy more stuff more times.

And if you look at 4 things, what do you actually do?

Well, to get more traffic, you have to advertise more better.

To increase your conversion, you have to practice sales, or you have to improve your offer.

If you want to raise your prices, you just have to grow gonads and decide.

By the way, gonads are both sexist, so there you go.

Buy more times, which would be decreasing turn.

You hold events to appreciate members or clients.

But if you look at your time, you do almost none of these things.

You're not doing this stuff now, and that's why you're probably not making money or as much as you want.

And So if you don't do this stuff, all the time that you spend, quote, working has the same impact as doing nothing.

And it's kind of like spending your entire week thinking about how you're going to build and redesign your website and then ultimately deciding not to do it, except it's just more tiresome than just watching Netflix and relaxing.

And so you'd literally be better off doing nothing than doing the work that you claim to be work that actually isn't.

And so that's why most of the businesses here are stuck and why many people watching this at home aren't growing as fast as they want.

And so for most of you, especially the smaller businesses, your effort should be disproportionately here on getting more traffic, advertising more, advertising better, and higher conversion, meaning your actual activities on a daily basis is letting more people know about your stuff and practicing getting them to give you money when they find out about it.

That is what you do on a regular basis with the vast majority of your time.

After all, if you do not have customers, then there is no 1 that you can raise those prices on and that you can get to buy more times and increase their lifetime value.

And so let's pick apart this first 1 first.

So you advertise better by advertising more.

When we even use volume as a measure for skill, like I've taken 4, 000 sales consults, We even say that.

And yet, we don't think about that for our own skill and business.

And so if you want to get unreasonably good at advertising, do so much advertising that it would be unreasonable for you to suck after doing that much of it.

So, if you run ads, it means you commit to spending 4 hours a day scripting, analyzing, writing, copying, and recording ads, which may mean learning how to use editing software or an iPhone.

If you use outreach, it means spending 4 hours a day reaching out to people across social media platforms.

If you use content as your primary advertising, then you make content for 4 hours a day every day and you make it on every platform.

If you use partners and affiliates, it means spending 4 hours a day doing outreach, ads, or making content to help your affiliates send you more customers.

So these actions become the volume that create the outputs, which for many of you is more leads.

And if you're hearing for hours a day and thinking, how will I have time to do everything else?

Remember that doing everything else is what's next.

This is what your time looks like when your business is stalled.

This is what your time looks like when your business is growing.

And so too many of you, if you're honest with yourself, your days look like this.

I told you I would just give you a really thorough answer.

And so before you say, but I need to keep doing, insert whatever thing that isn't growing your business, Remember, you guys can do whatever you want.

But if you keep doing the same stuff and your business isn't growing, then the stuff that you're doing is wrong.

And you have to learn how to let some fires burn.

Some problems are problems, but are not the problem of the business today.

Some things are more important than others, which means, yes, you can neglect them for a season.

Then when they actually become the true limiter of the business, the true constraint, then you focus on them 4 hours a day until you solve it.

And so if you use these 4 things as our guide, let's say you master traffic and you're getting loads of leads, but you can't close a barn door if the wind was behind you, right?

And so then you train someone else in the average passing stuff you do because you mastered it and then 4 hours a day trying to optimize your conversion Which might look like this You might actually track your close rate for a change You might actually report all your sales actions and do them from behind the person.

And have a sign on your door that says that you record so you can do this legally.

That actually worked every single morning.

You practice your script out loud every single day.

You hire someone who can give you feedback, ideally daily, on how well you sell.

You have a two-minute mental prep before you take consults every single time.

You give a pre-sale questionnaire to every person who walks in the door if you're brick and mortar or you have some sort of thing online to get them ready for the sale.

You qualify people on the phone better to pre-sell them.

And then you actually do that every time.

So all problems are solvable with skills, and all skills are attainable with repetition and feedback.

And once you have a skill, you can do it in less time, which gives you leverage so you get more for what you do.

The better you get at it, the less time it takes for you to do it, so you get more time back.

In other words, once you get great at sales, you don't need to spend as much time on it, and you'll still close the same percentage.

You go from growing a skill to maintaining a skill.

And it's much easier to maintain a skill and continue to stay at that same level than it is to gain a skill.

And so it's kind of like maintaining weight.

If you've ever like lost weight or gained weight, like once you get to that level, it's much easier to stay and maintain that it is to break the whatever the word is, homeostasis.

And everything you spend your time on has to clearly ladder up to 1 of these 4 things.

And so right now, if you look at your schedule and you're not laddering up these 4 things, you're not doing the stuff that makes money.

Otherwise, you're just doing this rather than this.

But still, some of you guys are going to be thinking to yourselves, well, with what timeout?

And if you have a special snowflake excuse, I'm special, You're totally right.

It's literally impossible for you to do what I'm saying, and that's why your business won't ever grow.

If you're better, of course, you're right.

You're totally justified as not achieving your goals.

All right, so for everyone else, we just have to face reality.

Success, the marketplace, your customers, they don't care about whatever your excuse is.

They care about what they can get from you, what's in it for me.

And so if you're open to the idea that might a little bit about making money and growing businesses, I want to get to the second part of my presentation, which was that was my 11-year transformation.

The first is how to get very clear on the inputs that grow your business.

And if you're very clear on the 4 things that you need to do and how they ladder up to activities that you spend 4 hours a day.

And you're like, great, but I don't have 4 hours a day.

Well, that's why we're going to do the second part, which is removing everything else that isn't that from your life.

And so the nice part about this second half of the presentation is that there's nothing to argue about.

People who move faster just do better things with their time.

You can cut grass with scissors and it will take a day.

Or you can make 1 call and have someone else do it.

In either scenario, both people get the grass cut.

And so we outline that you need to spend your time working on those 4 levers in your business, at least 4 hours a day.

And so I'm going to show you how to find the time with a combination of habits and buying time.

This may be 1 of the more tactical things that I give you guys that will probably change your life from this whole experience.

So first we have to find time and second we will buy time.

So there's 2 types of work that every entrepreneur has.

You've got maker time, you've got manager time.

Maker time is long blocks of uninterrupted time, 4 to 6 hours.

You only have 14 work blocks per week of this Maker Time, it's very, very valuable.

That's the stuff that moves the business forward.

A productive Maker Calendar is an empty calendar.

An interruption always destroys an entire time block.

Who here has had a time block where you're like really excited and then a 1 hour call comes in at 10 a.m.

And you're like, well, there goes my morning.

Yes, we've all been there and you hate that person.

Looks great, look at that beautiful blue space.

On the other hand, you've got manager time, and we manage both of these things.

These are time blocks as small as 5 to 15 minutes.

The goal is to fill your calendar with these slots if you're in your manager time.

And you are maximally responsible for your manager when you have no gaps.

And this is usually when you're spending time training teams, coordinating, communicating, putting out fires.

And this is what it looks like when you're on manager time.

This is also my calendar when I'm on a manager day.

And both of these work styles are important.

Everyone here has worn both of these hats, right?

But the moment these 2 hats meets is when disaster happens.

And so if you're trying to make tiny slices of management into your making time, you kill half a day.

And if you have lots of empty slots between your managing time, it's also inefficient there too, because you're not doing anything with that time.

You might as well fill it with more meetings.

And so, you have to understand what type of work you're doing when you start the day and explain to your team the difference between these types of work and the importance of those time periods and why you have to prioritize them so that the entire business can grow.

And so beyond explaining the difference in the hours of work, I don't know why I keep going out there, here's what I did to facilitate maker time, because manager time kind of always happens.

So here are the maker habits that I have.

So 1 is I decide the 1 project I need to work on that's most important.

And yes, it can be the same thing for a while.

I worked until 9 AM on that work, 5 hours.

My office now still has no windows, No sound, earplugs.

I want to put everything out of my world besides the work.

And I realize that there are no emergencies.

So this is something that for all entrepreneurs, we have to understand, is that there are no emergencies.

There's 911, someone's dying, in which case call them, not me.

And then there's the emergency that your business isn't going to grow for the third year in a row, which you need to solve now.

Which also means going to bed at the same time every single night, which is a habit that served me very well.

And realize that Drinking costs you 2 days, the day you drink and the day you recover.

And some makers work late at night after their kids have gone to sleep.

It doesn't matter what your time slot is as long as you make time for it.

Just find the 4 to 5 hours that you can turn everything off.

And working weekends is also a hack that you can move forward.

See all Alex Hormozi transcripts on Youtube

You're Not Behind: My System for Outworking Everyone