If you want to make more money, you might want to consider doing this. So number one is hold that thought just a second, because the thing that comes before the map is this graph views. Oh god, this is the entrepreneur lifecycle. And there are six stages.
Now, the vast majority of people get stuck on stage three. That means some of the biggest career mistakes at this point, and you're living in the same six months for 23 years. Suffering. Until you learn how to break free from it.
I want to go through the whole thing. This is going to be awesome. Alex Mormose is the master of business strategy. All systems and styling companies into the millions and the leading boys in how to craft your way to success.
He's an entrepreneurial powerhouse. Whether you're starting out or want to go from $1 million to $10 million, there are certain behaviors and actions that will increase the likelihood of success that we're going to improve. But here's the really hard truth that a lot of people don't like talking about. Entrepreneurs must be willing to make impossible choices, have the courage to be willing to be wrong, have shame, buy failing at things, in front of people, lose opinions that care.
And that fear keeps people stuck in a job and a life they don't want for years. And that was my path. I had a way college job, kind of overlooking the city, everything's according to plan. And I remember thinking like I didn't want to be alive.
Because I was so afraid. But once you get over the fear, it unleashes this whole new realm of possibility of being able to do what you want. And that is when you can learn the real game of entrepreneurship, such as knowing that this idea is difficult to come from one of three pieces. You only need one of those things.
And then there's the four R's for customer success. How to learn new skills quickly, how to stand out in a competitive market, the winning strategy for 2025. And so much more. So much less than that.
I find it incredibly fascinating that when we look at the back end of Spotify and Apple and our audio channels, the majority of people that watch this podcast haven't yet hit the full button. Or the subscribe button. Where are you listening to this? I would like to make a deal with you.
If you could do me a huge favor and hit that subscribe button. I will work tirelessly from now until forever to make the show better and better and better and better. I can't tell you how much it helps when you hit that subscribe button. The show gets bigger, which means we can expand the production, bring in all the guests you want to see and continue to do in this thing we love.
If you could do me that small favor and hit the full button. Wherever you're listening to this, that would mean the world to me. I will ever ask you. Thank you so much for your time back to this episode.
Alex, if someone's just clicked on this conversation and they're considering listening for the next couple of hours based on everything that you do for the millions of entrepreneurs that follow you that read your books. Can you tell me exactly why you believe they should stay and listen and who should stay and listen at acquisition.com. We scale businesses. The content that I generate that we put out conversations like this helps people who are going from zero to one just getting off the ground to helping people go from 1 million to 10 million to helping the entrepreneurs going from 10 to 100, either get there or eggs along the way.
And there are frameworks that cross all three of those that I consider both deep and wide that help any business navigate whatever strategic decision is in front of them to get the highest potential return for their time. And so if you were listening or watching, then if one of those frameworks applies immediately to your business and allows you to pull five years forward in your career, I would say that's a pretty good return on time. For the people that are at zero. What is it that they're typically coming to you to help them with?
So if you were one of them, what is it that they want from Alex? I think it's there's what they think they want and what they actually need, which are two different things. And so I think what they think they want is some tactic that's going to immediately help them start business. What they typically actually need is the courage to be willing to be wrong and to be willing to have shame by failing at things in front of people whose opinions they care about.
And I think that's, if I rewind the clock for me, it was probably one of the hardest things that I had to get over. And I think that's why maybe my message resonates with a lot of people is because it was so hard for me to get over. And what's interesting is basically what you're listening, the harder it is for you to break free of whatever kind of mental prison you've made for yourself, whether that's real or just in your head. The more compelling your story will be when you break through it, because it will resonate with even more people.
For the people that it was easy that their story doesn't have a lot of, like I was immediately an entrepreneur, like I wasn't like that. I had a job when I was in high school, I had a job immediately at college. Some people were like, I was selling lemonade out of the back of my, you know, thing when I was 13, I didn't do any of that. I was like, well, I actually was pretty good at school.
I didn't have any of those issues. You know what I mean? And so I had a pretty clear career path. And so I had what many would consider like, I had a real opportunity cost.
So I had a wake-collar job and I had a GMAT score above Harvard's min score. And so I had a really clear path of what my life could look like in the next 20, 30 years. And it was fairly well defined. Like, I'll go to Harvard or Stanford or one of the top business schools.
And then I'll either go back in a mansion consulting, I'll go and invest in banking and eventually end up in private equity. And that would be the path. Right. And then all the flowers would be set up my feet.
And, you know, everyone would say, we approve of you. You're an excellent person. But when I saw the people who were 20 years ahead of me, I really didn't want their life. And then it started making me look at my life.
And I was like, I don't even know if I really want my life. And so the big decisions that I've made in my life, unfortunately, have almost always come at the doorstep of a parent death. And I think maybe in some ways that makes me a coward for having needed death to make decisions. And so operationalizing that has been something that has helped me move faster to make decisions that I know I need to make but don't.
And so like the first big kind of like what felt like a death decision was I was being told 22 years old. I had a paid for, you know, condo that I bought overlooking the city. And I remember thinking like, I really hope I don't wake up tomorrow. And that and I don't mean that to be melodramatic.
I just, for a period of time, I just always just like hoops every night. I was like, I just really hope I don't wake up tomorrow. Like, I just don't want to do this. And what was difficult about that was that at that time was when my father was most proud of me because I was doing everything that was according to plan.
You know, he could talk about like his son who graduated in three years from Vanderbilt had the had the good job. Like everything was following the plan. And it was upon realizing that my ultimate expression of living out his dream was me feeling like I didn't want to be alive. And so in, and it took me time to get to that point to even articulate that because obviously you never want to kind of admit failure of like, I have really messed something up here.
But I was living my life to win someone else's game. And when I realized that I realized that one of our dreams had to die, either his or mine. And when I realized that his dream must die in order for mine to live was a statement that I kind of crystallized when I was at that point in my life. Like I had to keep repeating that like his dream has to die in order for mine to live.
And so to put this in perspective of like how afraid of my father's just when I was, I left the state and drove across the country halfway through before calling him to tell him that I was gone. And so I bring this up because I don't try I'm not trying to be dramatic.