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Alex Hormozi appeared on the August 4, 2025 episode of Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast. During the episode, Hormozi offered a candid breakdown of the emotional journey many new entrepreneurs go through as they chase income.
Hormozi identified five distinct stages that he said people typically experience when stepping into entrepreneurship. The first stage, he explained, is what he called "uninformed optimism", a phase where excitement is high but understanding is low.
"So the first is what I call uninformed optimism. So your friend tells you about this thing they made ten grand on, and you're like 'That sounds amazing.' You're uninformed, but you're optimistic," Hormozi explained.
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Alex Hormozi, the Iranian-American investor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist known for his expertise in monetization and customer acquisition, further explained how uninformed optimism led to the second stage. He called it “informed pessimism.”
This is the phase where people enter a venture with high hopes, only to face early losses or difficulties that shake their confidence, as per Hormozi.
"And so then you get into it, and then all of a sudden you get to uh informed pessimism. So you get in and then you put your money in and then it drops and you’re like, ‘Wow, this sucks,'" Hormozi added.
According to Hormozi, this stage gives way to what he considered the most critical stage: the value of despair. It is the emotional low point where people feel overwhelmed and lost.
"And so then you get to kind of stage three, which is the value of despair, where you’re like, ‘Oh my god, I’ve lost so much money. I have no idea what’s going on right now,'" he explained.
At this point, most people tend to hit a "fork" in the road, jumping back to the first stage and repeating the cycle. However, according to Hormozi, if a new entrepreneur manage to persist, he can move to stage four: "informed optimism."
This is the stage where the entrepreneur truly understands the rules and variables of the game. By internalizing the lessons previously learnt and staying consistent, as per the investor, individuals can eventually reach the final stage, "achievement."
More on what Alex Hormozi said on Jay Shetty’s podcast
After explaining the five emotional stages that entrepreneurs experience when they start pursuing income, Alex Hormozi stressed that new entrepreneurs need to stay committed.
He emphasized that this is especially important during the most uncomfortable periods. He further explained that there is a crucial turning point, where most people tend to give up.
"But the thing is that you have to stay in that third painful place because staying in the pain is what gives you the catalyst to learn how to get out of pain," Hormozi added.
He then shed light on the power of consistency and long-term focus. He explained that real growth happens when people stop chasing quick wins and give themselves time to build something meaningful.
"And I would say that what’s interesting is that you can build something very big in about 5 to 7 years," he said.
Alex Hormozi then criticized the common habit among new entrepreneurs of constantly switching ideas or business models.
He noted that many people spend those same 5 to 7 years essentially "reliving the same 30 days," never truly mastering the fundamentals. This happened because they fail to lay proper foundations. In his words, they never "get the root set," leading to them paying "ignorance tax."
Alex Hormozi also likened the journey of a new entrepreneur to enduring hardship rather than opting out too soon. That, he explained, force them to truly understand the skills and variables that determine success.
"And so rather than trying to pull your parachute, it's like I have to trudge through this so that it forces me to learn the individual skills, the individual variables that affect this outcome. And that means I might have to take 20 more lashings to finally get it. And then at that point, it starts to tick up," he explained.
What else do we know about Alex Hormozi?
Based on information available on his website, Acquisition.com, Alex Hormozi is a first-generation Iranian-American entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist.
He graduated from Vanderbilt University Magna Cum Laude in three years with a BS in Human & Organizational Development, focusing on Corporate Strategy.
After graduation, he worked as a management consultant for a boutique strategy firm for two years before starting his first business.
In 2013, he launched his first brick-and-mortar business. Within three years, he successfully scaled it to six locations.
Alex Hormozi then sold those locations to transition into the turnaround business. Over the next two years, he helped turn around more than 32 brick-and-mortar businesses using the same model that had made his ventures successful.
Following that experience, he packaged his process into a licensing model, which scaled rapidly over four years. During the same period, he founded and scaled three other companies to over $120 million in cumulative sales across four different industries, without taking on outside capital.
He scaled and exited seven companies in total. His big exit was the majority sale of his licensing company for $46.2 million in 2021.
In 2020, Alex Hormozi transitioned from CEO to owner/shareholder in these companies and founded Acquisition.com as a way to invest his wealth, both monetary and intellectual, into other businesses.
He also donated much of his free time to advancing equal access to education and encouraging entrepreneurship in underprivileged communities.
At present, Alex Hormozi remains focused on Acquisition.com, his company, while also dedicating time to content creation. He recently released a book titled $100M Money Models.
