Shadowing Practice: Hormozi's Best Advice - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Alex Formosi is one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our generation.
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I made more in a year than the CEOs of McDonald's,
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Ford, Motorola, Yahoo, and IKEA combined as a kid in my 20s.
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He did $106 million in sales in a single weekend, and today his companies do over $250 million a year.
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And he knows exactly why you're doing everything right but still losing, why your plan to get rich is keeping you stuck,
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and why you're working hard but falling behind.
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and he speaks from experience.
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In his 20s, he was running nine businesses at the same time.
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I had a dental agency, marketing agency.
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I had a chiropractor marketing agency.
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I had gym launch where we'd fly out and do gym turnarounds.
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And then I had five gyms of my own.
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Jesus.
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At the same time.
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And I was somehow perplexed as to why I wasn't making any money.
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I was, there's like, everything was always on fire all the time.
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And I always just sold my ass off enough to be able to pay all the bills and have nothing left over.
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That was the, that was how I rocked it.
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And it was only, you know, when Layla came in and she was like,
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you know, I think maybe if we just did one thing, you could win.
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Because she was like, imagine if all you had to do is make one of these businesses work.
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How easy would that be?
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I was like, oh, my God, the only one of them work would be a joke.
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And like I heard myself say that and I was like, you're an idiot.
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Why are you so dumb?
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And so like the treat that I was missing at that point was focus and or discipline.
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I couldn't say no. I didn't have that muscle, so that was a trait I lacked.
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And so it's like, boom, and then that blew up.
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So while he was juggling nine businesses, he wasn't making any money.
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But as soon as he focused on one, it took off.
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Scattered focus is one of the main reasons you're not seeing any results.
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There are a few more, and Alex speaks with so much authority on this because he's made every single one of these mistakes himself first.
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The first thing he learned, pick one ladder.
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Ambitious people are especially bad at this because they see opportunities everywhere.
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Alex explains it with a wall.
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On the other side is the success you want.
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And to get over it, you need a ladder that reaches the top.
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So you start building.
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You put four rungs on one ladder, then four on another, then start a third.
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The problem is that none of them reach the top.
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But the idea, the fallacy is that, oh, I'll just do all three or four of these things and I'll see which one works.
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When the reality is that any of them work, but none of them will work unless you work on one.
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But if you take the rungs off the other ladders, stack them on one, and you're over.
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What's crazy is that this literally happens at all levels of business.
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Like people who are starting out trying to start five things, people who are like their second or fifth year.
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I talked to a guy last night who has a really good business, really good margin, 50% margins, has great revenue retention.
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He was in cybersecurity.
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People stay with him.
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People pay.
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He has no problem getting customers.
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He has no problem delivering on them.
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I was like, what's the problem?
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He's like, me.
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He said, I just, I get bored.
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He's like, I just want to start more things.
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And I'm like, yeah, you got to stop that.
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And that's exactly how a plan to get rich keeps you stuck.
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often it's three plans at once, each getting a third of you.
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So zoom all the way out.
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Think of somebody who gets better every single year and works on the same project for 20 years.
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You'd be like, my God, that guy's probably really fucking good.
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And what's interesting about this is that it doesn't matter what project the person works on.
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You do 20 years of reps and you do nothing else, you're going to be good.
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And so if you know that that's a fact, that's a certainty, that you're going to be good with 20 years of practice,
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then the objective is to just get 20 years of practice in one thing and stick with it.
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So like your plans aren't working because the plans are wrong.
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The plans aren't working because you're not working on the plan.
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The hard part about the plan is not creating the plan or even following the plan.
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It's sticking with the plan.
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That's the hard part.
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Once you've committed to one business, the new ideas start showing up inside it.
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But Alex has a simple order for deciding which ones get his time.
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When we're organizing opportunities that we're going to pursue with a business, is we look at what are the ones
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that we have the absolute highest likelihood of success that we need no new skills and no new effort.
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If we can do that, or the least amount of new effort and no new skills, that would be the first thing we're going to do.
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And then once we take off all the ones that take basically no effort and no extra skills,
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we're like, okay, which ones take more effort and still no skills?
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And then once we do that, then we're like, okay, now we can start learning a new skill.
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And of the different skills that we could learn,
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which of these is going to give us the highest leverage as in most output for the least amount of input.
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And that's pretty much how we tick down which of these opportunities we want to pursue because those have the lowest
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likelihood of not happening.
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It's really tempting to do this backwards, to chase the exciting new thing and leave the easy win sitting in the business you already have.
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And I know because I've faced this more than once myself.
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So after you decide on one thing, you still have to do more than feels reasonable to get any meaningful results.
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Otherwise, most people decide the idea was bad and start another ladder.
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So what should you fix first?
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The first thing you do is you do more.
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And for most small businesses, they're doing so little and think they're doing so much.
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And it's a huge gap in understanding.
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And so I'll tell this story that's probably the easiest way to explain it, which is when I had my first gym,
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I called up a mentor.
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He had 20 locations.
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I said, how do you advertise?
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He said, I use flyers.
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I said, okay.
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So I put 300 flyers out.
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It didn't work.
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I called him back.
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I was upset.
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I said, WTF?
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He said, slow down.
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What was your test size?
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And I said, what do you mean?
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He's like, well, your test size.
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So like, I mean, the 300 wasn't the only amount that you put out.
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I was like, well, yeah.
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It's like, well, our test size is 5,000 flyers.
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And then once we have a winner, then we do 5,000 every day in terms of flyers that they put on cars to get people in.
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And so over a 30-day period, he would be putting out 150,000 flyers.
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And over a 30-day period, I put out 300.
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So his mentor was putting out 500 times as many flyers.
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but Alex thought the flyers were the problem.
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He thought 300 was a fair test, but he had no idea how much the guy who was actually winning did.
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Years later, with a $46 million exit behind him, he made the same mistake again.
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Most small business owners have no idea how much more volume the guys who were ahead of them put out.
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I remember having a conversation at the very beginning of me deciding to make content after I sold the company, where I said, hey, you know,
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I really want to learn this Instagram game and content game.
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And so I talked to somebody who's
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He was a big, big influencer.
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And I said, you know, can you analyze my stuff and tell me what I'm doing wrong?
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And he said, dude, you're not doing anything wrong.
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You're just doing too little.
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And so he said, pull up your Instagram.
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I pulled it up.
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And I think I was doing like a post every other day or something like that.
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And he's like, dude, I got four posts a day.
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And I was like, whoa.
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And then he said, pull up your LinkedIn.
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And I don't think I posted on LinkedIn.
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He's like, I got 10 posts a day.
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And he's like, pull up your Twitter at the time.
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Now X.
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It's like, nothing, right?
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So he went side by side.
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He's like, I'm putting out 70, 80 a day, and you're putting out one every other, and you're complaining.
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And I was like, got it.
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So even when you're doing the right things, you might just be doing way too few reps.
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That's how you end up doing everything right and still losing.
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It's also how people who work hard fall behind.
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Being tired feels like progress, but tired only means the work was hard.
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It has nothing to do with whether it was enough.
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But more attempts only pay off if you learn from them.
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So make every batch teach you.
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acquired and that volume has a great feedback loop for skill
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because you do these iterations and you will suck and
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that is okay and as long as you like the process
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that i have for improving any part of any system is just do a tremendous amount of volume let's say
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we do 100 whatevers we look at the top 10 of the ones
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that got the highest response rate of the ones
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that got the most views or the ads
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that got the most clicks
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we say okay what was different about these top 10 percent compared to the other 90
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and so the next 100 we do we say let's just try
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and just do the thing we did in the top 10%, we do it again.
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And that continual refinement process has been key to all the stuff that we've done.
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It's just look at what worked, do more of that.
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That's what the Flyer mentor was doing.
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He tested 5,000 to find a winner, then put out 5,000 a day of the one that won.
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So if volume matters this much, it'd be reasonable to think that we should just pump out as much as we can.
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But Alex says there's a catch.
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And so the thing is, is that it's so much better to spend 100 hours making one exceptional thing than doing 100 things mediocrely.
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And now, Some of that's like wait a second.
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How does that contradict with you got to do lots of quantity?
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Quantity matters because it teaches you how much work it takes to create quality.
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And so once you learn and this is like
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if you look at I like youtubers
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because it's it they have really well documented like work cycles
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and you can see all their product and marketing in the same place.
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Is that in the beginning many of them make more videos
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and then over time they realize that if they make a better video it has outsized returns.
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So, hypothetically, you're putting in the reps, you're doing the volume, but the results are still falling short of your expectations.
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Then it's your job to find the step that's broken.
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Because every day that you're working hard and smart, but still not reaching your goals, you're paying what Alex calls the ignorance tax.
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It means you have no idea what you're doing yet.
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You don't know what you don't know.
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And the only way you pay down that tax is that you test and you iterate.
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And so you just want to get as many no's out of the way, as many failures out of the way, because you're not actually failing.
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You made progress.
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It wasn't yes or no. Did it work or not?
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It's how well did it work?
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And I think if you can make even that frame shift, you're like, okay, well, I'm reaching out to people.
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They're responding, but I'm not getting them on the phone.
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Okay, well then you have a scripting issue.
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Okay, then you get them on the phone.
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Okay, well they're not buying.
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Okay, well then it might be an offer issue.
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It still might be a sales issue.
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Depends on why they're not buying.
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If they're saying, you know, it's price, it's like you might be mispriced, but you also might just be really terrible at explaining the value.
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And so you just continue to work your way down until eventually someone's like, yeah, that sounds good.
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And they read you their credit card over the phone and you're like, holy shit, this is actually happening.
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And you make your first dollar.
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Notice the question he keeps asking, which step is breaking?
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The replies, the calls, the offer, the price, each one has a different fix fix and the same question scales up.
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This is how it sounds when Alex looks at a company that's already working.
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So we want to invest to a company.
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We come in and a lot of times, right?
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Like in we're in like the diligence part of the deal cycle.
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And I say, okay, so you've got five sales guys and you're spending 5,000 bucks a day on ads.
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That's your primary way of getting leads.
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Why aren't we spending 50,000 a day?
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I just asked the question, like why, like what stops us from something's 50,000 a day.
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And then a number of things will come up.
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And then the question is, how soluble are all those things?
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Now, if they say, well, whenever we spend more money, our row eyes goes down,
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I'd be like, okay, I would see that as your ads suck.
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Great.
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If they say, we can't handle the call volume, then I'd be like, oh, you don't know how to hire, recruit, and train salespeople.
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Cool.
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If they say, oh, we could, it's just that we couldn't deliver based on the promises that we make,
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because we have a lot of high touch service.
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Like, okay, So you need to, we need to systematize more stuff on the back end and get better training in place on the back end.
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Ideally, maybe bring someone in who's ruling, you know, ruling that, owning that rather than the founder who's split between too many places.
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Right.
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So like you can, you can quickly understand where the constraint of the business is by simply asking, why can't we 10x this?
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Right now.
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For a lot of founders, the biggest constraint is the same one the cybersecurity founder had, the business owner himself.
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If the business relies on you to get customers, which is very common in founder-led companies, like you're the breadwinner, you're the promoter,
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you're the one who brings the business in, this is one of the biggest risk factors in business because this is why you can't leave.
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And when you do leave, the revenue goes down.
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And it's very scary because everything relies on you.
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And what's tough is that it feels good in the short term to have everyone rely on you, right?
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It feeds your ego.
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It makes you feel important because you're like, I'm irreplaceable.
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I'm a special snowflake.
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I am a unique human being with unique skills and therefore I am important.
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But the idea is that you actually, in order to make an important business, you need to become less important.
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So if the business stops when you stop, congratulations, you've just built yourself a job you can't quit.
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But every fix so far assumes the idea itself is actually good.
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But sometimes it isn't, and that's when you have to decide whether to push or pivot.
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it.
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Every founder hits the question at some point and Alex answers it with two kinds of failure.
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So there's kind of like good failure and bad failure.
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So good failure is like, I tried something and I saw that it didn't work and I realized what I need to do instead.
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And I'm going to iterate continuously.
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Bad failure is where I have an assumption that the world of the conditions were going to be this way.
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And my assumption was false.
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And so if I believe that people really wanted to have a dog
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Zoom calls or whatever, right?
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Zoom made for dogs.
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Let's just take a ridiculous example.
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Well, then I would have to take a couple of need to believes of like, in order for this to be successful,
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these four things would have to be true.
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If I find out after starting some iterations that one of my three
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or four assumptions that underpin this being successful long-term is not true, then I should not keep trying to pursue this.
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And that is where I would say we need to pivot in a situation where none of the conditions that I,
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or none of the need to beliefs have changed.
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All of those conditions are still the same and it's a deficiency in skill, then that is where I would push.
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Now, how long will it take is gonna be completely predicated on how quickly you can learn
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and the quality of that feedback.
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So write down what has to be true for your idea to work.
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When it gets hard, if all the elements still hold true, keep going.
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But if one turns out false, change direction.
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And while you're pushing, keep in mind, Alex runs two very different time horizons.
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Expand the time horizon that you measure your output on, but shrink the time horizon that you measure your inputs on
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so measure what you do today faster
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but measure what happens from what you did today longer
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that's it like find people ahead of you figure out what they did
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if that's what you want to learn do the inputs
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and measure them quickly short-term get feedback and then don't
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and then wait a long time until you get the outcome
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that you want but I I would say instead of optimizing for the outcome, I optimize for progress.
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Because when entrepreneurs flip those two time horizons, they quit on things that just needed more time.
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Do all of this and there's a good chance it works.
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You focus, you put in the volume, you fix what's broken, and eventually you get over the wall.
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But that brings up a question that's really easy to skip.
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What are you climbing for in the first place?
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Alex admits he's still working this one out.
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Someone gets to a few million dollars a year and they're like, that's it.
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I made it.
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I made it.
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And I have to fight against this is what I'm working on.
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I see that and I'm like, out of the game.
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Like, he's out.
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He's out.
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Done.
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Quit too soon.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Like, there's so much juice left to squeeze.
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Right?
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But then it's like, the thing is, is that the juice that comes out is your output.
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And the thing that's being squeezed is you.
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But he's also not telling you to stop working.
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He tried that once and it made him absolutely miserable.
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And so I remember when I sold gym launch, there was a year that I more or less took off.
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I had all these kind of existential crises that I was going through
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because all I had been doing was just working, working, working.
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Then I hadn't like put my head up to like look around and smell the roses per se.
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The problem that I had was that when I was smelling the roses, I was miserable.
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I was very sad.
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And the sadness for me came from the thing that I had
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that was most reinforcing my life was the work that I was doing.
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That was the thing that I enjoyed the most.
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And so not having that actually created a huge loss for me.
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The work itself is what he loved.
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While most people unwind by watching TV, playing video games, listening to music, going out with friends, his favorite thing was to actually work.
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Let me tell you this story.
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So my first gym ever, I had my first manager who worked there.
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And he was a trainer.
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He was awesome.
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Best trainer I ever had.
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And I promoted him to manager.
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and with that pay raise, um, he went from something in the neighborhood of like $25,000 a year as a trainer,
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uh, paid by session to getting a salary of like $45,000 a year,
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which for me was a ton of money at the time when I was paying somebody else.
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Right.
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And, uh, he did it for six months, crushed it, did an amazing job.
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And he said, Hey man, can I talk to you after work today?
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It was like, yeah, sure, man.
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What's up?
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Like you're like, you're doing great.
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Whatever.
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He says, um, Hey, I, um, I don't, I don't want to be, I don't want to be manager anymore.
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And I was like, what do you mean you're quitting he's like no no no
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I I just I just want to be a trainer
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and I was like but I mean
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but you realize your your pay would get cut in half like
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that like that doesn't really make sense and he just looked at me
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and I still remember this to this day he looked at me he's like I'll just be poor then and I
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and I it was like it was like it was like a it was like a bomb dead day
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I was like and I looked at it I was I was literally speechless then I just said I respect it,
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but I will never understand it.
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And the thing is, is that he is to this day, I got to see him.
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I got to see him three weeks ago.
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First time in like 10 years.
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He was then the happiest person I've ever met.
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And today, or when I just saw him, just as happy.
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And he's like, dude, I mean, I can't believe that we were starting that gym and you were at the floor.
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And, you know, we were canning some of those old stories.
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He's like, look what you have, man, all this stuff.
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and I was like, dude, you won.
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Like, I'm still trying to catch up to you.
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Alex Hormosey, with everything he's built,
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telling the trainer from his first gym that Alex is the one that's actually trying to catch up to the trainer.
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Ultimately, the trainer knew early which work he wanted to spend his days on and he was willing to pay for it.
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And that's the last way to do everything right and still lose.
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You can climb the wall, you can reach the top, and you can find out that it was someone else's.
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So pick one thing, put in more work than feels reasonable, learn from every batch, and eventually, win.
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Just make sure it's a wall you want to be on the other side of.
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And money is a big part of it, of course.
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But the bigger prize is a life you're proud of, doing work you love with the people you love, and the health to enjoy it.
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Build that, and you'll know you've won.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Hormozi's Best Advice”. This video has 344 sentences and 3977 words to shadow. The speech runs for 18:01. The speaker talks fast, about 221 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 87% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| trainer noun | /ˈtɹeɪnɚ/ | A person who trains another; a coach. |
| flyer noun | /ˈflaɪə(ɹ)/ | That which flies, as a bird or insect. |
| founder noun | /ˈfaʊ̯n.dəː/ | One who founds or establishes (a company, project, organisation, state, etc.). |
| ladder noun | /ˈlæd.ɚ/ | A frame, usually portable, of wood, metal, or rope, used for ascent and descent, consisting of two side pieces to which are fastened rungs (cross strips or… |
| horizon noun | /həˈɹaɪ.zən/ | The visible horizontal line (in all directions) where the sky appears to meet the earth in the distance. |
| output noun | /ˈaʊtpʊt/ | Production; quantity produced, created, or completed. |
| skill noun | /skɪl/ | A capacity to do something well; a technique, an ability, usually acquired or learned, as opposed to abilities that are regarded as innate. |
| input noun | /ˈɪnpʊt/ | The act or process of putting in; infusion. |
| rep noun | /ɹɛp/ | A fabric made of silk or wool, or of silk and wool, and having a transversely corded or ribbed surface. |
| feedback noun | /ˈfiːdˌbæk/ | Critical assessment of a process or activity or of their results. |
| rely verb | /ɹɪˈlaɪ/ | To trust; to have confidence in; to depend. |
| pursue verb | /pɚˈsu/ | To follow urgently, originally with intent to capture or harm; to chase. |
| assumption noun | /əˈsʌm(p).ʃ(ə)n/ | The act of assuming, or taking to or upon oneself; the act of taking up or adopting. |
| mentor noun | /ˈmɛn.tɔː/ | A wise and trusted counselor or teacher. |
| zoom verb | /zuːm/ | To move fast with a humming noise. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| put out verb | To blind (eyes). | |
| pull up verb | /ˌpʊl ˈʌp/ | To lift upwards or vertically. |
| take off verb | To remove. | |
| fall behind verb | To be late (for a regular event) | |
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. | |
| get over verb | To overcome. | |
| go down verb | To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one. | |
| blow up verb | To explode or be destroyed by explosion. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Why are you so dumb?
- I was like, what's the problem?
- I said, how do you advertise?
- What was your test size?
- What are you climbing for in the first place?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | you've committed · I've faced · has been |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who are · somebody who gets · guy who was |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | might be mispriced · be completely predicated · being squeezed |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 102 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, I'm, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: assumption /əˈsʌm(p).ʃ(ə)n/, congratulations /kənˌɡɹæt͡ʃəˈleɪʃ(ə)nz/, crush /kɹʌʃ/, exceptional /ɪkˈsɛpʃənəl/, expectation /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: miserable /ˈmɪz(ə)ɹəbəl/, entrepreneur /ˌɑn.tɹə.pɹəˈnɝ/, ridiculous /ɹɪˈdɪk.jə.ləs/, congratulations /kənˌɡɹæt͡ʃəˈleɪʃ(ə)nz/, exceptional /ɪkˈsɛpʃənəl/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like trainer, flyer, founder.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.