Former Community – We Moved
🆕 Coached community here, for posts & feedback public community here.
Alex Hormozi: Machiavellianism is the bedrock of success
Read between the lines.
And, from my POW, you see that strategic thinking, overlapping with Machiavellianism, is foundational to (Alex) success.
TODAY Alex is this mega icon of value-giving.
Finding ways to succeed BIG while also giving and keeping it win-win.
But Alex only became a value-giver AFTER he added a string of values to a more Machiavellian bent.
Look at him as a young man when he was a player and running a fraternity in college:
Alex: one guy turns to the other and says dude I just pulled a Hormozi. Because he stole a chicken breast and so the way that the way back in the day you'd put a chicken breast underneath your salad and you could also have a chicken breast on the side so you could get two chicken breasts but you'd have one meal credit so like you couldn't have more than one you have to pay extra so I put one under my salad and that way I could get it through
(...)
But the administration started catching on to this so they started asking people to push their salad aside to show that there was nothing underneath
but (...) so I started getting newspapers (...) and then I could put like two or three chicken breasts lining the inside of the newspaper (<--- this is the arms' race between enforcing fair rules for all the Machiavellian looking for ways around the rules)
Interviewer: I mean at what point are you like I'm I'm taking too much chicken (<---- the more moral "normal person" point of view. Ie: you're pushing it bro, being too much of a taker)
Alex: I felt like it was kind of like how Lindsay Lohan approached that issue in Mean Girls like the limit does not exist (<--- the Machiavellian bent: consequences for cheating are small, MY goal comes before anything else, so I find ways to win and take as much as possible, no silly moral qualms to limit anything)
*click to expand blockquote
It's funny he even uses Mean Girl as an example.
The chick flick movie that epitomizes Machaivellianism in search of status and popularity.
Of course this is all small stuff and small red flags.
But as we say here, it's the small stuff that often reveals the thinking patterns that apply anywhere else -including the bigger stuff-.
Just to make sure, I repeat again that I believe that today Alex is a great value giver.
And good (circumstantial) evidence, I hope, of the true possibility of change.
And, also, a good example of the higher potential for fulfillment -and potentially success- if you retain some of that strategic thinking, but add personal values and a "honorable man" approach.
Happy to read any thoughts on this.
In someways, this path is also similar to mine.
I used seek maximum returns while giving as little as possible, enjoying a good life with little effort.
And I was doing great at it until, luckily, life events shook up my path and thinking along the way.
I never stole anything as a teenager. It was more because I was too pussy to do it, and not because I had strictly good moral.
and my Machiavellian take on it, is that I could transform my pussyness into virtue signalling my good morals, by shaming  my friends who did it.
A lot of virtual signalling is just resentment masked behind a nice veil.
Thank you for sharing, Jack!
It very refreshing to hear some real-talk (self-)analysis.
Hello Lucio,
I think it's an awesome thread and is advanced: where in the grey do one pushes when one is free to go either darker or lighter? That's when the true moral (what stoics call Virtue) comes in: how does one behaves when one does not risk negative consequences? (very philosophical). I'm not saying it says good or bad things, it says what the trends in behaviours are in this person.
And I was doing great at it until, luckily, life events shook up my path and thinking along the way.
Curious to know more about it.
On my side, as I said I think it's very philosophical. That's utilitarianism vs stoicism (for instance). I don't think there's an optimal answer. It's basically a life choice: what person do you want to be? The person hiding the chicken under the salad or not?
Personally, I don't want to be this person. Personal choice. That's how I view it.
Yes, machiavellianism is the bedrock of success but law of optimum balance and it's easy to overdo it. You've seen my own example when I learned machiavellianism and was all excited about it. And then toned it down as I saw it was damaging relationships. And I value relationships above power and control.
