In case you missed it, this year’s BAM Fest had a fireside chat with Sharran Srivatsaa and Leila Hormozi (our biggest mystery guest ever). The full replay of their conversation is in BAMx.
One of the questions Leila tackled was asked by BAM co-founder Byron Lazine: How should people think about balancing hard work with the industry’s growing push toward work-life balance?
Leila’s answer spoke to anyone at the helm of a real estate business in its early stage, and what she’s learned applies to entrepreneurs across all industries.
“What people are losing is the context of time…You have to work incredibly hard and work your face off and sacrifice sleep and relationships, all these things, for an amount of time. And then you will create leverage.”
It’s that leverage that allows entrepreneurs to then create balance in their day-to-day. That just isn’t the reality when a successful business is in its infancy.
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The Myth of Balance Starts with the Wrong Timeline
Byron’s question goes right to the mismatch between how people expect to build a real estate business, specifically the day-to-day experience they have in mind, and what building one actually takes.
The real estate industry feeds into that mismatch:
- Getting licensed is easy, so a lot of people treat it like a side hustle
- You’re competing against people who do this full-time and people who don’t really need to care
- Most advice is written for the average agent, not the one who wants to win
Work-life balance has been a buzzword for a while. But when you’re starting a business of your own, and you want to build something amazing, balance is not part of the process.
Leila reframes the whole conversation around the reality most agents would rather avoid. Balance isn’t off the table, but it’s not a first-chapter concept. The early stages of any real business demand something different from you.
She breaks it down as a progression:
- Early stage: You’re putting in more than you’re getting back. And that’s the point.
- Middle stage: Systems start working, momentum builds, and you get some of your time back.
- Later stage: You actually get to choose how you spend your time and energy
Skip the first phase and you don’t actually get to the other ones. The people who reach that later stage burned through the hard part with their eyes open.
“If you want to be excellent…you’re not going to have balance in the beginning. I don’t know anybody who’s a great entrepreneur that’s like, ‘You know what? The first few years of starting my business were the most balanced.’ Are you fucking kidding me?”
The 5–7 Year Tradeoff That Creates Leverage
Leila knows from experience that building something meaningful takes years of concentrated effort. As she puts it, expect five to seven years of going all in.
This is the stretch where the real work happens:
- Long hours with little immediate reward
- Relentless focus on skill and output
- Tradeoffs across sleep, health, and relationships
- Reinvestment of time, energy, and money back into the business
Leila spells it out from her own lived experience:
“Every business that we ever started, by the way, even Acquisition.com, I sacrificed some sleep, my health, my relationships, my marriage in the beginning, knowing. In fact, the first chapter of my book actually says that. It literally says I have sacrificed my health, my sleep, my relationships, my sanity at times, and sometimes all of those things at once to do this.”
The point Leila wants real estate entrepreneurs to understand is what that phase produces. Those years compress learning and build the kind of momentum that keeps accumulating.
Leila connects that effort directly to what it earns you:
“If you work and you are unbalanced for a period of time, it allows you later the choice of if you want to seek balance. Because if somebody puts in incredible work for five, six, seven years, they then do have the choices to make.”
Choice is the lever behind both paths an entrepreneur could take. Without the initial push, options stay limited (along with your business). With it, the business starts working for you.
The early phase demands intensity. It demands sacrifice. And it’s not easy. What you’re buying is the ability to ease off later without losing what you built.
For agents, this plays out in specific ways:
- Lead generation becomes predictable instead of reactive
- Systems replace constant manual effort
- Time opens up for higher-value work
Put in the work upfront. Earn the flexibility later.
The Cost of Standing Out
Leila closed by addressing something most people feel but don’t say out loud. Choosing this path changes how people around you respond to you.
Working at a high level draws attention, and not always the supportive kind.
She’s direct about what comes with that territory:
- Being misunderstood by people in your circle
- Getting questioned for how much you work
- Hearing opinions from people who aren’t building anything
- Standing apart from the majority in both habits and outcomes
She’s clear about where that pushback actually comes from:
“People say that because you make them insecure and because they want more people to be mediocre like them. There are not that many people at the top. You will be made fun of, misunderstood, laughed at, criticized. It happens to me all the time. I don’t care because what it tells me is I’m doing something right because I don’t want to live like everybody else.”
The reaction from others becomes part of the process. It’s a signal that you’re operating outside the norm.
Leila also lays out two rules that anchor everything she’s said:
“One, if you’re not willing to work that hard, don’t get upset for the results that’ll come to you. Two, if you are willing to work that hard, ignore what people are saying.”
Effort and outcome stay tied together. Once the decision is made, outside opinions stop being relevant (or helpful).
Byron brings it back to the agent audience:
“I love your mentality, not only the work hard mentality, but the investing in the business. I mean, Sharran knows agents better than anybody. And one of the top questions is like, ‘Well, how do I get business, but I don’t want to spend any money?’ There’s sacrifice involved in that.”
Agents want growth, but growth requires putting real resources behind it. Where capital is low, the need for sweat equity is greater. But time, money, and energy all factor in. Standing out means committing at a level most people aren’t willing to match.
Even now, Leila’s work ethic still draws from her core belief that exceptional results require exceptional dedication:
“I’m at the point now where I choose to work as much as I do. I mean, you can even ask Sharran. He’s like, ‘Oh my God, why are you working right now? You don’t need to be doing this.’ And I’m like, ‘Because I like it.’ But I know that I don’t need to like I needed to 10 years ago. So if somebody tells you, ‘You know what, you can do it all and you can have balance.’ I just think that, I mean, you can have balance if you’re okay with being okay or mediocre.”
Those who don’t resonate with that are not going to be on board with your “unbalanced” all-in approach. Those who do will be cheering you on. Those are your people.
