BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 798: Leila and Alex Hormozi’s Unbelievably Simple Investing Advice

Episode Date: July 30, 2023

Leila and Alex Hormozi are arguably the most popular business owners on the internet. After growing Gym Launch, one of their first major brands, and selling it for many millions, Leila and Alex knew that they had the secret sauce for building businesses. When someone asked them to use the same strategy for another brand, the idea of Acquisiton.com was born, and the seven, eight, and nine-figure wealth building began. Now, Leila and Alex are running Acqusition.com at a rate that most entrepreneurs couldn’t even fathom. Their monthly revenues alone blow most businesses’ yearly numbers out of the water. And they’re doing it all as husband and wife, with less bickering and a lot more business getting done. Almost every wannabe entrepreneur wants what Leila and Alex have, so what’s their blueprint to success? In this episode, Leila and Alex break down how they’ve built their nine-figure businesses, the secret to scaling your brand and making millions, the do’s and don’ts of working with your spouse, and Alex’s new book, $100M Leads. This is a masterclass in running your business the RIGHT way, and if you want to build multimillion-dollar wealth, you CANNOT miss this episode. In This Episode We Cover: Leila and Alex’s business blueprint and the exact way they build their brands  The secret to scaling and why it’s SO hard to hire the right people  Leila and Alex’s surprisingly simple investing advice that the wealthy follow Working with your spouse and when you should (and shouldn’t) invite your partner to work with you Who you should hire FIRST when building your small business  The eight ways to build eight-figure revenue streams for your business  And So Much More! Links from the Show Find an Agent Find a Lender BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Pro Membership BiggerPockets Bookstore BiggerPockets Bootcamps BiggerPockets Podcast BiggerPockets Merch Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Learn About Real Estate, The Housing Market, and Money Management with The BiggerPockets Podcasts Get More Deals Done with The BiggerPockets Investing Tools Find a BiggerPockets Real Estate Meetup in Your Area David's BiggerPockets Profile David's Instagram David’s YouTube Channel Work with David Rob's BiggerPockets Profile Rob's Instagram Rob's TikTok Rob's Twitter Rob's YouTube Hear Our Previous Interview with Alex Sign Up for the “$100M Leads” Live Virtual Event Leila on How to go from $0 to MILLIONAIRE Books Mentioned in the Show $100M Offers by Alex Hormozi Connect with Alex: Alex's Instagram Alex's LinkedIn Alex's Twitter Alex's Website Connect with Leila: Leila's Instagram Leila's LinkedIn Leila's Twitter Leila's Website Click here to listen to the full episode: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-798 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email [e-mail]. Recorded at Spotify Studios LA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast podcast show 798. Really the philosophy behind it is if we can build a place where we don't just achieve success of becoming a firm that does 10 billion by, you know, turning people out, by paying them so much money that they feel like they can't leave. But by actually fostering an environment where people are constantly learning and developing, and we're encouraging them. What's up, everyone? This is David Green, your host of The Bigger. Pockets Real Estate Podcast, the biggest, the best, and the baddest real estate podcast in the world. I'm joined today by my partner in crime, Rob Abas Solo, with an incredible episode for everyone. Today, Rob and I are going to be joined by Alex and Layla Hormosi as we talk about business, real estate, people, relationships, success, investrations, investing.

Butterflies. Making money. A lot. A lot. We really did cover a lot. Alex and Layla were kind enough to share a good chunk of time with us and open up about both their relationship, their business, and their future. In fact, they hired an executive for one of their companies while we were doing the podcast. These are some hardworking folks that are dedicated to the cause that took some time to help our listeners.

What were some of your favorite parts of today's show? Oh, pretty much all of it. You know, the Hormosies are like my favorite people. These are really not just my favorite content creators, but my favorite entrepreneurs because they really tackle business problems. and really the foundations of business in a way that I've never heard it before. And really, it was super cool because you always hear them give these masterful insights on building a business and scaling to a million or scaling to a hundred million. The thing is you always hear them do it separately. Yeah.

But you never really get them in a room together. So this is the first time I'm really seeing that. We saw some Hormosey magic. We did. It's a Hormosey magic. So I think I did pretty good for being a fan boy. You kept your inner fan girl together pretty well. They couldn't tell until you told them.

How excited did you get when Alex recognize your posts on his thread? I was pretty excited. Yeah, he remembered it. That's right. Very nice. You know, when I hear Jocko Willink talk in the times that I've met him, he's got this vibe about him that you don't see in other human beings. Jocko has been through things in life that have made him very different than everyone else in a really good way.

I get the same thing from Alex and Leila. The experience they have with building, scaling, and exiting businesses and then managing them, I don't know how many other people on the planet have the perspective that they have specifically on there. Do you notice that? Oh, absolutely. Like, it's just the way they explained, like, building out your team and the operations, which is very applicable in the world of real estate, especially if you're trying to scale. That's exactly what you need to do and you need to do it well. It just seems so simple coming from them.

And that's how you know that they're masters at this because they explained an incredibly difficult concept in a way that just makes perfect sense instantly when you hear it. So they gave me for re-consulting. Many people would pay tens and tens of thousands of dollars for that kind of thing. And I feel like a lot of people at home are going to really, they're going to be like, oh, this is what I needed to hear. Yeah. So I opened up about struggles that I'm having a business, areas that I'm weak in. They gave me some advice.

I kind of laid it all out there. We talked about investing in fears that hold a lot of people back, things that are tripping people up. And most importantly, the fundamentals that lead to success in real estate investing in starting a business and in wealth overall. And my two cents is that with the market getting tougher, More and more people are going to need to move into building or buying a business. This is a very crucial wealth building block as real estate investing is getting tougher and tougher and you still need to be able to make money.

Today's episode is, I mean, it's probably worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for somebody who's going to go do something with it. So you guys are in for a treat. Now, you may be noticing that our background looks a little different. That's because Rob and I are here in downtown Los Angeles at the Spotify Studios recording for your viewing pleasure. Before we get to Alex and Layla, today's quick tip. tip is, consider making your money and investing in the thing you enjoy doing. Alex talks about how we can all get shiny object syndrome, and he refers to a conversation between Dave Ramsey and Graham Stephan, where they actually get into the fact that Graham

should be investing in the thing he's passionate about, and Alex realized that's what. Which is why they doubled down on Acquisition.com and scaled it to be incredibly successful rather than starting a bunch of different business ventures. As a second quick tip, Alex actually mentioned how before he met his wife, he had nine different businesses and none of them were profitable. And she really helped bring clarity into his life and his business environment. And the two of them exploded when they met each other. So keep an eye out for who your partner might be or potentially your spouse as we get into that as well. All right. Well, we hope you enjoy the studio. We hope you enjoy the show and get ready because several Bigger Pockets

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Banking services provided by Threadbank. Member FDIC. Alex and Layla, welcome to the Bigger Pocket's podcast. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having us on. Honor to be here. So welcome back, Alex. You know, a funny, quick little anecdote.

I think when we interviewed you about eight months ago, I said I had hired one of my sales guys to become my CEO. And then you're like, well, I don't know if I would have done that. And then he listened to it. he's like, man, I was like, do you really think, what do you think about that? And I was like, you're doing great. He's doing great.

Oh, good. It's a small update, just a small update. And Layla, I'm really happy to have you here. Happy birthday. Thank you so much for being here. And I wanted to say, you know, I actually, I subscribed to your YouTube channel first. It was a video you did about a year ago called How to Go from Zero to a Million

dollars. And it was a longer piece of content. And I was like, okay, well, you know, like I do. I'll watch a minute or two. And I watched the whole thing. And I was like, wow, this is really good. And you had like a PowerPoint. It was the whole thing.

And I was like, this is great. And then a couple days later, I get served up one of your videos, Alex. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure her name was Hormosey. But like, what are the chances? There's another YouTuber named Hormosey. This is all crazy. So you two are the only YouTubers that I will watch an hour-long video for them. I just watched your hour-long video last week.

And I was like, wow, every minute. Thank you. Oh, sweet. Good content from start to finish. Excited to talk about some of those principles. He's not lying, man. I'm glad you guys are here because this is all Rob has talked about for the last three days. Alex, that's harsh for later coming.

Alex, can you believe that Layla's coming on her birthday? We can't mess this stuff. It's got to be perfect. I really can't mess it up. I've been rehearsing in the mirror, but it's all good. Well, I'm glad you guys are here. Thank you, especially on your birthday. That's very, very sweet of you.

So we appreciate it. Our audience does as well. Absolutely. Tell us about Acquisition.com. Why are you guys passionate about this project? Oh, fine. Okay. Is that the single?

Sneak attack. You got a deal. Is it like, you need a still second base? Is that what she's still? Well, no, we, yeah, because if we ever go together, she always jokes that I will be like,

you should go and then I like have time to think about what I was. Perhaps a better answer. So the trick is, that's what we're doing. The trick is you're supposed to say, that's a good question to buy yourself some time. And then you get into it. Oh, I do that all the time.

I do it with you. I do it with you. I do it with you don't realize it. I'm like, I make you talk first, And then I sum up what you said better than you said it and add maybe one piece that you used. A little piece on the end, right, right? No, I mean, the reason for Acquisition.com, you know, interestingly, most of our businesses have come out of personal need.

And so, like, I got into, you know, I got in shape. And then people started asking me how I got in shape. And then I started helping people get into shape. And then I started growing a business of helping people get in shape. And then people who helped people get in shape, asked me how I got the business of people getting in shape. And then people who had businesses that helped other, you know, small businesses. businesses started asking me how my business was going. You know what I mean?

And so just continued to work out that way. And so Layland and I still had at the time when we started what would then become Acquisition.com, we owned Jim Launch, Prestige Labs, and Allen was our software company, Prestige Labs, our supplement company, and Jim Launch was our gym licensing business. And so we had, I think at the time, just about 4,000 people had gone through our licensing program. And we had the same amount of people who were selling our supplements through that same distribution base. And COVID happened. And so that obviously impact. And the software was actually how to

get is a martech solution. So how to get leads in the door for brick and mortar businesses of any kind. It was supposed to be for gyms originally. And then other people who were like, hey, man, I have a bunch of plumbers. I have a bunch of whatever's. Does it work for them? And it turned out it did. So it actually had a much bigger market than we thought it did originally. And so middle of COVID, things are tough for gyms. I'm almost like, I got to take my mind off this stuff. And I get a sales call because we're rolling out software. I'd read all the books. It's like founders should take the first sales call so you can get the know of the customers. And so I still had like a tinyish brand. You know what I mean? Like I had a tiny fan base. It is tough. Yeah. And so I was right on the cusp where it was still okay for me to take those calls where it wouldn't be where people just like hop on to have no interest in actually the product. And so anyways, this particular call guy got on and was like, I don't want anything to do with your software. He's like, but I've read everything that you've ever put out. I've applied all of it and I like tripled my business and I want you to partner with me to scale it. And I was like, uh, this isn't really the right time.

Whatever. Anyways, he, he sold me on it. And I really liked him and he owned a photography business. That's called enchanted ferries. And at the time he had one studio and he's doing really well. And he had an agency business on the side that helped photographer, like he marketed photographers the same way he had it for his own studio. Um, and after finding out about that, uh, I was like, you know, what if we just stop this agency

thing and just like scale the hell out of this. chain. And so we invested in the business. And that was three years ago. And that business now went from, you know, one single location to doing, you know, two and a half million a month over with over 30 locations that we just own all of them. And we just continued to scale that. And so that was like the first deal we did. And then you own all of those as in like they're not franchised out or anything. Wow. And so then we did a, we did a, it was like, oh, that went well, maybe we should do this again. So we did another deal. And then that business went from like, 16 and a half million in top line to 50 million in top line the next year. And I was like,

okay, that worked well. And then we did another deal, another deal. And so by the end of that year, we had done, I think three or four deals, I can't remember it was three or four deals. Three deals. And I was like, you know, I think, and we were going back and forth on selling gym launch because it was COVID. It wasn't like the ideal time to sell a gym company. But the flip side was like interest rates were zero. And so there was tons of money in the market. So it's like, okay, this is a great macro time to sell, but a really bad micro time for the business to sell. And but Layla and I committed a few years earlier that we would sell the business if we felt like we no longer loved the business anymore. And we'd both been in fitness for 10 years.

And we were ready to just, I didn't want to be the gym guy anymore. And so, and the fact that these other deals had gone well. Like, I wonder how different like life would be if like those first deal or two didn't work out. We probably wouldn't have sold. But they did work out. And so the day after we sold, which was December 24th of 2021, um, we were. We, we probably wouldn't have sold. we started Acquisition.com the next day. And so then we had, because we had, you know, we're probably taking 40 million in distributions up to that point. And then we also had our sale money, which was 46.

And we started our family office, which is Acquisition.com. And so we buy and scale businesses. That's really cool. So Layla, I know you're the CEO of Acquisition.com. What exactly is the type of workplace that you're trying to build there? I'm trying to, and it's really we, you know, because we're a small business, I think. but, you know, technically the team reports to me, but I mean, we work on everything together.

Really what we want to build is in terms of the type of place, you know, like you look at like traditional private equity. It's a very punishing environment. I think like it's run by fear. They're pretty much like, it's the golden handcuffs, which is like, all right, I'm going to get my two years at. I won't say their names, but like these top firms and then I'm out, right? Because it's so unsustainable. And so, you know, when we looked at doing what we're going to do, I was like, you know, the only thing is like, I just don't want. to build a place that actually treats people like that. You know, I want to build a place where we don't just build companies. We also build people because, you know, really behind the philosophy of acquisition dot com, there's really, there's strategy and there's all the strategy that we deploy into the

businesses in terms of how are we going to grow these things. But who grows those is the people that are in their businesses. And who directs the people on how to grow those functions and the businesses overall is our team. And so, you know, really, the philosophy behind it is if we can build a place where we don't just achieve success of becoming a firm that does $10 billion by, you know, turning people out, by paying them so much money that they feel like they can't leave, but by actually fostering an environment where people are constantly learning and developing, and we're encouraging them. And I think that there's a lot of talk against this, and any time that it's like kind of risen in the management philosophies,

it's so hard to apply and to understand that people just reject it. And so my goal is to just build acquisition to $10 billion and then have people ask how we did it and then tell them that we did it this way. And you don't have to be mean to people and pay people exorbitant amounts of money because it's such a terrible job. You can engineer an environment where people like the business wins, the people win and our partners win. And that's really what it is. I think that the founder of Whole Foods, he talks about that all the time, John Mackey. I think that's how you say it last time. I always say it wrong.

But he talks about creating a win, win, win, win. And not even a win, win, win, but like a win, win, win, win, win for the community, a win for the environment, a win for the employees, a win for the business, a win for the, you know, business financials, a win for the customers. And we just take that approach at Acquisition.com. It's like if it's not going to make a win for every single person that it touches, then we can't do it. We just keep working on. And so the business itself exists to be an example of a win, win, win for our portfolio companies, a win for acquisition. Notcom, a win for our employees.

And, you know, it just makes it more enjoyable, too. Because I think, like, I can't imagine going and being the CEO of a company where I felt like people didn't want to be there. Like, that just sounds awful to me. I wouldn't want to be there. So, you know, I think what we want to create is a place where people actually like working. And I think we're doing it. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, it seems like Acquisition.com, when you're working with these companies, you're effectively helping them scale. You're helping them build out their systems, their team. is your company set up from an operational standpoint, the same way you set up the companies? Like, do you have operators or is every employee at Acquisition.com meant to be like a super sniper operator that can be inserted into any business? It's a good question.

So we essentially have a setup where, you know, there's the executive team at Acquisition.com, which services, you know, the internal things that we need to have done at Acquisition.com. And then we have what we call like pods. And so there's one portfolio operator with a team of what we call subject matter experts, say, you know, managing director of people, managing director of customer success, managing director of sales, managing director of marketing. And they as a pod can service a certain amount of businesses. They can do the value creation for those businesses in our portfolio. And then you duplicate that. And, you know, as of right now, we're focused on like a, you know, more like professional services and brick and mortar chains.

that's probably like the two niches that were focused on. If we decide to branch out into SaaS, then we would build that same structure, but with people who have background in SaaS. So that's how Acquisition.com is structured. And then we bring in outside expertise and consultants as needed for like special projects. And the way that we've built this is that a company comes in. And let's say a company is doing 10 million top line and 3 million in bottom line. So probably like 30 or so employees somewhere in there.

What we would then do is we will. identify what department usually needs to go from zero to one. It's usually just non-existent. And then we will go and actively headhunt and recruit some of the best people from businesses that are maybe two or three times the size of that business and put them into the business. And then our subject matter expert will deploy our playbooks with that person. So that way we can create the most enterprise value at the Portco at the portfolio company level, not at the holdco level. And for us, it's like each of these, you know, SMEs, we call them subject matter experts, It's, you know, if they were sitting on the balance sheet of any of the portfolio companies,

it would definitely, you know, hurt the P&L. But because we can fractionalize that and a lot of high-skilled labor, it doesn't require tons of time. It just requires deep. It takes 10 years to learn, you know, where to hit the machine into that whole thing. And so it's like we can consolidate that cost at Holdco. So the actual profit is, I don't say inflated, but just way better. Yeah, supercharged. Yeah, exactly.

Because we can consolidate all this brain power and then copy and paste things the way we already know it's working. and we can take learnings across the portfolio. And so we're like, hey, you know, this sales setup is working really well in these three companies. We just got a new portfolio company in. Let's deploy that here, right? Or like, hey, this new media platform is doing really, really well. Let's deploy that playbook and the rest of them.

So we can learn way faster and deploy it way faster. A lot of companies, a lot of personalities mixing, right? So when you're looking at some of the companies that you're acquiring, if a company is coming in with like a sour work culture, can that be fixed? or is that something that might cause you to, like, walk away from a deal? I think that given the size companies that we're investing in, you know, these companies are typically, like, right, just a little too small for private equity. And so, you know, when they're coming in, they have a sour work culture not because of bad

practices, but because of no practices. They just truly don't have any standards in place, any systems in place to ensure that they can have a good culture. So it's like we're starting from ground zero. Now, I think what's harder is when businesses get bigger and they have systems in place that promote a bad culture, right? I think that when they're small, it's just kind of like you're just accidentally creating a culture because you have nothing in place.

When you get bigger, you have put things in place and still have a bad culture because they're the wrong things. That's harder to turn around. That's called a turnaround. We don't necessarily do that. I think we've done it with one business and it's honestly a lot harder and it requires a different kind of skill. To put the systems in place to promote a good culture because they kind of just have

like whatever naturally occurs, right? Yeah, it's like a hodgepodge. You know, that's something that we're good at doing, but it does take time. It does not happen overnight. The culture is the piece that takes the longest, and honestly, it's like still what I'm trying to crack because you can change all the people around the founder,

but the founder themselves if they do not change, like it's just really hard to change that. Yeah, David, I mean, you have a big team of, like the David Green team. Is there a lot that you have to, do to insert like what you see the the culture being or is that really something that you put more like on the operator level at your company? No, I haven't been able to get an operator to do that very well. That's like why I'm stuck. So that's really where I failed over the last four years

over and over and over was taking myself out, putting a person in. They understand the organizational chart. They understand the processes. They understand what's happening. As long as the money, the revenue, the deals flow in, they can keep the whole thing going. There's a change in the economy, interest rates go up, something changes the flow that was nice. And they, they don't know how to go and like lead the people into a new realm. And then I will have to step back in. But now it's like, I'm out of shape because I'm in the gym at six months. So it takes me a long time to like reactimate myself to what's happening, figure out who are the pieces that are working? Who are the pieces that have been slacking when no one was looking? You get the whole thing running again. And then that business over there is having the same problem. And like, I've just been. bouncing around for the last several years because of exactly what you guys are describing. It's that leader, the one that can inspire the culture. And that's really what makes the business work is people come to the one brokerage of the David Green team because they hear me talk on the podcast and they're like, I want his standards. I want that guy's work ethic. I want that guy's

eyes on my deal. I want to feel the way he makes me feel when he talks about real estate. And then when you put a person in your org chart to do a job, but they don't inspire that same level of confidence in the customer, the conversions become a whole lot harder. So it's what they're describing like is building the culture of leaders that all kind of adhere to the same standard. The subject matter experts are really the ones holding that line. It sounds like you're saying that are keeping everyone operating or is that not the role that they're playing?

They hold the standard of what good looks like in each function. Yes. I think that the portfolio operators who's like the leader of those subject matter experts is the one that more so is distilling that cultural piece. And so I think we're very, I've definitely developed a philosophy around that, which is, you know, you know, hiring people who are either have our values or are so open-minded that they can, you know, flux into our values. That's what's been missing to your question. Exactly what you're saying. We just it.

Just personal opinion. There's always, like, I always look at it like either we're going to be really good at hiring this person or like, like, we're, like, we're going to be really good at hiring this person. or like what we did at gym launch was like really good at building because like if you are used to investing in people then it's like maybe just bring someone in to be your successor and over a span of two years they watch you they're there with you at everything and you just keep them by your side and then two years in somebody with like very little experience could do it that is what I've tried I just picked the wrong person so they got a little taste of what it's like to be David Green's guy and their ego being insane right or they got a little taste of all this money and they're like oh great I don't have to work 70 hours a week to make it work anymore. Now I can cut back to 30 and enjoy my life. And they're taking their foot off the accelerator before you've hit like escape velocity would be the way to look at it. And I can admit that's, I think when we actually did the first interview with you, this is the hardest part for me is to be the guy who is like I was a police officer before this. I'm very familiar with enforcing a standard or a law. Then you step into the podcast basin. You're not a, you're like a

magnet of like, hey, you guys can do this. And I have not done well bouncing between those two roles. A lot of the people that will find come to me from the podcast. And Now I'm, like, crushing their soul when I'm like, you have to step it up. Or if they're not from the podcast, they don't understand the ethos that people have from the bigger pockets realm. You guys are nodding. Like, you understand the struggle I'm having here. But I can admit, I'm not good at it. It's a skill in itself.

Yes. So between the both of you, is there a difference between the way you'll wake up? Like, is one of you really focusing on the internal operation of the company versus the external side of it? Yeah. I mean, everything that Layla talked about earlier in terms of like getting a win for Acquisition.com, getting a win for our internal team and getting a win for the portfolio companies is what I would consider kind of like the internal mission of acquisition.com. The external mission is very much the stuff that we put out there, which is like to make real business knowledge accessible to everyone. And so it is like if we can make the entire marketplace better, then we are net positive to the marketplace. We can hopefully teach skills that then allow people to work at companies and quit the jobs they don't like to, you know, take jobs they do like and maybe even take jobs at acquisin.com or our portfolio companies. But yes, Layla is absolutely internal facing. I am external facing.

Our days are almost polar opposites in terms of how we work, what we work on, how they're structured. The hold code is not because it's a holding company. It's not like we have a gazillion people there. We probably have 20 something. It's not big. And so it still functions like a small business in that way and that Lail and I will, you know, talk about big street. decisions, but for the most part, we try not to change the strategy that much, which you got to

give time, time. Sure. Well, in episode 649, we spoke with you about scaling from zero to $100,000, $100,000 to $300,000 to $3 million and $3 million to $30 million. And so I want to sort of talk about setting up some of the operational frameworks when you're in those phases. I started a company recently called STR Kaseg, and I feel like the partners and I, we are all visionaries.

And so we're at this point now where, you know, from a funnel marketing standpoint, we've got the leads. We've got a very warm set of emails. We've had a lot of good conversions. We've actually done really, really great for the two months that we've been operating. But for me, I'm trying to understand who do I hire next? What is the ROI of that person? Because it seems like I need someone that is somewhat of an operator,

but I also feel like I need someone to actually run the marketing and the follow-up to actually convert some of those leads. You know, I think we probably have similar ways of looking at this, which is in the beginning, the first thing is, that when your business is small, is that the reality is you need everything, right? You don't have a head of marketing. You don't have a head of sales. You don't have a head of CS.

It's all just like open wound. But the question is like which artery, if clogged, prevents the most blood loss. That's the way I look at it. Right. And so it's like, okay, where do we get the highest ROI if we put a person there? And I think that often what a lot of people want to do is they want to get out of pain themselves. And so in the beginning, you do see a lot of people who have a skill in terms of, say, it's sales or say it's client acquisition. And then they think, well, gosh, this is taking up all

my time. I need to hire somebody. However, the question is, can the business bear you stepping back, bring someone in who's going to be 30% less effective at first, right? Say that salesperson, you're closing at 80%. They come in and they close at 50%. It's like, well, can the business actually even support that? And in the beginning, the answer is usually no. So the question is, where are we going to get the highest ROI if we bring somebody in, which is like, what is the biggest constraint right now? Not saying it feels bad to me, right? Because I think, like, often we're so often in pain that we're like, I want someone to come in and take the same off my plate. But like, what's the biggest constraint on the business?

And so I would look at it from that perspective in terms of like what is not happening that if it were happening, the business would be 10x better or what is happening that needs to stop happening to make the business 10 times better. That makes sense. Yeah, because the company is very profitable for where we are. We can certainly sustain hiring somebody. And from a marketing standpoint, I think the stubborn thing for me that I was feel like is I'm good at marketing my stuff. And it's very hard for me to relinquish that control. So it almost feels like perhaps I can't walk away from that business quite yet. But maybe if I put more of a project manager, someone that's kind of pushing the daily agenda in line, that would sort of complement my skill set a little bit.

Can I throw this out there? is there a reason that you want to step away from the marketing? Not particularly. Just time. And, you know, I have other businesses that I'm also, I'm marketing a lot, right? You know, I have four or five different companies that I market. So that's the tough part for me. Because you probably don't think you're not going to stop marketing, right?

So it's like, I feel like a lot of times, like just as business owners, entrepreneurs in general, we do a lot of things based on like shoulds that someone else has told us at some point in our career. And it's like, could have been a whisper, could have been at lunch, you know, five years ago. And you're just like, oh, this is fact. And you, like, operate the rest of time until someone's like, hey, I don't know if that's true. But like, you look at Dave Ramsey, you know, they're doing 300 million a year. He still does his podcast every day.

And so I think it's just like, unless the goal is to exit the company, if you enjoy doing the thing, then it's like, okay, well, then how can we get the most of you doing the thing? Because that is the highest leverage, you know, time for you. And then it's like, how do you clear everything else off of your calendar so that you can do the most of that? Anyways, that's just like, if we're looking at, okay, we're a big leverage points. you know, in the business. And it's just, it's just kind of funny because a lot of times we're like, man, I got to get out of sales. And you're like, well, you're an amazing sales manager. And right now you're doing, I don't know, 600,000 a month. Maybe that's not, that might not be the time right now.

Like, we might need to think about what are the other things on your time and take everything else off and then keep that. And then we'll have even more resources because we'll be twice as big to then go get a killer who we can hire who has an amazing track record at a company that's twice as big. who knows this type of sale, et cetera, et cetera. That makes sense for me. I mean, I feel like because, yeah, I would like to just show up in market. And so because I'm doing a little bit of the operational side back and forth, I feel like I can't really ever do the marketing side good.

I can't do the operational side good. And so, yeah, it's just always very painful to hire. Is that always painful to hire? Well, one thing I would say is also I just, I think that at different levels in the business, I think like a project manager is like that's everyone's go to when they're not really sure what role. So that's actually one that I think like vague roles like a project manager is actually where I see like usually what it means is that we're missing a role over here, a role over here and then somebody right here is weak and we fill it in with like a project manager.

The drunk drawer. Yeah, the drunk drawer. So I would just be be weary. In terms of hiring is a skill in itself. So it's just like like dude, I'm awful at real estate. Sorry. Like for now. Yeah. For now. Yes. Yeah. Terrible. Awful. Like as good as business, that's how bad I am at real estate, the opposite. But it's because I've never applied my skill set. It's not like I think I'm dumb and can't learn it. It's that I've never taken the time. And I think that, you know, I was forced to learn how to hire well because in gym launch, we grew so quickly.

And I had to hire so many people so quickly. I learned all these lessons that I think take, honestly, a lot of people decades to learn. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I've hired thousands of people at this point. And that's just not something most people of my age have done. And I think that it was in a compressed period of time, which then I think even cemented the learning even more. And so it is a skill.

I think that if somebody's not good at hiring, sometimes it is best that you defer to a recruiting firm and watch what they do, learn from them. Because I think a lot of times we think we know what good looks like. And we think that hiring is just like a thing you do to get people. But it is a complete, we have, there are complete hiring departments. There are multiple different roles that help people hire. I mean, it's an entire process of its own. So just like there is client acquisition. there is talent acquisition.

And I think that Alex is very good at client acquisition, and I am very good at talent acquisition. And honestly, it's just flipping client acquisition. All the things you do for that, you do to acquire talent. It's just that most businesses, in fact, 80% of businesses do not match their external strategy with an internal strategy. And so that's why talent acquisition doesn't exist in most businesses. And most people say, well, my business is too small for that. And I'm like, well, how do you think your business gets big?

like by happening that. And so I think that if it's treated as a skill of its own and one that is imperative to the growth of the business, then I think people would see. And I guess that's what I strive to do is like to show people the importance of it. There's a lot of stats to back the importance of the people that we bring on, how we bring them on, the culture that we have as a team. But it's still, I think it's starting to become more relevant. even when I started making content, I think, you know, two and a half years ago, I felt like I was like speaking something that nobody talked about. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. It's, oh, it's discussed is it's almost like, oh, yeah, you have to be able to hire people. It's an afterthought. Yes. Something super interesting is that for every strategy, for every three strategies that a company commits to saying like, this is our strategy that we're going to do for this year one. Here's year two. Here's your three. Two thirds of strategies fail, not because the strategy is wrong, but due to X, And when they say, well, what makes the difference in companies that are able to actually execute these? Because that means that only 33% of strategies that we say we're going to do actually happen.

Well, there are some companies that are able to execute 78% of strategies. What makes up the delta is what people, and I guess McKinsey defines this as the soft stuff, which is talent acquisition, culture, and people. And so it's like, you know, I feel like I'm like, I'm saying all stuff to people like, Oh, Leila is about the fluff. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is not the fluff. This will make you so much more money. you will grow your business so much bigger. Yeah. There's people that analyze the economy, what the government's doing, and they figure out what the overall environment looks like.

There's people that analyze an individual real estate investment and look at what's the income stream. What are the expenses? There's people that analyze businesses. There's people that analyze stock opportunities. It's all some form of risk allocation. Like, how do we know where this is going to work? We've talked to so many people today, and the biggest hurdle in all of their growth was hiring.

And yet you don't put that same effort. into the analysis of humans, which are the one thing you can't scale without once you get to that limit, like where I kind of am. If you were to think about it, like, you're really good at marketing and you probably have sales teams, you've probably taken a lot of sales calls in your life and you take a thousand sales calls or 2,000 sales calls. And then you think about that from the context of hiring. It's like a lot of entrepreneurs have had like 30 interviews that they've actually tried to

make a judgment be like, man, I suck at this. It's like, well, it's reasonable that you suck it. You've only done it 30 times. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? I tell people all the time, they're like, you know, Layla, I don't think I need a sales manager. And I'm like, do me a favor. I just want you to interview 10.

And then tell me if you need one because they don't even know what a sales manager or their business should be doing. Yeah. One of the other issues in the beginning is it's just ignorance, not stupidity. It's just that a lot of entrepreneurs early on don't know what good looks like. And so kind of like with the operator, it's like, I just don't, like, you probably know what a good salesperson looks like. You're like, you've probably hired enough of them because it's a role, I mean, just from what it sounds like in your business. It's like, well, how many good operators have you ever hired? And so it's just, it's kind of like. Such a good point. Right. So you have, there's no,

there's no ideal scene to like look at. You're like, I guess I'm going to roll the dice again. Right. Like that. I remember when I was trying to hire agents that could close my clients. I would just, I tried, I failed. I tried. I failed. They couldn't close it. I hired one Johnny. And he could do it. And I was like, that's what it looks like. That's what it looks like. That's what it looks like. There's something about mentorship maybe where you're following someone else and you see what they're doing that you get this pattern in your mind of what that's a great point that you just made and I haven't hired I called a leader but it's an operator like what you're saying the person that can run and we've placed operators in what two thirds of the portfolio more almost all of them yeah so you have a pattern in your

mind of what that looks like you know you like all of them yeah so yeah I get basically I guess it is all of them we've we've taken an operator and put them in because usually the entrepreneur is the one who starts who gets the fire going and gets to a certain point and they don't they don't a lot of these things. And what I'd say probably one of the bigger mistakes, and this is one that we've made earlier on, was hiring, hiring the project manager and calling them COO or calling them director of operations, right? And what it really is is somebody who you're like, oh, they're really detourented. They love Asana and they love like checking boxes. And it's like, that's actually not what an operator looks like. Most investors spend more time chasing deals than reviewing their

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which means you're paying less in taxes this year and keeping more cash in your pocket for your next deal. Cost Segregation Guys is the go-to firm, having done over 12,000 of these studies with $500 million in total depreciation identified. Head to Costsegregation guys.com slash BP to get a free proposal and see your potential tax savings. Well, I think that's why I said project manager, because it feels like going to, straight to operator or COO is too big of a role for where we're at? Probably not. But, you know, funny story, my COO that I was telling you about, we're thinking about hiring his wife as a project manager.

So if he listens to this, he's going to be heard again. A different way of describing it maybe would just be, and this is, I guess I'm describing this as me watching what Layla has done in all the companies. Because, like, I'm pretty good at acquisition, and that's kind of been my hat for a long time. but when I met Layla, I think I was doing two-ish million bucks a year in just total revenue, not making really any profit. But when she came in my life, she had a totally different perspective on how to just treat people and how to actually run a business.

And it was not all the detail stuff in the Excel sheets and things like that that that I thought it was going to be. It was just leadership. It was like your catalyst. It was leadership. And that was the thing. When we're looking at operators, we're like, is this a leader? Like, does this person inspire me?

Do I admire them? Will other people in the team admire them? Well, like, will they be able to, you talk about setting standards? It's like, well, if everyone in the team doesn't admire the character of this person, then amulate it. Then, exactly. And so that's where you get like more and more nuanced on, oh, we can, you know, we can pick this. And it's been really cool because our director of people, like, it's funny.

We probably have all these marketing stats and acquisition stats. You're like, you know, your CPR, your CPA, like all these different stats. But the same level of rigor can be applied to talent. So it's like, if I said, hey, what's your time to fill? A lot of people would be like, what's your average time to fill? They're like, I have no idea. It's like, okay, well, what's your employee's your employee and they're like, I have no idea? What's the two-sided fit? And there's like, what is that? And like, two-sided fit is 90 days later. The manager and the employee rate, rate themselves on a scale

from one to 10 and say how much of a perfect fit is this, right? And if one person says zero, one person says 10, then you're a zero. Right. And if both people say zero, then it's a negative 10. And if both people say 10, then it's a 10. And so like right now, two-sided fit is 8.7. So that means that on average, both people are saying 8.7 on both sides of that equation 90 days later. Not just like, you probably hired someone and be like, it's the first week, they're killing it. They're awesome. And then, you know, I have this conversation over and again. I'm like, hey, how is that marketing person? They're like, oh, they suck. It's like, I thought like two weeks ago, you know, right? It's just like you got to give it time to breathe. Yes. But having the

archetype and then understanding the process and truly looking at it as acquisition, like talent acquisition where it's like I'm going to draw a parallel so you've got lead gen on the customer side and then you've got application generation and then you've got lead nurture on the on the customer side and then you've got application nurture right and then you've got sales on the customer side and you've got interviewing right and then you've got you know whatever the offer is and you also have the offer that you're going to give them and then on the then you have onboarding for a customer you have onboarding for employees and then you have retention and ascension for customers and you have retention and attention for employees and so the entire customer life cycle is actually

mirror images we use different words for it yes but If we don't have patterns the same because it's people. Yeah. Right. But you got me thinking, very few people learn sales because they start off as a W-2 worker. Someone brings a house cat, it's tuna. It doesn't learn how to hunt. A handful of people can figure out how to hunt if they're hungry enough, right?

But then of the salespeople, how many of them actually make it to the tier like you're saying of being able to fill who could actually replace me? Like that's kind of, that's usually where I try to take off and then I fail and I come back down and I'm into bouncing up and down. It's just rare to have a human that can get that skill set because they don't. stick with it like you guys did. So if you could just clone yourself and make a whole bunch more Layla's like the business world would be. That'd be nice. Yes. I had a whole podcast called Find your Lela. Two entrepreneurs was like, find your Lela. That's it. So, okay, so you have your,

you have husbands and wives. You've got work husbands and work wives. For y'all, it actually ends up being the same. David's my work husband as much as he doesn't want to admit it. And I'm curious, you know, like I am actually at a point my wife does not work at the moment. She really does want to work. She doesn't necessarily, she's not super passionate about real estate, but she wants to be a part of the business, right? What are your thoughts on, you know, involving your spouse and your work? I mean, I feel like y'all can probably speak to this.

Those goes. Oh, got them. I think it was different for us because when we met, we both were incredibly, like, voraciously focused on our careers slash businesses. and it just so happened that they were in the same industry. And we had similar views on what that looked like and what we wanted our futures to look like. I have a lot of people that come to me and say, like, how can I get my wife, like, interested in the business? And I don't really have an answer because it wasn't like that.

It was like, you know what I mean? You liked it. I liked it on my own and then I met Alex. Does it sound like he's saying, how do I get this employee that doesn't really want to be in this role to, like? the role. Is that the same? Yeah, it's like, you know, if she herself has voiced interest, then I think that you make it easy for her to acquire knowledge about it. But I think that people have to autonomously, like, if someone's really actually interested, then they'll be like, can I come to work with you. Can I shadow your calls? Can I do all of these things from you?

They start, yes. I can do that. I can do that. They insert themselves. And so just like anybody else would. I don't look at it like, oh, it's your wife. I look at it like it's a person. If they have interest, then they'll find those ways to do it. And they'll be very eager. I think that a lot of people have a great marriage and then say, well, could we also do this together? I don't know. You know, I think that there's so many things that we learned in the beginning and that, you know, our natural skills that fit together eliminated a lot of friction. But there was still friction. You know, I think in the beginning of working together, even though we had similar mission, values, complementary skill sets, like,

still learning to work together was a skill of its own. And it's an ongoing thing that we have to continue to learn and get better at. And I feel like every year I'm like, gosh, we've gotten so much better because it just continues to like it's not, and you're never finished, right? I'm sorry, go ahead. No, no, and so I think, you know, we had a very different kind of scenario. I think that there's a lot of people who want to enter that. But I mean, like it's kind of like I said earlier, like you pay the toll. Like there's a toll that's paid, which is a learning curve.

And I think it's not a matter of like weeks or months. It's years of learning how to work with your spouse. Yeah, I was just going to say that. I think we actually fell in business love before we fell into like romantic love. And I've said this publicly before, but like I think Layla and I both loved each other the day we got married. But I feel like I felt more in love with her the more we did business together. Because business was like our first date was only about business and it was four hours long. I didn't even ask her about anything else because she was like, oh, I'm like, oh, you see this stuff?

And she's like, oh, yeah, I heard about these Facebook ads. This is years ago, right? And I was like, oh, yeah, I know. I know. I'm running those. He's like, what? You know what I mean? Like, that was the whole like, that was four hours, right? And at the end of the date, I pitched her on working for me. I was like, hey, this might not work out, but you should totally work for me. Did you still have the hangover? It's like the first time I drank in like two years. No, I felt okay that day. And at this time, she had a book of business already. So like she knew how to hunt. She knew how to kill.

She had a full client roster as a personal trainer. And I was a gym owner just a few steps, you know, like a few career steps ahead. I was also older than her. And so it seems divinely inspired that you guys. got married. I'm sitting here listening to you talk, thinking like, you couldn't have created in a lab better partner for each other. I, yeah. I think that it was, it's very much like when people say, like, how do you win the game? It's like, you win in the draft. So what I had two questions. One is, do you feel like you fell for her as a business partner before romantic partner because your love language is business making money success? You've mentioned that before, right? Yeah. Which led me to the next question I was thinking is we typically, do it the other way where we want romantic sparks, we want butterflies, and we're like,

I'll make all the practical stuff work, but I really want to be attracted. You took the opposite approach. And from what we see now, it looks like the romantic stuff happens still. Like you didn't have to just wander through life until you found that person that exploded with passion. Do you think that's good advice for people in general that are trying to figure out who to marry? I will say that it has worked exceedingly well for us. And so I think Layla and I talk about this just on our own time a lot, were like all the relationships that we had before this kind of were those you know crazy chemistry all that stuff and in the beginning of layland house relationship like literally on a second date she was like I just feel like you're like a friend type of guy oh friends yeah second date and uh he hadn't kissed me

and I was like what the hell yeah was that your way of trying to tell him he needed to do something different yeah I love it okay um and then I just gave like the most sickening belly laugh of all time yeah and it's never first time my entire life I'd ever been like my entire life that I've been like, you seem like a friend guy. I have never been friends ever. Ever. I think he said, you know, you told me, you're like, I actually respect you. Yeah. And that's what it was. And I was like, I was like, I enjoy talking to you. And I was like, I don't feel like I have to like pretend to wait for you to stop talking so that I can try and talk about something that I find more interesting.

And so it's not like, okay, your turn now to talk about your day. I was like, I just want nothing to do with that. Like it just killed me inside. And so I just liked hanging. And I think we hung out every day after the first date. And we didn't go on any dates for like a month. And then until finally it was like, you have not taken me anywhere. But we spent all day.

I was like, I'm going to be working. here if you want to meet me there. And then she would just work next to me. And that was what we did after like the first date. And then I was like, I'm going to start this thing called gym launch. And she was like, okay. I was like, she quit. You should quit your job.

Do my thing. You know, and still like she didn't. And then I did the thing and came back. And I was like, look, it worked. And then she was like, I've heard you mention the moment that you were like, that's a girl for me. I don't remember the detail of the story, but had something to do with her going overseas or out of town to go crush a gym that you had just started.

And you hammered the getting the signups. You basically filled it with life. blood so that it could exist and that was when like it clicked for you. Yeah. Like there was something different. Did the romantic part change at that point? Do you remember? It didn't.

It didn't change at that point. You just didn't say. Like this, it made too much, I have too much sense is the right word. But it was like I, she had basically like eternally earned my respect at that point. Like I already respected her. But like when she had gotten into that really tough spot or I was in that really tough spot. And basically, you know, at any other point, I would have expected, it would have been reasonable for any other person just like walk away because we split up and she went and so she'd quit her job to

join me do this thing six months later i'm like i don't know if i can do this i'm so overwhelmed i've got nine businesses i've never making money you know i've got some of you stole from me i had all this stuff that's going wrong i just had a DUI my mother's in the hospital i'm just like i have nothing left and so she was like well i'm going to go to the launch that we're supposed to do and then she broke every record she still has the all-time record for the biggest launch and it was like she stood tall yes um when was tough. And I think that's where I was like, well, wherever I want to go, I'm going to need someone like that. I think that's where all my best friends came from, those moments when you don't feel strong, you feel vulnerable, you know you need somebody and they show up for you. Like, it creates a bond

that is deeper than just an attraction that can come and can go. She made $100,000 in 24 days. At a time when you needed it. Every dollar. Every dollar of it. Do you ever go to bed at night and just think like how awesome you are at that moment. This is because of me. You like, it was like the ninth inning. You have a mirror on the ceiling. Two outs, you know, two strikes, ninth inning, bottom of the ninth. You hit the home run that led to the New York Yankees becoming the biggest brand.

But to, I was just going to full circle it, which is just like a lot of people are going through the dating side of this or they're in the marriage side. There's two different seasons on this. Like if you're on the dating side, I do not give advice because I think so much, like, there's so much individual variation that goes into. relationships and whatnot. We can only comment on the fact that like this was a very different dynamic for both of us. And it just so happened to have worked out. And all I can share is that like if you think about something all day long every day, then it is very helpful to have someone else

who also thinks about the exact same thing. As your love language it sounds like right? Like not many people could have figured out how to how to hit your love language there. Yeah, just talk to me about business all day. What about from your side? Keep it up. Like what advice would you give to guys that are trying to figure out how do I get a girl in my life? They can also work with me. How do I figure out if we're partners? I think the first piece of advice that I would give is like what I'm so grateful for with our relationship is that we've never compared it to anyone else's. And I think that even people comparing their relationship to ours, you're going to lose. Because you can't be Alex and Layla. And I think what we've never subscribed to is like any traditional relationship norms, rules. Is this okay? Is that okay?

Is this bad? Is this good? One date night per week. We literally. We literally, Literally will say we're like, put an encounter. We don't care if it's good or bad. We like it and it works for us. And so I think everyone has to find that in their relationship. And I wish everyone could just release judgment of their relationship. And if you like it and it works for both of you, then keep doing it. I don't care what that looks like.

I don't think anyone else does. But I think that we're so busy comparing ourselves and looking at, you know, people only see us on social media. And I do think that we're pretty transparent. But at the same time, it's like, you know, no one relationship looks the same. And so it's just hard to, you just have to stop judging yourself for whatever you do have. If it's working for you, yeah. Maybe it works better in other places that ours doesn't. You know what I mean?

You're just seeing one side. You're like, hear us on this podcast. You're like, man, wouldn't that be nice? But maybe you have something else that we don't have. You know what I mean? And we just don't know. It doesn't exist. Yeah, and we're good with that.

Yeah. Yeah. Before we wrap up today, I did want to ask, you know, you mentioned Dave Ramsey a little bit earlier. Did you recently have like a light bulb moment in how you invest your money? I saw a podcast that he did with Graham Stephan, how I remember what it was, but Graham had him look at his investment portfolio. And he was asking Dave to just analyze it. And before Dave looked at it, he was like, well, what I can tell you is having talked to all the billioners that I know, they all tend to do one thing that they like and they're good at and they just do a lot of it. And so he asked the follow-up question to Graham.

He said, okay, if this pie chart, this circle where your total knowledge and experience and resources and connections, what percentage of it would be like stock market stuff, what percentage of it would be real estate, what percentage of it would be business, et cetera. And he's like, well, shoot, I'd probably say 85% of my knowledge is about real estate. And when he looked at the circle, 85% of his assets were real estate.

And he's like, well, then I think this is a perfect distribution for you. Yeah. And that one bit was what ultimately gave me, it felt like gave me permission to do what we kind of wanted to do, but didn't feel like it was right because to the point about we're talking about relationships, you know,

500, a billion and up who were ahead of me. And I was like, what should I do with this money? Like, how should I invest? Like all this stuff. And literally every single person had an entirely different strategy. And so I was like, maybe I should get in hard money lending. Maybe I should get into fixing flip stuff. Maybe you should just buy apartment buildings. Maybe we should do business invest. But wait, are we doing business? What don't we just start another business? You know, like, I was going through all this stuff and I just didn't know what to do. But when I thought about that, I was like, we like business and we're good at business. And so let's just, if I were to draw that circle, it would be 100% business.

And so our circle of assets, though high risk from the outside, when you're buying companies that are in $2 to $5 million in profit a year, which is usually around the size that we come in, those are from an investor class asset, considered risky, you know, risky investments. But to quote Warren Buffett, it's only risky if you don't know what you're doing, right? And a lot of times, I'm sure there's real, I mean, to be fair, there's always bodies. You know what I mean? but at least if you know which closets are going to have the bodies, then you're like,

oh, I know there's going to be bodies there. Yeah. And you don't get, I mean, sure, we still get surprised every once in a while, but you have fewer surprises and the damage that you suffer from the surprises continues to go down and down. And so you can get outsized returns because you have an information advantage. And so that's, that was the piece that Dave gave us. And then that's why acquisition. We're like, well, what are we really good at?

We're really good at scaling brick and order, really good at scaling services, both consumer service, professional services. And it's like, that's what we're going to buy. Man, I watch you do that. I'm just looking at this whiteboard in front of me that you actually have with the markers. Very missed opportunity. I should have you illustrate it. That's great advice, though, because everybody else is looking for what they're doing wrong.

What's the secret? Oh, I'm making money this way, but it could be better if it was over here and they're bouncing around. And no one asked the question you said, what are you good at? And what are you happy doing? You can make money in that. And it's going to be a much lighter lift when that's what you're doing. And if I can tack on to that, like, let's say you've been doing something for like three years. And you're making some money at it, right?

in my opinion, the biggest mistake that entrepreneurs will make at that point is that they then look at the greener grass on the other side of the fence and say, man, wholesaling is actually the thing. I shouldn't be doing flipping. I should be doing wholesaling. And so what they do is that, and that's actually even a little bit too close. They say crypto trading or whatever, right? Something a little bit more outside of the loop. And then what they think is they see they have uninformed optimism. Right. So they go into it being like, this is going to be amazing. And then right after that, they get, you know, six months in and they're like, I now have informed pessimism. about this opportunity. And then they go into the value of despair. And that's usually where they're at it. You're three-ish, right? But the thing is, the next part of that loop is informed optimism.

Is it like, okay, I remember the things that I got me into this. And those things are true, but there are these other things that you also have to account for. And then you get to the fifth step, which is just like mastery, achieve into the goal, whatever it is.

And so most people just do step one, two, three over and over again. They find uninformed optimism, informed pessimism, value of despair switch. Uninformed optimism, informed pessimism, value of despair switch. And so like the thing is, is that when you're at year three, the gains that you get from year three to your four are greater in terms of absolute return than the gains that you get from year zero to year one. Now, you'll learn more in the first year than you do in any other year. But the time that you get the outsized return

is year 10 to 11, is year 14 to 15. And that's where like when you're, if you're thinking about like business value. It's way easier to take a business that's doing 20 million a year and take it to 25 million than take company from zero to five million. But in terms of absolute of like which one of these is going to make you wealthier, the 20 to 25, as boring as it might be, is going to make you way wealthier than going from zero to five. And so like a lot of people start over when they really just need to push further. Yeah, I love that. So yeah, you're always going to be asking if the grass is greener. You always want to know, what does tasty wheat taste like? I'll call back. That's from the matrix. Yeah, I know. That's good. You don't have to

Explain your own joke. It's a good joke. I was like, you don't know if I get your, the Matrix? I've been sitting on that one for 50 minutes. You're just waiting. There will be an opportunity for tasty wheat. Well, awesome. Well, before we wrap up, can you tell us a little bit about your new book coming out?

Yeah. A little preview? Yeah, yeah, for sure. So the first book, $100 million offers has sold just under 500,000 copies with no advertising. Thank you. Pretty pumped about that. Just word of mouth, which has been cool. And that book answered the question, what do I sell?

It's like, what do I sell to anyone? And that's usually when someone gets into the entrepreneur journey. That's what they're trying to figure out. The next thing is like, okay, I know what I'm going to sell, but who do I sell it to? You need leads, right? And so that was the reason I put offers before I put leads. Even though I wrote all of these, like this book and that book actually at the same time, but I was like, I have to put offers out first.

And so leads shows how to get, I'm going to rewind. If I said, hey, what is a lead? Right. people are like, oh, I know what Elite is. We talk about leads all the time. But I had a friend of mine who's not at all in business and very smart be like, what's a lead? And I was like, you know, like a, like a name and a phone number. And he was like, so is an Instagram follower a lead? And I was like, well, I, I guess, I mean, yeah, I guess that that is also a lead. He's like, what about a YouTube subscriber? And I was like, well, I guess that's not,

that's not really a lead. He's like, why not? And that discussion became like, the, the the pillar that leads was built off of, which is a lead is a person you can contact, period. That's what it is. But then when you realize that that's the definition of a lead, you realize you don't actually want leads. You want to engage leads. You want someone who's shown interest in the stuff you sell, who you can also contact. And getting someone from a lead to an engaged lead, you create something to make them take

that switch. And then from there, it's like, okay, if I know how to get people to engage, what do I do to do that? It's like, well, you have to advertise. And so there's four ways that any one person can advertise. And there's four ways that you can get other people to advertise on your behalf. So there's only eight ways that you can get other people to know about your stuff. And so fortunately, we've actually built, we've done over eight figures in sales in each of these eight types, obviously in some of them more than that. And so I feel really confident that I know how to build referral systems that generate real amounts of traction. How to build affiliate systems that build real amounts of traction. I know to run paid ads and how to make content. I know how to do cold outbound. Right. I know how to run an agency to do these things on our behalf. I know how to get employees to do these. actions on our behalf. And so these are all the different ways that you can get other people to

know about your stuff. And if you just know one of them, you can make good money. If you know how to do a couple of them, you can pretty much just write your own check. And that for me bridges the gap for especially the newer entrepreneurs who are coming in or the more experienced entrepreneurs who are like, okay, I'm at a million a month. I'm going to tell me 10 million a month. Like, what does that look like? And so the book starts chronologically with like, you have nothing. and then the end of the book basically paints the pictures of how do I have a $100 million plus lead machine

and just step by step how to build it. It took two years, 2,000 hours of writing time, so six hours a day for two years. It was the first six hours of my day every day to write the book. I'm incredibly proud of it.

And I do think it will be bigger than offers. Awesome. Offers, which is also a staple in the business community. This is Daniels, not mine. But I look forward to pre-ordering that Where can people get it? When does it come out? Give us some of those details. Acquisition.com for slash leads, L-A-D-S, is where the event I'm going to be doing a live launch.

Cool. So it's going to be a big thing. August 19th day after the birthday. You said it's going to be like the huge thing. Yeah. We've got 263,000 people who've registered so far. Wow. So it's, we'll see what happens. I just going to be awesome.

I just hope the tech works. I hope nothing breaks. The whole vibe is like. Would that just happen to you? It might, but no one will know. Who that just happened to on Twitter? Didn't someone just... There's like so many instances.

Was it Tucker that had that? Like took it down. Elon Musk. Somebody was like announcing... No, DeSantis was announcing he was running for president. Oh, really? And Twitter's servers couldn't handle it. And it was like a huge thing in the news.

You've clearly been writing so much that you didn't catch it. You've been hiring rock stars and so you don't know what's going on. I never know what's going on. We've put a million bucks into this event just into the event. And we've got another project I've been working on for four years that I've not told us soul about that will be releasing live to everybody there. And a little preview. What is it? Just for the podcast? It's absolute. So all I can say is that it's, uh, it's more than a gift card and it's less than a Tesla and every single person who's there will get one. Our team doesn't even know.

It's like a super big range. Did you hire Oprah to hand it out? It will be, it will be if that Oprah episode met entrepreneurship, that's what it will be like. I'm stoked, but it will only be for people who are there live. So it's going to be, it's going to be fun. Yeah. Awesome. Well, if people want to learn more about you, where can they learn? about your socials, YouTube, Instagram, all that kind of stuff. I'm pretty sure if you just search Hormosey. Alex and myself will pop up on all platforms.

Yeah. Actually, I think we're on almost, except for Snapchat, we're on every platform. So, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, threads, that's right. YouTube. You can question the threads, man. Love it.

Yeah. Alex is like, this was built for me. Yeah, I was, yeah, because I'm a Twitter guy. He's a writer. I think the first thread you posted out. I was like, yeah, can you just do these so we know who to copy? Yeah.

I think I saw you comment that. That's funny. But yeah, that's where we're at in Acquisition.com is if you've got a company doing two to five million in profit or EBIT a year, we'd love to see if we can help. Or if you want a job because we have rolled out what's called Mosey Talent. So people who are looking for work basically if they subscribe to Mosey Talent, then they first dibs at any of the jobs in our portfolio companies or at acquisition.com. Cool.

My last question for you guys, we've been asking everybody this today. My social media handle is David Green 24. I've been getting roasted by all these marketers that say it's boring and nobody likes it. Your guys are professional opinions. How terrible is it? And can I just keep it? We're wondering if he should drop the 24. Someone suggested earlier.

Maybe he adds a 7. So it's David Green 24-7. Thoughts. You won't hurt my feelings. Oh, no. I think it's just on brand. Yeah, I think if you've been riding it this long, it's funny. Yes.

So it might just be part of the brand. I personally I don't know if you can get your handle at this point Because like trust me I've tried to get mine They're like yeah yeah you know for 300 grand Yes I'm like hold me hostage

My URL for 20 grand And I was like no No I have I have the URL I have the website But if I switch it now I gotta go like Try to get all the new stuff right And I am kind of a straight shooter I'm not really known for being this big marketing scheme

So it's so you guys are saying David not a moron because I think it's kind of quirky If he keeps the 24 That's a good thing It's kind of funny. It's all right. Okay.

Yeah. I suggested thy David Green that's been shot down in every room we're in. Thy David Green. See why I don't trust the advice that I've been given right now. Well, then there's also like the real David Green, but I said you should do the realist. The real. Or the real real. I'll just give a funny anecdote on this.

So I used to poo-poo everything brand-related and was like it's just quant, right? It's just conversion and all that stuff. And so our supplement company, I called Prestige Labs and I did it out of jokingness, out of prestige worldwide, which was... Right, and it was because my whole point was that, like, the name doesn't matter. Zerox is made up. You know what I mean? Like, we ascribe meaning to it after the fact. And so, you know, I don't think it matters.

Like, Acme supplements or something. Yeah, I don't think it matters one bit. It's true. Yeah. Misholin Star Restaurant from Michelin Tires. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. Awesome. Well, if you want to find David on the socials, David Green, 24, or possibly thy David Green. We'll see... We'll see where we land with that. And you can find me at Raw Built over on Threads. Instagram, YouTube. Zanga?

Vine. Mine. Oh, wow. Nice ball back. Vined is retired now. Unfortunately. Well, thank you guys. Thank you guys for having us.

Thanks for coming out. Awesome interview. And thanks for sharing so much of your personal lives as well. I mean, obviously people like to hear the business stuff, but I think there are a lot of human beings that are hearing this and thinking, oh, I'm not crazy. I don't have to do what other people are doing.

I can look for a partner that fits into my life from a practical element before we run off and try to get into a honeymoon. And I don't have to swipe 7,000. people on Tinder to find the one that hopefully ends up working out. There's a better approach. She's out there, bud. Chase that beautiful butterfly. And that was our interview with Alex and Lela Ormozi, Rob. I know you're on cloud nine right now. What was your favorite part of that interview? Well, you know, I think they really stressed the importance of hiring and hiring intentionally. You know, it kind of brought the question of hiring a project manager and bringing them

on to my team. And it's really funny because this is a role that I'm also needing to hire on the real estate side. But it seemed like what they were saying is, you know, project managers effectively are the junk drawer position because most people think of it incorrectly. Like a project manager is there to keep timelines and set deliverables and all that type of thing and all those types of things. But what they were saying was people just sort of backfill every role position and call it a project manager, and I am 100% guilty of doing that. I was like, I need a project manager on the real estate side, and I need a project manager for my cost head company. But really, it sounds like they want me to drill down in hire specific roles that I actually need to fill,

like an acquisitions manager, a dispositions manager, an underwriting manager, all that type of stuff. And I was definitely just thinking of it as one grand position. So pretty eye-opening for me. It'll definitely have some pretty big implications on the hires that I make here in the next like week or two. What about you? What I thought about with that project manager was when you hire someone and they're not doing their own job, they're not making sure the project's getting completed. They're just giving you excuses for why it's not. We think we need to hire a project manager, but what that really means is we need to hire a babysitter for the other person I'm already paying. So now you've created a salary to pay someone to make sure that other people that you're

paying are doing their jobs. And now if the project manager's not making sure that the first person's doing their job, you don't have two salaries to get nothing done. And I could just see how quickly companies can run out of money when you start throwing money at problems rather than hiring people that are held accountable to getting a result. So that jumped out at me, especially with real estate sales, really any commission-based job. It's very easy for employees to say, well, I'm doing my best, but they're really not. There's doing as much as they're willing to do. And now you're hiring a project manager, which is just a band-aid for the fact you made the wrong hire. I think that's what they were saying is if you have to hire a project manager, you might have the wrong person in that

job because someone who's taking responsibility for the outcome that you want doesn't need to be babysat. They don't need someone to make sure they're doing it. I thought that was fantastic, especially when it comes to real estate. How many times have we hired a contractor whose job is to oversee the subs? Then you've got to hire a project manager to oversee the contractor to make sure that the subs are doing their job. You're just throwing money at these problems that aren't getting fixed. That actually just happened to me on a flip that I'm doing right now. I brought in, I was trying to bring in a project manager. And we were trying to write out like their roles and responsibilities. And we were just like, I mean, what do they really do? I guess they're going to manage the project.

And when I told my contractor about this, I was like, hey, yeah, you know, they're going to help manage the project. He was like, I mean, I can do it, man. He's like, all the stuff you're saying that you're going to hire them to do. That's my job. And I was just like, oh, and I wasn't used to having a contractor that was actually good at their own project management. So, So it was a pretty interesting follow-up. I mean, this just happened to me after this conversation with the Hormozies. So it's kind of nice to see all the dots connecting in the world of real estate. Yeah.

And you can tell how Alex isn't necessarily a real estate investor, but business is business. And real estate investing is a business. Oning a property is like owning a business and owning 10 properties, which is a portfolio, is like having a portfolio of businesses. And it's business principles that determine if we're good at what we do or not. He talked about lead follow-up as one of the key things that business owners miss out on when it comes to lead generation. He even wrote the book about it. In my real estate business, lead follow-up is crucial. In deal-finding, when I'm in buying mode, I'm always following up with offers that I wrote

and seeing if they change their mind. And I frequently will get good deals. In fact, when we bought our Scottsdale house, we used that technique. We wrote the offer. They said no. And we're like, all right, let's let them wait. This is what I want you to say. Call in three days and say this. called two days after that and say this. And then if they say that, that's where we know we're in a good place. Lead follow-up is crucial. And these principles apply no matter what you're doing. The whole idea of win-win-win and why culture matters, I thought was really good also, that you need to make sure everyone wins. That's a mistake I made in business many times where I put myself in a position where the employee was winning, but I wasn't. So they were getting paid

regardless of how they performed. So win for them, they get a paycheck, but it's not a win for me. Well, then you don't stay in business. Or I've had times where I'm winning. with the structure of the business, but they feel like they're not motivated enough, so if they don't think they're winning, they're not gonna work. You really do have to tweak with this thing over and over and over until you get a win, win, win.

Is that something you've noticed in your business life as well? Yeah, this whole episode just made me realize how lazy I've been about workplace culture, because my teams are small. You know, I've got several different companies, but within every single company, I mean, my team can be anywhere from like one person to three people. I think my biggest team is like 10,

And so in my mind, running these businesses, I'm like, well, we're not really that big of a company to where culture is all that important. And I think talking to them sort of made me realize that I should really be fundamentally trying to create that from the beginning because it only gets tougher to fix and adjust the bigger the company gets. Yeah, and the same thing is true with your portfolio. Like, you just got to remember that a company and a real estate portfolio are different versions of the exact same thing. And the principles that work in real estate, work in business, and vice versa. So I thought it was funny that when we asked Layla about real estate investing, she kind of made a joke. And she's like, oh, no, I'm terrible at it. But it's just a flavor of business that they don't have as much experience with.

They understand gyms. They understand, like, some of the other structures that they're comfortable with. I'm sure they'd be good at real estate investing. If they really. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. They'd be better than us. But why would they, right?

If they're able to scale with businesses instead of needing it because, you know how it is. Real estate is all about delayed gratification. It is a get rich slow scheme, for sure. And they've got a system figured out that I think is much more complicated. and much more risk intensive and not passive income is active. But it works for them. So that's why they're doing what they do. And we were very lucky to have them come in.

I don't know that they've ever done an interview together like that. First time I've seen it, but yeah. Anything I've seen online, right? Where you get, you got both sides going deep into deeper things, not giving surface level questions. So this was awesome. Yeah. Well, I'm excited.

I'm going to go start a business now. You implementing everything they talked about. Yeah. Just donate it acquisition.com. I don't know why Alex picked a word that no one knows how to spell. So many vowels in that thing. You got to pick something easier. Jobs.com. I'm sure that URL is taken. I'll go daddy it in a second. You're probably right. All right. This is David Green for Rob the Go Daddy Abasolo. Signing out.

Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave The show is produced by E&K, copywriting is by Calico content, and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.w.w.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included involves risk. So use your best judgment

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