The Game with Alex Hormozi - Behind the Curtains of Successful Entrepreneurship (on The Game Changing Attorney Podcast) Pt. 1 - July ‘23 | Ep 603

Episode Date: October 21, 2023

“A lot of times people were very driven by like their mission or their purpose or their big vision, and I had none of those things.” Today, join Alex (@AlexHormozi) as he guests on The Game Changing Attorney Podcast with Michael Mogill to share his thrilling entrepreneurial journey, from facing financial ruin to leveraging his brand's power and transforming his course through strategic pricing and company sales. Discover the significant roles of luck, pain, and respect in entrepreneurship, along with the importance of a long-term perspective and effective time management for success. This is part 1 of the interview.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Check out the episode on The Game Changing Attorney Podcast's YouTube Channel!Timestamps:(1:26) - The power of building a brand(7:51) - Financial setback due to fraudulent activity(14:44) - The role of luck in success(18:49) - Importance of acceptance in relationships(22:08) - Three traits of driven individualsFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

But my probably singular message is use pain. Because most entrepreneurs don't need to look very far to find the pain in their lives. Anger, shame, fear, resentment, whatever it is, anxiety. Like, we have different things that have fueled us in our lives, and I would rather have people just use what they have. Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers, how to make more per customer, and how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons we have learned along the way.

I hope you enjoy and subscribe. So my first podcast is June of 17. And then I think in September of 20, I did my first YouTube videos. And then I did that first, and then I think probably one or two quarters later, we started with the short video stuff on TikTok and Instagram Rails. I picked up Twitter, I think, in like June of like the next year of 21.

And then that's been more or less the entire strategy. When I say strategy, me like, we just post on those platforms. So from my understanding, you kind of had an evolution of just your mindset towards, building brand and building personal brand. What led to that? Being wrong, my eighth episode of my podcast in 17 was Stop Branding. That's the eighth episode.

I probably have the exact opposite perspective now. And I'm wealthier now. So hopefully I'm right. Maybe in 10 years I'll change my mind again, but I don't think I will. Fundamentally, brand is one of the ways that you can differentiate anything. It's really just the goodwill that you have in the audience. and your ability to price above a commoditized version of whatever you offer, like that discrepancy between what a commodity sells at and what yours sells at, like that is the pricing

power that brand affords you. And so with price being the single strongest lever on profits in any kind of business, having a brand becomes incredibly important if it is the strongest influencer on your ability to price. That just fundamentally shifted how I saw it. Because before then it was just direct response in terms of cold reachouts like cold calls, cold emails, et cetera, and direct response ads in order to get customers. And so I was just a big advocate of like, just do cold calls and run ads and you will get customers. But the long, long play is building a brand that is worth something and then that can get transferred into any arena. So like if I were to start a Mosey Nation credit card or I would start Mose Nation apparel, both of them would be

successful even though they're completely independent because of the brand that's been built. Not that I'm going to do either with those things. But I'm just saying like that that's kind of the idea. Well, and I mean, so obviously your ventures have evolved over the years. I heard you mentioned on a podcast that the businesses that most entrepreneurs start are often drastically different from the ones that they eventually find themselves in. And you mentioned like Andy Ficella and yourself. If you could briefly share just kind of your entrepreneurial journey and your evolution. Yeah. I'll do it by businesses. So that would probably be easier. So first thing I did was I started an online training a charity business. So people would pay, but then I would donate the money.

And that was just kind of like get my feet wet with people giving me money, even though I didn't take it personally. Then I quit my job and asked the same people who were paying the charity if they would pay me instead so that I could like, I was like, I'm the charity now and they were all good with it. From there, I started my first gym. From that gym opened up five more. From there, I had a mentor say that this, you know, he was like, you're really good at running gyms. You shouldn't be owning more gyms. You should kind of teach other people to run gyms. And so from there, we did turnarounds for two years.

So we'd fly out to brick and mortar gyms, kind of put all of our systems in place and turn to. it around in 30 days. That was kind of the offer. And then from there, that became really logistically painful. You know, got eight sales guys going out to eight different locations across the nation every single month, you know, away on the road 21 to 24 days a month, which is tough for families, et cetera. By a stroke of luck, there's a million very sad stories in between here, but by a stroke of luck, I was supposed to launch six or eight gyms the next month, and we had decided to pivot to go direct to consume. We're selling weight loss because we were familiar with that. And I told the gym owners that we were supposed to launch.

watched that I wasn't going to do it. And one of the guys was like, hey, could you just show me what you're doing rather than flying out here? And I was like, sure, how much? And I just picked a really high number. And he said yes. And I was like, holy cow, that was pretty cool. And so then I told all the other guys the same thing. And they were like, how much? And I just kept increasing the number. And they all said, it was fine. And then I called all the gyms I did the turnarounds for and said, remember that thing I did? Can I just license the model to you? And they were like, yeah, that's fine. And so that's when we got into license it. That was 2017. That was like May, April May of 2017 and then it took off like a rocket and so then you know five thousand locations

later that's where Jim Lunch is today we started a supplemental company in between there to sell through that distribution base so that was e-commerce and then we started Allen which is a software company that worked leads for Brickmore businesses that was the next year after that all selling with that the same audience and then in 2021 in December we sold two of those companies so gym launch and prestige lab to American Pacific Group, which private equity group out of San Francisco. And we sold that for 46.2. And then we sold the software company for an undisclosed amount to Streetgeek buyers. We sold 75% of that in an all stock deal. And so from there, we started our family office, which is Acquisition.com, which we started the day after we sold. And now we have, I think, 11 portfolio companies.

It's fascinating to me because, I mean, looking back at that journey, I know you mentioned that There's several moments and, I mean, I've heard you describe some of them, some like the rock bottom moments of the people that either did not operate with integrity, the people that you would partner with, you know, running out of money, even the way you start, you know, a hundred million dollar offers your book just talking about that scenario. I mean, you could speak to some of that, just in the story of adversity, right? That was an unrelatable recanticle of events. There were probably, I mean, there were many rock bottom moments, but, you know, I would say the two most famous of them, if stories can

become famous, was when we switch. switched out of the brick and mortar gyms and got into the turnaround business. The reason I made that move was because I was supposed to be opening more and more locations with a new partner. So I sold five and I opened a sixth with this kind of new model that was going to be like a launch and go model. And so the guy that I partnered with was like, hey, I'm really good at operating. You should, instead of doing these turn rounds, just open it, fill it, and then I'll just come behind you. And then every month you can open up one to two locations and own a mall. And I was like, that sounds great. He said, you know, but I have some financial issues. and my credit's not good. So of course, you know, of course you'll personally guarantee you the lease and front all the money. And I was like, of course. And I'll do the work too, of course.

I mean, that's any nice guy would do that. And so, you know, everyone already knows where this goes. Six weeks later, you know, I'd crush the launch of this new gym. And then I look at the bank account, bank account's empty. And I'd put all the money from selling my gyms and at that bank account too because I was young and I didn't understand how this worked. All the money that I'd had from the five years or four years of building my own gyms was gone. And so I just had this gym and I was like, dude, what the hell?

And he said, I know you've been skimming from the top of this business. And so that was just my share. It had never occurred to anything like that had ever occurred to me. And so I went to a mentor and he's like, just go line by line with him through the financials. Like maybe he's concerned or whatever. And so anyways, I went to him with all the financials highlighted line by line to like to show what every one of the expenses was.

And then we brushed it off the table before we could even look at it. I was like, oh, okay, I just got completely scammed here. And so, yeah, I lost everything. And so that was the first time I lost everything. And then that was when my Chewby wife at the time took me to her parents' house, which I got to meet her parents for the first time. Hey, here's this guy from the internet that I just left everything for.

He's a real winner. He has nothing to his name. And we're going to start the business together. And so she said, hey, we should keep doing this turnarounds, even though that this one didn't work out. The model's good. And so she got all over friends to quit their jobs to do this with us. And so we were supposed to start on the 26th of December,

which was 2016. And on the 24th of December, I had done this big launch to kind of recoup money because that was how I knew how to make money. So I did a big launch and we had like $100,000 that was supposed to come to us. And then for whatever reason, the money wasn't coming. Like we were processing the credit cards and it just wasn't getting deposited. And it had been almost like three weeks. And I was like, what's going on? So Christmas Eve, I get on the phone with the payment processor.

And I was like, I'm not getting off the phone until you guys send me the money. And long story short, they said, hey, because of that gym that you opened up and you had, you know, because I shut the gym down that was with that guy. And I was doing launches in other locations. So I was running everything through a Southern California brick and water processor account, which I didn't know how this works. I just figured, like, yeah, you just process money through the POS. Since I was making up memberships that didn't exist for Jim that I wasn't at. And they were like, this is a regular.

We're just going to hold on to this money for six months. And that was all of the money that I needed. And two days later, all of her friends were supposed to quit their job and start this new launch business with me. And so that was going to cost me $3,300 a day in advertising, hotels, airfare, rental cars, per diems for food for this new launch and go model. I had a credit card from when I had my gyms that still hadn't been canceled by MX for a $100,000 limit on it. And that's when I told Lela, I was like, hey, I think this could go really,

really terribly wrong. And I think you would be justified in leaving me at this time. I'm like sitting in her parents' basement over now. You know, like, I'm like, you really should leave me right now. I don't think this is going well for me. And she said, I would suit with you under bridge if it came to that. And so, you know, when she said that to me, it, gave me whatever confidence, you know, every guy could use. And I started, you know, I spent $3,300 a day on a credit card that, and meanwhile, I still didn't have a way to process money. So we're spending $3,000 plus a day, you know, selling 20 to 60, you know, packages of fitness per day with all these sales guys. And I couldn't process the money. And so in the last day of the month, I finally got

some processor to give me a $50,000 limit. If you're doing the math here, $3,300 a day does not add up to $50K. But the good news was I could process $50K. month, which meant that on the last day of January, I processed 50. On the first day of February, I processed 50. I got two more running. And so the 50 and 50 covered my $100,000 from the month before. And then I was still back at zero again. And so the next month that I made like 20 or $30,000 in profit after costs. And so that kind of concluded the first rock bottom. And then fast forward three months, all these gyms that were doing these launches for started telling the customers to refund and go through them instead at half the price after we would leave the

location because they had the relationship with them. But we owed the processing risk, which ended up being a recurring thing. So I lost everything again, the little nut that I had saved up. And that was when I called the gym owners to say, hey, we're going to sell direct to consumer. I think maybe I was telling Layla, I was like, I think maybe I'm out on this gym thing. Like something's not working and I just need to switch gears. But when I called the first guy up and I said, I'm not doing it. He said, I put my life savings into this gym and I refinance my house and I maxed it on my car. It's like, I need your hope. And so push came to shove and I said, fine. I'll show you how I fill the gems up and how my whole system works.

I was like, but I'm not flying out there to save your ass if you can't sell. And he said, no, it's fine. And so he said, well, how much? And I said, $6,000, which at the time was the most money I could possibly imagine someone paying me. And he said yes in like five seconds. And I was like, holy shit. And I just, I was dumbfounded.

And so then I just grabbed a piece of cardboard. I was like, oh, yeah, what card do you want to use? And then I wrote it down and processed $6,000 in one transaction and had seven more calls that day and ended up doing $60,000 in a single day. And Lela came back in from doing weight and lost sales because that was going to be the new business and I was like, hey, I think we're still in the gym business. I think we're just doing it wrong. And she's like, wait, so we're back in gybs. I was like, yeah, we're back in gyms. And so from there, I called all the old gyms that we've done the launches for, said, hey, remember that thing?

I just ripped $100,000 out of your location for. Want me to show you how I did it? And they said, sure, and then I sold them the thing. So that's the slightly longer story of that with many, many sadnesses taken out of that. During that period of time, I also got to head on to collision into DUI. My mother was in the hospital. Like, there's a lot of other things that were going on, too, but it was a tough time for me. It's like the ultimate pitch for entrepreneurship, you know, just now. And I mean, I got to say, right. The ultimate pitch for entrepreneurship, like, beware.

Yeah. It's like, well, the frustrations lead to breakthroughs. And it seems like, I mean, every entrepreneur kind of has their own story, but it's very rare, if ever, that I hear anybody having a story where everything always went up and, you know, and to the right. It was always, it was screwed over. There was always some rock bottom moment. There was something that was a catalyst.

I mean, when you're taking these, you're, you're taking these. these hits. I mean, obviously you're human as well. I mean, it's easy to get discouraged. What keeps you going? I mean, for me at the time, it was very away driven. You know what I mean? I didn't have like, a lot of times people were very driven by like their mission or their purpose or their big vision and I had none of those things. I mean, my vision was, A, don't be broke, B, don't let my dad be right. Really B more than A. But A was the facilitator of B. And so yeah, just the idea of going back as a failure to Baltimore was just like, I would rather

have died than done that. And so as much pain as a I was going through at the time, it was better than the alternative of admitting defeat. And so for me, that was the thing that that got me through it. And I think, I think for a lot of entrepreneurs, one of the, if there's, if I, you know, if there's a couple of key themes in the messages that I want to put out is that, like, there's a lot of positive jargon that's put out by, you know, it's social media and influencers, et cetera, like follow your passion. But the thing is just like, when you're starting out, everything sucks. Like, everything sucks. And I was talking to a friend of mine and you, sadness comes from not knowing what to do, right? It's a feeling of

hopelessness. Like you don't know what steps to take, which really just means it comes from ignorance. And when you're new, you don't know anything. So of course you're ignorant. Of course you don't know what to do, which leads to like very deep depression for a lot of entrepreneurs at different times in their careers. Most guys who are starting out or thinking there's something wrong with them because they're not passionate. Moza Nation, real quick, if you are a business owner that has a big old business and wants to get to a much bigger business, going to $50, $100 million plus. We would love to talk to you. And if you like that, we'd like to hear more about it, go to acquisition.com. You can apply anywhere on the page and talk to one of our team and see if we can help you get there.

But my probably singular message is use pain. Because most entrepreneurs don't need to look very far to find the pain in their lives. Anger, shame, fear, resentment, whatever it is, anxiety. Like we have different things that have fueled us in our lives and I would rather have people just use what they have. Because I think that is, in essence, what entrepreneurship is about is being resourceful. not really necessarily about having resources. And if we consider passionate resource as a requirement to be successful, I just don't think it's true.

I think you need fuel and you should use whatever fuel you have. I think over time, if you get your head above water, you'll be able to find a different fuel. But I think that away from fuel is more powerful than towards fuel. It's not necessarily a sustainable. But in the beginning, you should need to move. And so a lot of ways that can get you to move. Yeah.

How much do you believe, I mean, just, I know you mentioned this earlier, but just how much do you believe luck plays a role in success or does it play a role in success? I mean, for example, you meeting Layla, it's hard to tell the story of Alex without also the story of Leila, but at the same time, if you'd never met, I guess you'd eventually get there, but, you know, what the path would probably be pretty different. I think luck is huge. I think there are things you can do to increase the surface area of luck. So I think luck is a massive factor. I mean, I was born in America. I was born as a male. It was born to a doctor.

So I mean like from that perspective I already won. So like yeah, do I think if I was born in Bangladesh as a girl that I would have been as successful as I am now? Probably less likely. A big part of who I am now is the upbringing I had. If I live someone else's life, I might be exactly the same way they are. And so in that way, I think it's very much luck driven. I wonder like when when Mayo stood by you and, you know, she said, you sleep under a bridge. I have a similar relationship because my wife, you know, I've joked.

We kind of have like a Southpaw story when she met me. I'm a penny stock. I'm just starting the company. she's successful, she knows what she's doing, then we've kind of grown the business together. And I've asked her a few times, like, hey, what did you see in me then? But I'm curious, what do you think, why do you think she stuck by you? I think Lela is an exceptional judge of people. I think if there's like one skill that Lela is world class at is that she just, she just sees through people.

Lela has never been wrong about a hire, about a partnership, ever. It's pretty impressive. And so I think she saw, or she's, I'm giving her words here, but I mean, she saw potential in me and she felt like if I had, if I was able to shed some of these bad partnerships and beliefs and things like that that were weighing me down, that there was something underneath that was good. You know, a lot of ways that was kind of how both of what I think saw our relationship at the time was like, we're not good yet, but I think that we could be good together.

And I mean, our relationship in the first two, three years was not, was not like a Hollywood movie. You know what I mean? Like, we were mostly business partners and we got married 11 months in, but like, Like, we didn't have a wedding. We didn't have a marriage. I mean, we had a marriage. But, like, we didn't have a party.

We didn't have a honeymoon. We worked the day of our, of our eloping, and then we work the next day. You know what I mean? It just, nothing happened. And we just worked straight through. But I think it was about three years in where we started to, like, really recognize one another and really find our groove, kind of even romantically. So we have definitely, like, an atypical story from that perspective, but it has worked out.

Yeah. Yeah. And I heard you mentioned on a podcast, the importance of respect with in a relationship, sometimes respect being even more important. important than affection. I mean, it's good to have both, but just be able to respect one another. Yeah, I think there's, if you look at, gosh, I wish I could quote this better, but there's like the four horsemen of divorce. They did, you know, sure, for this like hallmark study, they like, they have couples bring up some subject that they argue about and they study how they argued and they

could predict like a 91% success rate who was going to be divorced in 10 years. And there's four horsemen of like divorce and the one that was the highest predictor was contempt, which can be seen visually with an eye roll, which is both a lack of respect for the other person and also thinking you're better than them. And so that like combination is deadly for relationships. And I think that if you were to reverse that and think that like the other person is better than you are and have ultimate respect for them, then you might have something that could safeguard a marriage or relationship. You know, I know the two of you work together. I joke, my wife and I say like, you know, we've been together, but it's like dog years, right? Because, you know, we wake up together.

We go to the office and then we come home. So it's just like multiplied by seven. But like, what What advice do you have for other couples, whether they're considering working together, if they're already working together, how to, how to, you know, how to keep that going? I have to put my disclaimer with that, like, we've only been together seven years and I think in, in decades. So, you know, when we cross our first decade, I'll let everyone know. But, you know, the only encouraging thing I can say is that from a time spent together, the average marriage, people spend two hours a day together. And 45 minutes of that is high quality.

And the other hour and 15 minutes is watching television or eating and doing, like, household activities. And so the amount of time we've spent together compared to the average relationship is we've had like a 45 or 50 year of marriage, uh, comparatively in terms of hours spent. That being said, uh, with that large caveat, I think that the biggest thing that has worked for us is just acceptance, which is that Layla has never tried to change me and I've never really tried to change her. And I think I get a lot of messages, which is like, how do I find my Layla or more specifically, how do I make my wife into Layla, which is a weird message to get because it means that you don't accept your partner for they are.

And so people are like, how do I get my wife into business? I was like, if she's not already into business, she's not into business. Like, you're not going to make her into business. It should be like a woman saying, like, how can I make my man taller? It's not going to happen. So I think, and this is going to probably be relatively controversial, but I think a lot of people lose in the draft. So a lot of people think about like, how do you coach a championship team?

I think a lot of teams lose in the draft. They don't have the talent. And so, again, that's probably a little bit contrary to like all marriages are favorable, which maybe they are. is are they ideal or are the optimal for both partners in terms of achieving their potential? And I think a lot of them are because I think a lot of people mature over time and probably wouldn't make the same decisions as they did, you know, 20 years ago, which is one of the hardest parts about a lifelong decision in general. And so I think that

making sure that you're picking somebody who has the same long-term goal as you, has the same values as you. And I think the single greatest one is that they, that if you want to grow, that they want to grow. Because growth is also another word for change, which means that if you have two people who are changing for a long period of time, you just better hope they'd be changing the same direction. Yeah. Yeah. And it's obviously a choice of spouse or life partner or whatever, obviously probably one of the most important decisions we make in our lives. It's number one. So, okay, so on that note, then what would you say is like two and three? Well, I say that from measuring from subjective well-being. So it has a 0.7 more correlation

to your subjective well-being is the strength of the relationship with your significant other. So there's nothing else that comes close to that. So I would say from that perspective, it is a, the most important one. And pretty much, if you think about this, everything else is impermanent. The business you start is impermanent. You can change businesses. You can change, you can change markets. You can change where you live. You can teach who you work with. Like, all of these things are changeable. But if you are married and you believe in trying to stay with that commitment, then like, you're making a permanent either detractor or addition to your life. And that person's going to interact with you probably more than anyone else. Not probably. You will be interacting with that person probably more

than anyone else, especially if you work together. And so like, pick wisely. Yeah. But two and three, where you live, like the actual market that you're in, that's becoming less and less important. But I think just the circles you run in are important. I think from a business perspective, the industries that you choose to get into have a huge influence on you. You know, if you were getting into steel mills as they were going out or you're getting into newspapers 10 years ago, it probably wasn't the best call. So it didn't matter how bud you were, you probably were going to win. So those are kind of like some of the bigger marker or macro influencers on how successful you'll be. But that's a little bit more of a business, tangent.

Yeah. And I know you've worked with many, many different founders. I mean, in all sorts of different businesses, services-based businesses, software, I mean, the full gamut. Like, are there any particular traits that you've seen in the most successful founders that kind of separate the most successful from the least successful? Yeah, they're humble. If you have humility, you can do a lot. Because if somebody's humble, then they can accept feedback. If they can accept feedback, then they can change.

I mean, it's very difficult to basically, if someone doesn't have humility, then it means that whoever they are day one has to be the person that they need to be a day 1,000. Because if they can't admit a deficit, then they can't improve. and so humility is by far the biggest one. You know, beyond that, it's they have to have drive. They have to have some reason that they're going to do it, whether it's, you know, away from fuel or towards fuel, like they have to have some sort of drive. There's a big study on this so that I've been quoted a lot for,

even though it's not my study. But it's, you know, the three most common traits that they've seen, you know, it's not the early wake up time. It's not a lot of, you know, it's not the healthy eating. It's not the cold plunges or the affirmations, but the three common traits were that they had a superiority complex, so they believe that they can do big things. They want to chase after big goals.

The second is that they have crippling insecurity and that they feel there never be enough and that they have impulse control. And so if you have a big goal and you have big fuel and you don't stray the path and you do it for a very long period of time, you'll probably win.

Yeah. It's almost like, I think there's a book it's called The Manic Edge, you know, to a degree, it's like you almost have to be crazy in a sense. I mean, you think about entrepreneur, the idea of starting a business, the risk that you take on. I mean, obviously, I think Shark Tank

maybe has popularized this, an extent, but when you look at the reality of it, it's not always a great proposition. I mean, I think now with a lot of like social media culture, it's this idea of, you know, working remotely from your laptop, everybody's making $40,000 a month. I don't know why people get stuck on this number, but it's just, I don't know that it really depicts an accurate portrayal of what this journey is. Yeah, well, I think the average, I mean, I think the average small business owner takes home like $50,000 a year. I mean, the average small business owner makes the same as the median household income. So, you know, from that sense, it's one person versus a household.

So I guess in that sense, they make a little bit more money. They also take out significantly more risk personally in order to do that. So I agree with you. I think that the, I think right now it's in vogue. It's cool. I mean, it is the way to make the most money. It's also the way to lose the most money. Simbo.

It is, you know, at definition, the highest risk, highest reward game. But, you know, it's quote Warren Buffett. I think the reason business is so risky is because people don't know what they're doing. And that's kind of the nature of it is that when you start, you're ignorant. The biggest debt you pay is the tax of not knowing, right? You're not knowing what you do. He also says that it's only risky if you don't know what you're doing. And so once you do know what you're doing,

then there's not nearly as much risk in business. But the only way to know what you're doing is to get in the game, which means you have to incur lots of risk to get in. And then the more you play, the better you get, and the less risky it is, the higher reward is. Yeah. Yeah. It's like in many cases,

it's like the solutions, how do you make good decisions, how do you gain, experience, bad decisions. And, you know, and the cycle repeats. Something you shared before that,

I thought was very interesting is just the differences between how the most successful people viewed time and their approach to the time horizon, if you could elaborate on that. You can pretty easily tell how successful an entrepreneur is by looking at two elements of time. One is the increments of time they speak in.

So if they talk in decades, they talk in multiple decades, they talk in lifetimes, they talk in generations, I can almost care to you it's going to be significantly more successful entrepreneur than the one who talks about next week, next month, even next quarter.

And it's such a small thing, but it's pervasive. Like you can hear it in conversation. You can immediately know, oh, this guy's only doing this much because the only way to do really big things is to think on a much longer time horizon. The second component is how they manage the micro, which is if you look at someone's calendar

and how they allocate their most scarce resource, which is time, you can see where they're going to be in six or 12 months. So if you look at the calendar as the balance sheet of someone's time asset and how they allocate it, their time budget, then you will see where they're going to get their returns. And so if we look at a founder and we look at their calendar, we can tell how the company's going,

we can usually see how we need to fix it because fundamentally most entrepreneurs work all the hours of the day. Most of them do, right? And so if they're not making the amount of money that they want to make, it's because they're doing the wrong stuff. And that's usually the biggest issue. And they think they need to work harder, but they've already maxed out their hours, which means fundamentally they're wrong. They're seeing a distorted reality. They think this is going to work and it is not.