The Game with Alex Hormozi - Every Business Owner Should Watch This | Ep 1006

Episode Date: October 8, 2026

Download your free personalized $100M scaling roadmap in under 30 seconds: https://www.acquisition.com/roadmap?el=yt-alex-486r&htrafficsource=youtube   Husee's father built a dental practice over 30 years but nearly ran it into the ground by being the only person who could run it. In this episode of Scale or Fail, Alex diagnoses the single constraint killing the business: one doctor, three locations, and a delivery model that stops the moment the founder takes a break. Ninety days later, the practice goes from a $160K best month to closing in on $500K. In this episode 00:00 How it started: numbers and goals at Smile Magic 03:12 The fix: mapping the implant visits 08:49 Increasing Google Ads spend and prices 12:55 Refining the sales process  22:00 Organic content engine 24:24 Position on the $100M scaling roadmap  25:59 90-day check-in and results  More Value: Book Your Spot at the 2-Day, Interactive Scaling Workshop in Las Vegas: https://www.acquisition.com/o-vegas        Get the $100M Book Bundle: https://shop.acquisition.com/pages/100m-book-bundle   Watch My Latest Episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AlexHormozi/featured  Learn How to Scale Your Business to Millions in Revenue: https://www.acquisition.com/  Discover The Easiest Business I Can Help You Start (Free Trial): https://www.skool.com/hormozi    Additional Free Books and Video Courses: https://www.acquisition.com/training   DISCLOSURE: Information shared here is for educational purposes only. Individuals and business owners should evaluate their own business strategies and identify any potential risks. The information shared here is not a guarantee of success. Your results may vary. Copyright © 2026.

I'm about to help a complete stranger build a $15 million per year business. I'm going to give him a step-by-step roadmap on exactly what he needs to do. And 90 days later, we're going to check in with him to see what actually happened. If all the business owners watching, I've scaled 10 businesses past 10 million, three past 100 million, and I've realized an important lesson, which is that businesses behaving patterns at all levels. And so you can take any of the principles and tactics and apply them to your specific business and industry at its current size. There are far more similarities than there are differences.

And so with that being said, let's meet Hasi. Alex, how are you? Ready to rock. Yes, sir. So my name is Hussein is here. I am CEO of Smile Match Dentistry. We are a holistic dental practice that focuses on helping prominently women achieve their...

Men don't deserve nice teeth? Usually the women are the ones doing the research. The men follow after. Welcome to Smile Magic Dentistry. So give me the dollars. Yeah, so these are some of our numbers. So our past 12-month revenue is really... $2 million. Our profit is right around 47% about $960,000. And our goal over the next three years

is to have $15 million in revenue and about $5 million in profit. Has the goal always been to do that or has the goal suddenly changed? So I've only joined the business about a year ago. So previously, my dad, he was the owner of the practice. He didn't have a support system to actually grow the practice. So he was essentially just making ends meet, doing what he can, working as much as he can, with me joining. It's been a matter of how can we scale and I've kind of try to expand his horizons because I'm not a dentist. Yeah. So I'm purely focusing on the business and just growing the business. So, but is he aligned with that goal? Yes. Of growing it. Yeah. Okay. So what's stopping the scaling right now? So right now, we have three locations, but one doctor. So our staff and

as well as myself, are essentially shuffling between location. So all the high-ticket patients are all flowing through one person. The minute, our main doctor and my dad takes a break. Business takes a break. Do you have other associates at all? So we had an associate over the past year or so. He's actually leaving to go to a master's program. But with him, the problem was we weren't able to actually fill his schedule.

So a lot of the time, he was only working about a day, a day and a half. half per week. And for some reason, his show rate would be a lot lower than my dad's. So why is solving this important right now? I mean, my dad has given everything to the business. When I was a kid, he wouldn't be able to show up for soccer games, essentially, because the business needed him in it at all times. So with him getting older and me joining and seeing his past 30 years of hard work, if we're unable to actually fix this problem, it becomes a thing that'll just die. Our business, will die if we're unable to solve this issue.

Got it. This will be really straight down the middle. Cool. Which is good news. I mean, complex doesn't mean good. So yeah, let's come over here. I'll walk you through what we have to do. All right.

So the big issue is that right now you have your dad who's doing all the diagnosis of the people who are coming in. And then he also does the actual implant work. From a time perspective, it does take longer to sell or it takes longer to deliver? Longer to deliver, by far. Okay. So of the elements of delivery, how many visits are, is required to do the treatment? It would be approximately of actual clinical work, about five visits. Okay, so it's five visits. Of all those five visits, does your dad need to do all five? No. Okay. So does he currently do all five?

Yes. Okay. So of those, so let's say we've got, we've got sale, right, which I'll get to in a second. We have the sale, the sales motion. And then we have call it Visit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Okay, which of these can he not do? Depending on how complex, like the actual pulling of the teeth are, that's really where some of our associates have gone hung up. So potentially he wouldn't need to do Visit 5. Okay.

So we can all search that. Visit 5. And then... Where does he pull the teeth? It would be Visit 1. Okay. So he did he this one an important one. Okay. So he has to do that one. What else? So the rest of these are visit two, he pretty much needs to need to do it. That would be like the bone graft. So essentially leading the foundation. Okay. I'm not going to push back, but let's just, we'll keep going. Okay.

And then visit three is a checkup. So you guys do to be there. Okay. And then visit four is implant placement, which I would say is less important than the bone graph, but very important. So I would still. I would still say he needs to do. Let's say you just had an associate-level person. Is there any reason the associate couldn't do these ones? The only reason why they wouldn't be able to do those three would be just based on their clinical ability. Well, this is a check-up. Yeah.

So... They can do that no matter one. Okay. And that's probably some sort of last conversation. Putting the tooth on, yeah. Okay. So this one is a very basic thing, right? Just implanting because the bone graft is...

Pulling in the graft is harder than the implant, correct? At times, yeah. Okay. So, I mean, wouldn't associate, they are doctors, correct? Yeah. Right. So it wouldn't associate be able to just learn how to do the implant? Definitely. Would the guy that you had be able to have that skill if that was like a priority to teach him how to do this one thing? Yeah. Okay, cool. So let's assume that we can actually get that off of this plate because right now you're capped at, was it like 25-ish a month, I think? About 25, yeah, but 25 to 30 patients a month. So that's a huge point of leverage. It's the greatest point of leverage. So if we just cut his, there's six visits to make this money, three of them

are the most important that require the most skill. The other three, not so much. It's like that can take us from 25 visits a month to 50 visits a month, provided we can increase the leaf flow, which we'll get to in a second. But do you think that that would be, like your dad would be on board with that? I think he would be on board with it. The only pushback, I would ever say, is more about the patient journey. Sure. So I think that a lot of the time patients get very connected to the doctor. And I think having the handoff has been the hardest part, especially after doing some pretty like intense visits. They have a hard time trusting a different doctor. It's not impossible. Yeah. Yeah, of course it's not impossible. There's dental clinics that have many doctors. Of course it's not impossible. But that just sounds like what I would consider to be a just a limiting belief. Yeah. So all he has to do is just have a like he could film one time a video that's that's, that's, that's. with the doctor that he's edifying. He says, hey, you know, this is Johnny.

Johnny's awesome. And so Johnny actually specializes in the next three visits that you're going to be coming out with us. And so this is literally all he does. And so he's going to take care of you for X, Y, and Z. And so we've already laid an amazing father of issue. You've been healing great. And that's what, like, the roadmap is.

And so if you have any questions, you know, you can give Johnny a call. He'll be, you know, available to you. And yeah, so next time you see it, you're not in the wrong place. Like, ha, ha, ha. That's it. Got it.

And you can obviously set that expectation to yours. hey, the work is split between two of us. One is, one, we specialize. I specialize in the side. He specializes on that side. And that's it. That's like, that's totally mental, though. He's obviously been a solo practitioner for a really long time. And it's one of those things where like a lot of entrepreneurs feel like it's nice to feel needed and it's nice to feel special. Yeah. But there are other humans who have hands who can learn things. 100%. And it's like, okay, do you want to be right or do you want to be rich? And this is one of those scenarios. And I'll tell you what he has to do, like what you have to convince him of,

it's just that he has to be positioned as the architect or the artist, and then the other guys are the hands. And that way it'll kind of preserve his, I'll say ego. But like, it's like, you're still the puppeteer. You're still, you know, you're the conductor of the orchestra. And then from a, from a positioning perspective, that's what you would say to the patients. It's like the actual hardest part is designing the procedure in the process. Once the plan's laid out, it's really just executing it. Got it. And so that's easy to position. All right. So that's thing one. This double, this is a gives us a double in capacity.

Now, that guy was quitting, but if you was able to take all these appointments on, would that fill up his calendar? For the most part. Okay. Well, I mean, in my mind, I would say, like, maybe don't fire him if he was a decent guy because that would double the potential revenue of the business and take you from two to four. That feels worth it. Yeah.

And you can make up the extra $2 million and whatever you're paying the associate. Definitely. Okay. Okay. That feels not dumb. Okay. the next thing is when so right now you have Google ads that are working obviously right yeah so I would just actually continue to encourage you to just keep increasing Google ad spend

okay because right now you're spending what do you spend in a month like 14,000 like that 12,000 yeah 12,000 right so if you have 12,000 dollars a month like you're not in your orange county like you could probably go to several hundred thousand dollars a month before you even get close to capping that area so like Like there's a lot of runway there. But if we double it, we can double the capacity. We double the spend. Now, number three is that you have like, or your dad has like an 85 or 90% close, some very high close rate.

Yeah. I would do a couple things. So number one, when I see those kinds of close rates, I would increase price because with those kind of close rates, there's probably a lot of room there. What payment options do you provide people? So it depends on what they qualify for. So either with an implant patient or a long treatment plan. They pay as they go. So they would pay over the course of a year.

Whenever they get the work done, they pay for that visit, essentially. If they choose financing, they pay the entire treatment up front. And that's it. What percentage of people do financing? Approximately 30% of the treatment plans over $15,000, 30% to 50% on say. I feel like you could get like 80 or 90% like doing that. Because like my position would be like, hey, so there's two ways to pay. you can either pay under credit card and pay whatever you want or you can pay using financing,

but either way we need to pay now to get this whole process started. Okay, so you would change it to pay now? I prefer that, especially from a cash conversion cycle perspective. Definitely. That's not that uncommon. Do you think that it would be wise to give them almost like a discount to prepay? Because the way, I mean, obviously it's more of a limiting belief, but the way we've always done it is pay as you go per visit.

No, I mean, that would be like a, huh, okay, I guess we could do that. You know what I mean? Like, I would make it seem odd. Okay. But yeah, you can give the incentive if you want, but it's like, this is what most people do because you're going to pay it either way because, like, believe me, you can't half finish your mouth. So, like, you're going to have to end up paying it, so you might as well just prepay.

And that's why because it allows us to pre-order some of the things that we need for your specific case. Got it. That's how I would script it. So I would just say, like, A, B, credit card slash financing, and then you downsell payment plan. Does that make sense? Okay.

Now, from a pricing perspective, you're charging 14 is the average. three-year value of these implants? Because it seems low. It is low. So the three-year value of implants is a lot higher. Fourteen thousand is our overall, including patient recall. Got it. So with implant patients, our average, our average tickets around 28,000. And his close rate is still 80, whatever percent. Yeah. Yeah, I mean. This is after being increased prices, too. First thing I did following your judgment was, and then nothing happened, right? Increased prices by 15 to 20 percent. originally it was whole world was going to end. Yeah.

And nothing happened. And I ended up trying to give more value to patients and close rate increased. Yeah, because it's a luxury item. I mean, people, rather technically, it's a premium item. But I think I would go to 35K. And how long had it been since your dad had raised his prices when you got him to raise the prices? But three to four years. Yeah.

And the thing is, is that in that time period, like the money sold high went up by a lot more than 20%. Yeah. So that change was not even, that was like still just make, that was just right sizing. It wasn't really a price increase. That was just right sizing. So I think given your dad's experience and the fact that he's closing 85, whatever plus percent, I doubt you're going to lose a lot, especially because of the nature of how you're having people pay. Because the actual monthly difference is going to be negligible, but it'll be a material difference for you guys.

Definitely. Right. Extra 7,000 per is going to, we'll add up, especially if you can pull it up front. Okay. Another quick, quick little thing is that walk me through the sales process really quickly. Because to help support this price increase, I just want to tweak sales motion if we can. Okay. So someone clicks, they schedule, you know, they call in or whatever.

They schedule their appointment. Okay. Walk me through what happens after, like from the time they schedule till the time they give you money. So they schedule. They receive a reminder seven days before their appointment. They receive a second reminder three days, one last one day before, one day of. So seven, three, two, one. Yep.

Okay. And then they show up for their appointment, and that is their initial consultation. No work gets done. It's purely potentially x-rays. It's a sale, right? Yeah. Okay. Visual consult.

Well, let's actually walk through that in more detail. So when they actually walk in the door, what happens? They walk in the door, we greet them, and they get seated in the chair immediately. Okay. Once we take the x-ray to the CT scan, they come back to the chair. Okay. And it takes anywhere from two to four minutes. Got it.

So they sit back in the chair. We pull up the scan with them. And we essentially diagnose what they can't see or what we can't see visually. So you educate the patient. You say your teeth are fucked up. Got it. When does it transition to, okay, give us money? So that transition doesn't happen in the chair.

That happens once he diagnoses and things are complete, they will either sit down with myself or office manager. And we will create the chair. And they get out of the chair and they go somewhere else into like a sales For an office. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Got it. So two things that we need to, I would tweak, is number one, and this will help you out. But I would put, I'd grab everyone's ID on the way in. Okay. So I could scan it and then confirm identity. Plus, I would swap that for their credit card and say, hey, it's just how we complete our patient profiles. And that way you already have payment method before you even ask for payment. Much easier way to do it.

Then you're going to go to chair, rig and roll, x-rays, et cetera. then afterwards they're meeting with you right you have your your one-on-one with them in office or right in the front office or whatever right um before they actually sit down so this you have our x-ray here right and then there's this period where they come into this office okay this is where before they actually sit down with you you should have them watch a little vsL a little vsales letter and so maybe you have them wait in that office for like five minutes 10 minutes and while they're there you just give them this ipad hey you're right with you watch this that'll give you a little bit more context on what the doctor just shared with you.

And then it's just like basically a ton of testimonials. I'll give you the TLDR. You can watch the recording. But promise of the video like, hey, in this video, I'm going to show you how we transform people's mouths, pain that you're avoiding, which is like, and so if you haven't been sure, you've had pain or you're like, you're not confident with your smile. You know these pains better than I do. Our process will help you fix that.

And here's proof number one, proof number two, proof number three, which are three or four for different avatars. And so that's when we'll walk through is kind of like our four-step process in this video. So then we go to big idea number one, which is like the old way of doing things like this. The new way or our way of doing this like this. And this is the core reason that we started this practice and why some people have bad teeth and why our, you know, patients are so happy. And that's the core, that's the core big idea. And then you just have what are the common objections that people bring up in that sales console?

Which is like some people have some questions we like to cover them ahead of time, which is, hey, does this work for tiny teeth? I don't know, whatever. Like you'll know what the objections are. And then with each of them, you'll follow through with this is what people think. this is why it's wrong. This is what is true, and then here's proof. And for each one of it. It's basically a simple objection to overcome for each of them.

And then after that it's just proof of just basically before and after some people saying, oh, my God, this is amazing. And then what that'll do is because if we're going to have an increase in price, I want to give you more tailwind to do it. Okay. And would you recommend going over price in the VSL as well? You can't. You can do a range.

Okay. You can do a range. It depends on number of teeth and whatnot, but our range is go from here to here. but you already have good close rates so I don't want to mess with too much, but like, you basically never sell less with the VSO. Yeah. And if you have already a form of payment on file, it's easier

do you want to choose the card on file? It's just very easy. And so you don't have to take out the wall again, it just decreases friction, makes it very buttery. That makes sense? Very nice. Big picture, you have like what I would consider to be very like straight down the middle, which is like, your supply constrained, this doubles our capacity. Long term,

we need to take up one and two and give that to another dock as well. So your dad can just focus on the diagnosis. If you just as that, that can get you to 12-ish million just from doing that one change. And so you'll have to break your dad's beliefs around the fact that like what my father's physician. So like a surgeon. And so I understand the archetype. There's a lot of romanticism around like I have a lot of repetitions on this and like no one will be able to teach me or no one's going to be as good as I am. I'm not saying your dad's like like like that like like there has to be a fundamental belief shift, which is that like if you learned it so can someone else and then reedifying him. as like you need like for for this business to scale his identity is change from i'm the best dentist to i'm the best teacher yeah like if he can make that change i think this thing can get really good if he if he holds on to the chair it'll be very difficult 100% and with this at what point do you think it would make sense to possibly buy any locations we need to we need to fix all this stuff first correct and right now there's no point in adding another practice because you

don't even know how to run a practice without your dad. 100%. Right. So it's like that has to happen before any of these other conversations can really occur. That said, I'll just add a little bit of a tidbit for these guys because you're just getting into it. But the speed to lead is, especially with, are you doing PPC? Yeah.

Yeah. It is the most important platform for speed delete. Like talking like 60 seconds because you have super high intent people, but they're shopping. They're looking around. And so it's most of the time, I don't know the stat, but it's very high. The first person who responds to the person who gets the customer. Yeah, that's the one thing that I've been focusing on. This is killing you.

Because the big part is like he's booked out 15 to 30 days in order for him to do these diagnoses, right? And you're losing money there. Okay. Perfect world would be this. Like perfectly efficient world that I think will maintain sales percentages is that they come in, greeted, whatever. And then when they walk in to meet with you, if possible, if he says, this is my guy, he's the man. He just transfers authority and says he's seen more these cases. said anyone like he will definitely help you out i'll be with you as soon as we get into the

x-rays he just needs to do that just edifies you and then you'll have the whole frame then he'll come in razzle-dazzle and then you close got it because in that way because if he can just basically the only time how long is the x-ray diagnosis part but our 15 is we right yeah that's terrible and so that's why it's taking 15 to 30 days because like you have 70% sure rates you'll probably get closer at 85 or 90 if that's the case that would give you a 20% lift in revenue and return on ad spend just from that one change because you'll just move you'll just pull it forward because then it's like great we can get you in tomorrow because they're they're literally they have pain right exactly so it's like we they want to solve the pain yeah and if somebody else can see them

tomorrow they'll see them in not you especially for a customer that's not warm or referral yeah right so i see this as super material other than that the business already runs really good margins the rest of this is fine but this would be the this would be the next steps Got it. Again, when I see prices went up, close rates went up, what that means is that, especially in the market you're at, and when I say market, I mean the geographic market, but also the avatar itself, the people were walking in the door, they are correlating price with risk in quality.

And so they're like, this is a complex procedure. I'm going to use my mouth for rest of my life. I want to make sure it's done right. and for that person, an extra call it $100 a month, is going to mean absolutely makes me no difference whatsoever. But them getting an inferior procedure is going to make a huge difference. Huge difference. You raised price and conversion went up.

Yeah. So keep raising price. At what point do we know that we should stop raising price? Well, when conversion times price goes down. Okay. Not when you sell less, because sometimes you will sell less, but if you have a 50% price raise and you sell 10% fewer, you should continue to keep that price, right?

Or at a plus. Right, exactly. You're at a plus plus. You're closing more at a higher price. Yeah. There's going to be a point where you close the same at a higher price and that's still good. And there's a point where even after the curve you close even at a higher price with even

a little bit less and the math still makes sense. But it's just a pure math equation. I also understand the nature of high ticket sales like this, which is very difficult to get. You know, maybe he was having a bad day, whatever happens. But I think you're very safe to continue to raise for a minute. This is just like probably the first of maybe another one after this. Got it.

And then the one thing I was going to start doing is just doing like organic content. It reminds me. I was going to bring it up to you. So what I want you to also do is reengineer the process. I'm sure there's these reaction moments when they get to see their teeth and like they don't look bad. Right. Okay. So we just want to have this big mirror in your hallway where you can have people kind of walk up blindfolded or like not see it or just you want to basically capture the reveal moment.

And you'll probably already do capture the before moment. I'm guessing. A lot of the time we don't. Okay. Well, that needs to get integrated in the process, right? Yeah. And so that becomes your posting. Like every single before and after that you have at your clinic should get posted, but you can have multiple versions of this. So think about one is like the story version, which is like Angela showing her before and then showing her after and it's like, yay. And then there's the carousel version, which is like images that you might still put the story as the third tile that you'd post. You can do a case study version of this, which is like your dad or you reviewing the case. So this is Casey. She came in with an X, you know, XYZ micro underbite. I don't make it up. Right. And so this was an interesting case for X, Y, and Z.

And so, and then, but then you're immediately flipping it to like, so if you're struggling with this, this, this and this, you don't have to struggle with that. Like, these are super solvable problems. All people just don't know it. That's why I'm making this content. And then with all of that stuff, you can just CTA to lead gen. Okay. I didn't want to add a separate channel because like this is the, you're already doing this.

Let's just do more better on this. this, but as you, like, basically if you were to come back, like, in a year, I would say, like, okay, this is going to be our further expansion. And so what's difficult with small business is there's, whenever you have a pipeline, if you, as long as you're not supply constrained, which you are, more marketing on a supply constraint does nothing. Yeah. It does not increase throughput. And so it's like, we have to solve the supply constraint first. And then the other, other things down the pipeline can increase, and then that increases throughput. But we have to solve that first. And then this alone will match your throughput. And so it's like, we'll match your

throughput. So could we do it? Yeah. Is it the constraint? No. Will it take resources from you to think about? Yes. If you do all this stuff and you have bandwidth, sure. Got it. Got it. The reason I was at least thinking about it was... I'm never going to tell you to advertise less. Right? Small businesses, like the more people know about yourself, the more money make. Sure. Unless you have no way to actually capitalize on it. Yes. Okay. How many employees you guys got? Nine, including me. Nine. All right. So, Where are we out on the scaling roadmap? So you're right at the kind of prioritized to productize stage. Notice what we were doing is prioritizing things you need to do and trying to develop productization of the actual delivery. It's almost like these things make sense. And so you do

have a specialized product that's priced to serve a rich or rich Ravtar. So you already have this, which is why like from a business perspective, you're probably closer to here. From a marketing angle, more free better stuff, that's where this part that I was referencing would kind of come in. And that will kind of graduate here. And so it's common for businesses to be split between multiple stages for different kind of functions. Yeah. From a sales perspective, I think you just started tracking these basic KPIs. So like you have probably more along this product type step.

So spend more in the sound messaging and new offer. Fair enough. Right. Create sales aids materials. Right? And the VSL sales aids. Right. Build a proper CS Playbook to onboard and train team to answer questions.

So that is partially like, how can we get the team to do some of these pieces? And then obviously, like, over time, they're going to be taking over more of the delivery. All right. Makes sense that you're at this stage to graduate? Fair enough. Cool. Far now. And yeah, by the way, this is free.

If you're a business owner and you're like, what stage am I? What should I do? Download this. Each one of these comes with like a 90 plus minute video that breaks down in way more detail than I just did in 10 seconds. What to do at each stage. So if you want that, you can go grab it. I'm sure the link somewhere. Well, sweet.

So you shifted, it sounded like you shifted to more payment up front, raise the implant pricing, speed to lead is solid, you held off on scaling to the new location. Yeah. So all in all, what's revenue at now, run rate? Well, run rate, we are right at 3.3, I believe. Oh, hell, yeah. So we're right at, I believe, it's 270,000 a month. When I saw you last, I think we're at a 2.8 run rate. Okay, 2.8 to 3.3.

So what's that? So I'd say it's a percent left for sale? And from averaging 160, our best month before this was 290,000. And now we're about at 500,000. I never thought it'd be possible with the same team being the same things we're currently doing. Honestly, Alex, thank you. Thank you so much. I have a lot of gratitude for your team, for you, for what everyone has been doing.

Just the advice you've been able to give when it comes to fixing limiting beliefs, I think that's been the biggest thing. Unlocking belief conviction in myself, in my team, in my dad, in our doctors, has been the biggest unlock of what's possible. Why not? Why can't we? Is the question. How fast can we do it?

We'll keep it going. Yeah, nothing to add there. I mean, it was all him. And so, you know, the kudos should go to him because a lot of people, you know, watch YouTube videos. They read my books, but they don't do anything about it. All right. And so that was this episode of Scale or Fail. Stay tuned for the next one.