The Game with Alex Hormozi - How 1 Woman Turned 5800 Followers into $1 Million Per Year | Ep 702

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

”You can make an absolute killing just talking about what you're really good at. Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) shares how a dietitian successfully monetized a small, niche Instagram audience, earning nearly a million dollars annually. Highlighting the value of targeted, value-driven content over vanity metrics, this episode reaffirms that genuine engagement and a dedicated audience lead to significant financial gains.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.Timestamps:(0:15) - A surprising encounter: the dietitian's story(3:43) - The importance of niche content(6:36) - Lessons from personal experience(9:31) - The value of a dedicated audience(13:32) - Followers make you famous, business makes you rich(18:02) - Focus on business metrics, not vanity metricsFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

If you make content to advertise your business or you want to start making content to advertise your business, getting the topics that you're choosing to pick right can influence whether you get views or you make money. And in this podcast, I'm going to explore, in my opinion, if you want to make money, the right way to do it. I had the most insane thing happened last night and it has had me at a loss for words. I was actually at a loss for words, like speechless, befuddled, bewildered. And I was like, what is going on? And it took, a concept that I kind of believe in, and I've made some moves around it, and it took it to the absolute hyperbolic extreme that you could imagine, and it's still held true. And I think that

for business owners who are listening to this, for people who make content, who are listening to this, but just in this is going to, I mean, it has, it has slightly nudged how I see the world. And I'll just put it that way. And I feel like a lot of the beliefs that have around the world are still relatively, I hold on it. I believe them pretty, pretty strongly. So here's what I have. happen. So we'd a company come in and the lady who owns the company is a registered dietitian. And I'm not going to shout her. I would shout her out because I wanted to get all the kudos in the world, but I don't want it to mess up what she's doing. And so that's why I'm going to keep it anonymous. So she's a registered dietitian. She takes home just under a million dollars a year

helping other registered dietitians bill insurance correctly. And so it's super niche in terms of what she's really good at. So she knows how to be an RD and help people bill insurance codes properly. And so the average, I think a dietitian adds like $100,000 in income using just like her kind of coding system for billing them, right? Crazy niche. Crazy, crazy niche. And so I spent, I spent some time with her. We talked about her business and things I was like, hey, I think if you move this stuff around. And I think that the business could probably do about $3 million a year to $5 million a year in profit if she just moved some of the things around that we talked about. And so I was like, cool, this is great. And so we had dinner and I was like, hey, let me see your, your, your, your,

your Instagram. So I just wanted to pull it up because I was going to make a point about something, because I assumed that she had, like, I wanted to see what kind of content she had. I assumed that she had at least a relatively large following. I honestly hadn't looked. Shame on me. And this is what happens. I pull it up. Number one, her account is not verified. And I'm like, this is your number one source of income and you are not paying 1499 a month. Like, what do you do doing? What are you doing? And after yelling at her for that, I then was then drawn to the next natural, absolutely unbelievable thing that I'm going to say to you. She had 5,800 followers. Her average post got 19 likes and like one comment. And 100% of her acquisition came from her

organic Instagram with just under 6,000 followers. I pulled up her accounts to ask because I was losing my mind seeing the amount of sales that she was making off of this account. Her account, her reach for 30 days of her account was 2,800. That was her reach, 2,800. Like for context, I do about 20 million a month. Context. And I was like, what is happening right now? Like, what am I, what do I not? What is what is going on? How is this possible? And so she's doing 10 plus sales a day at a low ticket price and doing three-ish sales a week at a higher ticket price. And when I say higher ticket, I'm talking like, you know, four or five thousand dollars type price point and then a lower ticket thing for just like some cheat sheets of like,

here's all the codes and this is how you can do them, whatever. And a 10 a day, a day. Okay. And so this is, that's the big story. Now I'm going to zoom out and I'm going to say what I think is so cool about this. So she says this and I was like, how are you doing this? And she was like, you know what? I got my first sale when I had eight people on my email list.

Eight. Eight. And I was like, that's nuts. And she was like, yeah, so it was really confirming for me that like, there's people were listening. And so I was like, well, how big is your email list now? And she's been doing this for a few years. I've not, I told, 2,900 people on her email list.

And she makes sales from emails. And it was such a great reset for me. It was such a good nudge as a reminder that the view count you have on the other side, the 19 likes, like, there's a real person on the other side of this that is watching your clip that has five views. There's a real person who's opening up your emails when you have a list that has 300 people on it. Like, people are watching.

People are listening. And the thing that was unique that I found, about her. I'll say two things, and I think that there's a really good meta-concept here. One is, her content was consistent, and she said, yeah, I do one post and I do one story every day. And I like, but she was like super proud of it. I was like, this is adorable and also crazy. But the post that she talks about, 100% of them are about billing insurance as a registered dietitian. Like could not be more niche. You couldn't even think of one, right? I couldn't even imagine one. And despite that, she's making the sales that she is. And so I'm going to zoom out on this

because I think it's really interesting. So if you go to my Alex's homepage, right, like as a user of Instagram, my user page, I've showed this to people because people like, this is really weird. All I have is philosophy stuff, comedy, and gym equipment. Like, that's my whole feat. I have no news. I have, it's philosophy, comedy, and gym equipment, because that's what I look at. And what's interesting is that the philosophy is kind of, a lot of those are kind of like mid-sized. the comedy comedians are mass markets so a lot of those guys are bigger but i get tiny comedians like 5,000 follower 10,000 followers get shown to me all the time because instagram knows i like comedy and equipment dealers and equipment manufacturers and metal fabricators not always the best marketers

and so like these accounts that i follow there have like 500 a thousand like 2 000 like they're not huge accounts but i get served everything in that space on instagram because that's what i'm into And so I think that there's a couple of really interesting things here. One is that I think that niche content will make you a hell of a lot more money if that's what you're actually selling. And I have, here's the thing. I have learned this lesson twice. So I like to, you know, I like to pretend that I'm, you know, I like to think I'm a fancy businessman who learns all these lessons. But I have missed this up two times, not two times.

And so I tell the story about how my podcast was getting, you know, two, three thousand downloads. per month, which is like 100 downloads an episode. Not a lot, right? But, and that was for like a few years. But I don't tell you this other part of the story, which is that my podcast started growing in numbers when I started talking about general business. It also started growing in numbers even faster once we sold the company for gym launch. But there was a period of about 18 months prior to me selling where I just talked about general business because I was like, I'm tired of talking about gyms. I just want to talk about business in general. during that period of time, our organic sales went to basically zero. And it took us like six months to figure out that the reason that that had happened was

because I stopped talking about gym shit. And gym owners were like less interested in my content than generic business content. And that makes sense. Like if you're just, if you're a business owner, you're going to listen to business stuff in general. If you're a dentist, then you're going to get a lot out of a dentist only podcast, right? But there's not that many dentists. So you're not going to get a lot of listens.

but the listens in terms of relevancy is going to be through the roof. And so we started making less sales, but I was getting more views, more listens, right? Now, I ended up wanting to go in that direction, so it was fine, and I'm talking about general business now, right? I made that mistake second time, not necessarily a mistake. We learned, right? Three or six months ago, we were like, let's experiment with some wider content. And by experimenting with wider content, we sure as hell got more views, more a bunch of other

vanity metrics. But the number of business owners that was watching, and the way I measure that was our CPMs on our videos on YouTube, the amount of people who opt in at Acquisition.com, people who buy our books, all of those metrics were actually down, despite our views being up. And so this little story that I have of the dinner that I had last night blew me away because it just showed how much you can really make if you have a diehard audience that doesn't need to be big. Less than 6,000 followers. Her account reaches less than 2,800 accounts per month, and she's taking home almost a million dollars a year. That's income, not revenue. I'm just talking profit. And right now, if she just

makes the couple of obvious changes that she could make, she'll probably make somewhere in the $3 to $5 million a year range. Income. Income. Hey, guys, real quick, if this is encouraging you to make a different type of content or start making content or make stuff that will make you make money, then let me know by tagging me on the gram. And you can just put a little Easter egg comment of views ain't cash. And tag me in it. I'm trying to respond to every person who does it and share as many of them as I can, but I'll definitely respond either way in terms of the DM. And so please do that. It helps me know that there's actually people listening and I'm not just shouting into the void. Enjoy the rest of the show. And I say this

because there's two angles on this, right? On one side, people are like, well, I don't want to start making content because what if I have low numbers? I believe now the algorithms are so good that if you make it about one specific type of thing, it's going to show it to those people. And right now, by the way, like the guy who runs Instagram talked about, he's excellent. actually favoring smaller creators now. So that's a good thing if you're if you're trying to get into it. But beyond that, I think there's so much power in and when I talk to her, she's like, I just want to show up. She's like, I show up whether there's no one, there's one, there's one person. And I just, I show it like, like it's a whole auditorium. She said this thing. And I have just

noticed this with fucking winners, right? It's like, they're doing it because of what they, because she's a missionary. She just genuinely wants to help Richard Dietitian. She's like, I get it. I work to the hospital's doing 100 hours a week. And like, I was under. understaffed, underbuilt, and I had to start making this business work on my own doing one day a week, so I had to figure out how to do this quickly in terms of all this billing stuff. And she gets so passionate when she was talking about it. I've confident she's not going to change industry. She's been in 20-something years.

Like, she's not going anywhere. She loves this stuff. And the people who stay in the game the longest like the game they're in. And so I have this thing that I heard from Last Dance, which is the Michael Jordan documentary, which if you haven't seen it, you should totally see it. And they're interviewing Jordan. And they're like, why do you bring you like, you bring such a high intensity every single time you show up to the arena. And he says this line.

And I remember getting chills when I heard it. He was like, I just never know. I know that there's one guy who's bringing his son. And they saved up for months to go to this one Bulls game. And that's the one. And it's not going to be some prime time night. It's just going to be a random Tuesday game in a series. He's like, and that's the only time they're going to see me play in their lives.

He's like, and I want, I want to perform for them, for that kid, for that. for that dad who wants to impress his son. And like that, that, like, I almost get choked up when I tell that story because, like, that's so real for me. And the way that she brought the energy, like the energy she brought in terms of how she wanted to show up when there's eight people on her live or two people on her live,

or when there were eight people on her email list and she made her first $39 sale. I was like, this is real and people need to hear this, which is why I wanted to tell the story, because I think it's absolutely insane. And it just, it put, like, I say what I say, right, which is, hey guys, like, start making, you know, start making content, start promoting yourself.

If more people know about your stuff, you're going to make more money, period, fight me, right? That's what it is. But you just forget sometimes that, like, when you have 10 views on a YouTube video, that's 10 people. And I remember when I was in the German one, if I had 10 people that I could talk to, I was stoked, right? And the fact that we can do this from home behind a camera, my God, how amazing is that? And so, like, if I had 25 people, my God, that's like a talk.

That's like a workshop view, a lunch and learn that you do as a business owner, and get business. The fact that you can make a niche content, Instagram will serve it to only people who are interested in it. I only like gym equipment. And I get gym equipment stuff all the time. They've got like 13 likes on it. But I see it, right? I see it because Instagram knows. And the algorithm will only get better. And so I wanted to cover all that stuff because I thought it was really important. And from a, from a how do you, how do you make this? She has endless sources of content because she just literally answers their questions. They just keep at, she was like, so where do you get your stuff from?

She's like, oh, they all have questions. And so I just, I just make my posts answering their questions. That's it. And I'll say this. I think she could do a lot of things better, to be clear. But like, she just had every other post just had a, by the way, there's a link in my bio that has more stuff that you might like. That was it.

That was the whole strategy. And she was doing a million dollars of your take home, just under. And so I was just blown away by this. I find it actually one of the most hopeful messages that I have seen in person in a very long time. And so people have, you know, like, unless I have 100,000 followers, we're not going to be able to make money. The thing is, is that people seek the followers with the idea that the followers are going to make them rich. The followers will make you famous. Understanding business will make you rich.

She understands business. She's like, I'm just going to talk to the people that I want to serve and I'm only going to serve them. And I'm going to answer all the questions. And the way she talked about her, she's like, I just want to be used. useful. She's like, I just want to help them out. And so if you're coming into the frame, rather than like, I want this piece of content to perform and think there's eight people in their side, I just want them to be better off and hopefully answer their question from this piece of content of them making, you will get raving fans, even if your audience is 5,000 people.

But there's a, there's a book, I can remember the guy who wrote the name book, but he says, you only need a thousand true fans. And I think that's like a thousand fans, like you can, you can do whatever you want with a thousand fans, even at 10 bucks a month. want, right? Like, you can make on $1,000 a year if you just do that, right? A thousand true fans that are diehard. And you can make a lot more than that with a thousand true fans. And so people think, because we have this eight billion people in the world that you need to be, you need to be the Barack, you need to be Kim Kardashian, you need to be Mr. Rees and sure, with massive numbers, like those, like, you're going to get famous. Those things are required. But like,

you can make an absolute killing just talking about what you're really good at. And that's the other piece here is that I'm, I'm shatting this at myself too, which is like, we, we made a piece of marriage content, a couple, you know, a couple relationship stuff, a little bit of fitness stuff. And the thing is just like, there's, there's no relationship billionaire. Like the only objective measure of if your marriage is good just from a society standpoint is that you are not divorced. That's it. And then it's that measured by how many years you put up with each other. That's it. And I don't like that because it's one of those, it's one of those crappy things where everybody's been in a relationship, so everybody has an

opinion and there's no objective proof that one thing is better at another. And so like I hate, I don't like making content in that space. We tried it out because like we have a unique relationship, Layla and I and we like what we do. And it's worked for us well. But I would say that I have more credibility in business. And so she has credibility in not just, she doesn't talk about nutrition at all. She just talks about how to be a rest of dietitian and bill insurance properly. and get credentialized and do this whole process that apparently is a big pain in the butt. And so if you are somebody who has a very specific niche that you're good at, I would highly encourage you to just make the content that gets 40 views,

that gets 100 likes that you know for sure will help a very specific person, because when you do help that very specific person, they will like you a lot more than many people who like you a little bit. And the people who like you a lot are the ones who buy from you. And that's the thing. And I'm making this because I need to remind myself of this, which is like, you can either be rich or you can be famous, you can obviously be both. But honestly, sometimes it's a lot faster to just get rich.

And many of you get in the game because you want to make money from social media, from making concept, from things like that, from advertising the business. You want to do more of that. Get your face out there, whatever. But you start chasing the views because the views is what the algorithm encourages. But the business side, and this is why I'm trying to make this point, is that the metrics don't necessarily follow the vent. Your business metrics don't follow your vanity metrics. There. And so just because you get more views doesn't mean you get more revenue. Just because you get more subs doesn't mean you get more optance, right, for your website or for whatever it is that you sell. You don't get sales from that stuff.

Subscribers don't mean sales. And so there are tons of stories of tiny-ne-ne-to-channels. We have an insurance brokerage that we own. and the head of the insurance brokerage has like when we when we invest in the company had I think like 5,000 followers on Instagram or sorry not Instagram on YouTube and the business is doing many millions of dollars a year. I'll just be that be very clear there many millions, not just one or two. And it's because he talks about a very complex structure of insurance that he specializes in. He's one of the foremost experts and his videos get like 100 to 500 views. but those 100 to 500 views are people who are looking for incredibly high-end, very specialized insurance products.

And so don't be afraid of the empty room. Very low views doesn't mean low revenue. It just means that it's more specific and that you're talking to a more specific person. And a specific problem being solved for a specific person is how you make big money. And so I thought this was one of the most hopeful messages that I had seen in real life. life in a long time. And it was really confirming for me. It also doubled down on the direction that we're doing, which for those you said, I said, made the mistake twice. We have come back to going back to business, baby, only business. Only Alex, only business. Only for the fans.

Just kidding. And I hope you, I hope this at least encouraged you to just divorce yourself more and more from the vanity metrics around it because I am now leaning so hard to this because our business metrics and I have a big long thing that's coming out soon, have skyrocketed since we stopped going anything that's not business. And so I feel so confirmed in this direction that I want to encourage as many of you seemingly possible to just toss out the vanity metrics because they do not fucking matter if you're trying to make money. If you're just trying to get famous, then yeah, by all means, it's great metric for fame, right?

And so yeah, just do that. be willing to have a thousand fans make stuff that has 19 likes because you know that the 19 people who liked it were like this was unbelievable for me and they will take the next step and they will purchase from your business views ain't cash talk about the stuff that you actually know that you know will serve the audience that you actually want to serve don't chase the views chase the cash and that's what you're going to end up with