The Game with Alex Hormozi - I Lost Everything Twice...Then Made $26M in 18 Months (My First Million) | Ep 742

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

On this episode, Alex share some of his conversation from the podcast interview with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri from their podcast, My First Million.Welcome to The Game Podcast where we talk about how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, and keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons we have learned along the way to $100M in sales. We've got roll-up-your-sleeves kind of hustle with a little bit of cleverness and a lot of heart.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

Hey guys, welcome back to the game. I was just recently a guest on my first million, the podcast with Sam Parr and Sean Puri. And in this episode, we talk about my journey going from Broke to over 100 million. If you have heard that journey, then feel free to skip a loser. So Layla and I had, so we started dating in April of 16. I immediately was like, hey, I've got this idea for this thing called gym launch. I want to go fly out to gyms and do turnarounds because I can like fill my gyms up faster than I can build up. By the way, context is at the time. you owned a couple of gyms. I had five gyms when I met her. And the bank balance looked like what at the time? I was making like 20 grand a month. I know that. So I like, I don't remember what my savings were,

but I was making like 20 grand a month in cash flow. And you're like, wait, five gyms. It's like, yeah, some of them were good. Some of them were. I had two corporate locations are a little smaller. Anyways.

But I was like 25, 26. So like I was hood rich, you know, as far as I'm concerned. I could buy whatever I wanted. I could live where I wanted. You know, I could go out to eat, whatever. And so I started the turnaround business.

and I made $100,000 in cash in 21 days. And I was like, holy shit. I was like, this is awesome. And so I came back and she picked her from the airport and I had this big stack of contracts. And I was like, hey, we can go on that date because I hadn't taken on a date in three weeks and we'd seen each other every day. So it'd been like 21 days of hanging out and not one date. And so you said, you promised you take me on a date after you did this launch. And I was like, okay, okay.

I was like, how do we process these? So you processed the contracts in 45 minutes she saw was 100 grand. She was like, holy shit. The first question she asked is, is the, this legal. And I was like, yeah, it's legal. And she was like, all right, I'm in. And so she decided to join me. So we went out to the next launch together, a few more launches. And then one of the launch guys that I did that I did really well, the one that I came back with the $100 grand for was like, hey, let's partner. Like instead of, you know, you just doing these gyms and walking away,

let's just open new gyms. I'm a really good operator. I'll just open them behind you and run it. And then if you open up one or two gyms a month, at the end you own 24 gyms instead of just like doing the service. And me being me, I was like, of course, money on the table. Why would I not do that. And the fact that he had been indicted for fraud, like, it was a misunderstanding, whatever. And he was like, hey, you know, you should sign all the leases for these new locations because I had a little run-in, like, no big deal. You should do it. And so I personally guarantee the lease and I put all the capital up because, you know, I'm 25 and don't know what I'm doing. And so, of course, we don't have this story goes. I launched it. I launched at 376,

you know, new members, which for like a CrossFit slash microjim is massive to open up with. Then I wake up on morning and all the cash and the bank account's gone. And I was like, what the fuck? And I, you know, hit him up and I was like, dude, what's going on? He's like, oh, that was my half. And I was like, what do you mean your half? I was like, you just call the money out. He's like, well, I know you've been skimming. And I was like, what? I'm here. What? I'm here every day. So I came to him with all the bank accounts, like every transaction highlighted. And I was like, hey, let's go through this. Like, I just want to make sure we're good. And he threw it off the table. He's I don't need to see that shit. And I was like, oh, you, okay.

got, I now understand what happened. Like, okay. So I just got all my money stolen. And right at, when that had happened, I had decided to go all in on that business. So I sold my gyms and I put all that cash in that account. So the cash that I used to open the gym and the subsopcane cash that came, all of that was pooled into one place. But that was what I had sold all my gyms for. And so when he emptied that, I had basically the five years I had built my gyms, I had nothing. And so that sucked. And so Layla was like, like, you know, dust it off, forget the whole like build and whatever. Like, let's just go back to the turnaround model.

Like, you made money doing that. Like, let's do that. I was like, all right, we'll do that. And so the next launch that's supposed to happen is in California. There's a guy who hits me up randomly on Instagram says, hey, do you have work for me? I've got a kid on the way and I've got a one year old and I need the money. And it just so happened. He lived 10 minutes away from the one gym that we were going to launch in the world.

And so I was like, dude, do this launch for me. So he does a hundred, he does a hundred grand. in sales in 28 days. And all of a sudden, though, as I'm like, normally, I know my deposits always hit on Tuesdays over the weekends. And so Tuesday hits and I'm like, there's no deposit. I'm like, we're processing the contracts like what's going on. I call up mind body, which is the, you know, Hartland was the processor they integrated with at the time. And they put, you know, they give me the run around. And they're like, oh, it's a standard annual review. And I was like, okay. And no, no Wednesday, no Friday, or Saturday. Then it's the weekend again. And

then Tuesday comes back and no, no deposit. And I was like, dude, what? the fuck. So they said, no, you're still in the annual review. So I did it one more week. And now it's Christmas Eve. And I had about 23 grand left after all the money was. It was basically my checking was what was left from all that other stuff. And so they got on the phone. I said, I'm not getting off. It's Christmas Eve. I need to pay my guys. Like, what the hell? And they said, we're going to hold on to this for six months because it's a regular activity. Because I was processing these turnaround gyms through my brick and mortar location. I didn't know how processing works. I was like, you know, flying into Calgary, Canada, doing a turnaround, running it through Huntington Beach, California

for an in-person transaction. I didn't know how it worked. And so they were like, this is weird. We're going to hold onto the funds. And so I owed $22,000 in commissions for sales that I hadn't gotten paid for for this guy who had the kids and the babies or whatever. And so I didn't want to give myself the idea that I could not pay him. And so I sent him the money. And so I had a thousand dollars left. It's Christmas. We're at Layla's family's house. I'm stressed the fuck out because I just lost all my money in the last two. Like, I got the money stolen. And then my, my Hail Mary to save the day was the $100,000 new launch. I didn't get paid for that. I ended up just having it empty the small $20 grand that I had and had $1,000 left. She told six of her friends to quit their jobs to start

that month on the 26th of December because that's going into New Year. So I could do it. I was like, let's do six gyms because that's logical go from one to six immediately. since we're going to go all in. And so after I found out that I didn't have any money, and I had $1,000 left, and the ads were supposed to launch on the 26th. And I was going to be spending $3,300 a day in advertising, hotels, rental car,

per DMs for the six sales guys that were her friends. And I had $1,000 in total. And so I, you know, we're sitting at like the figure, parents are downstairs. We're in like the spare bedroom where like the grandkids are. So there's like this little mini furniture everywhere. They like I'm sitting in a tiny chair. And I was like, hey, this could go horribly wrong. And if you, I said, I wouldn't stay with me if I were you. I am a sinking ship right now. And so in that moment she'd grab my chin. And she was like, I would sleep with you under her bridge.

It came to that. And so I was like, all right. And honestly, I just kind of felt relief at the time. I can appreciate it more later. But, you know, she quit her job to join me doing these turnarounds. And all she got to see besides the one that she did in the beginning was me just getting kicked in the nuts for like eight straight months. And so then the next day, I said, okay, well, I still had a $100,000 limit on my credit

card from all my five gyms. Like, Amex hadn't updated the fact that I was broke. And so I put $3,300 a day on that credit card. Mind you, with no way to process money. And so I'm spending $3,300 a day of money I don't have with no way to process new money. And so I got like porn, casino, and like gambling, processing that had like 10% reserves and like 6%, 7% processing fees. They were taking like 17% off the top.

but I needed the cash. And so I got one turned on with a 50K limit. And I needed, I mean, I had 100K and cost. I needed 200 grand. And it was like, well, if you do well, you get 50. And I got it only turned on three days before the end of January. So this whole time, I'm fronting 3,300 a day and we're collecting these contracts with credit cards. And I'm not processing anything.

And people are calling me like, hey, I haven't seen the money come out. hey, like, what's going on? Are you guys going to run the, run the card? We're like, yeah, yeah, we're getting to it. And so three days before the end of January, the first 50K processor hits. And so I run that in a day, you know, because I had so much backlog. But he's like, the good news is it's per month. So on the first of February, you can run another 50. So I ran 50-50, and that covered my 100 that went out, the 3,300 a day. And then I got two more processors turned on at 50-50. And then I was able to get out of it. there's also another crash that happens after that,

where I lost it all again three months later. But that was because all of the launches that we were doing, I had a new hole in my model, which is that I was selling and other people were delivering. And then they would tell the customers to refund and then sign up with them for half the price after we'd leave. So we'd sell like five, you know, we'd sell a $500 challenge or whatever.

And then we'd put 100 people in the location and they would just tell them all like, hey, refund with them, sign up with me for $200. bucks. And we'd already fronted the cost for the hotel, the ad spend, the commissions, the sales guy, like all that jazz. And so that's when I lost everything again. And that was, that was probably the hardest of all of them, because this was the only model I knew. And so the more I sold, the more refund risk I exposed myself to. And so it was just like, I had to sell more to cover the first month's refunds. And then the next month was bigger. And then I had to sell more, more to cover that

month's refund. And so then I had to make a switch in 30 days to go about 150 grand in profit. in profit in 30 days and I was like, I don't know what I'm going to do. The first two were out of your control. You know, business partner screws you. The payment process turns you off.

This one, your model was broken. Yeah. Where you're like, oh, shit. Because Sam, I don't know if you know

how this business worked. It was basically like, he would go, my understanding is you'd go turn around the gym, which means just you'd sell a bunch of memberships. And the deal was like, I keep the upfront cash and then you keep the members. And so they were just like,

well, he took all the upfront. He made 100 grand in like, whatever, a month or something. A few of them were like, well, you know what? Why don't I just cut them out and just do the deal directly with my customers who I'm going to serve going forward? And so that one was your fault in your control, basically, your model. But then you fix the model, right? And it worked. Well, sort of. So what ended up

happening is I told Layla, I was like, hey, because she still had her fitness clients because she was a personal trainer and she had a book of business. So she converted like half of them into like online training, or online training was the thing. And so she was making like four grand a month. And one day we're sitting in the kitchen table. And I was like, hey, how much you make on that. And she was like defensive. She was like, hey, this pays for our food. And I was like, no, no, no. I'm not like, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. And she's like, I don't know, like four grand a month. Why? I was like, how many hours a week to take you? And she's like, I don't know, four hours. I was like, that's not a bad business. I was like, well,

I already know how to sell fitness. Let's let's cut the gym owner out. Like, let's just sell straight to consumer. And so I spent 48 hours, took a ton of Adderall and wrote the best sales letter, got ads live in 48 hours to a sales letter. And we started to do a 500 bucks a day, 500 to a thousand day. This is like a women's weight loss product. Yeah, it was called Queen Transformation. And so it told Laylist, because Sign me up. Yeah, let's go. She lost 100 pounds and then did a fitness competitor. So she had a great before and after a great transformation story. I were the company as though I, yeah, Layla, as though I were her. So I'm like, my thighs were chafing together and I couldn't go out of the side. Like it was, it was just me, right?

My thighs are shaving. Yeah. So this is working. A thousand bucks a way. Dude, I get that now. I need to sign up for this clean transformation. So we do the thousand bucks today. And I got eight sales guys now. And I was like, wait, if I got eight guys, I can do eight grand today. With covering costs, I could make $150 on this. Like, this could work. And so I call up the gyms that are supposed to launch the next month.

And I said, hey, we're not flying out. And they were like, what the hell? Whatever about what? And then what guy's like, dude, I need this. You turn around one of my buddy's gyms. And like, because for the other model not work, only like one out of five gyms had to fuck me. So it wasn't like they all did it. Like some of them were fine.

But like my profit was like 20%. You know what I mean? And so I called the first guy. guy up and he's like, I need this. And so I said, he said he was poor. So I just said the highest number I could think of at the time, which was $6,000. I was like, fine. I'm not flying out there to save your eyes if you can't close, but I'll show you how I did it for six grand. And he was like, six grand. And he was like, done. And I remember just like looking at the phone being like, whole. I mean, I was selling $500, $300, $400, $400 at a time, like six grand. And I was like,

what the fuck just happened? And so I still had seven more calls that day. So I called the next guy, same conversation. He was like, how much? I was like, eight grand. He was like, done. And so next call, same thing. How much? 10 grand? And by the end of the day, I did $60,000 in cash collected. And I was like, holy shit. Now your thighs are really shaven. Yeah. And so I call, so Lela comes in after a full day of sales. And I was like, I think we're still in the gym business. And she was like, what? You just sold me on like, this is the new direction. We're going to be online queen transformation. And I was like, no, I think, I think we were just doing it wrong. I say, I think we just need to show them how.

we fill gyms rather than flying out and filling it for them, let them take the risk on the ad spend. They don't have to do a hotel. They don't have to hire a salesman. They can just do it themselves if I teach them how to do it. And so we did that. And then I called the 30 plus gyms we turned around and I was like, hey, remember that thing I did? Want me to show you how I did it? And a lot of them saw me pull 500 grand out. And one out of five was like, I'm going to super fuck this guy. But four out of five are probably like, this guy made more out of my gym than I did. And so when I called him back, almost all of them said yes. And so I did like 240 grand in sales in that next 30 days. That was almost all profit. And I was able to pay off all the refunds that were going to be due from all the other

gym. So I paid the 150 down. And I was like in the clear. And then that was what became, that's what became gym launch. Dude, that's insane. Have you ever felt richer than that first relief of being like out of the mess? No, I say in my book in the offers book, the last, the last chapter is the first 100,000. When we had our first 100,000, which was like four, six weeks after that I showed it to Layla on the phone and I was like, we did it. And she was like, what do you mean? And I was like, look. And I like pulled it up. And it wasn't like in the business account because I'd had that in like business. But it's like operating expensive and earmark for other stuff. But like this was like in the personal account. And I was like we can we can

screw up for like three years and we're going to be fine. Like we could do we could just do we could take off for three years and be fine. And to this day is it is 100% the richest I I've ever felt. And I think it's because of relative change in wealth. Because I have thought about it. Because it's like, if you go from $1,000 to $100,000, it's a, it's a hundred X increase in wealth in a month. By the way, the end of that story is like within the first 12 months, there's some like ridiculous benchmark that you guys hit, right? So from that brink of failure to what was it at the end of a year? Yeah. So we did the, so December 26th of 2016, uh, processors, shuts me down and I make the big bed and Layla says I'll go with you under a bridge and it's 3,300 a day.

It takes four or five months for me to realize the new model where I fly out to gyms has this big refund problem. And so now we're into May of 17. I flip, I flip during that kind of like April, May-ish, the model. And we start doing the licensing model. And it goes like 400, 700, a million, 1-2-15 into the end of the year. So we ended up with like 6.8 million top line and I think we did

3 million in profit. And then the full next calendar year, we did 26 million and 16 million in EBITDA. That's insane. Yeah. It was wild. It was just as wild for me,

for anyone who's listening. Like, I actually think it took me like three years to acclimate to the wealth that we were making. It was probably like 2019-ish, like end of 2019, 2020 is when I started to like realize how much money that we were making

because I didn't adjust my, I didn't adjust my living. Like we did buy a house. It's like three years later one day, you just woke up and you were like, holy shit, I feel good. Wait a minute, what is this? Yeah, well, it's like,

because we took out 42 million in distributions prior to selling it. And so that's why the sale was not like, I mean, we got a ton of notoriety from the sale, but in terms of material change in living, like it wasn't a massive step up. Sam, have you actually read his offers book?

The purple one. I read the purple one. Hey, no, I read. Yeah, I read it. No, it was Leeds, I thought. Bro, you can call it the purple one and then say, bro, I read. Sorry, Leads.

Well, they're all like the same cover, just different. But they're like the same thing. No, I read the, oh, well, they're like the same color. The lighting makes it look like they're more similar than they are. I read the Leeds one. All right. So the compliment is, Alex, you have a very good, useful thing on offers that I read a bit of the books.

I read like the first 20% of the book. I was like, sweet, got it, ready to act. Don't need the rest of this book right now. Knew exactly what I needed to do. And it really wasn't actually something super specific in the book. It was just implanting the idea. You sparked an idea of my head of how do you make somebody an offer so good that they would be stupid to turn you down?

And that stuck with me. It was like that one line stuck with me. And then immediately I went into this one business that we had started. And we had this business that I was like, what this business needs is a killer offer. And we're going to do nothing until we craft a killer offer. And we've crafted a killer offer in that first year of this business, which we haven't announced on the podcast. It'll probably do $4 million in revenue, 50% margins.

It's a really great business. And it needed a killer offer. And I would not have had that idea had I not heard you kind of plant that seed of why that matters. Can you give us the like couple minute version for anybody else that's listening? Because if it was that useful for me, I know it's going to be useful for a few hundred thousand other people that are going to listen to this. Also, I'll say, because of what you said, I wrote a summary and workbook of offers so that they

can finish it in one sitting. Does it come with crayons? My kind of guy. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So fundamentally, you think about like, are there supply-demand, are there supply-constrained businesses or demand-contrained businesses? And I like going into demand-contrained businesses because that's what I'm good at.

So the core, if there was one framework in the book that it relates to, it's the value equation, which is that you have to understand how to create value so that you can charge as much as possible, right? And obviously also convert as many people as humanely possible. And so there's four elements of that. One is the dream outcome. The second is the perceived likelihood of achievement. And then below that, so it's a fraction. So dream outcome times perceived likelihood of achievement. Below that, you have time delay and then effort and sacrifice. And so the dream outcome is what I would say separates whether someone's even interested in your category of offer or not. So it's, you know, men in general probably want to make more money. Women in general in general usually want

to look better because both of those are more associated with status. So, okay, why is it that B2B offers tend to be more expensive than B2C offers because it's more closely tied to ROWI? Great. So that's the category one. But within, let's say weight loss, given the example we're talking about it for B2C, how is it that you can have a $5 PDF and a $50,000 liposuction thing, but they both fundamentally solve the same problem, which is that they don't like the way their stomach looks, right? Well, it's the other three variables. And so the next is perceived likelihood of achievement. So taking the liposuction example, if you're a surgeon, or you're a girl or you're thinking about getting liposuction, and there's one surgeon that's

just fresh out of medical school, hasn't done a surgery yet. And there's another physician who's got 10,000, you know, five stars or surgeries under his belt. Who do you go to? The guy with 10,000. Why? And the crazy thing is that it's the same procedure, but the perceived likelihood of achievement that you're going to get what you want is significantly higher. And so you pay for that premium. Because the equal opposite of this is risk. Right. And so how do we decrease risk? So you have this dream outcome and you want it to be absolutely certain that you're going to achieve it. And so it's the category. And then there's things you do in the offer.

That's where guarantees come into place. How can I further decrease the risk associated with that? And then we have the bottom side of the equation, which is time delay. So how far between when they buy and when they get? And so to use the example of personal training versus the liposuction, personal training, you got to arm wrestle somebody for an hour to get them to buy a $2,000 package of personal training. And the reason for that is, because they might get their six-pack, you know, 12 to 18 months later.

Whereas if you do liposection, you know, you're going to go to sleep and then you're going to wake up and you're going to be significantly thinner. So the time delay is so much shorter. And so because of that, it increases the value of raw. And then finally, you have effort and sacrifice, which effort are things that you have to begin doing that you don't want to do as a result of a purchase. So in the personal training example, you got to wake up early. You got to be sore.

That's the effort side. You have to stop. you know, well, sacrifices, the things you have to stop doing that you want to keep doing. So it's like you got to stop Taco Tuesday. You got to stop sleeping in because you got to do it in the morning. So it's both sides of the same coin, effort and sacrifice. And when you itemize all the things that a customer has to do as a result of a purchase, what are all the things that they, what are the things that increase their risk?

What are the things that make it take longer? What are the things that make them start doing things they hate? And what are the things that we have them stop doing that they love? and then you create solutions for each of those categories, then you create an incredibly valuable offer. And so from the weight loss perspective, many people think, oh, I'm going to help them lose weight, but it's like, well, they're going to have to go grocery shopping differently.

They're going to have to learn how to prep food. And so it's really getting granular about all the little steps that has to occur in order for someone to get a result. And so looking at what happens immediately before and immediately post-purchase, all the little steps, and then trying to deconstrain each of those steps for them, and then including those things in the offer, ultimately creates a much more valuable, A, offer,

and B, a higher converting offer. And this is where you get these massive stepwise increases in terms of company value because all of a sudden we can double the price or triple the price for offer and close at a higher percentage. And so that's when these crazy kind of like Lollapalooza effects occur in the business where they go from $2 million to $10 in a year, changing nothing but what the core offer of what they said was.

And then we do these little enhancers that I'll add on, which is like you've got scarcity, which is limiting number of units. You've got urgency, which is limit number of time. You have guarantees, which is things that we do to reverse risk. There's four types of guarantees. You can do unconditional, conditional, zero guarantee and then performance. So performance, what I call an implied guarantee. Like if you don't make money, I don't make money.

Anti-guarantees, you lean into the fact that you don't make guarantee. For the type of person needs a guarantee, this isn't for you. Conditional is like, I'll guarantee it if you do X, Y, and Z. and then unconditional's, it's unconditional. Like, I'll give you your money back if you ask for it. Then you have bonuses, which are things that drive action in the short term, buying decisions. And so a lot of those things that you can make an irresistible offer or a grand slam offer from the book is by looking at each of those problems and creating kind of a bonus stack that solves each of them.

And so from a selling perspective hand to hand, the salesman doesn't need to say all seven of the things that you have. And so the idea is that you make the ask on the initial offer. If they say no, you figure out what the constraint is. and then you plug that bonus in. And then maybe you need to put three bonuses in in order to get them over the edge. This also allows the sales team to stop doing discounts in order to close people.

We just add value rather than taking away price. And then post purchase in order to make sure that ops is all the same, you then give them a surprise and delay with the remaining four. You say, by the way, since you did buy, I want to give you these other things. And so if you get the fast buyer that doesn't need the bonuses, you just give them the bonuses and they love you. And as you got to somebody who needs all seven,

then you give them the seven bonuses on the sales. calls. And that's kind of how you can just get increased close rates without giving way discounts. God damn. Highly useful. I feel pumped up, brother. I need to go read the blue and the purple one. Like, this is the stuff that I enjoy. And that's the stuff that we do to really grow the business in the portfolio is we're in it. We're rescripting the sales. We're changing the process overall. We bought a chain of 32 teeth whiting studios. Is there anyone at Acquisition.com who's better than you at this, or are you still the best? When it comes to like offer reimagining mixed with sales process, that's probably my strongest. It's probably the thing I'm best at.

And it just drives so much profit in a business since pricing is the strongest level of profit. There's a great example of the offer, by the way. I've been knee deep in like a, I do these two-week learning sprints where I just pick whatever the topic I'm most interested in. I just go fucking ham on it. Like every minute that I'm not on this podcast or not on like a required meeting, I'm just like going down on one topic.

In this case, I've been doing like the old school marketers. And there's a great story. I think it's OVey, who when he launched his agency, he's like, how do I get people to do this? And he basically made a killer offer.

He was like, take your top performing ad that you've spent years iterating on. You got this to be your top performing ad. I guarantee that I will beat it in an AB test head to head within a month. And I will fund my portion of the AB test. So I'll make the ad. I guarantee. you that I'll beat it and I'll fund the ad cost of the I'm so confident I will fund the ad cost

if I don't beat it or even I think even not if I don't beat it. I will fund the ad cost in order to win your business. And what he said was this was like the response rate on this ad was through the roof because he's like, but the best part was of the 100% of people that responded. He's like, we didn't even end up having to do it because the top 20% the most expensive clients were like, okay, cool, forget the AB test and the mechanics and the contract for that. the fact that you're willing to do that, we looked into your track record, we are big believers in this,

we'd like to just move forward and go ahead and entertain you. We know that our agency would never be that confident to pull that up, so we're willing to work with you. And he's like, it was incredible because I used this killer offer

to fill up the funnel and then I just picked the top 20% of clients in that funnel and that kickstarted Ogilvie, which became, you know, one of the big ad agencies. That's in the game. And like we bought that,

the teeth whitening chain. And so I sat down with our director of sales, and we re-scripted the sales process and basically reimagined how the offers were going to happen. And we 5x Dell TV per sale. And so I was like, okay, here's the plan, just roll it out. Fundamentally, it's like a lot of times people think there's a lot more that it takes to grow their company, but sometimes just a handful of levers just make a huge difference. Does every business and product offering have a killer offer inside of them? I do think so. I think that sometimes you have to, like the,

big part with the offer is you have to operationalize it. And so if you're Ogilvy, it's like, okay, well, how can I write all these split test? Like, it's like, if I'm going to have all these bonuses that I have to add in in order to make the thing more valuable, I have to operationalize that part. And so, yes, I do think so. It's just like, usually you might sometimes have to put like terms around that. Like, if I was an accounting firm, something boring. It's like, I can guarantee that I will get you more than you pay me by just auditing your back taxes and saving that money today, right? But you have to provide all the back taxes. And then I have to have a separate team that I now have to create just for our front end conversion to shrink time to value using that little

nugget. And the big thing with most of the business is I try and shrink time to value like really aggressively. Like even that publishing business, it takes a very long time for that business for our customer to get a result. And so we looked at it. We're like, can we peel some element of what we do and drop it in in the beginning? And it turns out we could do something in like seven days that gave people a very positive outcome really quickly, and then they, like, get bought in emotionally that you know what you're doing. And to further on the point, I think that probably a major difference between like the tiny slash Wilkinson model and how we do it is that we are operators. And so the investment strategy has slowly, you know, continues to, you know, move over time,

but it's been fewer, bigger deals that we have larger percentages of that we do more for. And it's just like, basically the more we work on the business, the more money we make. And so if we're going to work on it, then it might as well be big. Dude, you did that school deal, right? We had, we had Sam on the pod. Interesting guy. Sam Ovens, we're talking about school.com. Is it school dot com?

He, um, one of the oddest people you'll ever have a conversation with, but odd in the best possible way. So one time I was with him, it was my wife, me and Sam Ovens. We're sitting at, um, we're at a party or something. and him and my wife get along great because my wife and I both love quirky people. He's extreme quirky. It gets to a lull in the conversation

where there's probably a five-second silence where we're thinking about what we're going to say next. And he looks at my wife and he goes, I delivered my baby. And we both look at each other and like, what? He goes, I delivered my baby. And I'm like, with what? He goes, my hands.

And then he goes on to tell the story about how his wife gave birth at home because I couldn't make it to the hospital. But, like, he didn't laugh when he was telling any of that stuff. And I thought it was so funny. And he's one of the quirkiest people I've ever met. But he's the type of people who I love where he's so logical that it's painful a little bit. But also, he's the type of guy who I think has read a book on how, like, normal people interact. And you could tell. He's like, I do care about you.

But I kind of have to learn a little bit how to a. adapt to fit your, and you could tell that, and it's endearing. It makes me love him more. He's listening to you. He's like, I am active listening. Yeah. It's like, okay, about it, thank you. Like, which I love because he wants to show you he cares about you.

And I like that. And it's like a really, he's got a really interesting personality. Yeah, no, the school deal is going exceptionally well. We've, you know, five or six X the business in the last eight months. Well, we'll break it down. Why do that deal? It seems like you made a much bigger bet. And I'm saying that because you started wearing the hat around.

whereas your other deals you don't promote. So I'm like, okay, he definitely like ponied up for this one and made a big bet on this. So why do a SaaS deal or, you know, why do the school deal? How did you figure out the bet size and was it like a butt clenching number? And then, you know, what's the plan? Well, I'll say this. So breaking out of the end of the deal components, any brand endorsement for me is by far the buck clenching component of it, not the cash.

because you only have three, four brand bullets that you can use where you're going to promote without becoming a shell, right? And so if I looked at my audience, I think about the people who best monetize an audience do percentage conversion times LTV. That's it. So what percentage of your audience you convert and what's the lifetime gross profit per customer? And that's it. That's it. That's the math. The person who makes the most money wins. The big thing that's so with my audience is that obviously we have a very skewed monetization structure because we have portfolio companies where we just make a tremendous amount on like a handful. And then everything else like kind of doesn't matter. And do you even promote, you don't even promote those others. Right. No, I don't know.

No, no, the other, no, not at all. That's just, but they come inbound though. So that's, it still comes from content often. But a huge percentage of my audience are people who want to start a business. And that's probably some of the people who listen to your stuff. They're people who are employees, they're high up, their executives, things like that, or they want to start a business with their own, whatever. And so I was like, okay, so there's this entire huge part of my audience that wants to start a business and I want to have something for them. And so I also don't want it to cannibalize acquisition.com in terms of how we generate deals or things like that. And so it had to be something that would help people start a business, which in my opinion was going to be

the closest match, you like audience match, so highest percentage conversion. It had to be a scalable thing. So I didn't think a service would work, given the amount of volume that we have. And so it's like, okay, it has to be something that's demand constrained, not supply constrained. So it's like, okay. And ideally, if there's something that we can create some sort of network effect and some sort of compounding, you know, machine within it.

And it has to be at the right point in the life cycle of the business, right? If you're, you know, day, day, you know, day a thousand at Facebook is probably too late. you don't know what I mean, to get in on Facebook at any appreciable percentage, right? And also where I would have less leverage and less value to add to a company of that size. And so school was a big company in terms of its value and the rounds that they had done already. But I also have a really big brand. And so it took, you know, Sam and I call it nine months to work out kind of every component of the deal. There's, in my opinion, it was the best deal I've ever done. Not in terms of like winning over anything like that. It was just, it's a really elegant deal the way that it works, which I'm not at liberty to explain all the pieces of it. But basically, like, we both gave a lot. And we both are happy with how it's going. And so we both made commitments to the other person of what we can and can't do. Like, if someone's going to come on and, you know, be in an ad from school, like I have to be okay with it because I have a strong associate.

with that. And things like that. It's like there's, how can I mitigate this risk? How can you mitigate that? And so to circle back to the original question, why did I do the school deal? I felt like I had 70% of the audience that I have

because there's always way more people who want to start a business than have a business, especially if you make business content. And so I wanted to have something for that audience that met all those other requirements. And I knew Sam. And Sam told me about school two weeks into him starting school. And so I was kind of like,

like, well, it's, I mean, I'm not going to try and bet on a platform at day one. That's why, that's where Sam has just massive balls. I think on our podcast, I think he said he, I think he said he spent $10 million of his own money to fund the business. And I think he also said that was the bulk of all his money. Yeah, it was. I mean, I think he's been public about it. And then he, and then he still raised another five to still keep continue reinvest in the business. And when I saw the metrics of school, it has everything that you want. It had viral organic growth. It was compounding, you know, 20% every single month, month over month, over month. And I was like, this thing's a fucking monster. And it was right at that point where he's like, we need to grow.

And I was like, okay, I need a product. And so it was a perfect match. And it's worked really well. That's great. Last time you were on, you were talking about how like you started doing minority deals. Then you sort of realized like, damn, we're creating on the deals that win, we create so much value. You know, you basically wish you owned more on anything that works. And you're like, maybe we'll switch to doing a majority. like, where'd you land on that? Like, what's the evolved thinking on that? And I don't know if that relates to how you did the school deal, but just in general also. Yeah, it's almost all majority. It's almost all majority. Like, if we're going to do a minority, it's got to be a massive company, you know, like for us to do that. I basically have, and one of the unfortunate things

with content is like my deal line has continued to move up. And so like, you were like, I finally hit a million dollars in profit. And I was like, I, you know, like, we're kind of looking at like five or 10 million in profit now, like for minimum to look at. Because right now, like, the portfolio is 250 million a year. We do 70 million in EBTA. We have consolidated, like the smallest percentage ownership we have is 20%. The largest is 100. I think our aggregate is somewhere is like 42 or something percent if you blend all the percentages together. So we have meaningful chunks of the companies. Are you like our friends, we have a couple friends that are doing this and they were talking, I was talking about metrics. And they were saying, you know, with a hold

co like this, there's a couple different things you can go for. One is just free cash flow. So How much cash are these businesses spinning out? And they buy cash flow businesses. That's their play. They don't care as much about the equity appreciation. Obviously, they care. But first and foremost, they're looking for cash flow generation. So they picked free cash flow.

And I know other people in private equity that are, you know, they're looking for basically ultimately like a return on capital invested or, you know, a multiple on capital invested. So what do you, what's the main metric for you with acquisitions? How do you measure if you're doing a good job deploying capital or not? I have thought about it as deal by deal. Like school is obviously an appreciation play. You know,

like that will realize all of the gains from that years into the future, right? Whereas there's some companies that will buy that are pure cash flow deals. And so it really just depends on, I mean, deal by deal. So we don't have like a mandate, which is one of the reasons, you know, I haven't had LPs because I just look because the nature of having inbound deal flow is like we get weird deals. And so some of them are very interesting. they have to buy out a partner. And it's like this weird, terrible situation.

But no one else wants to get into it. But like, we're operators. And so we're happy to get into it. So we can get really good valuations. And maybe we get both in terms of cash flow. But like, I'd say like for us in cash flow, we're probably on pace to do 40 in cash flow, just like our slice for the year. That's incredible.

And how much capital did it take to get to that? Right. Because that's the skill. That's the finesse. If it takes a billion dollars to generate. Yeah. If you're cash, that's one thing.

If it took 50 million to generate 40, that's incredible, right? Not a lot. And it's been mostly because what Layla and I have realized in this process is that we're better at building. Better at building than buying. Yeah.

So like I, so we did 20, I did like a deal a month for like two years. And of those, I've gotten rid of. Like, I basically just like, here's your equity.

I don't even care to like 80% of them. And then we just, we just, basically did in 80-20 because it wasn't worth the time. I was like, you can keep the cash and I will give you the equity back. I don't like this. It's just not worth the time anymore. But like the largest two companies in the portfolio together will do 150 million. And we own very large chunks of those companies with probably consolidated some like 60, like a lot of EBITA. When you say build, you don't mean incubate like from scratch. You're saying once we get in there, we just do a shit ton of work and we kind of

run the business. Yeah. So like the company that's doing 110 right now, which the largest in the portfolio. Can you say which one? No. I just don't do any names besides school. It's a B2C business, business consumer business. But it started to do two million in trailing 12 months when we got it. And so we own 29% of the business.

And this year it'll do on its own between 35 and 40 million at EBITA. Wow. What was the unlock for that one? What did you guys do that cranked it up so much? Because that's out, that's, I'll tell you. I'll tell you all the stuff we did. And by the way, you still only have 30% of it? Yeah, that's 29%.

It hasn't changed. So in the beginning, it was just basically a handful of founders that were together, and they'd figure out a way to generate positive ROI on the front end in terms of getting customers. But they had no back in. Can you say category, like e-com licensing, just like a general architect? Publishing. Yeah, it's publishing business. And so they were getting like three to one upfront, LTV to KAC.

And so I was like, hey, man, wouldn't it be cool if we sold our customers or something else? And it's actually a really funny story if you guys want to hear it. So we're negotiating this deal and we're like right near the end. And we all agreed we need to have some sort of second upsell, some sort of back end that's going to build some sort of continuity, whatever. And so they were like, we've already got it. We've already built it all out. We're super passionate about it. We want to show people how to build a business like this.

And I was like, that's not, it was a B to C business. It's like a published, like it helps publish books, like things like that. And I was like, this has nothing to do with what we do. And they're like, no, we're passionate about it. We know our customers are going to be passionate about it too if we're passionate about it. And so I was like, this is kind of a deal breaker for me. Like, I don't want to do that. And they're like, well, it's done.

So I said, okay. And we're pretty much at the point where we're going to walk away. I said, crazy idea. Why don't you just survey the audience and put your offer next to my offer and just see which one they want. And I was like, and if they want your offer more, I was like, I'll kill myself and we won't do this deal. And I was like, and if they do want it, we do the deal. And they were like, fine. And so we ran it.

And 85% of people wanted my offer. And my offer was more of that thing you just bought. And so it was a great moment. Everybody came together. So we did the deal. And then we built out that back end, which 1.9x deltivu, which is now, now we've actually increases as 2.2x to LTV. And so we kept the same three to one, but we were able to 5x advertising in terms of how much we could advertise and spend so we could be profitable.

Which is basically, I mean, this is just like any digital marketer who's been in the game for 10 years or, you know, like this is like, this is the game. This is pretty standard shit. But every business owner has blind spots, right? Yeah, of course. So many businesses I look at, it's like, oh, yeah, we have 5X ROAS. It's like, cool, why aren't you spending more? Yeah. they don't have an answer. It's not like they have some complicated reason that they don't. They're saying, I don't know. I haven't really thought about it.

Or they get romantic about it. And they're like, well, we don't want to, we don't want to like market it too much. It'll be annoying. I read this thing that said we need to have this margin. It's like, no, no, no, dude, you do this for two years. You get 10x bigger, right? Like, you know, there's a story they tell themselves or a blind spot or, hey, how'd you get all these customers like six months ago?

It's like, oh, I used to go to these events. Like, do you go to those events anymore? No, I got tired of it. And then the customers are gone, right? Do you want this to grow? We're like, what's going on here? Yeah. So it went from, it went from $2 million to did $16 million to $50, then $70, then this year we'll do $110.

And so we hired 40 sales guys so that we could do, we could add that back end. We added a CMO. We added a CPO and a whole product team to help the chief product officer out. We added in a controller. And so one of the things atuizen.com, what we do is that we recruit. And so because we have a lot of inbound, we have a lot of talent that is in my audience. And so I might not endorse the company publicly, but from a private perspective, we'll endorse, we'll recruit at Holdco, get usually higher quality talent than a portfolio can get,

place the high quality talent, and then they just grow way faster. Well, why wouldn't you recruit that or promote that company? Why wouldn't I? It's because I don't want the key. Well, one, I don't like promoting lots of things. So that's a big thing for me because I don't want to promote. promote lots of stuff. It's one that I am considering, to be fair. But like, it couldn't handle the amount of volume that I can send now. And now it's probably close because we actually built a SaaS

component of that business. And now the software is doing about 50% of the revenue in that business. And so that's going to be a monster deal. But the point there is that like we took the team from like a handful of dudes with like some VAs into now the company's got, you know, 100 employees. and like a whole leadership suite, a whole executive suite, it's a company, you know what I mean? And that just took a lot of work

in four and a half years. And so our first kind of batch of deals that we did, we have our handful of winners that have come from that. What did you pay for that, by the way? The 30%? How much cash did you put up at front? Like almost nothing.

I'll just say like a negligible amount relative to what we do now. So you made tens of millions of dollars in value potentially more in four years. And you made it for everyone, it sounds like. Dude, I want to normalize this because I think this is really cool.

So I just did this, I just ran our stats this last weekend. Our average founder return on equity. So post-deal, how much more is their slice worth? Like every PE buyer says, listen, and you could make more on the second bite, right? Everyone's like the same pitch, right? So our average founder return on equity, net of the chunk that we now own is 13X. Yeah, that's silly. That's silly.

That's crazy. Right. So it's like at that point, it's like, you should pay me. Well, dude, so I did a deal that was similar. I can talk about it now because the numbers have come out a little bit, which was this deal that at the time was called Shepard. And now it's called Somewhere. So it's Somewhere.com. It's basically a way you can hire like top talent overseas. So, you know, in the U.S., that same role for a developer might be 150 grand, 180 grand. A lot of business owners don't want to do that. They're trying to be more profitable. Uber in that? Yeah. So Nick was in the business. And then I wanted to join. I like that blueprint.

So I was like, that's a business I'm either going to start. I'm going to buy into. I'm going to do something. I tested all the services out. And I was like, okay, I like this one.

So I approached Marshall and cut a deal that I thought was so good for me, which is my objective when I do a deal is, it has to be good for me. I'm not going to do a deal as bad for me. But I want to be good for both sides. But if I'm being honest, in my heart of hearts, I think this is a good deal for him and a great deal for me.

Turns out I had it, totally flipped. So what ended up happening was we put in a small amount of money and then actually, you know, but the business was already making millions of dollars a year of profit. And so I was like, I can't value you this low, but I'm bringing value that's not cash. So how are we going to do this? And they were like, look, how about we do this? This is Nick's idea. Actually, Nick was like, the business will loan you the money to buy your shares. And I was like, sick. Okay, you're going to give me the money to buy you. All right. Sign me up. Say no more. And so and that's that's when I was like, okay, this is an incredible deal for me.

And it's a really good deal for them because I knew I was going to grow the business. I didn't know exactly by how much and by how long it would take and all that. And what ended up happening was at the time, I think Marshall had an opportunity to sell the business, something in the range of, let's call it, like, 15 million bucks. That's what he's looking at. He didn't want to sell. He believed in the business. So he decided not to sell.

But he had gone out and looked at offers. And that was like kind of where a realistic deal might have got done. A year later now, the numbers came out. So it basically, you know, the buyout happened at a $52 million dollar valuation. So in less than a year, so basically like, I don't know, nine months of time, the business went from being worth $15 million to $52 million. And so I thought I was getting this incredible deal on my equity. Actually, Marshall got like by far like the most value out of the deal in less than a year. And the only thing that changed was be coming in and, you know, being able to help the business in different ways.

And so that way then I realized, oh, shit, that's the metric that matters. Because like, of course I'm always going to protect my bottom line to try to make this work. But the only way that this model works long term is if the founders get a stupid return on equity after my split. And YC does the same thing. YC, which they used to get a lot of shit because they would give you 20. The original deal was like $18,000, like $6K per founder in a company. And they would take 6 or 7%. And people used to be like, well, YC is getting in an effective like a million dollar valuation into these like future Dropbox, Airbnb.

Like those were YC companies. And Paul Graham came out. He's like, there's a very simple equation. you do one divided by the equity you gave me. So basically it's like if you gave me 7%, but I make the company worth 10%, like because you gave me, because I'm now involved in the company,

the company's worth 10% more, it was a good trade. You would do that all the time. And obviously they add a lot more than 10%. So it became kind of a no-brainer. It was a different lens to look at than just valuation, which I think is where most founders gets stuck on,

either due to Shark Tank or just whatever. That's the general parlance. It's just, is this the right value? Am I getting a fair valuation or not? versus if I gave you 10% of equity, but I knew you'd triple the value of my business, of course I would take that trade 100% of the time, right? Right.

And then the risk that's associated is, what if you don't do anything? And so then you covenant around that. And I think I'm a big, personally, I love performance stuff because I know I'll hit it. And so people tend to be like, well, if we hit that, I'm like, cool. Like, if you're good with that,

I'm good with that. Sam, you were smirking. Am I high on my own supplier? What were you laughing at? You're not high in your own supply. No, I like it. I think that, so we're glamorizing this, the buying of businesses because, Alex, you're doing it wonderfully. And, Sean, you told the story of doing it wonderfully.

Whenever I hear these stories, I'm like, this sounds awesome. And then I get into the nitty gritty and I'm like, I hate this. I love starting stuff from scratch. Like, I get so much more joy, like, crafting the brand and putting my personality into it and, like, calling customers on the phone early on and, like, hearing. like it's like you're comedying. I'm practicing my bits to hear what, like, what works well. I love that so much more than having to buy things because I just think it's, it makes my soul feel better.

And now we could debate all day if the numbers make sense for you and both those examples that you guys gave. The numbers like make so much more sense. And it's hard to create that much value in four years, starting something from scratch. And so what I want to know, Do you feel that way? I mean, you're, you started something for, like, do you ever, like, get a little bit of that vibe when you're starting something from scratch?

The artists regret. The artist regret. Yeah, you're like, dude, I'm producing all these artists. I'm not actually writing songs. You know what I'm saying? I miss that art. It's actually more like the analogy would be like a label. You're a label.

Sure, whatever. Then you get to go be in the studio. I get that. I would say, first of I do consider myself a businessman. So if I were to, like, give myself a thought. I feel like that's probably most appropriate. That being said, I do get a lot of the stuff that I like a lot, which is the big picture decisions,

which is like, what big bets are we going to make? Like, I love that stuff. Like, okay, we have, we're like, what's our one big bet for the year? And then spending a tremendous amount of time doing research and being like, okay, this is where we're going to go. And this is how we're going to. What's an example of bet you made a year and a half or two?

Well, the software component for the publishing business. So it was not that. It was basically a consumer service business fundamentally. education and service, whatever. And it was, I think the revenue is 50-50 split between the two. And so I was like, we have to put some sort of software thing in here that we can facilitate. So either we get a tech-enabled service multiple or we just get a pure SaaS multiple. And so it was a year and a half ago.

And we started putting a few million dollars into developing the software that now has just had a tremendous uptake rate, has improved conversion rates, improved client success scores, all of these things. and that was a bet. To be fair, for a company of that size, even when we made the bet, I think we were doing somewhere like $20 million in EBIT. I want to made the bet, something like that. So, you know, betting 10% or 15% of net-free cash is not like a massive bet. But from a resources perspective of the attention of the leadership team,

that was where the big bet was. And so kind of like the point with the brand versus the cash, like if I'm going to do a deal and I promote it, the biggest slice that I'm giving is the audience. and the attention, not the cash. What's a company you would want to go buy right now? Let's say you had the money today. What type of company would you go buy?

I'd probably want to buy a big professional services business. What's that mean? Business plumbing. So payroll, financial services or business like accounting, tax, like the things that every business has to have, I like those businesses. I mean, I love service businesses, even though 40% of our portfolio is software.

I still like service, tech-enabled service. And I still see software as software as a service. Like I just, I feel like I get those types of businesses. Because there's so many things where my skill set of like tweaking, pricing and figuring out sales process and demand gen. Like that's where I'm pretty good. And so there's the businesses that I can make a huge impact on. I got one more question for you, which is what are you trying to figure out? Because one trap you could fall into is like you're the advice guy.

It's like, here's the guy who turns on the camera and gives everybody advice all the fucking time, which is like inherently somewhat of a know-at-all position, which is dangerous on the audience side of like eventually people start to resist that, but also more importantly for yourself, you're like, you got where you got because you were the student, and now you're getting good benefits of being the teacher, but you still want to be the student. And so I'm curious, where are you still the student right now?

Like, what are you trying to figure out? What are your unanswered questions that you're noodling on that maybe even we could help you out or kind of help you talk through those? I would say the big things that I'm still like green on are the fund. world raising capital like LPs like I don't have any experience with LPs I've always done my own my own money I don't use debt I will probably use more debt in the future I just haven't um so those are all things that I am kind of more spending time on that being said like to be very candid with you I feel like in Sam and I talk other Sam a Sam partner of mine and I talk about

this which is like there's periods of figure it out and then there's periods of do like I'm in a of due right now. And then when I get to a constraint, because right now, the plan of like, grow more media, grow the companies has been working. And so I want to do more better, not new. And so I'm going to continue to do more better until more better stops working. And then I will look at something new. So like in terms of where I see my deficiencies from the private equity perspective, LPs and debt, are things that I would say that are our weaknesses of mine in terms of understanding, just because I've used my own capital. But in terms of limits for the business right now, I think the biggest threat is always focus.

And so that's why I try and say no to everything. Except coming on this podcast, because we're your boys. Dude, you're the man. You guys are the man.