The Game with Alex Hormozi - Ignorance, Difficulty in Scaling, and Finding Talent (on BiggerPockets) Pt. 2 - Aug '22 | Ep 500

Episode Date: February 18, 2023

The biggest threat you have to your business is ignorance. Today, join Alex (@AlexHormozi) as he guests on BiggerPockets to talk about the difficult stage when it comes to scaling, bringing more value and money, and finding the right talent for your team. This is part 2 of the interview.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Check out the episode on BiggerPockets’ YouTube Channel!Timestamps:(0:21) - Finding the right talent for your team(5:18) - Difficulty in reaching millions & the toughest stage in scaling(13:42) - Advice on bringing more value to your employer & making more money(19:14) - The hardest part in the beginning of entrepreneurship is ignorance(27:03) - How does the money come in the door? Where do you start?(30:32) - Alex answers some quick-fire questions & shares his opinion on TikTokFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

My goal in life was to be wise. When I was really young, I was like, I want to be wise. And wisdom is seeing what other people cannot say. It's understanding the circumstance and having the discernment to see what is true and what is not. Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers, how to make more per customer, and how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons we have learned along the way. I hope you enjoy and subscribe. But I mean, certainly, Alex, there has to be some people in your umbrella and your company that you do train up.

And those are kind of the people that, they're like the foundation of your company, right? Or is it completely objective like you can just buy all talent when you're starting a company? Depends on the nature of the work and what you're able to pay. So, for example, like frontline work in general, you're going to get lower skilled labor. And so it becomes a competitive advantage

to have a very good training program because then you're getting the work done for less than the market. So if someone comes equipped with the skill, you have to pay the premium of them having already acquired the skill. If we have a really robust training system, like if you're a door-to-door business, door-to-door sales business like solar or pest control, whatever, then a really big business

will pride itself on the fact that it can take somebody off the street, run them through their gauntlet of training, and then on the other side, they've got a $400,000-dollar-year producer. And so it depends on the nature of the thing that you're selling and what your competitive advantages are. Yeah. I think I've been so slow to hire simply because I feel like I want to have a few people that I build up and train simply because I want them to speak Rob and know Rob and write Rob, right? And think the way that I think so that when we start hiring externally, they can then train all those

people because they've been trained by me. But it's harder than you think. I mean, I just hired a C.O for my education brand. And that was a really pride-busting moment for me to really finally sit down and say, okay, it's not that I was failing, but I was failing myself from a personal standpoint of being able to be sane and not stressed and like fulfilling family needs and everything like that. And I really feel the moment that they accepted the offer, I was like, oh, I can finally stop saying no to everything because anytime I have a new idea or something new that I want to do with my program, I would immediately say, oh yeah, but the logistics on that are a headache. I would never do it. But it's a really cool thing. And I was in the meeting with my C.O.

yesterday and there was like three ideas that came up and I stopped him from riffing on it because I was like, no, the logistics on that are a nightmare. And then I was like, wait a minute, I don't have to worry about the logistics. It's literally your job to do that. And he's like, that's right, man, you tell me what you want me to do and I won't make it happen. And I was like, wow, this is, now I understand why people hire people. So I think a lot of this came down to like one of the reasons I chose him is he came from my organization. He was, it paid me for a consultation. I didn't charge him 120, though. I think, I charged him like 150 bucks like a year ago. Then he joined my program. Then he joined my mastermind.

Then he joined my sales team. And then he quit because he was too busy working his full-time job. And I said, no, wait, don't quit. I like you too much. Come back. And I was able to bring him on and integrate him. But one of the reasons I think I saw him early on was actually something that you said, and it's your philosophy on superstars. I'd like to talk about that for a second, where when you see a superstar, you know it. Can you tell us, expand on this a little bit? It's not common. And I think you get better at recognizing it over time. You know, I think the amount of people who hear me talk about superstars, and they're like, oh, yeah, so it says a startup.

I already meet a super star. They're super star. I don't know if that's a superstar. Because, you know, I had a mentor who sold his business for, you know, multiple bees. And he said, you know, Alex, you have to remember that the best talent has yet to come. He's like, the best hire you've ever made is in the future. And so it's always like this constant raising bar. But superstars, when you find them, you have to hold on to the.

them and you have to find a way to now mind you the big comma here is that as long as they do not break the culture and you're not making exceptions to them from a cultural basis because that's one of the biggest issues is that you've got this super high individual contributor who actually detracts and is a cancer for the overall you know company and so that's the hardest fire to make but it's the one you have to make but superstars who fit within the culture i mean you want to give them as much opportunities you can and support them in their growth so that they can grow but even then with like like the salesman to the co-o move i would have been like huh that's interesting. It's a very different character trait and very different skill set. So I'm like,

oh, interesting. That wouldn't have been my first guess. Yeah. Well, I think the salesman thing, that was definitely part of his, I think he just wanted to be a part of the organization. And so he was willing to do sales for me just to be like, hey, I just want you to know, I'm in. And I had seen him, like, you know, throughout the whole journey. He was kind of not, not the ground level of like the Rob-built channel, but pretty close to the beginning of everything. And so I was like, all right, well, this guy has been around since the beginning. He's had faith in me, so I'm going to have a little bit of faith to him. And honestly, I mean, just in the one week that we've started, I'm already like, really I needed someone that was complimentary to me, right? Because

the phrase for me that I always think about is, if we're both the same, one of us is unnecessary. And so for me, if I can't, I can't work with someone who's a visionary and like has big strategy, big ideas, because that's what I have. I don't need that. I need that. I need someone to actually go and run with it. So I want to kind of talk about a little bit here. Can you give me your opinion on when you're talking about scaling? What is the more difficult stage? Is it that first reaching the million dollars? Is it reaching the three or the 30 or even any numbers past that? It's so difficult. It's so difficult to say which one's the hardest. I would say the heart feels different. So, you know, the first stage, you know, zero to six,

zero to seven. The heart is that you don't know what the fuck you're doing. I don't know if I'm allowed to cuss. If I'm not, then believe me. We'll believe me out. It's all good. Yeah. You have no idea what you're doing. The biggest threat you have to your business is ignorance.

It's just not knowing what the hell you're doing. That's the threat. Right. And that is hard because you feel like you're just flying through space and you have no idea. You're disoriented. Once you cross, like getting from a million to three million is very difficult because you have to learn an entirely new skill set, which is like you have to hire your first team. Right.

And that's very difficult for a lot of people. You know, three to ten is difficult because you have to unlearn the thing that made you successful up to this point, which is you're focusing on front end rather than on product and back end. And so that becomes, it's very difficult. It's like, it's like spiritually difficult at that point. You know what I mean? Once you're at three to ten, you're already out of the, like, I have to work. I have to cry my face off in terms of like hours in because at some point the amount of work that has to get done surpasses your ability to work, which means you have to work through other people. You know, at 10 million, the difficulty is you have to give up even more control.

And so at each of these levels, you're giving up different types of control. You know, in the beginning, you're giving up control of fulfillment. The next level, you're giving up control of sales. Then you're giving up control of, you know, finances, things like that. Then you're giving up control of managing all those things. Then you're giving up control of leading, you know, the company and so on and so forth. So like there's always this relinquishing of control, which is, I would say, spiritually very difficult. And it's easy to say, very hard to do.

And that's what we look for in the portfolio companies that we're thinking about taking on. We look at the CEOs. I was like, do I think this person has the humility to give up control when it is required? Yeah, David, I think you're pretty good at this. I think you're really good at finding people that you can, as you say, develop them and help, you know, run the different companies that you've created. What's been the toughest, I guess, phase for you when it came to scaling? I'm like, I'm having a whole psychological session with myself as I'm listening to Alex talking. I see you bring it out into hives over there.

Yeah, like it keeps on. coming back that like every issue I'm having in business is a reflection or a symptom of an issue I have with myself. So like as I'm thinking about why what he's saying makes perfect sense, why don't I do that? There's this big arrow that comes pointing at some character flaw that I have or a fear that I would have or like maybe I don't want to commit to being there every single day at 8 o'clock. And if I'm going to hire this person and pay them $300,000, I have to be just as committed as I want them to be. So maybe Alex at some point we could talk more about like what your advice would be. But Rob, I'm sorry, what was your question there? This is how deep I am in

psychological. I know. Well, I can already see the YouTube title is Alex Hormosey exposes David free. Nice, nice click-vade title. I want to know from your standpoint, what's been the most difficult stage for you to scale in any of your companies? Was it getting to the zero to one million mark? Or was it any stage after that? I think by Alex's definition here, the three to 30 is where I keep getting stuck. So I am very good at what you said, a business is just a leveraged job. You have one person, a bunch of support pieces, right? And I get to where I max, I cannot get any higher than this. I am doing as much as I possibly can. And then I pick the person and I hand over a lot of my responsibilities. And then I go off and I crush it in another thing. And when I come back, I'm like, ah, like what happened? And then I have to

take that person out and put a new person in. And I just get stuck in that like leap off cycle. And then I fall right back down and it's definitely a problem with hiring. Like, I'm sure someone who's good at this would look at it right away and say you're doing it wrong, but I've been probably three years on that treadmill. Yeah. You know, it's an interesting concept to think about, Lail and I discuss this all publicly, but it's called the hidden funnel or the missing funnel. But if you think about what has to happen to acquire a customer, right?

So you have to do some sort of lead generation. There's some sort of lead nurture. There's some sort of sales. There's some sort of delivery and then there's some sort of retention and then some sort of ascension, right? So those are kind of like the steps that you take for a customer. Well, the same funnel exists on the other side of the business, which is as the business grows, you need to have a funnel to acquire talent, acquire employees.

And so you have, instead of lead generation, you have application generation. Instead of the nurture, you have application nurtures. So it's like, how quickly are we getting these people booked for interviews? Like the best talent finds a job in eight days, eight days from the day they start searching. If your entire job hunting process takes longer than eight days, you've already lost all the good people. Right. And then from there, the sale is the interview, right? And with good talent, it should be a sale, right?

because they should be able to be picking, like if the person that you're trying to hire doesn't have any other opportunities, do you really want to hire them? Yeah. You know, and then from there, you have the delivery, which within the context of an employee is going to be the onboarding process

of like, how am I going to acclimate you to this business? What are our culture, what are our values? How do you get paid? How do we do with time off? What's our compensation philosophy? What is your career path?

What is your ascension? Blah, blah, blah, blah. All these things that have to get covered. And it takes time, right? Like, we onboard a new, like, senior executive. It's going to be a month of one to two hours a day with the executive. And then finally, we have retention and ascension, right? So it's like, okay, now that we have this person, they're onboarding, they're productive, it's like,

how do we retain them and continue to get them motivated? And that is there the opportunity for Ascension? The same way, we have that with a customer. And so you really have this mirror funnel that exists in the middle of the business that's external versus internal, but the promotion process is the same. And most people build this front end, and they don't have a concurrent funnel that funnels into the business to build the infrastructure, the business to support the leads and customers that are coming in. And ultimately, that's how you were able to scale it. If you remember what I said earlier, there's one avatar, one product, one channel. We can have the same process on the back end, which is like we have a specific avatar that we're searching for,

and we have a specific job that we have. And then we have a channel that we're looking to get them on on a consistent basis. Getting the consistency down is really what gets you from one-off hires to having a consistent hiring process. Just like your lead generation process, right? Like you get that in order to get to that point, you get comfortable with the process. I always have to be lead generating and then you need to sort of take that same pattern and apply it to. Well, I'm lead generating for talent at this point. Yes. Yep.

So that's where I've been stuck. And that's just the challenge I like until I can figure out what it is in me or find the right person that can do that for me. Right. Like there's probably a person that is good at hiring people that if I had someone like that, man, I think I would, I would 10x pretty quickly. That's and just to. Any last advice there?

Oh yeah. And I was just going to say like, and that's why for us within, within our firm, like, the only thing that we keep in-house is recruiting because at least for me, I think about the highest leverage ways. Because like if I were to do anything. us as a hold code do anything for the portfolio companies actually doing this rather than advice in addition to recruiting, that means that that company becomes less sellable in the future because that hold code has to go with it, right? It has to sit within the enterprise for the value to be created,

right, in the enterprise value itself. And so the most efficient way of us doing that is for us to hire and find that talent, which is what we can do with our reputation, our reach, et cetera, that's our competitive advantage. And we can bring the All-Star into the business. And then now the value's being created on a consistent basis, the problem's been solved for good, and then that value sits inside of the enterprise, which then makes everybody more money later. I want to take a slightly different approach to what we're talking about and get your opinion on something. I'm riding a book for bigger pockets right now, and I think it's going to be called pillars. But the basic concept is instead of trying to find out how to buy a bunch of real estate

without acquiring any skills or without having any money, why don't you just solve the problem of why you're broke, right? Get your spending under control, get a budget, right? Here's some tools to do that get good at making money because that's actually something that is possible to do, especially in America. So there's defense offense and then you invest the difference. And that will be the part on investing. In this book, I'm trying, thank you. I'm trying to come up with advice for people who are not making enough money in their job.

Because as what I notice is, as we talk to people like you, the constant problem is, how do I get talent? How do I get someone to do a good job? It's not like we're holding people down. saying, I don't want to pay you more money. We're desperately looking for these leads of people that can help our business. And then you've got a whole population of people that are saying, I want to make more money. There is a huge disconnect that's happening here. So do you have any advice either for me that I can put in the book or for the people who are listening who are not

happy with how well they're doing for what they can do to actually bring more value to their employer and make more money? Yeah. So I think everyone needs to turn off their 19-year-old finance expert guru and stop trying to, you know, invest in the S&P 500 and invest in the S&E 500, right? They should be putting every dollar they have into themselves rather than an index, because I can promise you if they put $1,000 into themselves, they're going to make more than $100 a year off that increase in skills. And so the biggest issue that most people have is they don't have the ability to discern what their missing link is or what their next step is.

What's the, if you think about the theory of constraints, which is that a system will grow until it's constraint. And so what happens is most people add potential to a system, but they don't actually increase the throughput of the system. So for example, if I had a bridge, right, and it has a weak link in the bridge, or let's say a chain, it's probably simpler. So if you have a chain and you have to pull two things, the amount of force that you can put on the chain is just predicated based on the weakest link. And so what happens is that people reinforce a strong link and not the weak link in the chain. And so they add potential to the chain, but they don't actually add any more strength that can be pulled. And so if you

think about the amount of money that you're trying to make, as an amount of money that you're literally trying to pull towards you, that weak link is going to be the skill deficience that you have. And so most people solve problems that aren't really there. And they spend a lot of their time reinforcing skills that they enjoy, but that's not their deficiency. And so that's why, like, the entrepreneurship thing is you have to be a jack of all trades master of done. You have to be good enough to get the thing across the finish line to pull, you know, pull the money towards you. You don't have to have the strongest link. You just need all of the links to be strong enough. And so I think most people aren't good at assessing their own deficiencies. And so if the

follow-up question is, how do you assess deficiencies? How do you know what's missing? The question is, what are the revenue-generating activities within a business? How can I get myself closer to those revenue-generating activities. And so you can look at product as a revenue-generating activity. You can look at sales as revenue-generating activity. You can look at marketing as revenue-generating activity. And so if you think about those as kind of the three core pillars of what businessing is, and then you have back-of-house, right?

You've got finance. You've got IT. You've got the other pieces. But the people who ascend, even in the back office, know how to generate revenue and bottom line for their division. So, for example, my CFO, Suzanne Chiflett, she, you know, she led a $15 billion-dollar acquisition, $5 billion, a $1 billion. The last company she was out was $750 million.

She's been $1 to $100 million two times. So, like, she's been there. And the first thing she did on our first interview, she was like, oh, you won't have to pay for me. I was like, and she's paid very well. And she's like, you don't have to pay for me. She's like, I'll save more than what you're ever going to pay me. Just for six months, I'll save you that.

And I was like, oh, cool. And so smart people know how to do that. Like an intelligent, you know, video editor is going to come and say, dude, I can 10x the amount of views that you're getting on this thing because he's going to tie himself to marketing. A good product person's going to say, I can I can decrease our churn, which is going to increase your LTV. I'm going to be able to get more people to ascend because they have a higher MPS score and they're more likely to want to keep buying from us. So they have to just figure out a way to tie whatever the thing. If they're really passionate about something, by all means, go all in on it. If you're IT, then you're thinking, how can I decrease page load times? How can I get conversion rates up? You start getting into the CRO side. How can I organize the data in such a way that the CEO can make better decisions? And we have real time reporting against all the sales guys so we can optimize our. our funnels towards the best converting guys, right? Like all aspects of the business can make more money, but people don't think about it through that lens. So the first thing is, how do I tie what I do every day

to making more money in the business? You connect that dot and then you improve that connection. Let me ask if I understand your chain link analogy there because I thought that was really good. And I also love what you said is like solve a problem for somebody, bring value to them and you're paying your own salary. You can name your own price if you're making or saving the company that money. I did a TED talk about building skills.

and in it I described how when I was, you wouldn't think it from looking at me now, but I used to be incredibly skinny. Like I was very insecure. I was a bean pole six foot one and like 150 pounds. It was terrible. And so it was just a challenge for me to get to the gym at all. I just was working out next to meatheads and I hated how it felt.

And I was trying to work out my arms. You need a gym launch, man. Exactly. Exactly. We didn't have that back then, Alex. I was trying to work out my arms because that was the biggest area of insecurity that I would have. I would wear like extra long T-shirts because I didn't want people to see how skinny my arms are. So I'm doing these curls. And I, and I realize I can't even

get a bicep workout because my wrist would get tired before that muscle would. Like the muscles in my wrist were not strong enough to do it. And then I finally got my wrist strong. And I had that same problem my forearms. They would burn too much and I couldn't get to the biceps. So I had this like process where I had to strengthen individual links in that chain before I got to the actual freaking biceps so I could work it out. Am I, is that close to what you're describing that people have with their own personal skills, that they're, maybe they want to get to this part in bringing value, but they've got these weaklings. They have to strengthen before they get there. It's a perfect analogy, the one that you had. It's a perfect analogy. And as a total side note,

because Rob, you're in the education space, like one of the big things that people, there's a big misconception, which is that one product or one course or one coaching thing or one mastermind is going to be their Messiah. It's going to be the one thing that sets them off. And the thing is that the testimonials that anybody receives is not purely because of the best. And the of the program that they have. And that's hard for a lot of educators to take on because they want to take responsibility for everyone's success. But the thing is, if you take responsibility for everyone's success, you have to also take

responsible for everyone's failures. And so I think that a realistic approach is probably better. Like, you didn't teach the person how to read. You didn't teach the person arithmetic. You didn't teach the multiplication. And so education sits at top foundations. And so a lot of times, and this is for everyone who's listening to this, who's going through educational programs and they haven't made money yet.

The point is to make progress. And the hardest part in the beginning of entrepreneurship is ignorance. And you have to pay down the time. time tax of ignorance as fast as you can. And so you pay down that time tax of ignorance through education. And the thing is that if you are fortifying different aspects of the chain, if there is a link that is literally missing, let's say there's 30 pieces of the chain that have to get built for us to pull a certain amount of money towards us, all right, just to keep the analogy parallel. If there's 30 links, the first course you take might give you 20 of them, right,

but you didn't make money. And so that person then said, they shake their fist at the guy and say, screw that guy, he took my money, but you're 20 links out of 30, right? And then you take another thing because you at least accurately identify what was wrong and you get another eight links. Now you get two links. And then you go to this next final guy and he gives you the last two links that you need. And then you're like, this guy's the Messiah, this guy's the stuff. I did two other programs. I didn't get any results. The thing is that you were measuring, you were measuring based on outputs, not on inputs. And you were measuring based on how much money you were make rather than how much work you were doing on you. And so I think if people can

make that shift based on them being the investment that they are making, then they will always see the return. And then it obviously focuses more on the process and the outcome. And if you can do that, because I can tell you for me personally, because I get asked a lot and hopefully it comes off the right way. Like, how did you move so quickly? Because we're 32 years old, cross $100 billion to net worth last year. And we get asked this question all the time. And it was because we always took 100% as much of the access cash that we had and just plowed it into education. My goal in life was to be wise. When I was really young, I was like, I want to be wise. And, And wisdom is seeing what other people cannot say.

It's understanding the circumstances and having to discernment to see what is true and what is not. And so if we look at why you're not doing well in business, it's being able to properly discern and identify what those problems are. And you only get that through repetition, you get that through experience, you get that through mentors and people who have more context than you who can breathe into your life. And so anyways, I'm very passionate about that. And so I just think that a lot of people do the education industry or a service because they go to college and four years later with a Spanish degree, they can barely speak Spanish. and then they take one course and they're like, I'm not a millionaire. And if it's hard, then that's what makes it worth doing. Like if it were easy, it wouldn't be worth doing.

You wouldn't even want it if it were easy. Real quick, guys, you guys already know that I don't run any ads on this and I don't sell anything. And so the only ask that I can ever have of you guys is that you help me spread the words, so we can out more entrepreneurs, make more money, feed their families, make better products, and have better experiences for their employees and customers. And the only way we do that is if you can rate and review and share, this podcast. So the single thing that I

have to do is you can just leave a review, if it takes 10 seconds or one type of the thumb, it would mean the absolute world to me. And more importantly, it may change the world with someone else. I feel like the education space gets poo-poot on a little too much, especially for all the legitimate people out there teaching stuff. And it's like,

the way I say it is, I've learned it the hard way so you can learn it the easy way. But the bad news is that you still have to put in a lot of hard work for it to work out. It's not hard, but it is hard work a lot of the time. in real estate, you know. It is hard to if you're really getting started.

But I like that you said, ignore the 19-year-old finance bros, because I do feel like that is the thing. I actually got interviewed for a podcast or for a YouTube video about a month ago and it was a buddy of mine and he was asking a bunch of millionaires, hey, if you were talking to someone just getting started,

how would you recommend investing $1,000? And every single one was like S&P 500. I would think like Solana or like Bitcoin. And I was like, yeah, and I was like, you're not going to make any money really that's like life changing with $1,000 in a stock investment. Invested education, buy a $1,000 course or $2,500 course and learn a skill that allows you to make more money. Maybe it's video editing. Maybe it's, I don't know, Amazon real estate, whatever it is, I don't really care, but learn, empower yourself, give yourself knowledge and use that to make more money. Because at the end of the day, starting out the $1,000, I mean, while some people have done it and become billionaires from it, I'm sure.

it's not something, I mean, you know, you got to get real lucky with the $1,000 on like a Bitcoin call or something like that to make a ton of money. So I always say go learn and that is what's going to make you the money, not necessarily like a tiny little investment. In my opinion, 100% of anyone's money, especially sub 30, should be invested in only one thing which is increasing the earning capacity. That's it. It's increasing your earning capacity so much so that you cannot spend the money that is coming in. in. And then and only then, when you literally can't find places to spend the money on education, which is why I get so excited to spend 130 grand for the calls with grant or anything. I've done that

a number of times, $25,000 a call. I've paid plenty of those types of calls. And they've always returned. And the constant is that you have to be willing to work. And if you have the belief, which I do, which is that I always want to be the best student. So if I go into somebody's program, I will say, if someone else can, then so can I. And then I will do whatever they did and do a little bit more. And so, or a lot more. And that way I can always, because if it worked for one other then it means it can work for me. And so, like, I've always had that as a deep-seated belief. At least it served me well and maybe it'll serve the audience.

I know I went on a quick tangent with that. But this stuff really lights me up because it's like what I care a lot about. I'll give you a quick example because I think it'll drive this home. So a friend of mine has a daughter. She's 17 years old. She got a job at a bowling alley. And she was making minimum wage. I think it was like $7.50, whatever.

And he's like, why don't you just get a phobody certification? It's a weekend. And you immediately make $25 an hour, right? And so people think about that. I'm like, guys, it's $500 in two days. It's a weekend to get a phlebotomy certification. And forever, she will have three and a half extra earning capacity for the rest of her life. And so if you take that same $1,000 and put it in the S&P, maybe it goes up 10%.

Maybe it goes up 25% because that's a crazy year. Right. Well, cool. You have $250 extra. You could have $250 extra per week just by investing in that one thing where you get a 50x return or a 100x return. Right? And then you take that excess to your point, David, right?

And you say, okay, phlebotomy is this skill. Is there another skill I can stack on top of this? Maybe it's project management or management skills in general and I can manage 50 phlebotomists. It's leveling up the skill set and the opportunity vehicle that we're pursuing. So I could be a blender tender, you know what I mean, at a smoothie shop, right? Or I could be a manager a little bit better, probably still not a good vehicle. Or I could own a smoothie shop, or I could own the franchise of all the smoothie shops. It's all just degrees of leverage and acquiring the skill set are required.

And just as long as you know what the path looks like, then you can ask the question, what do I lack that that person has? And I think that's usually one of the more valuable questions, rather than envy and point in casting stones about why someone's ahead of you and why they were cheap and you're actually a really virtuous person and they must be doing something negative to be ahead of you. Maybe they're just better than you. And if you can at least admit that and have the humility to do so, then you can create the deficit that you can then solve. I love it, man. I think what you're saying right now has the ability to change lives more than almost anything else that could be said. And it hits right at the core of like you are actually in charge of your own success if you take the responsibility for

building skills you just don't hear people talk about how important it is to have skills like you get that Napoleon dynamite complex right girls like guys that have skills i don't have any skills but that's what that's what will put you in the position of empowerment it's not the next get rich quick scheme it's not some clever marketer telling you can have a Ferrari like me if you do this type of a thing like what you're trying to do when you're taking these courses or educating yourself really is building skills. And I think like you take anyone, you put them in a jamba juice and they're the blender tender and they take the right approach and then they learn how to become a shift manager. And then from there, they learn how to manage the other people.

And then they get put in charge of hiring and then they're looking at company books and well, we can increase revenue if we sell up cinnamon bun with every smoothie or whatever. You're actually building skills that then they say, let me put you in charge of the whole jamba juice. Let me put you in charge of my other five jamba juices. Now you learn how to franchise and you could buy a jomba. I mean, that's literally kind of what you did. And this is the key to making it. It's like, and for everyone's always like, I don't know where to start. Start with the money.

Watch where the money goes. How does the money come in the door? Like you just have to watch the path of the money. Like from click to close, cradle to grave. So how does this person find out about whatever business you're working in? Like ask those questions. Like that is fundamentally what the understanding of business is, is understanding how do I monetize raw attention?

How do I get raw attention? How do I attract it towards me? How do I convert that attention in exchange goods for good, for goods and service is $4. Right? How do I get that good and service a person to come back and spend more money? Right?

Like, if you know what that path of the money looks like, and that's where you can ask, I remember when I actually was a smoothie blender tender, because that's why he's the example because I was born. I remember, and if you're like, man, I haven't thought about that. It's okay. Neither did I. You know what I mean?

Like, I worked for two years at a smoothie store. And every day, I would look at the total sales. I would add it up. And I never actually thought about, I never once multiplied it out to see what the monthly revenue. was. It was just numbers to me. Like I didn't, I didn't care. It just didn't matter. I just came in and clocked out. But like, I'm telling you now, sitting where I'm at, if I can save you that time, follow the money. If you can follow the money and get yourself closer to the money, you will

become more valuable. And if you don't know how to get closer to the money, ask. Most business owners, even if they are small business owners, will know a little bit more than you. And in that, you can learn about it. Yeah. Do you think the, uh, the owner of smoothie king told the owner of Jama Juice, hey, man, you can't do smoothies or else we can't be friends? They probably aren't friends. But probably when they were starting out, but now it's, you know, both those companies are, you know, multiple decades old. You know, who knows.

But yeah, I mean, that's, it's funny, though, because like Ed said, it's like the 20 year. I can't wait to get like the 30 or 40 year club because, I mean, you think about a guy who's, you know, you're 65 plus years old. Do you see that guy like shaking his fist at the other? No, of course not. Like, he's old, right? And so if you're going to be that way eventually, why not be that way now? I agree.

I'm competitive in my own respect. but I've had friends that have started similar things in me, and they've come to me, and they're like, hey, I just wanted to bring it up. Like, is it okay if I, like, if I do this? I don't, I'm like, dude, I didn't invent Airbnb or short-term rental. I didn't invent investing in this city. I didn't invent this concept. You can do whatever you want because I got nothing to gain from being competitive with like friends in the space, right? We can only help each other grow. There's a lot of people. Right on. And you also get into like psychographics, which is kind of interesting if you're a mass market thing like, you know, anyone can do Airbnb shorter rentals, right? So somebody might be

attracted to you, someone might be attracted to me, someone might be attracted to David, some people might be attracted to Layla. So like not only do you have demographic differences in terms of like who's the avatar that we're marketing to, but like psychographic, we have different values. We stand for different things. And so people are just naturally going to just say like, I want this flavor, even though the actual mechanics might be the same. It's just I want this flavor because I just prefer this community. I prefer these values. This is more my vibe, which is fine, you know. Really appreciate you sharing your experience here, Alex. This is like legit, really gold information that I think can change lines for lives. For those that have ears to hear,

please listen to this one again. Let it sink into your heart. Ask yourself those tough questions because this will get you more money than you would need. And investing in real estate becomes a lot easier when you have a lot of capital to go do it. All right, we're going to move on to the last segment of the show. This is the world famous. Famous for in this segment of the show, we ask every guest the same. For questions, we will take turns firing them off at you. Question number one, Alex, what is your favorite real estate-related book? Crushing it with real estate apartments. Wow, I'm impressed you had a book to say there.

I was thinking you might be like, I don't do real estate, I do business. I thought you were going to say the Burr book since you've read it before. Yeah, I've read probably five real estate books, and that one is really good. It was really well written. The guy didn't sell anything. I like he had a really cool story. That's Brian Murray, right? I can't remember the author name.

I think it's black with a red. Yeah, it's black with a red thing. That's him. Yeah, he partnered with my former co-host of the, this Brandon Turner. Oh, no, why? Brian is now the partner with him and his company, ODC. They buy Mobile Home Parks.

Super cool. Yeah, yeah. Anyways, it's a good book. Okay, question number two, what is your favorite business book? For what stage in business? For someone just struggling with scaling. How about that? Struggling with scaling.

I think Ready Fire Aim by, what's his pen name? Mike Masterson. It's Mark Ford. He's the co-founder of Agora, which is a direct response giant. they do, I think a billion a year. So he has a book that goes all the way up. You said it was a ready firing. Ready fire aim.

Okay. Yeah, he talks about the transitions in business between each of those levels too. Okay, great. I always write down these books whenever people say it with the aspirations to read them one day. So got it on the list. I'll give you a flip side one. Any of the books by Patrick Plinyi, he talks about operations. And fundamentally, like, that's why most, if you're talking scaling, right, it's people.

And so that those books are fable. so they're really light reads. You can read them in one sitting. And they really teach really important lessons. The book called The Motive, Change My Life, and is what got me to break through that. Plus, you know, I was in a big reading mode because I just felt stuck in the mid-30s,

but I couldn't get through. And that was among the books that most deeply, most profoundly shifted how I acted as an entrepreneur. Awesome, man. Question number three, when you're not out there building $100 million dollar gym empires, what are some of your hobbies? I don't have many.

I work out. I work and I eat. That's most of what I do. Actually, this is very topical because I am somewhat known on the internet as the Chipotle guy. And then I recently saw that you posted you ate at Chipotle 500 times in a year one time, which is that actually does put me to shame and embarrass me that I haven't done that before. Yeah. Yeah, I did.

Because I was a single guy. And so it was way more efficient for me. Money, like the amount of time it takes to grocery shop prep. cook, clean, et cetera. It was way easier for me to just get Chpoli twice a day. And the end of the day Chipotle was easy because it didn't attract from work. So the only thing I really had to do was the lunch and I didn't eat breakfast. So I would just go, nothing, bowl, nothing, bowl. And that was all I ate. I didn't even have anything in my fridge besides egg whites, Coke Zero, Red Bull and Johnny Walker, Black, it makes sense, though, because when you're making a certain amount of money, it might be a

$20,000 lunch that you just ate if you had to go to the grocery store and you had to shop and you had to come cook your food. So that makes a lot of sense. All right, last question from me, in your opinion, what sets apart successful entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail, or never get started? The ability to deal with short-term discomfort for long-term achievement. That comes from everything.

It's like if you literally boil success down in any field, it's just the ability to endure short-term discomfort for long-term achievement. Whether you want to lose weight, whether you want to have a good marriage, whether you want to be a good leader, whether you want to have a six-pack, whether you want to make money.

It's like you have to be willing to endure short-term sacrifice for a long-term achievement. Okay. That is very good because me and David are currently both working on our six-pack, so it really took this one to heart. I'm starting with the four-pack first, you know. Got some got the other way to go there. Okay, and then last one for you, Alex. Where can people find out more about you or what you're doing all on the Internet?

I have a podcast called The Game, so you can just search the game on any place that you listen to podcast, Spotify, Apple, all that jazz, Stitcher, all the weird ones. We're on all of them now. That's the best thing. And if you like videos, we have a pretty big YouTube channel. We're on all the social medias. So I'm just search my name, Alex Ramozian. You should find me. Go do it, everybody.

Go subscribe to his YouTube channel. I don't know. I've said this. I watch your channel. It's been really cool to see you blow up, man. You're like the YouTube poster child for all entrepreneurs out there. So very much appreciate all the content that you put out there. David, what about you, man?

Where can people find you? Online at David Green 24 on YouTube at David Green Real Estate and on bigger pockets everywhere. So you can message. me on there if you have any questions for me. Rob, how about you? You can find me on the YouTube's at Rob Built on Instagram at Rob Built. And then if you want to see me do crazy little cute dances on TikTok, find me at Rob Bilto. I'm just getting out. Alex, last, I lied. I have one more question for you. How long do you anticipate we have to endure before we stop having to look at the little like TikTok pointing at bubbles thing? I'm losing my mind every time I see these now.

Yeah, it's really interesting because like I, you know, we've grown a decent amount. I mean, I think we started September of last year, so we're almost coming in on a year. I think we'd run 400,000 or something like that as of today in that period of time from zero. And I didn't do any dances ever. And so I think people, people look at, you know, because it was musically before this. So it made sense that there was a little bit more dancing kind of in the, like the embedded in the culture of it. But fundamentally, it's not a dancing app. It's a short form video app. And so I think it's just about whether you can deliver value in an entertaining way in 60 seconds or less. And so the dancing is just like a non, like when I see business people or like lawyers doing dances of like five things you need before you do a deal.

It's like due diligence. And like I just, you know what I mean? Like you know, you don't need to dance at point. Just talk to like about the five things and how you do it and keep it under 60 seconds and you've got a TikTok. You know what I mean? And so I think it's people misunderstanding the platform. And this is by and it means me being some social media expert, but just at least my understanding of as it currently is, it's just like it's just short for a video. And then you just know that there's a slightly different demo there and trying to cater it a little bit more. Like my general things about marriage and food and fitness tend to do better than my business stuff, but it's also probably because the audience in general is a little bit younger probably. But it'll age up.

In five years, they'll all be starting their businesses and hopefully, you know, they'll be able to get some value from it. Did you hear that people? You don't have to dance and point at bubbles that have a little piece of, please share this video, make it go viral, get the out. Collectively, we can end this horrible trend that makes me want to poke my own eye out every single time I see these things. I think it might be a realtor thing. I follow a lot of realtors in there. A lot of real. Oh, that's what, that's what I'm supposed to do. I'm going to start making exclusively that content and then tagging both of you in it. All right, Alex, thank you very much, man. We really appreciate you. We're going to let you get out of here.

Rob, I know you love when I do this. Any last words before we go? No, man. No, no final words other than things. Thanks for coming on. And I watch all your TikToks. There you go. Appreciate you guys. Thank you so much for having me in to the audience. I hope you were able to get, you know, some return on your attention. That's all of our hopes. So thank you so much.