The Game with Alex Hormozi - Overcoming Hardships and Pursuing Growth (with Flex Lewis) Pt. 1 - March ‘23 | Ep 597

Episode Date: October 7, 2023

"You can't have strong character without going through hard things.” Today, join Alex (@AlexHormozi) as he guests on the Straight Outta Lair Podcast with Flex Lewis to talk about pivotal moments of transformation, family dynamics, and the pursuit of excellence in their chosen fields. They also discuss overcoming adversity, and the pursuit of meaning and purpose.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 Straight Outta Lair’s YouTube Channel!Timestamps:(4:09) - Living with conviction(8:59) - How Alex got into entrepreneurship(11:01) - Starting and scaling fitness businesses(15:18) - Learning from failures is crucial(19:02) - Entrepreneur takes risks, overcomes adversity(26:05) - Desperation can lead to innovation(32:13) - Overcoming adversity leads to success(33:55) - Embrace challenges for personal growth(38:42) - Finding meaning in life(41:47) - Approval from others is fleetingFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

If I think about myself at the end of my life, I would hope to be somebody who has strong character. But in order to achieve strong character, you have to go through hard things. You can't have one without the other. And so if I had to pick, I'd rather have the character and the scars to show it rather than none of the character and it had a soft life. 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. It's great how we met.

And of course, you and I have, you know, over, I would say what, six, eight, ten months since you've been here, developed a friendship outside of, you know, the business stuff. Our girls have gone and had dinners and stuff. I know. That's rare. Layla does not do that. Really? No. I think in, I'd say in the last year, she hasn't done it.

That's the only dinner she's had without me. Really? 100%. Oh, wow. We do everything together. she and I have been together every night since we met or rather since we've been married except for one weekend like we don't we're like we're a package deal what did you do with yourself when when she was out with my wife I just I just like I was like wow look at all this time

you know that I have to myself like no one's saying anything this is wonderful I just I just worked more when's the first time you and I met 14 years ago by chance. And then we went our separate ways, but I was a 19 year old at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee and a buddy of mine bought tickets to the Roy Jones fight. And we by chance were sitting in the two seats behind you. And we were probably bothering you because we were 19 and fans. And I remember my buddy kept asking you all these questions about lifting and bodybuilding. And you were in kill mode then. No, I mean, you were. You were 100% like I remember the I remember the whole thing. And at the time, like you weren't who like you weren't flex Lewis as you are now. You were like on

the come up. You know what I mean? And you were you were so in the mode of, uh, accomplishing. You were in the hunt. And you said if you want to accomplish your goals, you have to cut everything else out. You have to stop the parting. You have to stop the drinking. And you need to go all in on the one thing. And we continued to bug you throughout the rest of the fight. Alcohol is. You get more words of wisdom.

Alcohol was flowing. Well, we, you know, we were 19. So that would have been illegal and underage. So we definitely wouldn't have done that. No drinking. Yeah. That was just normal debauchery from 19-year-olds at a fight. But so the crazy part about this is that we met by happenstance,

14 years ago, you know, Flex was early in his career. I was non-existent in my career. I was a freshman in college. And we ended up 12 years later reconnecting here in Vegas because I started going to your gym. And, and then, you know, after, you know, a handful of times, like, do you remember these kids that were behind you at this fight? And lo and behold. Yeah, I remember, I actually do remember this circumstance. I can't remember the context because it was kind of you know, I was meeting

people throughout that fight. I was super important to you. That's what you're trying to say. But I do remember I do remember two guys sitting behind me and we kind of shared you know, periodically opinions of the fight. Yeah. I did that too. And I do remember

some other words of wisdom being spoken about what I said, I don't know. Probably the cliche shit they said back then too. No, but I mean, you really did, though. Like, I remember the conversation because you were on the, on the route to champion, if not had just, like you were right there. And it was just crystal clear that nothing else mattered to you, that that was it. And I remember it was enough that I was impacted by it at 19 to enough that I remember a conversation that happened randomly 14 years ago. It was, it wasn't even the words.

He said, obviously, you're like, don't drink. don't party, you know, stay out of trouble, work hard, et cetera. Like, that stuff was the cliche. But I think the thing that wasn't the cliche was how you said it. Was it like, I could hear the conviction balls to bones that that's what you were about. Like, you weren't saying it. You were living it. And I think that was why, that's why it carried the weight and why I remember.

I mean, a million people probably told me to work hard and whatever. But like, I remember that conversation. You have been bad on yourself in a lot of projects. I don't know if it's anything that you want to talk about in terms of what you've been, that, you know, that you can speak about. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I would say like I have two, there's three big things I would say going on right now. One is that we're building out an office here in Vegas that'll be a headquarters for our media team.

We'll have, you know, we'll put probably a big four or five thousand square foot facility in there. We'll do more content out of there. And then I just will have all of my stuff, which I like having. So it's been in storage for like three years. So I'm very excited to get my own gym back. It's a big spot. So it's like 17,000 square feet. So that should be good. That's one project that's kind of moving forward. The other one is the book. So my second book, or a second general business book, third book overall, $100 million, $100 million leads, which is the sequel to $100 million offers is coming out.

We put about 3,500 hours into the book over the last two years, which for me, the way that I work is like the first six hours of my day is where I put, push all my big projects forward. And then the second, like, the next half or four hours-ish or five hours of my day is is meetings and fires and whatever. And so I've been working that way for probably almost a decade of just like splitting my day that way. And that's worked well for me. So whatever happens in that first six hours is usually like my big focus.

And so for the last like 18 months, the majority of my time of that six hours of creative time has been dedicated to either, you know, scripting out kind of ideas about content stuff that I want to do. And more realistically, it's been just book. And so the book has 18 drafts right now. So we're on draft 18 of the book, probably written like somewhere in the neighborhood of like 800 to 1,000 pages that got distilled down into about 240-ish pages for the book. Have like 127 pages of doodles that are graphics that'll go in the book that get

to still down to maybe, you know, 50 to 60 graphics, not just pages of graphics, but individual graphics that are throughout the book to explain kind of more complex topics for advertising to get more leads for a business. So that's been like a big project and that's going to finally come to an end in the next, you know, 12 weeks or so. And then the third one is just doing deals because that's, that's actually how we make money. And so we have a number of larger deals in the pipeline right now, which there's just steps to it. You know, there's the LOI stages where you're, you know, negotiating whatever the price is that you're buying in for. And then, you know, the diligence on our

side to make sure that everything is hunky dory, no lawsuits, that kind of stuff. And that we believe that we can actually add as much values we think we can. And then there's kind of executing the deal, onboarding the companies and that kind of jazz. So different deals at different stages in that pipeline. And that's what I spend most of my time doing. Yeah. And, you know, you and I try to get a couple of workouts in,

but as you said, that time is, you know, non-compromise for you. I try to bend the wrist and try to get you in the early. But no, as you said, that part of the day, that first early rising is all dedicated to your business. and stuff. And then the late afternoon is when it opens up for you. Yeah, I like to like fatigue my mind and then my body's fresh at the end of the day, but my brain is spent and then I go work out. And that's been like my favorite way to do it. I've done first thing in the morning.

I've done a late morning. I've done split shift, which is a good. I like split shift a lot, which is like that lunchtime lift at like 11 to, you know, one-ish. And then you have your second half the day. Like that's a nice reset. I think I'll be probably doing more of that when I have the office gym. But if I don't have that set up, then I think I end up defaulting to like the four o'clock workout and then having dinner afterwards. So it's kind of like marks the end of my day. I do want to circle back on that new endeavor of the offices and that 17,000 square foot and, you know, new building that you're working on. But for the viewers who have seen your face all over Instagram and, you know, they can recognize you as the serial entrepreneur, just

Can you tell the viewers and take the viewers back on how you got into the entrepreneurial sort of mindset and what age that started and what came from that step by step? So I was actually a pretty good student. A lot of times entrepreneurs are like, ah, you know, school failed me or like I was never interested in school. I wouldn't say I was interested in school, but school was fine. You know what I mean? I did the work.

I graduated early from college, Magnet and Kamalaude from Vanderbilt, which is a school in Tennessee. Did pretty well on standardized tests. Got a good job after that as management consultant. Had a pretty prestigious firm that just focused on strategy. But we were in the public sector. So it was defense contracting. So space cyber intelligence sounds very sexy.

It was not very interesting for me at the time. Really, really got depressed during that period because I felt like there was nothing else for me to achieve. I'd kind of done everything that I thought I was supposed to do at, you know, age 22 or whatever. And so I looked into starting a business because that was what I ultimately wanted to do, applied to a bunch of business schools. They were like, you know, how will this help your short and long-term goals? After spending like three days thinking about it, I realized it wasn't going to.

And so I'd figured I would save the 200 grand in two years of not making money and just put it into a business. I'd saved about 50 or 60 grand at the time when I was 22 and just live in cheap. And I used that to start my first business. So I was choosing between test prep. uh, frozen yogurt and, uh, a gym, something fitness related. And I couldn't afford the yogurt because it was like 250 grand. And test prep I could afford, but I had like a falling out with the person who was supposed to partner with me on it. So fitness was kind of what was left and I could afford to do it. And I knew how, you know, at that point, I was already competing powerlifting,

not bodybuilding. And I was just like super into fitness at that point. I've been training for, I think, like seven years. Um, yep, seven or eight years at that point. And so then I, uh, I asked, started a gym. So I drove out to California and started my first facility against the wishes of everybody who knew me and slept on the floor there, learned a lot the hard way, and was able to open up a second location at month 15, then opened up a new location every six months after that. And then we had six locations. I sold five of them. I shut one of them down. And then I started doing a turnaround business where we'd fly around two gyms and get them to full capacity in about 30 days. That's right when I met Lela. And so she was flying out with me right at that time. I had this idea for this new business

model. And so we did that for about two years. We did 30-something turnarounds. And then from there, we got it, we got it really down pat. And so then we started licensing that to brick and mortar facilities. And now we have, we licensed over 5,000 facilities, that model over the next five years. And then we started a supplement company to sell through that distribution base of thousands of gyms called Prestige Labs. The other company is called Jim Lowe. much. And then after that, in 2019, we started Allen, which is our software company, which also sold through that distribution base. And in 2021, we sold all three of those companies, two of them to a private equity firm called American Pacific Group. For two of those were for 46.2 million.

And then the other one, we sold to a treat cheek partner, which we were under NDA for the price. But we did 12 million in the trailing, you know, 12 months leading into the sale. And that was an all-stock deal. So we basically contributed assets to an entity they did too. And then the hope is that five years from now, that next sale will be, you know, significantly larger. And so from there, we started our family office, acquisition.com. And we started investing our own money because at that point, we'd probably taking about 40, things, 40 million in dividends out prior to our exit. And so we had a decent amount of cash on hand, and I had never really done any investing. And I felt like that's kind of the phase that I wanted to get into, but rather than kind of putting it all in the stock market, which I feel like I'd be competing

against people that have an advantage over me, I was like, well, why don't I just invest in businesses that I know and understand and can add value to? And so that's been pretty much the thesis behind Acquisition.com was finding businesses that we, you know, that are simple, that we can understand, that we can scale. And so now we have 16 portfolio companies. And right now, in aggregate, I think they do about 200 million a year. Depends every month. Kind of, you know, it's a little bit volatile, but that's kind of the current run rate of those portfolio companies. And usually we have between 20 and 51% of the businesses that were invested in. And that's our jam. Are they all in the same genre? No, no. Okay. So everything from, you know, photography studios for kids,

all the way to mortgage sales, you know, just different businesses. It's really just like, do we have a simple business model that has one to do products that we understand? A lot of times, you know, like red flags for us when we're looking at businesses is do we see an entrepreneur that's super scattered who can't focus on anything you can often see that because a lot of times the business is a reflection of the entrepreneur and so if everything's scattered everything's erratic there's five different things going on and they're doing 10 million a year it's like well why don't you just pick one and get it to a hundred you know and that's kind of the approach that we that we tend to have is like maybe there's a front end product and a back end product awesome and most people end up creating new products because

they just don't know how to sell more of the first one and then end up creating all these appendages attached to the business that ultimately make it harder to run. Obviously, you know, there's a little privy to, a little privy to us, you know, the, some more so the earlier part of the stories. Alex is a fan of me. He's on shop on Spotify right now. He's assessing what protein body is going to consume. We'll see which one I'm going to go for.

It'll be a big decision. This is a big decision. But I'm a little privy to, you know, the, some insight stories too i do want to and for the viewers you know watching this a lot of people in the early stages of either starting up a business or maybe they're in the fitness industry and they're looking at themselves as a brand as a business you know i know that you mentioned earlier before you went through this incredible you know uh history of what you started and where you are now but you really had a rags to riches story you know you kind of skimmed the earlier part of of life um

of where you open up a gym. But you've really had, you know, a lot of failures that you've learned from. And one of the earlier parts of, you know, your story is that you did get a gym. It failed. And can you tell us about that? Because I think that's a big and a critical part of your story line, of learning from your failures to get to where you are now. Yeah. Failed a lot.

So I'd say the biggest. the biggest failures, you know, right off the bat, I started, you know, the first gym. So all the gyms that I had were more or less successful. I had one gym that I was a 90% owner of. I'd given 10% to an advisor to kind of like help me with it. But then I met two other guys who said they could help me more. So then they bought in for very little. And I used what little money they gave me to buy the other guy out. But then they ended up buying two thirds of the facility. So I was a one-third owner of my original gym. And I pretty much didn't take any money out of the gyms while we were growing them because I would just take whatever cash to open up the new facilities. I ended up having a falling

out with one of the two partners. So me and the other guy bought the other guy out. Kept doing, you know, and using, you know, using cash flow to make payments to him and then also open new facilities until we got to about six locations. At this point, I was like, I don't know if this is what I, like, it just, it was very difficult. We were probably doing, I don't know, two million bucks in top line maybe three i honestly don't remember um and that was when i ended up kind of reaching this weird point where i didn't know what to do um i wasn't making a ton of money but i was work it was just a weird spot for me and so i went to uh a speech or like a a seminar thing like a you know one of those events and there was a guy who's talking about online marketing and i was

like man i need to learn some of this stuff so uh i didn't do anything i waited a year and then during this like weird moment. I was like, you know what, maybe I'll go join one of his like events or whatever. So I joined this guy's event. And when I was there, I was explaining my whole model and how it opened up each facility at full capacity. And he was like, you should show other people how you do this. And so that was kind of the big shifting point for me going from, okay, I'm going to go from six locations and 10 locations to maybe I'll start this turnaround thing. So I started the turnaround thing and it started working. And so then I sold all the gyms. It didn't sell for a lot. I sold them, you know, probably an aggregate for like 250 grand, which for anybody who's listening, that's not a lot of

money for six locations. It was almost just like the hard costs of the assets. But I was really committed to this new direction. And so I put all the cash that I got from that sale into this new partnership that I decided to do with a guy who had been indicted for fraud, which I knew about. And I filled up a gym and we were supposed to partner on these new gyms together. And he would come and operate them after I filled him up. So it's going to be like a launch and go model. I'd open up one or two facilities every month and he'd come and fill it up. So I crushed this launch. It did 380 something new members in the first 21 days. And these were at 600 bucks a pop for six weeks. It was a training facility not like a membership facility. And and then I looked at the bank out one day and all the

money I'd put in plus all the cash that we generated was taken out. And he was like, well, I know that you're skimming profits. So I'm just taking my half and I was like, what? You know, and he hadn't paid for anything. And I was the one who was guaranteeing the lease, of course, because he had financial difficulties. Uh, yeah, of course. You know, I was like, oh yeah, don't worry. It's just a big misunderstanding. And so, anyway, so there I am now and I have no cash in the bank count. I lost everything that I just spent five years building with the gyms. Um, and I had, I think at this point, just in my personal savings, I had like 25, I don't, just not a lot of money. Um, and I couldn't sell more people because I didn't want to keep doing the gym thing. I wanted to do this other thing.

and so I basically just had to stomach the hard cost of the gym with no new revenue coming in, which was horrible. So I just basically had to pay payroll and rent everything. And if you have no inflow, it, you know, it goes down very fast. And so within six weeks, I was able to close that last facility. So that was where the, you know, sold five had the, the one that I ended up closing down was that one. And so now here I am, I have nothing left. And Lila at the time was like, hey, we should still do that, you know, launch thing where we just like fill other people's facilities up. and we don't own it and we just take the cash that we generate. And so we started doing that again. And so we did the next launch. We hired a sales guy to go do it. He did 100 grand in a month,

which is basically about what we would average. So I was like, okay, this is my fresh start. I'm going to get this money. And then for some reason, the money didn't come in. And so I'm checking the bank out every day. And I was like, where's this money? Like we process a payment. I see it's successful. And it didn't come in. And so I call the processor up and they're like, oh, it's a standard annual review. And I was like, I've been with you guys like six years. You've never had an in a review. And called two days later, same thing, called two days later. And then finally, it's Christmas Eve. And I'm back at Layla's parents' house. I've never met them before. This is the first time they're meeting me, the winner, who now had lost everything and had no

money. And the only shot I had at making money, the money was not coming in. And so on Christmas Eve, I called them up. And I was like, I'm not getting off the phone until you just give me money. That is mine. And they said, no. Shocked. Christmas Eve? Yeah, right. And so I had a sales guy that I owed. about $22,000 in commissions, and I had $23,000 left after all of this shittiness. And so I wired him 22, and I had $1,000 left, and it was Christmas Eve. And so that was December of 2016. So it's, you know, whatever it is now, 2023.

So I was at $1,000 left in total at that point. I screenchotted it because I was like, I'll remember this. You still have that screenshot? I do. I do. And two days later, Layla had convinced all of her friends to quit their jobs to join this our thing. So six of her friends had quit their jobs, which was great. I felt super responsible for that.

And so I told her, you know, I have this credit card from all my gyms that they haven't canceled yet. I've got a $100,000 limit. And this could go horribly wrong. And so I think I'm a sinking ship and you should probably get out. And so she didn't listen to me. and she said, I would sleep with you under bridge if it came to that. And that was probably my moment for knowing that Layla was going to be the girl I was going to be with for a long time. And so I put $3,300 a day on a credit card with only $1,000 in my bank count to launch six locations that next month, which made no sense.

And if I were advising me, I would say, that's retarded. But I just, like, was wildly insecure and felt like I lost all the money that I was making. And I, like, wanted to have a comeback. And I just went for it. And so mind you, I didn't have a way to process money. So I'm doing $3,300 a day with zero ability to generate cash. And so we're stacking 60 contracts every day that were selling across these locations. And I had no way to process the money.

And so I thought I could get a processor easily. That was not the case, especially if you've been shut down by our processor, because it's kind of like, it's kind of like a black mark. Yeah, yeah. And just for context, the reason I got shut down was because I was doing sales through a brick and mortar location, not in that state. So I was basically running all these launch sales through my brick and mortar location in California. But I was in like Canada and, you know, wherever. And they were like, this is a regular, seems weird.

We're going to shut it down. And so, um, anyway, by the way, they never gave me that money. So that hundred grand, they just kept it. Um, they never gave it back six months later. They did you shit in me? No, they kept it. So, um, I ended up getting a new account that would get, they gave me a $50,000 limit to process money. And thankfully it was per month, per calendar month.

So I got it live on January 29th. I'm spending 3,300 a day. We're processing, we're getting all the contracts stacked up. And people were calling us like, hey, like, why aren't you running my card? We're like, oh, yeah, we're going to get to it. You know, like, yeah, it's great. Good faith. Yeah, yeah, right.

And so the 29th of January comes, and I run 50 grand in a day, and I still have another 100 grand in contracts. Holy shit, man. And so then on February 1st, two days later, I run another 50 through the same thing. So I have 100. spending 3,300 a day so I can cover my credit card bill, and now I'm back at zero again. So I'm still, still poor. But I got two more processes online, and then I was able to bump those. And so the next month, I was able to do like 180, I think. And I think we had like 30 grand in profit. And I was like, okay, we might be out of this. And so right as I thought we were out of the woods,

March came around. We started the next, you know, a few launches or six or seven or eight or whatever it was. And then two of the locations, which for us, the sales guys weren't as good as we were. Like I would average about 100 grand. I think they average like 50 and cash collected per location, somewhere in there. And two of the gyms that we launched at a 6th in January, stood up on chairs and told everybody to refund with me and that they would fulfill the same thing for half the price. So just for context, the way our turnaround model worked is we would fly out there. I would spend the money on the hotels, airfare, rental cars, food for the sales guys, commissions, ad spend.

And our deal was we keep all the cash that we bring in for X period of time, which was like a six week program. And then after that, the gym got to convert however many members. So it was all free. It was all free for them. They didn't have to do anything. They said to like do a good job for the six weeks. That was their actual cost was delivering.

And then they convert whoever they want on the back end. But they were like, hold on. Let me do the math here. They were like, you signed up 150 people. at my gym for $500 each. That's $75,000. I made $30,000 last year and you've ripped 75 out of my gym in 21 days. Which is a half anyways. Right. So they just told them all to refund and then sign up through them. Not all of them did that, but a couple guys did. And that's because, you know, you sell to, you sell to broke people and people, broke people, do broke people things. And that's a broke person thing to do. And it was done on my part.

I held the processing risk, but I didn't have control over the delivery. So like, I could see now that that's a risk that I probably wouldn't do as a business owner, but I didn't understand I was younger. And so anyways, those guys do that. And all of a sudden, that cushion of the 30 or 40 grand just disappears. And so then we are like, well, shit, what am I going to do? And the problem was that it started to happen to get another location the next month. And Lely comes to me and she's like, this model is broken. Like it doesn't work because basically we had to sell more to cover the refunds.

Because I only had 30 or 40 grand and we had like 100,000 or 150,000 in refunds we owed. So I told the guys to ramp it on sales and we did. But then the same issue happened. And so it was kind of this vicious cycle of the more we sold, the more we had to give back. And it was very horrible. I just remember I just couldn't breathe a lot of that. Like wake up the morning. I was like, I just couldn't breathe.

And so I, so I'm thinking like, how do I come up with 150 grand in profit in 30 days? I've never done that my whole life. And which is why I think a lot of times like desperation is one of the, you know, the mother of invention. And so we, Layla had this queen transformation program, which was like her, she, She took her personal training in-person clients to online. She was making like $4,000 a month. And it was basically paying for food. You know, I'm trying to,

I'm doing all these big numbers and just like losing my ass. And she's just got her like $4,000 month thing on the side that she spends like four hours a week on. And so I hit her up, hit her up. She was in the kitchen. I was like, tell me more about this thing that you're doing. And, you know, quickly it was like, okay. So this is all margin. It's all online.

I think we could scale this. And so she gave me the go ahead. And I spent 48 hours writing the best ad. ads, best sales letter, best website I could come up with and started running ads to it. And within 14 days, we're doing $1,000 a day online over the phone. She was. And I was like, this could work because we had eight, we had eight sales guys at the time. So I was like, if I get all eight of those guys to sell, they each do $1,000 a day. We could do $8,000 a day, pretty much all profit. We'd make $2.40 at the end of the month, cover commissions and

ad spend, and I'd make about $150 in profit. I was like, we could do this. And so I called all the guys that were supposed to launch the next month. So in April, the eight gyms. And I was like, hey, we're not doing this anymore. And, uh, you know, they're like, uh, well, you said you were going to. And I was like, yeah, but you haven't really paid me anything. So like, you know, uh, sorry, you know, you haven't, you haven't, there's, even lost anything by me not coming out. And but one guy was just like, the first call that I had was like, dude, I need this. I refinanced my house. I'm maxed out my credit cards to do this gym. And like, I know you launched my buddy's gym and crushed it for him. Now, this is one of the good guys who didn't do anything weird. He's like, I know you can help me. And, um, at this point,

I'm really beat up by the gym industry. And just, just felt really betrayed. And I was like, dude, I'm not flying out there. Like, I don't, I don't really care. Um, and so finally he was like, dude, can you just show me what you did? Just show me at least. And like I could, I could get this going. And so, uh, I said, fine. Uh, I'll show you, but I'm not going to fly out there to save your ass if you can't close. And he said, that's fine. And so he said, how much? And so I just picked the highest number I could think of at the time because I just wanted him to say no. He already said he was broke. And so I was like six grand. And, uh, he was like, six K. And I was like, yeah. And he was like,

done. And I just remember. looking at the phone and being like, holy shit. Should ask more. Yeah. So good thing I had seven more calls that day. And so I got credit card on the back of a napkin or whatever. And I was like, holy shit. So I called the next guy that we were supposed to launch in same conversation.

He was like, how much? And I was like, eight grand. And he was like, sure. I was like, what though? And so I called the next six guys, same conversation. Next one was 10 grand, okay. Next one, 12 grand, okay. I made $60,000 in one day.

and I looked at Layla when she came back in. And I was like, so I think we're still in the gym business. And she was like, what are you talking about? I just got this whole weight loss thing. Like, it's actually working. Like, what are you talking about? It's like, I think we're still in the gym business. I think we're just doing it wrong.

And so that's when we switched to the licensing model where I basically took all my internal trainings, which is what I trained my sales teams on, what I trained for like the nutrition consults, everything that we were already doing. And I just like made them external. I just gave everybody else access to. to them. And the, so then as soon as that worked, I called all the 30 gyms that we had launched before that had those conversations and we ended up doing like, I think something like $300,000 in that, in that month. And that covered my $150,000 pending, you know, refund thing that I owed.

And then, and then it just took off like a rocket because the first 30 guys that we put through it average $30,000 in additional cash collected in their first 30 days using the system we had. and then it was just like, we could, you know, we could barely keep up with the phones. You know, Lila was getting on the phone with like, she had eight calls a day and each call had five gym owners on that. Like it was just like hard to even comprehend. Like one guy was like, wait a second,

you're charging each of us $16,000 and there's five of us on this phone. And you have calls all day. And she was like, yep, yep. And it was insane. And so it went, you know, I think we did $480 the next month, just under $800. Then we did $1,000. Then $1,000, then $1,000, then $1,000.

Then $1,000. Then $1,000. then two, then two three, and then two five, and then it just kept going. And then 20 months later, we were at four and a half million a month. And, I mean, our first full year of business of the licensing model, we did $17 million in profit. And it was crazy. And yeah, so that's the story for keep on going. Real quick, guys, if you can think about how you found this podcast, somebody probably

tweeted it, told you about it, shared it on Instagram or something like that. The only way this grows is through word of mouth. And so I don't run ads. I don't do sponsorships. I don't sell anything. My only ask is that you continue to pay it forward to whoever showed you or however you found out about this podcast that you do the exact same thing. So if it was a review, if it was a post, if you do that, it would mean the world to me

and you'll throw some good karma out there for another entrepreneur. So what about you was this? So lost everything in 2016. Yeah. And then lost everything again in the first quarter of 2017. And then the turnaround of like when the model switch from, you know, us, flying out to then trying the weight loss thing to then trying the true licensing thing that happened like uh april mayish of 2017 we finished that year at i think six eight top line three million in bottom

line and then the first full year so 2018 i think we did 26 million top line 17 million in bottom line and then uh next year we did 37 and you know that was when we started the supplement company and then went from there and you scaled that to to what uh i think the biggest year of those combined was 37 million top line. And then COVID hit 2020. And so that hurt both of those businesses. But we still had a very stable base. And so it still made the company pretty valuable in it of itself.

And so that's what we sold to American Pacific Group for 46.2 in 2021. 46.2. $46.2. Million. Yeah. Incredible, man. Yeah. Do you ever sit back and think, do you have there moments where you kind of

of go back into that time of waking up with that crazy anxiety of thinking, shit, how am I going to get through this day and how am I going to, you know, deliver? Mm-hmm. All the time. But you give yourself, you know, flowers to be like, wow, I've taken myself from, you had, you had yourself? Did you celebrate yourself after your second Olympia on your radio, third? This is not my, this is my podcast.

I understand, I understand the mentality. We're not going to share off the podcast. But for me to explain to the viewers, like to see and, you know, and hear these stories and, you know, and see you walking around and staying as humble as what you are. Because let's be honest, there's guys who are make a million bucks

and now they're driving this, they're driving that. You are probably one of the most humblest guys who have got, you know, an insane work ethic. And you don't come off the gas for nothing. And for me, to see that, I think that's a good person for me to have around me in my life, just to see what your mentality is to, you know, grow and scaling and, you know, back into the next project or consuming yourself with the next big thing and not coming up forever. I mean, since I've known you anyway.

Yeah. It's, I think it gets into a wider worldview perspective of like, you know, for me, I think the purpose of my, my life is learning. So like that's, that's people are like, what's the meaning of your life for me? It's learning. And so learning I can only do through doing.

And so if I want to leave no potential Alex, uh, on the table when I die, then I have to expose to myself, you know, I have to expose myself to as many hard things as I can. And doesn't have to be hard like, yeah,

cold plunges and whatever. You know what I mean? It's just like challenging circumstances that will create character. Because you know, if, you know, at least for me, if I think about myself at the end of my life, I would hope to be somebody who has strong character.

But in order to achieve strong character, you have to go through hard things. And so it's kind of interesting that, like, we want to have, all of us want to have really good character, except none of us want to go through hard things. And so it's like you can't have one without the other. And so if I had to pick,

I'd rather have the character and the scars to show it, rather than none of the character. And it had a soft life. That being said, I mean, we're born and I was born in America to an upper middle class family. So I haven't, you know, the biggest contributor to where I am now is luck by far. And so I've done what I can with what I've been given. And I still think I have a lot that I have underutilized.

And so I just live in constant fear of that, which is I'm not religious, but my favorite verse in the Bible is to whom much is given, much is expected. And so I feel like I've been given a lot. And so to the same degree, I feel like a lot is expected of me. And that's mostly just me expecting that of me. Because during the year that we sold the business, or three of the businesses in 2021, I actually didn't work at all.

And that was a terrible year for me. I was very depressed. And so I realized that for me, I am good in motion. And so it's just about constantly having that pursuit of betterment, of growth, of challenge. And the goal for me is always to just have challenges that match my ability.

And then over time, hopefully the challenges get bigger as my ability grows. And that's that's kind of the idea. You have talked about depression in some podcast of old. Is that something you're very weary on in your day-to-day? Or do you catch elements of yourself going into and you can stop it? Because I can, for me personally, you know, there's traits that I see if I don't, to your point, keep active, keep moving, keep.

evolve in. Is that similar with you? Yeah, and I'll be clear. Um, when I say to say to, sorry, when I say depressed, um, I say that more, not in like a clinical sense. I just was like really aimless and felt like what's the point of everything. Not like I was in bed and couldn't get up or anything like that. Like it was one of those kind of situations. Um, I mean, the status I've ever been was actually when I had that job and I had to quit way back went. Like that was when I was like, that was actually when I was the most depressed in my life. I was 22 years old and felt like there was nothing. There was no point to living. I want it like, that's where, you know, There's like levels to it, but for me, I think they call it passive ideation, but basically,

you just hope that you don't wake up the next day. That's what body was? Yeah, when I was 22 for sure. Well, yeah, I just hated my life. And I lived a life that was for my father. And so it was all about making him proud. And this is not his fault. This is me.

But I lived the life that I thought he wanted me to have, which I was. He was happier that he could have ever been during that period of my time. And I remember thinking to myself, like, either his dreams die or mine do. And so I had to pick whether I was going to be. to die to him or live for myself. And so that was ultimately, and a lot of people are like, oh, I probably exaggerated. He was like, no, my dad and I didn't talk for like years after that. Not really.

I mean, like one text every, you know, whatever. But me making this, the switch to going from like the trodden path of doing the prestigious consulting thing to being a gym owner after going to like a very good school and doing all this stuff, he was not happy about. But that, at least for me, I was free to fail on my own. And, you know, at least in the early days for the, the first, let's say five years, the biggest motivator was proving him right that I was going to be a failure doing the new path. And so that was more painful to me than anything that I could go through.

And so that was always my reminder. So like, no matter how hard it was, I was like, I'm just not going to let him be right. And so that just like got me through it. And so a lot of people have like these really motivational like speeches of I just wanted to change the world and I just wanted America to be fit like I didn't want any of that like I just wanted my dad to be wrong and so you know then I you know progressed through that and first it was like I want to make you know more money than my dad and then it was or as much money as my dad then it was make more money than my dad than it was make more money than my dad's ever made and then I realized that I was trying to win at a game that was not mine so I was trying to beat my

father at his own game. And then that's when I realized that I was like, is this the game I really want to play? And so, uh, kind of shifted gears to like, well, what is the game that I want to play? And where do I find meaning? Um, and that kind of went to a, a different place. And, um, now it kind of is what I say now, which is it's just learning for me. Um, and I think we can create our own meaning around the things that, that we want. And so that's the, the most depressed I was was when I was 22 and having to quit that job or that life for the new path was by far the hardest decision I made my life by far like still number one hardest decision I've ever made my life but after that it all got easier it was still incredibly hard but that that to me was like death like I actually had to leave my

dad not my dad I'd leave that Baltimore which I was from and I didn't tell anyone until I was already halfway across the country because I knew that because I'd already tried to leave and I couldn't do it And because he'd always talk me out of it. And he had a lot of authority over me at the time because he was the really successful, you know, he was a doctor. Oh, right. Okay. Yeah.

So, you know, he was a doctor and he was successful. And he had a, he wielded a lot of authority over me. And a lot of my early days was like trying to make him proud. And I realized that over time, the approval, my father was something that was always going to be out of reach. So it didn't matter where it was. He would always move the goalpost. And that's fine.

I mean, hey, I've come a decent way. but I think it was like five no probably seven years after I left for the gym you know to start the gym so like when Jim Lodge started really crushing it and he called me to you know give a momentous apology you never apologized to me in my life and I remember we were out to dinner and he called me and I was like this is weird like he doesn't really call me that much so I took the phone I was like hello he's like you're going to want to sit down and I was like okay and he said I'm sorry.

I was like, for what? He was like, you know, everything. I was like, okay. And, you know, rather than having that just be a nice moment, which I probably should have done, I was still very angry. And so I was like, you know, pops, you know when they have those speeches

at those award ceremonies and people get up there and they're like, you know, I just want to thank my mom, my dad, for always believing in me. I was like, I'm not going to say that. I was like, because you didn't. I was like, because you only believed at me once it was obvious.

Once I had made more than you than you've ever made in your entire life. And he was like, well, we'll see how long it lasts. And so, you know, we had a little bit of that kind of competitiveness or whatever. I don't even know what you want to call it. I was disrespecting him. It was basically what that was. And I shouldn't have done that. But I was younger and I was angrier.

But now I think we're on decent terms. I think he has come to respect me in a real way for who I am because the thing that that that I also said in that conversation, which I probably shouldn't have, was you approve of me now. And I was like, but I stopped caring about what you thought five years ago. So your approval doesn't mean anything to me. Wow. And to be fair, it was true because it was, it was me having to like die to that vision of what he had for me. That was the thing that allowed me to do this thing because he made it very clear that he didn't

approve the decision. So I had to go on my own. And that was why it felt like death, because it was like death of a relationship, death of the mentor that you have or whatever that, you know, and up to that point, that was the major driving force in my life. It's like, I got good grades to impress my dad. I went to a good school to impress my dad. I took the job that he wanted me to take. I did all those things. But I always felt like the approval was like one more thing. Yeah, okay. Then go to business school and then graduate from Harvard. And then after that, like, and that's okay. Because like a lot of people have it tougher than that. You know, that was Just that was my story.

You guys are okay now? Yeah, we're on good terms. Yeah, we're on good terms. Listen, it's not, I don't think there's no way that he looks at what you've achieved and is any shape or form, not pro'd. You know, maybe it's just, he's one of them old school people. I'm not, again, I don't know the situation, but some people are just hard and, hard in compliments and trying to, you know, my parents obviously are a little different.

and for me they you know coming from a very uh blue collar upbringing and from the town i was brought up in there was there was only a few jobs that were highly successful that i was gonna achieve right so i done pretty much similar to you i went off from my own to my half back to front failed so many times but i got the stories to tell you know right so um but listen that that is a story that that has obviously got you to where you are right now and um um And I don't think it's hardened you. It's probably made you more focused on all these endeavors. But one thing I have learned to do over the years is give myself sort of,

almost all looking back, the flowers that I never give myself at the time. And like, I hope that you're able to do that now looking back. That's why I kind of mentioned what I did because we're so focused for, that I would always on to the next. Like every one of these trophies are here. Every one of them, I was always on to the next. Everybody else was celebrating for me, and I was like, I got a show next week.

I got to get my way back down. And I'm on the road again. And now we're retired. I probably can more so accept more of that praise, even though it's come and gone now. I wasn't there at the time, even though the after parties and everything else, I wasn't there, you know?

But yeah, there's so much more stuff that's going to be achieved by you. I think in the moving forward, I hope that you're able to, like, be present and celebrate. I don't know. I think you're so focused, though. So I see, that's what I get from you every time I'm around you. And every time I give you a compliment, even if it's about your physique, it's like, ah, it can be better. You know, my calves are not as big as yours.

Am I wrong? Let's be honest.