The Game with Alex Hormozi - Why Selling Wasn't Always Second Nature (with Ali Abdaal) Pt.2 - Oct, ‘22 | Ep 536

Episode Date: May 13, 2023

"Find out what the price is and just be willing to pay that price.” Today, join Alex (@AlexHormozi) as he guests on Ali Abdaal’s show to talk about his experience of starting a gym, learning how to sell, and explains how he developed his selling skills through trial and error, as well as investing in a one-on-one course to learn how to run Facebook ads. He also discusses his decision to quit his job and pursue entrepreneurship, despite familial and societal pressure to pursue a more traditional career path. 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 Ali Abdaal’s YouTube Channel!Timestamps:(1:39) - Using Sales to Fund a Gym Startup(6:58) - Value of Investing in Sales Training & Ads(16:58) - Exploring Benefits of Running a Multi-Million Dollar Gym(23:32) - Balance Between Financial Freedom and Personal Fulfillment(31:13) - Discussion on Content Production Costs and Subscriber Revenue(38:32) - The Price of Achieving a Six Pack: Motivation, AccountabilityFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

You have to love small business ownership. And it has to be about really being a love with the product and the experience. It's just like, you know, we have this kind of thing with a lot of the gyms is once someone understands how to run a seven figure or multi seven figure gym, you now have the skill set to run a $10 million other business. 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.

I wonder if we can zoom into the sales thing a little bit because I think selling is a massive black box for a lot of people. And even for me, like, when I first started actually selling stuff, I've been doing YouTube for five years. But, you know, I don't feel like I was selling anything for the first three because it was all like sponsorships. And then sort of two years ago when I had an idea for like a course that teaches people how to be YouTubers, I came up against so much like internal, like mental friction around the idea of selling and feeling weird about it. And like, then realized sales is a thing. So I wonder, what was your experience sort of on the ground in the Jim, how did you learn how to sell?

Yeah, I hated everything in the sales. And the side story on that was that when I quit my job, my dad's buddy was a, or my dad's financial, his investor dude, right? The guy who managed his money was like, dude, you should just come work for me. He's like, you can sell. And I was like, me? I'm an academic. I'm a cerebral thinker.

I'm a management consultant. Like, I am known for, you know, I am not a salesman. Like, that was my thing. And so I was like, I thought it was beneath me. I really did. And so anyways, I got the job. I did the interviews, got the job. And I ultimately, like, they told me what it was.

And it was like, here's the phone. Here's names. Bang. And I was like, oh, I don't want to do that. So then I started my gym and I realized that I had to pay $5,000 a month. And then it was like the first day. And I was like, oh, fuck, how do I get people to give me money? And I was like, oh, sales.

And so it was a forcing function. So I had gone to a weekend workshop that I spent $3,000 for, which was a tremendous amount of money for me at the time to go learn how. to run Facebook ads. This is 2013. So I learned how to run Facebook ads in that weekend. And I ran Facebook ads for my gym. And that was when people came in. I signed up 27 people, the first two weeks. I charged 300 bucks ahead. I think I spent a thousand bucks on ads. So I made, you know, spent a thousand, made 8,700 or whatever it was. And that was, that was how I, that's how I paid my first month's rent. And my, my selling was just literally, I had an empty gym with

no equipment. It was literally turf and a table. And they were like, are you going to be here? Is this like a scam? I was like, no. And people just believe me. I was like, I promise I will do everything to get you in the best shape ever. And they were like, are you sure? Like, I'd have some people come back like two days later, like make sure I was still there in the two week period. And I also didn't understand a lot of stuff. Like I thought I had to open as fast as possible because I thought that opening meant that I would make money when really I should have had a really long presale, just collected cash the whole time. Like I didn't know. Honey, that stuff worked. So I just tried to open as fast as I could. I had my first 27 clients. And I taught all the sessions. So I was doing

six sessions a day. And then I would run ads. I'd have sales appointments. Then I'd clean the gym. And then I would do all my billing at night. And that worked the lead. Like it was, I was, it was the hardest I've ever worked time was. Like I've never, I've still to this day, never worked that hard. It was, uh, okay. Let's, let's zoom in to some of these. So you had the idea of like, I want to start a gym. You worked in a gym. for free for a minimum wage for a while, so you understand how a gym works. And then were you just like roaming around looking for a warehouse that you could convert into a gym?

Yeah. And then you signed a lease for $5,000 a month. And you're like, all right, cool. I now have a box. I need to put some gym equipment in there. So you put some gym equipment in there. You take a Facebook ad workshop over the weekend. You spend three grand on it.

And that helps you run ads in your local area that says, hey, by the way, new gym opening something or other. And then people walking through the door. And then what happens when people walking through the door? Do you just say, hey, this is the gym? Can you give me your money? How does that process work? I had an offer, I had an offer, which was a six-week challenge.

I said, if you lose, because it was similar to my whole charity thing, where I wanted people to, like, have skin in the game. So it was, if you lose 20 pounds six weeks, I'll give you your money back. So people would bet it was 300 bucks. I would train it for six weeks. And if I lost 20 pounds, I'd give them their money back. So I was a check. So are you relying on then people not completing it to make money?

No. No, the real real is there. Yeah. So, so you've got. You've got three buckets, right? You got people who don't hit it, right? Which is actually not the bucket you want people in because then they're not happy. The second bucket is people who hit it and then have more weight to lose or want to keep

working out because they just started this habit and want to keep going, which is the vast majority. I think we had just under an 80% success rate. And then the third bucket is people who want to lose the weight and then say, I'll take my money, please. Right. And the sale is actually very easy. I mean, you're just like, hey, do you think that working out six weeks and then going

back to not working out is going to be a good long-term solution? No. Okay. Well, why don't I just take your 300 bucks out credits towards the next year, staying at the gym because now you've started this habit. You don't want to lose it when you have the momentum. And they say, sure. Cool. And I had people commit to the year before they even finish the challenge. Halfway through, I'd be like, you like, you like, everything, everything cool. You're 10 pounds down. Awesome. You're halfway there. So, I mean, how much weight do you want to lose? Because I promise you, once you're 10 pounds lighter you are now, you're still going to want to look different. Like, you're not going to be perfect. I've yet to meet somebody who's a perfect body. You're still going to have stuff you want to work on. Right. They're like, yeah, yeah, of course. I'm like, okay.

So the question is, do you want to do it on your own? Because that's what you were doing before this. And that wasn't working. What do you want to do it with me? They were like, I want to do with you. And I'm like, cool, I'll take the money. I'll credit it for it. So you won.

Congratulations. High five, big hug. You want it. You get it because the point of the challenge is not for you to actually lose the weight. It's for you to understand this a lifelong process, not six weeks. Done. That was it. That was it.

How did you do the transformation? How do people lose 10, 20 pounds in six weeks? It's all food. Okay. So you're giving the meal plans? It's food. Yeah. I would give a meal, plans, grocery lists, free preparation instructions, eating out guides, the whole thing.

I'd give them a whole custom thing. And then they'd work out at the gym. Originally, it was five days a week, and then I switched to three days a week. And so that's your offer. So the offer isn't like a monthly gym membership. It's just like, hey, get into the weight loss challenge. You do the thing. And then you're signing up people as they walk through the door.

Yep. And what happened is, and I still do like this in terms of businesses in generals. I do like having to find in programs on the front end because it gives a very specific outcome. for someone on a specific timeline. And what it really becomes is your onboarding process. So you can typically charge more for a one-time expense, usually three or four times more than you can on a recurring basis. And so what that affords you is the ability to liquidate acquisition costs more easily.

And so it's like if I can charge four times more for the first six weeks of service with somebody, I should do that because it costs me more, A, to onboard someone, and B, to acquire them. And so I should make more money in that first period of time. It makes sense. And so structuring business models that way is I've almost done that in every business I have. Got it. Did you feel weird about selling initially? No, I was begging for money. I needed the money. I got over it very quickly. I mean, it was just like I had this ethical, I had this like,

I'm superior, I'm not going to lower myself to selling. And then I was like, oh shit, I'm going to lose all the money I have. And so I didn't even know it was sales. I just said, like, I will help you. I promise, please. You know what I mean? Like, I didn't know what I was doing. But the thing is, you know, I had done 4,000 sales, consults before I ever consumed a piece of sales training. So, like, a lot of the stuff, I got, I learned most of the things I've learned through just doing it. And just on the on this notes, so you paid $3,000 for a Facebook ads weekend workshop heat type thing.

These days, so we're sort of almost 10 years on from that, do you think there's value in people paying for something like that or can everything just be learned on YouTube and there's no point in paying for a thing? Yeah, I think things can get learned. on YouTube. I think what you pay for is speed. So you pay for speed. You pay for trouble troubleshooting. You pay for somebody else who's already done it and not fucked up as many times as you're about to to get you there faster. Like I remember most of the, I've paid for tons of one-on-one stuff. So I had a guy who had a course. This is later. This is probably two,

three years later. I knew enough to make, you know, to get ads going. But like I really did, I wasn't like a genie at it. I just knew enough to get leads so I could sell them. But a few years later, I wanted to get more sophisticated. I wanted to learn how to retarget. I don't know any of that stuff. And so I paid a guy who had a course. He said, I don't do one-on-one. I only do courses. I don't sell my time. And I was like, it's America. Everyone sells their time. Just tell me what the price is. Went back and forth and finally, it was like $7.50 an hour. And I was like, done. Cool. And I think I did eight sessions with them. So it cost me like, $5,600.

And because I didn't want to just learn how to run ads. I want to learn how he would think through running my ads. And so the deal was he would get on. And then I would be like, this is all the stuff from last week. This is what I have. This is what I'm thinking of doing. Why is it wrong or what would you? And then I did all the clicking of the buttons and he would tell me why he would think about things in different ways. And so that was how I learned how. And it only took me like eight sessions. So I was like, I even have to go through a course.

I took eight hours and I learned the skill. Probably by the sixth time, I was like, I'm good. And I just did two more to make sure that nothing happened. Yeah. And now you've leveled up your baseline for how much money you can own by having this skill. Totally. So I spent $5,600. $5,600.

And if I wanted to go run ads for gyms, if that was all I wanted to do and have no employees, I could make $10, $20,000 a month easily if that's all I wanted to do. So like there's you know what I mean like you just keeps adding to your your skill set and stacking on top now I also knew how to sell there so you know you stack those two skills together all of a sudden I'm a hundred thousand a month skill right so they just keep multiplying and multiplying and multiplying and how old are you at this point when you just start your gym and you've signed this 5,000 a month lease? 23 sounds crazy yeah and so you said that was the riskiest thing that you've ever like what was going through your mind at the at the time if you can remember for like that because that's a pretty big big decision I? Not much. Not much, honestly. It was ignorance. It was, it was, I mean, I got lucky. You know what I mean? I got lucky that I didn't know what I didn't know. I probably wouldn't have advised myself to do that now. But I was fortunate that I, by chance, went to a workshop for, it was a marketing workshop. I didn't even know Facebook ads wasn't even advertised as the thing because no one even knew what they were. They'd don't even knew Facebook ads were a thing yet. And so I showed up. They're like, oh, there's these things you can run on. And I didn't use Facebook. I had one, but I didn't like, I wasn't like active on it. I was like very like productive mindset.

Like I don't use social media. Like I was very big on that whole thing. But he was like, oh, you can run ads on there. So I learned and it was two weeks before my gym open. If I had not had that, the plan going into the gym was the guy who I, I apprenticed under, he just ran groupons. And that was how he got. So that was my whole plan. I was like, I'll just run a group on and I'll just get people in the gym from that and I'll convert him.

That was his whole business model. That was what I was sold on. And then I ran a coupon on too. do. And I can get anybody. No one came in. And I ran the same Groupon because I was in the most competitive part of Southern California. I was in Huntington Beach. I was in Orange County. There's a hundred fucking gyms that are running Groupons. And so he had a more established business. He'd been doing it for 20 years. So when he ran a Groupon, people all bought it. Every every month he was getting like 120 people a month coming in for Groupon's. So it was free customer acquisition. It was free. He was getting paid to

get these people in the door. I didn't have any of that. And so I by chance. went to a workshop two weeks beforehand. And that is, like, honestly, it's the only reason. I mean, who knows? I probably would have tried to figure out another way, but it would have been tough. You said that quitting your job felt like the riskiest thing. Yeah. What did that feel like?

Because at that point, you were making like 4K a month of the personal training you stuff, weren't you? So why did quitting your job feel particularly risky? But it didn't feel, it didn't feel regular. It didn't feel consistent. I was like, this is one time. I don't know how long this is going to last. You know what I mean? Like, it didn't feel like a regular thing.

But it wasn't even that because that would have been a math decision, which at the time, it was not a math decision. It was an emotional decision, which for me was I'm leaving the path that I spent the last, however, my, basically my entire life leading towards, which is management consulting, business school, like the whole thing. Yeah. And then, you know, Middle Eastern father, same deal. Yep. You know, he was like, this is a terrible idea. I strongly disapprove of this. And we didn't talk for a while. You know what I mean? Because he's like just throwing it all. way. So that was very tough for me. It was that. It was just that. And I mean, at the end of the day, like my, my final decision came down to, I mean, I gave you the risk things, which is like, I'll have a good story, like blah, blah, blah. But I was, I was not really willing to let that be the story. Because I just didn't want him to be right. And so I was just going to do anything to not make him have that I told you so moment. I just like, I was going to, I was going to fucking die. I just wasn't going to do it. And so, um, the final decision came down to a point where I was so

miserable at the job that I had. Because I really didn't like the job. Like, I was fortunate. I think if I had liked my job, I don't know if I'd even be an entrepreneur. I just really hated the job I was in. And so I disliked the position, whatever, or at least my day to day, enough that I said, I would either have to die to him or die to myself. And I felt dead inside at the time. And so I was like, I don't want to continue life living this way.

I would rather accept myself and have him reject me than me reject myself and have his approval. And that was ultimately the decision that allowed me to do it. Now, I was still a pussy about it. And I drove halfway the cross-country. before I called and told him, because I didn't want him to be able to, like, tell me to come over to convince me that I could come back because he did. He was like, ah, come over for lunch, we'll talk about it. Because he would always just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure you want to say, we'll talk about over lunch.

You know what I mean? Then you would always talk me off the edge. And I was like, no, I'm in Ohio. It's like, I'm gone. He's like, what about your condo? And I was like, it's there. He's like, well, what are you going to do? I was like, I'll sell it. He's like, well, you're not going to sell it. I'm going to have to do with it. I was like, I'm going to coming back. Damn. How's your relationship with your dad today? We're good. We're good. I mean, he's, he's proud of me now and he's happy about all that stuff. I mean, he's got plenty to be proud of in terms of material success, so he can rest easy on that. Yeah, I had a similar, I think when I took the decision to leave medicine after two years of working, and at that point,

my YouTube channel, my YouTube channel was making way more than I ever would as a doctor, but it still didn't feel like a mathematical decision. It was very much, an emotional thing. The whole Asian family, like, medicine is like the pinnacle of all of the things, like 10 years of some cost, et cetera, et cetera. And what it took, weirdly, was I was on Lewis Hose's podcast. Yeah, yeah. He told me this story. And he was, he just like, sort of talked to me out of it, which is bloody hell. I've never considered it in such stark terms before. And that was what made the decision to be like, you know what? Let's say goodbye to medicine, at least for a while and see what happens. Yeah, it's only for a while. And I can always go

back to. The thing is, once you have, I mean, you have an MD, you can do it. I mean, you always go back to it if you want to. Okay. So we, at this point, you are sort of in your early 20s, you've got your gym, you're paying 5K a month and you're getting people coming in through the door to do your six-week transformation program and you're up selling them on the longer term thing after the fact. What happens next in the story? The gym starts being successful. It grows by $5,000 a month for the first seven months. It goes up to $35,000 a month nine. I had the whole gym outsourced. So I was just managing it. By month 15, I took the profit from that gym to open my second gym. gym, launched that one profitably. Now, this one, I learned a lot at that point. So I pre-launched it at full capacity, did it the right way. Then I opened location three, four, and five. And then using the same concept, then I went and I felt like I was stagnating. I felt like I didn't know what to do next. I joined an internet mastermind.

And they were like, if you're really this good at business, you shouldn't be owning gyms. You should be like teaching people how you fill your gyms up so fast. And so then I transitioned to this. turnkey like I fly out and do the thing, which I make a hundred grand a month on with no employees. I was like, this is cool. So I did that for a year-ish. And then there's a series of a million series of fortunate events that happens during this period of time, lose all the money like twice. I sell the gyms. I go all in on the new concept. We switch from doing the turnkey system to doing a licensing model. And then that was 2017. And that's when everything, that's when everything

just took off like a rocket. What does it like, so let's say, someone's listening to this and they're into fitness and they're thinking, you know what, I'd like to own a gym. What does, like, is it something you'd recommend? Can you make any money owning a gym these days? What's the deal with that? You can. You can make money owning a gym if you love, if you, you have to love small business

ownership. And it has to be about really being a love with the product and the experience. It's just like, you know, we have this kind of thing with a lot of the gyms is once someone understands how to run a seven figure or multi seven figure gym, you now have the skill set to run a 10 million. other business. It's just a limited opportunity vehicle. It's a great vehicle to learn how to do everything because you have to do everything in a gym. And I think some of the best entrepreneurs are the best salespeople, especially learn how to sell in fitness because you get so many reps. You talk to 10, 20 people a day.

Just rep after rep after. So you get very good at that. And you have to deal with people because it's an all-service business. So you have a lot of headcount for very low revenue. Like there's lots of things that are very good to learn. When I had the same headcount with the turnkey sales model, I had a third of the employees and I was making four times the revenue. You know what I mean? And then when we went from there to the licensing model, I went from, I went from eight employees to like 30 employees, that just like that first year. And we did like seven million. And then the next year, we did 26. You know, it was just like, it was just a huge growth. So it was just more leverage. What does turnkey mean? They didn't have to do anything. I'd fly out. We'd do the marketing. We'd do

that. We'd spend the money. We'd work the leads. We'd do the sales. Like, they didn't do have to do anything. I'd just hand them customers. You were confident enough in your ability to, get customers and convert them to things that they were just absolutely signing up for this. But hell yes, you can transform my gym. Yeah, they don't pay you $100,000 or whatever, yeah. They didn't have to pay me anything. I just took 100% of the cash I collected. Okay.

So then what are they getting out of it? Oh, are they getting the recurring revenue? Yeah. Levels of wealth. So you are very open about kind of net worth and money and stuff. And I just love the way you talk about it in such a matter of fact way. One thing that I've been curious about is like, what are the levels of wealth at... beyond which, like, you get significant diminishing returns.

People say 75K is the peak happiness and then, but like, clearly there are people that, you know, 300K is better than 75K, a million is better than 300k. Like, have you got in mind a rough sort of ladder of at what level of wealth unlock certain things? Yeah, I think there's like the, I don't have to worry about any basic needs level. And then there's the I don't have to worry about discretionary spending level within reason. You know what I mean? Like I can get, I can go out for drinks. I can go to a fancy restaurant and it's not going to, you know, affect me. I can buy appetizers and not just buy,

you know, the cheapest thing on the menu with no appetizers, no alcohol and call that the dinner. So Layla spends a lot more money than I do because we just have different. But that being said, I spend money on other stuff. So like, I spend a lot of money only on information. It's all I spend my money on. It's just information, access, like that's all I spend my money on. And that stuff is expensive. You know what I mean? She offered one guy, 350, grand for an hour so I could just learn from him, you know what I mean, just for context. So, like, we'll spend whatever it takes to learn anything. Yeah. But, like, it's always been the highest return for me. So for me, it's just, I like, sure, let's go. You know what I mean? Like, I just,

I've made so many, every, every penny I've made has come from knowledge. And if I can buy someone else's 10 years and say, if I can save a year of my life for 350 grand, why would I not spend that? You know what I mean? So we've got needs, we've got discretionary spending where you're not worried about appetizers and stuff. What's, yeah. And then, and then, you have what I would consider like luxury wealth, which is probably like, you know, a hundred grand a month. But it all depends on what you're willing to save. And so like Layla and I have always lived on less than 10% of what we make. So whatever we make, it's 10% of that is what we're kind of willing to spend. I don't even think we spend that now. We probably spend about

5% of what we make. Still a lot of money, but it's not a lot relative because we're both actually pretty risk-averse, but we're not illogical because some people, I know there's some people in the YouTube space I was having a conversation with her, you know, clearing, clarinet figures and are like splitting entrees at dinner. I mean, dude, like you, we literally made more money than this dinner cost while sitting here. You know what I mean? Like I was, I was having a conversation with my father-in-law and he offered to pay for, for lunch or something. And I was like, while we have waited in line, I have made more money than this lunch costs. Let me cover lunch. I don't care. So it really depends on your,

on your savings versus spending percentage that you're comfortable with. So that's the big multiplier on those levels, but I think those are the three levels, and it just depends on what that percentage is for you. So if you're a five to one person, I want to save 80%, spend 20, then your needs, before, when you go from needs to, you know, for level one discretionary, you need to still five extra income to do that, but it's just that that smaller percentage. So I do think that's individual. I'm super risk averse, ironically. So what do you do with the catch? Like if you're spending 10% or sort of what happens to the other 90%? Are we now going S&P 500 or? Is that still like?

No, I count it. We invest, but I have a bigger, I kind of a bigger play for what we're going to do. So right now I'm just stacking it. And I've always been a pretty big cash stacker. I always have a lot of liquidity. I just feel better with it. People are like, you're not getting the return.

I was like, dude, I make a ton of money. I don't like, that's not like, what am I getting the return for? So I would rather have big chunks of cash that I can go on big offense when I want it. Then it's just different ways to doing things. You know what I mean? I also have Layla, and so she handles a ton of stuff internally. And so I wouldn't be able to do some of the investment stuff that we do. I probably wouldn't do some of the investment stuff we do right now.

That takes a little bit more time, like deal analysis, et cetera, if I didn't have her. So like, if I didn't have Layla and I were just trying to live the most passive to a lifestyle, I'd probably just put everything into a dividend ETF, makes three, four percent a year and still gets the appreciation. And I would just love paying down or paying up that dividend check every month and just watching it go up. And it would probably just become a game for me. Because it's truly passive.

You know what I mean? Like that's just truly zero management passive income, which I do like from a cash flow perspective. And qualified dividends for anyone who's curious gets taxed at capital gains rates, which are lower. So even if you make a ton of money, you're still only paying, you know, 20, 23% depending where you're at. So for me, I was like, okay, that works.

It's still relatively tax efficient to get the cash flow from the, from the investment. But for me, though, I am going to take bigger risks with the wealth I have because it's kind of the next level of the game for me, is taking big bets. So what does that look like broadly? You'll see more stuff for me on the media side, probably in the next 12 to 18. I'll be probably making really major investments in media.

Because like, you know, here's a fun one, which you can appreciate from a YouTube perspective. It costs me like less than a dollar. Or it costs me a dollar, whatever. It's around a buck per subscriber. per month. Now, I'm taking my entire media team cost, which goes across all platforms, which is not really fair. But if I were to, if I even took that whole media team and put it against YouTube, it costs me around a dollarish a month per subscriber. And I make more than

a dollar a year per subscriber just in ad sets. So like from a return, you know what I mean? Like that doesn't include like what I actually make money, which is my, you know, my deal flow side. So it's, you know what I mean? It's like, well, then I should, you know, port my money there. And I will be, I'll be taking bigger and bigger chunks of companies. Right now we do minority deals, but I will be taking majority, interesting companies where it makes sense. So it's like if I see a company that makes sense within the entire portfolio,

so I give an example. So like if somebody has an accounting firm, it would be great to just have the accounting at Holdco and I'll just buy 100%. And then I can provide those services internally. And then because of the buying power that I have between the entire kind of conglomerate for lack of better term. You know, if I have, you know, $250, million a year in, in business that I can push towards something. It's like, I'm not going to push that kind of money towards something that I don't own majority of, at least. So those are kind of the two directions that I'll probably go.

And it's just reinvesting more in the team and, you know, taking, I mean, from a, from a money allocation perspective, more of that would go towards the majority purchases than the team. But that's just, you know, fundamentally how I see it. Like, I'll get better returns on that stuff than I will in the And I have to take if I want to get to a billion, I have to make some bigger bets, which is fine. 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. What's the goal here? Is the goals to get to a billion?

The goal is to get to $10 billion. Yeah, the goal is to get to $10 billion. But the mission is to just make real business knowledge available for everyone. And so that's what I'm trying to do. And so everything I do aligns that. That's why I make the books. If I make the courses, that's why we do the YouTube stuff. That's why we make the shorts.

It's why we do podcasts. That's why we do all of it. It's just to make real business education available to everyone. But I have to answer the question, why should I listen to you? And I want to be unassailable in that perspective, A, and then B, I do believe that I'll gain more perspective as things grow. So it's more than I'm just curious what I'm going to learn going from, you know, a $200 million year portfolio to a billion dollar year portfolio to a $10 billion year portfolio. And so I have wished that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Warren Buffett would come out with the course. Wouldn't that be amazing?

But they didn't. And so my goal is to just document the path that we learn along the way. and when I die, hopefully there'll just be a whole bunch of people who are younger than me who make way more money than I do at my age because they were able to just shortcut a lot. Why is that the mission? Like I'm making business education available. Where's the kind of emotional resonance with you for that thing? Because that's what set me through.

Free as in free from the corporate wage slavery kind of stuff. Not even corporate wage. Like, I'm free. I can do whatever. I don't have to do anything. If I didn't want to. So I just get, I just get optionality, which is all I want. I just want to have options.

And so I wouldn't have that if all of this stuff didn't exist. And I have had many mentors and many coaching programs and many courses. And so, you know, I would say that I differ from the vast majority of the talking heads in the business space and that I, to my knowledge, I'm the only one who came up through that world. Like you look at Andy Faselli, you look at my lap, you look at Gary. You know what I mean? Like there's, there's, there's, there's, they've, none of them came up through learning stuff on YouTube going to send a and ours going to coaching programs, I did. So I'm a huge advocate for for for for alternative education and you know, paying for skills as fast as you can. To what extent do you think about the

balance between I guess optimizing for freedom, freedom fund, flexibility, all of that like living whatever life you want kind of vibes versus some people say that once you get to a certain point, you realize that oh, actually more money, more status, more success, more freedom is not actually thing and actually the thing I care about is investing in a relationship and like having a family and having kids and like buying a house and the sort of putting down roots versus having wings kind of vibe. I have options. So if I change my mind, I can change my mind. But as I see it right now from where I sit, the thing that lights me up every day is making business knowledge available everyone. And I mean, I spend an inordinate amount of time. Like I spend so much time on those

books and presentations that I make when I give speeches and stuff. Like every presentation I make up to this point in my career has been custom. And that takes me like three days, you know what I mean, to make a presentation. So like if you've seen Last Dance Michael Jordan, there's this, there's this moment where he says that he always has to bring his all because it's the, there's some person who spent hard earned money and it's the only game they're ever going to see. And he wants to bring his best for that. And so that's how I see it. You know what I mean? Like there's people who will never, they spent real money to be there and it's like they're hoping that they can get

one thing from this thing that's going to like change their life and I want to honor that. What does like a day in the life look like for you? Oh it's I mean I could share my screen but it's it's it's uh I I work on my own stuff until about one most days. Um so usually five to one is Alex time to do whatever. Um, which is five am to one. Yeah.

Um, okay. Cool. Um, and then usually from from one to four, one to four-thirty-ish is when I do meetings. And then that's it. Go to the gym, eat, and then I'm done. Sounds pretty chill. And where are you based at the book? We're all over right now. The hub is in Vegas, but we're here, we're all over.

I mean, we travel a lot. So it's kind of like this is our in-between when we're traveling spot. I remember you're just talking an interview about like how you like your office to be very, like sparse and not overly fancy and stuff. And that's one of the things that really, I really vibe with in your videos in that you seem to, except until recently, you seem to just be filming on some shitty webcam and just like spouting knowledge. And it's just like, mind blowing.

Because you haven't got the, and there's like a charm to the jankiness. And it's just like, whoa, shit. I'm getting the real truth without any of the production value that like normally gets in away. Yeah. Again, was that deliberate? Is that just accidental? Is that just how it's ended up being?

I mean, that's how it started. You know, I mean, like, I'm a big, I'm a big believer and just start. And you'll, the path illuminates as you walk. You know, I mean, we now have, I mean, I started without a media team. So I just clicked record and I would send it. I mean, I had my media team at gym launch, but it wasn't, that business wasn't built on content. It was built on outbound and paid that.

So I just said, you know, clip, you know, clip it, put a thumbnail on it and post it on my YouTube. I don't even know how to upload them just to show you how silly was. I was like, just upload it. And so I would just put it in a Dropbox and they would upload it. And then that was, um, That was what I did for the first, I don't know, six, nine months. And then we hired somebody to actually do recordings with the camera.

And so he's like, you know, if we did it like on the couch, it would look a lot better. I was like, okay, that's fine. So it took the same amount of time for me. Now I just had some more people who could help. And it has shown, despite, you know, as much as I would lament, you know, I would love to just do it like this. You know, the audio quality is better, the video quality is better. and the newer videos definitely do better from an objective standpoint. So some people need to, you know, can't focus this long.

And so they need a little bit more happening. And so we can now, again, the whole point is to make it available to everybody. So that means that people who don't have the attention span, I need to make something available for them to. So I've just knew my best to, I'm just not going to bitch and moan about the fact that like people's attention span short. And like, some people are like, I can't cover anything in 60 seconds. I'm like, there's a hell of a lot you can cover in 60 seconds if you know what you're saying. So, you know what I mean? I'm just not one to complain about what it is what it is.

And so I will do my best to match, you know, providing value to the context that people are consuming it. It seems like you're spending like, I don't know, half a million a month on content. Is that fair to say? No, no, no, no, no, no, not even close. I think we're spending about 100 grand a month. Oh, okay. If you said $1 per subscriber per month, it's what it's costing you. Yeah, per year.

I make a dollar per year. Oh, per year. Oh, okay, cool. I was thinking like per month. Oh, shit, that's a lot. Yeah. No, my channel makes, I think, as of today, like right now, it makes $41, $42,000 a month. And then Lela's, Lela also use the same team.

I think hers makes six or seven, something like that. So that's just that. And then the book, the book revenue comes on top of that, which I count those kind of the same thing because I think that's where a lot of people find us. Those two things together, you know, are more than that. I technically spend a little bit less than I'm making, which kind of further reinforces the point. It just depends if we're just saying only ads,

if we include the book, whatever. So what does 100K month, like, what does that look like at the back end of the content production engine? Yeah, it's not huge. Right now we've got four in-house. I still do Twitter. So I do Twitter full-time. That's still just me.

And it's because I like it. I would do it anyways. We have a podcast vendor, a LinkedIn vendor, a YouTube vendor a shorts slash TikTok slash Reels vendor and by and by vendor you mean like a company that yeah okay

now we have our internal components because like my whole playbook is is pretty simple which is go find the best person who's already doing this at a high level pay whatever to get them to do it be clear that your intention is to take it in-house over the long call start to go with them only hire somebody to be the inner

the interface between those two, who has the skill set, and then eventually get to the point where you double your volume, because you do half from the vendor, half from the in-house person. When the in-house person beats the vendor, you fire the vendor. And so what does it look like to work with like an agency on the YouTube side? Are they telling you that, hey, Alex, we need to do a video with this title and this thumbnail, go talk? Or, like, what does that look like? So my team does, because I have in-house team too.

So they will, they'll send me, like, I could show you a document, but it's like the next film session, they have like eight ideas for videos. I'll just pick the three that I'm feeling. And so they have like headline idea, talking points that they've grabbed from my other videos and shorts that they've kind of combined together into one video. And I use that as a loose outline for what I'm going to talk about. It has to be minimum. And this is one of the things that my team gets. It's like it has to be minimal on my side because I'm still doing other stuff. You I mean. So yeah, that's my, that's the, that's the big, big. And so is the, is, is part of, as part of the overall mission of making business knowledge accessible to everyone, is part of that, like,

you getting as big as possible in all the social platforms as quickly as possible with as much content as possible, like the Gary V model? Yeah. Probably. 100%. Nice. We're still not even, like, we're barely scratching what I would consider to be phase one of that, but we're on just phase one. What are the next few phases? We're right now, we're just getting all the platforms. then we need to maximize all the platforms, which we're currently not doing. We have to take it all in-house. We have to do that, which we haven't done yet. I'm not running any paid of any kind, which I would add on.

I don't have any affiliates or endorsements, which I would add on. I don't have any, like, in terms of level of content, I would like to do some more like custom production stuff. That's more show-ish than just like, you know, seven ways to make a million dollars. without any money. So those are kind of like the direction of where I'd like to go with it, and it'll just, it'll take time. And that's fine. Like, great things take time. And do you think at all about sort of pitching certain content, like, like, for example, pitching it to a complete beginner who's never even heard of business versus pitching it to someone who hears how to level up your sales, which is a bit more advanced? Like, how do you think of that balance? It's a discussion

that we actually have internally a lot. So I believe, because our beliefs shape our world, that we can make content that helps both. So $100 million offers, if you don't know what to sell, that will help you. If you sell shitloads of stuff, it will help you. So I do believe that if you, I think there's, if if, if things are packaged and presented properly, like sales to your, to your point, could I make a half step and just call it persuasion? And all of a sudden, it's not sales guys, it's sales guys, marketers and general population that want to influence people. So all of a sudden, it becomes a much more open topic. So I'm trying to think about all Like this is what I'm asking.

Like this is today, Alex is what I'm thinking about right now because I think that there, and you know this better than I do, but this is just my inkling is that there's a natural ceiling that you start to approach. Now, we haven't seen any slowdown at all. But like I would imagine that there's a ceiling that you begin to approach as you start to kind of own, I don't say own, but like take up a big slice of like brain share of a certain niche. Right.

And so the only way to expand beyond that, I think I've, I've known people who went from sales to marketing sales to business to make money. You know what I mean? So they go broader and broader. But I think if you have the depth of knowledge behind you, you can make something wide yet also deep. So that's a belief that I'm choosing right now is that we can do both. We can make content that is wide and deep.

It's just harder, but I think we can do it. So that is what I'm committing to. If you were to start the whole content thing again, like from scratch, what are some things that you might do differently? I would have started five years ago. that's what I would have done. The only thing I could wish worse for things to happen faster, the only thing that would happen faster is if I started earlier.

So that's it. But then there's also the caveat of like, I have credibility now that I didn't have five years ago. So, I mean, you could make the argument I did. I could probably just show my tax return when I was 27 and show 17 million dollars of income.

Like I could show that. I could have. I don't know. I could have. But like I don't, I honestly don't spend much time thinking about it. I'm content with what we're doing now. We know what plan we have to execute.

and so now we're just laying the bricks. Final thing I wanted to ask you about. So I think I heard you say in one of the interviews is that you've had six-pack abs since the age of like 16 or something like that. Yeah, let's see if I still got it. No, oh, love it. I still got it.

I've had six-pack abs on my kind of annual bucket list for the last several years and just never really gotten there. Is there like a single resource? Is it a lack of knowledge or is it lack of knowledge or motivation? Motivation. Okay, well, that's a totally different thing. You know what I mean? Like, you might also want to be a trillionaire.

You might want a lot of things. But, like, if you don't want it enough, it doesn't matter. I think it's just more accepting that you're not going to have it because you're not willing to pay the price and that's fine. What is the price? You like want to be motivated. Yeah. What is the price of a six-pack? It's not that hard, though.

That's why I'm like, and everyone who's listening is like, fuck this guy. I don't know. I've counted my macros for 20 years. Have you? Okay. So go away. But it's just calorie deficit. You know what I mean?

It's just like there's tons of people in Africa who have six packs. They just don't see the sign of status there. It's just everyone's skinny. You know what I mean? And so six pack is purely body fat percentage. That's it. It's just body fat percentage. It just means you eat too much.

That's all. And a six pack plus being jacked is progressive overload protein. I've seen one of your videos where you sort of break that down. And then to get to six pack abs, you're just sort of calorie deficit and while training broadly. I mean, truly, that is it. And so, hit every muscle group, do it three times a week, add weight or reps over the bar, over a long period of time.

That's all you have to do. And then eat less than you burn. Do that for a long period of time. You'll gain muscle, you'll lose fat, and then you'll look up after 18 months and you'll have a six-pack. Like, that's it. When people are signing up to the weight loss programs or like a gym program and stuff, presumably they know this.

So, like, is it that like the motivation gap? accountability gap, like what is it that is the, the, the quick secret source that makes someone lose the way? So to your point, even of alternative education in general, when you say, hey, you could learn the stuff on YouTube, et cetera, et cetera. The issue that we're solving for is not that it's not a knowledge gap. The issue is an accountability gap is that people don't do stuff. That is the primary issue with all humans in general, is that they will not endure short-term discomfort for a long-term achievement. That is it. You hack that. You hack success. That's all it is. And so it's just how can I, how can I make it more inconvenient for them to not follow

than to follow it? So I can still lean into their humanity and just say, how can I make it more uncomfortable for them to not follow it? That's an element of that is accountability is that someone says, hey, bad boy, you had a cookie when you shouldn't have. You feel bad. Feel bad. I am punishing you.

Because like the only way to change, you only have two things you can do to change behavior, right? You can reinforce or you can threat, you can punish. That's it. You have carrots and sticks. That is literally it. And so currently they're getting reinforced by their, you know, by their current way of living. So think about this way. What is not having a six-pack do for you?

It does something for you because you keep buying it. What does not having a six-pack do for me? Yeah, because you choose something else over a six-pack. So what does that do for? The food just tastes too good. And I know that I should, yeah. But it's probably not. And I get a McDonald's drive-through at like midnight and I know it's bad and like, yeah.

It could be convenience. Convenience. And then the store you wrap around like, I'm an entrepreneur. I need to just do things on my own time. etc, right? So I think if you, like, it's unpacking those things

of just trying to find your own bullshit and or if it's meaningful for you. Because like, I understand why it wouldn't be. I was on this podcast and I got an argument with the, the spokesperson who's like, don't you agree that every entrepreneur

should be working every day? And I was like, no. And it did not go the direction he was expecting. He looks at me and he expects, I'm going to say that. I'm like, no. Like, what are we solving for?

If you just want to live a long time, then just walk. Walk and don't eat a lot. Like, it's all you have to do. Like, literally it. That's all you have to do. should live the longest amount possible. Like, I am going to live a shorter amount of time because I have more muscle mass. I'm shortening my life by being how big I am. So it just depends

on what's what problem we're solving. But given how you look now, you could, you could look fit in 12 months. Like, you could look like a person that people are like, oh, wow, this guy works out. Because you don't have a baseline of fat that you really have. I mean, you do. You have body fat. But like, you're not, you're not overweight. You're just, you have, your body composition is poor, not poor. But you know what I'm saying. It's not, it's not what you want. Yeah, I know, you think, yeah. Nice. So figure out where you want, find out what the price is and just be willing to pay that price. Yeah, or don't, which is also fine. I don't buy everything that I see on the shelf. If it were free, I'd want it, right? Maybe if I were, you know, a hoarder of some sort. But like,

we like, the thing that everybody has is we all have a wallet with the same dollars in it. We have $24, right? And so it's like, everything has a ticket on it. And we're just choosing to spend that dollar, whatever we want. Now, $8, we got to spend on sleep. It's like, okay, well, now I only have, you know, $16 left. I'm like, all right, well, what is this cost? Well, this cost a dollar day. It's pretty, every day I'm committing to a dollar of my $12 or whatever, my $16, it's a big cost. Does it make sense? Coming back to the six-pack example again, like how much time effort, do you, how many dollars do you pay each day to maintain the six-pack? Minimal. I have a passive income body now. Okay, fine. I already, yeah, this is passive dividends. I don't need to do much

to maintain this. To get to here is much harder. To maintain here is easy. I mean, think about this. How much effort does it cost you right now to maintain your current body? Oh, zero. Absolutely. Right. That's how it really does not take, like, unless you give your body a reason to eat muscle, it's been a lot of resources to build it, right? And so you can have minimal stimulation on a weekly basis to maintain contractile tissue and provided you're eating sufficient protein, your body will take the protein it needs from your intake rather than it's stores of protein, which is your muscle. I mean, if you watch the video, it's like you just, oh, shoot. A pound a day of meat or something.

Yeah. Nice. Alex, thank you so much. This has been absolutely wonderful. Appreciate you. Thanks so much, man. Take it.