Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPClassic: Alex Hormozi, From Soul-Sucking Job to $100M in Revenue | Entrepreneurship

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

Defying his father's wishes, Alex Hormozi left his stable job to open a gym. But after a failed partnership left him sleeping on the gym floor, he attended a marketing workshop that turned everything around. He used online marketing to secure his first 27 customers, and within three years, expanded to six locations. He has since run and sold multiple successful businesses. In this episode, Alex chats with Hala about his inspiring entrepreneurial journey, sharing the valuable insights he gained along the way.  Alex Hormozi is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and co-founder of Acquisition.com, a portfolio company overseeing multiple businesses. He is the bestselling author of $100M Offers, where he shares strategies for creating irresistible business proposals. In this episode, Hala and Alex will discuss: - Alex’s upbringing and come-up story - The efficiency of learning from experts - Using death as a motivator to accomplish your dreams - The marketing workshop that fueled his success - How Alex scaled his gym chain by monetizing his knowledge - Why your life partner is critical to your success - Respect over chemistry for a successful marriage  - The pros and cons of marrying your business partner - When it's okay to leave money on the table  - How he rapidly scaled his business using the licensing model - And other topics… Alex Hormozi is a first-generation Iranian-American entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. In 2013, he started his first brick-and-mortar business. Then, he transitioned from gym ownership to founding GymLaunch, a fitness business consultancy, which expanded to over 4,000 locations within four years. Alongside his wife, Leila, Alex bootstrapped three additional companies, which generated $120 million in sales. Then, the Hormozis founded Acquisition.com through which they manage a portfolio of bootstrapped companies. Alex is the bestselling author of $100M Offers, where he shares strategies for creating irresistible business proposals. He is also the host of The Game podcast.  Sponsored By: Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify Indeed - Get a $75 job credit at indeed.com/profiting. Yahoo Finance - For comprehensive financial news and analysis, visit YahooFinance.com Kajabi - Get a free 30-day trial to start your business at Kajabi.com/PROFITING LinkedIn Marketing Solutions - Get a $100 credit on your next campaign at linkedin.com/YAP Industrious - Visit industriousoffice.com and use code PROFITING to get a free week of coworking when you take a tour!  Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship podcast, Business, Business podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal development, Starting a business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side hustle, Startup, mental health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth mindset, Career, Success, Entrepreneurship, Productivity, Careers, Startup, Entrepreneurs, Business Ideas, Growth Hacks, Career Development, Money Management, Opportunities, Professionals, Workplace, Career podcast, Entrepreneurship podcast   Learn more about YAP Media's Services - yapmedia.io/

What's up, Yapam? Today we are replaying one of my most iconic episodes, and that is with Alex Hermosey. Alex Ramosey is one of the most well-known entrepreneurs, and he's a sales and marketing expert. He started his entrepreneurial journey running brick and motor gyms, and after taking some good advice from Russell Brunson, who, by the way, is now in my YAP Media Podcast Network, he ended up selling those gyms and eventually licensed his business model. to start the company gym launch. So he was able to scale what he did with his own gym with gym launch, and then he helped 4,000 plus locations and four years do the same thing. During the same period, Alex and his wife, Leila Hermose, bootstrapped and grew three other companies to $120 million in sales

across four different industries. And in 2020, they launched Acquisition.com to help promising internet companies scale and grow their portfolio to over $100 million per year. Talk about couple goals. Alex also wrote one of my favorite business books of all time, $100 million offers. I find myself time and time going back to that book. It is a classic business book.

And we cover a lot of the concepts found in that book in part two. But today, we are replaying part one as our Yap classic. We're going to go deep into Alex's super inspiring rags to rich a story. There's so many lessons to learn just from his story. And the next Friday, we're going to get really tactical with sales and marketing strategies. So mark your calendars for part two next week. If you guys can't wait for part two, we're going to put episode 199 in the show notes.

I'll also link out to my episode with Layla Hermosey. So if you guys want to binge the Hermosies and Yap this weekend, go for it. Right now, let's get into part one, young improfitors. I give you Alex Hermose. Tell us about what your parents were like. I know you haven't really talked much about your mom in terms of your upbringing. And what was young Alex from Osloid growing up before you went off to college? I mean, I was a pretty quiet kid, I think, for the most part.

It was just me and my dad, for the most part growing up. I didn't see my mother very much. And so that's probably why I don't mention her as much. That being said, I had a Middle Eastern father. He was like, I got out of Iran because of school. And so do well in school. And you too will succeed. That was kind of the path.

There wasn't really like an option of not trying hard at school. Like it just wasn't a door. You know what I mean? Like, I think there's some things in America that are a little bit different. I genuinely believe that everybody can get straight A's. Now, I think the amount of effort that would be required for everyone is different. But I think given the time constraints that people have to apply themselves to school, anyone could do it. That's just Alex's perspective on the world.

I don't think it would be easy for everyone, but I think everyone could do it. And I think most people, or oftentimes there's different things that are reinforced in their household. Like there's some people who are straight A's at football. And so that's the thing that their parents reinforce and reward. Because maybe that dad thought that he relives his football days through his son or whatever. And so that's what gets reinforced. And they spend three hours a day practicing and 30 minutes a day on all of the homework for all the stuff. So anyways, me growing up was mostly quiet.

I think as I got into high school, I came into myself a little bit more. I was a little bit of an angrier guy. I would say I was more of a lone wolf during that period. I mean, I had groups of friends and whatnot, but I wouldn't say that I was particularly close with, you know, like deep. I'm still in touch with one guy, but that's kind of the extent of it. From there, I went to Vanderbilt

because I did decently well at school, so I was able to get in. I think I needed to get out of the house for me to kind of just be me more because there's a lot of, I'm sure, from, and this isn't just a Middle Eastern thing, a lot of Asian parents. It's just probably just more foreign parents.

It's just a little bit more pressure, I think, than is common in the American standard to conform a certain way. And I definitely conformed. I definitely followed the path. It was only when I was very, very sad after I had graduated college and I did it in three years and did,

you know, I did all the stuff. You know what I mean? I was president of fraternity, vice president of the powerlifting team. I did all that. And then when I got out and had my two years of consulting, it was a very miserable time for me. And it had nothing to do with the,

you know, with the people or anything like that. It was me. I just, I was like, this is it. This is all there is. Like, it's just more of this for the rest of my life. And that was incredibly depressing to me. And so that was when I had to kind of challenge the original paradigm, which is maybe the plan that was laid out for me was not my plan, but someone else's plan.

I'm making progress towards a goal that I do not want in terms of my dad's viewpoint of me and my success, which was at the time all that I cared about. And so for me, it was really just not wanting to be alive, which became my kind of thing that got me to change, which I was like, if I wake up every day hoping that I don't wake up, then either I can just live the rest of my life like this or I can just die to somebody else. I was like, because right now I'm dead to me. That was kind of the internal dialogue was I have to die to my father in order to live for me. And so that was 2012, 2013. I drove across the country. I called my dad to tell him that I had left halfway there because otherwise I knew he would talk me out of it. I mean, very transparently.

Like, my dad had enough influence over me at the time that I literally had to physically separate myself in order to not be convinced. Because I knew that if I had not done that, he would have convinced me to stay. because I had tried multiple times before that to be like, I'm not going to do this, I hate this, I don't want to do it. He would always be like, you know, when I was a resident, we didn't sleep. This is just, you know what I mean? And to be fair, there's probably a certain degree that's true. You know what I mean?

And he's like, just got to get through this and you'll get to the other side. And I think there's an element of that that's true. And maybe I was too soft. Who knows? Like, I don't know. I really was very, very sad. And so just the idea of being free was very liberating for me. Then I went to start my own business and was shocked by just how hard it was.

For me sleeping on the floor at my first gym, I remember having the story of the come-up and that everybody loves the idea of like, yeah, you slept on the floor. Like, it was not glorious. It was very lonesome. I didn't know anyone because I was in California. I'm from Baltimore. So I knew no one. And I was sleeping underneath of a warehouse where homeless people would be on top, like breaking bottles at all hours of the night.

You've missed a whole big part of your story. So let's back up. You ended up becoming an apprentice for some guy in California. So you ended up driving, where were you, from Maryland to California. Like you said, you called your dad halfway. And you decided you were going to basically work for free for this guy, 4 a.m. to 10 p.m. or whatever it was. And you followed this guy around a gym and you tried to learn as much as you can because you were obsessed, right, with fitness and gyms.

And so you wanted to break out and learn from somebody else who had already done it. So tell us about that period of your life. So I emailed 40 gym owners because I knew from the consulting world, which is what I had graduated into, that the best way to learn is to seek out experts. And so they have already consolidated the information because there's no lack of information in the world. Like the issue is sifting through it at this point.

And so finding people who've already pre sifted it is more efficient. So I emailed 40 guys. He was the only when he got back to me. He had a seven-figure gym. His name was seven-figure Sam. And so anyways, I just showed up at his doorstep. a few days later, he was very surprised by that. He had a mastermind, which I joined, even though I didn't have a gym. It was for gym owners. And he said, yeah, if you join,

then you'll start the gym the right way. And I was like, okay. But then I didn't have a gym. So he said, do you want to work for me? So he ended up paying me as an employee, even though I paid him for a mastermind. It was a very weird setup. But anyways, I worked from at the gym, and he said I could be his apprentice because he didn't really have a program for me. So I just long out with them all day. And so he got to the gym at four and he would leave at four. So he worked four to four. I would usually stay an extra couple hours until six because I didn't know anybody. So I would just hang out the gym because at least there was people there that I kind of knew now. I worked there for 12 weeks. It was kind of a crash course. I mean, imagine spending 12 hours a day

with somebody who was a decent business owner at the time. You know, he had a seven-figure business. And so there's just so much that I learned so quickly. It's more like constructs. Like I didn't know things existed. It wasn't like I learned tactics. Like I I just didn't even know email marketing was a thing. I didn't know affiliate marketing was a thing. I didn't know what a landing page was. I didn't know what ads were. I didn't know sales as a term existed.

I didn't get it. And so I remember the first time somebody walked in, he's like, oh, go sign this girl up. She walked in. So I had no training, no script, no nothing. He just said, go sign this girl up. And I came from a management consulting background making slide deck. So I had no idea what I was doing. And so the girl came in and I was like, yeah.

So, yeah, the gym's 129 a month or whatever it is. And you want to sign up? and she was like, yeah, I just have to, I don't have my credit card with me. I just have to go get it. I was like, okay. And then I walked out two minutes later. And I was like, yeah, she's going to sign up. He was like, you closed her in two minutes? And I was like, yeah, I guess. He's like, you got the card? And I was like, no, but she'll be back. She said she's just going to go get a credit card. He's like, ah, like, it was like a bunch of guys around.

They all cracked up because I had no idea how it worked. And so, I was like, dude, if you don't get the card, you didn't close. Anyways, I went to a workshop for a weekend. It was like $3,000, which was a tremendous amount of money for me at the time. They promised that you'd make $10,000 by the end of the weekend. I did not make $10,000 by the end of the weekend, but they taught Facebook marketing. And this is 2013. And so I came back to Sam and I was like, hey, we should try this stuff.

I think it's going to work. He said, I try that. It doesn't work. I was like, just give me a grand and I'll test it. So he said, I'll split the profit with you after I make my money back. And so I ran the ads the way I'd learned at the workshop and made $6,000. and intruder was worried, he gave me $2,500.500. And that was kind of like the beginning of my taste into marketing. And during that period of time, I was looking for my own location.

That was like far enough away from his thing that I wasn't going to compete. You know what I mean? But close enough that I could still be there. So I went to Huntington Beach and found a old warehouse on Gothard and Talbert. And that's where I started my first two. That's so cool. What a great story. And so I want to talk about giving up something good to go after something better. I feel like this is such a big. lesson. I can relate because when I started my company, everybody was against me. I had a great corporate job. I was running a marketing department at Disney streaming services. Everyone was against me. My boyfriend of 10 years who I thought I was going to marry was so upset with me. I had to

break up with him to start my business. And I moved out. And that's when everything took off from me because I felt like somebody was stepping on my neck and I finally was like released from it. I'd love to talk about why it's okay to leave something good to go after. something better and what you learned from that? This is a really, really deep topic that I like a lot. And I don't think I've talked as much about it as I really like to. I think the hardest decisions in life are giving up good for great. And I think oftentimes what makes it hard is that your good is someone else's great

who's casting their projection onto you and saying, why would you give up great? And so it's really just about expectations and standards that we set for ourselves. And not buying into people's dreams about you that are smaller than your dreams for you. And so I think it's really just continually trading up dreams as you realize what you can do. Because my dreams now are significantly bigger than they were 10 years ago. And it's the scariest thing to do is to trade what you have now. It's basically trading the one in the hand for the two in the bush. So it's going counter the traditional common sense that people espouse. And most people are security driven. Most people don't achieve big shit. It makes sense that everybody around you

will tell you not to do it. Because for most of them, it wouldn't make sense. And many times you will fail. They will be right most of the time. But the thing is, you only need to be right once. And that's the piece that I feel like is missed, is that they will see someone try something on their own and then fail and then say see,

and then they will confirm their bias, rather than thinking like, well, if I do this a hundred times, I only need one time to be successful to be set up for the rest of my life. the biggest cost is time against expectations that we have for ourselves, or rather that we adopt from other people. And so this is for the listeners. If you could fail for 10 straight years, and then on your 11th year, make a $2 million year business, you are further along than the person

who made $100,000 a year that entire period of time. It's just people measure outcomes on too short of an interval. And that's why they don't get what they want. The goals that they have, because they measure with such a small interval, they can't see success anyways. It's like you can't make a billion dollars in a year. It's just not going to happen. I don't think there's anybody who's made it from zero to a billion in a year.

I could maybe nowadays who knows. But if you extend it on 10, anyone can do it. And also people don't understand your experience, what you've done for yourself, you know, what failures you've had in the past, how you've learned, and sometimes these big hard jumps actually have the most rewards. So let's go down a little tangent.

tangent. I think this is a great place to talk about nihilism. So you are a nihilist. And at this point in your time and your journey, we'll get back to your journey, you weren't one, but you are now. And you don't let other people, people's beliefs really impact the way that you move. And so I'd love to understand what nihilism is because for me, it was sort of a new, like not many people talk about it. And what is it that you like about being a nihilist and how does this philosophy enable you to take on your dreams without worrying about what other people think? Yeah, I'm glad you asked. Most of because I don't really like the label of nihilism in general.

I think it's just I got on an interview and someone said that and I was like, sure. But like Nile, I think it's Greek or Latin, comes from nil, which means nothing. But it really just means that you don't believe that something has inherent meaning. And so for me, that's incredibly liberating because it means that we are devoid of circumstance. nihilism, people ascribe meaning to that word, which is by and large, negative. I reject the term. I just inherently believe that things don't have inherent meaning and that we choose the meaning things have.

It does not mean that I live a meaningless life. It means that I choose the meaning that I want to ascribe to things. So I don't inherit the meaning that my father gave to having a job. I choose to ascribe my own meaning to that. And so all that happens from a behavioral standpoint is that we're changing the meaning of circumstances. And so it gives us a lot of liberty to live life as we see fit. And a lot of that comes, at least for me, big picture, because I have the belief that when I die, people will come to my funeral. People will argue over my belongings, over who gets what.

People will think that some people shouldered more of the responsibility of dealing with my funeral and my death than other people. some people will not be able to make it because something came up. And two months, three months, two years after I die, I will never be mentioned again. And so if people are not going to even care to show up to my funeral, why would I let them have any say over my life? Yeah. For me, a lot of it was unlearning projected judgments that I believed people had over the actions that I was taking when they weren't even thinking about me at all,

nor do they really care. Like, you get a hater comment. It ruins some person's day, but like, they don't really care about you. Like, they don't care. And even the very few people who really care who might actually speak at your funeral, like how many people are actually going to speak at your funeral? Probably not many. Even then, those people are going to go home.

They're going to look at their to do list and they're going to move on. And so it's like you have this whole life. And the whole time we're catering it to a lot of beliefs that other people have about us. and we don't take actions and we put things off for years, decades, because of judgment that isn't real. It's made up. And it's just hard to unlearn that. Believing that things don't have inherent meaning

and then that we have the choice to ascribe whatever meaning we want to things has been very liberating for me in terms of how I can approach business, timelines that I can ascribe success, how I see marriage, like, you know, all of these things. It's so interesting to me because we talk about death a lot on this podcast because a lot of business people bring it up. I had Robert Green on the show, and he talks about the law of death denial. And that's all about people avoid the thought of death because it scares them. But really, when you think about your death, it can help motivate you to accomplish your dreams.

And you're giving us a whole other perspective, like thinking about your death to realize that nothing is that big of a deal. And who cares what other people think? You should just do your own thing and do what you want in the moment. All this stress, all these problems that we have, they don't matter. No. I mean, there's a poem. I always forget the name of it, but it's like a, it's of an Egyptian king or something like that. And there's this, this head that's buried, it's sort of worn with time, 5,000 years old. You can imagine the nose is off. You can barely recognize it. And there's an inscription on the side and it says, here lies so-and-so, who, I'm loosely paraphrasing, who ruled everything that the eye could see. I obviously don't know the name of the thing. And so like, here's somebody who was king of the world or the, or the known world at the time. And we, not even 100,000 years later, but a few thousand years later, don't even know who they were. I talked to entrepreneurs a lot too, and they're like, I want to, I want to leave a legacy. But like, when you zoom in on that, it's like, for what? Kids get ruined

when you give them too much stuff. So that's kind of out the door. If you want to go like extended time horizon, the earth is going to disappear when the sun gets too big. And so like everything that we're doing is just stimulus for us to stay busy while all of our material needs are completely taken care of. I see it as liberating. Many people see that as dark. But like I think a lot of times it's just because like people don't want to confront that. The sun will get big enough and eventually evaporate all the oceans in the earth. There will be no water here. Like that's what's going to happen. We could be on a multi-planetary species. Elon can kill it. Who knows? You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And I'm glad you went over that because that was a huge interview that millions of

people listen to. So I'm glad that you cleared that up. That's great. Yeah, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. We even call ourselves scrappy hustlers. And I'm really picky when it comes to my employees. My team is growing every day. We're 60 people all over the world. And when it comes to hiring, I no longer feel overwhelmed by finding that perfect candidate, even though I'm so picky. Because when it comes to hiring, indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job post noticed. Indeed, sponsor jobs help you stand out and hire fast by boosting your post to the top relevant candidates. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored ones according to IndyD data

worldwide. I'm so glad I found Indeed when I did because hiring is so much easier now. In fact, in the minute we've been talking, 23 hires were made on Indeed according to Indeed data worldwide. Plus, there's no subscriptions or long-term contracts. You literally just pay for your results. You pay for the people that you hire. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed, and listeners of this show will get a $75-sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com.com.com. Profiting right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash profiting. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed is all you need. Happy New Year, Yap, gang. I just love the unique energy of the new year. It's all about

fresh starts, and fresh starts not only feel possible, but also feel encouraged. And if you've been thinking about starting a business, this is your sign. There's no better time than right now. 2026 can be the year that you build something that is truly yours, the year where you take control over your career, and it starts with Shopify. I've built plenty of my own businesses on Shopify, including my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass. So it's a two-day workshop. People buy their tickets on Shopify. And then my mastermind subscription is also on Shopify. I built my site quickly in just a couple of days, payments for setup super easily, and none of the technical stuff slowed me down like it usually does because Shopify is just so intuitive. And this choice of using Shopify helped me scale my

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Yeah, bam, you should definitely take advantage of this offer. It's free business internet forever. Visit spectrum.com slash free for life to learn how you can get business internet free forever. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. Okay, so let's get back to your come up story. Let's talk about when you first started opening up gyms. What was that like for you? Like just talk about, you know, your first experience opening up break and mortar gyms? Well, my first gym, I was sleeping on the floor. Very fortunately, I had, I was supposed to open it with a partner, not Sam. Sam was going to be like a minority partner as like an advisor kind of thing. And he set me up with another guy who was in the area. And said, this guy's in

the mastermind, you guys should just merge your gym. He is a tiny gym. You want to have a bigger gym. You could start with his clients. You could split it, whatever, which is, by the way, not a good way to start a partnership. But I said, sure, you know, I don't know anything. You're my advisor. I'll do that. And the night before the lease was supposed to get signed and we're going to put the deposit down, he couldn't come up with the money. And so I actually had to take on the whole thing, which I wasn't really financially prepared to do. So I ended up going from thinking I was going to have like $25,000 or $30,000 saved up to having five when I opened a gym with no customers in a place I didn't know. And at least that was $5,000 a month. So I had one month of basically savings

for this business before I would not have money. But the gift that that partner gave was that he was the one who told me to go to that workshop. He's like, we should do this marketing workshop. And by chance, the thing that that guy taught in 2013 was Facebook ads. Like, I have been extremely lucky many times in my life. And this is one of them. It's crazy because something as small as that. If I hadn't gone to that workshop, the recommendation that my advisor had given was that I should just run Groupon's to get customers because that's what he was doing for his gym and it was

working. But in Huntington Beach, there was 10 times the gym density compared to where he was. And so every gym, there was literally three gyms on the same block. is made. And so when I ran a group on, nothing happened. If I had not gone to that workshop, I might not even be in business. Like, I might have just gone back to corporate world and had to come back with my tail between my legs because I would have failed. So I'll go on this quick tangent. Like my plan B was that I would strip and drive Uber if I couldn't make it because I figured I could make probably 250,000 a year doing that if I needed to. And then I could start again

because once I was out, I was like, this is what I want to do. I knew even though it was hard, I liked the freedom. I knew that I enjoyed that. So anyways, did the workshop. I learned about Facebook marketing. That was what allowed me to sell my first 27 customers, which paid my first month's rent. The next month I paid more,

and we had $5,000 a month in revenue to the business for the first, I think, seven, eight, nine months, somewhere in there. I didn't know employees were a thing. So for me, I thought, like, a business was, you pay the rent, everything else is yours. And that's pretty much how I ran it when we were starting out. But quickly, I was like, I cannot. I was not sleeping much and I was doing the billing and I was doing working the leads and I taught all eight of the sessions every day.

And it was just very, very hard for me. I was very tired. And so then I found out that you could hire people to do some stuff, but I still slept at the gym. So they would still get in there, four o'clock in the morning anyways. So it didn't buy me a lot of sleep back. But at least I didn't have to teach all the sessions. But yeah, from there, by month nine or 10, I was able to get a manager in and I had a fully out-outfitted facility. And then from there, we were able to open the next location at month 15. And then I opened a new location at a new location. every six months after that. And the big claim to fame was that once I got better and better at marketing and sales, I was able to open each location at full capacity on the first day. And that's what ended up springboarding into the next thing. That's awesome. How much did you scale that up?

You had like six, six of them or something? Yeah, I had six locations. So I opened a new location every six months. And so at year three, I had six. That was roughly where I was. And I think, honestly, I never added up the top line between all of them. I know my biggest one did 600. So it wasn't like a huge business in terms of,

I mean, my biggest location did 600. And so anyways, I got to this weird point where I wasn't needed. So, like, I had managers at each location. They could all sell. Like, the locations were working. I was making okay money. I had a nice little condo that looked fancy, so I felt like, felt cool. And so anyways, I went to go to this another marketing conference.

It was trafficking conversion years ago. And a guy named Russell, right, got up there and was selling people on internet marketing. And I was like, man, this is. really interesting stuff. But he wasn't allowed to pitch. So he did his whole pitch webinar and then just didn't close. It was very weird. And so I was like very sold to this opportunity, but there was no call to action. What happened? Nothing. I just kept living my life, but I was like, that was really cool. A year later, I'm up at night, nothing to do. And so I was like, you know what? I wonder with that guy. Maybe I should do some of that stuff. And so I just Google his name. The first page

that comes up is his application to be in his mastermind. This is again six, seven, I mean, a while I applied. They called me up. I paid the money. And they were like, oh, yeah, there's tons of gym owners here. And you'll, like, you know, lots of people go to, I was the only brick and mortar business owner in the room. But anyways, I went up there and I was like, here's how I opened my gyms, you know, profitable day one. I don't have to put any money down. Like, I pre-sell them to pay for them. Like, I had this whole strategy. And after I broke down, like, everyone was silent. And he was like, you shouldn't be running gyms, man. And I was like, I had this whole plan to be America's gym, like United Fitness was the brand. And no, he was just like, you have a level 10 skill set and a

level two opportunity. And this was Russell Brunson ClickFunnels, right? Just to the listeners. Yeah, this is years ago. This was before he was Russell Brunson ClickFunnels of the, of the Lord that he is now. I think ClickFunnels is maybe doing like a million bucks a month then. Like, I mean, it was, I think year two, 18 months into ClickFunnels. It was very, very young. And so anyways, he said that, but, you know, I'm a big believer. Like, if someone's, if someone's further, because he was much further head than me, when I was in the mastermind. And he said that, and I was like, well, if I'm not, if I paid for advice, I'm not going to listen to it.

I might as well just burn my money. And so I took the advice. And so he said, you should start teaching people how to do what you do. And so I took that not quite as literally as you probably meant it. So I started doing gym turnarounds. So I started flying out and launch other people's gyms. Did that for almost two years. Did 33 turnarounds.

We'd fill the gym up 30 days. That was the offer. It was free to them. I would just keep all the upfront sales. I'd make about 100 grand every 20 days doing that just on my own. no employees. I was like, this is chill. I like this better than just running the gym. So I got really good at the marketing sales. And I would say that me running all my gyms, I got very good at sales, but where it really got one from like, I just got so many reps in

during that period of time. I mean, I was taking 20 plus one-to-one consults a day, every day. And like when you have that kind of level of transactional sales over and over and over again, like you just, there's a depth of knowledge that you learn. You learn when to pause. You learn when to shift, how to say certain things, how to, like, just how to shift tone. Like, there's just lots of things that you intuitively learn just from that many repetitions. I got pretty good at it. And then I got pretty good at teaching it because I had a team of guys who could start doing it because we started doing like two, three, four, five, six gyms a month that we'd start doing

these turnarounds for logistically got really difficult, flying people out. Guys said their wives were threatening to divorce them because they weren't home and like all that kind of stuff. And so I need to have a different model. There's like many terrible instances during this period of time. I like lost my money. I had a partner who stole everything. I'd start from scratch again.

Like, I could keep going into it. Yeah, let's pause here because I do want to talk to you about the sales experience that you got. So would you say that you learned most of it on the job? Or were there are certain books that you were reading? And what were you really into at that time period? Because I think sales is one of the most important skills that any young professional can have.

Agreed. Yeah, the ability to persuade. And I would just say persuade in general because marketing and sales, like marketing is really just sales done at scale. Yeah, marketing and sales. No, I wasn't really consuming anything. It was all done just the first time I bought a sales training program was after, like, it was when I had a team of sales guys.

And I was like, you know what, this would probably be a good idea to add it in. But at that point, I'd already done like 4,000 closes. So like I was, again, a lot of the stuff I didn't know the terms for it. I just knew I needed to get somebody to give me money. You know what I mean? And so that was like, this is how I have the conversation that gets the most people to say yes. That's how I was sorted in it. That's so interesting.

Well, part two of this were really going to get into some of the, sales and marketing strategies. So this was around the time you met Layla, right? Yeah. It was I think within one month of me joining Russell's thing was when I met Layla. You have some unconventional views on marriage and I have a few questions. First of all, let's talk about why your life partner is so important to your ultimate success. I mean, I think that people either are contributing to your goal or they're taking away from it. I think a lot of people compromise on their partners because they're convenient. rather than thinking, like, is this person going to make it more likely that I achieve my outcome that I want?

And so, you know, for me, Layla was the first, to be fair, I hadn't dated that many people because we were pretty young when we met. But she really, really not only, like, wanted to encourage the dreams, but, like, participate. And so I think a lot of times entrepreneurs will make compromises on, okay, well, I'll do this, but then I'll do your thing this weekend or whatever it is. And so, like, the nice thing with Layla is that she never really tried to change me. because I probably wasn't that changeable. I would have just resented someone more for making me do things I didn't want to do or asking me to do things I didn't want to do. And so it was really just a new construct.

I had just gotten out of a basically on and off relationship that was a five-year engagement that we ended up calling off. And I had no desire to get into anything. I was like, I'm going to do me. And you can like roll with if you want. And so like our entire first few months of dating was just, I'm going to work all day. You can work next to me. That was what we did.

From the day we met, like the next day I called her up, I was like, I'm working all day if you want to come after your shift. And so she just worked with me. And that's what we did. And this really hasn't changed. Like, we went from like first date until today with very little changing in our relationship. It was just, it was very easy. And so that's been even running a business together, like, I think because we had such

low expectations getting into the relationship, it made candid conversations much easier. I was like, hey, I think it was, you know, six months in, I was like, you're a little cold. For this to work, I need you to be less cold. And then she was like, okay. And that was it. Like, literally never again. Like, Layla is one of the most fast-changing people I've ever, actually, not one of. She's the fastest changing behavior person I've ever met my time.

It's almost freaky. If I'm like, she used to say, you know, when someone laughs and they're like, you're stupid. You know, like, you know, the girls will say that? She said that to me once, like, early on. And I was like, I don't like when you say that. I was like, I just don't like being called stupid even if it's a joke. And she was like, oh, okay, never did it again. Like, if you define learning as same condition, new behavior, like, if you haven't changed your behavior

with the same condition, you have not learned. And intelligence is speed of learning, which is speed of behavior change. So in that way, Layla is incredibly intelligent. Like, her ability to change behavior is insane. And so that's also why I think she's been such an adaptable CEO, or rather CEO now. She's really CEO of Acquisition.com. I just, I make the content and write the books. But, like, she's really the one running everything.

I think you got to, there's so many ways. to have marriages. This is what worked for me. And I am weird. If we're defining weird as not standard, like different from the average. Like I am not the average. And so my marriage is atypical. And so this is just what has worked for us is that I like working all the time. And I wanted someone who would work all the time with me. Because if I didn't, then I wouldn't see them. And then we would drift apart because I'm getting way different stimuli from my life than they are. Inherently, we're going to adapt to the things that are that were exposed to all day. and eventually we're going to look at each other, be like, oh, we don't know each other.

And some people, that's exciting. To me, you might as well be a stranger. And I can just keep doing my own thing. So probably contrary, but that's just how I see it. Now, it's very interesting stuff. And I'm sure because she was so smart and, you know, had her own thing and very career-driven, you obviously respected her a lot. So how did that respect factor play into you being attracted to her and wanting her to be your wife?

Yeah. So two separate things. So from a respect standpoint, she was the first goal that I respected professionally. And so that was new for me. And I think it was probably one of the keys of our relationship is that it was based on respect rather than chemistry. The second part was kind of like what you alluded to with like the attraction part. I wasn't like super. I mean, I was attracted.

Like she's pretty obviously, et cetera. Like there was that. But I didn't have like a romantic. I wasn't like, oh my God, I'm getting slept on my feet. And neither was she. So we honestly were just like. buddies. Like, we liked the same stuff. And so we just did stuff together all the time because we enjoyed doing it together more than alone. And then it got to the point where it was where our

employees at gym launch started saying, hey, what happens if you guys break up? Because we weren't married. And the business was scaling like crazy. And I said, you know, we should probably deal with their concerns and get married. And my proposal to her was, hey, what do you think about getting married? And she said, that sounds fine. And I said, okay, then I'll get you a ring. And so we went together to the store literally after I said that. We got the ring 45 minutes later back home. I said, I guess we should call a church, called the church. Six days later we were married. And then we didn't take off the day of our marriage and we didn't take off the next day. We just showed up the next day at work and we're like, hey guys, we're married. So all of your

concerns about the stability of the business are gone now. You can keep working and everything's fine. And it was like that was it. You know what I mean? And since then, we didn't do a wedding. We didn't do a honeymoon. Again, we'll work for me. I'm just saying like that worked for me. My vibe. Yeah. And so you guys are obviously a power couple that a lot of people are looking up to. And I learned from you that people who have businesses together that are married only have a 10% divorce rate, which I think is pretty incredible. So what would you say are like the pros and cons of marrying your business partner?

And the other question I have is, do you feel like Leila fills in your weaknesses? Or do you feel like you guys are more similar and kind of just help each other accomplish the same goals? This is really interesting. So even the way that you phrased the question I thought was cool. So I recommend marrying your business partner. I don't recommend trying to make your wife your business partner, or rather your spouse your business partner. So we already were business partners.

And then I married her. And it worked. And people ask me, what happens if you got divorced? We probably still run the business together. Because I never want, and neither of us would want this, for the other person to get a free ride. You know what I mean? Like she doesn't get special treatment because she's my wife.

She is CEO of the companies that we have together because she's the best CEO. She's amazing. You can look at the tracker. She's amazing. She fucking knows how to run businesses. That's why she's CEO. You know what I mean? I have so many entrepreneurs who are like, how do I get my wife to want to?

Like, dude, you're trying to change somebody. They don't like it. That's it. That's fine. But don't try and make her who's not Layla into your version of Layla. She has to be her. And I think to a great degree, a lot of, and this is, again, this is countercultural, but like, I do think people pick wrong.

I think people use the wrong assessment to judge whether or not they're going to have a good long-term relationship. When I say good, I would say that's going to be minimum strife, maximum achievement of your personal goals for both people. Yeah. And I think people think about marriage differently. And so for me, marriage was, is this somebody, again, that's going to support my long-term goals, and am I going to support her long-term goals? And for us, our long-term goals were aligned, which honestly was rare and weird. I didn't actually expect to see anybody who wanted to do the same thing as me and work as much as I do. But I did. I'm very happy and very lucky that we found that. I just think the reverse you get in trouble.

Yeah. And would you say that she has strengths where you're weak? Complementary skill set, shared values. So I think, was it mission values lifestyle? So these three have to be the same. And then you want complementary, so different. So it's like we want to go the same place. We want to get there the same way.

And we want to have the same stuff happen in between. Right. So mission values is how we're going to behave. Lifestyle is what we do in between. Right. Like we like all, or you can say interests if you like that. Those have to be aligned, in my opinion, for it to just be maximally fun. The complementary skill sets is if she did the exact same thing as me, one of us wouldn't be necessary.

And we've also gravitated that way, because when she came in, she was top salesman. So she came and she was top salesman at 24 at one of the top locations in the country. So she's a savage at closing. But the requirements of the business required, I was like, well, I'm going to still sell because that's what I'm good at. And I was older. And when I started, it was my business. So I called the shots. But so she just, again, so adaptable.

Like, Layla can learn and change her behavior like that. And so she was like, I'm going to be an operator. And so then she just went all in. The books, the courses, the podcast, the masterminds, the workshop. All the stuff she consumed was different than the stuff I consumed, which is cool because then we got to talk about different stuff. And like at the end of our days today, like every day, we download. It's like, what were your meetings?

We just go through each other's calendars. Oh, how is that meeting? How is that meeting? How is that meeting? And so we download at the end of the day, we do a walk for an hour every day. That's our download. And so yin and yang, I think it has to make sense like that. Otherwise, one of you isn't, I've seen the entrepreneur assistant wife or husband. It's tough. It's tough. I think you have to have

equal power. And that's rare. It's rare because it's usually uncommon for both people to be like equally yoked. You mean, you want them, want both people tread in the same way and it's hard to find that. If you want to do rare shit. Talk to us about that. How did you meter? Bumble. So I swiped right. swipe right literally and swipe right in terms of right and left. I swip right. Swip right. She was an Iranian girl and was into fitness. And when I met her on our first date, she really wanted to talk about business the

all the time. I'm like, well, this is great. I don't have to like pretend to like what you like. So this is so much more efficient for me. And so we talked for like four hours, only about business. And I was like, this is great. And then she was telling me what her dreams and aspirations were. And she had big dreams.

And she wanted to open a gym someday at the time. I think I had five. I had five or six, I can't remember. And I was like, let me just leapfrog you. I already know what you're about to try and do. I know all the failures. Like, I already have, like, the ones that I have, I'm starting this new thing. You should do it with me.

She didn't really believe me yet because I hadn't even started it yet. So it was just kind of like an idea, you know, right on her. And she had built up her own personal training business, like a roster of clients. And so she had her own thing going. But I was like, well, I'm going to do this. And so I went and I launched three gyms, came back. I processed like 100, ran in front of her. And she was like, what the hell is this? And she, I mean, she ended up

processing it with me. But she was like, is this legal? And I was like, yes. And she was like, okay, I'm it. So she ended up quitting and joining me there because she knew it's like, there was product market fit. There was a viable, like people wanted this. And I was good at it. And so that's when we started flying around doing the launches together. Now my gyms kept running, but it was very clear that as I left, like, they weren't doing as well without me like being there. There's just all the intangibles. And so I ended up selling those. and just going all in on the launch thing, put all my money from the sale.

I mean, I've told this story before, but I'll tell it to your audience quickly. I had all the sale of my gyms, went all in on gym launch, started launching gyms, doing well with that. One of the gym owners I launched with was like, dude, you should be owning all these gyms. Like you're literally filling them up

and you're leaving all this money on the table, which, by the way, most dangerous term in business is leaving money on the table. It's okay to leave money on the table because you will fuck up the big money that's in front of you by trying to chase little money

that's still on little tables. Anyhow, he had bad credit, so I signed the lease. I fronted all the money for the locations. We were going to split them. 50-50, of course, that's a terrible deal for me. I'll do all the work, front all the money, and then we'll split it. But I didn't know anything. So anyways, he was supposed to come in after I launched the first gym.

With him, that was number six, and I crushed the launch. And then he was like, hey, man, I'm going to keep running mine. You got that one. And I was like, whoa, I'm doing launches now. Like, that's not my business. You were going to come behind me. We're going to launch open two, three, four gyms a month and own them all. And then it kind of rapidly spiraled.

down from there. And then he accused me of stealing. So then he took all the money out of the account. I went to go line for line with him. I haven't taken any money out of account. Like it cost money to open a gym. And when he didn't want to look at the financials, that's when I knew that he, that was just a line. That was just like a strategy. And so I basically lost everything. So I lost all the money that I had from my own gyms and lost all the money from that gym. But the thing is, I still had a gym. So there's no money to run the gym. And I didn't really have any money. So I just had whatever was in my checking, which every month basically I couldn't sell anymore because I didn't want to keep the gym open because he wasn't going to run it. So my savings just got drained. If you have payroll,

rent, everything, and you can't make new sales in a new gym that doesn't have recurring revenue, really, really tough. And so I got drained almost of everything. And then I started doing launches again, sent Layla out. She did a launch in her own, first solo launch, crushed it, still has the record to this day, did 240 sales in 28 days, made me 100 grand. And that basically helped me pay off all of these debts of refunds that I had to do for people who bought a year and all the stuff like up front, I just refunded everybody their money, which just came out of all the money that I had. The one thing I had a coach at the time, and he was like, just do right by everyone, and you'll be able to get out of this. And so it was really good advice. And so I just, I did right by everybody.

Like, no employee was unpaid. Every client I wanted a refund got a refund, and I was able to just like walk away unscath. And so I was at ground zero again. We did another launch. So the The first 100 grand went to cover all the refunds and stuff. We did another launch to kind of like recapitalize ourselves. Like, okay, we can go make another 100 grand because that was kind of like, we make 100 grand on every launch. And so we went to go to a launch. A guy said he had a baby on the way.

He just happened to be in the neighborhood of the gym that we were going to launch of all places in the entire nation. A guy reached out to me. He crushed it. All of a sudden, we're not getting the deposits even though I'm processing all this money. And I'm like, where the hell is the money? Call the processor up. Standard annual thing.

You'll be getting your money soon. called again two days later same thing and then finally it had been 10 days since i had a deposit imagine anybody who had like no stripe like not getting deposits but still processing money i was like dude i need this money like what's going on and so i called christmas eve and uh i said i'm not getting off the phone until you send me my money and um turns out uh they can keep your money and i had no leverage and they said we uh you will get you will get off the phone because we're not sending you the money and we're going to hold it for six months because of regular activity because what i was was doing was processing money from all over the nation through what used to be my brick and mortar

gym's processor. I didn't know how it worked. So I just was, I was running like credit cards from Virginia through my Southern California local gym processing account. They're like, what is going on here? So it seemed a regular. So they held all the money. But my sales guy had, that the guy who had done it, I owed him like $22,000 in commissions. And I had $23,000 left after all the refunds and everything that I had done. And then that got me to my last $1,000. And so that is, that was my rock bottom moment. I screenshot it after everything, four years or five years or whatever it was. I was like, wow, I have literally nothing to show for it. That's tough. And was this around the time where you got your DUI and got into a car accident? So my mother went to the hospital for tough stuff. I got in a head-on

DUI, 60 miles an hour on a highway, walked away, crazy, nothing, walked away, walked out of the car. The car's crushed. And then I lost all my money from my partner. And so that was all 90 days. What's up, young and profitors. I remember when I first started Yap, I used to dread missing important calls. I remember I lost a huge potential partnership because the follow-up thread got completely lost in my messy communication system. Well, this year, I'm focused on not missing any opportunities. And that starts with your business communications. A missed call is money and growth out the door. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled QUO, the smarter way to run your business communications. Quo is the number one rated business phone system on G2,

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Go to workinggenius.com. Again, that's working genius.com. Stop guessing. Start working in your genius. What I found was really interesting when I was researching your story. You didn't mention it, but you also had like a dental and chiropractic agency, I think, at the time. And you were like running these gyms. You were doing your gym launch business.

And you hired an attention coach. So what did this attention coach teach you about having to focus? guess and make decisions? Well, like, the one output of the entire time that I had with him was just untangling loose attention. It's like I was just spread so thin. So I had all these things that you just alluded to at a chiropractor agency that I had a couple clients. I had a dental agency that I had one client.

I had my five gyms from home. I had the new gym. And then we had gym launches that were going on basically paying for all of my stupid mess during this period of time. And he's like, you have no power. You were so spread thing that you can't accomplish anything. And so what it was was that I was not confronting many hard conversations. So I would do any, I would start another business.

I would avoid. It was all avoidance. So I didn't want to have hard conversation with partners. I had partners at all of these things. And for most of them, I was the, I don't want to say the breadwinner, but I was the one who was bringing it in. So I ended up just partnering with people because I felt insecure about doing things on my own.

this is where partnerships have to be long term. Like, even if this is a side note, like if you have the opportunity to get 50% of a business that you know you're not going to contribute 50% to, don't take it. Because two years from now, they will resent you and it will not work. So there's no point in getting the short money

because it's going to blow up in your face and be really ugly. And so I learned that on the opposite side, being on the receiving end of that. And I was like, I will not do this to anyone. And so anyhow, every day, he would ask me the same question, which is, what is your attention on? And so piece by piece,

it was just every day we would just start peeling back all the things and just removing things from my life until there was basically nothing left but one thing. Layla and I went on like a six-week breakup. Basically, she went to go launch a gym and I was like, I just don't have headspace for this. Fundamentally, we talked every day. But like, from attention standpoint, I was like, I can't do with anything. I had too much on my plate. And so I broke everything down to nothing and then just rebuilt with the few things that mattered. And I think that since then, that has, despite my proclivity for wanting to do more things, it has been the hardest, hardest one character trait I have is being able to focus by far.

Yeah. So let's get back to gym launch. You start this company. You basically start licensing your business model. So talk to us about how, why is that such a scalable opportunity for the new entrepreneurs out there? Like, why is it better to take something and teach people how to do it rather than trying to do it one by one? So just big picture, I don't think it's necessarily better. I think that it has faster scale. Like, for example, we have a handful of companies in our portfolio that are brick and, so I had a company recently that was an agency for photography studios, and they had a very good model for growing photography studios. And I was like, and he was like, hey, I want to do what you do with gym launch. But there were a couple of key differences in the

business in terms of how would it cost to start up. The nature of the surface itself was one time versus recurring, et cetera, et cetera. And it made more sense for us to actually own all of them. And then compound by adding more locations every month. So we open like four locations a month right now. And so if I knew then what I know now, real, real, acquisition.com might not even exist. I might have 200 gyms. But the thing is that my operational skill set at that point wouldn't have been able to scale that business. It is easier to scale something that has more leverage. So media has leveraged, software has leverage, capital has leverage. Like one person can raise a billion dollars. One person can write code and a billion people can use it. One person can make a video like this

and a million people can listen to it. Right? There's leverage there. Limited input. unlimited output. With labor or services, right, like you have to be able to operate people. And so I didn't have that skill set. I think that now we have a team, et cetera, like we could do something like that. But then I didn't have it. And so given the skill set I had at the time, me switching from brick and mortar operations to licensing it and basically taking a fraction of the revenue I was able to make other people, I was able to scale that much faster. And so I could help 4,000 gyms make an extra 100 grand a year in profit and then take a percentage of that profit. So realistically, I would be able to take probably 25 to 30% of the added profit

to the facility through my licensing. They would win, I would win, and that's just the nature of capitalism. And so that was the tradeoff. Now, a licensing business or any business has value insofar as the future revenue is stable and predictable. So the reason that I like brick and mortar a lot of times for scaling is that if you count the locations, almost like customers, if you think about it like that, they're not going anywhere. And so it's like every time you open a location, it's like you can bank on the fact that they're going to just deliver $150,000, $200,000 a year in income to the main business.

And then we just reallocate capital and keep doing it, which is why it's such a nice and scalable business. That's why franchising versus licensing, franchising those contracts are ironclad. You're in for 10 years. There's a lot of law that protects the franchisor to make sure that they can collect on that for 10 years. Licensing, it's much less so.

And so, anyways, not to go into, a big tangent here, but the main point is me switching from brick and mortar to licensing made up for the fact that I was not as good at operating yet because my constraint was my operational ability, not my marketing and sales. And the product that I was selling was marketing and sales. I was really good at marketing and sales. And then the thing I sold was marketing and sales. And so I was better at teaching marketing and sales than I was at weight loss experiences. So if you just think of quality of the product, like the marketplace valued making $100,000 a year an extra profit far more than Susie value.

use six weeks of group training and losing 20 pounds. Far more. And so I was able to switch my vehicle that I was that I was selling. And that was a big part of why I was able to make a lot more money. Talk to us about how you started Acquisition.com. Oh, yeah. So, I mean, Acquisition.com started in 2021. The first company we took on was 2020. So June of 2020, I think, was the first company we took on, which is that photography business. We also took on a personal training certification business. We took on a publishing business in 2020. Those three businesses between the three of them added over 100 million a year to those businesses in total. And so we thought, hmm, we should do more of this.

And so once we had that as like, okay, we have a workable model here where we can just take all the knowledge we have of scaling our companies. And the reason 2021 was boring and difficult for me was because I had to sell, I sold three companies. So for anybody who's ever sold, like going through a big sales process is a year. And you usually don't change much in the business. You don't want to do anything crazy. And so there was just not a lot for me to do.

So I just had to sit there. And mind you, they made money, which then gets into the whole meaninglessness thing. But I just had to sit and wait. And so Acquisition.com and these companies that I was working with on the side took my focus. And to the point that we were making earlier about focus, I know myself all enough to know that I have to do one thing. And so I needed to exit these companies so that I could focus full time on acquisition,

but I wanted to just have like a quick test in the water that it worked. And so once it did, then we sold December 24. of 2021 is the day that the last deal closed. And the 25th, so the Christmas day, we were working on Acquisition.com. And so I started making content in 2021 because, again, I had extra time. And so I was just making stuff and people seem to like it. And then everything really took off in 2022 when we brought in a team and editors and all that kind of stuff. And yeah, now we have 16 companies in the portfolio. And we do, we take minority, minority interest in businesses. The average company we have right now does about 17 million a year with margins above 35.

percent as a portfolio average. And so, yeah, so our goal is just to get as many of them as we can over 100. And then it's really the founders because we're minority partners. You know, we're 20 to 30 percent equity holders in those businesses.