
Ecom Podcast
Hormozi Teaches Me Everything He Knows in 90 Minutes
Summary
Alex Hormozi shares how using "money models" by sequencing offers can double revenue, emphasizing a strategy where gross profit in 30 days exceeds 2x CAC plus COGS. He illustrates this with a gym business example, turning low-ticket trials into profitable customer acquisition.
Full Content
Hormozi Teaches Me Everything He Knows in 90 Minutes
Speaker 1:
You probably recognize this guy, Alex Hormozi.
Speaker 2:
He's known as the $100M Man and he's probably the most popular business teacher on YouTube. So last week I flew to Vegas and I asked Alex to teach me the things in his new book, Money Models. Ah, how to make money. Thank you.
Speaker 1:
He says that this one concept has made him more money than anything else in his career.
Speaker 2:
How would we improve our business by thinking in money models?
Speaker 3:
So let me walk you through the actual economics of this. If 10% of people buy something that's 10 times expensive, you double your revenue. So the classic upsell is you can't have X without Y, right?
You can't have a burger without fries or whatever, right? It's like, you can't have X without Y.
Speaker 1:
I recorded the whole session and I want to share that with you here today.
Speaker 2:
All right, if I reset your bank account and your followers, change your name and face, so I reset you to zero, how long do you think it would take you to get a million bucks in your bank account?
Speaker 3:
Well, having lost everything twice, I'll tell you what I did.
Speaker 2:
What do your haters get right?
Unknown Speaker:
I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on a road less traveled.
Speaker 3:
So we got a new book.
Speaker 2:
If I read this book and it's going to start a little campfire in my head, what's going to happen from money models?
Speaker 3:
You will love this book if you liked offers. And so a money model is a deliberate sequence of offers. Many businesses have more than one offer. And so it's how do we sequence those in the right way that accomplishes a financial objective.
And so the financial objective for this book and what I try to go for for every business I have is something that I've always called client-financed acquisition. And so the reason that we've been able to scale...
Speaker 2:
One user pays for the next user?
Speaker 3:
Yes, and a slight tweak on that. Okay. So, it's 2x CAC plus COGS. So, this is the big thing that we want. So, it's basically gross profit in 30 days. So, I guess I can move this over here, but it doesn't matter.
Gross profit in 30 days is greater than 2 times CAC plus COGS.
Speaker 2:
Let's just explain the terms for people who don't know. Gross profit, you're not talking about overheads in this.
Speaker 3:
Right.
Speaker 2:
So, gross profit. CAC, Customer Acquisition, COGS, what it costs you to deliver the product or service that you deliver. And what you're saying is my bar,
my golden number I'm trying to hit is I want to take the cost to deliver the service and get the customer, double it, and in 30 days I need to be hitting that number. That's my goal.
Whether that came on the first offer or what you're saying now is the second, third, fourth thing, I sell them along the way, along their customer journey.
Speaker 3:
It's exactly that.
Speaker 2:
Can you do like a stupid tangible example?
Speaker 3:
So the first business I ever did this in was the gym business. And so it's a really simple example because everyone gets it too. So when I came into the gym business, what the vast majority of businesses did is they would run a low ticket,
like $21, 21 days that they run a free month or free 14 day trial, whatever. That was the primary way of getting people in. And so let me walk you through the actual economics of this. And so if you have a business, let's say Oldway, right?
Someone comes in, let's say you pay whatever, 10 bucks a lead. That's your CPL, cost per lead. And then you can convert, let's say you're getting 20% of these people to start a trial. So that means that it costs you 50 bucks to start a trial.
And then one out of three of those trials, which is the industry average, convert. And typically the conversion for like a bootcamp or something like that is gonna be about $99 a month, right? That's what it costs.
Speaker 2:
And so- Here's your CAC.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:
And here's the first 30 days.
Speaker 3:
Exactly. And so you're upside down here. Now, not only that, it probably took you two weeks between when you got the lead, before you got the trial, and then 21 days, now you're at five weeks.
And so by the second month, now you're like, okay, I got 99 times two. Now, that doesn't even take into account that that 99 is not all free. There's costs involved there.
But let's just say that these guys are amazing and they're running 100% margins. And so it's like, okay, so this is gonna take 60 days for this business to basically recoup the money.
Now, the problem is that in the gym industry, especially, Many customers leave within four months. And so it's a very tough way to make a buck.
And so what I kind of came in and started doing was we'd run these challenges and I'd spend the same amount of $10. I'd have the same.
Speaker 2:
You were here when you started. You did the same model initially?
Speaker 3:
No, I saw people doing it. I saw people doing it. And so then it was like a three-step permutation. I don't even want to tell the backstory. But basically, figured it out, tried it out at a gym, it worked at that gym,
and then I started my gym. That's basically what happened. So same cost per lead. I would close the same. I get 20% of these businesses. So it would cost me, let's call it 50 bucks, whatever.
For me, though, I would off of that $50, I would sell up front and I would make $500.
Speaker 2:
Because your $500 offer was?
Speaker 3:
Yes, a challenge. So you win your money back. So if you lose X amount of weight in X amount of time, we get your money back. Now, that was the beginning of the offer. That's an attraction offer.
So it's one of the offer types I talk about in the book. And so it's like, okay, I got $500, but we didn't stop there. Cause what are you going to do after you have your, your thing? Well, you're gonna need some supplements.
It's like, all right. So then we'd 48 hours later, we'd sell $200 of supplements, call it, you know, 80% gross margins, whatever. It's like, okay, so I get 160 plus, plus 500. So now I'm at 660. All right, great.
Now on top of that, it's like, all right, three weeks in, it's six weeks, a six week deal. I would then say, Hey, I'm going to roll this towards a one-year membership. And so boom, we'd roll that over, which is another mechanism that we use.
And so then I get the one-year member. Great. Now, at week six, or between week three and week six, we'd make a second offer and say, hey, you're already a member. Can I just save you some money? And they say, sure.
And we say, hey, if you want, what we can do is if you just prepay for the whole year, we'll knock two months off. And so then all of a sudden, I get about 20% of people to prepay for the whole year, which is the $2,000.
Cash upfront, which if it's 20% and we add all these together, I'm getting about $1,000 upfront in the first same period of time that these guys are getting $99 or $199.
And so my ability to outspend them in an auction based base of attention on like Facebook or Google search or whatever, it was like unparalleled. And so because of that, I was able to not only outspend my competition,
but because it cost me, like if you're actually doing LTV to CAC on this, it cost me $50 to make a thousand. I'm getting 20 to one, 30 to one up front. And so I was actually able to finance the opening of all my locations that way.
So I could spend $5,000 in ads and make $100,000 back and literally paint the walls, put the lobby in, buy the equipment, and by the time I actually open the gym, because I do pre-sales for a month or whatever,
I would actually already be cash flow positive day one without actually having to invest capital. And so fundamentally, I will continue to tinker, and this is where I got spoiled or whatever,
maybe my belief set changed, is that this was the first model I ever had. And so every business I've had since then, I was like, I know there's a way if I just keep tweaking it until eventually this thing will print.
And then when that happens, you don't need the outside investors because you cash flow getting customers. And so you basically almost like every business I've had has been supply constrained.
Because I can blow the doors off on the front end because I can acquire customers. And so like this has been the skill that's probably been the largest contributor to my material success.
And like Allen went from zero to 1.7 million a month within six months. Gym Launch went from zero to 2.2 million a month in 20 months. Prestige Labs, zero to one, one and a half-ish in six.
And so like each of them just very quickly just ramped because I could get customers at a profit. And when you look at the actual like where the mechanics of the money happen, as soon as one customer comes in, right, One guy comes in.
Now, if he gives you that 2x CAC plus COGS, then it's like, okay, well, I've paid for him. And I paid for the delivery, but he comes loaded. He's holding this guy by the throat. He comes loaded with my next customer.
And so, but then this guy brings me two more. And so basically you keep doubling.
Speaker 2:
He comes loaded.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, exactly. And so then at that point, you literally only have to acquire, you have to have the cash or the wherewithal to acquire the first customer. And then everything after that is financed by the customers.
And the greater that discrepancy, the more you don't have to even put more capital into the business at all. And so that was a very long, as fast as I can say it, that's what we hope to accomplish with Good Money Models.
Speaker 4:
Alright, so a lot of people will talk about how you need a million dollars and three years of experience to start a business. Nonsense. If you listen to at least one episode on this podcast, you know, that is completely not true.
My last company, The Hustle, we grew it to something like $17 or $18 million in revenue. I started it with like $300. My current company, Hampton, does over $10 million in revenue.
Started it with actually no money, maybe $29 or something like that. Nothing. And so you don't actually need investors to start a company. You don't need a fancy business plan. But what you do need is systems that actually work.
And so my old company, The Hustle, they put together five proven business models that you could start right now today with under $1,000. These are models that if you do it correctly, it can make money this week. You can get it right now.
You can scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now, back to the show.
Speaker 2:
First of all, this is great. I come from Silicon Valley. In Silicon Valley, virality rules all. The early growth hackers, in fact, there's a book called The Viral Loop. My mentor, the guy who kind of plucked me when I got to Silicon Valley,
He's featured that book because early on he was like scraping hotmail and he realized, wait, I have no marketing budget, but one user can get me the next user through this thing called the K-factor.
And then you measure the K-factor and it becomes like, this is how Facebook and other businesses grew. You've created a version of the K-factor for non-tech businesses that are not going to grow virally,
but you can grow, you can finance the next customer through the existing customers. I want to point out a couple of important things. So the first one was, this is kind of book one. So this is, you know, your $100M Offers book.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
And a key difference here for any entrepreneur is that you're able to charge $500 when this guy's probably honestly struggling to even charge $99 a month.
I drove by a place that here there was like $5 entry offer, the Las Vegas Fitness Club or whatever, because you were not selling a gym membership, which is a cost to the customer. You were selling a transformation promise.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Right. So you're selling customer transformation, the happy ending. So first of all, what are you actually selling? That was a key thing. The second was you were then upselling, upsell one of your money model.
And you had a good insight here in the preview your team sent me, which was basically that you want to sell when the customer pain is highest. Can you talk about that?
Speaker 3:
Yeah. I'd love to talk about this. So basically, I think so many people, businesses, et cetera, they think about, especially services, because 78% of businesses are, they think about they have a term that they deliver for a customer,
and they typically want to renew when they're about to stop getting paid, which is typically the absolute worst time to try and renew.
Speaker 2:
It's like an ex-boyfriend.
Unknown Speaker:
Hey, I'm back in town.
Speaker 2:
It's like, oh, I guess I'm on month 11 of my annual trial.
Speaker 3:
No, exactly. There's basically five times that you want to sell a customer. So number one is immediately, right? So that's like in the same conversation. The second one is after basically some sort of activation point.
Next, you have your halfway, just because you're like, why halfway? Because it's halfway and that's why it works. You have your last chance at the end. And then you have milestone, which can happen kind of anywhere in here, but basically.
They have something occur. So this is something they do. This is something that happens.
Speaker 2:
So the action item for a company here is map this for yourself.
Speaker 3:
But if you're like, okay, well, which of the five do I do? You want to sell the point of greatest deprivation, not the point of greatest value.
Sometimes the point of greatest value and the point of greatest deprivation occur at the same time. Not always though. So I'll give you my simple example, which is like,
if I go to the best steakhouse in the world and I have a steak and I'm like, this is amazing. And the waiter comes back and says, Hey, would you like another steak? I'd be like, I'm good. And they're like, what, you didn't like the steak?
And I'm like, no, the steak was great. They're like, why aren't you getting another steak? I was like, I'm good. They're like, well, if you if you like the steak, you'd get more steak.
And the thing is, is that so many businesses are trying to sell and upsell that way. They're like, wow, my customers suck. They're so cheap. It's like, no.
So at that point, I might have a I might have deprivation around something that's sweeter and lighter. And that might be the right time to offer dessert. Right. Versus more of that other thing. Now,
the Deprivation occurs at the same time as value creation when the first loop of value that gets created creates the next problem. So if I help you get leads and you get leads and then you're like, holy shit, I'm overwhelmed.
If I say, hey, would you like me to help you work those leads? Then it's a very natural upsell where greatest value and greatest deprivation at the same time. If you are a business that doesn't have that type of, I'll just speak broadly,
if that doesn't occur in your business or on a short enough timeline, then you don't want to sell at that time, right? And so that's basically what we strive for.
And that's why I've always been of the belief like when someone comes in with red hot pain, that's when you sell, not when you offer your trial.
Speaker 2:
And so for, let's take, you can use the gem, we can use a different business if that, maybe that'd be nice. If you can, what would you either, you know, either this or a money model,
you know, you can either walk through a money model or you can walk through this for another business. Let's do another example.
Speaker 3:
Sure, let's say you have an SEO agency, whatever.
Speaker 2:
Actually, we can use one of my real businesses. Okay, so we have this business, somewhere.com. We basically help you find talent that is overseas.
So we help businesses where you're like, I really want a developer, but I'm not trying to pay $150. Did you invest in that too?
Speaker 3:
Yeah. Okay, got it. I thought it was, okay, got it.
Speaker 2:
So we own this business, somewhere.com. So for example, I got my assistant through this. You know, I'll hire developers, graphic designers, data analysts, whatever you need. There's talent is everywhere in the world. Hard to find.
They put boots on the ground in different locations. So South Africa, Philippines, and they have hundreds of recruiters in each of those areas to find who's the best 1% in each of those locations to come work for you this year, right?
Great business, great margins. Love it. Happy, happy, happy owner. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so now what's the problem? So today, the way our money model works, And what we do is customer basically listens to Shaan's podcast.
Unknown Speaker:
So we'll just do this.
Speaker 2:
Or they follow Nick on Twitter.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
So we get leads from one place. Exactly. Not exactly fully, but that's a bulk of it. And they come in, they book a call. And on that call, we try to sell them a contingency based thing, which says,
if we find someone to pay us a fraction of their salary. Now, they're so low salary, typically, because you're getting talent from different regions of the world, that will come out to, let's say, maybe $6K per customer.
And what we do is that happens, and then we stop and we go fishing again for the next one. Help us with our money model. How would you, if I read this book and I want to go help Nick improve this business,
how would we improve our business by thinking in money models?
Speaker 3:
Yeah. So the question would be like, do we need, so if I'm looking at this, right, we have attraction offers. So it's like, do we have a big demand issue or do we have an LTV issue, which might be upsells?
Do we have a conversion issue, which might be downsells?
Speaker 2:
All of the above. Everything can be improved.
Speaker 3:
Or do we have a continuity thing, right? And so there are different structures that lend themselves more to one versus the other type of problem, right, that we're trying to solve.
And so, like, for an attraction offer, if you're like, you know what, let's get a shitload more, you know, phone calls in the door, I would say, hey, I just got this absolute savage.
And I would put like, this is the dude, all right, this guy's a fucking god, whatever. Now, who here wants him? And I would say the business that, like, we're going to do a raffle and everybody who submits to win this guy,
now obviously you've got to be ethical and loyal, but assuming that you're not a fucking idiot, right, this is the guy that you're going to get. And you have to be a business that's like this in order to qualify. Cool.
So they're going to enter their information in order to get in the raffle so they get this guy. Now you're going to say, we will pay for this guy for a year. As the deal, as the big giveaway.
Not only is he amazing, we'll also pay for him for a year. And so that makes a huge, you'll get a gigantic amount of demand. But what's beautiful about it is that the demand is for your most expensive or ideal product.
And so then at that point, every single other person who opts in is a qualified lead who you say, you know, we can't give you Carlos, but we can give you so-and-so, and we'll give you a partial scholarship,
we'll give you a partial win, whatever, and you knock whatever off, 10%, 20% off, and then you roll that right into the continuity. So that would be an example of an attraction offer that you could attach to that existing thing.
From an up-sell, down-sell perspective, it would be like, and there's five different ones, that's just one that I pulled out. That's a giveaway.
And so like just for everyone's listening, the weight loss version that I had was something called Win Your Money Back, which was a different mechanism, right?
So there's five different ones that I think that work exceptionally well for bringing people in, depends on the type of business. And so for yours, there's Buy X, Buy Free.
There's a bunch of different versions, but like think this makes the most sense.
Speaker 2:
Cool.
Speaker 3:
We'll use a giveaway. All right. So then upsells and downsells. So with So I'll start from downsells. So you can have feature downsells, you can have free trials, you can have payment plans.
Now, for your particular business, payment plans doesn't probably, that doesn't really make sense, because it's a continuity thing anyways. And so it's like, okay, we have free trials, which you kind of have with contingency.
So it's like that risk is kind of averted. But from a downsell perspective, they might think, okay, well, I can't afford six. Now, that's a business decision more than anything. I like to think of feature downsells.
So I can get you somebody who's maybe not as PhD level, whatever, but we can do it for 3K a month. And that person might give you more opportunities to say yes. That would be the downsell component.
From the upsell perspective, there's four different upsell structures that I like. The classic upsell is you can't have X without Y, right? Which is like, you can't have a Coke without fries.
You can't have a burger without fries or whatever, right? It's like, you can't have X without Y. And so it's like, you don't want to buy this big framed art without insurance, right? So there's always a, you can't have X without Y.
Speaker 2:
So for here, because they said yes, naturally, just say yes to this next thing.
Speaker 3:
Exactly.
Speaker 2:
In order to make your first decision and even more sound.
Speaker 3:
And this is why the whole deprivation thing that I was saying earlier is so important, where like right now supplements. Yes. Because some people are like, well, I don't want to sell them something else.
It's like, well, you just created this new problem that they weren't aware of, which you will now make them aware of, which is, oh, sometimes these guys flake out, whatever. And so we have insurance that we can offer for this type of thing.
So me just shooting from the hip here. I'm running through the different mechanisms.
Speaker 2:
Easy one here in this situation is payroll. So great. A lot of companies are not set up to pay people all around the world. We can manage that for you and we'll do it for you for 500 bucks a month.
We'll take care of this because you're going to build out a remote team here all around the world. You don't want to be doing compliance and payroll and foreign exchange and tax reporting. We take care of all that for you.
We have an accounts team that does that.
Speaker 3:
Perfect. And so that would be the natural upsell that you tack on. And so some people, and I'll just make this point, A lot of business owners will think, well, why don't I just include that in the main offer?
So I'll just say in my experience, it's a lot of times, as bad as this may sound, it's easier to get the second yes after you get the first yes. And so, like, it's like, well, maybe if I included that, they'd buy it at $7,000 a month.
It's like, yeah, but you might also just raise your price to $7,000 a month and then do it again, right? And then still have it. And so, because, I mean, the amount of gyms were like, you know what,
I'm going to take the challenge system and then just include the supplements. Or you could just do it the way that I've already tried a hundred times. Like, believe me, if I could sell more up front, I would. It works better this way.
And I had this whole psychology around it, which is like, you have these different wallets, in my mind, it doesn't work this way, but like, it's like, my grandmother used to say this thing,
like, I would go there and probably like your family, like overfeed, she'd have enough food for 10 people when I go and see her on my own. And I would just, she would stuff me to the gills.
And one time I went there with my dad, and she and I have different languages, so she's tough to talk to, but she said something under her breath after she walked away, after I was like dying, and he cracked up.
I was like, what did she say? And he said, well, you said you were full. And she said, well, your main stomach's full. Your dessert stomach is empty. And so it's the same idea here where it's like, well, their person wallet has been spent,
but their tax avoidance operation, when I paint an ass, isn't. And that one's still full. So we can still tap that one. And so if we're drawing this, it's like, okay, so we've got payroll as our upsell. Cool.
And you'll know your services better than I do. But it's like, okay, so we have one or two things that we can include in the upsells. But the mechanism of doing it is part of the Money Models book.
And so the X without Y, the way that we probably present it. So each of that whole section is a lot more on the scripting of it. So it's like, hey, what a lot of people do is they do this. You don't want anything else, do you?
And so when you say that, everyone says yes by saying no. And by that, it's like you get 80, 90% take rates on the upsell rather than saying, hey, do you want, it's a binary, it's a different question, right?
Now they have to just consider a purchase. And so all of them have like tiny little repositionings that work really well. But that I think would make sense. Like you'd say, that's the classic upsell.
There's rollover upsells, there's, which is one of my favorites, there's anchor upsells, which an anchor upsell would be like, Let's say you're like, okay, if you want, Nick will go find the person for, I'm just making it up, right?
And he'll do it for $15,000 upfront and $10,000 a month. Now, at that point, they're like, shit, it's like, that's a lot. It's like, or if you're good with the exact same work being done by someone that Nick trained,
we can do it for one third the price. And it's like, oh, yeah, that's fine. So the key part is that you anchored them to the anchor is part of it. But there's also like what you want to anchor.
And so the way I learned this was actually at a Salt Lake City suit place. So I go in. A friend of mine sets up a private suit appointment with me. Now, I'm not balling. I have like $10,000 in my name.
So I was like, he's like, you got to have a boss suit if you want people to take you seriously. This is many years ago. Obviously, I've really listened to this advice. And so I go in there and the guy's like, all right, I'll get you.
He asked me, what do you want? I said, a boss suit. And so I'm 23 or 24, something like that. And so he puts this suit on me and he's like, what do you think? I was like, oh, I look awesome.
And then I looked at the tag and it was $16,000. And I was like, I think I turned white, right? And I was like, oh, and I think he saw me like just like freak out. He's like, hey, he's like, do you care about the brand?
And I was like, no, not at all. And he was like, I got you. And so he the thing is, is that he had his lineup already picked for me and he just pulled the second one, put it on me. He's like, what do you think?
And I didn't even look in the mirror. I just looked straight at the tag and it was two grand. And I was like, thank God. I was like, OK, I can like my friends are going to be embarrassed that he sends his poor,
you know, This muggle is non-match folks over peasant. And so anyways, I ended up checking out and he was like, well, you can't have this without that.
He's like, well, you want to make sure that you have the little pocket thing, you want the socks, whatever. So I ended up leaving for $2,500. And I remember after I left, I was like,
I spent five times more than I had budgeted for this thing. And I realized, I was like, oh, but the key part wasn't just that there was something expensive. Number one is that you actually have to sell it.
Because sometimes people put anchors, but they don't really commit to the anchor. If you just say it and then immediately don't even acknowledge it, then it's just like, this is this thing we put in the sales process.
I don't know why it's there. That's dumb. You have to commit to it. Because the thing is, 10% of the time, you have a whale and they'll fucking buy it. You're like, holy shit.
But the other 90% of the time, the key is that the thing that differentiates the anchor from the core offer is a very negligible thing. And so for me, the brand didn't matter. Or he might be like, do you care what kind of wool this is?
Now somebody might, and the reality is they probably don't actually. They just always buy the most expensive thing. Like Layla, just always asks what's the most expensive thing and then she just buys it. That's how she rolls, right?
She just always wants the best shit. You know, whatever. But the thing is, you want to have a model that allows for that. And if 10% of people buy something that's 10 times as expensive, you double your revenue. So it's still worth it.
And that's why the anchor should be super fucking high. And so that's an example of a different type of one. But this one is a classic upsell, which would be positioned the way I said, which is a no-based yes.
We cover the downsell with a featured downsell, and then continuity. Now, you already have a continuity business, so there's no real point to saying, how do we do that? But there's different mechanisms that I use on that side,
but one of my favorites is something called a wave fee. So this works really well with expensive stuff. So we would say, hey, for us to go find this person, it's $10,000 upfront. Or I can waive it if you commit to a year.
And so you just waive the fee, but you get the commitment. And the thing is, it's like, oh, if you're not sure, then just pay the 10, you get it month to month, no sweat. And so with that, also you say, and we would stack it.
So we'd be like, okay, we're going to waive the fee, we commit to a year. And if for some reason it doesn't work out with Carlos, we'll get you another Carlos within 90 days or whatever, no cost. And so then it's like the,
so you decrease cost and you decrease risk with the continuity and commitment and we create artificial pain in the moment. Now, what happens if they're like, hey, six months in, I want to cancel. It's like, no worries, just pay the fee.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 3:
That I waived for the commitment. So it actually creates a very simple contract, which is like, you just got to pay that on the way out the door. So it also increases stick. So that's like, it has like three prongs to it that makes it,
but it's very easy to understand and very elegant. And so that's one of the continuity mechanisms that I use.
Speaker 1:
Hey, let's take a quick break. You know, Hubspot helped Tumblr solve a big problem.
Speaker 2:
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Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
All right, back to the show.
Speaker 3:
When I'm looking at a business, I'm running through the different mechanisms that we use. Like, okay, we're having issues. We're having a lot of friction here, right?
Now, I'm guessing because you're selling continuity on the front, it's probably not a huge deal, right? But maybe churn is, I don't know. But here, it's like, okay, which part of this process needs to get lubricated?
Is it we need to lubricate people coming in the door? And that's where we'd use a raffle or giveaway or sweepstakes or something on the front end. Or it's like, you know, like, the thing is, is they're signing for six,
but we need them at 10. It's like, okay, well then we need to put more lubrication here. Or, you know what, we're getting all these unqualified, like 80% of the leads that are coming in are unqualified. We make the business decision.
We want to sell to these people. Okay, we have a gross product, a gross margin product that's sufficient, that still makes sense. We still have 80% gross margins on this inferior product. Okay, how do we present it?
And that's where the downsell would actually become really key. So I had a business that a close friend of mine had. And what we did was, for the downsell, we basically had this super high-ticket thing that we were selling.
He's a PhD for health stuff, and he does all this really weird health stuff for people. If you have a problem, he's the last person you go to, and then he fixes it. That's his whole thing.
And so what we did, though, is we created a downsell that re-upsold people. And so they'd get sticker shock, and he would say, no worries. If you want, I can do it for $2,000 less, but I just won't include a guarantee.
And so then people were like, I kind of want the guarantee. And then they'd re-upsell themselves.
Speaker 2:
The guarantee is worth that $2,000 to me.
Speaker 3:
Which actually gets to show you. So then there becomes the art, and I talk about this in the book, of How much do I decrease price versus how much do I decrease value? And so the play between those two, the more you study the customer,
the more you understand which components they value the most. And so typically when I'll create a downsell structure, I'm gonna think, okay, the first downsell I'm gonna give is actually to re-upsell the main thing.
Now if they really can't because they clearly said no, even though it's a big issue, then I say the next one I'm gonna do is gonna be a tiny thing with a large decrease in price.
Right, and so the first one is like small decrease, big drop in value. You know what? I'd rather have the main thing. The next one though, I'm going to have a bigger drop in price with a smaller change in value.
Speaker 2:
Because at that point, price is actually the thing that's stopping us.
Speaker 3:
Right. And so then it's basically how do I ethically lower my price? Without saying I'm selling different things to different people. That way I can change the terms rather than saying, because I never discount,
but I will change terms like, oh, no, they got something different than you, which is why they pay less. If you want, I can give you that. That's fine. But you just won't get what you're getting now.
And so that's a little bit of a brief overview in terms of how I think through creating these. But you can see right now, like if you were to do just even like a raffle once a quarter,
it's like that would probably feed all your leads for the next whatever.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. And I think one of the best parts about this is Every business has some version of this, right? This is a different way of looking at a funnel.
But the cool part of what I think you're doing with your books is you're basically taking the parts of the funnel off, getting leads through the door, being able to actually sell the first thing to them.
And how do you string together things to maximize the value you're getting for that hard-earned lead that you already paid for and busted your ass for?
And one of the things I like about this is that you've basically codified A lot of what the best people do, but they do it in their business, then they get rich and then they sort of relax. I don't need to go back.
I don't need to even label what each of these things were, but you've sort of looked at it and said, OK, let's call that an attraction offer. What are five examples of those that I've seen? And then you're on the lookout for them.
You see it in this business and that business and you start to put it together. So I think that's very, very valuable, even as a structured way of brainstorming. Because I think most people in their business, most founders will understand.
Yeah, I got it. I want to get more demand and I want to make more money per customer. But these are vague wishes. And I think the key is to sort of not be most people. I have this like rant about most people.
I'm like, you know, We try to fit in. That's our nature.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
But it's like most people in America are overweight or obese. Most people don't like their job. Most people get divorced. Most people don't have enough money to pay for an emergency procedure.
You don't want to be most people yet you want to fit in. It doesn't really make sense. And so I'd love to understand from you where you see a lot of entrepreneurs.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
When it comes to money models, what do you see is like, what are your most peoples that you're seeing? That if we just drew kind of like, here's how most people are doing this. And if you just made these sort of one or two tweaks,
you're now not in the most people bucket anymore. You're operating in a different way. Your business is going to have a higher chance of success or be worth more.
Speaker 3:
I would say not enough. Entrepreneurs are students of business and they're students of the thing. And so I'll give you an example. So like I will never claim to know more about remote work, business or HVAC or plumbing or whatever,
but like people fly out here not for that, but because a very good understanding of the variables that create money. And so it's like, okay, how can we arrange these variables? And then we will fit, like you said, the payroll thing.
I was like, okay, great. You have a thing. I'm not going to be the one who immediately knows that, but I'll be like, there's a slot here that we're missing, right? And so one is they're not big enough students of business.
Number two is a lot of times it's like, well, this is what everyone else does, to your point. And so like, well, I'll give you an example. I had a guy who did guard services, right? And so they staff buildings like this, right? With guards.
And so he had huge cash flow issues because he's paper thin margins, but it's super sticky. People stay forever. And it's very commoditized in terms of competing for bids.
And so, you know, after talking for an extended period of time, I was like, OK, well, why don't we just say that people pay quarter at a time and pay up front? It's just, oh yeah. And he's like, well, no one does that.
And I was like, so let me give you the best overcome in the world. Someone's going to ask you and they're going to say, well, everyone else does it. You're like, we've just always done it this way. That's all you have to say back.
That's all you have to say. We just, that's how we've always done it. Right. And as crazy as that is, that is still the number one overcome. Still the number one overcome.
Like when I used to ask for credit cards on the phone for someone to show up for, you know, a trial or something. Most places do not do that. But they'd be like, why do you need my card? I'd be like, that's just how we've always done it.
And then they're like, oh, okay. And so there's all this, it's so funny how some of these little lines just make huge differences in your life.
Speaker 2:
You weaponize the uselessness of most processes. It's like we're all so used to processes.
Speaker 4:
Stupid policies.
Speaker 2:
That are stupid.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, 100%.
Speaker 2:
That we're just like, oh, it's one of those, got it.
Speaker 3:
From management. And they're like, oh yeah, retarded. Yeah, got it. In. And so one is, but when I had to spend probably 30 minutes with him to just like, Just get him to just be okay with asking for the money, getting paid quarterly,
number one, and getting paid before you do service rather than after you do service. And so, I mean, everyone throws around the word first principles, but it's like,
Very few people actually think from first principles, like what prevents us from doing this? And I think that's, like this is the constraint, cash flow. Then like what are all the things we can do?
Can we change payment terms, which is the first thing you're gonna do if you have cash flow issues. Can we push our stuff out net 30 always? Like how can we change this cash flow balance in our business?
Speaker 2:
What's the money model of acquisition.com?
Speaker 3:
So this is really interesting. So it's so hard for me because what I have to write about is not the rules that I have to live by. And so my favorite movie in the world is The Matrix, like many people's.
But there's the line in The Matrix when Neo's looking at Morpheus and he says, so are you telling me that I can dodge bullets? And he says, I'm telling you that when you're ready, you won't have to.
And so all of the things that I write about, like even like selling tactics and things like that, they assume you have no brand. And so like when you have a brand,
you have so much demand and so little supply that you can set your own terms. I can have zero attraction offer and make the absolute worst offer. I don't have to make a grand slam offer at all because I might say,
I don't want to deliver much at all. I will promise zero. I will guarantee nothing. But because then that'll still give me less operational constraints on the back end. And so at the end of the day,
like the reason I have the two parts of my logo are this is a lever and this is supply and demand. And to me, those are the two biggest forces in business.
Speaker 2:
I always thought it was a whale's tail.
Speaker 3:
But those are the two strongest forces in business. And so all of these things are to help lubricate or create or channel demand when you have little. When you have an ocean of demand, It's hard to lose.
And so the model that we have is very different. It's almost like a ward away model of like, we, you know, we invite entrepreneurs out here who we think are interesting.
We look at the business and then we say, hey, change these things, call us in a year. And that's basically what we did. We took our diligence process that we were doing for multiple years.
And I was like, the catalyst for it was that we had, we're getting all these thank you emails. So all these founders come in from my content or whatever, and they'd be like, My deal team took six calls with them and at the end was like,
listen, these two metrics suck. Do these things. See how it works for a year. Give us a call. And they were like, this was the most valuable process I've ever gone through. And then I was thinking, that cost me a lot of money.
And so I was like, what if I just charged for diligence functionally and then I could actually staff it better and all these other things. And so that's functionally what we do from the advisory practice that then feeds the deal side.
Speaker 2:
So you have the content, which creates the brand. What you did is you turned your cost into, whether it's a profit center or breakeven, I don't know, but something like this. This is your workshops. What did you call it?
You called it something else just now?
Speaker 3:
Advisory practice.
Speaker 2:
Advisory, okay. So this is your advisory.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
And you say, okay, pay us five grand, come over here.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
But then you do have an upsell here to like more advisory.
Speaker 3:
Which is like, yeah. So we just do, so basically from there, it's, this is how we, basically how we seek value creation. And so we say like, this is our framework for creating value. If you like this, Happy to help you.
If you're like, this is cool. I'll go do this. Awesome. But the consulting side is true consulting. It's one thing. They come, we identify the constraint, we say, okay, well, we're going to go look at comps.
We're going to look at the different ad strategies of people who are bigger. We're going to say, this is the funnel and this is the offer we think you should do. And we say, this is all you have to do. When you do that, call us.
And so it's 100% from Point to point, it's not like a ongoing thing. It's literally one-time consulting. And that's the quote, that's the quote upsell.
Speaker 2:
And then at the bottom here you have the equity side.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Where you're like, great, the private equity side, right? You can buy the businesses that...
Speaker 3:
Yeah, and the venture arm now, which we do a lot of.
Speaker 2:
And venture, okay, gotcha. Interesting. When you started, how much of this was figured out as you go?
Speaker 3:
Or 100% of it?
Speaker 2:
Grandmaster plan, visionary, turtleneck.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, right, yeah. Some things, I would say the big goals for master plan, all of this mechanics was absolutely like figured out as you go. Like the books and how they've all been structured has been a five plus year plan.
And you'll see what I do at the launch and why. It's going to be awesome. But it will all be revealed. But the mechanics of the prices and how we do that, that was very much born from, I am currently spending money on this team.
We have way more demand than we have supply. Maybe if I can generate more revenue here, I can staff it better. I can get more luck surface area because I can look at more of these deals. Because you've probably seen this.
Some companies look terrible on paper and then you meet them and you're like, oh, these guys are awesome. And so we had to do so many I mean, we probably talked to 1% of the papers that would come in and I was like,
I know we're missing stuff. And so that was basically the thesis behind this.
Speaker 2:
I mean, I think it was brilliant. I was like, wait a minute. So he basically gets paid for people to come and open up the kimono. They get value too, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. These are not dummies. These are business owners.
They should be making good decisions. But I was like, wow, that's it.
Speaker 3:
The median size is four million. So it's not like they're not small business. It's median. So like there's plenty of like tons of good businesses.
Every time we have a workshop, top one's usually between 30 and 100, you know, and there's plenty in the eight, like every single, I don't think we've ever had one that doesn't have multiple eight figure companies.
Speaker 2:
I want to play a game with you.
Speaker 1:
Do we have the game here?
Speaker 3:
Oh, what is the game?
Speaker 2:
So the game was this.
Speaker 3:
Ruh-roh.
Speaker 2:
Okay, so this is going to be a game. That we're calling Make It or Take It. All right, so you're going to have to shoot. I know you're not making a bachelor. We're going to have to get up for this.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, OK.
Speaker 2:
So you're going to take a shot. We're going to see how far back we're going to get here, but I think we'll set that as the benchmark here. You make it, you're off the hook.
You miss it, you have to take it with one of the tough questions that...
Speaker 3:
We spin the bottle.
Speaker 2:
I was like, I really like Alex. And I was like, what do people want? So I asked people, what do you want to episode? The guy puts out a ton of content. You know, I'm not just going here to get views. Let's do something new.
Let's do something fun. And so they were like, ask him some tough questions. So I said, okay, let me think of some tough questions, but let's make it fun.
Speaker 1:
How we do this.
Speaker 2:
All right.
Speaker 1:
So first shot.
Speaker 2:
Go for it, and then you get a...
Speaker 3:
And then if you miss it, do I ask you the question?
Speaker 2:
If you make it, yeah, you can ask me the question, that's fair. Or I burn the question. So it's up to you. So here's the question I have.
Speaker 3:
Okay, what's the question?
Speaker 2:
Perfect. So the question is, what do your haters get right?
Speaker 3:
What do my haters get right?
Speaker 2:
Meaning, you know, you get criticism, as anyone does, but sometimes there's, you know, some criticism is fair, or there's components of it that's fair. So what do the haters get right?
Speaker 3:
Steroids is one, you know, he's just, you know, he's here for the money. I would say from like the philosophical angle, you know, I would say there are people who are like, I'm pretty open about that too.
They will use a fact as an insult and I'll be like, I agree.
Speaker 2:
I think that qualifies. I think that's one. They're intending it as a hater comment, but you're like, yes, and I agree.
Speaker 3:
I agree. If only you knew.
Speaker 2:
I'm open with that.
Speaker 3:
I'm here seven days a week. I work all the days until I cannot work, and then I take a day, and then I continue to work again. I work 12 hours most days. I'm usually a five to five for six.
Speaker 2:
Is that a temporary thing? Are you like, I'm in an era of my life where that's what I want to do, or you're like, that's who I want to be?
Speaker 3:
This doesn't feel like a push for me. When I'm pushing, I work third shift, which is I work 18. If I do that for an extended period of time, that starts to grate at me, but 12 is like, That doesn't, yeah, like five to five,
I'm like I still feel like I've got plenty of time to like chill out and do whatever.
Speaker 1:
All right, this episode is brought to you by Mercury. They are the finance platform of choice for over 200,000 companies. Shouldn't be surprised because I use it myself for not one, not two, but I have eight different Mercury accounts.
I have seven for different companies that I'm a part of and then I have My own personal account because now they have personal banking which is a really cool feature. I highly, highly recommend it. Like I said, I use it myself.
The reason why is because the way that Mercury works is beautiful. It's very intuitive and you could tell that it's actually made by a startup founder. It's an entrepreneur.
You could tell it's made by somebody who used other banking products in the past. And didn't like all the different rough edges and annoyances and decided to, you know, actually fix it himself.
And really any type of entrepreneur you are, let's say you're an agency, well, one of the things every agency has to do is be able to send invoices,
easily create them, send them to customers and stay current on your balances with all your customers. Well, you can do that inside Mercury. And so I think that Mercury is great. Highly recommend you check it out.
And thank you for sponsoring the show. For more information, check out mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details.
Speaker 2:
Let's do another question.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, okay. Make it or take it.
Speaker 2:
All right.
Speaker 1:
Next question.
Speaker 4:
All right.
Speaker 3:
What do I got? I love it.
Speaker 2:
All right. If I reset your bank account and your followers, change your name and face. So I reset you to zero, basically drop you in another life, not another country. How long do you think it would take you to get rich again? Which rich?
Rich would be, let's say, for the name of this podcast, My First Million, to make a million bucks, get a million bucks in your bank.
Speaker 4:
A year.
Speaker 2:
And what would be the approach? So you're back to nameless, faceless Alex.
Speaker 3:
Yeah. Well, having lost everything twice, I'll tell you what I did, which was I find a local business that's typically a service that I think I can sell for a lot of money. And they're typically undercharging.
And so I will say, hey, how cheaply will you let me sell? Basically, if I send you 100 customers, How cheaply would you do it? Would you charge me to do that? And so I get an agreement on price from them.
And then I sell for whatever the hell I want.
Speaker 2:
I brought you volume.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
What's the lowest you could deliver the service for that volume?
Speaker 3:
Yeah. And so let's say it's a backcracker. Let's say a chiropractor or whatever. And I say, OK, how much will you crack back for at the absolute cheapest? And he says, $25 a session. I say, OK, cool.
So I can sell packages of 10 for $250 and you're cool with it. And he says, yes. So I'm going to go and sell packages for $3,000. And I'm going to make the spread, and it's because I know how to sell and I know how to get leads.
And so, I mean, this is what I did. I mean, obviously, I did it in the gym space, but that's what I did when I lost everything. I just went to gyms and said, hey. But for them, I negotiated zero. You already have all your cost basis.
I'll just add you customers and then after the first month exactly So I would I would take the first the 500 bucks I'd say like I get to keep that and then after six weeks you can convert memberships are all yours So zero CAC for you.
I take all the risk I do all the work right and that's and then I would I did about a hundred grand every 21 days doing that Is there a better or worse type of service business that you'd go for like knowing what you know now?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I sold the gym.
Speaker 3:
I for sure do health care health care. Oh my god health care means what white lab coat? Anything yeah, like pseudo I call it pseudo-medical.
Okay, so that's where like I mean, that's why I like teeth whitening That's we have a chain of 28 20 stores. Like I love pseudo-medical stuff. So Laser, you know laser laser skin stuff laser hair removal,
you know the chemical peels I love all that like the beauty medical like intersection you can just sell your.
Speaker 2:
What's the why you love it because of the demand because it's huge supply demand inequality.
Speaker 3:
So there's if you see if you look at the stats there, it's insane. Like the amount of demand of like boomers and all the stuff you like want to stay young and the supply side on is so low.
And the reason I know this is because every single med spa that walks in these doors is killing it. And I talk to the founders and I'm like, Whoa. And I'm like, so how do you market? They're like, we just kind of like open up.
We just announced that we're there.
Speaker 2:
We have a website.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, no, they're like, yeah, we have a phone number. People just kind of come in. I was like, they don't know. That's not how it works.
Speaker 2:
That's not how most businesses work.
Speaker 3:
That's how crazy the supply-demand difference is. And they don't think about pricing. They think about nothing. And they make 40% more. They have no idea. And so that's why I would go there.
Speaker 2:
That's like a heat signal for you.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, 100%. When I see a lot of people who don't know what they're doing all making money, I'm like, OK, there's something there that's good. And so that's what I would do because that's what I did do.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 3:
Thank you. All right.
Speaker 2:
Let me get another question here that I want to do because I got a couple.
Speaker 3:
Yeah. Because it's like if you need to make a hundred grand to a million bucks, you can do that. Like if you just if you know how to generate leads locally and sell,
you just get a service business that agrees to take customers for a price and then you just sell as much as you can. All right.
Speaker 2:
Go ahead.
Unknown Speaker:
Make it.
Speaker 3:
You want me to burn it or you can ask me? What are you doing? What did you get most wrong in the past three years?
Speaker 2:
OK, I'll tell you this. These guys are operating well, I can add a bunch of value, similar to what you guys do, private equity, whatever. And I took minority stakes in several companies that have done well.
But basically, when they do well, and I add value, I just sit there wondering why the hell don't I own more of this company. And I realized that I could have made more and really simplified my life with one great business.
Like it doesn't take many great businesses to get to the next levels of wealth. Business can be worth $100M, $500M, like they can get very big. And so I would have been better served doing less. And I got it wrong.
I thought that I was being, I thought I was playing the game at a bit of a higher level. When in actuality, if I just kept it simple, picked one of those businesses or built one great business,
I could have done better than I did spreading my focus with less work.
Speaker 3:
I made the same mistake. We did 24 deals in 24 months, and then we consolidated it down to five. I mean, it's 80-20. You're like, wow, that was dumb.
Speaker 2:
The power law applies at basically all levels of life.
Speaker 3:
It still rules. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
All right, let's do the next one.
Speaker 3:
All right. Now I've got my...
Speaker 2:
I've got to move the benchmark.
Speaker 3:
Fine, you just ask it, whatever.
Speaker 2:
All right, I was going to ask you, this one's funny. Should successful entrepreneurs get a prenup?
Speaker 3:
It's tough as a frame.
Speaker 2:
If it's your kid.
Speaker 3:
It's my kid. Well, if they're my kid, they're going to have my money. So yeah, I'd say, yeah, get it. I mean, for me, I asked Layla. Basically, it's like when you want to have a prenup when you have somebody who doesn't want to sign a prenup.
That's the only way I can say it. Layla and I, I thought I was rich when I met Layla, which I wasn't, but I thought I was rich. I said, will you sign a prenup? She was like, sure. I don't care. I don't want your shit.
We were on the way to the courthouse to get it notarized or whatever. In a dramatic flare, I tore it and threw it out the window. Because it was so not a thing. She was like, I don't want your shit. It's fine.
And I believed her and we built everything together. But I think that is very risky advice. And so I would say the vast majority of people should strongly consider it.
Speaker 2:
Romantic.
Speaker 4:
I like it.
Speaker 2:
All right, here we go. I'm gonna give you one. Okay, I like this question. So I'll do this one. Oh, perfect.
Speaker 3:
Bumped in and out. I know.
Speaker 2:
This is an easy one. This is actually not that tough a question. If you could only follow three people on X, meaning if you had to slim your content diet down to bodybuilder mode, where it's like chicken and broccoli or whatever,
who's your chicken and broccoli of your content diet? People you genuinely You genuinely value what they're putting out there. I think maybe Twitter is one of your big platforms.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, it is.
Speaker 3:
I mean, Elon would be one. So I have two more people to use. You know, it's weird. I'm actually I totally like use Twitter like a like I just like let it serve me whatever. Right. And so I just like love all this.
Yeah, I just like kind of like just let it feed me whatever. I'm trying to think about the other accounts that I would be like, oh, I would I'd miss them if I didn't see them.
Speaker 4:
Right.
Speaker 3:
It's actually hard. It feels like I'm who are two years. Who are two years?
Speaker 2:
Naval would be one.
Speaker 3:
OK. Naval is a good one.
Speaker 2:
You know, the others, I mean, I would cheat and be like the news aggregator. So it's like, oh, at least I get all that. But I wouldn't actually pick that.
Speaker 3:
You know who actually I think puts really good content? Ankur from Carry. OK. Yeah, I actually like his stuff a lot.
Speaker 2:
Interesting.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I like his stuff. That'll probably be my second one. I'd say George Mac. I love George Mac stuff, yep.
Speaker 2:
George Mac. Although I'd cheat. I'd be like, just text me the thing.
Speaker 3:
No, George is really good. I actually really like George's stuff. Yeah, now as I'm thinking about it, it's like, see how he puts good stuff out. Obviously, Williamson puts good stuff out. So now that I'm thinking through it, I have this blank.
But no, I think George just has some of the most unique takes. And I think that's why I like his stuff a lot.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. All right. Well, thank you for playing. Make it or take it.
Speaker 1:
You took the tough questions.
Speaker 3:
Hormozi, hot hands. Hard questions Yeah, the three, you know the biggest errors man. That's a Because it's like which ones cost me the most and then which ones did I miss the opportunity the most?
Mmm, so it's like I have it's like I It's like just based on that. Like I thought I've really beat myself up on this. I have missed more hundred million dollar Net gains and multiple $100M net gains than I have made,
which makes me really angry. But then I thought about it. I was like, you always say no to more deals than you say yes to. So you're always going to miss, you're literally going to miss more winners than you have.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 3:
But like, I could tell you all, like, it's like I say their names before I go to sleep at night. Like, one of them.
Speaker 2:
Arya Stark.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, and some of them I'm like, I shouldn't, like, There was a gym franchise, a buddy of mine. I've known him for years. He's been in the business for 30 years. He finally went out on his own to start a franchise.
And then I was like, we need to do the business this way. And he's like, I just want to run a franchise. I was like, dude, let's just privately own a mall. It's a great model. And I was like, I'll fund the whole expansion.
I've already sold 40 units. I don't want to flip back. I ended up not doing the deal. He'll exit for probably $120 million. This is in three years. It was for 50% of the company. Hugh is a friend. It was fitness for...
I was like, I should not have missed this deal. You know what I mean? There's a content creator that I love and have followed for more than 10 years. Talked to them. We were gonna get a 33% stake in the company.
And from the time that we said no to the deal, I'd say 24 months later, they're now probably a $150M company. And it's just like I have like four or five of these ones that I'm just like, I should like that was like that one. I said no,
because I knew the amount that he he slash they wanted from me was going to be more than I wanted to commit to. Like I get it was like I think they saw it as like an aqua hire.
And I was like, I'm not going to like I will do this, but I'm not going to dive in.
Speaker 2:
I had a moment like this in Silicon Valley. I thought I was saying my big miss. I was like, I forget which one it was. Maybe it was like Calm or something.
I think I was buddy with Alex and he was like raising it probably like a $4 or $5 million valuation. It's now $2 billion, right? So I could have easily written a check into Calm.
Disregarding the fact that at the time I had no money, was not angel invested. There's many reasons I missed that in addition to just not thinking it was going to be a winner.
But besides that, I was telling some story about one of these, one of these misses. And I thought I was like sounding cool because I missed it. And literally, I just got big dogged by this guy in Silicon Valley who was just like,
he's like, okay, welcome to Silicon Valley. He's like, what are you talking about? Everybody, anybody has. Baskets of these.
Speaker 1:
Are you kidding me? You want to start? How much time you got?
Speaker 3:
Here's Facebook number one. Uber's first and second round I missed.
Speaker 2:
It's like, oh, I wrote the check. I missed the date.
Speaker 1:
How many different versions of this?
Speaker 2:
But he said something smart. First, he was like, shut up, basically. He's like, shut up. You think this is a really cool, unique story? Not only is this not cool and unique,
it's actually just a standard cost of entry if you're going to play this game. So what are you talking about? But the second thing he said was he's like,
I think you're taking the wrong lesson from this because I was focusing so much on what I missed out on versus what the root cause analysis of why didn't I do this?
Speaker 1:
Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:
And I've actually since then changed this where it's like actually a lot of these misses were like deals I liked, I wanted to do, they want to do.
We just didn't chase or kind of follow up enough to like make sure a transaction goes through because doing a deal takes a sprint at the end. And we actually operationalized a bunch of those.
Once we got over ourselves and the weird ego of missing, life got a lot better for us, but I had to learn that the hard way.
Speaker 3:
That was probably a big one. And then a lot of my big misses have been strategic mess-ups. One of the biggest errors I ever made at GemLaunch was I started Allen, the software company.
And I should have built a CRM for gems and that was like I had the right idea.
Speaker 2:
What did Allen do if it wasn't?
Speaker 3:
It just it worked leads because the biggest pain point they had was working leads. CRM wasn't a pain point. From a monetization perspective, if I put them all on the platform, then I would have all their metrics.
I would have been control revenue. There's so many things I would have been able to do.
Speaker 2:
You could have used the pain to get them into like the sticky forever product.
Speaker 3:
100%. And so like That was probably a $300M miss. And so that sucks. That's probably my biggest strategic miss I've made. I literally allocated capital to build technology and I built the wrong one. But I didn't know.
Speaker 2:
I mean, I was 27. On the other side of the coin, what are the biggest hits that have happened post the gym launch and whatever?
Speaker 3:
This building. So this was like an unexpected, like, wow, this was way, way more alpha than I would have guessed.
Speaker 2:
What do you mean by that? Like, literally the real estate value? Or you mean just the serendipity of doing an office?
Speaker 3:
So I bought this building before we did any, like, it was just like, I just wanted a place to have a gym. So like, I was like, I'm going to buy the building. And Layla was like, we don't, like, we're all remote.
And we have like, you know, with the, on the, just the pure whole co, I think at the time with like 15 employees, just on the investment side. And I was like, And so anyways, I was like,
I really want this building because it was the old UFC building. It's kind of cool. I was like, I will figure out a way that it will pay for itself. Right. And so the only reason the advisory practice got stood up was because I was like,
well, we have this space. I was like, let's just I'll make a post to see if anyone wants to come out. And then that's what sprung this. There's huge demand for that in person versus remote stuff. So then it was like, great.
So we meet all these businesses and we generate cash flow. So it's like both things, but like this for sure, like that whole thing would not have happened if we didn't have a boat, like zero chance. I wouldn't have done it.
Cause I, it was just like, I have the space. Let's try. I just would never have taken that leap.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 3:
So that was probably a huge, like, didn't guess it was going to be a win-win. That's probably like the biggest, the biggest one that's like that.
Speaker 2:
Plus, I mean, you've got like, you know, Michael and a bunch of other guys who are here all the time now, which I think it was very tempting and very easy to be fully remote.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
And I think remote works. Remote works.
Speaker 4:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
But in like the business Olympics, the people who are serious about it, they're going to be together. They're going to be co-located. You know, like I paid Diego. I was like, move across the country. I'll pay you more. Just live.
As the rule is, here's a five minute radius from like where I live.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Pick a place. You know, that's the only rule of coming out here because You can't really replace that.
Speaker 3:
Oh, totally. So now we're 80% in person. And so I think we're at like 90-ish employees, something like that. And so the only thing that we allow as remote is infrastructure. So HR is here. But finance can be remote.
Certain tech roles can be remote. Legal can be remote.
Speaker 2:
This has actually become my favorite podcast question. I don't know if you have a good answer to this, because I think you're so locked in and focused on what you do, but what are you really interested in lately?
What are you very obsessed with lately that's not your core day-to-day work? Meaning, not like a hobby, but just like, dude, I'm kind of fascinated by this, or I just keep reading about this, or I keep wanting to meet people in this,
doing this thing. What's that thing?
Speaker 3:
I only have two, and they will not be, well, one's the trite answer, which is like, I'm reading up on AI just like you are, and I spend a ton of hours looking into it.
Um, the other thing is completely unsurprising is that I'm actually really into gym equipment. Like I, I, like my Instagram is gym equipment. It's gym equipment.
Speaker 2:
Are we talking like novelty gym equipment or what do we like? Like kind of like I get all these like your neck cracker.
Speaker 3:
No, no, no. Mine's like commercial, like giant industrial. Yeah. Yeah. Like, like the stuff that you see at gyms.
Speaker 2:
And why are you so interested in that? What's what's get me interested in it?
Speaker 3:
Well, if you train hard, you start to notice that some machines are better than others. And why are they better? And then you start looking at force curves for, okay, where's the tension the highest?
And then it's like, does it correspond with where hypertrophy is maxed out for the range of motion for the muscle? And just what's the feel of the equipment and the range of motion and the adjustability? And what kind of bearings?
You can go pretty far into this. Yeah. And so I'll say this. There's a new thing that came out. It's called The Voltra. I'm not sponsored by Beyond Power.
And I think that in 10 or 15 years, gym equipment will look very different and it has not changed for a very long time. And it's because basically magnetic resistance wasn't a thing and now it is.
And so like a vulture, for example, it's like a brick. It's literally the size of a brick. It's this big. It can get to 200 pounds of resistance, right? But not only that, you can do single pound increments,
which is amazing for strength work because like most people, Like, side note for anybody, a lot of reasons you get stuck at a machine or on dumbbells is because the percentage jump is too big.
Like, girls with dumbbells, it's like the worst. They go from 20 to 25 pounds for a girl. It's a 20% jump in weight. And so they just can't make the jumps. They just get stuck.
Whereas, like, the perfect gym would have literally 100 dumbbells that are 1 pound, 2 pound, 3 pound, 4 pound, all the way up. And then you can make those progressions much easier. So anyways, it goes single pound increments.
You can also change the eccentrics. So you can have it be way harder on the way in versus the way out. The next thing is you can change the curve. So you can make it like really hard at the front.
So for any kind of pulling movement, you want heavier here because you're stronger here, lighter here. On the flip side, if you're doing pushing movements, you want to be lighter here, heavier here.
Speaker 2:
And you do that by just telling it the movement? Yeah, you can just move the curve.
Speaker 3:
You can change the curve. You can manually change the curve. And so, because of that...
Speaker 1:
Is this the European company, by the way?
Speaker 2:
I don't know. Somebody sent me this. They were like, because I was buying the Bowflex adjustable... Two dumbbells, but you can do all these weights. He's like, I really want to get these. That's probably Nubel. Okay, maybe that was the one.
Speaker 3:
That's probably what it is. But yeah, the best ones right now are the Rep slash Pepin Adjustables. They go to 120 and they're all metal. There's no plastic. I mean, I can talk about it. But that is probably my...
I'll close the loop on the Vulture thing. The reason I think it's so interesting is that all the selectorized pieces you see, stacks of weight, you put a pin in it and there's the stack.
They take up so much room because you have to balance the piece of equipment from when people are moving it. And the stack takes up a huge amount of space.
And from a shipping perspective, it's so expensive to ship 400 pounds plus the machine. And so it takes more square footage. It's more expensive. It has smaller increments. You can't change the strength curve. There's all these reasons.
And so they find like the tech is finally there where I think that there will be a next generation of machines where they will only have the electronic. Yeah, exactly. And you just literally plug it into the wall.
And the thing is, the square footage will be smaller. The actual machines will be cheaper because this is Vulture's Gen 1. Like in five generations, it'll be $200. Right now it's $2,000 for the brick, but it'll be cheaper.
having mass-based resistance. So I get very excited about that stuff because I think it's going to be really cool for gyms because I mean,
I obviously come from that space, but the amount of things that you can now be able to do as a gym owner. Now, I don't own a gym right now. I do own a gym, it's just not commercial.
There's so many more things you can do with customers that like your ability to do like true hypertrophy training in a large group setting, when you have that type of resistance, it's safer. You can't get hurt on it.
Like there's all these things that are beneficial for it. So I think that that's my, that's my 10 year call that people aren't expecting. I think it'll, I think a huge amount will be magnetic resistance. It'll be cheaper for gym owners.
They don't break as often, incremental, all the reasons I said, and it's less space.
Speaker 2:
Dude, that was a sick answer. That was the one I was like, I don't even know if I'm going to ask him. I feel like he's going to tell me like, I really liked writing this book and I'm like, okay, well, great.
Speaker 3:
No, gym equipment. Have you seen my gym?
Speaker 2:
No, I haven't.
Speaker 3:
I'll show you.
Speaker 2:
Okay, yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 3:
You'll see it and be like, oh.
Speaker 2:
You said you're geeking out on AI. Anything, like, what's interesting? You use it a ton. What do you use it for?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I use it a lot. I use it, I mean, I feel like, I just say I'm ashamed. I use it all the time and I am ashamed at my use cases. I know I should be using it better, which I think many people feel that way.
But I feel like at all levels, everyone feels like they should be using it more.
Speaker 2:
But there should be a word for like AI guilt.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
I have this overwhelming sense of AI guilt.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I think Elon has AI guilt. You know what I mean? So I would say like, I'm the most interested part that I'm in for like where I'm focused on AI is actually phones because obviously I come from the sales background.
And so that use case like, I want...
Speaker 2:
Like phone call?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, like sales calls, customer support calls. Like right now, we have fully implemented AI support and it's crushing. It's doing so, it's like, it's amazing.
So right now, over 90% of all tickets are being resolved entirely with AI, which is, I mean, you have an e-commerce or multiple, right? Like, it's so, it's amazing. And like, I'm getting these thank you emails like, you guys rock.
Like, this was two minute response. Like, you guys are on it. And like, the whole thing's AI. And so, I'm like, that, it's obviously the text-based side is there, but like, it's weird because the, if you like Grok 4,
I'm sure you got the upgrade or whatever.
Speaker 2:
The voice keeps getting better.
Speaker 3:
Grok's the one I use for voice. So it's the only one that I do voice stuff with. I do all the other stuff with the other ones. But I'm like, why, like, it's so close.
Like, the latency is so close that I just, that's the use case that I'm waiting to crack. Like, we've been working on one for a year now and the latency, but it's still like,
it's not good enough that I'd be like, I wouldn't waste money on, you know, leads for it to call, but it's like, maybe it's six months, but that's the one that I have my most finger on the pulse.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's great. Yeah, dude, I hired an AI tutor. Oh, did you? Basically every week because I'm like, it's a full-time job to keep up with advances, use cases, etc. So I said, I'm going to sit down. I was like, I'm going to pay $500 an hour.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
What you're going to do is you're going to come with a list of like, below my mind, point one, below my mind, point two, but I get to drive.
Speaker 3:
Yeah. Right?
Speaker 2:
Because you set it all up, but then I get to be caveman.
Speaker 3:
This is how I learn everything, just so you know. Yeah, that's how I learned how to run Facebook ads. I paid a guy $7.50 an hour and I said, Just explain to me how you're doing this and then I'll learn it.
Speaker 2:
I think literally coaches are like coaches for adults. Yeah, it's just like I don't know why there's maybe an embarrassment factor or a lack of imagination or creativity. I think it's just like basically underrated.
Speaker 3:
Highest ROI money.
Speaker 2:
Also like the difference, it's just like engineering, right? Like they tell like 10x engineers. There's really like average coach, a good coach and like the best coaches is these orders of magnitude jumps and how good they are.
So the other thing people do get wrong is they just take the first coach that they have versus like Be really promiscuous and like,
you know, go date around and like, go find a coach that will just like rock your world because whether it's fitness or food or whatever, I have like probably six or seven coaches like in rotation right now in my life.
Speaker 3:
For AI or in general?
Speaker 2:
I have AI. No, just general. I have my food girlfriend. She calls me every morning. Helps me think about like, okay, how am I going to eat today?
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
And helping me like uproot all my bad habits through that. I have my personal trainer who does a very specific functional training thing that I like and I do. I got a basketball coach. People are like, you're not going to the NBA.
What are you doing? It's like, well, I love playing basketball. I decided being better at basketball is more fun. I can go do cardio or I can have an NBA trainer train me. It's way better than just doing cardio. So why would I not do that?
So I just have a bunch, but it's become to the point where it's comical. I'm just looking for an excuse. What other coaches can I add to my piano teachers? Everything.
Speaker 3:
I'm such an advocate of this for anyone who, if we're still even rolling. They've all left. They've all left. We're just hanging out here. I think some of the highest ROI money you can spend is one-on-one tutoring.
Every time I really need to learn something, I will pay you a huge amount of money to just sit with me and teach it to me.
Speaker 2:
Which, by the way, is the killer AI use case. That's going to be the thing where once we get it... I forget what it's called. Have you heard of the Bloom Two Sigma thing? Basically, there's this long-term studies.
People want to fix education, so rich people fund.
Speaker 1:
How do we do it?
Speaker 2:
And then they go do the research and they're basically like, the number one way to get like an actual two sigma, which is like the standard deviation jump in outcome is one-on-one tutoring. Problem is doesn't scale. So we, they wrote it off.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
So for the last 30 years, we've just been like, well, we know the thing that works.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
It doesn't really scale. It doesn't, you know, it can't be affordable. So we'll try all these other things.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
But it's like, Hey, wait a minute. That's now, that's now viable. And so let's see what happens.
Speaker 3:
You know, are you in Austin?
Speaker 2:
No, I'm in the Bay Area. Alpha School.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, so I talked to Joe about Alpha School and I mean the stuff they're doing is wild, but the issues that they are encountering has nothing to do with education. Yeah, it's everything to do with policy.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 3:
Such a pain. But it's like, okay, two hours a day, we're moving at twice the speed, so that's So one-fourth the time, twice the speed, they're moving at eight times the speed of a normal school, and their scores are top 98 percentile.
So it's like eight times the speed and the quality metrics there, and then the other six hours of the day is the kid just learns whatever they like.
They code apps, they do public speaking, they do budgeting, they learn all these other life skills. And it's like, God, did you see that clip by Alexander Wang? Hopefully I didn't.
Speaker 2:
Scale.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Which clip was it?
Speaker 3:
Well, he's like, I don't want a kid until it's native.
Speaker 2:
And I was like, man, that was one of the more insane statements I've ever heard.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
And the good, like, that's the good weird of Silicon Valley is you run into people, very close to people who will say batshit insane stuff with a straight face. And then you're like, wait, am I insane? Or is he insane? I can't tell.
He's probably right. But he's crazy.
Speaker 3:
He has way more context on this, which is what scares me. It's like when you have one of those, it's like, Well, you have to know something like if we have the same information, you might be crazy by my standards, right?
But if I assume that you are intelligent and can make good decisions that it means you know something I don't know and so that's what that's what frightens me from the AI. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:
Peter Thiel had a great one of the great Peter Thiel like sort of insights was when he was went around he was like universities a bubble and he was basically saying like You have to look at university as a bundle.
Education, great, sure, 10%. Babysitting, maturation of 18 to 22-year-olds, social. There's an insurance policy for parents where you're like, I don't know, just go to college. I feel like that's what I needed to do for you.
And there's a filtering thing, which is like, well, we trust that Harvard filtered you, so we'll just trust their filtering process. So college does all these different jobs.
And his take was basically like, If you want to disrupt it, you don't just disrupt the whole thing. You have to unbundle the bundle and figure out what to do. And so, like, I feel like this is just such a common business thing,
which is like, oh, health care sucks or this sucks. Yeah, it sucks. Cool. But until you've realized that that thing is actually a bundle, you really have no shot at upending it in any way.
You've got to take one part of that bundle and just 10x that and figure out a way where the other stuff doesn't apply to you because you didn't promise that. And if you can do all that, it works.
The way I think about what you do is you're a teacher on YouTube, which is not a surprise to you. People think of YouTube as like either a social media. Okay, maybe another just content. It's entertainment, right?
But like did I get little kids miss Rachel is the best preschool teacher in the world Yeah, she has 34 million preschool students. Yeah who watch her on her app great like that.
She's the best teacher therefore she should get a This huge outsized number of students and Khan Academy was a great teacher. You're a great business teacher. I literally look at YouTube like it's a high school. There's just classes to offer.
I can go to David Cenera and get the history of entrepreneurship. That's an elective I decided to take. You're basically like business 101 or business fundamentals. It's like great.
I can go take business fundamentals with my professor Hormozi. I think when you start to look at YouTube as also a bundle of music and entertainment and education,
then you start to think about how I might use it differently than the average person, right? Because like, both you and I probably wish we started on YouTube 10 years earlier.
And it was the people who saw YouTube as more than what others saw it that actually got that advantage.
Speaker 3:
No, I think that's really good. Yeah, I think it reminds me of the Deval quote that I like a lot, which is technology democratizes consumption and consolidates production.
And so it's like, which means if you're the best in the world, you get to do it for everybody.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 3:
And so, yeah, I actually, I think about that a lot when we talk about our channel, which is like, how do we, how do we just make this the best business content possible? And that's, I mean, that's the whole goal.
It's like, if we just keep doing that, then we'll be okay.
Speaker 2:
I think you're doing a pretty damn good job of it.
Speaker 3:
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:
The hard part is, I'm curious how you do this, because at one point in time, I think I even talked about this on the podcast, I was like, I think he's great and smart,
but then the problem with YouTube, because the goddamn views are public, is they give you an outer scorecard to use that may not be the one you want, right?
I remember once I looked at your channel and it was like, if you're broke, do this. If you don't have enough money for Chipotle, do this. I was like, dude, he's just going to attract broke people.
Speaker 3:
That's the opposite of what he wants.
Speaker 2:
It's easy to optimize because guess what? There's more broke people who are more desperate that are on YouTube with a bunch of time to kill. You're going to get 2 million views on the Broke Guy video. But I'm never going to click that.
And you probably want some people like me clicking some of your content. And so I think that's the challenge with YouTube overall. If you take their metrics as your metrics, you might have a big problem.
Speaker 3:
It's 100%, yeah, it's 1,000% a problem. And we put as many controls in place as we can and it's still tough. And so right now, here's where it gets, let's peel a layer back.
So where it gets really interesting is that if I make six videos, this is our actual cadence, five of them I want to be business first, business deep, whatever we want to call it.
And then one out of six I say, I'm okay to just make it wide. Brutally honest truth about whatever, right? That one video will get more views than the other five together. And so then how much does that actually weight the brand?
So even if I actually think about my production versus consumption, right? So if I actually put my inputs like I might have a 50% philosophy brand and 50% or, you know, motivation, whatever you want to call it, right? Like mindset, etc.
And then 50% business-y. But in terms of my production, it's 90% of my time is business. It just like doesn't get the reach. And so it's actually one of the things that frustrates me in some ways because like,
If I get stopped on the street, I'm always curious, what was the thing? Business owners, for me, because I see the people walk in the door and you have to be at a certain level to walk in the door anyways.
They are more listening and reading in general. And we have a whole series we do called Cash Gows, which is kind of like what we did with the Hormozi Hotline, but I have them in person. And then I do the whole thing and it's like an hour.
And those ones right now average like 150,000, maybe 200,000 views per video. But a brutally honest million, it's just like, I could do, we could do one right now. And I know exactly what we're going to say.
When I ask who here likes those who shows up, they're like, please keep making those. And so I keep asking them just because I need the reinforcement.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, of course. Because you need an inner scorecard.
Speaker 3:
I need something.
Speaker 2:
The outer scorecard is only going to tell you one thing. So you have to instrument an antenna yourself to get the signal that you're actually looking for in a way that's not necessarily biased.
But if I don't put up an antenna, there is no generic antenna for this.
Speaker 3:
Also, a little tiny thing that may be helpful or useful. But we actually just this quarter switched our metric.
So we used views as basically the way that I did it before was like we will make content about these topics and then as long as they're within these topics, then we maximize views.
So that's the constraint and then maximize within that constraint. We have now switched to subscriber count, subscriber growth, even though subscribers matter zero.
It's just, yeah, it doesn't matter for distribution, but it's a great quality.
Speaker 2:
It's a signal of loyalty.
Speaker 3:
Exactly. It's a quality score of like, I thought this was valuable enough that, so now I can still do the same constraints on the content, but then use the subscriber, because that gives us the,
because subscriber still has baked into it some element of reach. But if I make a brutally honest video, I'm not gonna get the same amount of subscribers I am as like 13 years of business advice, like one of my best videos ever.
That's but hardcore business. So anyway, just something that we've switched to just this quarter.
Speaker 2:
I basically figured out what do I want, which I can't measure. So first was what do I want? I was basically like, I created it, but like, you know, in popularity, they have the Q score. So I basically was like, give me the Z score.
What's the Z score? The Z score for me is the trust score. So I was like, all right, probably should have been a T-score, but it was the Z-score, which is basically I realized that all content,
what you actually want is number of people reached. Times the quality of the person reached.
Speaker 3:
Sure.
Speaker 2:
Times the depth of their trust in you.
Speaker 3:
Sure.
Speaker 2:
And basically that's the equation you ultimately care about. So like you can reach a lot of people on TikTok, but if they're just like, you know, if they're not the people you're trying to do, like exactly, you know,
it's, you have to discount factor because you're not, your second variable is not very good. And then the third, which is like, how much do they actually trust you?
Not like, they watch that piece of content, or they like that thing, or they hate watched it. And you're like, yeah, I got views. But like, actually, they're like, this guy's an idiot, or like, and I hate this guy.
So that's, that's what I wish exists. Now that's never gonna exist. So I had to back channel it, basically a shame metric. So I said, if I make a thing, Do I want to go put it in my favorite group chats?
Me, myself, being like, I made this, guys. Because there's a lot of shit I make that's popular that I would cringe putting it there. Because they'd be like, bro, what the fuck is this? We don't need this or care about this. What is this for?
Why did you put this here? Versus other things. I did this one thing that went nowhere violently. I spent two months just studying the process of creativity.
I realized with AI, productivity value is going down and creativity value is going up. So I was like, how do the most creative people in the world work? I've studied Elon and all those guys, but I actually have no idea how,
you know, all these other guys, how they operate. So I studied that and put it together.
Speaker 1:
And I put it out there, again, went nowhere, kaput.
Speaker 2:
But I've internalized these lessons deeply, so it's still a win. But that was the one where if I put it in my group chats, my most successful peers were actually like, dude, this is actually sick. I didn't know this. I took this.
I needed this, blah, blah, blah. So I've had to use basically my own cringe factor of like, do I want to put this in there? Or would I feel kind of stupid doing that?
Would I feel like I need to soften it with some context and some excuses to put it in?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I think what you hit on is such a painful part of creating content is that the reinforcement system leads you away from the actual business goal. I mean, if you do this for business, which I do,
it leads you away from your business goal, which makes it very, you just have to have a lot of discipline. This is the stuff I'm going to make and it will underperform and that is okay.
And it gets harder when you know how to make the stuff that really hits from a views and all that stuff perspective. The more you know. Yeah. I mean, it's probably one of the largest focal points that we have for our brand.
And I feel like it's an accordion. You know, if we we do just hardcore, hardcore business content, and then we'll be like, all right, let's let's make a little bit of personality stuff. Let's show a little bit.
And then it's like, oh, that did great. And then we're like, oh, fuck, we're way too wide. And then like, so I think we just kind of oscillate.
Speaker 2:
One thing I wish you did more of just my personal request was that you did something that is like a short or something. I don't know who made this.
Somebody in this room might have made this, but it was like you were just talking about your figure. You're talking about your shoes.
Speaker 4:
And I bought those shoes.
Speaker 3:
My Darwin outfit.
Speaker 2:
So yeah, you're holding your Darwin outfit. You're like, I can wear this in the rain, in the pool, and then I can get out of the pool, go to a restaurant, and it works.
Speaker 3:
I can go for a hike tomorrow.
Speaker 2:
And I think that's great because first of all, I didn't feel like I'm trying to be the Kardashian. So it didn't feel like you were trying to show me something. It was just like, oh, you want to know something I do in my life?
Here's something I do in my life. What I thought was interesting about that was A, it was a good find. You actually put real like your own nerdiness into like doing something for your own lifestyle. So it was like, it meant something.
But B, every time I wear those shoes, I think of you. And there's something to physical anchors in a digital world that like actually matters.
Speaker 3:
I'm a huge believer in that, side note.
Speaker 2:
So I think this is like a little sauce there. And I think the other part of it was, I like made a mission for the year, like a Misogi for the year.
And I thought it was like, it should have been about business or like getting in great shape or whatever. But when it was like, oh, I know what I want to do. I was like, I want to learn to jam out on the piano.
I was like, so I just made that my mission. And I took it like incredibly seriously and like had a great time. And so just yesterday, I just turn on, I just turn on a live stream on Twitter. I was like, I think they have this feature.
I was doing like a piano practice, not even like a performance. I was just like fucking around like. Trying to learn these songs. I'm not good. I've been doing it six months. Dude, I got so many DMs from like, again, the same thing,
like the people who I don't want to send my content to because I'm like, you're a billionaire. What do you, how to get rich from a guy 10 times less rich than you. But I got them being like, dude, I've been wanting to practice.
I love how you made time for this. Is that what you, which one did you get?
Speaker 3:
What room is that?
Speaker 1:
Who's that teacher?
Speaker 3:
How'd you find her?
Speaker 2:
Do you think a teacher is better than the apps? And I got so many of those. I was like, there's something to the lifestyle content when it's really like, I could talk about gym equipment,
for example, like you can probably see that I like I'll light up when I talk about it. Exactly. If it genuinely lights you up and it shows it's like for other people who I don't like, I've read all the books now.
I don't really need a lot of like, How to grow my business. I'm actually pretty good at that.
And so like one cool way I thought your lifestyle stuff worked was it attracted me to that where I probably wouldn't watch like 10 of the other videos, but that one I was like kind of interested in from a different angle.
And I think you kind of turned the spigot off on that, I noticed. But like my personal request is give me 10% of that back.
Speaker 3:
So this is the the dichotomy that has to be managed, which is the the thumbprint of the creator, in my opinion, should be the representation of their current life, which means it can change. Right. And so it's like I spend maybe it's like.
10% of my time is fitness-oriented. And so like maybe 10% of my content should be fitness-oriented. And then probably 80% of my time is business-oriented.
Then maybe 10% of my time is philosophical and maybe five, and this is now 105, but is relationship, whatever, right? And so it's like that, that's my mix. And maybe in a different season, it'll change.
And so the content should be, I always think it was like, should be glass. It should be like when someone meets me, it's exactly as they expected. The only thing that fucks that whole thing up is the algorithm.
Yeah, because I can absolutely make that, that, that thumbprint. It's just that this one will get 10 times the views. And so then if you're trying to manage the mosaic of your brand with all the little,
all the little shorts as tiny little squares, it's just that you can't control how big the square is in the middle of the fucking face that you're trying to build. So that makes sense.
Speaker 2:
But that's what I'm saying. Like those, that thing about your shoes didn't get a lot of views, but it made an imprint on me. And I would say like, I would carry more weight than like, I'll say a thousand random views.
Tim Ferriss said this once. He's like, Do I want 10,000 people selected at random somewhere in the world to like my stuff or half of Davos to really respect what I do? One's a big number. One's big value. Which one do I want?
I think there's something similar there. They have different wallets or different stomachs.
Speaker 3:
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:
It's like I only have a certain wallet or stomach for like educational business contract. Me reminding myself I need to do more at work.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, right.
Speaker 2:
But I actually have other wallet share to give you on another area. My fitness wallet share. You could get some of that. You could get some of my outfit wallet share or my relationship wallet share as an entrepreneur dealing with,
you know, busy relationships.
Speaker 4:
Right.
Speaker 2:
Like so think of it maybe with your own analogy.
Speaker 3:
Yeah. No, I really like that. I mean, It's always I we need to be reminded more than we need to be taught. Yeah, so I'm with it dude.
Speaker 2:
All right, we should we should cut appreciate you fun.
Speaker 3:
Thanks, sir Thanks for having thanks dudes.
Unknown Speaker:
I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to Let's travel never looking back.
Speaker 4:
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