Alex Hormozi Deep Dive: From Sleeping on a Gym Floor to Making $105M in One Day⏐Holdco Bros. Ep. #212

Alex Hormozi is the talk of the business world this week after making $105 million in one day from his book launch, breaking the world record for the most nonfiction books sold in 24 hours. The second fastest book of all time, fiction or nonfiction. Second only to Harry Potter, which is insane for a niche Internet marketing book. So I thought, what better time to dig into Alex Hormozy's backstory? How did he get to where he is today? What can we learn from it? And how exactly did he pull off this launch so successfully? I had my business partner Nick on. We each spent about four to five hours researching for this topic. We went really deep. You're going to love it. Please share with a friend and enjoy. I think it's fair to say that as of today, Alex Hormozi is the most talked about guy in the business world. Am I right?

100%.

So Nick and I wanted to sit down today and talk about who is Alex Hormozi, AKA Bro Mosey? How is he so successful? What is his background and how big was this launch and how did he exactly pull off this launch? So, Nick, why don't you explain high level who Alex Hormozi is and then we'll start from the beginning.

You're probably seeing a lot of Alex Hormozy news right now because Alex Hormozi just launched the biggest single day nonfiction book launch of all time. He sold 2.9 million books in 24 hours. The previous record sold 1.4 million books in 24 hours. So he doubled the previous record. And that was spare by Prince Harry. What a terrible name for Prince Harry. Terrible like poor guy. Anyways, he doubles the previous record, sells almost 3 million books in his first day, and now everyone's like, who the frick is Alex Hormozy? Alex Hormozi, right now the biggest name in business.

Well, it's worth noting that this book, Spare by Prince Harry was, is just a generalized memoir written about life by one of the most famous popular people in the world. And this guy who most people on the street have never heard of, Alex Hormozy, who wrote a book about Internet marketing, niche business, Internet marketing tactics, sold twice as many. And it is the second fastest book of all time of any category, fiction or nonfiction, second only to Harry Potter, which sold 11 million copies in the first 24 hours.

Geez Louise, I didn't realize it was second all time.

How many people have heard of Harry Potter versus Alex Hormozi? I'm going to show you. I'm going to show you the difference in search volume between the two.

That's a really good point too, because Alex Hormozi's book's about selling. Like, it's about business. It's very specific. It's not like Prince Harry, where it's like, I've watched him since he was a little kid. He's Diana's son. I want to hear about his life. He married that kooky lady. No, this is just like a very specific niche business book. And he doubled it. First 24 hours, he freaking doubled it.

This is the Google trends search volume for Harry Potter compared to Alex Hormozy. And this is all relative to each other. So Harry Potter is a 36 and Alex Hormozy is a 1. So despite having 36 times more influence, he sold a third as many books in the same day. Just crazy.

That's nuts. So, okay, here's. Here's the thing about Alex. You look at him and like I did. Many people like I did at first, you write him off. He's not dressed very well. He's wearing a flannel shirt. Sometimes it's cut offs. He looks like a gym bro. He's got the freaking nose strip on him. Right? It's not like you look at him and are like, oh, yeah, that's. That's Marcus Lemonis. That's whatever, Mark Cuban.

Cuban, yeah.

And so you automatically think he's a scammer. You automatically think like, oh, this guy must be selling some product. But he's not. He's been super successful. He's had multiple exits. He sold his businesses for nine figures. And now he just had the most successful nonfiction business book launch, like, of all time. Which is insanity. But I want to start back, way back, Chris, in the 80s. Did you know Alex Hormozi is younger than Taylor Swift?

He's born in 88.

Dude, I feel freaking old. I was born 85. You were born in 87, bro. Mosey was born in 80. 88 or 89?

8-16-88.

This guy, he's born to an Iranian immigrant. So his father came over from Iran. He meets his Alex's mother in medical school. We don't know a lot about Alex's mother. Sounds like she had some personal issues. So for most of Alex's life, he's raised by a single dad. His father was a physician, fairly successful. And he just, like, drives home the point to Alex. You gotta be successful. You gotta be in the rooms where decisions are made.

You gotta very Strict dad.

Very, very strict dad. Now, they. They had a good relationship. Obviously, Alex looked up to him. But I have an immigrant father, right? And my dad was always like, nicola, you have no idea how good you have it here. I grew up on dirt floor. You have a nice Internet and things, right? Like, I could see how Alex's dad is like, dude, you're born in the United States. You better freaking make this family proud. And how Alex just grew up with this immense weight of wanting to make his father happy, but also living up to those expectations. So I didn't know this. He ends up going to college. Where did he go to college?

Vanderbilt.

Vanderbilt University. He not only goes to college, he graduates magna cum laude, which I can't remember. That's like, top 5%, gets really good grades. He's like the founding member of the Powerlifters Club or something like that.

In college, he's the president of his fraternity.

And as I was, like, reading and going through his interviews, one thing stood out to me. He had this quote where he's like, I would be in the library every day from 9am to 9pm now, let's talk about your college experience. Chris, were you in the Library every day, 9am to 9pm dude, no.

I was starting businesses.

Wasn't that kind of surprising? Like, I was actually surprised that he wasn't scheming. He was studying. Because there's, like, two layers to it, right? He's freaking working his butt off. That's a lot. That's a lot of hours to be working. But then, second, he wasn't, like, doing side hustles. He was just focusing on school, which I thought was interesting.

Did he originally want to go to med school? And then he ended up being, you know, a consultant or an investment banker because he had, you know, he met rich guys in his fraternity that were doing that. But the famous line from him where everything changed was he had to let his father's dream die so that his could live. He said that was the hardest call he ever made, was calling his dad and saying, hey, dad, like, I'm moving to California. I'm not doing this whole thing anymore.

So he graduates, he gets a great job. He's making six figures. He's a consultant. I can't remember which company he's a consultant for, but, you know, one of the big ones. And he was like, I just was waking up every day hating life. I didn't want to go to work. And he had this moment, this, like, internal shift where he's like, I got to Go do my own thing. And like you said, he calls his dad and. And his dad. It was a good conversation, right, Chris?

Oh, great. Great conversation.

How did it go?

It did not go well. And there was a big rift. And Alex talks very publicly about how him and his dad have. Have issues. And I find that fascinating.

Yeah, they didn't talk for years. Again. He. He goes to school, graduates in three years, has a great degree, magna cum laude, president of his fraternity, gets a job in consulting. He's. He's hitting all the marks, like he's doing the things that his dad wanted him to do. And then all of a sudden, at 22 years old, approximately, he's like, dad, I'm sorry, I can't. I can't do this. I feel miserable. Like, he has a quote where he calls it his rock top moment. Like, he doesn't call it his rock bottom moment. I liked the way that he described his rock top. It wasn't. He wasn't framing it as a victim. He was framing it as like, actually, this is a good thing for me. Like, it was the momentum that I needed to get started.

This kind of led me down a rabbit hole because I. I've noticed a lot of similarities between successful people. And I did, like, a mini study with AI the help of AI because this study hasn't been done yet. But I wanted to know are. Are you more likely to become a billionaire if you've had, like, a loving, nurturing, successful, kind present father or not an absentee and. Or deadbeat father? And. And you are twice as likely to be a billionaire if you had an absentee or, like, father issues. Daddy issues, basically. Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Howard Schultz, Richard Branson, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Howard, Huge, Larry Page. They all had, like, significant daddy issues. And I believe it just. It puts a chip on their shoulder. Like they're always trying to prove their dad right, who's not even around. You know, there are plenty of examples. Otherwise. Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, they had, like, good, loving, doting fathers. Michael Bloomberg, Sarah Gay, Brin. But I just find that interesting what that can do to a man.

At least the way he describes it. They didn't have a bad relationship growing up. It's not like he hated his dad or it was adversarial. I think he actually liked his dad a lot and respected him. He just got to the point where he was like, I can't. In order for my, you know, my dad's dream had to die in order for me to do What I wanted to do.

Agreed. It's. It's not like his dad left, but I think that he. Deep down, he's trying to be so successful to show his dad, I didn't go your path, and I'm crushing it despite that. Right?

Yeah, it is. I wonder if he knew his dad was going to freak out. Like, I wonder if he knew. Like, yeah, if I tell my dad this, I'm done. Or if, like, his dad had just always been really supportive, and so he's like, I'm going to call my dad and just tell him. And was like, wait, what? I'm out of the will. What are you talking about?

Yeah, you're right. Because maybe he was always supportive because Alex was always doing what he wanted him to do, you know, so he just assumed, yeah, Alex loves everything I suggest. And then as soon as he didn't, Alex learned. Oh, no, he's. He's only supportive if I follow his plan exactly, not if I do what I want to do. Got it.

This moment was interesting for me because I am not, like, this. Duty bound isn't the right word, but, like, I probably care more about what people think, and so I admire people like this. My wife Jessica is like this. You're more like this, where it's like, I'm sorry I'm disappointing you, but this is what I'm gonna go do. Like, that level of conviction to follow your own path I think is really, really admirable. And it shows up for him as we see, like, you know, living on the gym floor, going bankrupt, getting scammed, money tied up. Like, I understand better now why he was so convicted later is because, like, he burnt the bridges back, he burnt the boats back here. It's like he. He didn't have anything to go back to. And I think that that's admirable.

And he has a quote about this whole experience about taking this job, hating his life. He says he doesn't regret it because he says, you need to justify the path that you're planning on. Like, go live that path. Justify it to see if it's the path you want. After all, some people, you know, they go down that investment banking route and they learn, this is awesome. This is as I expected, if not better. And he learned it wasn't for him. So you need the contrast of, wow, I know what that looked like. I would prefer to sleep on a gym floor as long as I'm in control of my own destiny.

So he leaves the east coast, and he literally just drives out to California.

I've heard two reports he had $5,000 to his name, and one said he had $50,000 to his name. So somewhere in there, Somewhere in there, five was involved. He went to the Bay Area, to San Francisco initially.

Oh, up to the Bay.

Yeah, to the Bay Area.

Where did he go?

Like, why did he go out there?

Yeah, why the Bay Area?

Funny, because. It's funny you asked. Because I dug really deep into this part of his story. I assumed that he had a friend there. It's like, bro, you got to come out here. Oh, you need to open a gym. You would crush it. I found no report of like a triggering event or conversation that made him decide to leave because he was in Austin. He was living in a condo that he bought at 22 in Austin, sold it, went to San Francisco, and he didn't open his gyms until he was in Los Angeles. So there's, there's not a lot going on during that part of his story.

Where does he go to Shadow Sam?

Sam's gym, that was in la, in Huntington Beach.

I really liked this part of it because he effectively like really quickly goes and finds this guy Sam. He owns, he owns a gym. And, and Alex just goes and shadows him for a couple of months, just learns the business, kind of Soup to Nuts. Right after he learns the business soup to Nuts, he. He launches his own gym.

Seven Figure Sam. That was his name, right?

Seven Figure Sam? Yeah, I wish, I wish that was my nickname, you know. Seven Figure Nick. Yeah. Why do they call him that?

Pretty self explanatory bro, by the way. Seven figure Sam is. I found a blog article from 2011. Sam Bakhtihar came from Iran, moved to Sharon, Pennsylvania, went to Penn State, then went to LA. So I think he, he had a short jaunt in San Francisco and then he went down to LA to shadow Mr. Seven Figure Sam.

I wonder, I wonder if it was a family friend of some sort.

Yeah, definitely could have been.

I mean, the Iranians running in the same circles. So he, he learns the business, he launches a gym. Now what's interesting about gyms? When we were in college, Chris called me one day and he was like, dude, I just met with this guy who owns a Planet Fitness franchise. Have you ever heard of the Planet Fitness economics? And I was like, no. What the freak are you talking about? He's like, bro. And you proceeded to tell me about Planet Fitness before Planet Fitness had like really exploded.

This is like 2010 zero locations in Tennessee today. They probably have over 100. And I was living an Hour from Tennessee. So, yeah, I remember that conversation. Planet Fitness franchisees, at least at the time, made between 400 and $800,000 a year of net profit.

So, like, what do we have profit?

Net profit for one gym.

Oh, my gosh.

So I wanted to raise the money to open a gym in Nashville or Memphis or Knoxville.

There were no Planet Fitnesses. That is insane to me. So anyway, so. So he ends up going to Southern California. He opens a gym. It's not glamorous.

United Fitness was the name, and it's still around, by the way.

United. So he launches this gym. He's sleeping on the floor of the gym. Like, I think for nine months. He's there. It really wasn't that comfortable. Everything he had was in the gym, in the business. But it starts to do decently. Well, it doesn't fold automatically. He ends up building that business. He gets to a string of, like, six of these locations. And kind of in my reading, he says, like, I kind of got bored with gyms, which I thought was really interesting. It reminded me of you in the sense, you know, you started phoner store. You grew it to several locations.

This is like, the same year. This was like, 2010. It was 2011. Yeah, right.

Like, you were in Alabama at the same time that he was doing this, and you had multiple locations, and you were just kind of like, I don't.

Know now what I want to do.

I want to think I want to do something else. Right. And he's. He's kind of at that moment as well. It's like, I think I kind of want to do something else.

He opened six gyms in three years, and he said that, like, you know, he had two of them were partnerships with a couple guys. One was a partnership with another, three where he owned wholly, and then he had a chiropractic marketing agency and a dental marketing agency. He talks about this, and I just. I. This rings so true to me. And he said everything was messy. None of them were making money. Sorry, keep going.

No, no. Because he was a freaking hustler, man.

Yeah.

I texted you before this because I was like, hey, do you care if I kind of compare him to you? Like, I don't want to be looking like, I'm a fanboy. It reminded me of you so much because he was just trying to mih. Just trying to make it happen. And it was like, all right, I can make a little bit money here. I can make a little bit of money here. Like, he was in the experimentation phase of, like, trying to figure out life and those skills all compounded, like, it's. It's pretty cool, right? Those things don't look the same. He's like, why the frick is he marketing for dental offices? Why the frick is he marketing for chiropractors? And he's got a gym that he opened, whatever. And then you look down the road and it's like, yeah. All the skills that he learned to acquire customers through these paid acquisition channels, all the skills he learned about growing media and getting attention all served him really well after he launches acquisition.com and even before that. Jim launch was good as well. But really, it's since acquisition.com that he's really grown that media brand. So it's just like, again, that's why it reminded me of you, is because all these different pieces that look like they're not really fitting together are really just compounding on each other at this point.

I don't want to jump the gun. But his, like, brilliant marketing tactic that maybe he learned it from Seven Figure Sam, maybe he invented it, I don't know. Is the same thing he's using today. And it's the whole thing that his new book, $100 million Money Models, is based after. And he. He calls it cfa, which I understand to be Chick Fil A, but he understands it to be customer finance financed acquisition. Yes, CFA stands for customer financed acquisition, which means the customer pays you upfront for something. You deliver the service. You use the customer's money to put into paid ads to get more customers, and then the cost for fulfilling the service is less than what the customer paid you up front. So you don't have to have any money upfront. You collect the money. You use the money to run ads to get more customers, to collect more money, to run more ads, to deliver the service for a fraction of what you charged.

So first he launches these gyms, right? And they're difficult to cashflow. Then he launches an agency that is consulting for gyms, and it's a turnaround. And some of these gyms are paying him. Some of these gyms were giving him equity. Like, it just kind of turned in to a mess. And so then he decides, I'm actually going to go even harder at this and I'm going to launch a real business. Takes all this money, he had like $80,000 at the time, and you can hop in here and actually tell this story the way it's supposed to go at any point. And he partners with a guy who ends up taking all of his money, like they were supposed to launch and then all of a sudden, boom, all of his money's gone. He can't pay his team and his staff. The launch went well, but he can't do the fulfillment. And he's in this, like, quandary. He does something that frankly, I think is a Chris Kerner special. It's, oh, how do I make $200,000 in 30 days? Or whatever. The number, I don't remember what the number was, but it was like some astronomical number. And they kind of have to figure it out what. And what do they do?

Well, so this was kind of lost everything twice, Right. He got his partner basically. And what his partner did was they had a shared bank account and he just withdrew everything. That's it. Most partners have shared bank accounts.

It wasn't even like it was like a crypto scam or something.

Right, right. And then he lost, quote, everything one to a payment processor for six months, which happened to us. $400,000 happened to Nick and I, thanks to PayPal. Screw you, PayPal. Yeah, so he had that happen. And then he also had an issue where. Well, let me back up the cfa. The customer finances the acquisition. That's what he built everything on. One marketing hack. And it started in the gym. His sales pitch was run paid ads to people that wanted to lose weight. The people would come in and say, hey, you're going to give me $500 for a six week weight loss challenge. But good news, you're going to get all back. If you lose the weight that you think you can lose, we'll give it all back to you. Guess what? They don't lose the weight. So he uses that money to put into more paid ads, to get more people to come into the gym and say, hey, $500 weight loss challenge, we'll give it back. Some people do, you know, lose the weight and he gives it back, but most people don't. That's the whole offer, right? The customers are financing the acquisition of the customers because it's a six week challenge. That's what he did for $100 million. Money bottles. That was the whole thing that gym launch was built on. That's the whole offer that his gyms were built on. And he's still doing it today. So I just think it's interesting to pause and just look at that as a framework of one offer, one marketing hack, one growth method can scale infinitely across dozens of industries, across decades. It's just like a first principle that is always true. And I find that fascinating.

Well, and the thing that happened is. So he launches this business, his partner steals his money. Boom, money's gone. Then he's like, all right, I already committed to these people. I got to figure out how to pay them. I know what I'll do. I called someone to tell them I can't do this anymore. And they said, I'll pay you $6,000 if you just, like, teach me how to do it. He was like, oh, I can do that. Wait, this is. This is cool. They can pay me the money. This is going to be great. So he then sells a bunch of those, which is effectively what Jim Launch becomes to teach them how to launch their. Their gyms. And that's when the money gets held up by a payment processor. That's when he's just sitting there like, are you freaking kidding me? My money's sitting there in the bank account. It's going to be six months until you're going to release it from me. What the f am I supposed to do? And that again. Yeah, that freaking happened to both. To us. It freaking sucked. It was February, and they're like, yeah, August is when we'll get the funds released to you guys. Half a million dollars. But I think it was the pain of those two things where he then goes into gym launch and is like, all right, look, this is how you get money up front. And this is exactly the strategy. This is how you run the paid ads. This is how you get paid up front. You take that money and then you just reinvest it back into paid ads. And this way you're getting cash first and then you're able to reinvest. You're not bringing them in, fulfilling the service and then getting the cash. I think that is such an interesting shift. Like you're saying in his business mentality that has funded the rest of his growth. It wouldn't have happened had he not gone through the pain of being scammed and then having his money tied up with PayPal or whoever the payment processor was.

And fun fact, he was so worried about payment processors for his launch last week that he had 29 payment processors lined up and they were rotating through them throughout the 12 hour launch every 20 minutes or so. Dude, I mitigate his risk. Of course.

Absolutely. And like, on the one hand, I get it from these payment processes perspective. Basically what they say is, well, you're a new customer, so we don't know what the chargebacks or refunds are going to be, so we are going to hold a percentage of your funds for six months because that's whatever the period of time. And then after six months, we'll release the funds because we'll have enough data to see how much we should hold on an ongoing basis. I think a lot of people think, oh, I'm going to launch a business. I'm going to sell all these products on E Commerce. I'm going to have so much money. What they don't realize is, like, it's not a worst nightmare, but it's pretty close to the worst nightmare. If your business does crush it, you're going to have cash flow problems because those payment processors are not going to pay out all of the dollars. And you're going to have to figure out how to fund the working capital. That's happened to us how many times?

Six, eight? I don't know. It's not just for new businesses either. It's for unexpected volume increases, too. Like a Black Friday event. Right. So all of this kind of came to a head in 2016. That was a big, pivotal year for him because he had all these gyms, he had these agencies, he had nine different businesses. He had just met Layla, they were dating, and he. He calls himself an alcoholic. And he would drink a bottle of whiskey or half a bottle of whiskey every night. And one night he was drinking and driving 60 miles per hour. He got pulled over by a cop and he hit a car that was parked on the shoulder. A parked car. No one was injured. He walked away from it, but he was going 60 miles per hour. He hit a car in front of a cop, got put in jail. Layla bailed him out the next day. And that was like, the massive turning point in his life. He was basically saying, like, what are you doing, man?

What are you doing?

You're. You have all these businesses and you're not making any money. You're drinking. Like, I thought, like, isn't that why you came here, was to live a better life? This isn't better. He had an attention coach. Did you know that? He hired an attention coach. Yeah. The coach said to him, your stress is because of unmade decisions, period. End of story. You have all these businesses you need to shut down, all these hard conversations you need to have, and you're not doing it. That's where your stress is coming from. So you need to sit down, you need to call your business partners. You need to say, I'm out. You need to sell your shares, give away your shares, it doesn't matter. And then your life will be better. And so he said over the next 48 hours, after getting bailed out of jail. He called his business partners and had hard conversations. He fire saled his gyms. He basically gave away four, sold two for like 20 grand, shut his stuff down. And at that point he's like we're going all in on gym launch. And after that point is when he had those. The theft and the payment processor and all that. But I think that that DUI is really what changed slash broke him.

Dude, that really hit me hard. That's your. The stress is from unmade decisions.

Yeah.

And like we've both talked about it. Y like we've both gone through, gone through that process. Like, like I've been there like and at this point, at the same time when he's going through the payment processor issues, he's getting calls from customers who are like where's my money? Why hasn't it been refunded? He's got to find other payment processors, probably sketchy ones to process these payments. He's like doing it in $50,000 tranches at a time. Like as I was like reading about this, it just triggered kind of the last, not the last two years but that two year period of time when we were launching Mining Syndicate and even perfume vending where you're like, oh it's cool, we're getting a ton of business but then we're not able to process it. Like it's, it's freaking stressful and if you are then not focused on one business, it just compounds.

Yeah. We didn't even talk about another thing that happened. He, if he was flying out to gyms, flipping them in person or launching them in person and he went out to this one and his whole deal was like, I'm going to collect all this money from for these six week challenges and then I'm going to upsell them on your gym and on supplements and then you keep everything thereafter. So it was a, it was a good offer because he got paid directly from the customers. The gyms didn't have to pay him and the gyms collected everything thereafter. And so he went to one gym to do this and then after he flew back home, the gym emailed all the customers and said hey, just file chargebacks on all those and we'll charge you half as much. Just pay us directly. And so he was hit with hundreds of chargebacks from one gym because the gym owner just wanted to capture all that revenue for himself.

F that guy. What's it Alex name and shame.

Okay, well shame it, it just goes to show which we've lived through this. Like when you do all these things. Your surface area for fraud and scams is just massive. And your surface area for luck is massive. But that's the trade off you make.

It's massive. And then it's also massive when you add massive value. Because like he, he made a ton of money. And so these gym owners are, are like, well, that's not fair. I want that money. Right. There's like this jealousy component.

He just goes home. They got to run the business now, right?

I got to freaking run this business now. What the freak, bro? What's interesting is he actually just went on my first million and said if he had to start all over again, this is the type of business he would do is he would go out, find a high ticket item. He said he would focus in the health services space, but find a high ticket item and just go find who's going to do the fulfillment and say, what will you pay me per lead? And they're like, I'll pay you $500. He's like, okay, great. And then he's going to go out and charge $2,000 and then he's just going to keep the difference. So business model that works, worked for him. Yeah, continues to work for him.

Botox, teeth whitening, anything with a lab code, I think he said.

So when he launches gym launch, it goes so freaking well that in the first year they do $24 million in sales.

Yeah.

Do you know what their net margins were in 2020 or in their first year?

It was like 60 or something.

It's like $17 million.

Yeah, 17.

So in like an 18 month span, he goes from sleeping on the floor of a gym, basically being homeless. We can't forget the Layla Hormozi quote of I would live with you under a gym if it came to that.

Right.

So under a bridge.

Under a bridge in a gym.

I'm so dumb. Oh, my gosh. That's what I meant. But she probably did say that actually. Dude, he goes from that to making $17 million in a year. Do you know how much money that is?

Dude, I feel like the, the duration of compounding is directly correlated to the duration of how quickly you can turn things around. Right. You just grind and you compound and you test and you growth, hack all these things for a decade and you get some hits, you get some losses, you get scammed, you get defrauded, yada. You, the longer you do that for compounding your learnings and your lessons equals the shorter the amount of time it's going to take to turn things around for you. I've experienced that myself.

You're going to make a lot of money this year. But for people who don't know you, it's like oh of course that guy's successful. He's freaking crushing it. For people who do know you like me, it's been this for a long time and then all of a sudden it just rocket ships up. It wasn't this up and to the right kind of consistently for a period of time. It just compounded very, very quickly. And it's that same principle that you just said, right. Like Alex is grinding for a really long time. Hits and that first year they just freaking crush it. I think that was 2018 was their first full year of gym launch of gym launch. 2019 they introduced a new product which is selling supplements. And I think they get to 36 million in that second year and they just prestige worldwide. Prestige worldwide. I love that company. Detliff Shrimp I think was one of their spokesman John Ralphio continues to compound. And then in 2021 they get an offer from a company to buy 66% of the company. And what Alex says is at that moment they had taken about $43,000 of distribution, 43 million, 43 million, $43 million of distributions up to that point. And then they got another 20, 30, 40, I can't remember the exact number.

It was like that was also 43 million what they sold for.

Okay. And then they got another 43 million and he was sitting on like $60 million of cash in 2021. So think about that. 2017 to 2021 is only four years. It's not that long. He goes from broke, broke is a joke to just having $60 million in his pocket. And that's when they launch acquisition.com. that's when they kind of go to this new Holdco model.

Yeah, it's crazy.

It is crazy.

Oh, and he says he made a half, a half a billion dollar mistake by not launching a CRM. Basically what Allen was was it was a lead management software for Jims to handle all the leads that he was teaching them how to get. And he said the CRM was a much bigger market. It would have been a half a billion dollar business.

I don't know. Yeah, yeah, I read that as well. It was a good software. I think the other thing that he acknowledges though is like hindsight's 20 20, like how was he supposed to know? And yeah, maybe that was a hundred million dollar miss but he also had a hundred million dollar win in there and it's allowed him to do what he did next. I think what was interesting for me is that right after he sells, they're not sitting on their hands. I want to say it's like very.

Quickly after one day, he said the next day.

That's right, the next day. Acquisition.com like acquisition. It's a thing. He's launched this company where they're going to be now essentially launching a family office, investing in other companies to grow other companies.

Yeah, you know Russell Brunson, right? He's here in Boise. For those that don't, he's the clickfunnels founder, Internet marketing OG guru. He wrote.com secrets and expert secrets. Basically what Alex Hormozy has done has taken these webinar principles, these marketing, Internet marketing, make money online principles and boiled them down to the highest, the best and highest use he could think of, which is acquiring other companies. Previously it had only been done for like high ticket course sales and, and PDFs and webinars and whatever. He said, why don't we just take those same first principles and apply them to acquiring companies and building the next Berkshire Hathaway? And he's doing it quite successfully, at least appears from the outside.

If he was just a typical gym bro, he could have just gone bought like Lamborghinis and Ferraris and taken trips and pictures on a yacht and like just blown the $60 million. But he doesn't. He takes that money and they start investing in companies. So do you know what their investment criteria was? I thought this was cool.

No, please.

Okay, so 2021 they launch acquisition.com. this was their original investment criteria. Asset light, high cash flow, sales focused service and digital product businesses. You can think of those as two different things, right? Sales focused service. That could be a home services company. It could be something somebody actually comes in physically provides and digital product business. So digital product would be a course. Education, marketing, sales, et cetera, et cetera. I mean that hits all the, all the things like all of his learnings. He's like, all right, I don't want to be asset heavy. I don't want to be in a bunch of gyms. I want to be high cash flow. Because I'm tired of playing this game where we're worried about what our cash is going to be. And then he doubles down on his superpower, which is sales. Like systematizing those sales processes is kind of one of his superpowers. And he's like, all right, I'm just going to take that. Find companies that need really Good sales systems and processes.

Boop.

I overlay it. Instantly they're accretive when I invest in those companies.

It sounds a lot like what our thesis used to be, right? Sales, heavy operations, light service businesses. And you and I know at least people that have gone to his seminars and people that have been portfolio companies. I know two people that either are or were acquisition.com portfolio companies. And I asked them, like off the record. Listen, you know, between me and you, this Hormoza guy, what are we talking about? Is he for real? Is he legit?

It's just. It's just you, me and the Limitless pendant.

Yeah, that's it. That's it. Every single person I have talked to has said he is worth his weight in gold. I would have give, had I known the value he would add. I would have given him so much more equity. Like everything he says and touches just turns to gold.

It's kind of weird because, like, we've now started to get to know people who know who run in these circles. And I have, I have not seen anybody yet dog on Alex Hormozi, who's actually either gotten to know him or worked with them. They're like, yeah, he's, he's the real deal. He really does work hard. He really does believe those things. And his success is verifiable. Like he literally did walk away with $60 million after he sold his company. Now the strategy that he took post sale, I think is the reason he gets the hate. So let's articulate what his strategy has been. His strategy has been high volume, value packed information given away for free or almost free. That's been his strategy. And he's just constantly putting out content around how to grow, how to scale, how to build your business, cheap books, et cetera, et cetera. I think that that's kind of the reason why he gets hate, right, Is because it feels like he's a guru. Because usually only gurus are putting out that kind of content, don't you think?

Oh, yeah, yeah. A guru is defined by the quality of their content, right? Not. Not in how they deliver it. In my opinion, I would think the most gurus do not deliver on the quality that they promise. And I feel like he over delivers.

Yeah, I guess I was, I was meaning it in the sense of people's misconception. Not misconception, people's perception of that word guru. Of like, oh, it's somebody who's saying, this is what you're supposed to do. They've never actually done it or they're making it easier. Like, yeah, Tai Lopez knowledge.

I tweeted, I said, I'm 100% certain that Alex Hormozi will go down as one of the greatest business minds to have ever lived. I've never heard anyone trash talk him that has actually taken the time to listen to his business advice. Yes, he sells stuff that comes with the territory. One of the commenters said, oh, yeah, yeah. So let me get this straight. Bezos, Jobs, Musk, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Hormozi. And my reply to him was, yes. Like, yes, here's something a little controversial. Rockefeller, Carnegie, a couple hundred years ago, if they're alive today, and they start digging around on the Internet and they learned that you can make this much money doing what Hormozi does, They're selling courses, I'm going to call it right now. Yeah, they were building railroads because that was the opportunity. They were opportunists at the time. Right. If they were Internet marketers, they would be making money in opportunistic ways as Internet marketers.

So this is something I've been thinking about. I agree with you. Leverage in all the things that I've done. Knowledge, books. You know, Hormozy is obsessed with this leverage concept. It was like, can I get more out of the same input? If you look at all of those men, mainly that you just named, what they were able to do is take advantage of a new type of distribution. You have the early industrialists who built manufacturing plants, and all of a sudden they were able to create massive amounts of quantity, given the way that they set up their new production processes. Bill Gates was able to distribute his software because now it's a much smaller cost per unit in a new way that nobody before him was able to do. Bezos launches on the back of the Internet, Amazon. Now he has this massive new distribution channel. Mark Zuckerberg creates Facebook on the back of the Internet as well. Alex is kind of just the next iteration of that. He's realized, oh, the attention economy is real, and this is a new distribution mechanism. And so I don't have the money or the background or the investors to go and compete with everybody else who does it the traditional way, raise money, whatever, have success, inherit. It's so I'm gonna take my money, I'm gonna grow an audience, and then I'm gonna use that audience as a distribution channel. And the way I'm gonna build the audience is by giving away stuff for free, building trust. And then I'll do the ask, and then I'll ask them for $6,000 for 200 bucks.

Yeah.

No. Not even a chuckle.

Sorry. Okay.

You were locked in.

I'm sorry. All entrepreneurs do is they're just feeling out where the energy is. Like, they're just testing all kinds of things. Oh, what's giving me energy? I'm gonna follow that. Like water flowing to the lowest point. That's all I do. Right. And so, like, did I ever plan to be an influencer? Absolutely not. But when I start, like when the first time I tweeted, it was just a test. Test everything except drugs. Right. It's another test. Oh, there's some feedback. They like it. Let's tweet again. Oh, this guy just tweeted. That was interesting. I'm going to try that hook. Let's. Oh, that did even better. I'm just finding energy, right? Next thing I know, I'm a. I'm a freaking guru, right? This wasn't in my master plan. You know, another way to put it is, if Alex Hormozi was alive 200 years ago and he was in the same kind of rooms living the same kind of life as Rockefeller or Carnegie, do you think he'd be building railroads or starting oil companies? Yeah. Why isn't it true the other way around? He's an opportunist.

Yeah. There was a quote. I don't remember who said it, but they were like, if Bill Gates was living a thousand years ago, he would have been Genghis Khan, which is like, Bill Gates. What the.

Funny to think of.

It is funny to think about him.

Jumping over a chair.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they are the type of people who just had the mentality of, where's the arbitrage? Cool. I found the opportunity. I'm going to go out at 110%. And that's what Alex is doing. He's like, okay, there's an arbitrage right now in attention. That's what I'm going to hammer home every single day.

Yeah.

So that's part of his media strategy. Right. He's, like, trying to build as much trust as possible. So he starts putting out social media content and then written content as well. And he has two books. What were his books, Chris?

Well, his first book is $100 million offers, and I've read it. It's an amazing book. I refer people to it all the time. I haven't read his other two, but I assume they're just as good. $100 million offers was a huge book. His launch was an insane success, second only to his launch Last week. And then his middle book, his second book, $100 million leads, was like, okay, it was third of three as far as, like, the size and scale of the launch and the number of reviews and accolades it got.

His books were, for me, the type of response where it was like, I didn't want to like them, and I loved them. I was like, okay, I guess I'll read this because it sounds like people are making it a big deal. And then you read it and you're like, oh, my gosh, this guy is. The way he looks is not the way I would think he thinks.

He's a great thinker.

Yeah, he's a great thinker. And they're not. The thing I love about it is they're not principles that are just new. He's just effectively repackaging these sales principles and saying, like, hey, entrepreneurs, did you not know this is what you're supposed to do? This is how you follow up. This is how you run a campaign. This is how you ask for the sale. This is how you price things. This is how you anchor. Like, it's just very clean in the way that he communicates it to the normal man.

And it's dense. Like, you read books sometimes and you might get one good point from a chapter. I find good points from every paragraph, if not every sentence. Like, it's just a book that you can tell. He. He rewrote and rewrote dozens of times. Like, extreme attention to detail.

Totally agree. He launches those books, it's going well. And then all of a sudden, he's like, hey, guys, I'm going to be launching a new book. And he's been teasing this like, you're going to be surprised by this launch. He's going on a podcast tour. And we're. Now we're here. Chris, tell us about the launch.

So he spent the last six weeks on podcasts, most importantly, running paid ads. This Guy spent over $4 million on paid ads, eating his own dog food. He was spending the money that he was receiving in pre sales for this book. Right. So on the surface, it's like taking so much risk. Who spends $4 million in ads to sell a book? No one. And he's looking at it like there's no risk. I'm selling the book, and I'm using the. The funds from the book, the pre sales, to put my book into the book. And he's tracking everything. He knows how much email, how much every registrant to the webinar email is worth. And he's not Just like blindly throwing money into ads. At one point, he was putting two to $400,000 a day into ads at its peak, which is insane. This is a book. He had over a million views on his live stream. He streamed for three days straight, 10 to 12 hours per day, which is not a thing. Does not happen. And he sold a 200 book offer at $6,000. But he. He angled it as a 200 book donation. He led the webinar with the pain point, which is like webinars 101. The pain point being the average business owner in America only takes home $48,000 a year. I want to do good to the world by providing free business education to business owners. So if you buy this $6,000 package, then I'm going to, quote, unquote, donate these 200 books to business owners on your behalf. Which was all a growth hack to get the Guinness World Records for most books sold, to hack the New York Times bestseller list, the Amazon bestseller list, and to make $105 million in one day.

Dude. Not only that, he just recruited every single person to become a salesman for his book.

22,000 affiliates.

Yes.

Oh, what, do they pay them a percentage of sales? No, no. Like access to a slack.

They paid for the privilege to be an affiliate. So now they've got 200 bucks. How many people have I seen on Twitter that are like, I got 200 bucks. DM me if you want one.

Yeah, what do I do with these? There's going to be kids in Africa reading lime green books wearing, like, Utah Jazz 1990 NBA Champion shirts.

Western Conference Champions, Sacramento Kings. That's freaking funny. But no, I'm like, every single one of those people are now. Because he spent all that time building up this goodwill with people. They're bought in. Like, they were. It didn't really matter what he was selling in that webinar. He could have asked for anything, and they would have been like, I'm in. Alex, you, like, you've already delivered all of this value to us. Take my money. Did you do the $6,000?

No.

No. Were you even close? Be honest.

No, I didn't watch the livestream. Like, all of this research that I did for this podcast was done after the fact. I saw people on tweeting about it, but Saturday, I'm working in the yard, dude. I got holes to dig.

I was very close. I was very close to buying, like, yeah. And then I was like, he's so good at selling.

Like, I knew if I watched it, I was going to buy It.

Well, what was crazy is, like, he turned it into an event and a spectacle.

Yeah.

It wasn't just, oh, I've got good sales processes, and I know which funnel people are going to go to. It was an infomercial. And, like, he created this event where people would attend and they watched it and they were talking about it with their friends. Like, it was different. It was really cool.

Well, there's a lesser known guy that people, most people have never heard of. His name is Jason Fladlian, and he's basically Russell Brunson. Except not nearly as possible. Except not nearly as popular. Jason Fladlin invented this webinar structure, and then Russell Brunson packaged it in a really pretty way and sold it in his book, Dot Com Secrets and Expert Secrets. And his whole. His whole shtick was get the book for free. Just pay $20 shipping. Here's the secret shipping. A book costs $4. Okay, so it's not free, but that's fine. That's fine. So Alex Hormozi paid for this Launch, Jason Fladlian, $25,000 to see the slides that he uses for his webinars. $25,000 to see a PowerPoint. And why wouldn't he? Like, how much do you think that moved the needle on this $105 million that he made in a day?

Well, the other thing that it did is, like, it became an infomercial. And then you're, like, watching the sales tick up. And what does that create, Chris? You've got all these guys, mainly guys who are like, oh, Alex Hormozi is selling this thing. Oh, people are starting to post that they bought it. 100,000 people. He had over a million views, but let's just say, concurrently, 100,000 people watching. What does that do to them? It creates fomo.

Yeah. And loyalty to him.

Yeah. Because they already have the loyalty. But also, I don't want to miss out. Chris Christ bought 200 bucks. Okay, I'll. I'll donate $6,000 to Alex for him to give me 200 books. What an amazing reframing of that. Hey, did you buy that newest Harry Potter book?

No, no, no, no.

I donated a hundred dollars to J.K. rowling, and I got the whole set.

Dude, there are gonna be so many Internet marketers in Kenya this year. They are gonna be so skilled at slanging webinars.

It's so good.

In all seriousness, like, what a playbook for a launch. I don't care what you're launching. It doesn't have to be a Book, anything. Why would you not just copy this playbook? Yeah, you're not gonna have $4 million to spend on ads. But one thing he said in his announcement is the whole reason I'm doing this launch this way is because this is what I'm talking about in the book. I'm eating my own dog food. The six week challenge, the CFA principle. Like, the only reason I'm selling this book instead of giving it away like the previous ones is just. Just because I want to show you that the book works. I don't even want this money.

I don't even know what I'm gonna do. I don't. Do I need an extra $105 million? No, I don't need that, Julie. No, It's. It's just creating. It's creating more credibility. It adds to the flywheel. He's just increased his surface area. Like, the. The 200 book donation is pretty freaking cool.

He calls it an ignorance tax. Right. Like, buy this book because the. The price of being ignorant to certain business tactics that can bring you from $48,000 a year to $480,000 a year is very expensive. Right. So what's $6,000 in the grand scheme of things? If it helps you learn and not be ignorant to these cool offers and tactics.

Let me ask you a question. $6,000. Do you think it's worth it? Let's say you didn't read any of his other books, but you know everything you know about him. Do you think $6,000 for the books, and I think you get like a webinar. Do you get access to his GPT? If you're a business owner who really knows nothing about the sales and the lead generation process, et cetera, do you think 6,000 is a reasonable price point to pay to get that level of education?

I think the 8020 rule applies, and it's worth every penny of buying that $30 book.

I agree with you. You could go and cobble it together. You could buy the books individually, whatever. But I do think that if you implement the stuff that he gives away in those books.

Well, yeah, that's the biggest. That's a massive if, though.

Yes.

Statistically speaking, the vast majority of people will not. They won't even crack the book. That's just human nature. But that's on them.

It is on them. But I also don't think it's a crazy. I know he was getting knocked. People were like, I have nothing to sell you, Alex Hormozi. And then it was like a screenshot of him selling that. I didn't have a problem with it anyways. I think I'm fanboying out anyways. So Chris called me on Monday, Tuesday, and you were like, hey, when you have emergency hole cobras, let's just deep dive on this. And I was like, you had me at hay and so did a bunch of research. Here's one thing that I just loved about him because I saw some of my relationship with my own father in this. His level of conviction was crazy. He was smart enough to go to Harvard Business School. That's obvious. I didn't realize that, but he was smart enough to do that. And he just was like, no, I gotta go do my own thing. So he pivots there. He was smart enough. He shut down his chain of gyms. They were probably doing decently well. And he's like, no, we're gonna go in a new direction. He sold off multiple companies after he had like grown this portfolio because he was like, no, I need to focus. But I think like, that level of focus and conviction is incredibly admirable and you need to find what you are focused on and what you truly believe in and go for it. For me, that really stood out in doing this research with him.

I would say one big unlock I had was that the level of focus and conviction he has is directly correlated with the level of love he has for the game. Because if you like, you're not going to sit there and grind 12 hours a day, every single day. If you don't love it, like, you just won't. I can sit here at the computer and grind all day. If I didn't have a family, I would be exactly where he is. I would be at this computer just typing away growth, hacking all day, every day. And I wouldn't feel like this hero with this, an amazing work ethic. I would feel like I'm just doing what I truly love, you know? And so he loves it. He's in the game and he's the perfect testament of. Don't interrupt compounding. And I've talked about this a lot, but in my opinion, compounding is staying in the game with one business, 100 businesses or whatever. Just stay in the game and you'll win. And if you find product market fit, then you're not going to be distracted by shiny objects. But if you are distracted by shiny objects, then that is a signal that you don't have product market fit and maybe there's something worth looking at.

Okay, so I'm going to add to that. I'M going to share this really quickly. Like, clip of his. That is pretty popular. You've probably seen it. I want you to listen to the question and then listen to his answer. So he's in a podcast, and this podcaster asks him this final question. I ask every guest at the end of the podcast, what's the best piece.

Of advice you've ever received? But I'll change it for you a bit. Oh, wow. If all your books, videos, and tweets.

Were erased from the Internet forever and all you had was the next 60 seconds, what's the most useful thought you could leave to the world?

Figure out what you want, ignore the.

Opinions of others, and do so much volume that it would be unreasonable that you would be unsuccessful. And then he and the podcast host just, like, stare at each other dreamily in the ears.

But I love the look on his face as he says that.

I know. That's the quote. I mean, that. That's. That's Alex Hero, right? Find what you want, ignore the opinions of others and do an unreasonable amount of work or do so much work that it would be unreasonable for you to not be successful. I think that's. That's his ethos.

Yeah. Volume negates luck, is what he says.

Volume.

Volume negates luck.

Volume also creates value. I thought that was really interesting. The other one that I thought was very interesting is the importance of finding the right partner. And so he's got. I think any of us have two very, very important partners in our lives, spouse and business partner. He happened to find his business partner and a spouse in the same person, which was Layla. And so. And what's really cool is he talks really positively of her. Like, he. He admires her. Like, he loves her. Not just as like, oh, she's my wife and I love her. But he's like, no, dude, I respect the crap out of her. She's the CEO of their companies. He went out, he did kind of, like, all the marketing, and then he just handed off the infrastructure to Layla. So, like, this story's not told in the way we're telling it. Unless he had had a business partner like Layla and a life partner like Layla. You know, she just happens to be the same person. But I. I did think that that dynamic was really interesting. I also think the flip side of that is he compounded the time that it took for him to find the right thing, where, like, many people takes years. And he was just like, eff it. I'm going to. I don't care. And so it's like, he just shortened the timeline for it and went through all the crap that he went through.

I think the most important thing he said in that clip is find out what you want to do. Like, don't gloss over that. You've got to find that out. Most people, like, treat that decision as if it's like, where am I eating lunch today? You know, oh, oh, I got to register for my classes. What's my major? Okay, I guess I'll do that for the rest of my life. Like, that doesn't make sense. And then most people change their major or they learn that it's not for them. Like, you just gotta find out, like, what you truly love. Like, I truly believe there are no lazy people. There are just people that haven't found what they truly love to do.

Yeah, I agree with that. And I think, you know, we don't spend enough time sitting and thinking and contemplating what we want to do. I. I had Sam Parr on my podcast, and that was an amazing conversation, because in the middle of conversation, he's like, yeah, I just sit and think for a couple hours a day.

Yeah.

What?

What? You were like, sam, no offense, but are you autistic.

Sam? Be honest. He's like, no, I just sit in my office and I just, like, think about stuff like, what the freak? But even in that answer that Alex gave, there's a big gap when the kid asks him the question, and he just, like, sits and thinks about it deeply. I think that contemplating is good, but contemplation without action is wasted time. And he contemplates and then makes a decision, and that's admirable. I contemplate, and sometimes I don't make a decision. You don't contemplate and make a decision.

Sounds about right.

So, like, anyways, I just. That part was really interesting. Is like, yeah, okay. He thinks about it. He thinks deeply, makes a decision. On to the next thing. I'm in.

Well, is that a wrap?

It's a wrap, Jack.

All right, what'd you think? Please share it with a friend, and we'll see you next time on the Kerner Office.