How to Become Too Good to Fail | The Alex Hormozi Interview

Did you feel like you were really close to losing it all?

Every day.

Yeah.

It was horrible. It was so stressful. If someone else can make this piece of content, I don't want to make it.

You fell in business love with Layla first before you fell in love love. Yeah.

I was really upfront about this and we both agreed. I said, listen, here are the priorities. I was like, business and then us.

When your shit's so good, you don't need to game the system. That is already the game.

Too good to fail. You know what I mean? That's the line. It's funny because right now people will probably be like, you've made it. You're at the pinnacle of content.

I'm like, dude, we literally haven't even started.

Oh, wow. that we're planning on doing for, like, 2024 is bananas.

Dude, so what happened with the Crocs?

Yeah, so you introduced us to whatever, some guy at Crocs.

Dan.

Yes, Dan. You know, then sent us all these cool designs for some acquisition.com Crocs, which would've been dope, and I would've totally repped them. Um, and it was like, yeah, we'll do some sort of collab thing. Like, right when we were ready to move forward, I was like, cool, like, Send me whatever link I can promote and like, let's do this. Like, I don't even really care about like money splits or anything. I just like thought it'd be dope if everybody had some.

Yeah.

And then he was like, well, just tell us how many you want and here's the bill. And I was like, huh? And it wasn't even that they were priced at normal Crocs. They were priced at twice what the normal— it was like $80 to us.

Yeah.

To have the Crocs. And I was like, there's some massive misunderstanding. I was like, so many people, if there was like an acquisition.com Croc, would rep these, like, for sure. I had tens of thousands of people who did the thing, like, I'd get this one or whatever. And so, um, because I was a prima donna, I was like, no, I'm not wearing Crocs again. Um, and so after that I stopped wearing Crocs.

We're not done here. I'm gonna help sort this out. So the story here is, at my thing last year, at my event, you were wearing Crocs and you were just like, dude, I'm ready to take it to the next level. I'm super motivated to promote. I was like, dude, I happen to know their VP of digital there.

Yeah.

And, uh, no, we are going to rectify this. And I just want to see it happen. It's not like he's going to pay me or anything. So that's a good place to start. And you know what's interesting enough, Dan, he actually has a holding company. And what I wanted to bring up was this. I was at an investor conference a couple of months ago called Capital Conference. And every year there's like rage. I think the year before it's like all about the hedge funds. This year it's about holdcos, right? Everyone's holdco.

Interesting.

As if it's really easy to start a holding company, right? And, and then it's like, no, there's a lot that goes into it. I mean, you have a portfolio of businesses, right? And maybe we can spend some time talking about how difficult it actually is to not only be creating content, which we'll talk about in a second, but running a holding company. It's not just, oh, I'm going to hire an operator and that's it, right? It's like much easier said than done.

Yeah. Well, to, to dial in on the holdco side, I mean, we have— it's tough if we, if we try to pull apart media from the actual people. But I think we have like just just under 30 people who work at Holdco, which is like a lot of people for a holding company. But we're really hands-on in terms of how we like add value to companies. So I think there's, there's kind of 2 models, at least that I'm aware of, or at least that we considered. One is the completely decentralized model, the Berkshire Hathaway model, which is delegation to the point of abdication, right? Like, just like, don't call me unless everything's burning and then still don't call me. And that's one model. But part of the reason that we have basically the complete opposite model is that the deal flow that we have usually wants our help to grow. So we're definitely growth partners more than we are, let's buy at a good price and hold it and just try and arbitrage the value that we can get from the business and then reallocate capital at the holding company. And so for us, we're looking at, is this company in our deal box? Do we really like the founders? Because a lot of times if you're buying a company, you kick the founders out. and then you put it in an operator that you trust, et cetera. So like we have a lot of, which actually makes it harder for us to do deals 'cause there's so many reasons that we won't do a deal. Like we don't like the founders, they don't have a big enough vision, we don't think the product's good enough long-term, which means like we won't redo pre-product market fit. That's one of our big, like that's why $3 million, if anyone's curious, like why $3 million in top line is kind of the minimum. And for us it's $3 million-ish, but at least $1 million in EBITDA.

Mm-hmm.

Because unless you're there, like usually it's, you're still figuring stuff out. Like, we want to have at least a basic product market fit.

Like you've done something.

Yeah, there's something that's here, right? And so we won't redo that. And then we want it to be in a couple areas. For us, it's usually consumer services or business services, which is either brick-and-mortar chains or national services like mortgage sales or something, right? And those are places where if we can see like an easy like 5x or something like that, that's usually what we will want to pick up. So if there's like a bunch of like, it's kind of funny, like the double-edged sword of you want a good business, but my head of biz dev said, he's like, we want you to be very specifically incompetent, as in like incompetent in all the ways that we are excellent.

Okay.

And so it's like if someone's like, oh yeah, our sales process is horrible, or like, man, we can't get enough demand gen, but we have like a huge LTV and we're really sticky on the back end, like Those are companies that we come in and just murder.

Zero attitude.

Yeah. I mean, we just, we just bought a 32-location teeth whitening chain and I was so excited about this. And then we went to the facility and the experience was fine in terms of the product. But the sales process that I went through was like, I was like giddy. I was like, oh my God, there's so many things that we can do to improve this. And so we just rolled out our first level and we 5x'd LTV.

Wow.

In one rollout. And so this is 32 locations. And I was like, great. Like, we just created $50 million in enterprise value. Like, let's just roll this out over the next 12 months to all 32. And I was like, and that will be a W for the year, you know what I mean? Like, one of the hardest parts about what we have is that you have this desire to have activity, right? It's like we have all— because right now we get 3,000 companies a month that apply. So it's continued to grow, but we don't— We don't necessarily make more money by doing more deals. And so it's way more about finding— and like the hard part is sticking with the plan and not getting like eyes bigger than your stomach. And so anyways, that's, that's been the biggest challenge for us is like just being very selective about the deals that we know are the best deals for us, not necessarily just good deals.

And you talk about the deal box, which is Warren Buffett's, like you wait to swing, right? So what do you think it is for your deal box? You kind of mentioned a couple of things.

Yeah. So right now, and I think that over time we'll probably expand it as we bring in other like like ex-operators, somebody, you know, if someone's scaled and exited a business for like $100 million plus in like software or something, then I'd be like, well, dude, just come into my deal flow and we'll make a deal that makes sense for both of us. You don't have to spend 3 years building out this massive deal machine. I'll just partner with you on it and then we'll, you know, kick off a different pod. But for right now, our stuff has been focused on services just because like that's the world we just know really well.

Got it. And that's Kind of starts to go into content a little bit because you've been very prolific in the last 2 years with leveling up your content. Did that teeth whitening company, did that come through your content or where did it come from?

Content.

So walk me through how that works, because actually I was having lunch and my friend has a pet holding company. He's like, I want to ask, like, how? Because he does produce content, right? He's like, how much does that content actually help with deal flow? So what happened with that story?

All of our deal flow comes from content. So yes, it does help. Yeah, I mean, it's like someone will watch a number of pieces, they'll listen to a bunch of podcasts, they'll buy the book, they'll read the book, they go through the course, and, you know, they'll have spent 100 hours with me virtually before they decide to take the first action, which I like, because then a lot of times they'll fix a lot of the low-hanging fruit, which is kind of nice because then you don't have to like have a thing that has all these issues. And so they'll apply. Our, you know, head of business— well, there's multiple screenings. We have an automated screening that weeds out like probably like 90% just because they're not big enough or they're in a space or they're international. And then once that, we have somebody who immediately reaches out to just qualify that this data is accurate, which again, that's like another wave. And then from the qualifying stage, we have somebody who then does a way more in-depth business case and basically writes up a full like one-page write-up per business.

Yeah.

And then the ones that that person thinks are big enough and in our deal box then get passed on to managing director of business development. And so then he takes the deal from that point until close, which is usually like several more conversations, which he usually weeds out most of them. We usually do about 2 LOIs a month is what that results in for us.

I think just for those people listening, it's hard. Once you're in it, like you understand how hard it is, right? But when you look at your team, it actually is a team of badasses. It's like a SWAT team, right? And so you have people that have actually been there, done that. You've talked about your CFO before. You said it's 30 people. Who else are kind of the key players on that holdco team? 'Cause I don't want people to think this is easy.

Oh, yeah. Everything's easy if you don't do a good job. Um, so it's like, uh, so for us, we look at it by function. So it's like we have somebody who's an IT— we call them SMEs, so subject matter experts. So subject matter expert for IT, for finance, for, um, HR and recruiting, uh, for— we have 2 different marketing SMEs, one that's more on like the tech side, like martech and like media buying and like funnel optimization stuff, CRO. And then the other one is more like truly like the art side of like the words, the copy, like video sales letters, ads, that kind of side. And then we have a director of sales and we have a director of customer success. And so each of those people has years of experience building and scaling multiple teams to bigger than most of the companies that are coming to us and now have experience doing their function and scaling it within each of our portfolio companies. And we've just It's just a very long process of step-by-step codifying every play in the playbook. And I think that it's kind of like the Bruce Lee of like, in the beginning, everything's simple, and then you have like a zillion punches and kicks, and then it comes back to just like, don't get hit.

Yeah.

And I think that right now we're getting better and better at like, okay, we crushed this playbook really well. We crushed this playbook really well. And so right now we've got like a 3-playbook. that it's like we can 10x services companies. And so, I'm just trying to see like, okay, there's 20 other things that we do really well, but what are those easy, just massive levers that we can crank on? And then, I think that's where I want to just like— I might even say, let's get even more efficient at just pulling these 4 levers, immediately 10xing the business, and then saying like, okay, so do we want to exit or do we want to double down again or do a dividend recap or something like that?

Yeah.

And then reinvest for another 10.

I think when we were hanging out like a, like a year ago, it was service plus other businesses. And I think now you guys are honing it in even more. And like, that's what business is, right? You just hone in more and more and more.

You get— because then you get even more efficiencies at holdco and then you can get more. And then it's even easier at the holding company to create value within the portfolio companies because they're doing the same. Like if you're switching from shit, like let's say an e-commerce, like the pet thing, right? So like let's say I had one of his companies, which would not be in my deal box, and I'm— we're optimizing a Shopify page for chewing toys for dogs, and then like the next call is about the brick-and-mortar teeth whitening chain. It's like it's such a jarring switch of like perspectives that you don't get a lot of like accretive you know benefit between both of those calls. Whereas if you have brick-and-mortar teeth whitening, and the next call I have brick-and-mortar photography, and then the next call is brick-and-mortar gym chain, and all of them are selling sessions and appointments, it's like okay, like Run this play.

Yeah, you you had a talk recently, and and I want to go into this a little more because back in the day, at least for me, it was like I had this senior living business. There's this education thing. There's this SaaS thing. There's this. There's this. There's this, right? And for you, you had like nine different businesses or whatever, right? I mean, just how bad was it when that was when that was actually happening? Because I don't think people really understand how important focus is until they get punched in the gut. But it's like, how do you prevent that?

So I think the the big difference is because people are like, Alex, you talk about focus now, but you have thirteen. portfolio companies, but like I have one holding company. And if you were to reframe it as like, I own a marketing agency and I have 13 clients, it feels that way except I own them, you know what I mean? But there's a full CEO and leadership team that run each of the companies and we have our leadership team that runs that. And so like I own the holding company and that's my work, you know what I mean? But where I've made the huge mistake when I was earlier on is like I have one company that makes money. I'll start another. And so then you end up becoming CEO of 3 companies and it's a nightmare. And so that's the part, like, it's weird because I feel like I only— I mean, I don't want to speak this over myself, but like, I was only really able to understand how to do multiple things once I sold Gym Launch, because then I think it was the first time I was really above the business. And then at that point I was like, okay, so the, the above the business is the one thing. The portfolio is the one thing. And then that's when you're like, your value prop as a, as a holdco, it is a bit like the holding company is a business in and of itself. And I think that's the big epiphany that I had is like, it is a business. And then you get really specific, you niche down just like you do in any other business on what specific type of customers, even though they're not customers, you serve.

And you talk about working. So there's above the business, in the business. Yeah. You know, on the business, right? What's What's the difference with above?

In the business is like I'm taking sales calls. I think on the business is like I'm in leadership positions, I'm managing, I'm leading, I'm casting the vision, I'm inspiring the team. And then above the business is the business. You look at many businesses and they are all almost like product lines or clients, as I was saying earlier, that you don't sit anywhere on the org chart for these businesses. And that's probably the easiest litmus test is like Do you have a direct report from the company? And I have zero.

Yeah.

From any of the companies.

Yeah. It's funny. So Neil sometimes will call me in the middle of the day and he'll be like, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm working on stuff. He's like, I'm bored. Yeah, it's like, right. But it's not like that. But he works really hard. But I think the other good comparison here is the difference between like a parallel entrepreneur and a serial entrepreneur, because a serial entrepreneur actually waits to the next level.

Yeah. A parallel starts multiple things. Yeah.

But then to your point, how are you supposed to compete?

Yeah. I mean, the focus— the one person who's going all in on one thing is always, in my opinion, going to make the most money. And if you look at the wealthiest 50 people in the world, they all went all in on one thing.

Yeah.

And, you know, and there's a couple private equity investors who are at that top now, but I would make the argument that they were— they got into the business of private equity and that was their one thing, even though they bought and sold companies, it functioned the same way as having a marketing agency, except the unit size was bigger with more zeros.

Yep. Do you think when you had the 9 different companies— was it 9?

Yeah.

OK. When you had the 9, A, it felt frantic, right? But did you feel like you were really close to losing it all?

Every day. Yeah.

It was horrible.

It was like— it was so stressful because, I mean, I had 9 companies' worth of employees. I didn't— I just didn't understand how to operate. I didn't understand how leadership worked. I didn't understand management. I didn't have one-on-ones. I didn't have a communication cadence. And I was the rainmaker for all the businesses. Like, it was so ridiculous when I think about it now. Like, it's so obviously stupid, but you just don't know when you're ignorant.

Before we move on from here, what do you say to all the people now that want to start a whole— they're just like, I'm going to go buy businesses because that's what cool people do. Yeah. And I'm going to go hire an operator. You have any words for those people?

Well, right now buying businesses is like in vogue. I don't really know why it got in vogue, but My best guess is that we have so many people retiring right now that there's just a huge supply spike. And then a lot of people who'd never made their money buying businesses selling courses on how to buy businesses. Because the thing is, is, and this is kind of for the audience, is like, if you make your money buying businesses and you're really good at it, you don't need to sell a course. Like, the best people at buying businesses buy businesses and hold them and invest. Like, I think Naval said, like, the best investors don't sell courses on investing.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Because like, if you're really good at it, you don't need to.

Yeah.

And I just— I like, I kind of stick by that. And so it is kind of shitty. And there's a lot of marketing dollars that are going behind that and a lot of content being made because it's like sexy. And the idea of buying a business for no money down that makes $500,000 a year, which is absolutely possible, you totally can do that. But the thing that they miss is that I can buy a business for $0 down that makes $500,000 or $1 million a year.

Yeah.

And know how to run it. If you've never run a business and even if you do somehow magically pull off that deal, you're still screwed because you have no idea how to run a business. And so it's like you still lack the skills even though you can close the sale. Like, I could sell— I could sell that I could build a skyscraper. And if I somehow managed to BS my way through the negotiations and close the contract, I still have to build a skyscraper. And if you've never built a building before or even a house, very tough. And the likelihood that you then lose your ass on— because like you're not— you'll get the business that does $1 million in profit per year for $0 down, but not for $0. And that's the piece that I think a lot of people miss. Like, it's not free. Like you have a liability or you have a debt if you use some sort of seller financing, creative financing, whatever. It's like, but now you owe this person. Yeah.

And that's the marketing piece, right? I think we get the— it's the headlines at the end of the day. I want to talk about the content piece. So I was hanging out, I was at a Speaking of real estate mastermind, a couple weeks ago, basically this guy owns $1.5 billion in real estate in Arizona. And then in the middle of the pandemic, he's like, I'm just gonna do YouTube for fun, right? Because he couldn't go anywhere. So he grew to like 400K or so. Oh, sick. And then, but his content is like top-notch, right? It's like he understands. Yeah, it's like this guy's deep. You can tell, right? Tax advantages, whatever. And but then, um, Ken McElroy. Okay, yeah, so you should definitely talk to him. Super smart. And but then you look at other people who are getting millions and millions of views a month on YouTube and they're talking about all these different businesses, but then They know the YouTube game, but they don't have depth when it comes to business, right? So I see it as a trade-off at the end of the day. But you're actually playing, you're actually able to play both, right? And so they were talking to me, they're just like, okay, what's the point of even creating content? I'll just go buy more business. Actually, this was last week. One of my friends went to me, he's like, Eric, I don't need to create content. I'll just go buy their businesses. And then I posted that to Twitter, X, the next day. And Layla was like, So, Layla was like, oh no, but YouCreateLeverage is where we get our deal flow from. And you said all your deal flow comes from that, right? So I guess—

Sure, we have the same as, you know, we have a network and things like that come through. But yeah, I don't— I can't— I don't think we've done a deal that's not come through our deal flow.

And of the 3,000 that come through each month, what percent actually make it?

Oh, tiny. Right. We do 2 LOIs a month. And that's not to dissuade people. It's mostly because we just have a lot of people who don't have qualified businesses. Just to be clear, like, if you have a qualified business, hit me up. But We just have a tremendous amount that are doing less than $1 million in profit. And they're like, I'll give you 5%, Alex. Oh, man. So tempting.

So, OK, if, for example, the— I mean, let's just use a fake example. Someone has a bunch of locations. They're doing $1 million in EBITDA. Well, let me just rewind for a second.

And minimum is $1 million, just to be clear. So, like, ideally for me, like, I love that, like, 3-ish, 4-ish, you know what I mean? Like, that's where, like, you're right about to hit that. So we can just like, boom, 20. And then it's like—

And you're aligning with them. It's like, hey, if we want to hold forever, you're like, hey, like, if I like you, maybe. Yeah, right.

Yeah, I'm good on either way because, like, we don't, we don't need the liquidity. I'm happy to let it compound tax-free. So, like, I'm good either side.

And I'll just rephrase over here because I think when we hung out a year ago, it's— you talked about how you were maybe moving more towards instead of minority investments into majority. How are you thinking about it now?

Yeah, we're 100% in that. that camp are. Um, and it's, you know, it's almost like, uh, it's almost like finding your price when you're selling a service.

Mmhmm.

Except in the deal world. And this is one thing that, like, if you really want to get into this world, like, it is such a long game. Because if you think about, like, product-market fit, you have the same concept that happens at, like, a holding company when you're investing. You have, like, deal fit. And so it's like, what's my offer? But not to a customer, but to a to an entrepreneur, to a founder, to somebody trying to grow their business. And so it takes way longer to, to have enough qualified candidates to even make the offer. And then it takes 90 days to even see if you can close the offer. And then from closing the offer, it takes another year or 2 to see if it was actually like worked out. So like your feedback cycles are so long that it's, it's very painful as somebody who is an ex on whatever you want to call me, who's used to being able to like, hey, let's try this out. And in 30 days have it both spun up, tested, and have data like In 30 days, we might be able to like talk to a couple entrepreneurs that we think are interesting. And so, anywho, we have moved towards bigger and bigger chunks of companies. Right now, we target 49% with most of the deals. We just did a majority deal 2 months ago. And so, we're now doing both minority and majority, and our minority slugs are bigger because it's the same thing where it's like, it's the same work for us at 20% as it is at 51%. In some cases, weirdly enough, it's almost less work at majority. majority because I have fewer emotions to manage on the founder side because it's like, listen, I'm the one who's taking all the risk on now. And so this is what we're going to do rather than saying, hey man, I think this is what we should do. What do you think? And so I have way— my speed of implementation on majority companies is so much faster.

Yeah.

And like what I would like to do in the next— and this is why it takes years to do this, but like over the next 2 or 3 years, I'd love to show the difference between our minority holdings and our majority holdings of how much more profitable and how much faster we grew them.

Yeah.

To then make an even more compelling case of like, I don't necessarily want to fully exit founders. That's not my intention. It's more like we have done this before. Like, please, like, let me love you. Like, let me, let me just do what we already know how to do many times.

Yeah.

And that, like, I remember I had a conversation with one of our founders. This is one of the companies we actually ended up buying majority of. We had like 6 phone calls. to talk about a price change that I wanted to implement. And we implemented the price change and we doubled profit. And it was a big company already. We doubled profit in 30 days. And, and like, we increased the price and increased close rates. Like, we call that a wonderful, wonderful thing because they were mispriced. Like, we did a bunch of research. We saw the competitors in the marketplace where we were like, we're not even going high. I was like, we're just going up to market.

Yeah.

Which is— I mean, I love those opportunities. They're not always there. But, like, but if it had been a majority holding, it would've just been an email and been like, this is what it needs to change to. Let the team know. Here are the bullet points to talk to the sales director, and he would just let them go.

Yep. Do you think before— so, when you had the 20% or so, like, I think we were talking about this already. It's like they weren't— not that they weren't taking you seriously. I mean, maybe you just didn't have enough stake.

It was more of a consultative relationship. And to be fair, like, it's not like we wield authority. Like, I've— I'm not really an authoritative person from that perspective. Like, it's always soft influence. We've never taken a vote in any company ever. Like, what— because it's funny, because during the deal process, they're like, well, how many— who gets— I'm like, dude, we will literally never look at this contract again. Like, I pride myself on the fact we've never taken a contract out after a deal. Um, but it still feels a little different. Like, no matter what anyone says, like, if you, if you buy majority, it just feels different. It's like, here's the plan, let me know if you have questions about it, or like, what do you think?

Mm-hmm.

And I want feedback more. I want feedback. I don't want to sell someone on it, you know what I mean? And I think that's the—

You're looking to collaborate.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. And so now we rewind back to the content again. So how, how do you think your content strategy has changed in the last 12 months? Because I can, from afar, I can see some of the adjustments.

Yeah.

Caleb's not here today, right?

Yeah. Yeah. No, the team's bigger now. I mean, How big is the media team now?

9, maybe?

Is it? 9 people? Yeah, it's 9, and then we have some vendors. So if you included their teams, probably like 15 or 16, somewhere in there.

OK.

I mean, I think the big thing is, like, we try and focus on content that only we can make. That's the big single-throughput line. If someone else can make this piece of content, I don't wanna make it. And so that's why we try and, you know, we call them, you know, one-of-zero stories, which is like something no one else can do. And so like no one can talk about like how they bought a teeth whitening chain and then like implemented a new sales process and then 5x'd it. No one can say that because that's such like— no one did that. I did that. And so someone might be like, here's how Coca-Cola— here's a breakdown of Coca-Cola's business model. But like, I'm not going to do that because someone else can do that. But this is the stuff that I can do. So it's more— it's going to be more capturing what we're literally doing because I think the more people saw what we actually do in companies, one, it would get even better deal flow for us. Um, but also it's more unique than I think what most people do. So that's kind of like us trying to play more to our strengths, which is like our day-to-day is our strength. Um, and we almost diverted from our strength to create content to just like learn this game. But as our infrastructure gets bigger and better, we're leaning more and more. So we, we, um, we just bought a big headquarters here in Vegas. Um, and so we're going to be centralizing the whole media team and that'll be our big media headquarters.

And so we got the gym in there too, right? Yep.

Yep. We have a whole floor.

Nice.

Um, and so there's gonna be a ton of new content we're gonna be pushing out. 'Cause it's funny, 'cause right now people would probably be like, you've made it. You're at the pinnacle of content. I'm like, dude, we literally haven't even started. The amount of stuff that we're planning on doing for 2024 is bananas.

I can't wait.

Oh, it's gonna be— we will be pushing out a lot of content, and it will be really good.

Yeah.

Um, 'cause you said one thing earlier, but I love this statement, but it's like, the second throughput would be too good to fail. 'Cause that buddy of yours, Ken—

Uh-huh.

It's like, you don't have to know the algorithm, in my opinion. Like, if the piece is good enough, you don't have to nail the thumb, you don't have to nail the headline. If people start watching it and they're like, this is so good, they will share it, they will keep watching it, and they will come back and watch it the next time. Because what happens is, if you think about the human behavior side of it, if you just watch— if you overdeliver like crazy on one video, the next time you post a video, that person will click it. And they don't even look at the thumb. They don't look at the headline. They're just like, oh, Alex or Eric made another video. Yeah, it must be good because all the other videos are good. And I think it's more important to have fewer good pieces than more mediocre pieces.

Dude, so here's where I'm coming from. Looking at Ken's during the pandemic, he had videos that would get a couple hundred thousand. And that's when, you know, you're doing pretty well with each video. Neil, same deal. He had a couple hundred thousand. Some videos would get a million views or so. And then same deal for me, a couple hundred. This is like 4 or 5 years ago. And my thesis here is that you have to be in the good graces of YouTube and you have to be consistent. You cannot stop, right? And because those guys— Neil stopped, Ken stopped, I stopped. We're in this box right now where I look at Neil's YouTube, I'm like, dude, your videos are the same shit from the last couple of years ago, but you're only getting like 5, 10K views, right? So there's— I think there's like this penalty box almost.

I think it's— so in my opinion, all social media has switched to the TikTokification of social media. Um, I, you know, I actually think it's good because what it does is it like subscribers mean nothing. Followers on Instagram mean nothing. They're literally just a vanity metric now. And so the only thing that matters is click, retain, reward. That's it. Like that. Like, and it doesn't matter what the platform is. They're all the same. It's like, did you get them to click? Did you get them to watch? And did you get them to come back?

Yeah.

That's it. And so The algorithm, like, it also, by doing that though, it makes it— there's never been a better time to start. Because in the earlier days, when it was subscriber-based, it was basically an email list. Like, you build a subscriber base and then they push out your stuff to subscribers. But they don't do that anymore at all. And now it's just like, they do lookalike audiences based on what they predict someone will like your thing or not. And so you could be a brand new account and have your first video do 10 million on the first upload ever. Which I think in some ways is like a great equalizer, and it makes the content king.

Yep. And so actually, going to the Shorts for a second, you're a team of 16 people.

Yeah.

What percent of your work, with you and your team, goes, you think, into Shorts versus the long-form stuff?

Oh, I mean, Shorts for me is like almost no work. Um, that's, that's all the team.

OK.

That's all them.

So they're cutting up your long-form stuff?

Yeah, that's almost the majority of it. We did direct-to-camera stuff early to kind of like kickstart things, but It is— I can't remember the last direct-to-camera shoot we did.

Um, 'cause direct-to-camera versus— it's a very— it's a different setup.

Different experience.

So, like, no more direct-to-camera.

Not that I'm against it; it's just that they've got enough other stuff. And I prefer the other stuff, 'cause I think it's more organic. Usability per minute of footage is highest. Whereas if we do a vlog day, they're gonna get 3 or 4 Shorts from a full day, but they gotta go through like 8 hours of content, whereas if I do like 2 hours of direct-to-camera, We have like 100 shorts.

Yeah, it's a lot.

Yeah, yeah.

And so what about from this? This you pull like what, like 20, 15 shorts?

You would know.

Yeah, it all depends. Like 10, 10, 20 shorts.

Okay, yeah, really 10-ish.

So you go for 2 hours or something like that? Okay, got it. Um, and your spend a year ago was like, I think like $120 grand a month. Like what do you think that looks like now?

It's probably double.

Okay, so $240.

Yeah.

And are you getting paid on AdSense, any of this?

Yeah.

OK.

I mean, not enough to make it back.

It doesn't equal it out.

It doesn't equal it out.

But it's OK. The deal flow's good. Yeah.

No, yeah. Like, media's just like a loss leader, if you wanna consider it from that perspective. We lose money on media, which is funny 'cause people are like, he makes money on his $2 book, which, by the way, Amazon takes— you get paid like $0.30 on a book that's $2. But anyways, that just goes to fund the money-losing media team. Say that with absolute love. You know what I mean? But that's— I mean, all marketing loses money until it makes you money. Like, that's, you know, that's what it is.

It's a long game. And rewinding back to the deal stuff for a second, so of the 24 LOIs that you do— that comes from content, by the way, so it does make money— how many of those actually go through?

About half.

OK, got it. So 12 go through. OK, pretty high conversion rate, but it's also good qualification.

Yeah, but I think we've just continued to get narrower and narrower. And I wouldn't be surprised Well, our deal flow keeps going up. So if we might actually have the same number of deals done on 5 times the amount of deal flow. Yeah, because we're just getting better and better at picking.

Yeah. Well, one more thing before we go back to content. What is the craziest thing someone has offered you? Because here's the thing, right? Like, I do believe there is the brand equity that you have gets you good deal terms. Like, there are agencies that come to me, oh yeah, we do $4 or $5 million a year. We'll give you 20%. It's like, what?

Yeah.

Like, right? So like, what is the craziest thing someone's offered you? Like their newborn? Like anything like that?

Honestly, the people who, who make the craziest offers usually don't have anything of value to offer, you know what I mean? But I would say almost all the, all the deals that we do have favorable terms, you know what I mean? In terms of both price and just like just terms in general. Like we keep— we try to keep our contracts as simple as humanly possible. I've put this big emphasis on the legal team to make it plain English contracts. And like my lawyer, like, had a heart attack when I was like, I want a 5th grader to be able to read this contract. Because the biggest issue that, that happens in the deal process for anyone who's ever done a deal is that their lawyer starts talking to your lawyer and then they just keep having these conversations and translating back and forth. And then you have all these miscommunications and then it's like—

The bills keep going up.

Yeah, yeah. And the only person who wins there is the lawyer. And so we've taken a little bit of a different approach of like, let's keep our conversation as primary. and then we together tell the attorneys what we want them to do. And that way, like, any negotiating happens between us. And that way— 'cause I remember there was a deal we were working on, and their attorney, who wasn't even an M&A attorney— by the way, if you are gonna sell your company or have somebody invest, have an M&A attorney. Anyways. Um, it's like, no, he's a family friend. I'm like, doesn't mean he knows anything. Don't work with him. So he was like, we need this noncompete to be 24 months and a 50-mile radius around the brick-and-mortar location.

They asked for this? Yeah.

And I was like, so the lawyers are talking for like 2 weeks about this. And I finally, I call the founder up and I was like, are you planning on starting another chain? I was like, you still own majority of this business. Do you plan on competing with your own business? He was like, no. And I was like, cool. Then as long as you own majority of the business, you don't compete with your business. And he was like, yeah, that's fine. It's like, great. Glad we had this talk, you know what I mean? But like, that was probably like $10,000 in lawyer fees that went back and forth that was settled by 2 entrepreneurs in 2 minutes.

Yep.

Just obvious stuff, you know what I mean? But like, that kind of thing is the stuff that like hangnails, you know what I mean? Like on deals.

Yeah. So now we rewind back to content. Sorry for jumping all over the place. Yeah. But the— so when you're thinking about the ideation piece, right? So is that like, are you separating that into another day? Is that like on the same day? And then how are you thinking about like the hooks, the stories, all that type of stuff?

Um, the team brings everything.

OK.

So, the team brings everything from, like— 'cause they'll watch this podcast, and then they'll be like, dude, that story was interesting. Can we do a thing on that? 'Cause, like, basically the team is inherently curious people who like my content.

Mmhmm.

And so, like, to use some Gary terms, like, they fuck with my content, and so the stuff that they wanna know more about, we go into more depth on.

Yeah.

And so, um— I haven't been asked to come up with topics in a really long time. Yeah. But I'll tell you how I would come up with topics, because this is how I was doing it when it was just me starting out, is that I just like to use time as my, as my like anchor for this. So I go far past, which is like, what are the, what are the life-changing experiences or conversations that I've had that have shaped the way my worldview? And so those are stories that I will tell because I think they're impactful and people get value from them. Then I have recent past, which is like, let me look at my calendar over the last week and just look at all the meetings I had. And I just like, I would have my phone up and be like, okay, so I was talking to one of our portfolio companies who's trying to make a change on pricing. And so this is what we were considering, you know what I mean? I'm just, I just literally go through what my life was. I have present, which is whenever something comes up in the moment, I always have a way to like brain dump it. And so for me, Twitter or X is kind of my brain dump whenever I—

Double threads?

Yeah. Well, they repost stuff.

Got it.

But Twitter is my, is my home, home base for that. Yeah. And so they'll also come with the tweets that they thought were interesting to make more content about. Um, and then you've got manufactured, which is stuff that doesn't exist at all.

Um, what's an example?

Uh, like, I lived on, uh, $100 for 30 days. Like, here's what happened, as an example. That wouldn't be one that I would make, 'cause somebody else could make that.

Yeah.

Uh, but stuff like that. Um, and then, uh, and then case studies and vlogs. So those are kinda like the buckets that we think through. But most of it, you'll notice, is just, like, real stuff, so we don't have to come up with, like, what would people find interesting? Like, well, this is what I did, and if they find it interesting, awesome.

And what's the micro there? Is it like one day at a time, they just dump a bunch of topics on you?

Well, when we do recording, 'cause we record like twice a month.

OK. Um, and this is what? How much in a day?

How many hours? Oh, it's a full day.

OK.

So it's 2 full days a month is when we do the recording. Once we get to headquarters, it'll probably be smaller chunks more frequently. But for right now, it's just like one 8-hour day twice a month.

Got it.

But they'll have, like, full, like, 6-page preproductions for every video.

Nice.

Of, like, these are the themes, these are the 4 or 5 stories that we think are— that we've pulled from your other pieces that we think would tie well together around this topic. I talked to the team to get stats on some of these companies for this case study. So, like, the media team now will talk to our subject matter experts at Holdco to get like, hey, what was new this week? Did you guys do any implementations or whatever? And then they'll take that and then repackage it and then that'll become content.

Dude, I mean, this is a sidebar here, but like, I know even with Caleb and my just sense in general, like you like to be friends with your staff, right? And which I think is good. And that's how they really understand what you want and how you think as a person. How do you indoctrinate them into your way of thinking? Like a chief of staff would just be sitting and watching you and shadowing you for a couple of months, right?

Yeah, I think it's osmosis.

Okay.

I think it's just proximity and exposure. And that's why, that's why I'm so excited for the headquarters. It's funny because as a, as a previously remote before it was cool, you know, that's how we scaled Gym Launch. Everything we had was remote. And this will be since my brick-and-mortar chain. This will be the first in-person stuff I've done. But it's weird because I feel incredibly confident at how much of a game changer I think it's going to be.

Dude, I mean, here's where I'm at, right? And maybe my staff might crucify me for saying this if they find it, but I'm an introvert and I do— I've been working remote at tech companies for the longest time. And like, we were doing hybrid even before the pandemic hit, like a couple years, 3, 2. But I'm just like, dude, you cannot replace like this, right? Like, this is a relationship and it goes much further. And I just think commercial— I think commercial real estate is going to come back in the next 5, 10 years. So it just seems to be moving that way because how are you supposed to If there's this, how can you compete?

Yeah, right. I think, you know, one of the— this is kind of interesting— is like, if I— if we had like an SOP on how to handle difficult conversations, right, or bad news, whatever, if I teach an SOP around that, people will be like, okay, got it, these are the steps. But it's incredibly different to see me get bad news and then watch what happens. Like, it's a completely different experience. And I think that is something that becomes memorable. And that's what can change someone's behavior way faster.

Yeah. I mean, dude, like that in itself is a story and people remember stories. And so when it comes to your videos, because you're pretty good at just— your memory, I think, is really good. I just forget stuff, right? But it's like you seem to weave into stories pretty well. Like, how much is it just second nature to you now? How much are you thinking about your stories when you're creating content?

Yeah. So the storytelling component was something that I really worked hard on and I have continued to work hard on for almost Probably 6 years. So when I started Gym Launch and I had to start teaching, basically when I had to start teaching, I realized that teaching was making connections between things that people understand and things that they don't. And so that's why metaphors and analogies are so strong, because they're like, okay, so energies. So you're kind of like a car, and if you put your gas in, it's kind of like your body and the food, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

So it's like, I understand this, but I don't understand this, but I can apply the same principles. And so when I realized that I used to just kind of like lecture people on like jargon.

Yeah, right.

Their eyes would roll over and I just didn't get the desired result. So I had to start learning. Like, so then I started reading books on how to tell stories and the TL;DR on like how to tell a story is just you have a character, you have an unmet desire, you have an obstacle, you have a guide who comes in with some sort of solution. The person tries the new way. Yeah, it works. And then there's an internal achievement and an external achievement, meaning like Who did they become in the process and what happened on the outside? And so like, I just pretty much just try and think through that process of like desire, unmet desire, obstacle, guide, plan, execution, result.

The fact that you can just roll that off your tongue means like it is burned into you, right? Because I mean, I just— it's like, sounds like the Harmon Circle. Oh, is it? Yeah. Yeah.

Like the stories are the same. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah.

It's— I mean, it's for me, I just riff on it. This— I was kind of making fun of Neil and myself. And when I look at both of our YouTube channels, I was like, you know, we suck at YouTube because we just lecture people, right? It's like, but then we do like a— we do like a live recording and then I'm just sharing a story about MrBeast, 2 million views on TikTok, right? Or anyway, point is, so the story is huge. Do you think about your hooks a lot?

Yeah, the hook's everything.

And let me just rewind the stories real quick. Which books did you read to get better at storytelling?

Honestly, I think reading fiction and then I'm a big articles guy. Like, I don't, I don't actually— people would be amazed at how few books I read. I'm like really narrow. I'll like binge consume a field of study. And so I might read like 9 books on— so like when we, when we started doing deals at acquisition.com, I read 9 books in 1 month on dealmaking and I was like, okay, I feel like I have a better understanding of just the leverage, the tools that I have available in my tool belt that I didn't know existed. But then I haven't read one since.

Yeah.

And then same thing with like, you know, storytelling in general was more reading all the different articles and stuff that were out there about storytelling so that I could understand. There's a million different like story, you know, unmet desire, character, you know, whatever. But they all more or less follow that same trajectory. And so to answer the first thing you said, like, how much do we work on the hook? A lot. And if that sounds like it's in contrast to what I was saying earlier, it's not. Because if you have something that's amazing, it'll get shared no matter what. But if you have something that's mediocre, if you have an amazing hook, it'll also get shared. And so if you can create an unbelievable hook, you can still have content that just murders.

Yeah.

And I'll tell you a story that isn't mine and how it related to one. So A buddy of mine was a big infomercial guy. He's a little older, and he did this book. He had a book that he was selling, and so he had Larry King fly out and record like a one-hour book infomercial promo. And so it was like a big deal for him, you know, getting interviewed by Larry King. And so he had Larry King be like, and you're live with Larry, like the same intro he does for all the shows. And this guy is a very good marketer. And so he ran the ad and he was like, this thing's going to murder. I'm gonna make so much money. And it tanked. And he was like, what is going on? And so then he, he was like, so he started studying game footage. He looked at his all-time best ads. He was like, all right, I'm watching this one. He watched this one and he was like, I messed up the hook. He's like, the hook's wrong. And so he flew Larry King back out, reset up the entire fake setup of Larry King Live and rerecorded the first 30 seconds and then pushed out the new one with the new hook. $100 million in the next 12 months. That's crazy. And so We had like, my story is not nearly as significant as that, but we had a video recently that was like, we all were like, this is a good video. And it got like 5,000 views or something, which is pretty small for our account. And so the guys just cut out the first 3 seconds and then it was, it was basically saying like, so I had this time when, and then they just cut that out and just went to the when the thing happened. Yeah. And it went from 5,000 to 900,000.

Is it because in analytics you just saw a big tank like drop off?

Like the They hear the first 3 words or 5 words or phrase and they're like, not interested. Yeah. And so you have 5 seconds, but it's more like 2.

Yeah. Or like 2 milliseconds in a Shorts.

Yeah, tiny. But it makes all the difference in the world.

So going back to your team then, like, is most of your content team based here?

I'm going to give a really good— go for it. Sexy tactic. Yes. So this is something that I haven't even shared with you guys, but I just had this realization. So So I had a tweet that just crushed this morning, and I was thinking about this when I made it, was I wanted to give a business example. And then I used the same principle in a marriage.

Mm-hmm.

And then, and then I did the generality of the principle. But then I was like, I should put the marriage one first because it's the way wider hook. And then I did the business one and then it had the philosophical principle and then it way outperformed. And so we would like when we're thinking about our hooks, we'll probably go wide business principle rather than like any of the other versions of that so that we can get a, you know, wider demo. But anyways, this is just like— Live content strategy. Yeah, I just enjoy the game. Like, I think, I think it's fun to learn this stuff.

You fell in business love with Layla first before you fell in love love. What do you mean by that?

Well, I liked her mind first. I mean, I pitched her working for me the first time we met and I was like, hey, this might not work out, but Like, you should totally work for me and we can make a bunch of money together. And I said, like, plain black and white, I'll pay you twice as much as you're currently making. So but still look at the offer independent of me. Like, it should make sense for you. And so obviously she said no for the first 30 days because I asked her every day and she said no. But then when I did the turnaround business, launched 3 gyms, came back with a big stack of money, she was like, oh, so this works? And I was like, yeah. And I mean, the first question she actually asked me after we processed all the money, because I did it together, a little bit of a flex.

Yeah.

We processed like $120 grand in like 45 minutes. And she was like, I mean, I'm 27, she's 23. She was like, whoa. She's like, is this legal?

Yeah. Your first couple of dates, were you guys just like working at Starbucks or something?

Yeah, just working together. Yeah. I mean, I didn't— it was weird because like, I just, I just like liked hanging with her. Like, I just liked her around. And that was like whenever I had the choice of like me being alone and me being with Layla, I just like I always wanted to be with her and she kind of had the same thing. And so, but we didn't have like romance, chemically love until much later. Yeah, but I got her to quit her job and fly out with me within like 6 weeks.

And even when you guys got married, you— I think you like, you weren't in love love yet, right? Really? Like, at what point did you say she's going to be one, but we're not in love love yet?

I have to say that we like really got into like love love in December of '19. Okay. So that was 2 years, 2 and a half years after we got married.

Okay.

And that was because we made a conscious decision. We were actually both pretty miserable, mostly because we were— and I was really upfront about this and we both agreed. I said, listen, here's what— here are the priorities. I was like, business and then us. We got to feed the business and the business feeds us. That's how this works. And in December of '19, we were both like— we had this like deep conversation where she's like, I'm just like not happy with this. And I was like, me neither. And so we're like, I think we— I think our premise was wrong. And so we said, well, what if we just like made marriage the priority and then the business would flow from that? Yeah. And so that's when we flipped everything and it's actually been great since then. And again, it was fine. It wasn't like, you know, combative. It was just— it's just much better. Yeah.

And I think you said this before, it's love is something that you decide to work on. It's not— it's like an active thing. It's not passive.

I also think there's a lot of different versions of relationships. Like if you think about your friendships, like, like your friendships with like 7 different dudes that, you know, Yeah, you probably have like the relationship is different with all of them. And so I think like love is a really general word and we're just more limited by like our vocabulary than anything else. Like, I think Layla and I have a very different love than most people who are married and together. But I would say that it is absolutely founded in respect.

Yeah.

And that to me was probably the most unique aspect of my relationship with her was that I, I just respected her and she respects me. And I would say until that point, I probably had the more traditional relationships that were just like more lovey-dovey, more chemically, more romance, etc. But the thing is, like, I'm a really extreme person. And so if someone doesn't like what I like, like, they're not going to see me very much. And if they do, and if they are that way, anytime I do something, it's going to feel like I'm doing them a favor.

Yeah.

And that, that tally board of like who's doing who a favor is— would get way out of whack really fast. And then I start resenting them because I'm like, I want to do this other thing. And it's not that I don't love you. Yeah, I just want to work and that's what I want to do. And so the fact that she just like— the biggest thing that made me really love Layla was just that she has never tried to change me.

Yeah.

Like she just— it was pure acceptance on this is Alex. Like, I'm not going to get him to dress a certain way. I'm not going to get him to behave a certain way, talk like— I'm not going to ask him nothing. She just was like, you do you and I will do me next to you. And as long as we agree on where we're going, we'll get there and have a good time.

And that's who told me this. Neil told me this, actually. It's like I was like, so why did you decide that his wife is the one, right? Michelle? Yeah. And he's like, she just let me be me. Yeah. And like, you know, we've dated, right? I've seen, you know, people come and go. But and then now, you know, he's hounding me about kids all the time, right? It's like, you got to get married to have kids, right? Lecturing everyone. Last week at my thing, he was lecturing Syed, the WordPress king, and he's like, "You need to have more kids." Blah blah blah. But where I'm going with this is, do you think kids will be on the horizon for you?

I mean, I think that will change things. I think it's possible. Yeah. Layla's still young. Like I mean, we have time. I mean, you're still young. Yeah. I mean, right. Yeah. I'm still. But like, I'm not the limiter. You know what I mean? For for youth in terms of procreation. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, she's still young and. If we were cool either way. So if it happened, like if she got pregnant tomorrow, like we'd have the kid.

Yeah. I mean, this is like, this is all like conjecture at the end of the day because like you guys adapted your marriage a little and then it might adapt to the next level. It's all levels, right?

Yeah. I'm not, I'm not worried about it. Yeah. I think I would, I would like to have kids at some point. Kind of like when people who don't, who are employed and are like, I'd like to start a business someday. Yeah, it's an easy thing to say, you know, like Sounds great, but I'm sure it would be very different.

All right. We're going to go back to content and then I got a bunch of stuff to double down on here. So the going back to the structure of your content team, like, A, where are they based mostly? And then who are kind of the key players there?

We're all US-based. Okay. And most of them are West Coast because we're on the West Coast. So I think right now, 100%— nope, we have one person on the East Coast. Everybody else is either Southern California or Vegas.

Yeah. So what I found is, A, the reason I'm asking that is because when I've seen us fail on content, it's because we've gone cheap and relied too much on offshore. And it's like, dude, where's the strategy? Like grammatical mistakes. They're picking the wrong areas for the hooks, right? See you nodding your head over there. Like wrong areas for the hooks, just bad part. Like there is no story. And it's like, no wonder everything's falling flat. And you look at the metrics, right? And you're nodding your head. Seems like it's happened to you.

Oh, I mean, early.

Yeah.

But I think the big thing that everyone messes up with the content and even, even the quote going cheap is that like they have to understand brand. And that was— I mean, that's been my big epiphany after post-Gym Launch was I didn't understand brand when I had Gym Launch. Like, I understand— I don't wanna say I understand brand, but I have a much better idea of it now. And like, so like my team right now has so much footage and they could clip a bunch of moments during the vlog days and make me look bad and get a zillion views. Like, we could do that. Mmhmm. But that doesn't help me. And so a lot of people will do anything for the algorithm. They become algo-whores, is what we call it, um, which is just like, this is really hot right now. We should make that stuff. But, like, I'm not gonna— like, if it's not on-brand for me, if it's not something I'm an expert in, I'm not gonna talk about it. And I think that's— That's my one piece of advice for anybody who's like starting to get into the game of content is like, just talk about stuff you know about. Like, don't worry. Like, just don't pretend to be someone you're not. Like, if you, if you're only good at sewing, then just talk about sewing. Don't start making content about how people should invest their money. Like, just talk about sewing.

Let me ask you this. When you produce content now, those full days now, are you very much looking forward to it? And are you enjoying it when you're creating your content?

It really all depends on how much I've slept the night before. Look, it's actually like the biggest factor. It's just like, how much have I slept the night before? Like, we just had a recording day recently, and I basically didn't sleep at all the 2 nights before. And so like, that was like, I had to use willpower. But most times I don't have to use willpower. I can just rock and roll.

Yeah. And so you feel like for the most part, when you— let's assume you had a good night of sleep, you feel like you're creating the content that you wanna create?

I think it's always an evolving process. I mean, I think it's more like a pendulum. I mean, I think, like, it's more a dichotomy to be managed than a problem to be solved.

Yeah.

And so there's stuff that I super, super fuck with exclusively, and then there's stuff that the audience absolutely loves and the algorithm loves. And so we just try and find that middle ground. Um, and if anything, we're probably right of center of, like, if Alex doesn't like it, he's not gonna keep doing it.

Yeah.

But I'm looking at this on a 20-year time horizon, and so, you know, we had a video that, uh, that was ready for this week that we were supposed to post, and then we— I saw it and I was like, I don't want to post it. Yeah. And so we didn't have a YouTube video go out this week, and I will survive. I like it.

And so the— now I'm just trying to think from the team's perspective, like all the hard work on like the edits, the jump cuts, the thumbnails and all that. Um, how much effort are you putting into that now? Because like, I actually— that, that one talk that you did recently, I saw the I saw the headline change like 3 times in the span of a couple of hours. So what's going into all the testing right now?

Yeah, it's right off the bat. So our head of YouTube, I mean, we'll still do a good job. We'll still split test like we would for an ad. You know, we'll try different headlines, watch different thumbnails because at the end of the day, like the mission is to get real business education accessible to everyone. And that means that we have to meet people where they're at, which is why I have to tie in more stories. And I don't just like review Excel sheets on, on YouTube screen shares, you know what I mean? Because like, that's not going to help anyone.

Yeah.

In fact, it'll help basically no one. Um, and so we have to make it accessible, which is part of the reason the vlog is— it's like, that is— it's a form of consumption that a lot of people can do. And so we're gonna be doing more of that, because more people can consume it and benefit from it. We will play the game just like anyone else does. Um, but the thing is, is like, they will send me thumbnails and headlines, and I'll be like, that's not true.

Yeah.

Or... I don't like how this makes the person that we're talking about in the video sound.

Yeah.

I think it was like, I'll give you an example. We had an affiliate video that went out basically explaining how you can use affiliates to promote a business. And I was talking about it within the context of the book that's like my next book that's coming out. And I think one of the headline split tests that was sent to me was something like how I got or how I convinced. Yeah, I think it was how I convinced 12,000 people to promote my book. And I was like, if I'm an affiliate and I see that headline, I was like, that doesn't make me feel good. And so I was— so I was talking to you. I was like, we have to think about— we have to think about it from every angle. So there's, there's the Alex brand angle. Does this reinforce or dilute the values that we have in the position that we want to associate ourselves with? Then we have the, the audience of like, who's actually watching this? Does this make them feel more aligned with that that ultimate mission? Does this leave them better than they were when they started? And then it's also, who's the subject of the content, right? Like, I could make content that makes me look fine and the audience would enjoy, but it's me bashing somebody. That's not gonna be— I'm never gonna do that, because I would never do that. If we don't have a win-win-win, then it's not right, and we will keep doing it until we have a win-win-win.

Got it. I love that. And that aligns with your values, the unimpeachable character.

Yeah, I'm never gonna throw shade. I'll criticize generally, And I will pray specifically. Warren Buffett.

Yep. All this. So you have Mosey Media right now. You've got the vlog. You've got the new studio coming. And then this, this podcasting. I mean, you've got 2 full days that you record already. I imagine, I imagine this has to start getting annoying at some point for you. You're doing a ton of pods, but it makes sense because you're on the book tour right now.

So I only do podcasts with people that I feel like doing podcasts with. So if I like So this is actually— this might be kind of interesting. I will only do— so this is for anybody who's trying to get me on a podcast. I will do podcasts if I think the person who's doing the interviewing has good questions. So I did one recently with somebody who had no, like, very small audience. Yeah, but I saw, or the team had seen, that he like did a ton of research on every person, would watch like 50 hours of content to ask like really good in-depth questions. Not like, so tell me your origin story.

It's Danny, right?

Yeah, Danny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, Danny did a great job. Yeah. And so I'm like, and he's doing it absolutely the right way, which is like, do the work and you can, and you can bat outside of your, outside of your league if you do the work. But the flip side is like, if somebody's got like they've been doing a podcast, they've got 500 episodes, they've never taken off. And the first question that they ask in every video is like, so tell me about yourself. No, thank you. I'm just not interested. Like, my audience already has 50 podcasts they can watch of me saying the exact same story.

Yeah.

And so I would like to— there's an element of, of there's their audience and I can do the TL;DR on that like in 2 minutes, which I can understand, but I'd prefer them just provide the context for me so we can actually like rip and roar.

Yeah.

But that's the— I don't like— I enjoy the good conversations. The hard part is just how many do you have?

Yeah.

And which ones do you pick? Because like right now I think we get like 10 requests a day.

Yeah.

For podcasts.

A lot.

Yeah, it's a lot. And I feel bad because I want to— I want to say yes, but mathematically I can't. It's not even like a reschedule. It's just like, it's just a no. Yeah. And so it really comes down to the quality of the interview. And if we can do it in person, I feel like the, the in-person podcasts outperform the Zoom podcasts. It's literally just like All of the in-persons and then, like, all of the Zooms. So, like, the best Zoom podcast is probably, like, about as good as, like, the worst in-person podcast.

Dude, I mean, I enjoy these, right? 'Cause these are much longer. I think if we did this on Zoom, it'd probably be, like, an hour or so.

Yeah, and you get tired. I don't know why. I feel like I'm way more— I'm, like, way— I feel like I tire out faster. I'm, like, less interested.

I don't know. Just staring at a screen, basically. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. I wanted to start to dovetail this into the book, but just, I'm curious, you started to compound on all the channels, right? Twitter, LinkedIn, everything. How are you compounding? Are you like, you're a numbers guy too, like you're tracking the month-over-month growth? Like, how are you looking on those?

I see the compounding as a consequence of what we're doing rather than the goal.

What do you mean by that?

Yeah. So like, we're human and we love having things that we can measure. And the more ways you measure, the more we can win. So I can appreciate that. But like, we're big on If we have a piece of content that we're like, this is gonna really help someone, and even if it's not super wide and we know it's not gonna get— it's not gonna perform, we'll push it for sure. And so it's— I think it's really been all about the too good to fail. It's like, as long as we make sure that what we are putting out is high quality and that I am proud to have it out there, it's kinda like the rest will take care of itself. Like, we will do our jobs. We will do a good job. We will do all of the basics, and we will do it every time. And if we do that on a long enough time horizon, we will get the result we want.

Yep. Makes sense. And as you were talking, I just, for whatever reason, just started thinking about your Twitter workflow, which I think is probably the most interesting to you because you're writing. It's the only one I do.

Yeah. The only one that I'm directly posting. You taking a poop while you're doing it, or like, what are you? No, actually. Where do these thoughts come from? So there are two places. One is I wake up with. them. Yeah. So I usually wake up with like 3 or 4 tweets in my head and I won't usually even get out of bed until I put them in.

That is nuts.

And so, yeah, so like you'll see all like a lot of my tweets are front-loaded for the day because—

But they're super refined too.

I think Twitter lowkey is the single greatest tool for learning how to write. Yeah. Because it forces you to have word concision and you get immediate feedback. And so you like—

Dopamine hits feel so good.

Like just the feedback on the language, you know what I mean? You get to learn really quickly and it's based on your words. So I think they're like There are two things that have improved my writing more than anything: Hemingway, the app, and Twitter. Like the two things that have improved my writing the most. Use Hemingway to tweet? No, no, no. But like when I wrote, like when I write the book, yeah, that has helped me. And and Twitter. Got it. But you said so the so from a the second place that I do it is when things come up naturally during the day. And so I'll say something on a meeting and like literally like the team would be like, that's tweet. And then I'll just I'll just fire it off. But there's no, um, there's no cadence. There's no ghostwriters. You'll also see 2 days in a row where I won't tweet at all. So, like, it's just whatever. And some days I'll tweet, like, 11 times. It's just if I'm in the zone.

Makes sense. Um, I think there's a lot of wisdom there. I think there's a lot of beauty in the written word, and if you can articulate yourself that way, then it's like you're next level.

Well, dude, I had a guy, um, a really successful tech entrepreneur. So he had had 2 unicorn exits, so, like, really successful. hit me up on Twitter, and we hopped on a Zoom call. And he was like, dude, so what's your Twitter strategy? Are you in one of these engagement groups? And I was like, no. And he's like, oh, dude, I won't tell anybody. Like, just what's the playbook? And I was like, I tweet shit as I think of it.

Yeah.

And he just, like— he asked like 3 or 4 times. Like, he just wouldn't believe it. I'm like, that's what it is. And you'll notice, because the tweets are usually themed, 'cause it's just top of mind. So if I'm feeling— 'cause usually, I'm tweeting to myself, and that's what people don't get. Like, my tweets are me trying to bang myself in the head and be like, dude, like, be fucking patient, or like, relax. Like, you know, whatever it is. Or like, you don't need to care about this person's opinion. And so like, they're so violent because I'm in the moment of discomfort and I write that to myself to get over the moment and move on with my day.

Dude, that's so— it's like what we'll talk about in you, your 80-year-old self mentoring you. But it's, it's weird how we use it in our own— like, you use it to beat yourself. Beat yourself up, or no, no, sorry. I use it to beat myself up sometimes, right? You're talking to yourself just to like it's like reminders for yourself, right? And Gary is like to motivate people, right? So it's just interesting. But okay, so how does now the first book that you released, Hundred Million Dollar Offers, you sold what? How many copies? I think it's about 500,000. 500 That's a lot, right? Like what? I saw like 12,000 positive five-star reviews or something.

Just crossed 16. 16,000. Okay, that's great. I just saw it. That's why.

Yeah. No advertising, right? This, by the way, let me just rewind for a second. The guy that got on a Zoom call with you, he wouldn't believe it. It's like when your shit's so good, you don't need to game the system. That is already the game.

Too good to fail. You know what I mean? Like, that's the line. Like, too good to fail. I had a roommate of mine who said that. I was like, what? Because this is way back when I had my gyms and I only had one gym. So like way back in the day and he had an online business. So it was like way early, a decade ago, right? And I was like, so what's your strategy? And he was like, he was doing like blogging SEO stuff back then. And he said that statement to me and he was like, I don't do anything else. He's like, I just make sure that my articles are so exceptional that people share them. And he would spend 2 weeks on one article, but then they would crush and get shared all over the place. And now he has a business probably worth like $60, $70 million now.

Wow.

And we were just like roommates in a house, like just renting. Great. Yeah.

That's awesome. Okay, so back to the book. So you did the first one. What did you— I mean, it's a labor of love first. Anybody that's written a book before, you know, it's a labor of love. And plus, you, you like 10x, 20x just to make sure it's damn good. First book was amazing, right? What made you so quickly want to go to the next one? And what are you looking to get out of it?

Man, writing books is like such not a good use of time. Um, as much like It's like, it's something— it's honestly like a guilty pleasure. Like, it takes too much of my time, and I enjoy it. 'Cause a lot of people don't know this about my background, but like, I was the vice editor of the newspaper. I was the editor-in-chief of the literary magazine. I got a writing scholarship going into college. Like, I've been writing a long time, and I enjoy writing. Um, and so this is the only thing that I get to marry my two loves, where like, I love writing and I love business.

Yeah.

And so it's like, it's my like, chief form of expression. That's why Twitter is kind of like a microcosm of that. But the point of $100 Million Leads was to answer one question. And the first one, $100 Million Offers, answered the question, what do I sell? Leads answers the question, who do I sell it to? And so most people, once they have something to sell, they're like, okay, now what? And this book pretty much walks you through how to get your— I mean, basically this book can get most people to a few million dollars a year. That, I mean, that's it. And so I see this like the books are my absolute long game because the amount of guys that I see every single day that stop me, like when we're walking, who are like, dude, I'm 21, I've got my thing, I'm doing, you know, $70 grand a month and you're on my vision board. As soon as I cross $1 million in profit, like I'm hitting you up. And so like there are so many of those guys right now who are like incubating that I know in 3 years, 5 years, 10 years are going to hit that. And I just want to be the first person they call.

Right.

And that's it. And like, that's a long— it's my longest game. Like, the books are my absolute— which is why I spend so much time on them, because if they're not going to be good enough to still be referred to and sold in a decade, there's no point in me writing it today. Yeah. Like, what would I get? The book launch money? Like, it cost me more money to put the event on than I'm probably going to make from the book. Right. You know what I mean? And the media team My my losing money media team. Yeah. I said it with love. Losing money media team. No, you guys are you guys are awesome. Writing a book to make money off a book is possibly the worst monetization vehicle of all time. It's a physical product. You have a sixteen week lead time. You have to manage inventory accounts. You make no money on it. You have to sell it on a platform that takes eighty percent of the money, or you have to go to a publisher that also takes eighty percent of the money. Like there's no winning from a money like. Yeah, the percentage of like the offers is top, top 100 Audible books still on Amazon 2 years later and top 1,000 physical books.

Wow.

There's, there's like 60— there's, I think, 60 million titles. There's 6 or 60 million. That's a big difference, obviously, but a lot of books on Amazon. And so it's a 0.0001% book and like it does— I mean, it makes money, but like it makes less than any of my portfolio companies, to give like a reference of scale.

Yeah, I mean, you're not retiring from—

Right now. I mean, if I spent no money, you know what I mean? Like, any of the companies we have makes more money than the book, right?

Yeah, makes sense. I mean, but it's still— it's like it lives on forever, and that's cool.

And I think that's it. That's like the— like, if I were to die tomorrow, the thing I'd be most proud of is the books, because I knew that that would be the thing that would outlive me the longest.

Yeah, which is interesting. We'll come back to the book in a second, but I think you talked about how you don't believe in the concept of of legacy, right?

Yeah.

Um, kinda is your legacy.

In the formal sense, yeah. I don't believe in individual legacy. Yeah. Can you expand on that? Yeah, so, like, I don't believe in your name being passed on for thousands of generations. I mean, like, to prove the point, do you know what your great-great-great-grandfather's name was? Probably not. Right. And so that's not even that many generations back. And so to have the ego and the thinking that, like, your progeny are— and even if you somehow became king of the world, Yeah. And you did have that, they wouldn't know who you were. You would just be like another historical figure that they could then trace their bloodline back to. And then if you do the math on how related you are to them, like if you go, you know, 0.5 to the 8th, I mean, you're, you're not related. You're just another human. And in that, to that degree, then it, then relation generalizes to all of humanity and then you just become a humanitarian, in which case I am pro-legacy from that perspective. And I think that the ultimate legacy is education because All of us here are sitting here in a house full of inventions that other people that we don't know invented and made our lives better. And that, I think, is like the ultimate legacy for humanity, is that we just fall and someone picks up the baton where we left off and carries it. But like, I think the ultimate wasted life is one where you learn lessons and pass it on to no one and force someone to quite truly reinvent the wheel.

You know, Naval has— so the book he recommends the most is the— I think it's The Beginning of Infinity or something like that. Yeah. David Deutsch or whatever.

I read it.

So this dude, And it's like a super dense read, but like, I haven't completed it. But this guy's like, you know, what is wealth? And wealth is knowledge. To your point, you just said it's education, right? Like, that is the thing that continues to compound beyond you and me. It lasts beyond money. Yeah. And like, that is what should matter. Like, how do we make people wealthy? We educate them.

And if you think about the reverse of that too, if you had a lot of money and you gave it to someone How would you guarantee that they lose the money? You have them completely uneducated and completely ignorant. And so there's a— there's— I think it's Sanskrit. It's a super old, like, ism. But it says if you have a bad son, there's no point in saving money. If you have a good son, there's no point in saving money because if you have the good son, he'll take care of himself. If you have a bad son, he's going to squander everything you have, which basically means that at no point does it ever matter what you accumulate because either you passed on education, in which case they never needed you to begin with.

Yeah.

Or you pass on no education and they're going to lose everything you had.

That's so good. But this is the thing. You look at all the wealthy people, they can't help themselves. They have to give it to your kids. And we don't have kids yet, right? But I suspect if we have kids, right, it's just like you probably end up giving it to the kids, right?

Well, I think I really like thinking of like, I mean, and I'll probably be different when I have children, but I don't know how different. People will be surprised. If, like, if I wanted to create a human that had certain character traits, I would then think, okay, what are the— what are the experiences someone has to go through to have that happen? And I would try and reverse engineer as many of those as I could. And like having uber wealth throughout your entire life and having a guaranteed ease of, of eating and living and whatever is a great way to guarantee— not guarantee— is a great way to increase the likelihood that someone does not turn out good.

Yeah.

And so I wouldn't want to spend the rest of my life after they're 20 with a bunch of people I didn't like. And so I would rather have them suffer to become the types of people that I'd want to spend the rest of my life with.

I'm with you, man. It's— I mean, let's, let's rewind to our childhoods real quick because we— for me, Tiger Mom, right? It's difficult. You're never good enough, right? And so I think similar kind of story for you. Do you want to talk about maybe how your childhood shaped you into who you are? Because I feel like there's part of you that's really compassionate, but then there's the other side that's really tough on yourself and sometimes tough on other people too. Yeah.

Well, as a quick side note on this, I think because I've had this question in different forms on a couple of podcasts about like the struggle growing up, etc., and how that creates success now. But I really think it's people suffer during childhood. Some people are successful and some people aren't. Like there's just as many people or not even way more people who have terrible childhoods and then don't do anything out of it.

True.

And so I don't So to point back to a terrible childhood and say— not that I had a terrible childhood, but like to tough times and say that that is why I am here. The why is really difficult and I don't think anyone can answer the question. I just know that I do these things because I have been reinforced for doing them. And so that's like the only rule or law of humanity that I see is that you're either rewarded or punished for doing the things that you've done.

Yeah.

And you either avoid things you've been punished for in the past and you keep doing things you're rewarded for. And so like I keep working harder and harder on things because my minimum standard continues to rise, because the more I raise that minimum standard, The better the things that I have are, and the more reinforced I am for working hard on the things that I work on.

Which brings me to a quote over here: Most people keep fighting the same boss, but the boss is being able to stick with it. Yeah. And you had to learn that the hard way, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. Here, I'll give you another one over here. I'll give you your your moseyisms. Is that a thing? Moseyisms. To do something epic, you have to convince yourself to do the same thing for a long period of time without telling yourself that you're smarter than you are. This talk that you did. I think the talk I'm paraphrasing here was how you're this will change how you think about money or something like that, right? But this talk was really about focus at the end of the day, and you went to Yogurtland and decided that you had to redo your talk and focus the talk on focus. What happened there?

Yeah, and all these guys who were coming up, so I so I got so I was supposed to speak at this event, and I'd already finished the the presentation and. Part of the reason that I don't speak very much is because on stages, one, I don't like how people use my face to promote because again, associations I don't want. Yeah, but also because it means to just give this to everybody else, like a lot of people will promote with my face and then people will buy whatever the person who's at the event is selling. And I have no association or anything and I have no way to— I don't have the time to do the due diligence of figuring the person out. So like if I speak somewhere, it's not because I'm endorsing the person. But that being said, I went to the Yogurtland and like 8 or 9 people were in the area for the next day and they sat around us and I spent like 60 minutes talking to all these guys and it became really clear that all of them were distracted. They were all doing multiple things, trying to— like they subscribed to the single fallacy that I think is number one in new entrepreneurs, which is the I'll see which one works fallacy.

Yeah.

And the reality is that any of them could work, but the only one that will work is the one that you work on. And so you have to commit to one of them because it's just— it's arrogant to think that you going 25% in on 4 things is because you are competing in a real marketplace against somebody else that's in that space. And to think that your 25% is going to do anything against someone's 100%, it's just arrogant. And so And one of the definitions of commitment that I like a lot is the elimination of alternatives. And so if you want to be committed to something, then you have to eliminate alternatives. And some people use, you know, decidere, which is the Latin root of decide, which just means to kill off, which is like, what are we killing off? And I think it's kind of like pruning a tree. And when I realized that, it's like there's only so much nutrients in the soil, there are only so many minutes in the day, so much literal attention and focus that you can allocate. And if anyone's ever worked on one project for a long period of time, you realize that you start peeling back layers and getting a depth of understanding that you can never get when you're on the surface level looking at multiple things. You're barely being reactive and setting out fires. You can never make progress and like drive. And I think that like, this is a Warren Buffett quote to give the GOAT his due. He said the difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything. And I think that that's— it's just taken me a very long time to learn that. And I continue to repeat it in my tweets because it's still just as hard for me now as it was then. It's because the thing is, is that the opportunities I have to say no to now are things that I would have given my left nut for, you know, a decade ago. And so it's just— it's continued. Like, the bar has continued to rise on what I have to say no to, and it's hard the whole way through. And one of the big unlocks for me has been judging myself based on my actions and not my feelings, meaning I can feel impatient, but still do the patient thing. So I might still want this to go faster and be upset that it's not going faster. As long as I don't act on that impulse, I can still be a patient person.

Yeah.

And so, to the same degree with focus, I might be interested and love jamming with the guys on, like, what if we did this? What if we did that? What if we did that? But as long as I don't say, all right, buy the URL, let's get the bank account set up, let's go. As long as I don't do that, then, like, We're still focused on the one thing that matters most.

It must be tough because it's you're you're trying to educate people on the pain that you've been through, right? Again, being punched in the gut, nine things, right? But still, like I don't know about you, but in my early twenties, I remember like yeah, focus, focus. And I would read you know Warren Buffett, Steve not Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, you know Bill Gates. Yeah, the one thing is focus, right? Like you know, and but then it's like no, no, no. But like I'm better, I'm smarter than that, right? That you have that quote in here. It's like. Thinking that you're smarter than you are. So I feel like it's as much as we try to teach people, sometimes it's like they just need to get punched themselves.

I think there's a difference between knowing that and knowing how. So like going through an experience unfortunately teaches you in a different way than knowing that something happens. Or like, I know, I know, I know that this works this way. But if I said like, I know how a business works, but it's like, but you you know what to do, but you've never done it. And so until you've actually done it, you think you know what to do until you go through it. And so I think that's like that experiential knowledge, which is honestly, I think, the base of the content. What makes the difference between Ken McElroy's and hopefully our content, which is like people can see a depth of understanding that comes from experience. Like one of my favorite quotes from L.H. Hardwick is, no man with experience is ever at the mercy of a man with an opinion.

Right.

And until someone's done it, all they have is an opinion. And if you have done it, they are irrelevant. Like someone's like, well, it doesn't work that way. I'm like, have you done it? And they're like, no. And I'm like, your opinion does not matter, dude.

I just remember 2, 3 years ago, one of the guys that, that was leading my marketing team, he's like, so we'd have this engagement tool called 15/5 and you could just— here's how the week went, you know, here's what I'm learning right now. And every week it's like watching Hormozi videos, watching Hormozi videos. And this is when you had This is when you were just like maybe 20,000 subscribers or whatever, right? But it was because of the depth of the content that you have where it was just so— and then I started watching it and it's like, then it's like all the thumbnails on YouTube started, the recommendations become— started becoming you. I was like, holy shit. And that's how you start to compound, right? Because it's good stuff.

Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, it's— I think it's being, it's being really honest with yourself about, you know, we have the investor's circle of competence, right? I think there's a content circle of competence that you have to know. If it's not in this circle, I shouldn't talk about it. And that's not because of brand and that's not because of any of the fancy stuff. It's just because you don't know it. And like anything that you have to add that's outside of the circle of competence will often be a generalization that you heard from someone else.

Right.

And if it's a generalization from someone else, then that's their opinion and not yours. Right. And so we want first principles, first experience type content. And so n equals 1, right? Or 1 of 0 content, as we say. And that's the litmus test is like, is it in that? Is it, is it something we know from experience? And I had this video, I think the long that I had right before this was my explanation of how to get to $10 million plus a month. And I talked about, I was like, and I think this is how we get to $100 million a month. I don't know that because I haven't been there yet, but this is my current plan of how to get there. And somebody commented something, I can't remember what it was, but it was something like, Well, you have no idea. I can, I can coach you on it. Like, whatever. But the thing is, is like, I will only talk about retrospect, right? Like, I will only talk about things that I have done because I can speak confidently on them. And if someone says Gym Launch wasn't a company, it doesn't bother me because it's like saying like, you didn't have oatmeal for breakfast. I'm like, I mean, I did. So, okay. And that's, that's what, in my opinion, has allowed me to not suffer from the, the many inevitable, you know, comments, whatever you get from the masses of people who don't know you. Because if someone says, hey, Alex, you're short, I know that's not true. And so it doesn't, it doesn't hit me. The only ones that hurt are the ones that you feel like have an element of truth. And so if there's an element of truth, it means that I probably stepped out of my circle of competence. And I think getting stung outside of my circle has really taught me, at least for me, to stay in my world of like, these are the few things that I know and that is what I'll talk about.

You know, interestingly enough, speaking of circle of competence, I think there's also a circle of competence when it comes to content creation. Like you should stick to the format that you understand initially before expanding out. Right. And so I really enjoy this, but maybe I'm not the best at, you know, telling long-form stories or something like that. Right. So I think it's like Really do whatever works for you. Play your cards. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So going back to the book, you got this big launch strategy happening right now. It's like the Super Bowl. Like, what can you tell us about that? What's going on? How much you spend? Yeah, let's go.

Tons about it. So $100 Million Offers, the first book, I'm— the goal with every book was to be a meta book, meaning I wanted to use the book to demonstrate the ideas in the book as proof that the ideas worked. And so $100 Million Offers: How to Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No was supposed to in and of itself be an offer so good people feel stupid saying no. And so I made the book $2 on Kindle and I added in a course that most people would sell for $1,000 to $5,000 on top of it and made it for free on my site, not behind an opt-in wall, just made it for free for everyone with downloads and everything. And the idea was, if it is good enough, people will share it. And that's more or less what ended up happening. And so with $100 Million Leads, the meta concept is not about the offer. The meta concept within leads is advertising and how to get leads.

Right.

And so the 24 months that I did post the Offers book was all towards the Leads book. And so the last 24 months was, well, if I'm going to talk about how to build an audience, then I have to build an audience. If I'm going to talk about how to run paid ads, I have to build— I have to run paid ads. If I'm going to talk about having affiliates, I have to have affiliates. And so there's 8 methods of advertising that I talk about in the book.

Right.

And I use all 8 specifically to promote the book to prove that all 8 methods work.

Ah.

And so when we go live at the event, I will break down here was our affiliate strategy. This is how many affiliates we had. This is how many of you are here from affiliates. This is how— this is our paid, paid, paid ad strategy. These are the scripts I use, which is directly from this page. This is the landing page I use, which is directly from this page. And it got this many of you guys here. I got this much content, which is how many we put out over this period of time. This is the resulting impressions. This is how many of you are here from that. And so I wanted to just give proof that these concepts worked 10 years ago and they work today and they'll work in 100 years because people won't change. The platforms will, but the principles remain the same.

Yeah. So, I mean, you're basically showing, hey, like, I'm showing you this in the book and I'm meta. This is how it works, right?

Yeah.

But by the way, for the affiliates, what are they getting out of this? I mean, it's a $2 book. Like, what's in it for them?

Yeah. And actually, the Kindle on this one is $10 because the point was not to be an offer. The point was to be a leads thing.

Got it.

Right. And the next book will be a meta concept on that. So every book will have its own unique thing anyways. So with the affiliates, I think of affiliates in kind of 2 tiers. Now, when I make a true affiliate strategy for a business, there's usually 3. There's usually first level, which is the base level that everybody starts at. There's the next level, which is an activation point level, which is whatever activation point is for you and your business. You make that the next kicker for their income or whatever the benefit is. And then you have your like top producer level. And so those are usually the best 3. And we paid a gazillion dollars to consultants who just only set up affiliate structures and that's what they use. They're like always 3. These are the 3 and there you go. There's a nugget for you. Let me save you $100 grand. That's how you set up affiliate setups. But with this book, I have 2 levels. If you don't have a massive audience, bring 10 friends. That's it. So bring 10, 10 people from your company, bring your family, bring your cousins, whatever it is, bring 10 people and I'll give you 2 chapters that I'm not releasing with the book.

Okay.

So that's the, that's the benefit for that level. For the top level, those are going to be people who have audiences, right? Who have email lists, have subscribers, etc. And so for them, I wanted it to be more competitive. And so for them, at the top 10, I'm going to do an AMA live with their audience, with them, and they can ask whatever they want. And the reason I chose that specific benefit for them was that if I said, hey, I'm giving a Lamborghini or I'm giving a car to the top 10 people, right? If they go to their audience and say, hey, attend this thing so I can win this car, that's them extracting goodwill from the audience. Right. And I don't want them to do that for me. And so I was like, how can I also use the concepts that I preach for them? And so I made it an AMA so that their audience clicking their affiliate link benefits their audience. Because if I click Johnny's link and we win, then we get the time to do the AMA. And so he doesn't— Johnny or whoever the affiliate is doesn't extract goodwill or withdraw goodwill from their audience by promoting my thing. And so that way I wanted it to be an easy thing for people to promote. So it would just be a net benefit. So it didn't have to like work into their promotion calendar or be like, like how— what kind of split am I? Because there's no financial incentive for the— for this. And I also did that because operationally, you know, 12,000 1099s is a pain. And so it was easier to do it that way.

Interesting. These people are willing to promote too because of all the goodwill that you've built up. And I think that's really interesting and probably people understand.

And probably brand association. Yeah. Like, for sure. Like, real talk. Like, that was the thing that I, I'm still consistently learning and am impressed by how branding works. Yeah. But yeah, I think that was also an element of it.

So in the AMAs that you're doing, you're doing basically 10 separate AMAs.

Yeah, 10 separate ones. So it's totally like their audience. Yeah. And so, yeah, that's— and I don't do a lot of these. Yeah. By percentage of requests. And so for many of them, this is like the only shot that They'll probably have to do that. And so I wanted to make it cool and awesome.

Got it. How many hours do you think you put into this launch? How much do you think you spent so far?

I spent $1 million in cash on the event so far. Yeah, probably more, honestly. Yeah, it's been probably more. And then so right now we have like 405,000 or 410,000 people registered. Okay. for the event, which is pretty nuts. It's like 7 NFL stadiums.

Dude, I imagine attendance rate has to be pretty high, too.

I hope so. Well, you know, this is the first time that we've done anything like this big. Um, so yeah, we've spent that much money. And then from a time perspective, this has been— if you include the writing of the book, I mean, it's— I've got 2,000 hours into this. So if we don't include writing the book, um, the presentation that I'm giving, I've spent— I probably put 200 hours into it.

Wow. Okay.

So I, I will do the work. And so I made the presentation and this, and now I feel like I have the process down. So I will share this with you. So I'm a big fan of outworking your self-doubt, right? Like you're never nervous if you're fully prepared. And so I don't want to be nervous. For this thing. And if anything, I just want to be excited about it, which I am. But the way I approached it was I made the first version of the presentation and then I presented it and I recorded it, and then I watched the recording with the deck up and I pause it when every time there's a mess up and I fix the deck and I play, fix, play, fix, play, fix. And then once I have the new fixed one, I go top to bottom in my head and then I go top to bottom, record it out loud. Pause, fix, pause, fix, pause, fix. And so right now I do that. I do one full cycle of that every day. And I started preparing for that 3 weeks out.

I don't know if people are— maybe they are seeing this, but from my observation here is you just mentioned, I will do the work. And I think one of your other quotes was like, the work needs doing, right? But then— and then you tie it in with really not even a 10x effort, but to me it seems like a 100x effort. Just people aren't willing to go that far. Right.

But what's interesting is that, like, if you work 100 times harder, you can sometimes get like a million times the payout. And so like the top end of work still has disproportionate payoffs. And so I don't even— I don't even like— there are diminishing returns, but there's a point where you actually get like outsized returns for the effort because like if you think about it from like an Olympic racing perspective, like if I work, you know, 10 times more than everybody else does, but I get gold and the next guy gets silver, the difference between gold and silver in running is everything, even though it's a 10th of a second.

Right.

And so from an absolute perspective, there's diminishing returns. But from a relative perspective, I think you have exponential returns from being the best, from being number— the difference between number 1 and number 2 can be, you know, like Uber and Lyft. Like the difference is 10x the size. And so I, I have now been reinforced enough times of how much more work is required to do something excellent. that now I understand it. And I think the one thing that has continued to level up over time for me, and this is also for the audience, is that like you don't even know how much you can work. Like you think you know how much you can work until you like really, really work. And like with this presentation, I was like, I will not be the reason this is not good.

What do you think changed your perspective? Like flipped you into working 100x harder?

I think just my standards have gone up. Like, I looked at the first presentation I ever gave and it's like, it's embarrassing. I mean, it's truly embarrassing. I think it has like 19 slides with like 4 bullets on each slide. And I remember being— I remember thinking, man, I spent a lot of time on this. And a lot of time to me back then was like, I spent a day on it. Like a full day, like 8 hours.

Yeah, that's still me right now.

Yeah. And, and I think that a little moniker that I have is just count in hundreds. is like, how many hundreds of hours did you spend on something? Because like when you start counting in hundreds, like the depth of understanding of something goes to such a, such a large degree. And it's like if I were to tell someone to edit a video, right, like a short clip, and I said, hey, edit this clip in 30 minutes, right, and give it back to me. And I was like, and they give it back to me. I'm like, okay, I'm not going to edit it yet. If I give you another 30 minutes, could you make it better? And they're usually like, I could make it better. Another 30. So I give it back to them like, Give it back to me in another 30. So he gives it back to me in another 30, and I say, OK, if I give you 2 more hours, do you think you'd make it better? There's a point to this.

Yep.

He's like, yeah, I think I'd make it better. Comes back to me. I say, OK, what if I gave you 2 weeks? Like, well, then I would totally approach it differently. I'd probably restructure the whole thing, like, because the amount of time— sure, work does expand to the amount of time that you allow it, right? But I— deem work done when there is nothing else that I can do to make it better, that there's nothing else that I know of that I can make this better.

Right.

And that was the point that I got back with the book. Like, I did 19 drafts, I did 4 full rewrites, and the last version that has gone out, when I, you know, read it front to back so many times now, like there was— I was like, I can't take anything else out and I can't add anything to it and I can't make anything clearer. And I've written this whole thing in a 3rd grade reading level and I added 106 hand-drawn images into this. There's nothing else I can do. And if it does not succeed, that's fine. Yeah, but it will not be for lack of effort.

Let me ask you this then. What would be considered success for this book launch?

It'll be successful the moment I step on stage. I genuinely believe this. Like, truly, I'll have won by the time that it happens because I know what I feel like when I walk on stage and I have done everything in my power. Everything. Not some of the things or most of the things, but there is nothing else that I can conceive of to make this better. And then at that point, if any, like, then the chips will fall where they are and I will control the controllables. And so that's— that has— that has helped me get through like some of the anxieties and things like that that happened earlier on in my career around these types of things.

Yeah.

But the whole— like, the reason I have the outwork yourself doubt, like give yourself a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are. Like, if I say that I will— I will do my job, then I will not make I will make sure that I have done everything in my power, which also means— and this is the underlying thing— is that means I can't do a lot of stuff. And that's the, that's the real cost of excellence is all the things that you want to try that you can't do because excellence has a huge price tag associated with it, which is how much time you have to put into one thing.

Totally. And you actually gave this example when it comes to writing a world-class book there. Yeah. I think the analogy you shared was like, you know, there's a difference between like a 7.5-star and a 9.5-star book or whatever it is. It's like 100x more work. Yeah, right. What was the analogy?

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's exactly that. Like, to go from a, you know, like from a 5 to a 7 is like twice the work. To go from a 7 to a 9 is like 100 times the work. It's so much more work. It's an asymptote when it comes to work and excellence.

Power laws.

But, but the difference, like, but the difference between a 9.5 book and a 9.9 book on Amazon is the difference between you having one book that you can retire on for the rest of your life. Like the Offers book in sales, I think does around $300,000 a month, which is crazy.

Pretty good. Yeah.

As a book.

Yeah.

As a book.

That's your take, right?

Huh?

That's your take.

No, that's not my take. That's sales. That's revenue, right? Then Amazon has his way with it and takes the vast majority of it. But point being is like for the vast majority, I think it is about $1 million a year.

Yeah, great.

But for the vast majority of people, like that, I think is actually kind of encouraging is like you can put an unbelievable amount of work into one thing and make it so good that it will pay you for the rest of your life. Like, you don't— like, you could work a job, you could have a career, you could do all these things. But like, if you build one amazing product that people will consistently buy and tell their friends about, you don't have to work again. And I think that like understanding that I've now applied. And honestly, the Offers book was the first, probably the biggest real-life example I had where I could control every variable. Like in a business, you can't control every variable, but in— and even in like a tech product, I'm not the coder or whatever. Like I was like, I can code every page of this. I did the drawings, I did the Audible, I wrote the words, I designed the COVID like everything. Yeah. And so I can make sure that it's excellent from my perspective and then hopefully the audience will agree.

I love it. And that acquisition.com/leads, is that going to be an evergreen page or is it going to disappear at some point?

Oh, I mean, it'll always reroute to probably something about the books. So yeah, acquisition.com/leads.

Got it. Let me ask you this. I think for $100 million offers, that book is very Lindy. And what I mean by that for the audience is that, you know, it stands like How to Win Friends and Influence People. It's been around for over 100 years. It's going to be around for another 100 years. I think your book is written that way for that one. I think leads might be a little more difficult because you might be talking about— no, no, you've written it, Lindy.

That's why it was so hard.

There you go.

Think about— I mean, like I had to. So, so to give context, leads has been probably 10 times the work of offers, like, and it was because I had to rewrite it so many times and, and thinking about what topics I was going to get into and what topics I wasn't going to get into. And then how at what level do I chunk up or chunk down from tactics around advertising.

Mm-hmm.

Right. So explaining the concepts, like I call it the core 4, but there's only 4 things you can do to let other people know about your stuff. You can message people one-on-one who you know. So it's warm reachouts. You can message people one-on-one who you don't know. That's cold reachouts. You can post one-to-many to people who know you, which is posting content, and you can post one-to-many to people who don't know you, which is running paid ads. That's it. That's all you can do. There's nothing else. And if you're not doing those things, then people won't find out about your stuff. And so the platforms change, the principles remain the same. And so that was the— but like I had to cover platforms, media formats, placements, targeting, cold emails, cold calls, DMs. Like there were so many things that I had to cover in one book. I will, I will probably never bite off so much again. Yeah. In terms of narrowing the scope of the book. But now that I did for this, it really— the problem set that this book answers is literally just one step in the funnel, which is a lead is a person that you can contact. That is the definition of lead as I define it. An engaged lead is a person you can contact who has shown interest in the stuff you sell. And the entire point of this book is to get someone from a person you can contact to get them engaged. Got it. That is it. That is the whole problem of the entire book. And then like, and that's it. It self-destructs. It self-destructs.

You got offers, you got leads. Can you talk about the next one?

It's— I won't share the name yet. Yeah, but it's green. It's green. All right. You got to be a green book. Purple, purple.

Wait, blue, purple, green, purple, blue, purple, blue. Okay, got it. Got it. Got it. Just for the audience to know, it's typically when you write a book, it's usually 5 to 7 drafts, right? And when I— my editor first told me that, it's like, Come on, I'll be done in one draft, right? No, it's 7 on my end. You did 19. That's, that's way more. And it sounds like you rewrote a couple times too.

4 full rewrites, like end-to-end rewrites.

That's crazy. I think I'd just give up.

It was hard. It was very hard. It was really hard.

Yeah, but the work needs doing. And—

I'll tell you what my editor said when I would get to these points where I would just like throw up my hands and be like, dude, I don't care. I don't need to make the money. Like, I don't— like, whatever, you know.

You're close to giving up a couple times.

Oh, for sure. I mean, like, you know, Everybody has bad days. Yeah. And he, he said that he gave me this visual that like just like seared into my mind. He was like, there's a 17-year-old kid in Pakistan who has a goat who's going to be sleeping with this book under his pillow. He's like, do it for him. Wow. And I was like, like, all right, that's good. We get back and we, and we, you know, I was like, dude, they can figure this part out. And he's like, no, they can't. Yeah. He's like, you'll sell the book no matter what. He's like, but they won't get it. And then I was like, So then it's like back to the drawing board. How can I rethink through this framework so that I can make it easy and then make the visual match the words and make it under 3rd grade? And all the way through was tough.

I mean, that just goes to show you too, because earlier you talked about your mission around the education piece, right? And sometimes no matter how strong your mission is, you start to waver a little bit, right? And you need heroes like your editor to come in and recalibrate. Yeah. Yeah. This one's interesting. So the guy I had lunch with today, we had been in these masterminds before and In our mid-20s or so, it's like, yeah, tactics. You need a dopamine hit. It's like, oh, that feels good, right? Yeah, split test. You know, there's this new channel over here, you gotta talk to this person. But then as we get older, it's like, no, no, no, it's not about the tactics. It's just about hiring good people, right? Like, is there anything you want to— I mean, I thought it'd be good to chat about with you here because after they read the book, sure, they'll pick up the strategies, the tactics, but really once they get a certain level, it's like—

I mean, it's all about who. You know, I mean, there's that— the title was that book Who Not How.

Yeah.

I mean, it kind of summarizes the entire concept in the title. You— I think you and I've had this discussion, but like, you can, you can sit in on a group of entrepreneurs, listen to the discussion for 60 seconds and know how much money they make within a rough, a rough estimate or what level of the business that they're working, if they're employees, like where they, where they sit on the org chart because of what level of conversation they're having. And so at the highest level, you're talking about allocation of resources. That's all it is. It's just capital and human allocation. Yeah. And, you know, one level maybe below that would be human, like human capital, which is how are we going to attract talent? How are we going to train talent? How are we going to get compounding returns on talent? Because, you know, I like the saying, but you're just one great hire away from all of the money that you want. Yeah. But the thing is, is that I think the catch of that, that ism is that you have to become the type of person that that person wants to work for.

Totally.

And that's why you create— that's the hard part. Yeah, that's like, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. What's his name? Tim Cook, right? Of Apple. He could, he could probably grow your business, but he wouldn't work for you.

Yeah.

And so like, that has been always at the forefront of Layla and I's mind is, and that's part of what we do with the brand stuff, which is we want the brand to stand for things that— because we're, we're just as aggressively advertising At a tactical level, we're more aggressively advertising from a transactions perspective for the talent we put in portfolio companies. So we place talent, I mean, a few times a week. I mean, we have 3, 4 leadership positions a week that we fill in our portfolio companies compared to how many deals we do at the portfolio level. And so, and that's the, that's the highest return on capital that we have is buy someone. And I say buy just in the Capital term. Buy talent for $200,000 a year, make $20 million a year.

Yeah, no-brainer.

Great trade, right? And one of the big, one of the big misnomers, I think that one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make, myself included when I was earlier on, is that I didn't understand the difference between A and B talent. You can pay A talent 30% above market and get 10x the output. And like, there's no sense in ever paying below market, in my opinion, because you just don't get You can get so much more for the, for the extra premium that you pay that it's one of the best. It's like the best, best bet in Vegas. Yeah. You know, I mean, the best trade you can make is that premium to bring the right person in that's 10 times more effective.

You know, have you heard of Keith Rabois? He has this expression about barrels versus bullets. So the concept here, this guy was— I think he was like a COO of Square or Block, whatever you want to call it. He's high up at PayPal. But anyway, so what he said was like, look, in an organization you need barrows. These are going to be the ones that you give them a problem or like something, they'll just solve it, right? And then the bullets, like they will do what you tell them to do, but you should always hire a barrel whenever you meet a barrel. And that's kind of what you're saying here. And to me, like, I, I love playing poker, right? Like I'm a gambler at heart, but in like in business, it's like unfair. It's like you make this hire, it's like Upside is unlimited.

Well, I mean, it's gotten to the point now where we will like— we interview, we basically have open interviews. So if we see someone who's incredibly talented, we will hire them without really having a clear position for them yet. And like I'm saying, that's a bit— that's if we have an incredibly talented person. Like we had someone recently who is an exceptional sales director, had huge experience, was an ex-CEO, like all this great stuff, great value fit. Um, and one of our portfolio companies, we were about to, uh, you know, make the recommendation that you should take this person. Um, and they were like, we don't think we wanna do it. Um, and so we hopped on the phone and we're like, you're wrong. Um, like, we have a lot more context on this. You should do it. And it ended up somebody from, like, their outside had said, you shouldn't do it, and they had no—

Ah.

That person had no context. And they were like, we actually wanted to hire him, but we didn't trust ourselves, which, by the way, Huge part for entrepreneurs is like you make one bad hire and then you think, I can't hire people. Like, you're going to make mistakes. It's part of the game. You get better and better at pattern recognition. And so this person had talent. It was clear. And so we were like, just so you know, we are hiring him no matter what. And so we're either going to put him in your company or putting him with somebody else. And they were like, okay, yeah, yeah, no, no, we want him. And so it's like, I think that's the level of talent is like you should feel FOMO when you're talking to the person. And here's the other litmus test that I love. I got this from Layla. If you are not learning on the interview from the candidate about the thing that they're supposed to take over, you shouldn't hire them. Because it means that you know more than them, which means that you're required for them to be successful, which means that they need you, and you don't get leverage.

Yep. Dude, that's way better. So, I used to use this Larry Page proxy. So, he would just get bored on all these interviews, right? He's one of the founders of Google, and he would be like, Yeah. So like, tell me about something you're passionate about. Okay, great. You're going to teach me for 7 minutes so I can learn something. Yeah. Layla's is even better. Yeah. Yeah.

Because if you think about from a, from a chunked up example, an organization grows if the, if the cumulative knowledge base of the company grows. And so if you bring somebody in who you have the complete, you have their entire complete knowledge set about whatever the subject matter is, then the organization doesn't grow. Just as simple as that.

Yep.

And if you were the smartest person in your business, then it means that the business will be capped by your brain.

Yep.

If you have 4 other people who have huge trench knowledge, then I see it as this— like, in my head, I see it as this Christmas tree where, like, if you have 4 like this, the peak goes way above because you have this wider, wider top. So the peak is way, way higher. Whereas if you're the single brain at the top, The peak is the top of your head.

Yeah, that's like how I visualize. Very small Christmas tree.

Yeah, very small Christmas tree. Exactly, dude. No presents. That's, that's good.

Um, so actually we have a couple minutes left here, but the Layla conversation is going to be really focused on talent acquisition because that, that is the game. So, um, she's a G at it.

She's a savage.

I mean, speaking of savages, so A, yes, both of you are savages, um, in a good way obviously. But B, when you find this talent, right, like I tell people, I tell my staff, it's like, dude, you know, and if you have that feeling, that little gut feeling, you pull the trigger. You don't wait. You don't wait that long.

Yeah, because the next person they interview with will hire them.

Yeah, totally. So you'll do it on the spot sometimes.

We don't do— I mean, we don't— we still follow a process, but we do 24-hour turnarounds to move things forward.

There you go. Yeah. But usually your turnaround's like—

We try and do— we try and do everything one day apart. If we like, we always try to do that. Like we have really good metrics around HR, like our cost to fill. Is way below industry average. Our time to fill roles is like 22 days versus industry average is much higher. Yeah, our two-sided fit at 90 days, which is one of our key metrics, is that the person above the person and the person both say that it was a perfect match. Hmm.

90 days later, two-sided fit. I like that. You guys came up with that one too?

Well, director of HR did. And that was because she came from Audax, a private equity firm. And so she was director of people there. Yeah. And so on the interview, she was teaching She gave all these metrics that I didn't like— time to fill. And I was like, I should— why have I never tracked this? Like, that's so smart. And she's like, what's the cost to fill? And here I am thinking, I was like, oh yeah, I'm this big metrics guy. I know the cost to acquire a customer, CPM, CPA, all these things. And she's like, oh, you don't know what your cost to fill was? And I was like, wow, like such an idiot myself. And so that's why, like, that's why you need really smart people around you because like I learn from her all the time.

You should feel like Idiot when you're talking to high-caliber prospects.

About their subject.

Yeah, yeah, I love it. Cool. You know, so I'm gonna go back to a story here because, because we have a guest question here. But we were eating lunch one time and your order was, give me 4 chicken breasts. So tell us about the— I've seen the video you have with the ice cream and all that. How is your diet? Like, what is the question here from my buddy is, what is Alex's fitness routine aside from what he has And diet as well.

Yeah. Like right now I haven't worked out in like 3 or 4 weeks, which is not as common for me, but I go through seasons. I would say like I didn't, I didn't miss more than a week of working out for like 16 years.

Wow.

And then I, in my old age, you know, I'm crossing 19 years of training now. So I've like, for everyone who's like the entrepreneurs who like all of a sudden decide to like start getting into fitness and then they start lecturing people when they've only been doing working out for like 2 years, like, I read the book and the article and I know the guy who wrote it. I know how he makes his money and you're not seeing the whole truth, but that's okay.

With which article are you referring to?

Oh, I'm just saying, like, in general, like whatever that thing is that you're like really obsessed about right now, it's because you understand it very— like, I'm all keto, I'm intermittent fasting, I do high carb, you know, high carb, or I only do vegan or I like whatever make-believe thing you have. Like there's a few things that matter and everything else is just preference, you know what I mean? And so I don't know if this is a Navalism, but like if you can't do it for a decade, don't do it for a day. And so there's definitely been seasons when I'll train harder. But overall, I do resistance training because it's the number one thing for, you know, longevity, maintaining bone mass, etc. And then from a health perspective, it just comes down to calorie intake from a body aesthetics and then making sure that you have the vitamins that you need and micronutrients.

Yeah.

But like for most people in the developed world, we don't normally have vitamin deficiencies and we usually don't have mineral deficiencies. Again, that clinic that you go to where they do the bloodwork and they can have you chew on something and then spit it out and it does pink, and then you take a supplement, then it's blue. Like, you have to understand that these are also businesses. Like, I come from the health and fitness world. Like, there's, there's games behind these things. And so I try to keep things as simple as possible. I eat 2 pounds of meat a day. That's how I get my 200 grams of protein in. That is very easy for me to do. And then I have dessert in excess of my calories to hit my goal. If I want to lose weight, I eat less dessert.

Yeah.

If I want to maintain weight, I eat the same amount. If I want to gain weight, I'll add other calories to my other meals that have meat in them. So rather than just meat, I'll have meat and pasta or meat and rice, whatever. But training has been progressive overload on resistance training, meaning weights and machines and plate-loaded machines for almost 2 decades.

Is there anything else? It's— I think you probably— my guess here is that you started out and then you tried all the things and it's like, no, let's just simplify to these. These work. Yeah. Do you do anything around anything else that's strange, like preventative healthcare? People like, oh yeah, the MRI scans, all this type of stuff.

I don't. Maybe I will later, but right now I don't. I've, I focused. I mean, all the things that I just mentioned. So like I did kettlebell-only training, I did barefoot training, I did exclusively swim sprint training. I've done high-intensity interval training. I've done like all strongman-style training. I was a competitive powerlifter for 5 years. And now people would probably consider me more of like a bodybuilder-esque in terms of training style and aesthetics. And so like I have done a lot of different styles of training. And when it comes to diet, I did the Warrior Diet when you ate one big meal at night. I've done intermittent fasting, I've done alternate day fasting, I've done, I've done keto, I've done all the opposite of keto. So like high carbs, super low fat, high protein. I've done Zone. I've like I have done them. And it was because in my first decade of fitness, you hop on all of these trains because part of it is like you want to experiment, you want to learn, you want to see how you react. And part of it is because you believe the magic, right? There's something different. But there's a few fundamental truths and they all come down to physics, which is just like law of thermodynamics. Like there's a certain amount of energy that you consume and if you have less than that, you will lose fat, period. It will get taken from energy stores. Like, well, what about starvation mode and things like that? Like there was a Minnesota starvation study where They starved people for like months, no food. And the biggest decrement they saw in basal metabolic rate was 30%. And so that means that when you're truly starving, your BMR goes to 70%, which I mean is significant. But it's also not like, like the women that I used to, you know, have at my gym, like, I think I'm in starvation mode. I was like, I think you just snack, you know? Like, I was like, if you want to see starvation mode, go to Africa. Like, none of them have cellulite. Because they are starving.

Yeah.

Like, you know, we use these words, but like in order to truly get that level of decrement and decrease in your, you know, BMR, you have to really be restricting for a very long period of time. And most people don't even track what they eat. And so like if you don't track what you eat, it's kind of like the guy with the opinion. Like, I don't, I don't care. Like you don't even have data. So and the thing with any of these, these, you know, diets or at least approaches is You have a certain calorie intake that you maintain your body weight at. The thing that fudges this is that people are very bad at measuring what they take in, like what they eat. And they're— but that's even— that's still easier than measuring what your output is because you have non-exercise activity that really— so like if I'm, if I'm bobbing my foot or I'm chewing more gum or I'm taking the stairs more, I'm cleaning the house like those few hundred calories a day over a week or over a month add up a lot.

Yeah.

And so usually what happens is when you get older, your metabolism doesn't necessarily decrease nearly as much as people's activity decreases. And so they think that their metabolism is really slow. But it's like when you were 20, you were in 2 rec leagues and you had to walk across campus at college and you were walking 3 miles a day and you didn't even notice it, right? With a backpack on that was like 25 pounds, right? Like it was rucking now.

Yeah.

But like you just had a backpack because you were a student. And so it's just like we have these perspective shifts that have to happen, but There's a few things that happen. Progressive overload, meaning you lift more weight over time, works. That builds muscle, right? Protein increase builds and maintains muscle. Hormones build and maintain muscle. Calorie surpluses help maintain anabolic states. Calorie deficits, you lose tissue, you go into catabolic states, period. That's it. The rest of it is preference.

Yeah. Look, I think this all wraps well together because it's the reason I bring this up too, is because You've simplified it. And just like business, it comes down to people, right? A lot of blocking and tackling. Same thing with this, the health stuff too. It's like there's a lot of distractions. Oh, there's this new diet over here. Oh, should we like cold plunge or should we like infrared sauna? Like, should we, I don't know, blue light blocking, whatever, right? But it just comes down to the simple stuff.

And I talk about this just for context. So this is for you guys. You can add it back in. Is this is per Purely from the perspective of aesthetics. If you want to maintain a certain amount of body mass with a certain percentage of fat and certain percentage of muscle, those are the only things that matter. The other stuff, it gets into, you know, magic and all the stuff that I don't, I don't partake in. And what's interesting is like, I don't talk about fitness much and it's mostly because I am so— I mean, it's been 20 years. So like, I'm, I'm, I've been in, I've been knowing about fitness for longer than I've known about business, for context.

Yeah.

And so I also did that professionally for a very long time. And a lot of, like, the YouTube world and, like, the influencer world, or people that follow me, don't know— like, they see that I'm, quote, jacked, but, like, I wrote the plans that 4,000 gyms use. Like, you've probably used my stuff. And so, you know, people are like, oh, this guy has such great thinking, but then if I make a comment about food, then everyone feels entitled to an opinion 'cause they have a body, right?

Yep, yep.

Right? So they— but, like, They— how many people have you helped change, like, their physiques? Probably not many. And you probably can't even change your own. So, like, it's kind of like in business where, like, no one wealthier than you will take shots at you.

Yeah.

No guy who's ever been more jacked than me has ever said anything negative to me about fitness stuff. It's only like laptop warriors and whatnot. And so, like, again, my, my level of care is so much more passionate about helping people make money to, like, sustain their families and whatnot. And it's— I don't have a lot of passion anymore around fitness. And maybe it's been 2 decades and maybe that's why. But yeah, to me it's the— the equation's been simplified. And the thing is, is that business— I remember this, there was a moment when I stopped reading T-Nation and mind you, that's not where I got my source of content, but I'm just saying like—

T-Nation?

It was like back in— I mean, back in like the early 2000s.

Okay.

There's like all these articles for like lifting and nutrition and stuff. And I remember there was a day when I was like, I think I get it. Like, I— human bodies haven't changed. And so I have a sufficient amount of knowledge to do all the things that I need to do and to help other people do what they need to do. And so my consumption of new stuff dropped dramatically because everything at this point is such a small increment in terms of changes in physique and performance and all that stuff that like sleeping well, eating your protein and working out are still so big.

Yeah.

compared to everything else that it just doesn't matter. And the reason I think I got into business and I've stayed and I think I will continue to be interested in business, whereas my love of fitness started to wane, is because business changes all the time. Yeah. So like bodies haven't changed, but business and the market changes all the time. And I think that's why I love it.

Best game ever. All right. Last question for you. Your coach is 80-year-old Alex, if I'm not mistaken. What are some things that 80-year-old Alex has told you recently?

Sometimes you have to give time time. I mean, most of the themes of my 85-year-old self, like if there was like a handful of themes that our conversations lead toward, one is like, this doesn't matter. Like it's going to work out either way. And since me, it's like basically just zoom out. So that's probably one. A second theme is just around patience, which is like, I think you just need to stay busy. I don't think you need to do anything about this. this. So that's the second one. I think redefining problems as not problems, like my, my undefeated heavyweight champion of the world solution is decide something isn't a problem. Okay. I like that. Yeah. Like, like, how do I solve this? It's like, what if I just decided it wasn't a problem to begin with and kept living my life? And that a lot of times when you're 85, I feel like you have more of that perspective. It's like, that's just not— I'm just not— I'm going to decide that's not a problem.

Yeah. No fucks given.

Right. And so I would say those are 3. But dude, patience is by far the biggest one. And I'll give the 4th, embracing uncertainty, because I and many of us want a guarantee from a world that doesn't give them.

Hmm.

It's like, I want to know that this is going to work, which is such a fallacious thought at the onset, because if I actually knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that something would happen, I would lose all interest because then it would be boring.

Yeah.

It's like having the cheat codes and playing a video game. It's good for like 5 seconds and then you realize it's not a challenge at all. And so like, I have this desire that if it actually were met would be the ultimate undoing of my desire. So it's just a complete smokescreen that I've made up in my head. And so my 85-year-old self just— I would say like most of the time it just points. It doesn't have to say anything. He's just like, you know, like, yeah. But it's crazy though how powerful it is because I don't like if I had a therapist or a coach or something, I'd have to spend 90% of my time trying to give context to the problem that I know the answer to, and I'm just not doing it. Like we give significantly better advice to other people than we adhere to ourselves.

That's the paradox you're talking about.

Solomon's paradox. Yeah. Yeah. And so if we can harness our own ability to give better advice with the absolute context that we have on our situation and the aligned incentives that we have, that no one else can have as aligned incentives for us as we are, then I think it unlocks a another level of coaching that's been tremendously helpful for me. And I would say that I haven't— like my sessions with Solomon, even though it's me, but I just call it Solomon in my head. Sometimes they're really long and sometimes they're short because sometimes like things are working and I'm good. And so I kind of see it as like the, the therapist or the performance coach that is on demand. Like if I need him, he's there and I have a block. you know, hour in my calendar every Monday. It's the first thing I do every Monday is have my time with Solomon. But it's rare that I take the full hour. It's usually between 5 minutes and 30 minutes is usually what—

Are you sitting around? You walk in?

Oh, no, I'm at my computer. So I actually do a chat back and forth and I go from him to me, him to me, him to me. And I type out all the responses because I think even typing out what my question is, you even like, like many problems, if you can properly ask the right question, that's 90% of the solution. is asking the right question or precisely stating the problem you're trying to solve. Yeah. And so that process helps me solve most of the issues that come up that aren't really issues to begin with.

I love it. Well, I know we can go on forever, but what— we're going to end it right here. So what is the best way for people to find the book? Yep. And I mean, just Google Alex Hormozi, right? How do you find the book?

Yeah, you can go to— I mean, you can go to Amazon, but if you want to Go to acquisition.com/leads. And we also have training and courses and other materials that are all free, no opt-in on the site at acquisition.com. And if you are a company and you have, you know, an EBITDA of $1 million, $2 million, $5 million, $8 million, hit us up. You know, we're always looking for great founders who are looking for growth partners. And because that's, that's, that's what our day job is.

All right. I love it. Alex, thanks so much for doing this.

Thanks for having me.