How The 1% Build Wealth (Get RICH In 2025 Easy) | Alex Hormozi & Lewis Howes

What about the, the habits that you learned of the wealthy people once you started to really earn and scale your wealth, Were you studying wealth or were you just fixated on like how do I get one more customer and increase my prices, make better product? What did you learn about the habits of the rich?

I haven't learned much about the habits of the rich at all. To be very candid with you. I think that maybe there are some beliefs that. Because like my dad was a doctor, I wouldn't say he was like, you know, ultra wealthy but like we lived in upper middle class lifestyle. But in terms of wealth, as I think you and I would probably understand it, I didn't know anything about that and I don't think I've ever really studied it very much. I would say that my heroes now I started studying wealth after I became wealthy.

What did you learn about it afterwards? And what do wealthy people do that you think poor people don't do?

They pick higher leverage opportunities. In a sentence. So like rich dad, poor dad, poor dad says get a job. Poor dad says get a higher paying job. Like rich dad says, like. And the thing is there's so many innate beliefs that seem commonplace. Like well of course, you know what I mean, like, well of course, you know, and you know, you buy some real estate and you know, it'll appreciate over time. Of course you invest in some stocks, like yeah, of course. But like poor dads just don't say that. And so you have to like learn that I think. And I didn't. So I'm grateful in that I didn't have to learn that because I heard that just was. Of course, yeah, once you have some money, like of course you don't spend your whole income. Of course you don't. And so there's a lot of. Of course you don'ts that I think I inherited just by being in like a saving father. But there's also some upper middle class people who don't save anything. So like. But I think my dad did a lot of, I think he helped a lot with like money hygiene. I've had a lot of really good money hygiene from my dad. The big, the big breakthrough that I had for me was when I stopped focusing on and this is going to sound backwards but when I started my gyms I was all about building the business, right? And when I built the biggest companies that I've had and now recently sold and now we have our portfolio, it was about how do we make the most money. And I know that sounds completely backwards, but the Only way that you can make the most money is to provide an exceptional valued service and charge a ton of money for it. And because I optimized around making money, I started going through four low capital expense businesses because I had lost everything after that five year stint. And so I was like, never again am I going to reinvest every dollar from the business back into the business, because I've lost it before. So when I started the next business and every business I've had thereafter, like, we take dividends every month and we do that because you don't wait till.

There'S an exit 10 years later. Put all your money in.

I'd love to do both.

Yeah.

Yeah. Why not both? Sure. Right. And so that was take a dividend.

And get a bigger. Yeah. But not just put money in and wait and get no money back.

100%. And the thing is, and this was a fallacy I had because people always talk about reinvesting in their business, but I realized that that just meant that they weren't making profit. The vast majority of businesses, even the software world is somewhat shifting in this, but they want to see profit. And then even better is if you have net free cash flow, which is just a fancy word for the amount of money that you can take out every month after making necessary investments in the business. And so I wanted to have businesses that pumped cash flow because I had lost it all before. And so I think there's a lot of, like every, every one of my business seasons. I would say I've had three business seasons. I had my gym ownership period. I had my turnaround and early gym launch day period. And then I had Prestigious Labs, the licensing business and Allen. That was like my last season.

Where you exited all of them.

Yeah. And then I'd say, like, now we're in, we're in our. This third season, I guess so Brick and mortar gyms, licensing, supplements and software. And then, you know, third season is what we have now. And each of those has a huge, huge magnitude of leverage that was added to it. And so, you know, this like gym launch was started on accident in that I was like, this might be a way that I can make money.

Because people are like, hey, you're doing this pretty well for your own gyms. Can you help me?

That's exactly what it was. Yeah.

Like, can you teach me what you've done? All right, let me go in here and. Oh, I just helped them double their revenue in 60 days. Maybe I'm good at this. I'll go.

People pay me More for that than they'll pay me to help them lose £20.

Right.

And so that was the big. That was when I went from B to C to B2B.

Yes.

And then from there, to be honest, it was just going up another order of magnitude because now instead of just building the one business, now we're building lots of businesses at the same time. And so that's kind of like why acquisition.com, i think has a much higher. Has bigger feet, for lack of a better term.

Right. And so what do you look for when you're acquiring a business or investing in a business that has cash flow and what businesses have the best cash flow?

So this will be relevant for everybody in the audience. And also hits on what we were talking about with the wealth thing. Like wealthy people choose higher leverage opportunities. And we went over what leverage was earlier. The best businesses, especially in an inflationary period, are businesses that have low capital expenses. And that's because if you have some examples. Yeah, I'll give you opposite examples to make and then I'll drive it. Something that does have high capital expense, which is what you would not want to get into, would be like stuff that has lots of inventory, stuff that has lots of supply chain, lots of manufacturing, heavy equipment, things where you have to constantly buy more stuff in order to increase capacity. Right. A low capital expense business are things like services. Right, services. You know, digital businesses. Software is mixed because sometimes the development team can be considered a capital expense. It really depends on how you build the dev team. But the idea is that if you can produce 10 times more units without phenomenally changing the cost basis, then you will have a business that has lower capital expenses. And so that's what you like. And most of those types of businesses produce more cash flow, have more pricing power. And so, I mean, that's what Warren Buffett invests in. Right. It's high, you know, like insurance, Geico. There's no capital. It's risk. They're literally assessing risk. It's math. Like the business is math. Like if you really think it's just math is the entire business of insurance. And what's crazy, just as a side note, is that a great way of figuring out the highest leverage businesses that exist is looking at the business that's been here the longest. Insurance has been here since before the World Wars. Banks have been around forever. J.P. morgan was 1800s. The biggest insurance companies, they're all 100 plus years old. They're found in the 1800s. And so when you have a business that's Lasted that long. To me, that's a great breadcrumb of like this thing has to print money because it means that they were able to still keep making money through wars, through famines, depressions, all of it. And they were still able to keep going. And so I think that when people like when you look at all the, like many of the biggest businesses that exist, they have phenomenal gross margins. I don't want to get too like, you know, business terming here, but like the gross margin is how much incremental cost it is to make a new, an extra widget, right? And so like a pill, for example, cost $100 million to make the first pill and then every pill after that costs a penny. And so the gross margin on the pill high, because if they sell each pill for $10 and it cost them a penny, those are great margins. And most people who are small business owners are people who are trying to get into small business price. Like small business owners, they say, well, it cost me a dollar, I'll sell it for three, or I'll sell it for two. But if you're already starting on like a 50% gross margin, it's very, very hard to make money because think about it, at 100 you're already at half and then you have the rest of everyone else, you have to pay off that extra 50. Very hard to do. I give a couple rules of thumb if anyone wants this, but if you're building a service based business for us, by all means I have to get gross margins above 80%, which means five times the cost of goods. So if it cost me $100 a month, the minimum I'll charge is 500. That also gets you to think about business differently, which is not necessarily even how much can I charge, but how can I provide value and make it cost as little to me? How can I be as efficient as possible? And, and if you think about what technology does over time is technology takes something that's valuable and makes the cost of delivering it less. And so that's what happens is a lot of people are able to have access to things that were once only for the wealthy, but now become for the common men. Because the cost basis decreases as a result of technology. And so technology as we see it, we can create technology, but you can also have technological breakthroughs just through process in your own business. And that's where niching down and being very specific about the avatar becomes important. Especially when you're starting because then you can productize the service. Because if you're doing Everything custom, which most people when they're starting out do, it becomes really difficult to become efficient. And it's really difficult to be efficient. You have very little margin. Right. Or you have to charge huge fees, which most people are too afraid to do. And so the flip side is if I do the same thing over and over and over again, I will get better and more efficient at it and I will know how to do it faster and quicker and cheaper. And I specifically choose this type of customer so that I can have more margin because there are millions of even this one specific type of avatar. And then from there I can take the gross margin, the extra cash that I have, and I can hire the best people I can invest in marketing. But when you have such little margin to work off of, it's very difficult to make money.

Yeah, it's so hard to grow. That's interesting. Do you think it's going to be harder or easier to become wealthy and start businesses over the next few years? With everything that's happened in the last couple years and where this whole, great, you know, 20, 30 agendas coming, all these different things are happening, the war and all the, you know, there might be another pandemic, whatever it might be. Do you think it's gonna be easier or harder to make money?

I think technology in general makes things easier for most people. I mean, because at the end of the day it's just, it's, it's increased access for more people.

And so I think to reach more people at any moment.

Yeah. If I were just to use history as a, as a, as a guide, business has only gotten easier to get into. It's gotten more competitive and easier to get into. And so I think that what happens is just the arena gets bigger. So you got more gladiators, so it's more competitive, but more people can walk in. And so I think. But it, but for the world in general, the more people you have fighting to make amazing products and services, the better it is for society. But the downstream effect of that is that in a capitalist system, it is a winner take all for most, for many, not all, but for many businesses. And just by the nature of it, that does create social disarray. But the thing is, it's still the best system that we have. We don't have a perfect system because the other systems remove incentive and humans are driven by incentive. Even the survivorship bias, every MLM in the world exists off the fact that there's that one guy who makes $500,000 a month selling shake mix and the other 5 million shake mix producers are like, someday that'll be me. And it's just survivorship bias. But that's why the whole capitalist machine works. So I think they're like figuring out some sort of a, you know, creative way. Like my, I put this in my, on my YouTube channel. But like the idea of having 100% death tax, I thought was like, take down like the income taxes and all this stuff. But like the thing that creates the conglomerate at the top is that if, let's say, let's say I have $100 billion.

Right? That's interesting.

And if I have 100 billion, I'm probably pretty good at managing it because that's why I have 100 billion. So. So let's say I gained 15%.

Yeah, you're holding it. You're not using it yet.

Yeah, let's say I gained 15% on my assets. So I make $15 billion on my assets. It is so hard for anyone to make that up in a lifetime with just the one. And that might be my kid who gains 15 and the next year he gains 20. And so the compounding effect of the wealth is cross generational is where I think it gets crazy. But if there were 100% death tax, because obviously this is aligned with my belief that all of it disappears anyways. So this is obviously Alex's 2 cents in the world, but it's just basically dramatically lower the income taxes. I think income taxes should be like as close to zero as possible and then make the capital gains taxes higher because that's only going to really affect the wealth if you really want to think about it. Right. Because people who, if you make with your hands, awesome. If you make on your assets, that's the stuff that has infinite leverage with, with time. So if you trade the most expensive thing for your money, then I feel like you should get taxed less than if you trade no time for your money. Sure. This is like a weird thought experiment.

What do you think would happen if it was 100% death tax?

I think that billionaires would become far more giving and as they approach the end, they know they can't keep it. And I also think it would change the way the game is played. Because if, you know, because this is the analogy that I like. I haven't heard it anywhere else. I think it's mine. But if you were to imagine life as a poker game, everybody grows up, they become 18 years old, they can go into the casino, they get a chip or 21, whatever age you can be. And you get a chip. And then you sit down at the table and you're dealt cards. And there's all the other players around the table. And depending on the cards you're dealt and the skill you have, you begin to amass chips. And the difference between this fictitious casino and the casino of life is that in the real world, you can amass chips, you cash out, you have a big wad of money, and you walk out the door. But in the casino of life, when the grim reaper taps you and tells you it's time, you have to get up from the table. But your chips stay on the table and they push them to the middle to be distributed by everybody else and continue to get played for. And that's when you realize that it was a fake game with rules that never mattered to begin with. And so I bought this piece of land in Austin. It was like a big, really, really nice lot. And I remember thinking to myself, like, got me some land. Yeah, got me some land. Right? I have that tree to that thing on the roses. My. And then I thought to myself, I was like, well, the guy before me thought the same thing, and the guy before him thought the same thing, and the guy before him thought the same thing. And I was like. And we've literally still been looking at the exact same piece of dirt, and it's just been cycled. Even if it was father to son, even if it was family to whatever. Like. Like Death taxes everyone 100%. Even if the government doesn't, death taxes everybody 100%. And then time taxes your money to infinity. Because people are like, I want to build a legacy that's even just within Americana, you know what I mean? Within the times of America. But you go a thousand years and there's never been the same superpower over a thousand year period. And so we're like, I'm going to leave a legacy. But that would be like, let's say an ancient Greek saying, I'm going to leave a legacy for my kids when they might change their currency by XYZ or. And there's so many things. And I've had real experience with this because my great, great grandfather was a ruler in Iran, which is where we're from. We got kicked out because we were loyal to the shah back in the day, which is why my dad came to the U.S. and so despite that, my great grandfather had like 400 wives. Ruler. Very, very wealthy.

Really?

Yeah. Very, very wealthy. Different time, different culture. Very, very. Well, he's a ruler, right?

Yeah, yeah.

All the Money, all the women, all the everything. Literally a ruler, right. And it doesn't matter. And here I am, I'm not even that many generations separated from him. Right. Even that.

You don't have all that wealth, you don't have that land. Yeah, right.

And so like the idea that we're going to somehow. Because the desire for legacy is the desire to cheat death. That's what it stems from. It's like we don't want to die, we want to last forever. So we want to make something that is impermanent. And so we fool ourselves into thinking that the accolades and the material success and the books we write, whatever, are going to last forever. And they're probably not. I mean, the sun's going to disappear at some point. If we don't do anything before then, at the very least, that's going to happen. And so if that is the inevitable outcome, I think it shifts the way people think. And I think that's when you start changing. I mean, Tony Robbins talks about global belief systems, and that's why if someone adopts a new religious belief, everything changes because the reasons they do and the way they believe the world works changes. And so I think that if they did do 100% death tax, it would be a really interesting way to see the downstream effects of how it would change the way the players played the game.

What do you think would happen if all the billionaires started distributing their wealth sooner?

I think what would happen?

Or would they be as hungry to be and driven to push and build and innovate to generate the wealth if they knew I got to give this away anyways quickly?

I think they would. I think it's because it's. I think it's. I think I'm going to say something that might sound bad, but I think winners win because of who they are. And so I think it's like sales guys. You can have an incentive or a comp plan. They just want to win, but they are salespeople. And if I get on the phone, I want to sell because of who I am, not because the comp. The comp has the ticket to get me to say yes to the deal, but it will not change my activity. I will do it because I love to sell, right? And so I think billionaires get there because they love the game. Like, you don't get to a billion without just because you obviously don't need it for you. You stopped needing it for you millions and millions ago. And so you do it just because you love the game. What I Do think the reason that I like that solution is because Elon Musk said this. But private enterprise is 10 times as efficient at capital allocation compared to the government. So every dollar that private enterprise spends, it's 10 times more efficient. And so it is like if we were to death, tax 100%. So whatever you accumulate while you're alive, it just goes back. And the thing is, it's not that it would go back into the system through the government. It would if you were lazy. But most people knowing the government was going to take it, the less efficient vehicle at the end of your life, you would then start thinking about, how can I allocate this money efficiently? And so I think what would happen is you'd create far more ingenuity and innovation around social enterprise before they die solving problems, knowing that the wealth would eventually disappear. So it's more. There's this backstop that no one wants to hit. And so I think what happened is they would change their behavior before hitting the backstop. I don't think a lot of people would just be dumping their billion to the government. I think just knowing that they had to would then trigger them to, yeah, yeah, that would be, you know, hey, that's Alex's two cents of the world, which is obviously different.

What's. You just had a big exit, right, Last year. What was that for?

How much?

It was 46.46 million. So when that enters your account, what did you expect would happen? What did happen? And what can you teach other people about what they should expect to happen when they have a big exit?

So I will say that I did not feel the money. I did feel the loss of cash flow because I had this. I measured myself off cash flow for since now you don't have any, right?

You got a big chunk, but then no money coming in every month.

So I actually felt, and I probably still feel poorer now than I did before the exit. That's interesting because the cash flow's going down now. I know that acquisition.com is going to be, I think, significantly bigger than Jim that than those companies were. But in the interim, I definitely did not feel any better after that. I am happy that I did it because I do think I'm in the right vehicle doing what we're doing now, making the books, making the YouTube channels, the Twitters, the social medias, all of them. But the cash flow is what I felt. And because I had taken dividends my whole life, the amount of money that we got out was pretty much about what we already had anyways. So it was not life changing in any way. It didn't change how I lived at all. Like, not at all. We didn't have any big like, what are you gonna buy? I was like, well, I could, you.

Know, I'm happy already.

Yeah, I could buy 100 Lambos before the sale. You know what I mean? Like, that wasn't. And I never bought them in and I never did, you know, because I don't get a lot of out of that. What else was different? Losing the team is hard because when you sell a company, you sell the people. Like that's something that people the connection. Sounds bad. Yeah, but you sell. You sell the organism, you sell the.

System, the people, the processes and everything 100%.

And so that was hard because there's definitely times now that we're building acquisition.com where I'm like, man, I wish I had so and so I already taught this person everything. Like, I have to do it again. So there is a. But there's also some level of beauty to it because now that I'm doing acquisition dot com, I have a different appreciation for what I'm doing. Because every other time that I've started something, it has been from a place of lack. It has been from a like, well, this is what's going to not make me poor. You know what I mean? Like, the gyms was all about that and then I lost it all. So the second time was all about that again. So this time I'm starting not like that. And I know what it got like. Before we sold the companies last year, I spent basically 12 months not doing anything because I wasn't required in the business. Like, it truly it ran. And so I had a lot like. It was very depressing. Exactly. It was very depressing for me.

Think of all the amazing things in life that are expressions of just you. For instance, the song you stream over and over again while you're in your 13th hour of gaming at 4am in the morning with all the lights off, trying not to wake up your roommates. Or the recommendations that you share with your friends on the top six comedy podcasts that are the best to listen to on your way to the gym and back. Or even your new haircut, which may or may not be an epic bowl cut from the 90s and hopefully is everything that makes you you makes all the difference. State Farm believes insurance should work the same way. Your plan, your coverage, they need to be personalized to you. And the ability to choose the plan you want by picking the options that fit you like building your home and auto policies is exactly what the State Farm Personal Price plan is all about. Getting the coverage you want at an affordable price, just for you. So are you ready to make things personal? Call or go to state farm.com today. Create your State Farm Personal Price plan. Prices vary by state, options selected by customer availability and eligibility may vary. What happens if we don't have a purpose?

I mean, you find one. You know what I mean? And so for me, but you're in a depressed state.

Even though you have. I mean, I'm sure you're fine, but you are emotionally, mentally, like, what am I doing every day?

Exactly. I've not go to the gym for so long. Right. Can I go out to dinner? Yeah, what else are you gonna get?

I can eat every meal I want. I can travel. Okay, now what? After three months of that, you gotta have some mission, you gotta have some purpose, right? Even though you have the money, your safety, you have everything, security. But it wasn't fulfilling 100%.

And so that was 12 straight months. And it was because we were going through a sales process. So you can't start new initiatives because I'm in the middle of a sale and you don't wanna make any massive new hires. And so you just basically have to just like maintain. And the whole time you're wondering, I hope this deal goes through. Because if it doesn't, then you just wasted a year just doing nothing. And then you might have to do it again. So it was this, it was, it was a super, super. It was one of the most emotionally tiring years of my life. Because it's always like, this is about to happen. It's not going to happen. The deal's on the table, the deal's off the table. Like, there's all of this drama that's happening constantly. And I also. One of the things that sucked that I didn't like was as soon as I had made the decision to sell or that I was going to entertain the idea of selling, and this is a mistake I made. Everything became about satisfying a fictitious overlord of like, what will they think about this move? Well, how will they value this? And I started thinking, whatever acquirer, whatever private equity was going to buy the company, like, how are they going to see this? Are they going to value this or is this a waste? And so what happened was I started making the private equity buyer my customer. And that was a mistake. And so I think that like, at the end of the day and now that. And what happened was, interestingly, we Started the sales process because my wife and I were beat down. Like we were just very tired. You know, we'd been in gyms for almost 10 years. You know, at that point. Not to say that that's not a good thing, but like, whatever, we run its course. We were ready. We were ready. But in order for us to sell it and make it a sellable business, we had to fix all the things that were wrong with. Right. And so we took a year before the year. So it took two years. Exactly. So it took two years, basically one year to like fix everything and then one year to sell it. But the thing is, it's just like when you have a house that you fix up before you get ready to sell it, by the time you're about to sell it, you're like, I love this house.

This is amazing.

I just fixed all the problems. I fixed.

Now I've got more cash flow, it's more efficient.

I got rid of the toxic people. Exactly. And so it was again a very like mind trip experience where I'm like, well, maybe I should just hold it as an asset that just produces cash flow. Over Uncle Warren never sells anything. Like selling is what makes you rich, keeping is what makes you wealthy. I've got all these kind of things in the back of my mind, but I think ultimately I think no matter what we had done, we would have been fine. But I think for me right now, I think the likelihood that the choice. If I had two alternate realities, which I don't have to play in, I think that the choice will ultimately yield more impact for more people. I would not have the attention to do acquisition.com and the media stuff that we're doing right now. I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't.

You'd be focused on your gyms.

Yeah, exactly. On those companies that were in that portfolio. And acquisition.com would still be a side thing, but it probably wouldn't be the main thing. Whereas now it is 100% of my attention and the companies are killing it and I feel renewed.

Is it harder to get leads and sales or harder to build a powerful team with the right culture?

I think they're both hard and both easy for different people. You know what I mean? Like Layla naturally is very good at the back end funnel. I mean she's so good at building culture. But she has this thing that she's kind of spoken over me from a belief standpoint, which is if you are a really good marketer, a really good salesman, a lot of them are like, oh, I'M not a good, not a good leader, I'm not a good operator, not a good whatever. And she's like, if you can sell all those people and influence all those people, you can use that same skill set and just face internally to your team. It was a nice belief shift for me or belief break for me. I was like, she's totally right. And so to the point that you were making earlier, like leading is selling and influencing, a lot of it really comes down to being able to move people and being able to clearly communicate with what you want.

Why do you think it's so hard for people to overcome their limiting beliefs around money in general?

A lot of people were told things about the world that were not true and they take them as fact. And so they're making their decision calculus off of something that is not true. And so they're making conclusions off of false data. And so that's why they can't see it, because what they're basing their assumptions on is false. Right.

They've been believing it for so long.

Yeah.

So how do they change that belief when it's been baked in their psyche for decades?

Yeah, I think that the way that the biggest beliefs have been broken for me have been one of two ways. Reality proves me wrong. Or someone tells me a story and gives me evidence from their lives. Like, I remember when I, we went to a mastermind and we were just starting out, I was not making a ton of money. And the guy, a guy got up there and he gave his little spiel and he was like, yeah, you know, we're making three or four hundred thousand dollars a month. I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm not really sure I like the business, blah, blah, blah. And the guy did not seem smart.

You were like, how is he doing this?

It's funny you say that because my actual first thought was, if he can do it, I can do it. Right? And so that was like he, through evidence, like he reshaped my reality. It was one of the most momentous things I remember Lael and I both had the same takeaway because she was next to me. When we both saw this guy do this, like, we walked out, we're like, dude, if he can. Like, we both immediately had the same conclusion. Like, if he can do it, we can do it. And so I think that that's like, how do you either have reality prove you wrong or someone else is that reality for you where they tell their story about, hey, I used to feel the same way I used to think this thing, and then I will share my story so you don't have to have the scar. Yes. So you don't have to give up five years of your life to learn this lesson. I'll just give you the story so you don't have to have the scar.

There's certain things I think we need to learn on our own and fail, you know, and make mistakes on our own. But there's a lot of things we can learn from other people. Being the youngest of four kids, I watched, you know, my older siblings fail and succeed in their own ways as a model and say, okay, I don't want to make this same mistake. I made other stupid mistakes, but I didn't make certain mistakes that they had made. And able to accelerate that time from the pain that I was going to feel by making the same mistakes. I think you're going to make mistakes no matter what, but I think that's seeing other people and learning. This is why it's so important to have coaches, mentors, people that can. Can break the beliefs in you and tell you what you need to do.

If you think about human, like the human race just to zoom out, because I think it's a really interesting concept. I was talking to Caleb about Gary, and I'm a competitive person.

Yes.

I like, you know, thinking like, oh, by the time I'm that age, I'm going to be further. You know what I mean? Like, and it's, it's. It's lovingly, right? And he said this thing back to me that, like, it hit me, right? And he was like, dude, Gary didn't have Gary. Right.

He just had to do it his own.

Right? And all of these. And so the thing is, is, like, a lot of us and myself included, I get caught up in the, like, man, these kids have it so easy, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, right. I did. YouTube wasn't even around when I. You know, the thing is, if you ask most entrepreneurs what they want to do with their lives, they say they want to make an impact on the world. They want to make the world a better place. But, like, making the world a better place, what that looks like is it being easier for the next generation. And so rather than lamenting the fact that the guys who are younger have it easier. That was the point. Yes. That was the, like, mission accomplished. And so it re. It reframed how I thought about being the greatest of all time, because I think a lot of people have that goal to be the greatest. I mean, a lot of People have that goal. But the more I thought about it, the more I was like, I can't have that goal because if I did my job, then I have to have made people who are after me get there faster than I got there. And so the mark of the success is that I'm not the greatest of all time, but that other people who come after me are even better. And so it really shifted my relationship with how I saw future generations, or, sorry, past generations, guys who are older than me who are killing it. And I used to think, oh, I'm going to beat them. And if I look at my, how much I'm worth at this age versus them, like, I just doing the math, I should be further along than them by the time I'm their age. And it was this kind of like, different competition rather than this gratitude for like, well, of course I'm going to be bigger than they are at their age. I had them to help me, they didn't have them to help them. And so I'll, I'll age up and we'll be multi billionaire, whatever it is, right? And then there's going to be a young whippersnapper who had me to help, right? Who had me to help him out. Because I'm seeing, you know, we have guys who apply for acquisition.com who are in their 20s doing 100 million a year, right? And I'm like. And that was, that wasn't possible 50 years ago. It just wasn't right? And so if you think about like the human race in general on a macro perspective, right? You have like, rather than seeing the people who, who are older than you as the old dogs that you have to, to kick off, right? And by all means, play hard in the paint, don't get me wrong. And the people, the young whippersnappers behind you as, you know, resenting them for the fact that they got it easier. It just flipped the script for me in terms of like, I'm so grateful for these guys who came before me because they didn't have them, right? And then if these guys do eventually beat me, right, or they're further along than I was at their age, rather than lamenting them to protect my ego. Because what it really says is, you're better than I am. Because if they're making more money at a younger age than me, that means they're better at business in some way than I was at that age. That's just the fact of business, right? They're better than me at that age. And to protect my Ego. I want to say they had it easier. Right. But rather, what does that do for.

You if you protect your ego as opposed to help others accelerate faster than you?

I think it just reframes it. And so it takes the ego away from I need to crush these guys or I need to poke at why it's easier for them and instead say, like, it being easier for them is my purpose. How can I say that? My mission is to document and share the best practices of building world class companies and then not be pumped for someone to use the best practice of building world class companies 10 years before I learn them to accelerate way past. And so anyways, that was a frame of reference that completely shifted the narrative for me in terms of competition. I still am pushing as hard as I possibly can to transform my potential into reality, but it feels different, it feels lighter, and I like it. So anyways, I just want to share because it was a cool breakthrough that I had recently.

Yeah, you do look a little lighter.

Yeah, I'm fine.

Mentally, emotionally, physically. You lost a little weight too. It's funny, I just had Steve Young on, who's a Hall of Fame quarterback in the NFL, won multiple Super Bowls. He was just on a couple days ago and he said back in the late 80s and I guess it was the 90s, Bill Walsh, the coach who was like he said, three generations ahead of every other head coach at that time. He had a camera guy with him all the time documenting his processes, and he would package it into these, I guess, VSH tapes and put it in a box and he would give it to all his assistant coaches and say, I want you to learn these skills. His offense was the west coast offense, so it was far ahead of its time where most people just running the ball down, you know, down the middle. And so he gave away everything for free. He said, I want you guys to learn this and then come and challenge me. You know, use my information and come and people. He said years later, some coaches would leave to become head coaches and they would compete in big games together. Sometimes we would lose against these other coaches that he coached and he loved it. And he is still revered as a leader in the space because he was ahead of the time, because he documented it and gave away the skills to his other coaches. And I think that's really cool. I mean, you're not gonna be able to do this forever, so you might as well leave some legacy behind in that respect as well.

It puts the game above the player. Yes. Rather than putting the player above the game. And so like, I think right now, if Elon had a choice of having somebody else accomplish all the things that he is setting out to accomplish and it not be him, my hope, my belief from everything that I have seen and witnessed of Elon is I think that he would be stoked and because it's mission first rather than ego first. And so Steve Young put the game of football and it consistently being elevated to be played at a higher level as more important than him. Because in three generations no one will remember him, but the game will always have his fingerprint. And so he can live alone in that way to the same degree. In the business game, it's like we honor the game by playing to our absolute hardest and by doing our best and passing it on to the next generation. So anyways, I love that stuff. That stuff hits me.

What is the vision for you now? Because when did we first have you on? I can't remember. It's a few months back and we've hung out for dinner a couple of times and I've seen you a few times. But there's been like a transition in you in like three to four months. You know, there's been like an evolution already. I'm hearing you say you're having realizations recently and, and before it seemed harder. Right. And now it seems like there's something that's unlocked inside of you. So I'm curious, what is the business vision that you have? What's the number you want to reach personally for the business? All these things. Yeah, I know you've talked about being a billionaire. It's just going to take a matter of time. When do you think being a billionaire.

Will happen for you? I'd like to do five to seven for a billion. I like to hit ten and ten. That's what I would like to do. I think that we can do that math wise based on kind of the inflow of deals that we have, the returns that we're getting in general. I think we can do that. But the thing that really drives me though is acquisition.com is the wealth machine that is behind Alex and Layla's media. And so I wouldn't be a very good business educator unless I had proof or evidence that I actually was good at business. And so we obviously could just sit on the laurels of the 3X that we had last year, three exits we had last year. But to me, that's not like as crazy as this will sound, it's not super impressive, you know what I mean? At least for where I want to Go. And so I want to have a billion or multibillion dollar thing because I think it would be so cool. Like, how cool would it be if we, if Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett and Elon Musk and all those guys had documented everything that they learned throughout that path. All we get is these snippets, shareholder letters every once in a while. And it's just like they're so little and they're going to die and we're going to lose it. We're going to lose all those lessons. And so part of it that excites me is just calling my shop because I think that always just like enlivens a little bit of the competition. But I do believe from a mathematical standpoint we will get there. So it's not, to me, it doesn't feel like a super big. I'm not really pointing that far to the fence, but seeing the hordes, the scores of businesses that are using the stuff in the books and the courses and YouTube and podcasts and you know, TikTok and Instagram and LinkedIn and use those and the message I get every day of like, dude, you helped me go from a million to 5 million a year. You helped me go from, you know, quit my job and then start my dog walking business. And now I'm doing, you know, six figures a month. And like those stories, I know that I will probably never meet most of them, I will probably never work with the vast majority of them, but the fact that it's happening just amps me up. Like, it just gets me so lit. That's cool. And so the media has been really cool and new for me, but I like it and so I'm learning it. And so it's just, it's a new thing that I get to learn. And so I'm really loving that.

Yes.

And then seeing the vision of where we're going in terms of what we're building on the acquisition.com side and the companies that we're scaling there and the impact that they're having because many of them are also education businesses, not all of them, but like probably, probably about half seeing that on both sides, like us directly influencing through media and then the actual wealth machine on both sides, like I just see them both expanding. That's cool. And so I don't. We were talking before this, but it was like I saw a limit with gym launch, prestige labs. Like, at least my vision was limited and that could have been me being younger, whatever it is, but like, I don't feel like my vision is obstructed in terms of where this can go. And so that is what amps me up. A buddy of mine sold his company for a couple billion and he's been in a little bit of like a rut since then. Yeah.

It's kind of interesting. After people sell a lot of money, why do you feel like they go into a depression. Depression or a funk after they sell a billion dollar company?

They lose the vision. Right. Like, the vision. Like, I think the vision is another word for hope. Right. It's hope for a better future. That's what we're marching towards. Right. And you basically give that away to someone. Right. For money. For money, yeah. In exchange for money. Right. And then the hope ended up fueling you more than the money ever does. But. Different conversation. But the. But he said this one thing to me and it really resonated. He's like, I'm just looking for my next big bone to gnaw. And that visual, for whatever reason, like, stuck to me. And so I'm like, I just need a big bone to gnaw on, knowing that I'll never chew through the entire bone. But being pumped every day to just get a little bit further down the. Down the nub.

What happens if we don't have a vision for our lives?

I think you have less direction and so you make less progress because you're not actually. You can't make progress unless you have direction because otherwise you're just moving. So like, you can only have direct, like a vector. Right. You know, movement in a direction if you know where you're trying to go. And so it's like the first thing we have to do is figure out where we're trying to walk and then we can start walking there.

Yes. You said you want to be a billionaire in five to seven years. So you can see the math playing out that way.

Yeah.

Let's say you were forced to do it in half the time.

Yeah.

Three years. You were forced to be a billionaire.

Yeah.

Or some catastrophic event would happen.

Yeah.

What would it take from you to reach the billion dollar goal in half the time? What would you need to do differently and how would you need to think and act differently?

I would. I would probably onboard more operators faster. That being said, the current plan gets us there in like three years. I say five to seven publicly because I want to give myself a little buffer. I tend to be that way because, like, I have probably a little bit different approach with goals. Like, I want to hit every goal. Like, I don't like missing goals. And so for me, I don't like teaching myself or teaching other people that if I say something's going to happen, it doesn't happen. Because some people are like, shoot for the moon. I think you absolutely should think really big. But then like, okay, how do I make a goal that like, and then once I have that goal, do the activities that make it unreasonable not to hit it? Like, if I hadn't hit this goal, to your point, what level of activity would I have to do that it would be unreasonable. It would be unacceptable based on how I see reality, that I would not achieve it. If you're like, I want to learn sales, I would say it's on. It's unreasonable that if you get on 10,000 sales calls, you will not be good at sales. Be unreasonable. Okay, how, how long will it take me? You know, 10,000 sales, right?

A lot of time.

Yeah. A couple of years. Right? A couple of years. You could do it. Okay, so then I can. That's a goal, you know what I mean? Like, and I can set that. And if I do the activities, it would be unreasonable that I'm not. Now, realistically, you probably get there in half the time, right? Because you're probably pretty good at sales even after your first two, 3,000 calls. Right? You're probably pretty good. And so with this, we would. I mean, what we're doing now is the only thing I could probably do is take on bigger companies. That would be the shortest path. But I feel confidently like in terms of how much we're stretching, I feel good about it. Like it would take. I would feel like I'd be taking on more risk to hit that before the interview continues.

If you feel like you're not living your most authentic life, not leaning into your purpose, and not living the life that your future self would be extremely proud of. I've written a new book called the Greatness Mindset and I think you're gonna love this. Through powerful stories, science backed strategies, and step by step guidance, the Greatness mindset will help you overcome all the different challenges in your life to design the life of your dreams and then turn it into your reality. Make sure to click the link below in the description to get get your copy today. Okay, let's get back to this video. If you had to do it.

Yeah.

And half the time with less risk.

Yeah, with less risk.

What would you need?

That's a good question.

What would need to happen? What would need to shift inside of you?

Yeah, I would, I would need more People faster. I mean, it would just be.

How many people would you need?

I would spend more aggressively on talent acquisition. So I would basically go into like from the debt perspective. Right. So rather than think of the businesses or like the portfolio companies as cash flowing towards me, I would probably take all of the excess that is there and plow it into talent earlier. So right now I live on a certain amount of cash flow, et cetera, just from the portfolio companies. And I probably have gotten accustomed to that. And so I don't like cutting below that. So if I had to, then I would say all of that money, rather than going to. Alex is going to go into more talent, bigger, faster. Yeah, exactly. And then they would amplify and then they would be able to. We would increase our rate.

You would have less money in the short term over the couple years, but then you would have more. Way more money in the long term.

Totally.

So it's a comfort level.

Yeah, it is. It is not as we're talking about.

You knowing that you like to have a certain amount of cash flow every month, but you've got a bunch of cash in the bank too.

I know, it's totally. It's 100% illogical.

If you had to do it though, let's say you had to do it in two and a half years.

Say if we had to do it tomorrow. You know, if you had to do.

It two and a half years. Because you need time too.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, five to seven. You had to do it in two and a half and you had to stretch and get extremely uncomfortable where you're not going broke. Obviously you got money.

Yeah.

How many people would you need to hire?

Yeah.

And how much less cash flow would you need to have?

I mean, I would eliminate my cash flow.

All your cash?

Yeah. I mean, if I was really going. I mean, I was going ham on it, I would just. I would have no cash flow to me. I mean, I don't need.

You have money, though.

I have money. Yeah. So I would eliminate all the cash flow to me and it would. 100% of the money would go into the team. The only thing that would go faster than that is that I drain my own net worth to further fund. Yeah, exactly. Go. You're. I'd be incurring financial debt to more quickly build the enterprise value of the asset. So I'd be transferring money into the asset fast. It's like you incur different types of debt. Like if you incur no debt when you start a business, you do always incur Debt you incur, management debt, you incur. Technical debt, time debt, 100%. And so people, like all businesses, start with debt. It just depends on what type of debt you're dealing with. Right. And so if you don't have money, then that's fine. You just incur other debt. Like, even when we think about how we built, how we're building the Holdco right now at acquisition.com, like I am building more fixed cost in the infrastructure right now because of what I want it to be in a year, two years. And so if I wanted to run it, like we already do reinvest, obviously a big percentage, but I would just reinvest more and be okay with it. Yeah, I've just grown accustomed to this. And it was funny because a buddy of mine I had dinner with last night sold his company for $250 million. We were talking about how cash flow is a very regular reinforcer from a behavioral standpoint. Like, you get this feedback directly every month of how you're doing. Right. And so you as entrepreneurs, or at least for me, I've been always a high cash flow entrepreneur. Like, I've never been like a reinvest every dollar into the business. I like making money from my businesses. But that has become a trait that I have learned to look at as my barometer every month. Like, how am I doing? How am I doing? How am I doing? And so it would have to. The question of, like, what would have to change in. I would have to change how I measure success. And then I'd have to reinforce the behavior in a different way. I'd have to measure it differently. For me, like learning what hard feels like. I think once you learn it, it's like, oh, there you are, my old friend. Right. This is hard. And that's why it's worth it.

Yeah. And I think you get more comfortable with hard where it doesn't feel hard anymore. You're like, okay, I've done this for five years now. I'm used to this. I'm familiar with it. I learned how to manage my emotions.

My feelings around it.

I'm becoming a better leader to myself. And so this is more norm.

Yeah, it's not hard and it's a fun one. The feeling of the heart changes. So it's like when you're, you know, in the beginning, the heart is that you don't know what you're doing. You just feel like an idiot all the time, just ignorant. You're like, I have no idea what I'm doing. Right. And then the feeling is the giving up of control, right? Once you get into the, you know, 7ish figures, it's like you have to give up control. You have to. You can't control delivery anymore. You can't control. You can't get on every sales call. Like, you have to give up control. And that's hard.

And trust people, it's different, but it's hard.

It's just different, right? And then as you start making more and more money, then it gets around. Focus. You can't pursue every opportunity you want. Like, in the beginning you did because you only reported to you, but now you have an entire company that you're responsible for, and you have to really allocate resources. And you're like, I've got this idea for the show. I can't start it yet. I really want to, but I can't start it yet. And it might not be for a year. And you got to be like, okay with that. And it's a different kind of hard, right? So, like, at every level, and if anyone's curious, the one after that is that your character, how you spend your time outside of work starts to come into question. Because the level of talent you're able to attract is going to be attracted to who you are as a person and the values that you espouse that you represent. And so you're like, well, what I do in my own time shouldn't be anyone else's problem, right? It's my own life doesn't work that way. Humans can't separate things like that. They just see you for who you are on the field and off the field. And so it's like, you have to start changing things. Like, if you're somebody who drinks and does a ton of drugs, hey, more power. It's legal. It just might not be. What everyone thinks is what they want to admire and emulate, right? And so it's like, it's a different kind of heart. And so one is about being. One's about control, one's about focus, one's about ignorance, right? And so at each level, the heart changes. But you're like, there you are, my old friend. I was waiting for you to show up again. This is the heart. And being able to identify which thing you need at every level is, that's where the mentors come in. Because they'd be like, this is the next thing that's going to come up. You want to get distracted, you got to keep doing the thing. Or like, right now, I think you need to quiet this outside stuff in your life because, like, it's a distraction. You're not going to be able to attract the talent you need to get to the next level. They're not going to like that. And then you have to change. Right?

Inspiring stuff, man. I want people to follow you.

Thanks, man.

They can go to Hermozi or I guess Hermozi on Instagram and also on YouTube. Is that Alex Hermosi on this?

Yeah, Alex Hermosi. If they type Alex Hermosi anywhere, they'll see it.

But you. YouTube has been blowing up your Instagram, your TikTok. Also, if you're a business owner and you want to partner with you, go to acquisition.com to learn more about that process. You can apply there. This book is really powerful. A lot of people have gotten this. How many copies have you sold now?

Two hundred and something. Thousand.

Couple hundred thousand. So if you guys want to learn more, this will be an amazing investment for you. I think it's, you know, the digital version is only a few bucks. I think on Amazon, $0.99. $0.99 it is for anybody. So it'll be a great dollar investment for yourself. Make sure you check this out. If you're looking to really maximize your offers and build your business, check this book out. It's really powerful. Great examples. Again, you do a great job of creating frameworks, which I like. You know, it's like you make it simple for someone like me who can't read, but the images, you know, and the framework so I can visualize success.

I had to make them simple for someone like me. That's why it's good.

Big pages, big spacing, big font. Exactly.

I like it.

But if you guys want to learn more, make sure you check this out. What is the thing you're most passionate about right now? Is it the content in the content world? Is it the long form YouTube stuff? Is it Instagram? What's the place we should go follow you?

If they're gonna pick one place, YouTube or podcast? Yeah, those are the two. I mean, podcast has been growing too. Podcast is doing really well. Number two on entrepreneurship.

I saw that, man. It's big.

I'm trying to be like you, man. Trying to be like you.

It's awesome, man. And what's the biggest results you've seen from your podcast and YouTube growth? What's the biggest benefit you've seen?

It's just been, you know, people tagging me on. I mean, like, I don't, I don't. The only thing we quote, advertise, Is that. Yes, if you're a company doing, you know, 10 million a year or more. Ideally, if you're a little below that, we'll look at the deal. But, you know, it just allows me to just talk to more cool business owners. So the more the podcast grows, the more cool, interesting businesses come our way and we get to grow them. And that's like. I don't know if I shared with this last time. So we did our stats on. Because now we've been doing it for two years. And so the average company that we work with increases their top line by 1.8 times in the first 12 months and triples their profit in the first 12 months. Amazing. In the next 12 months, the average company increases their profit by 4.2. I think it's 4.27 times or 4.75. There's a 4 and a 7 in it.

It's not bad.

Yeah. In the, in the next 24 months, it's like we can almost 5x the profit of the companies the first 24 months. And so that's just the average. So, yeah, it's cool. We love doing it. It's. That's the stuff we live for. I mean, like, I've never been more amped to do what we're doing.

What do you feel like your future mentor self, when it hits the billion dollar valuation, would say to yourself now, if you were three years out, five years out, whenever you hit this billion dollar valuation and you could speak to yourself from the future?

Yeah.

What would your mentor future self say to you right now that you need to hear?

Keep having fun. Because, I mean, it would be like if I had hit that at that point, you'd be like, keep doing it. Like everything you're doing, you got here because you're having a good time. So just don't lose track of that because in three generations, everyone's gonna forget that you're alive. No one's gonna remember your name. You're not gonna be the greatest all time. Cause if you did your job, someone else would be even better and younger than you. And so, like, the only point of the game is to play and just. It would just remind me of something that I already know to be true. But it would just be from future me. Hopefully he would just say it perfectly to my heart and I would just become a new person and I would transform and I'd ascend, you know what I mean, in a halo of light. But that's hopefully what happens.

What happens when people shift their intention from scarcity lack mindset to growth, impact, service, whatever it might be that you're coming from.

I'm so excited for this question. So I think the biggest thing that changes is time horizon.

Time horizon. What is time horizon?

And I think the single greatest differentiator between the poor and the middle class, middle class and rich, rich and the truly wealthy is how they see time. And if you think about money as simply a condensed unit of time, that's all money is. You trade it for time. I mean, you can trade time for money. So they're almost equivalent units. And the people who know how to master their time the most mean that they know how to master their money the most. And so really, if you want to master to the original question of like, how do wealthy people come wealthy is because they master their time. And so time horizon is just like the perspective from which we see what we want to achieve. And so if I am doing, if I'm building a company from the place of like, I believe that this company should exist. I believe this problem is worth solving and that is where you start it from, then you build it differently versus I need to make money. I need to make money this week, I need to make money tomorrow.

Because what can I go make money with?

Exactly. And so I think like, I mean, you've built this amazing brand here. If people were able to not ask for 12 months and just serve, dude.

This is what I did when I launched this because I literally sold another company. I didn't make that much, but I had enough for like two years to live. I was living pretty frugal. I wasn't like, I never bought anything fancy. It was like, you know, whatever food and travel maybe, right? But I was still sleeping on couches back then, you know, just because I wanted to save, I want to spend it on hotels. I didn't start spending hotel rooms until about four or five years ago. I would always find a way. Who do I know in that town I can crash on? Anyway, side note, but when I launched School of Greatness 10 years ago, I remember saying, I'm going to do this for one year because I, I wish I had access to this. I wish this was a thing that I could go listen to in the world to teach me. And I'm not going to try to make money. Like, I'm going to do it for a year all in, but I'm not going to try to make money. I don't want to make money. I mean, if the money came, great, but it wasn't my intention. It Was just how can I create the best content to serve people on the things that I wish I would have learned in school growing up.

Yes. The school of greatness.

And after one year I was like, man, this thing's really starting to take off.

Yeah.

You know, but it wasn't based on how do I make as much money. There's how do I create something that could really make a lasting change.

Yeah.

And that intention is what's made me sustainable for 10 years. Loving the process.

Totally.

So when people come from a place, I'm hearing you say, when they come from a place of that intention of service or because this needs to be.

In the world, it's art. Art exists not to do something. It exists to exist.

Right.

It's like no one says, why did you paint that?

It needed to come out. And then you express it.

Exactly. And so I think that if people chose their businesses that way, I think, and don't get me wrong, I'm all about making money. Like, by all means, go get your bag.

Learn as much as you can.

Yeah, by all means. But I think that what it does is it ends up freeing you to then make your real impact because then you can start whatever the next thing, and hopefully your first thing is that thing. But realistically it probably isn't. And all you have to do is look at every entrepreneur that's really wealthy, the amount of graveyard businesses they have in their back. And so right now, if you're listening and you're like, I'm not sure if this is the perfect business idea, let me just save you the time. It's not. Because look at every other person who has been ultra successful. They have 10 failed business ideas. So just like just start. So you can just start notching off the bad businesses. Right. But extending the time horizon, I think only happens if you do shift the intention through which you're building it or you're just unbelievably self discipline. But I think it's easier to just like start at it with the right heart. Because small tangent, but I think it'll be worth it. Is that the reason that most people aren't successful, in my opinion, is that they sacrifice global benefit for local benefit. And that happens in all areas of life. You eat the piece of cake because you have an acute local benefit versus the global benefit of a six pack that lasts for a very long time or better health, et cetera. Right.

You need the instant gratification as opposed to delayed gratification.

Exactly. And I just like saying local versus global because it happens in an organization. For example, sales guys don't want to put the notes in the thing because it's a pain in the butt to put the notes in the CRM. But finance needs the notes. Customer service needs the boats. Success needs the, like, all of these other departments need those notes for all the other things that we're going to do. And so it's a local cost, but for a global benefit. And so I think if people were able to delay that immediate gratification, which is like, this is the nature of success.

It's funny, man.

There was the study that was done. I can't remember it.

It's the marshmallow test or the other.

Okay. God, I can talk about the marshmallow test. Okay, so fun, fun. One with that, with the marshmallow test is measuring how long they delay for the marshmallow. So at what point does it not make sense if they say you can get one? Because they, like, everyone simplifies the experiment, which is like, if I give you a marshmallow one now, or you can get two, two later. Right. But what if two is in a year?

Yeah. You're like, I don't care. I'll take the one now.

Right. So then the next question I would have is like, if you were to test kids and then say at what point the global versus local crosses would be. And then track the kids who had the longest marshmallow waiting period, because then you could measure how long they were successful.

Probably a life.

Really interesting. Just total side note. But the three things that I think were in common of the ultra successful were inflated sense of self. As in they thought that they deserved big things. They wanted to go after big things.

They believed in themselves.

Right. Inferiority, never being good enough, and impulse control.

Those are the three factors of the most successful.

When they did a common factors analysis, these people think they believe that they can achieve all this amazing stuff. And then it's just. It's an amazing paradox because at the same time, they think they're not good enough and they are insecure about whether they can achieve it. And they have impulse control. And so it's like, if you have discipline.

Yeah, yeah.

And they just, they. And they stay focused on the thing and what I like. I'd say the biggest breakthroughs that I've had, I think that will create a lot of the wealth that we will have in the future is really a deep understanding of how long long is. And shooting with the intention of, like, I'm only bringing this up because my YouTube guy said it, but he's like, I've never had somebody who actually started it. I was like, we'll see what we do in five years. I was like, we'll measure that. And he was like, no one has literally ever said that to me. I was like, as long as I see progress, I'm good.

Because everyone wants results in like two months.

Yeah, yeah. Like if we're going this way, I'm cool. I don't need to say, like, that's good enough for most people if they could extend the time horizon. Because like, I'll give you another hack. You can know how wealthy someone is based on the time horizons they speak in.

Give me an example.

So if someone's talking about how they're trying to make, you know, make money this today. Let me hold 20 for today. You know how poor they are. I have to say poor. Like you know how poor they are. Right. If someone's talking about what they're going to make this week or this month, or this quarter or this year or this decade, think about how different the people are who are talking in those time horizons. And so I think that if we can shift the time horizon that we think in, then we gain more leverage over our time, which we then know we will compound into money. Because I think if you can master the time, you master the money.

That's good. You've been married for how long?

Five years.

Five years in a relationship or six years or something?

Six years relationship, five years married.

This is something that I've been on curious about a different decades of my life. Right. I'm 39 now. I just turned 39 in March. And in my 20s, I didn't think it was, I was like, how is it possible to be with one human being for the rest of your life?

Right. Yeah.

Like there's so much adrenaline and testosterone and just desire. I was thinking from a place of desire, not from a place of, I don't know, from a spiritual foundation, let's say.

Right.

More of a sexual desire. And I would study these different men over the years and the ones that I really respected were the ones who had amazing long term relationships and who had healthy businesses that impacted people in positive ways and had, you know, semi healthy families in general.

Right.

I'm curious, why did you decide to get married? I guess at 25, 6.

I was 20, she was 23 or 24 and I was 26 or 27.

Why decide to get married in your 20s? Yeah. And how has that been beneficial towards your inner peace, your health and Your wealth.

Yeah. So I think getting married is a great hack for making money. I have a lot of thoughts on this. First one is because at least if you're anything like me, probably 80% of my attention went to chasing tail. And so getting all of that attention back automatically just makes you more money.

Right. All your energy is spread 100%.

If you're doing that, it's spread all over the place. And so that was. That's just like, honestly, just getting into a relationship accomplishes that. Going from a relationship to marriage, though, was really surprising to me because I was, I would say, fairly against marriage for most of everything. And it's by happenstance. Leila and I got married almost like as a dare. And then we're still married. And it's been awesome. Total. We'll get into another time. But when I, when we did get married, it was actually really interesting. And maybe this is just my own personal experience, but I felt this very sincere shift of knowing. It felt secure, even the long term. I'm like, why do we need a government body? Why do we need someone? Why do we need an external party to validate our relationship?

Sign a document from the government. Yeah.

But there is some level of commitment that comes with it, that makes it more stable. And knowing that it was like, oh, she's in it with me. Just knowing the barrier to exit was significantly higher for both of us, I think increased our commitment to the relationship. But it gave me so much more stability for risk taking. In a lot of ways, knowing that she was there, knowing she had my back. And, you know, I was texting a buddy of mine who was living the.

Fast life, yes, girls, every other night.

And he was like, how do you know? How do you think through this? And I thought about it, and I think that when you get into the committed relationship or marriage, you trade novelty for loyalty. And for me, that, to me, loyalty. I was trying to define this for myself, but like, for me, loyalty matters more than love or is a form of love or the one that I value the most. And then as a secondary, because I was trying to define. Whenever someone says, what is love? Like, if you actually, like, start trying to peel the word back. Most people just describe activities that people who are in love do. Well, it means. And then they use a laundry list of activities. And so the best definition I have, I know this is me out there, is of how much, like measuring love is how much are you willing to endure to keep it. And so if you have a relationship with someone and like, and I Would say love and liking to me is the same thing because it's really difficult to differentiate between the two. If you have a relationship with someone and you're not really willing to, like, let's say, wait 30 minutes later to go to dinner with them, probably have very little liking in there, Right. If you have kids, you're probably willing to do a lot for them. And so, like, I'll give you an example that a friend of mine said, he was like, man, he must love. He's like, if you have a car that you've been working on all the time, like, a lot of guys, like, tinker with, must love that car, right? That thing's a piece of crap. He must love that thing. It barely runs because of what he's willing to put up with. And so it's kind of interesting when you think, like, you can measure love by your willingness to sacrifice or endure in order to keep it.

Do you think we should endure a toxic relationship, though, or something that's not adding value equally or putting forth a.

Level of effort to be fair. The toxic relationship. I'll use the quotes here because defining toxic would be another call, another video, Right. I think that there are moments in relationships that are negative. But if you love someone a lot because you had a lot of benefit, so going the other direction, right?

Like, but if it's more toxic than.

It is, then you wouldn't put up with it, right? So then is it worth putting up with anyone having a negative experience? It depends on what you have to gain. Right. And the more you love someone, the longer you're willing to wait for another positive reinforcement. So if I meet somebody and I have a negative experience, immediately I'm probably done. Right. If I meet someone and I have positive, the next day, positive, two days later, positive, a week later, the next one, I might be willing to wait two weeks and then four weeks. And this really just becomes a question of human conditioning rather than love. Not to get, like, I love this stuff, but anyway, I can get us back to marriage. But marrying Lelo gave me a lot of the security that I needed to take the big risks and knowing that she had my back. And Layla and I have very uncommon views on marriage.

What's the, I guess, unique views on marriage you guys have?

So most people get married because they feel a chemical attraction.

Yes.

And then they just wait Right. Until eventually and it goes away. Yeah. And they're like, I guess we should get married. We had the first date, we talked for four hours about business, all business. And at the end of the day, I said, you should quit your job and work for me. I was like, was it even a.

Date or was this a date? Okay, it wasn't just like a casual encounter.

No, it was 100% Tinder date. It was bumble, but it was a date.

Bumble date.

Yeah.

And all business, all night, the whole thing.

We walked for four hours just talking about business. And the veranda said, you've got to, like, quit your job and work for me. And she said, no, I just met you.

Not quit your job and date or date me, but I quit your job.

And work for me. And I said, listen, even if I don't come with the deal, like, this needs to make sense for you. Like, this is how much I'd pay. I was just like, this is how much I'd pay you. This is how much you'd make. Like, you should totally work for me. And she said, no. But I kept working on her. And eventually, three weeks later, she quit her job and she joined me. And we hung out every day after that one. And we did not have a super chemically sexual romantic. Not at all. We just liked doing the same stuff and we both wanted the same outcome. And so, at least as I see it, it's like you have to have an aligned mission of what you want to accomplish in life, values of how you want to get there, man. And then ideally, this, like, bonus, bonus points for similar interests.

Dude, it's so funny you say that because I say that, you know, from all the mistakes I've made in the previous relationships that are all my mistakes, it all comes to values, vision and lifestyle. And having shared. Alignment doesn't have to be 100%, but it's like an alignment in values, vision and lifestyle, not in, you know, if you have the sexual chemistry, which we do, which is great, but not using that as the main value. The sexual chemicals, because in two, five, 10 years, they may not be there. But if you don't have the values of vision and lifestyle, or what you.

Call values, mission, because it's all business. Mission is what we're trying to accomplish. Values, how we're gonna get there. And then interests is like, what do we wanna spend our time on?

Exactly. That's so funny.

Yeah, so that's what I think. And if you have those things, you create a relationship. In my opinion, at least. This has been my human experience that becomes very difficult to get out of. And I say that intentionally in that, like, the best way to stay married is to figure out how to stay Married. And so, like, well, let's stack all the chips in our favors. Like, we like doing the same stuff. We like talking about the same things. And then I think in a very important way, if those three things are aligned, you will get exposed to the same stimuli. And if you get exposed to the same stimuli, you'll have the same adaptations, provided you have the same values. So if we get this exposure and we both have the same values, we'll both grow in the same way. Where I think what happens for many people is they're opposite sides and they attract. Right. And what happens is you get on this. You probably. Esther Perel.

I just had her on a week ago. Had her on a few times.

I'll just stop. Go ahead. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, now I feel silly. Quote her. My understanding of mating activity is you've got familiarity, right? And you've got. I say variety and then familiarity, because this is how I do it. And so in the beginning, everything's so new and exciting. There's all this variety. Right. And then you get to know each other, and it gets better and better because you're like, oh, my God, this is amazing. This is amazing. This is amazing. But then all of a sudden, you keep going, and then you're siblings and your roommates. Right. And so it's not like she says, a problem to be solved, but a dichotomy to be managed between familiarity and variety. And one of the interesting things with our relationship is that we have so many ways to be familiar. So for us, based on that, like.

So you need to create more variety.

Yes.

How do you guys do that? Because you talk about all the same things. You do the same thing all day long. How do you create variety?

That's a great question.

Besides the multiple business. Multiple business boards, you're not doing the multiple people.

Oh, no, we're not doing. No, no. I think Lilywood stem. No. But I think the variety piece comes in through deliberate creation of room to be missed.

Space and time.

If you think about it, for a week. Yes.

And you're gonna go with your friends or family, and I'm not gonna be there.

You know how much you like someone more when you see them after not seeing them for a week.

So good.

Isn't that weird?

That's feeling right.

Isn't that weird? So it's like we can create that deliberately.

The missing belonging.

Exactly. And so it's like if we can, like, physically separate ourselves in terms of when we work. So we work on separate sides of the house. We only come together for food. So we eat and then we go back. And ideally, we're not on any of the same meetings. Because the last thing I want to do at the end of the day is sit down and say, like, how's your day? Just kidding. I was there the whole time. Right, right.

Yeah.

So it's ideally.

So you work together, but you don't.

Yes. You work in the same company, but.

You'Re not on calls all day long together, hand in hand.

Right. And we can accomplish. And so that way, when we talk, it's like two business colleagues that are both after the same thing. They both believe in getting there the same way. And we're talking about our unique things that are interesting for me that she might want my perspective on. And I'm like, hey, I'm thinking about this hook or this message or what do you think about this? And we can bounce on it, but because we didn't share every moment of the day, it gives us that ability to have variety. But I think Esther said this. But the couples that have. That do start businesses together. Maybe I'm misquoting two research things anyways. Couples that start businesses together have a 10% divorce rate if you start and make a dollar in a business together. And I think it's like birthing a child, except in order to do a business. I think it's harder than having kids. And people will be like, you don't know that because you don't have kids. It's true. But I do know that there's a lot of people who have both. There's more people who have kids than have businesses who started together. And I think that there's some magic in that. Cause it's like birthing an idea. But you both got to agree on what you're going to create. So you're not leaving up to biology. You're leaving up to choice.

Do you guys ever fight or argue?

Sure. Like, I would say we don't have what I would consider, like, real fights.

Low observer. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, minor arguments, but I'm sure that, like, the many common miscommunications that can happen as humans. Sure, sure, sure. Hey, you said this. That did. Is this what you meant to say?

So it's the cash flow coming from all the businesses you guys are in partnership with. You get a percentage of cash flow. They get a percentage as the business owner as well. So you have a certain amount of cash flow every month that's coming in from all these businesses.

Right.

But you also have a ton of money in the bank.

Yeah.

So one of them, you could take some money out somewhere. You can still keep the cash flow coming and take the money from the savings.

I'm so security driven. It's funny because I was having this conversation with this guy and so the guy sold his company for $250 million. For the last 10 years he's lived on 70,000 a year. 70,000 a year. And so he was staying at the Marriott and I was staying at a nicer hotel. And I was like, dude, you got money now. Yeah, you got money now. And he's like, I know, he's like, but I just.

Isn't that funny. For years I would sit middle seat, you know, back of the airplane. Cheapest flights for years, even when I had seven figures and a year coming in. But because I was so used to, I was like, I don't want to lose my money, you know, it's like I want to make sure that I can live like this. I was still sleeping on friends couches when I traveled to events. It was like any way to save money. And it's not until the last couple of years was like, okay, my back hurts. I need to like have some leg room. Right. I'm a big guy. But for years it was just like, how do I save and use that money to reinvest in going to the event, buying the ticket to the commerce, or investing in coaching that will accelerate the revenue long term.

Yeah. It's so funny you say that because I think, and this is off the cuff here, but many of the people that I know who have tremendous amounts of money have huge fears around being poor. And so it's just an interesting thought. Like a lot of people who don't have money see people who have money as thinking differently. And they might in that they are more uncomfortable being poor than you are. Like it is more painful for them than it is for you. It might be. I'm just being really.

It might be why some of them are stingy too, with the money.

Of course, 100%.

I'm not going to spend this $5. I'm going to keep it. You know, they're very stingy with all of it.

Two nights ago I was, we were out with, to dinner with a guy who just got valued at a billion. Right. And it's all cash flow. It's not one of these software things. Like it's off. Like he's getting. Yeah. Like he's making real money, crazy money. And he's like, I'm not going to that gym. He's like for equal. I said, I'm not paying $200 a month for a gym membership. It's, it's a different perspective now. I'm not saying I'm that way, you know what I mean? Like, I'm okay spending on gym membership. Like that's fine for me. But like everyone has their own things and like there are these behaviors. Like he got the other guy who had the 250. He got to that point because he lived. He squeezed everything out of his business, which made the business so valuable and then he was able to sell it. But like the billion dollar guy was saying, he's like, you know what they don't tell you about when you sell your business? Because he's sitting next to the guy with the 250, right? And he's like, the moment you sell your business, he's like, you have no cash flow. And so he felt that too. He's like, what are you gonna do? He's like, you're take the money and then what are you gonna do? You're gonna try and buy more cash flow because you gotta replace the cash flow you have with the business.

You gotta get real estate assets, you gotta do something else.

He's like, why bother? He's like, I'll just keep it. And so he doesn't have any intentions of selling. And so it was an interesting lesson for me too because like we obviously got rid of our cash flow asset when we sold all three last year.

You got a lot more money, but you don't have the money cash, right?

Because then it looks like this, this finite asset, the business goes on forever in your mind at least, right? And so it gives you this illusion of control, this illusion of security. And me personally, most people wouldn't believe this when I hear it, but like I'm very risk averse. And so I probably need like what's the core changes that I need to have? I probably need to be a little bit more of a risk taker than I am. Like, I tend to always take the lowest risk path when I can. Even, even the idea of like when I quit entrepreneurship or. Sorry, when I quit my job to start entrepreneurship, it was because I knew that the path that I was on was guaranteed not to get to me where I want. So I had a zero outcome and that. So this one, even though it was lower, like I had a low chance of success, the other one had 100% failure guarantee. And so that, so it felt like the lower risk option for my long term goals to Quit my job and become an entrepreneur for that reason. And so, you know, people are like, I'm really risk averse. I'm like, so am I. Like I hoard money. Like I'm, I do.

You must get any of the money from the exit side. No, it's not sitting in the bank.

Nothing. We started working the next day. We didn't even take it. We didn't even take a day off. Yeah, we literally sold wire hit and we started working on acquisition.com the next day.

Let's say you had to put your start putting that cash flow every month into other things. Team, resources, whatever it is. And that wasn't coming in and you know, maybe let's call it 100 grand a month was coming in with cash flow. I don't know how much it is, but let's say that is going into hiring team and other things to support you getting to the billion in two and a half years. What would need to shift inside of you after three months of feeling no cash flow come in to stack your bank account in order for you to be okay with it? To get to that billion quicker, I.

Would just have to be more secure. Just realistically, like I use, what does that mean?

Is that an internal.

I use cash flow from businesses as evidence to the fact that I'm not a failure. And so I use, I've always like, it has been easier for me to change my conditions than to change who I am. And so I have used my material success and accolades to quiet the voices of not being good enough. And so for that, like me having that, if I have that little voice that peeps up, it's like, hey, look at that. I'm like, okay, no, no, I'm, I'm okay. I'm not, I'm not that bad.

This money just came in.

Yeah, no, I'm not that bad. Right. And so, so I'd have to, I'd really have to re engineer the conversation I have with myself around how I value myself. Because then people are like, well if you, you know, if, if everything disappeared, you know, how'd you feel about yourself? I like to think that I would be uncomfortable and then I would change my views, but I haven't needed to do that yet. And so my effort goes elsewhere. But that's what probably would have to happen in order for me to make that change.

Is it a, what is the thing that is you're afraid of inside of yourself? Is it a self worth thing? Is it a self love thing? Is it a belief that you're not good enough.

Definitely be a good enough thing for sure. Yeah. It's just like, maybe, maybe, maybe I'm. Maybe I'm not as good as I think I am. Maybe, maybe everything that I've been putting on media, maybe my book, maybe all these things are actually not true. And I don't know what I'm talking about. About, right, because clearly I don't know what I'm talking about because I'm not making any money. Like, so these things have been. That's why acquisition.com is the other half. Like the actual businesses of acquisition.com compared to the media of acquisition.com it is the other half because it's the evidence of the fact that the things that I say are true, because those are getting results 100% and they're growing, right? And so that way I feel bulletproof when I make. When I make the content, when I make the book, when I write the stuff. Like, you know, there's a zillion people who are like, you suck. None of this is true. Whatever. And for me, it rolls off my back because I have evidence, right? And I'm like, no, no, it is true. And here's how. But if I didn't have that, I would probably have to. It's because I don't know what the right call is there. Because if I didn't have the evidence, it would be hard for me to say, you're wrong, because I don't have any proof that they're wrong.

But you have evidence now.

Right? And so I have this evidence.

So how do you change the belief inside that you're good enough with the years of evidence.

Now the question is, like, have I built a billion dollar thing yet? You know what I mean? That'll be 10 billion, of course. No, but it's a fun convo, and it's great because this was wonderful, Louis, because I get to see my own limiting beliefs. And just for everyone who's listening, everyone deals with this, you know what I mean? At every level, you're dealing with this of feeling, of inadequacy, feeling not good enough, feeling like you're not smart, feeling like you don't work hard, whatever it is. Like, I have that stuff all the time. Because you think that the external circumstance is gonna solve that. And I would say that it does to a degree. It becomes a crutch. But then you have this crutch, and then you just tie yourself worth to the act later the thing, rather than still yourself. And maybe I need to do more work on that who knows, if you.

Could overcome one thing or eliminate one thing internally to become a better leader to yourself, to. To quiet the noise, help you take a risk in a different way. Not talking about lose all your money, but take the risk to help you accelerate this.

Yeah.

And you don't have to buy any way, but I just believe that it's possible for you to do that.

Yeah.

I believe you can be a billionaire in two and a half years.

I appreciate it.

If you, if you shift whatever inside of you is holding you back to get to that space, what would be that one thing to eliminate or overcome.

Internally, to make it happen is need for external validation.

100%, the need for external validation. Why do you need external validation?

I mean, I think part of it's so ingrained in us. If you think about us as kids, right? Like, how do you. How do you orient yourself with the world? You get reinforced or punished at all, at all phases, directly, indirectly, but you get reinforced or punished. And the things you get reinforced, you do more of the things you get punished, you do less of. Right. Like, that's just how we, how we learn behavior, how we learn to function society. Right. Touch the thing. Ah, it hurts. We got punished. Okay. You know, your parent tells you to sit down and be quiet and eat, and you learn to sit down and shut up and eat. And then we wonder why adults don't move because we're told to sit when we're running around. Right.

We learn or at school, sit down and be quiet 100%.

And we wonder why we eat so much when the reward for everything we did when we were a kid was food. Right. We wonder these things. So the reason external validation is so hard, at least for me, is because it's how I learned everything, is because external validation gave me the directional guidance of what's good and what's not. And then as you get older, it's, where am I going to get that validation from? I would say that my external validation is still 100% there. It just comes from different sources. So I'm more selective on whose validation I want.

So how much external validation do you need in order to overcome this belief? To go all in and do it in half the time?

No, I think I just. I need to be able to validate myself. And that's fundamentally. I think Epictetus said this. He said, like, if you need someone else's. If you need. He has this quote, it's so good. But it's basically like you need to be able to give. You don't need to swear to somebody else. You should be able to swear to yourself and bear witness to yourself, because your word should be good enough.

So you need to eliminate external validation from you feeling good enough.

Probably, yeah, it's probably that. Like, obviously, you need. It's good to have feedback in life. You know what I mean? So I think that's why it's also difficult for some in general, because it's not eliminate or have more of. It's to what degree and from whom and about what. And so then it gets a little bit more complex. But even using those different lenses, I think it's good to unpack it for anyone who's listening, which is like, okay, Layla said this, so this is not mine. But most times when we're afraid of something, it's not actually like this amorphous crowd that we're afraid of. It's like one or two people's opinion. Like, it's your dad or it's your whatever it is. Right. And you're worried about what they're gonna think, and they're not even thinking about you, but you think they're thinking about. They're thinking about their dad, whatever it is. Right. And so she restated this earlier on in Mike. Like, when we were together five years ago, she was like, are you. And she, like, made me name the person. It wasn't my dad. It was somebody else for this particular thing. She's like, are you gonna let this guy stop us from getting what we want?

Wow.

And it was like. When I saw it, it was, like, looking in front of me, I was like. She's like, what if this guy hates you and thinks you're terrible? Is that a worthy enough reason to still keep going? And I was like, yeah. She's like, let's go. You know what I mean? And so she was very good with that.

What do you need to say to yourself every day to believe in. To believe you're good enough? If you could say one thing to you that no one else needed to hear, but you needed to hear it from you, what would that be?

I don't know if it would be a saying thing. I don't think it'd be, like an affirmation. I think it's just a belief. You know what I mean?

What would the belief be?

Yeah, I mean, fundamentally, the belief would just have to shift that the doing. This is enough validation for me, not the results. Right. And that's. I mean, fundamentally, that's always the goal, is that you can detach the. The Doingness from the result. I think what I've been able to do has been to extend the time horizon between the doing this and the result, but not necessarily fully eliminate it. I'm patient in that I can continue to do things for very long periods of time before seeing a payoff. But if I were able to truly eliminate it, I think that would be kind of like a next step. Then again, it's that borderline on insanity because if you never get feedback on, sometimes you're like, maybe I should change direction.

But you'll keep getting feedback though, because you're creating, you're taking action. The more you do that, you'll have more businesses, you'll be acquiring, you'll be creating more content, and everything will be growing. Growing at the same time.

Yeah, right. 100%.

I love seeing you go through this process internally because I think I'm open to it.

I just want to win, you know what I mean? I just want to be better.

What does winning look like?

It's achieving the potential. It's taking all this raw potential. The line in the Bible that always scared me the most was to whom much is given, much is expected. And so for me, I always felt like I was given a lot. You know what I mean? I was born in America. Right off the bat, I was born as a guy. I have insane genetics. Like, from. From that perspective. I have a six pack when I was 15, you know what I mean? I have a pretty high processing load. Like I can usually, I do okay with complex problems. I was, I was bilingual at, basically at birth because parents talked to me a different language. So that gave me good language abilities. And so it's like these are, these are all things that were given to me, right? And I was born into like a deep, you know, from a money standpoint, a decently wealthy family, right? Not ultra brilliant, but never worried about food or shelter or anything like that. And so these are all the things that were given to me. And so to me, I'm like, man, much is expected, right? And not necessarily that. That's God, whatever. Just I expect a lot of myself because I see so much potential and I want to, like, by the time I die, I would like to have nothing left in my potential tank. And it just all have been transformed into my reality. Yeah. So that's what winning looks like.

What do you feel like is missing in your life?

Not a lot. I'm just like, really right off the bat, like, I really, like, I'm amped right now. I'm super pumped I love what we're doing. I love the businesses that we're helping. I love the mission. I like doing this not, not a lot. I mean, if I got into things that were missing, it would be like super tactical. Like I want, I want these, these roles are ones that I want filled in the company. You know, I mean, like, it'd be stuff like that, it wouldn't be anything else. Right. Most times because of this, like we were talking before this about the Internet marketing space in general is that most people's products are not serving.

They're not good.

They're terrible. Right? They're terrible. And so what happens is like it is the most right hook of right hooks possible. Like, you just lose a ton of goodwill with the thing. Apple doesn't lose goodwill when they come out with an iPhone. Everyone's just excited about it and they use the iPhone, they tell their friends. So the difference is in the goodwill that comes with the quality of the product. And so I think that's where the issue is. It's not like, do I sell or do I not sell? It's just is the thing that I'm selling. And the vast majority of people who are pitching all the time are natural promoters, not product people.

Right.

And so like most times the greatest product people like naval had this quote that I really like. He said, you're only selling because you don't know how to market. And you only market because you don't know how to build a product. Because like the best products market and sell themselves. Now obviously if you're Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, it's like you build amazing products and then you back them with unbelievable marketing. And then you have an army of salespeople that, that are selling for you. So it's like then you have them all and then you have a trillion dollar company.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But like just, just being exceptional, any of those will make you money. But you get the multiplicative, you know, compounding effect if you're good at two or three of them.

Right. Were you always good at making money or was there a time where you were like, man, I'm just broke, struggling and trying to figure this thing out.

Depends on like how much we're defining, you know, I mean, like right out of. I finished, I finished college in three years and then did the management consulting path. And so like out of college I was making, making like 50,000.

Right, right.

And I lived in Baltimore. So like my cost of living was like $5. And so I was able to save a Bunch of money. So I saved $50,000 in two years living there and that's what I was able to start my, my gym with.

Did you understand money when you were in your teens or growing up? Or did you feel like you were scared of it or it was scarce or are you thinking ah, this. I'm not really worried about money. It'll come when I'm ready.

I've always been a saver. I've always been a saver, not a huge spender. I think part of that is because I don't get a lot of. When I pay a dollar I feel something different. And most times if I buy something I don't feel any different. So I don't get a lot of utility. Right. I just don't get a lot from it. I think I've been aware of that for a long time. And so like if you don't spend a lot and you make even a normal amount of money for a decent amount of time, you end up having a lot. And my income went up. I would say that there's definitely elements of scarcity that I, that I believed in for a long time. Really? Yeah. I mean around competition was one.

Tell me about it. What was that about?

So like when I had, you know, when I had my gyms for example, this is, you know, almost a decade ago, you know, I was so concerned with the guy down the street was who do his marketing. Is he copying my ad? It's like I used to get so obsessed with this stuff and like it just so doesn't matter like at all. Like you he could copy and we could both have really big successful gyms. It's not like there's a lack of people who need to get a chance.

Right.

And then even then it's like we're only talking about a five mile radius, not like the rest of the world. Like it's, there's just orders of magnitude of thinking in terms of scale that I was just like completely like aloof to.

What happens when we focus on competition so much? What happens to our ability to scale grow our creativity, our money making abilities?

I think you become emotionally reactive to the activities of the other person and so you're truly focused on nothing that adds value. And so it's because of, it's not the competition. Like competitors don't put you out of business, but you obsessing over competitors does, right?

What should people be doing instead of obsessing over competition?

It's all customers, it's all just being because like if you can get, you know, there's a billionaire in my building who he was asked on everybody, he's like, if you had one thing that you could tell someone if they wanted to build a company like yours, he said, your customer must absolutely love your product. A lot of people just underestimate the amount of effort it takes to go from good to great in product or service. It's like, if you've ever been to like the difference between a five star restaurant and a four star restaurant looks like 20%, but it's 10 times the effort. You know what I mean? The difference between a one Michelin star and a two Michelin star restaurant is ocean. And so I think, like, I use the book as example because it's an easy one to reference. Most people try and just write a book and then once the final word is done, they're like, send it to the editor, edit it. Cool. And let's ship it out. But like that book I rewrote five times, end to end the whole thing. And each time the goal was to make it shorter. It's like, how can I say this in fewer words? How can I say this in less words? And in doing that, and the same thing happened with Gym Launch with that product is that every time we created a 2.0 or 3.0 or 4.0, we made it shorter. How can we make it easier to consume? And then that was the reason we wrote the book about the value equation. It's like, what is value? How do we define that? And so if we're customer focused, we can obsess on value and then have a very iterative approach. And I think that you came from the Internet marketing world. And I talked, I've given this in a couple of closed door masterminds where I'm like, guys, you all say that your product's amazing. I'm like, what's your CRSA? What's your CHS? What's, what's your NPS scores? What are your TTVs? And they're like, huh? I'm like, well, if I ask you your cpm, your cpl, your cost per book call, your cost of acquisition, like all of these things you could rather lose off in two seconds. I'm like, so you guys say that your product's amazing and yet you don't measure a single metric around product. Wow.

So focusing on that, right?

So they just. So the thing is like, if we can get that part right, then you get so much. Because if we can just get each customer to get one more customer, then we get our return on ad spend doubles. But then if you think about what your contribution margin is on that extra customer, if you don't have to spend the cost of acquisition, so much of that drops to the bottom line. And then the company just becomes so much more profitable just by tiny levers that we do here. How can we take. I think we were talking earlier about our publishing business. We're like, okay, publishing is something that takes a long time to do. How can we figure out. TTV is time to value. So how can we figure out some sort of experience or some sort of win someone can have in the first seven days? Like how can we get them a dollar? Is there anything that we can do.

To launching their book?

Yeah, exactly. Like something, some proof of concept. And we were able to figure out how to, we're talking about mini book, get that going in a very short period of time so that people could just. And we're like, hey guys, this is an mvp. This isn't your perfect product. We just want to prove to you that it works. And so then they get $1 in their account. They're like. And we're like, you are. Now we get some momentum. And now you have that identity shift that happens. Just like I just made money on the Internet. Like, yeah, you did. Now let's do a real book that's like really good. Like, this is not the product, but this is proof of concept. And so that was like a more creative one we had to do. But like in other businesses, it's like, how can we always drag forward at least some sort of big win? So we get the emotional buy in to then, you know, fall through. Like when we had the gyms way back in the day, I would run people through like a six week really aggressive diet in the beginning. And that was because even though the sustainable weight loss is it takes a much longer period of time, you know, et cetera, the slower you lose it, the longer it sticks off. But the faster you lose in the beginning, the more likely you are to stick with it.

Interesting.

So you get this emotional buy in and you're like, cool, okay, we just did a lot of weight loss in six weeks. I need you to chill for six.

Right?

And then they're like, but now they believed us because we had just delivered, you know, a big win. Kind of hard.

They got results.

Exactly, yeah. And so it's like, we know how to do it, but now, like, you can trust that we do know how. But now let's just maintain for six weeks. Get your hormones back, make sure everything's good, hunky dory, but a little more muscle because you lost some during this kind of aggressive cut. And then kind of, then we'll get into a more sustainable phase. So it's just, how can we drag that forward? And I think that level of obsession, the way people obsess about promotion, if they obsess the same way about product, the amount of profit they would make as a result of that is just like it's huge. And those are sellable businesses. The marketing driven businesses do not have nearly the enterprise value that the Pomodoro businesses.

So would you say the key to going from good to great is obsessing on product? Product greatness, 100%. What if someone, you know, they have any product, a physical product, digital product, coaching, a software, and they're watching or listening, what should they be thinking about to making the product that much better? They've put a lot of time and energy launching it, building it. They've got sales, maybe they've had it for a year or two. How do they break it all down? And it says, is it 20 different factors? Is it like just do these three things and it's going to improve the quality of product? What should they think about?

It's a really good question. So there's like three different angles. I want to take this. So one is like what I talk about in the book, which is like the value equation. What is that? So there's four variables in the value equation. The first one is the dream outcome, which is, is the thing that I'm delivering fundamentally valuable? And this is especially for people, probably more so, who are trying to like starting out in their, like entrepreneurial career.

I want to map. Draw it out for me too, if you want to.

Sure.

Well, I'll hold it up for people.

So you've got your dream outcome. So I'll just put dream here. Right. You've got dream outcome, which is the first variable. The second variable is the perceived likelihood of achievement. And so the idea is, and I'll give you an example of this, if you have, let's say you wanted to get plastic surgery, whatever, and is that.

What you did with your calves?

That's exactly what I did. If you wanted to get plastic surgery, surgery, and you had the option of two guys who are going to do the surgery, one Guy is on 10,000 surgeries and one guy is fresh out of medical school, this is his first surgery, which guy would you go with? Probably 10,000. It might even take this guy half the time. To do the surgery as this guy.

And double the price, right?

So he might. And it's double the price. Why? Because of the perceived likelihood of achievement. We believe that when we pay this man, we are more likely to achieve what we want, even though the work is the same, probably longer on this side. But our perception of what we are going to get in a real way increases prior to purchase. Which is the same reason that if you have like 20 people who told you that this restaurant is amazing, you're willing to pay way more, even though you haven't experienced it yet. Because it's the perceived likelihood of getting the outcome. To rewind on the dream outcome, this is more a commentary that how is it that you have a 50,000. You can. You can solve the same problem. Let's say weight loss, because Everybody understands that one. If I'm trying to help somebody lose weight, there's $50,000 solutions, and there's $5 solutions. There's free solutions, right? $50,000 solutions. You can get liposuction, right? And get a full body lift and whatever, right? Or you can get an ebook, you know, for five bucks. So the question is, why are these two things more valuable? And that, again, goes to perceived achievement. But if I went from the weight loss to, let's say, making money, if I had two things in general, all the things in the making money category will be priced higher because there's a more direct roi. So that's why between categories, dream outcome as a category can be higher or lower. But then once you're within a category, it's the other three variables. So perceived likelihood of achievement is number one of the other three variables. The next variable is underneath, which is the time delay. So between when I pay and when I get. What's my delay there? Right? So if I were to say, using the weight loss example, if you swipe your credit card and you look down at your stomach and you just have abs, how valuable?

We'll pay a lot for that.

Exactly. And all we did was just decrease the time delay. And so let's say in a B2B example, if you had a marketing agency for examp, and normally it's like, okay, you guys need to send me all this creative, and we gotta get everything spun up, and it's gonna take us, you know, 45 days to really get everything ramped. We gotta build a funnel and blah, blah, blah, right? And then let's do a different example. We're on the same call. The guy says, cool, we're gonna get you going and you hang up the phone and your phone rings with the prospect.

That's pretty big.

Even if it's the exact same thing. 45 days from now, your phone rings with the prospect. Today, your phone rings with the prospect. How different is the perception of value? Phenomenally different. Which is why the time delay is such a huge piece, which is why time to value referencing earlier is such a huge part of increasing the perceived value of the product. And so that's the time delay.

That's the third.

Yeah. And then the fourth one is effort and sacrifice. And so effort and sacrifice are two sides of the same coin. So effort, as I define it, are things that you must begin doing that you do not want to do, that you did not have to do prior to the purchase.

Give me an example.

If I have to wake up early to go to the gym, that would be effort. That is something that I now have to do that I do. And so sacrifice I use as the equal opposite, which is what do I have to stop doing that I want to do? Yeah, that I. That I would continue to do it. Continue doing if I didn't have to.

Stop eating milkshakes at midnight.

Yes. And Even in the B2B example with the marketing agency. Well, now what do I have to do? I have to start making this content. I have to start hopping on meetings every week. We have to start looking over these metrics, like the hire new people. Right. And so oftentimes, especially like businesses, they think that their price is the most expensive thing that they have in the cost, and it's not. So think about this. If you've ever asked someone, hey, I'll give you my service for free, and they said no, it's because there are other costs that you're not taking into consideration. Which also means a lot of times your price has far more wiggle room in it than you think it does. And if you can decrease much bigger hidden cost by asking for more money, and you can solve a hidden cost, you can make more money and improve their experience at the same time. And that's when you just make oodles and oodles of money.

When does someone know. So this is a good degrade concept. Right. What we should be focusing on is kind of this main analogy and factor. When does someone understand. A lot of people talk about their worth? Like, I'm worth this, I deserve this. Whether they're an employee or they're an entrepreneur and they want to price something.

Yeah.

When should they be thinking about their worth and increasing their rates? Whether as an employee or as an entrepreneur, how do they know? Because you're only worth what people are willing to pay. So how do you get people to pay what you believe you're worth?

So I think there's three variables that come into, like, how much you can charge. Right. The first one is value or perceived value from the prospect. So perceived value. The second one is how good you are at negotiating, which would become. Which I put that. Or persuading. You could probably put that as just persuasion in general, because if it's a job, you might be negotiating, if it's a customer you might be negotiating to, but it's persuasion in general.

And that's a whole skill to develop.

On its own, 100%. And the third one is how unique it is, so that there's no easy alternative. Right? And so if, like, for example, let's say I provide something that's really valuable, I'm unbelievable at selling rare, and then another guy is willing to just do all the same stuff for just less. Right, right. And so it's being decommoditized, which I talk about in the book, too, is that people have to be able to. They cannot. And the goal should be with our services that we have, that no one can hold up our service and somebody else's and say, these two are similar enough. I'll pick the cheaper one. And so the goal is, how can we differentiate ourselves in enough ways? By looking at the value equation and thinking, what are all the things that are making this take longer and how can I remove them? What are all the efforts and sacrifices, even these micro things, these nuances that make things more difficult. And so, like, the kings of this, if you look at, like, Amazon, right, Like the biggest companies in the world, I'll reverse the small companies that are out there, they always focus on the first two things. Let me promise something really big. Let me show you all these testimonials. And that's all they do, just promote these things. It's amazing. Listen to Sammy. It's amazing. Listen to Tommy, right? That's all they do. But the biggest companies, the world focus on the bottom side of the equation, which is how can we make things faster and how can we make things more effortless? Like, Netflix destroyed Blockbuster, not because they fundamentally changed the product at all. All they did was they made it happen immediately and from the comfort of your home, right? And so they just dramatically decreased the cost and effort that was associated with watching movies. And boom, they blew up. And so, like Jason Fladlean, who's a Friend, he said, you know, one of the easiest business models in the world is just look at what everyone else is doing and do it in half the time. Right. Like, people like, what do I do for business? Just look. What. Like, if someone can cut your lawn in whatever amount of time, or you clean houses, say you can clean houses in less time because it's just less inconvenience when people, when you're there in.

Their house, less time and less money. Or same money.

Same money, yeah. Or more money. You know, like, it depends on what are the. What are the hidden costs? So, like, probably, like with cleaning, what are they hitting? What are all the things that people hate? Scheduling is probably a pain. Hearing the noise is probably a pain. Like silent cleaners. Right. Like, what are. Like, you list this out and we outline that in the book of, like, the process of thinking through this. But what are all the pains and problems that your customers complain to you about? And so, like, the goal is always in the support tickets. So when you talk about, like, obsessing about a customer, right. It's. Let's go through all the comments on the videos, right? Let's go through all of the support tickets that are coming in and those complaints inside of the complaints. Sure. Like, what you don't want to do is say, like, well, these guys are all victims, because then you lose all the power as a business owner by just blaming them. So if you just accept all of it, it's like, these are all, like, as long as the thing that they're saying is not false, if it's unreasonable, then let's see if we can figure it out. Maybe no one else has figured out how to do this, but we might as well try, right? And so I think if you can approach it with, like, very open hands of, like, when you accept the feedback, it gives you the gold to really create huge breakthroughs in products and services.

Were you always open to the feedback from customers?

No.

When did you learn to be like, okay, this sounds like a victim conversation, but there's something here where this person's struggling, and if I can make it more effortless, it's going to be a better product for that person?

I think it's just taken time, and I think it's because I think a lot of it, I think is. Is really beating down your ego. And I think in a lot of ways with business, in my opinion, ego is the enemy because it gives us too much confidence when we don't deserve it.

When did you start beating down your ego?

I mean, I'VE been trying to do it since I was 19. It's just been a very slow process. I just realized that it was the root of all the unhappiness that I had. And everything that I had was in comparison to other people for no reason. And I've obviously adopted some perspectives we'll probably get into later, but that are contrarian in nature in terms of, like, how we live. But not just there's no benefit to ego. There's just none. And then I have a different thing that I've been thinking about recently. I'm excited to share with you. Sure. So there's. You've probably heard this, but there's a lot of evidence that points to. With mitochondrial DNA that we go back to like one one woman birthed. Like the mitochondrial DNA of all humans just comes like, tracks back to one one woman. Right. And so I think that that's interesting within the context of legacy, because people talk about legacy and they want to leave something for their progeny. And we love our sideways family members. Right?

What do you mean, family?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But if we all came from the same mitochondrial DNA. Right. Then we. Not to be weird and huggy, lovey, but. Or family members 100%.

Yeah, of course.

I find that really fascinating. It's just like. It's like a super distant cousin. And this is why when I met.

You for the first time.

Yeah.

What did I do when I met you?

Deep, long hug.

Deep, long hug.

Oh, yeah.

And I do this.

It was a triple hug.

It was a triple.

Because you.

You broke it. I was like, bring it in, bro. And then you had to surrender. There's a reason I do that is because.

Oh, that's the thing. I didn't know those.

Well, I mean, I mean, that's just a. Unless it's somewhere where it's like, maybe someone who's older that doesn't want to be hugged or, you know, your wife. I'm gonna give a quicker hug. I'm not gonna be grabbing, so. Yeah, but it's, you know, it's a respectful, you know, understanding the human being in front of you, doing your best, respected. But with you, I knew I could just hug you. And it's gonna make you uncomfortable, and it's gonna make you uncomfortable. But. But for me, I don't know if I'm ever gonna see you again. I don't know if I'm gonna see you tomorrow or anyone tomorrow. And so why not embrace people with, you know, a 3 to 5, 10 second awkward hug and let people Know that you really appreciate the moment in your present. That's what I try to do. It's what I try to focus on. But, you know, and if we're all distant cousins, then why not treat each other that way, the best way possible, you know, And I didn't.

And I didn't mean to launch all the way there because I'll go right back to ego so I can scoot us back. Otherwise we'll go in that direction. But yeah, so I think, because all this comparison, I was like, well, if I were comparing myself to a family member, would I feel the same way? And if all these people were on the same side as me because we're all family, would I still feel like I would? Because I've just tried to attack it from a logical perspective of, like, how many different ways can I try and diffuse this bomb? And I think there's a lot of keys and you just unlock tiny pieces of it and you can just try piece by piece. And I don't think anyone ever conquers it, but just hopefully I can, over time, get better.

I used to be very competitive as well as an athlete. That's all I thought about was winning. It's like I had to win to feel like I was worthy or I was good enough or I was talented enough or. And if I didn't win that, I wasn't reaching my goal of winning the championship or the prize or whatever it was. And I took that into business for many years, and I felt like I needed to compete with other people. And then. It's funny, when I started this show almost 10 years ago, I was like, it can't be about me. It needs to be about collaboration in order for this to really grow and scale and change lives and impact people. It can't just be the Lewis Howe show all day long.

One, I'm not smart enough.

I don't have all the answers. I'm not as talented as you. Shorter guys are way smarter. That's why you're so much more brilliant, you know? And I was like, I gotta bring on the smart people and create a safe space.

I can bring all the tall guys on, right? And I'll just catch it, right? Like every. All my audience will get taller as a result.

But it's funny because when I started to shift that, the ego goes back into still comparing and ranking some of these things. And I was like, okay. When I started to shift that, it's when the platform and the community started to expand because I made it about shining the light on Others and doing my best to shine the light on others. And when you do that, when you shine the light on an idea or a mentor that taught you something, usually good things come back. That's interesting. So when did you start to shed this ego mentality?

I mean, I started attacking when I was 19.

19. And how are you now?

32. 32, yeah. And I think I have like 40% less ego than I did.

And how do you have. How do you diminish the ego as you continue to scale and exit these big companies and build your brand and get more and more attention and known? How do you bring it back down to the humility?

I think it's linking the two. So it's trying to link these good things are happening because I'm decreasing this thing that's smart. And so that way I can have a positive, reinforcing association with the success that actually, that would normally amplify the wrong character traits.

What do you think would happen if your ego was at the highest level right now?

I think a lot of people would. I mean, a lot more people would not like. I mean, I don't think the message would get across, to be fair. I think the message would stop. The spread would happen much slower or not at all, because the message would change. Because the message wouldn't be about the message. It would be about me. And I think that probably the reason that this has grown so much is because you've tried to quiet yourself so that the message and the idea can spread to as many people as possible. And you put the message on the pedestal rather than Louis on the pedestal. And I think your audience realizes.

Yeah, that's interesting. So what do you think? You were making 50k the first couple years out of college. You saved 50k within two years, which is amazing. So you were disciplined. What was the. The habit or the switch from one year to the next? That started to bring in more abundance financially, not in an incremental 20%, but it was like, boom. This was 5x10x. What was that habit or mindset shift for you that started to develop more income.

So there's like the science and the art, kind of both sides. So, like, the science side is just the leverage. So the amount of money you make is proportional the amount of leverage you employ in your life. And so, you know, four types of leverage. This is not mine, this is Naval Ravikant's, but I'll just say that. So you've got labor, I call it. I use four Cs because it's easier for me to remember, he says labor, I say collaboration. So funny that you said that earlier. But it's just getting other people to basically use their time right for your cause. The second level of leverage is other people's money is getting people to invest in your thing. And then the next two are. So these two are permissionless. The first ones, like you need to get someone's permission to work for you and you get someone's permission to give you their money. The other two are permissionless, so you can do them on your own. One is media, which is what you have here. Because the cost of making one video and having one person see it versus a million people see it is the same cost. Right. And then the other is code. Right? So I say content and code. So Those are my four Cs. So collaboration, capital, content, code. And those are not binaries. It's not am I using other people? Am I not using other people? It's to what extent am I using other people? Do I use other people's money, yes or no? No, it's how much of other people's money am I using? And so each of these are continuums, not binaries. So somebody could just use other people's money and be a billionaire because of the extent they use it. But those are the types of levers that exist. And so as my income went up, it was by proportion of the amount of leverage I was employing.

Really, how are you, what of these four were you leveraging the most?

So in the beginning I had no leverage because I was an employee, Right. I was using my own time. The next thing that I started doing was I became self employed. Right. So I had a little online training business that I started in between quitting my job and starting the gym. And so when I started the gym, I started getting labor. Was the first people? Yeah, not a lot of it, but I got some of it. And so that gave me that first next tier.

I went from part time interns, 5.

I went from $5,000 a month to I think about $30,000 a month. So that was the, that was the big jump. It was just, I had a team, you know, I made a small team, but I had a team.

Right now that's overall in revenue. That's not your take on that sales. You might have been losing money or whatever.

We, we made. We. I made, I made. I was probably making 20,000amonth at that point.

For yourself?

Yes.

After expenses and team and everything.

Yeah, that was then. And then what did that feel like?

Going from 5 to 20. Did that make you feel something different? Was there a shift inside of you when you took that action?

Because for me, when I started this, it was all about vanquishing my father. So it was all about. I was Middle Eastern father, only child. So, like, I was raised by a single dad. It was just me and him. That was it for the vast majority of my life. And so he's Middle Eastern, came here with a thousand dollars, became a doctor. He was a doctor, Came here, learned English from watching television. You know what I mean? Has the American success story. Absolutely.

That's amazing.

And so I was born here, though.

Speaking on the language, too.

French was my first, actually. There's a whole story around it, but anyways. But, yeah, French is your. Yeah.

How many languages you speak?

That's the best one. I. I'll just leave it at that. But all of it was about making him proud. Right?

That's what you did. You set out to do that.

That's what I was trying to do. And then I think that throughout my, like, adolescence, I realized that it was something that was always going to be withheld from me. So it didn't matter what it was. The goalpost would always move so that.

It would never be proud enough.

Right. And it was just. And it was because he wanted the most out of me. And so, like, if I got, let's say, you know, a 99 on a test, it wasn't congratulations, it's, what'd you get wrong? Oh, man. Right. And that was always what it was. That's okay. Like, I work. I'm very happy with my life.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I realized that. And so this desire to gain approval turned into a very deep anger, and.

So towards the world, him, yourself, other people.

Mostly him. Mostly him. And most like him and myself probably split probably 50, 50. You know what I mean? And. And so it was like my earlier I'll say quote, success was purely fueled by rage. Like, it wasn't. It wasn't like it was. It was rage. You know what I mean?

I was in the same boat.

Yeah. Yeah. And it was like. And I. But there was probably some element of me that just, like, almost enjoyed the suffering because, like, I just would get in the space when you ask, like, how did I feel by getting the extra 20,000amonth? First, my goal was to make as much as my dad, and then it was to make more than my dad, and then it was to make more than my dad had ever made his whole life.

Wow.

And so once I had done that, I wanted the Success to be unquestionable. Like there couldn't be a. But there couldn't be an asterisk. It had to be so undeniable that vanquishing was the word. Right. And so for a five year period after I quit my job, my dad did not support. He didn't support me quitting my job. Why not?

Even though you were off making money and building a business and.

Because he didn't. He's like, you're. What are you, a gym owner? Like, he's like, you went to Vanderbilt. You were on a management consulting career. You, like, you got, you know, you got above Harvard's mid score for your.

You could have had an incredible career.

Of course. Right, right. Gym owner doesn't sell well in cocktail parties. Right. What do you, you know, he's, he's figuring himself out.

Yeah. He's doing this little gym as a side thing.

He'll snip out. Right. And so, and I mean, I made plenty of mistakes too when I had the gym. So it wasn't like all, you know, sunshine and rainbows for me. Like, I had a lot of mess ups that I did. I got in bad partnerships. I mean, like, all the things that you could possibly do. And over that five year period of me scaling to six locations with my, with my facilities, at the end of that whole thing, I ended up losing it all. Really? Yeah. Lost everything.

Six locations. Lost the whole business.

Well, I sold it. I sold five of them. I shut one of them down because I wanted to start doing this gym launch thing, which would be like flying around doing turnarounds because I started. That's when I met Layla.

You find a gym that's kind of like not succeeding and you do a makeover.

Exactly. Bar rescue, Same exact thing.

Done a TV show with it.

Believe me, the many regrets I have. Right. That would have been an awesome one. We did 32 turnarounds.

Wow.

It was almost two years. Yeah. And so we started doing that. And anyways, I lost everything because I took all the sale money and I put it into my last location. And then the partner that I had there siphoned the money out because I was like, yeah, like, I'll put all the money from the sale of these gyms into this thing. Like, it doesn't matter. It was my own mistake. It was on me. But it was even then. It was, you know, we'll see. You know, we'll see how, like, this isn't real. Like, we'll see. And then once I started, once gym launch really started taking Off. It wasn't until I think we did like 17 million in EBITDA, like, profit take home in one year. In one year that my Dad. I was 27.

That's crazy.

My dad called me and he's like, are you sitting down? I remember, like, at this point we were like, not talking too much. You know, maybe every few months it'd be like a five minute phone call. And so I was like, sure, yeah, I got time. What's up? And he's like, you're gonna want to hear this. And I was like, okay. What? He's like, I'm sorry. And it was the first time he'd ever apologized to me in my life. And what's interesting to me, though, is that it didn't feel like anything. I didn't care.

Why not?

Because I had stopped caring about what he thought about me a long time ago. And it was like, when I quit my job was the day that, like, I accepted dying to my father because very much to me at that point was I was really, really sad at that point in my life when I had the job, because I had really done everything that he had wanted me to do. I finished Vanderbilt in three years as president of fraternity. I had won writing awards. I'd done like a bunch. Like, I'd done everything, you know, I mean, I was in. I was vice president of powerlifting team, like every club, all the stuff I could possibly do. Yeah. Finished. Yeah. While. While still being president. And did it in three years. Right. And got a management consulting job. That was like a good job. Had all the credibility and it just. I knew it wasn't enough and I knew that. And so I knew that the choice for me was that I either had to die to him or I had to die to myself.

Wow.

And that was ultimately, like the choice that. That I put in front of myself. And that was whenever I was like, maybe I should just. I was like, die to him or die to you. And so that was what gave me the confidence to break that. And then I physically moved because I couldn't be in the same area. Wow. So I actually.

23 at this point, or 20.

So I called my dad when I was like, in Ohio, and I'm from Baltimore, so I'm like, how? I called him when I was there and I was like, hey, by the way, I'm doing the gym thing. He was like, okay, it's like, why don't you come over, we'll talk about it. Because he knew. Because he knew that, like, if he came over with enough battering, I would be like, fine. I know this is smart thing. I'll take the gym. You know, I'll apply to, you know, Booth and Harvard, whatever, and I'll get the. I'll do that whole thing. And that. Because that was a cycle. I just kept doing that, and I was just like, no, I'm not going to do it. So I was like, well, I can't. I'm in Ohio. He was like, what do you mean? And then the tone totally shifted, and he was like, you always do these crazy things, and you're always like. He's like, you're never balanced. It's always extreme with you. There's no middle path.

Blah, blah, blah.

And so anyways, I. You know, I did that five years, gyms, lost it all anyways, and then started gym launch, and then that's when. And then that really took off.

Sure.

And then. But when he called me and he played, apologized, and this is where I, like, you know, I'm ashamed of myself. But, like, I could have just let it lie and been like, thanks. Appreciate it, you know.

What'd you do instead?

Instead I said, I was like, you know, when people get up on stage and they're like, hey, you know, they get awards and they're like, hey, mom and Dad, I just want to say thanks so much for always believing me. I was like, I won't say that.

Oh, my gosh.

I was like. Because you never did. I was like, the only time you accepted me, I was like, is once every other person on this planet had accepted it, too.

Oh, my gosh, man.

And so that's. So I said that.

Intense on the phone. He said that?

Yeah.

What do you say to that?

He said, well, we'll see how long it lasts.

Oh, my gosh.

So that was.

He's still kind of in competition with you.

Yeah. And to be fair, when he apologized, he said, you know, I'm sorry. He said, but in my defense, if it had been in my time, I would have been right. And so, you know, but all that to say, like, I should have just said, like, appreciate the apology, you know, thank you. Because, you know, Tony Robbins said something that I thought was really impactful was, like, for the vast majority of my life, it's been, like, how my father shaped me or whatever. But rather than thinking, like, what can I use from this dynamic? Like, what gift do I have?

Yeah, like, from his mother kind of, like, beating him or whatever.

Yeah, exactly. Like, what do I. Like, what do I. You know, they're blaming for the good. Right? And so, like, I have so many things to blame for good from that, and I'm very, very happy with my life. That is why $20,000 a month didn't feel significant to me, because the goal that I had, my expectations weren't to make money. My expectation was that I had to make more than he had ever made. And so I had a very big vacuum to drive towards, which I think in a lot of ways was a gift. Because, like, I blew past 100,000amonth, 500,000amonth, million a month. Like, I blew past those things because, like, it was never about having enough money for me. It was about feeding this monster. But once I got there, I realized that what I had done was set up a game to win by my father's rules. And so then I.

And you could never win.

Right. And to be fair, would I want to win a game that I was. Wasn't for me, it was making you suffer.

Sure, you're playing the wrong game.

I'm playing his game. And so I did win, but I wanted his game, not mine.

Right, Right.

And so that was kind of what I think making that realization was. It was kind of the. The slow shift that happened from there.

So when you won the financial game or the game of, like, I've made more than you in a month or year than you've made your whole lifetime, how did that make you feel? And when did you realize you needed to start playing a different game? And what would that game become?

Okay, there was three questions there. What was the first one?

How did it make you feel the moment you crossed the finish line of the game of making so much more than he'd ever made in a short amount of time?

Relief, because we actually got our relationship back. Not like, you know, I wouldn't say we have, like, sunshine and rainbow, but, like, we have a functioning relationship. I would say it's role based. Like, I'm a fu, you know? But what happened was we are both very, like, strong personalities. And it wasn't until I think that he accepted me as alpha in our relationship that we were able to kind of, like, move forward again. Because before that, because my dad's. He's a doctor, so he's always had, you know, like, decent money. And I wanted to be beholden to no one, you know what I mean? Including him. Like, I didn't want his money. I didn't want anything, you know, and so I think I had to establish my own. I had to, like, really plant my own flag to be Seen as a man in his eyes. And so I think once that happened, I think I felt there was some level of, like, there's no conflict here anymore. Like, this is undeniable. This is beyond reproach.

Yes.

I have an attractive wife who's really nice and awesome. I have a business. I'm in good shape. And if you think about it, like, the way, I mean, I'm just being really real with you. I blame my father for the many things that I have become in a lot of ways. Right. Because everything that was not perfect was criticized. Right. And so, like, I've had a six pack since I was 15. Wow. And it was because he used to always criticize everyone who was overweight and being that they're undisciplined and they don't try hard. Right. And then I've, you know, like. And then it was, like, about having pretty good, nice, everything perfect women. Right. Not just pretty, but, like, everything has to be perfect. Right. And then. And then making lots and lots of money. And so it's like all of these elements. I had to max out to, again, win it that game. And. But my whole life was designed to be bulletproof. Was that so that I just wouldn't be criticized? And so that was because that was what I just. I knew that if I could criticize myself harder than anyone could, then if they did say anything, it was never as mean as what I would say to me.

What's the meanest thing you say to yourself?

Oh, like, it's all around just not being good enough right now. I mean. Oh, not now, not now. But I was. Yeah, 100%. And it was. It was about being. To be fair. The actual thing would just be being weak. And so it was all about strike.

Mentally, emotionally, physically weak, financially, Everything.

Literally just weak.

That's how you felt?

Yes.

You felt powerless for most your 20 teens and 20s, for sure.

And so everything that I did was to counteract that. Right. Like, what can I do?

Get as big and strong as I can get.

Yeah.

Yeah. I'm gonna make as much money as possible, have all the women I can get. Yeah, exactly.

100%. And I was. And so I pushed against that to try and to quell that, you know, that. That need or that desire, that feeling.

Did it satiate that need when you had all those things?

Yes and no. Yes. Because when I got there, it forced me to change my perspective. The perspective is what changed the way I felt. Basically realizing that those things were never going to solve anything is what allowed me to But Les Brown, I think says this where he says, like, everyone knows that money doesn't make happiness, but everyone's like, I'll see for myself, you.

Know what I mean?

And so I think it was one of those, like, I had to cross all the like. And I say this not as a slight to anyone else, but like, I had to check off the easy ones from the list, which is like getting in shape, getting the good wife, getting the money in the business, all that stuff. Like, those are circumstantial. That means I can push with enough effort, I can change my conditions, I can change my surroundings, in my environment. And if I can change those things, will they make me feel better? And so I think once I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that didn't work. People who are poor, in my opinion, spend a lot of time not doing stuff. And that sounds terrible to say, but like, at the base level, they're distracted. They're not. They're not doing the right stuff, right? Well, I would even say not doing anything, just distracting them, playing video games, Netflix, et cetera, you know, all that stuff, right? So they've got, there's like the basis, like, they don't do anything. They're purely distracting themselves from their current state, which is hard because it's hard to confront reality. If you're like, not happy, it's easier to distract yourself. Right? Now, the level above that is you've got people who are operating, they are working every day, but they're operating in low leverage opportunities. So they're doing things that do not give them a lot of return on their time. And so it's like, I could work. It doesn't matter how many hours I work at McDonald's. It's very, very difficult to become wealthy there. It's just near impossible, right? Versus like, you could buy a building for $10 million and then sell it to somebody else for 11, you know, for $11 million, just get the contract and make a million dollars on the exchange. Super high leverage, right? From a time perspective, which is crazy for somebody who doesn't have money to even contemplate something like that. But the only way that that happened and that required no money is skill, right? And so like, that's an example of like, it didn't require money to make that money. That's skill that's required to do that. And so first is the time, right? People are not doing stuff with the time that they have, or they're doing low leverage activities with the time they have, and then they're not trying to increase their output per unit time, which means investing in their skill set. So like one of the easiest ways to gain leverage on your time. And when I say leverage just for everybody, like leverage is the difference between inputs and outputs in a system. So you know, Archimedes said, if you give me a lever long enough, I can move the world. And so the same degree, if you have enough skills, you can do anything. Right. And so skills give you leverage on your time so you get more out of each unit of time. So if I'm a master cold caller, I will get more sales and calls booked for the same unit of time that somebody who sucks at it, same time, more output. Right.

Because they developed a skill at a masterful level, 100%.

And so when people are allocating their time, they're not by percentage, they're kind of like consuming their time rather than investing their time. So they're either doing nothing or they're consuming the time rather than putting time into getting higher returns on their time. Which is education. Right. And so education you can have from like the conceptual learnings, watching stuff like this or, and, or the actual doing. Right. And so, you know, you learn taking.

Action, failing, messing up, you know, feeling like an embarrassment in the actions. Yeah.

The first thousand cold calls you make, the first thousand cold emails you do, the first thousand doors you knock on, the first thousand, you know, like you'll learn more from that than you'll learn from every single book you read up to that point on the concept. Like you'll learn. Right. And so people don't allocate nearly enough time to that in the beginning. And so I think one of the things that the formal education system did really well that people poo poo on it is the idea of going into debt to gain education is something that fundamentally makes sense.

Yes, but it's got to be the right education that can make you money.

You got to get a return on it. That's the issue. Right. You have to get a return on it because like the idea of borrowing from a future self that can make more money to pay for the thing that you're getting the skill for makes total sense. I think Elon was saying something about how neuralink in the future it's gonna be such a competitive advantage that they could price it at whatever they want because once you have it, you'll be so much more able than anyone who doesn't have it that you could so easily pay off the price of the thing. That's how it should work. Conceptually right.

Crazy.

So education is supposed to work. Yes. And so I, like, this is the simplest example that I have. So a friend of mine has a 17 year old daughter, she got a job at a bowling alley and she makes minimum wage. And he said, why don't you become a phlebotomist? She was like, well, I don't want to spend the money. He's like, it's 500 bucks and it's a two day certification. And then after you have that, you make $25 an hour. So she didn't have the money. Now she could save it to get the $500, right. Or she could take a loan for the 500 bucks and pay it back in a week. Right. Because she has higher earning capacity. And so it was like she could, she could either save for eight weeks from her bowling alley to pay the 500, or she could take a loan for the 500, do the two days and then pay it off in a week. So at that one week, she now has seven more weeks of earning capacity. This is a micro example, right? Seven weeks of earning capacity at her new level and she'd be net positive on the next seven weeks of earnings. And so that's just a micro example of what skill investing does. And so that, because a lot of us talk about like, you gotta get educated, you gotta learn stuff. And like you learn stuff by doing it. And a lot of times you pay for that education or access to people who can teach you those skills. Cause a lot of people aren't gonna give it to you for free. And that makes sense. It's okay. Like it took them time to learn the thing and they compressed that time to give it to you. So I mean, that's why I'm like, if there's one thing that's my life's mission, it's education.

And so I was telling my coaching students last night on a call that I have with them that I have multiple coaches that someone was asking about mentors. Like, how do you find mentors? How often you stay in touch with them? And I was like, listen, when I was broke, whatever was 15 years ago, just getting started in this space, I was lucky enough that I had a couple local mentors in Columbus, Ohio that kind of had pity on me. But they saw that I had this hunger, this desire. I was like, I'll do whatever you tell me to do.

Yeah.

And then I came back two weeks later and I was like, I did it. Here's the results, here's why I failed. And that's a fuel for mentors to be like, I gave you wisdom, you took action, you got results. I'll give you some more feedback, but if you just keep asking and you don't act. We talked about this with a mutual friend. We have. It's frustrating for a mentor. They don't want to give you that time.

No.

And I told them, I go, this is why I pay mentors. You know, there's a big guy in media that has a massive business that I message him, I'm an acquaintance with him. I said, hey, I would love to pay you for some coaching. He said, I'll just do it for you for free for 30 minutes. Now I want to pay him because I want to be able to do it more frequently. He said, I'll give it to you for 30 minutes because he likes me. We're friendly, but I know I can't call upon him for 30 minutes every week. So now I'll go back in six months and say, I took action on everything you said in that 30 minutes. Here's our results. Can we do another call?

Yeah.

And that's kind of like what you can expect with a mentor is that type of opportunity unless you have a serious bond and they just want to give with their time. But investing in it, like you said, is so much more powerful and getting that speed of information, in my opinion.

Totally the single highest return on investment thing I've ever done. And not to sound trite here, but I just like using scenarios like if I had taken all the money that I had spent on coaching, mentorships, courses, workshops, seminars, and put that in the S&P 500 when I, you know, 10 years ago. Right. The amount that I would have right now is inconsequential compared to what I currently have. And it's because I invested in something different. So rather than investing in the S&P 500, I invested in the S&P 500. So I took all of the excess cash that I had every single month and rather than saying like, oh, I'm at a dollar cost average, you know, long term, I wait four years, whatever. I was like, I just don't make enough money. So, like, I could be the millionaire next door who saves every penny, doesn't go to Starbucks for my entire Life and have $2 million when I. I'm old or whatever for the last 10.

Years of my life.

Right. And literally enjoy nothing during that period of time. That doesn't sound like this. It's not a trade I wanted to make. And so I Had a belief that I know I will work hard, and if I'm given the right tools, I will be able to implement them. And so I took all my extra money. And this is kind of. You know, a lot of people might not necessarily agree with me on this, but it worked for me. So I put all of every dollar I had, even went into debt, to get access to communities and mentors and coaching programs, masterminds. And those were the biggest gifts of all. And it wasn't even just like the biggest gifts I got from those wasn't even the education, but it was the perspectives on reality. It was people disproving things that I thought to be true. So I was like, this is the way the world is. And they're like, that's false. And my whole paradigm shifted because I just. I had distortions of reality. I thought reality was different than it was. And so right now, for people who are poor, it's because they actually don't see. See reality for what it is. Because the way they see reality, they see making money to be impossible or incredibly difficult or it's only for a certain select people, not for them. Right? It's just because they literally cannot see it. And so I'm trying to think of an example of when you can see something that easier. Examples like kids and parents, right? Like, a kid thinks the world is a certain way, and the parents, like, you just haven't seen enough stuff yet. And so as you level up in the entrepreneur space, there's also just more levels of that where other people are like, this is the perspective you need to have. And you're like, no way that's possible. And so that's where those rooms gave me the highest roi, the other skills. Because there's so many people there that are trying to learn the same things. They already said, hey, get this program. Read this book. And so they helped sift through the amount of information that's out there. Because I only have one resource, which is time at that time, right? And so it's like, okay, I'll spend it, but where do I spend it? And they were like, okay, if you want to learn real estate, these are the top three guys. You can join this Facebook group, get into this guy's community. You can. He has a coaching program that helps you do wholesaling. This guy's a coach that does Airbnb. This guy, you know, like. And so it's like, which one do I choose? The answer for everybody who's curious is do them all. Because you're just like, you're not. Like, people are like, which one should I do? I'm like, you're not going to be poorer by learning more, Right? Right. And then it's not like you have a finite capacity to learn. The more you learn, the better you get at learning. Right? And then the more lines and synergies you find between different skill sets and.

Opportunities, the more dangerous you become. 100%, you just learn cold calling, but you didn't also learn, you know, copywriting and email marketing or speaking on stage. You know, it's the combination of multiple skills that make your earning power so much greater.

I get. I'm literally getting goosebumps, dude. I love it. It's the compound. And so I have this example. I break down Jay Z, right? And so if you look at Jay Z in the beginning, like, he had, you know, he probably had a natural proclivity for rhyming and beat or rhythm, whatever, right? So that was his first, like, kind of skill. He probably practiced that a little bit because he was into it, right? And then he started rapping, right? So that was his first level skill. And then he learned, you know, writing lyrics, and it's like, okay, so that's another producing, right? Exactly. Then he learned producing, and then he learned marketing, and then he learned performing.

On stages or something.

Yes. And then he learned how to sign other people to his. How to start a label, and he started learning. And so with each of these skills, it wasn't one plus one. It was like, one plus one plus one equals 10, right? And so, like, in a formal world, like, the world that's not rap. Like, if someone's good at math, they can learn accounting or bookkeeping first, right? It's like, okay, that's a level one skill. Then you learn accounting, okay, now you're making more. And then you learn how insurance works, and you're like, oh, okay, now you can start to see this person evolve. And then you learn how tax and tax efficiencies work. And you're like, oh. And then you learn how to. How to package and sell businesses and negotiate those deals with, you know, private equity and things like that. All of a sudden, that's a cfo. That's somebody who's making multiple million dollars a year. But it's the same basic few skills that stack on top of each other and get disproportionate returns on all the prior skills with each new additional skill. And so the idea is not like, people ask the wrong question when they're like, which course should I Buy. Which program should I do?

It's yes, yes.

Do them all.

Yes.

Yeah, you want, like is each one of them, you will learn things and there's going to be either different ways that they, someone's teaching. They'll have different communities, they'll have different beliefs. You'll learn from all of them.

And this is something, I think you'll hear this sometimes where people say, well, I just invested in this program. I don't know if I have the time to invest in this next course or read this book or whatever it is. And you got to think of like, I believe, you know, I'm doing five, six interviews a week where I'm constantly learning. You know, every time you come on, I learn something new. It's not like there are things that confirm what I already know, but I'm also learning new things. It's not like I've said after 10 years of doing this, I don't need to learn anymore. I don't have any more time to learn. It's so important for me to develop as a human being and that's why I'm constantly learning. People need to sit down and do interviews with people all day long. They can learn in different ways. But I don't think the investment ever ends in how much you can learn.

And it compounds.

Compounds.

That's the best part.

What would you say are the three main skills for someone to want to have the potential of being a six or seven figure earner that they need to start learning now? So 20, 23, they have that potential.

In my opinion, there's three main skills in business in general. Got to learn how to sell, gotta learn how to build. You learn how to lead. The easiest and best questions in sales in my opinion are what are you afraid of if you sign up? What are you afraid of having happen?

I lose my money or I don't lose the weight or.

Yeah, yeah, right, exactly. Well then what do you think would have to happen in order for that to happen?

Right. Well, I don't show up, I don't do the work.

Well then what would you need to see in order to feel like that wasn't going to happen? Because at the end of the day you do know you need to work out and do all this stuff to lose weight. Right? Right. Okay, so that's fixed. So then what would you need to see from us to make sure that you feel good about taking the decision? Because like, you can just always just take it apart and get to the point where like, you know, what if someone just Texted me. It's like, well, that's part of the program, right?

This is the weekly check in.

Yeah, totally. And we do have that. What do you know? Oh, I didn't know that. Okay, fantastic. Let's get you. Because sometimes you can't mention every single thing feature you possibly have on every sale, which is one of the benefits of one on one and one of the drawbacks, right? It's like you can cater it, but at the same time you don't want to take the whole time. And I'll give everybody in the audience two really easy ones if you're starting your business. Number one is the reason close, which I use all the time, which is whatever reason they tell you that they don't want to do it is the very reason they should do it. Like, I don't want to do it because I think my spouse is really controlling. I think the reason that you should do it is because your spouse is really controlling. Because you need to control of your life. I think that I don't have time to do it. I think that that's the very reason that you should be doing this. You need to get your time back, right? Because you're trying to do this business program, right? And currently are you working all day? They're going to say yes, because everyone thinks they're working all day. Like you're working all day. Okay, well then obviously what you're doing now isn't working. So the first thing we're going to do is cut out all the stuff that's not working and then you're going to have all this time to do the program that's micro. So the macro is the one I said earlier. Micros. That's the second one for time. There you go for everyone in the audience. And so with the reason close, it's just whatever reason they present with, just say, totally understand you don't have money. That's the. How long you want that to be an excuse of why you can't do things in your life. That's the very reason you should be doing this more than anyone, right? It's like when someone says, this is a lot of money to me, right? This is really expensive. And then you would normally say like, this is a lot to you, right? And they say, yeah, like, well, you know what? That's the perfect reason to do it. Because there's people every single day who come in here and they buy this thing and the money means nothing to them. But the thing that makes, the thing that makes you successful is that this is a lot of money to you. And the only reason that this won't work is if you don't do the work. And if this means a lot to you, then you're more likely to be successful than anyone else here. Wow. And so when you say that, it's true and it helps overcome the people, because a lot of times, like, I spent a lot of money early on by percentage of my net worth on skills and acquisition education. And it is scary, but it's 100% what you need to do when you're starting out. It's the fastest route to getting to where you want to go is buying the lessons from people ahead of you. And so that's the reason close that you can use in all those different situations. And the other one is one that I'm working on. I'm trying to figure out, like a skeleton key for closing because it's something like, I just love this stuff. But it's like a hypothetical close. So whatever they present with, you get a hypothetical yes. And then you. And then you walk backwards. So if someone's like, I'm just not sure, you say, well, if the program were perfect, would you do it? They're like, well, yeah, I would do it. If it were perfect, they're like, cool. Then what's the difference between what we've got and perfect?

Right?

And usually they can't generate many ideas anyways. And they're like, I don't. A lot of times they're like, well, I don't know. And you're like, right, so then it's not that. So let's talk about what's really like worrying you. What are you afraid of? Right? And then we can confront the real stuff, right?

The fears, the insecurities, total doubt.

Same thing with. But like, you can use that for any of them. It's like, I don't have time. Well, if you did have time, would you do it? Okay, well, how much time would. So if you did have. So they get the yes. It's like, well, how much time do you think you need? And then they're going to say something like, did you know that it's actually one tenth of that is what you're actually going to need. Oh, I didn't know that. And we already got the yes. So they're already committed with commitment and consistency. They're already committed to the yes that they just said. And so it's really hard that if they. It's like, cool. If you had the time, would you do it? Yes. Cool. Now they gave us one problem to solve, and all we have to do, especially if you sell services. Yeah, it's like, cool. So all I have to do is solve this one problem for you because I just got you to say yes. Because that also ties them down to not any other objections. They still might, but it's much harder for them to go back on that to a no. Yeah.

Now, one of the things that I've heard you talk about a lot and also you just shared right here, is developing skills and acquiring skills over the last decade. That's something that I've been obsessed with since I was a teenager is acquiring skills. Because I didn't feel like I wasn't enough, I wasn't smart enough, talented enough, all those things. So I wanted to become those things by acquiring those skills and investing in them. What would you say are the three main skills? If you could only learn three to reach your first million, what would those be?

I mean, the reach of the first million is you just have to sell something to someone. So it's just sales.

Sales.

It's just sales. You can just make a million just doing sales. Like, you don't even have to sell your own products. You can just do a million dollars just selling.

Right.

And in order to make more in sales, you sell stuff that's more expensive. That's it. Like, learn how to sell and then find the most expensive thing you possibly can to sell and then sell that. That's how you. That's it. And I will tell this to everybody who's like, not sure. The more expensive it is, the easier to sell. Really?

Why is that?

Because you're dealing with better people. Like, you probably had a consulting client that pays you 50 grand is like, oh, yeah, by the way, I sent the wire yesterday.

Yeah.

Whereas the $50 person's like, well, what exactly am I going to be getting with this program? You know what I mean? It's just. It's a different person. You know what I mean? You're dealing with a different avatar. And from an actual selling perspective, almost every sales same regardless. So you might as well just do the sales that you're getting paid $5,000 for rather than the sales you're getting $20 for. Like I learned. And the one thing that I will say is that if you're starting out with the intention to develop the skill of sales, sell in the highest volume environment possible. That's why a lot of. I think some of the best salespeople are fitness people. Because so many people, you know, you work at LA fitness, you get 25 memberships a day that you're, I mean you're sitting on 25 consults a day. And I did that for five years, you know, four years every day, 20 plus consults every. I was in LA Fitness at my own gym. But like so like you get, there's just so much unconscious competence that you develop at that point. Like and those, the time and the money, like those things become so ingrained.

In how you second nature.

Yeah. And your language patterns and it gives you power in all different areas of your life. So sales is number one. You might want to develop the skill in a high volume environment, but understand that that's not, you might make some money doing that, but the goal will then be to sell massive buildings, sell super expensive cars, sell yachts, sell jets, you know what I mean? Sell huge software packages to enterprise software. All of these are roles that you can make for 400amillion dollars a year doing. So that's where you want. And that's a million income. Not even gross, that's a million income. But if you just want to make a million dollars, just reverse out a million dollars and just do it looking at daily. So it's 3,300 a day, whatever. Roughly. And so at that point it's like, okay, well I can sell three fifteen hundred dollar things and I'll be over it. I can sell one five thousand dollars thing, I can sell, you know what I mean? Or you could sell $3,300 things and it's just which of those sounds easier? They're different, you know. And I will say that I have this desire maybe in the future to like look at some sort of entrepreneurial personality type where like I do believe that businesses are an extension of the entrepreneur in terms of like their personality. Their thumbprint is on it based on just how it works. And so like I've met guys who do super high volume, really low ticket transaction and they, they're a little different than the guys who sell ultra high ticket like service based stuff. And so yeah, and so I think, and I've seen people really successful on both sides, but I do think that the more expensive the ticket in general, the less operational complexity there is. You still have to take, if you're going to take 10 sales calls, you might as well make them worth all.

Exactly right. I have two final questions for you, but before I ask them, I want people to get your book. It's really inspiring. $100 million offers. How to make offers so good people feel stupid saying no which is a great tagline as well. So make sure you guys get a few copies of this. And also go to acquisition.com right. Which is the main business that you're running right now, acquisition.com and so when's the right time to acquire a business?

If you're a small it depends on whether you're going for majority or minority. That's the huge, that's the huge lever here. So there's the what you're trying to buy and then there's the life cycle of the business. So it's like if you're trying to buy a majority then you want to get it before it's paid peak. Right. And you want to have it when it's already established with a good leadership team and you want to make sure that you can pull the entrepreneur out and still functions. Like that's how we were able to sell the companies that we had. And that's what we do with acquisition.com companies that we actually. So we buy minority.

Minority.

Yeah, exactly. So we buy minority.

What's minority? 10, 20, 30%.

20, 30 is usually the stakes like we need to be invested enough to care and usually the companies are between three and I think 36 million is the biggest one. So three we don't really have anything. I think the smallest we have right now is 6. But 6 million to 35ish million is kind of the range. And we have seven companies in the portfolio. And so for those companies we buy them because we think they can get better, we think we can grow them and we think that we can put a team in place and we can transition from face based branding to a brand based business so that it is sellable. And then what happens is interesting there is that we might triple the revenue of the business but we might 30x the enterprise value because it's not valuable if you're just Johnny Teacher or whatever. Which we do mostly Internet businesses because we know how to transition from being the personality brand who teaches some sort of niche skill like we talked about earlier into teaching the same thing but being like salon university or being plumber U or gym launch, you know, like those are all like very specific niche skills that provide real value to people. So almost the entire portfolio except for one is eLearning. That's because we're huge education people. I like the business. I also like the impact the margins. I love the cash flow. It's a low capex business. It's very inflation responsive in that we can always adjust prices very easily. There's real impact on people's lives compared to a four year degree, you've got a great price anchor and alternative. And I think the education, my thesis is that education is becoming increasingly fragmented just like media has. And it's just catching up. The fact that all of these quote gurus exist is a telltale sign that more and more people are not going to college because they don't see the value. And I think they're right in that, in that assessment. And so Rather than spend $100,000, $200,000 over four years or $50,000 over four years, you could spend a quarter of that and get that way more tactical training that can replace your entire income. And so in terms of, for us we look for companies that are growing, that are cash flow positive, that are typically elearning or Internet businesses that have, that have really good products. So ideally somebody who really knows who is good at the thing that they teach, which sounds silly, but you also know that there's lots of people who don't have that. And if we have those things, we on average triple the profit of the business within a year anyways. So we're very like when we have our very narrowly defined avatar which is doing 3 million or more, so 250amonth or higher, that's just to be considered. Usually they're at like the, usually like five to a million a month. 500,000amillion a month is usually when you take them on, that's our sweet spot. And then we can ramp them and then with regards to majority it kind of goes back to like I personally, I think long term we're going to try and figure out a way to maybe raise a fund so I can help all of the founders take some cash on the table and maybe do some sort of conglomeration thing because it's all E learning which would be cool. Or we might have them sell off individually. It's really up to the founder because we're, and this is kind of cool for me because like I'm really just there to support them and we recruit the key players for them and because we have the reputation we have, we have so much more reach and leverage, we can find the people that will help them so much easier than they can. And so that's how we can build these things into enterprises so quickly and we can get outsized returns. And so that's, that's what we do.

That's cool. And do you guys teach also how people can acquire a company on your site as well?

We don't, no. The, the Courses on the site correspond with the books. So the book has a free course that comes with it. It's on the site, you can go through. It has all the downloads, everything. The ebook is 99 cents on Kindle. I think it has 5,000, I think five star reviews on Amazon. Who's counting? Who's counting? But it's 99 cents. I wanted to make it affordable for anyone. I think that the hard copy is a little more. But I wanted to. I've got people from Nigeria and India being like, I could afford this thing so much. So that's. And I know they're probably never going to become acquisition.com right, right, right. But yeah, if you're a UA space company and you're e learning, we're always happy to see how we can.

We'll have to have you come on another time. If you guys wanted to come back on to talk about how to acquire a smaller company and teach that process, then let me know in the comments below on YouTube if you're interested in learning that. But acquisition.com Alex Hormozi on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. Your YouTube's blown up your Facebook as well. But you're doing what daily? Almost daily. YouTube now use shorts.

Shorts Daily. Yeah, we do the shorts daily on Instagram. TikTok, YouTube. We're on Twitter. We have a podcast that's actually grown a lot. Oh wow. Yeah.

What's the podcast called? I didn't even know you. The Game. The Game. Okay, I see more of your YouTube stuff.

Yeah, it's the game. Yeah, the game is the podcast. It's just me. Just me. Just talk about whatever. Check that out. They're same style as YouTube in terms.

Of short, 15 minute stuff.

Yeah, exactly. And yeah, then we also have LinkedIn.

We're everywhere now.

Trying to be Lewis House.

The Twitter's everywhere.

Yeah, the Twitter's. Yeah. The Twitterverse and the Metaverse.

I love it. Yes. Make sure you follow you everywhere. We'll have it all linked up. This is a question I ask everyone at the end called the three Truths. So imagine it is your last day and Maybe you've surpassed 83. Maybe you're 120 or something. Extended the life as long as you can. And you've lived your life, you've accomplished the things you want to, even though they don't matter anymore. You've made all the money, but you've given it all away because it doesn't matter anymore. And no one has access to your content or information for whatever reason. It goes with you, everything. The books, the videos, all this stuff goes with you. This interview, gone. And you can only share three things with the world. Three lessons that you've learned from your entire life.

Yeah.

What would be those three lessons or three truths that you would share?

Give first and without expectation, and you'll get more than you can imagine in all aspects of life. One, if you can't do it forever, don't do it for a day. And probably something to the extent of, if nothing matters, then you get to decide what matters. So use the power wisely. That's good, man.

What's the thing you love about her the most?

She's made of steel. She's. Leila's just unbreakable. So, like, I'll tell you the two moments in our marriage that like. Or we weren't married yet, but the two moments that, like, defined her to me. So one was in. We were probably nine months into dating, maybe. No, not even maybe. Like, six months into. We're six months into dating. And I had lost everything. Again, standard Alex move, right? Just lose everything. And she had to go launch a gym, and she had to absolutely crush it. And I was so stressed out because at this moment in time, I had the six gyms. I had a chiropractor agency, a dentist agency, and I had the launch business where we're actually, like, flying out and doing launches. I think I had one more thing. I can't remember what it was, but eight different businesses that I was owning. I made no money, obviously, because I had eight businesses, right? And I was just. I was too stressed to function. That was the only way I could describe it. It's like I was not present at all ever. I was just thin. I just. I was so spread thin. She walked in the office one day, I didn't look up, and she was like, do you want me to be here? And I was like, you can do whatever you want. And she was like, well, are you. Do you want to break up? And I was like, yeah, that's fine.

Really.

And so she said, okay, that's fine, you know, and she had quit her job to do this with me. So it had been five months. Like, she quit everything. She'd built up a personal training business that was doing really well, and she got rid of all our clients so she could come do these launches. Wow. Five months in, I was like, you know, I can't. Whatever. And so she went to Hawaii to do this launch, which was going to be a really big launch. And I was betting big on this Thing because.

So she's still working with you, but not in a relationship with you.

Yeah. So we've actually like, work is the thing that is our first language. It came naturally to us. And so she went there and I had. I think I lost all the money for the seventh reason in a row. Right. And I had like 10 grand left. And we needed to make like $100,000 in that month or I was gonna get behind. So it was 10 grand to get her there for 30 days in Hawaii because hotels are insane. And I was like, you, you need to crush this. Even though we just broke up.

Oh my gosh.

You need to crush this. Like, you need to crush this. That's like all I can say. And she flew there and she set every sales record that we had when she got there and did 100 something thousand in cash collected and she killed it. And when she came back, I had a coach that I was like meeting with during the time she was gone. He was like, look at the stats of your life. He's like, are you in better shape now that she's here? He's like, are you making more money now that she's here? Are you like. And to be fair, like, in general, I was still doing better because I had started the launch business. Like, I was, you know, I was like, yeah. And he's like, I think she's a very good thing in your life. And I was like, okay. And so anyway, she came back and she crushed it when virtually every other person that I know would have either not gone, like, screw you, I'm out of this. Or just wilted under the pressure because I put a lot. I was like, you need. I was like, this is the last money I have. Like, you have to. To crush this.

And I don't care about you intimately anymore.

And I don't get it. And so she killed it. And then she came back. And then two or three months later, of course, I lost all that money again. And then. And so then at this point, now we're sleeping at her parents house and.

You'Re not in a relationship.

No. So we got back together when she came back. So when she came back together. Yeah, that was like. I was like, you're awesome. Like, you stood tall when everything else was crumbling. Like, let's keep doing this. Yeah. And so this leads me probably to probably the core point of Laila is that. And I don't know if it's all relationships, but at least the way this one is compared to every other relationship I've had. Is that I respected her first. And I don't think I had.

God, that's so key.

Like, I don't. And I say this not as any. I've loved a lot of people in the past, but I don't think I respected them to the same degree. And I think part of that is because it was harder for me to respect them because. Because I didn't have a shared arena to witness it in. It would be like, maybe for me, I might not have been able to respect an athlete, maybe. Maybe because it's just not a game I understand as well as, like a business game. I'm maybe just saying that I can appreciate excellence, who knows? But I respected her, and her opinion mattered to me. A lot of times I would feel like someone's opinion, like, yeah, it matters, but, like, I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do. You know what I mean? My opinion matters more. Her opinion I valued equally or even higher than mine in many occasions because I trust her gut. She has an amazing instinct with people especially. And so I respected her first. And the second time that happened was I'm sleeping in her parents house, Winner that I am.

She's 24, 25, 27.

No, I'm 27. Yeah, 26 or 27. Sleeping in her parents. She's 23, 24. And they gave me like the spare kids bedroom. So I'm like in this little desk, you know what I mean? Like, the little chair cramped up and I'm like, this is like make believe, except it's a real business. And we had this horrible day where we lost like $150,000. And it was. And I just saved, like, everything was turning around. Everything was turning around for us. We lived there just to like, kind of save some money.

Yeah, yeah.

But the first month of getting rid of all those businesses that I had and just focusing just on gym launch, we did 100,000, we did 200,000, 300,000. So, like, things were turning around, and I was like, okay, this is happening. And then we got 150,000 refunds, which is pretty much all the profit I made. And it was because a couple of the gyms that we had launched basically told all the customers to refund and then sign back up through them for half the price.

Oh, my God.

So it's like, I go to a gym, we pay for everything. The hotels, the flights, the marketing, the sales guy. And let's say we sell 100 people at 500 bucks, we make $50,000. Right? Just for example, they would say hey, 100 people. Now that they're gone, that's annoying. That's messed up. It was a flawed model, you know what I mean? And I could lament it, but I was not operating within the context of human incentives. There was a huge incentive to not be ethical. Right. And so we lost 150 thousand, which was all my savings again. And at that moment I had already lost everything like three times since I'd been with her. It had been like 11 months at this point. I think at that point, 10 months because we got married in May and it was 13 months since we had met. And so I just looked at her and I'm like in her parents room or whatever and I said, listen, I'm a sinking ship and if you want to get out, I was like, I will have absolute respect for you. We will be like, we're cool. Like, I will hold nothing against you because I, like, I clearly am not good at this. And that's where she was like, I would sleep with you under a bridge if it came to that. And so that was when.

That was before you're married or.

Yeah, that was before we were married. And so that was when. And like, you know, I think the dedication in that book says. Or actually, well, I might be spoiling it, but I think the next book says, you saw the light in me.

It's a strong My ride or die. I couldn't do this without you. Yeah, that's right.

It's a very meaningful thing. But I don't know if I would have done it without her. You know what I mean? And so anyways, all that to say she stood tall when everything else was crumbling around me. And for that she has my eternal respect. And so as a result of that, that security, knowing that she, like, even when she didn't have to, she was there and she chose to be there alongside me because she believed that we could do this even when I ran out of belief. I think for that, that's. And that's, and to be fair, that was the first 11 months of our relationship. And so like since we got married, it's been super easy.

Yeah, really easy.

It has been like literally nothing was harder than the first year of our relationship. Of our relationship.

I mean, no, it's great. I'm assuming you wouldn't call yourself a marriage expert by any means, but you've been married five years. You've also know you have a lot of respect for older men who've been married for a long time. You've. I'm sure. Interviewed them and have mentors in that space. What do you think makes a strong marriage last more respect or love?

I mean, you know where I'm going with this one? Respect. Because I think that respect is based in logic. Love less so. And so I'll say it, I'll say it differently. I think that love has a lot, a strong emotional component. Some days like some days you feel like you love someone more than other days. Right. But respect doesn't change as much.

Consistent.

Because it's based on facts, it's based on evidence, it's based on I. The story I just told you will not change. That happens. Right. And so when emotions fade, logic remains, which is why I'm a big fan of logical selling, which is when someone is trying to make a decision, I do want to give them the logical reasons for why they should do that. Because when the emotions do fade, which they inevitably do about the decision that they made, what will remain is the logic. And the logic will carry you through the dips. But if you don't have a logical reason to be together, then when the emotions fade, that's when you have no reason to be together because the emotions are on and there's no logic. Right. And so I think that for the long term relationship, that's why the mission, the values and the interests. There's a lot of logical reasons for us to stay together. We have a million logical reasons together. We're partners in business, we love the same lifestyle, we're both in the fitness, we have all these huge stack of reasons for why we should stay together. And I think that if we can stack the reasons, and as a funny side note, with the length of marriage, the average married person spends two hours a day together, 45 of that is watching television. Average marriage, 35, 24. 24 minutes of that is housework. And then 35 minutes, sorry, 35 minutes is eating. And so 45 plus 25. So there's like 20 minutes that's not that of the two hours that is just being with someone. And so we have spent every hour of every day together for six years. And so I feel like in that way we've had a 50 year marriage. Right, exactly. From a time perspective. But anyways, just.

And where do you think you'd be without her or a marriage like hers that has supported you and thrived? Do you think it'd be as financially successful? Do you think it'd be you'd have more time to build your businesses or you feel like you'd have skills scattered Energy with lifestyle choices.

I don't know. I don't know if I would have learned the lessons that she's taught me. So if I had a similar marriage to the one that I have, I think it would be the same. If I didn't have a similar marriage to this one, I think I would have figured out the money thing was too important to me for me not to figure it out. It was just too important to me.

Because you had the discipline.

Yeah. And I. And the fitness thing, that was, that was always on lock. And so like the missing piece, I still probably would have had that longing to figure it out. Because I do. Because to your point, like all the people that I respect have been in 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 year marriages. And I think there's something about character. It speaks to someone's character when they've done something like that. And I think that was something that I wanted to have.

Yeah. What do you think? You're 32 now.

Yeah.

What do you think when you hit 40, the three biggest lessons will be that you will have learned or that you, if you could go into the future because you're really good at thinking 85 year old self and your 40 year old self was looking at you right now or in a room with you, talking to you, and he said, here are the three things you're really going to need to learn and try not to make these mistakes. What would those three lessons be, do you think, if you could go in the future?

Well, the first one that just jumps out at me was patience works. So that would be the first. I think I would have continuous reinforcement on the fact that the longer I wait for things, the better they are. The second one would be define your terms. Socrates says wisdom begins with a definition of terms. And so a lot of people make these goals but they don't know what the goal means. And so they're like, I want to be healthy, what does that mean? I want to be happy. What does that mean? We have to define our terms before we start trying to attack them or breaking them down. Which is why if you've ever heard any of my stuff, I, I tend to define terms a lot. So I think a definition of terms have to define your terms. And then third one of lessons that I think would probably still be because whenever I talk to my 85 year old self in my therapy sessions with myself, it's always just remembering to smell the flowers more. Because if I'm 20 years old or 30 years old and I would trade all the Millions. I have to be 20 again. Then that is the lesson. So I would trade everything that I have when I'm 40 to be 32. And so it's just like reminding myself.

Enjoy this now, this moment. Yeah.

Because I would trade everything to be here when I'm 40.

Right.

So like, if I can just. If I can just even get a tenth of that awareness in the present moment, if I can bring 10% of that future awareness to the present moment, that would be a success for me.

Can you break down really how to sell someone or how to enroll someone in your product or service who has a reason why they don't want to sign up?

Yes. So the baseline assumption is this person wants what you have. And so that's why at the beginning of every sale, you're always asking, what problem are we solving? Why are you here? What do you want? And sometimes you have to ask that question a lot of different ways to get someone to actually answer it. Because if someone says, why want to find out more? It's like they're not actually here to find out more. They're here because they want to solve a problem. So some just saying, well, what problem are you solving? It's an easier way to get to the core of the matter. And so once they admit they have a problem, then we can. So I'll give you approach it. Then I'll give you the back of napkin before I give you the one that we were talking about earlier. So the back of napkin sales scripting process that I have is called closer. And so it's an acronym, it's easier to remember. So the first thing C is clarify why they're there. Why are you here? Right. What brought you in today? Why'd you respond to the ad? Why'd you take time to take this call, whatever it is? Right. Clarify. We're there. You keep asking. So you get the right answer. If it's just information, it's like you're not hopping on 20 calls a day taking information, are you? No, of course not. Okay, what problem are we solving? Cool. Got that. Then L is label them with a problem. So that's where you're really repeating back to them. So let me just get this straight. So you're here because you're trying to lose weight and you are struggling to do so at current. Is that correct? Awesome. Okay, great. Then I think you're going to like what we have. So tell me. So then we go to. Okay, so CLO Closer O is overview their past experiences or past pains. So it's like, well, tell me what you've done so far to try and accomplish this. I'm assuming that's not the first person you've talked to. I'm assuming this isn't the first moment you realize you wanted to lose weight or you wanted to xyz, Right. And so then we go through what I call the pain cycle, which is like, okay, what did you do?

Tried this and this.

How did that work for you? What was good about it? What was bad about it? Great. What else have you done? And you go back through and each time it's like. And each time you affirm the person, you're like, that must have been been hard. Appreciate you sharing that. Just affirming and giving them positive reinforcement throughout the conversation. And that's just building rapport 101. Right? I understand how you feel. I felt the same way. My sister was like that too. I totally get where you're coming from. I know how that's difficult. Blah, blah, right? O S is then we sell the vacation. So now that we've exhausted all the pain, they're in the thick of the pain of remembering all the times they failed. And you're like, you know what? Given everything you said, I think you're going to be perfect for what we have. Can I tell you about it? So then you get permission to sell. And then when you sell, I like to have three main points that I hit. And I think it's because people remember threes very well. I know you've seen Russell stuff with webinar. Threes are remembered well. Same thing with values in a company. I think three people remember. It's easy to triangulate ideas. And so when we sell the points, a big part of this is not actually explaining the features. This is obvious. But I like giving short anecdotes that are easy to remember. So if I would say a word, like, we offer accountability for whatever program you sell, right? And that doesn't mean anything to anyone. So I want to give a quick story or anecdote to explain the concept. It's like, all right, well, we have three types of accountability. We've got peer to peer accountability, which is people are going to be walking with you shoulder to shoulder. You're going to have alumni accountability, which people have already finished, but they're just 12 weeks or 12 months ahead of you and they're cheering you on from the finish line. And then you have expert accountability. You have people who've helped a thousand people just like you get to where you want to Go, alright, so those are the three levels of accountability. If that doesn't make any sense, do you have a kid or were you ever a child? That always gets a laugh. They're like, ha, I was a kid. You're like, well, do you remember when your parents used to tell you to brush your teeth and you want to brush your teeth? No, I don't want to brush my teeth. Right. Like, of course. But then every night you'd still go brush your teeth even though you moaned about it. Do you brush your teeth now? They're like, yeah, well, that's an example of external accountability turning into internal habit. And so what we're going to do is we're going to be the initial parrot that'll tell you brush your teeth, but we're going to be able to transition to getting that internal combustion engine going by the end of this so that you're brushing your own teeth. Right, right. You can use the same thing with the seat belt. There's a million examples you can use. And so that would be a quick. Whatever that was. 90 second anecdote to explain point one and you same thing for point two, point three that you have of like, it's kind of like. And then you explain a little epiphany bridge or the story of how you realized it's important. And then they would say, like, that makes sense. Yes. Boom. You move to the second point. Make sense? Yes. Move to the third point and then it's. Then you go for the close, like, well, given X, Y and Z, I will tell you, this is extremely expensive. And the reason we say that is because it's even better than a price anchor. Because extremely expensive for everyone is expensive. If I said, hey, Louis, it's $500. Just kidding, it's $100, you might have thought $500 and $100 were both cheap. Right? But if I said it's really expensive, whatever I say next is going to either be actually expensive for you, in which case I braced you, which is actually more likely to close the sale, or it will be less than what you perceive as expensive. And you're like, oh, great. Because the problem that most people try and do when they sell is they try and minimize the thing they say next, but it actually has a counteractive effect. You say, it's actually not that much. It's only right. But when you say that, when you say only then, all of a sudden people expect low and then you rip their expectations. And so it's much better to set expectations here. But people are Afraid of doing that. But that's not how psychology works. So you set expectations sky high, you anchor, and then when you say reality, it either matches the braced person or it's much lower, which most cases it is. Right. Interesting. It's really expensive.

Does that work for webinar sales to mass or is that only better with one to one sales calls on webinars? Interesting, but one on one, let me know. I'm curious if that also can.

Well, I do know that from the infomercial world you price anchor high. So it would make sense to me that I would imagine it would still work the same way. It's like, guys, it's super expensive for guys. It's not $5,000 and you work your way down. Right? And then when we do end up saying, hey, it's expensive, we want to make sure that we're selling to goal. And the point there is that some people sell a program, but people don't buy programs about results. And so the idea is we want to, as closely as possible, sell the outcome that someone desires. And it sounds obvious, but people don't do it. You know what I mean? Like a lot of these, like, well, duh, but no one does it. Right. And so like in the weight loss example, I realized that people didn't want to buy memberships. No one's like, I want to buy a membership. Of course not. They want to lose weight. And so what we did was we shifted our selling style in the gyms and the fitness programs to how many pounds they needed to lose. So we'd say, okay, cool, you need to lose 36 pounds. Based on our calculations, it's going to take 36 weeks for us to get there and It'll take another 50% of that time to basically restabilize. You get your metabolism back up and now you're eating the same amount, at a loss, lower weight. That sounds cool. Great. And so now it's going to be a 52 week program. I will tell you it's very expensive, but it's normally, you know, whatever, $500 a week, but instead it's only 150 a week.

Interesting.

Fair enough. And then when we get into closing questions, I always prefer neutral or negative questions because if I said sounds amazing, a lot of people would be like, what does it sound amazing? But if I said fair enough, then it's much easier to get someone say, well, yeah, it's fair. So it's like, how low can I make the thing that they're agreeing to? And then the negative Version of that which Chris Voss talks about in the negotiations is no base questions.

That's not so bad, is it?

Right? Or yeah, you wouldn't be opposed to moving forward. Would it be totally crazy if we move forward today? Would it be totally crazy? We started you on Monday, like all this. Well, it's not crazy. Okay, cool, let's do it. And then at that point, let's say Lucy says no to whatever the thing we're selling now, we begin the E of Closer, which is explain away their concerns. So C, clarify L, label O, overview their past experiences. S sell, which is the three anecdotes that you're going to tell. And then you present the price. And then at that point, hopefully they say yes. But in the world of sales, no is the job. No is the job. They say yes. Then you wouldn't be necessary. Right. And so, no, like, selling is everything that you do before you present price. Closing is what you do after. And obstacles are what come up before you present price. That's when you disagree with the prospect. Objections are what happen after you present price, when they disagree with you. Right.

Well, I don't have the money, I don't have the time, I don't have.

Let me check with my spouse, etc. And so obstacles, you want to resolve as many of those as you can before because they become bigger, scarier monsters of objections after you present the price. Right. And so like that example I gave earlier with the information, when someone says, well, I just want to find out a little bit more information, that's an obstacle, like someone's presenting in the first five seconds, they're already telling you an obstacle. Like, you have to confront it. And so a lot of people are like, well, you know, I think it's my potassium. Slow. Right? You're like, is it though? Because like, you know, there's a lot of people in Africa and none of them have stubborn body fat. Right, Right. Because they're actually starving.

Right.

But so you would think that they have true starvation mode, but they look like they're starving. So what do you think it is? You know, like. And then you can get into it. Most people really offended by that, though. But you get. It's an extreme example. So once we get to that point, they say no, or I have to think about. So there's three circles. And this took me actually a really long time to think through because I've gone through a zillion different books and things on sales, ironically, after I already knew how to sell, not before, which is just Kind of funny, but different people had different. Like Grant had, I think, decision maker stall money. Those are the three that you always have to overcome, which is like, I need to think about it, I need to talk to my spouse. Or it's money, right? Those are his three. Barry from Sage, she has five. She has time, money, time, money, spouse, fear, shame. Interesting. I was like, that's cool. Noted. And then Belfort has his. The three tens. And there's a number of different ones. And I was like, there has to be. And they may all disagree with me on this, so who knows? But there has to be a unifying truth here, right? Because everybody has their own buckets. And there's obviously some elements of each of these. And so I pulled back from Albert Ellis, who is one of the fathers of cbt cognitive behavioral therapy. He said, and originally he had like 17 and they had 11 and they had nine and they had seven. They had three reasons that people upset themselves. He just kept boiling it down. And the three that he came up with are that people blame their circumstances, they blame other people for their unhappiness, and then they blame themselves. And so when we are confronted with an objection underneath the pretense that the person has already admitted that they want the thing that you have and the thing you have would solve their problem. So that has to be there. If we have that, then we have to walk through three concentric rings of power. And so the first thing that people do is they blame their circumstance. So they're casting their power to something else. They're saying it's because of time or the money. Or the money, right? And then, you know, with the money, if you were selling a B2B thing, I would say, well, what's the difference between a self made billionaire that starts at zero and you? It's not resources, it's resourcefulness, right? Then you can tell a story if you want to reinforce the point. But at the end of the day, like if you were resourceful, you can make it. So the question is, if you were to die tomorrow and you needed to come up with the amount of money for this thing, how do you figure it out?

You figure it out.

Exactly. So what we need to do is figure out how to tap into those resources, right? So the bumblebee, you go into that thing, right? And so each of these overcoming your.

Insecurities, your fears, your people saying no judging you, and you just taking action and risking.

And so underneath the circumstances, I have three big buckets, which you've got time, you've Got money. And you've got what I call fit, which is actually an association with identity. So usually it might be like, well, I want to lose. I use weight loss because everybody understands it. I want to lose weight. I want to lose weight, but I don't eat broccoli. Your prawn has broccoli on it. But, like, you know what? I don't like cardio, though. And so that is. That's where you just go through, like, you got to change the change. Right. And there's a whole script around that. Yeah. It's like, you can't. You cannot change any of the variables, because at the end of the day, like, you know, I used to have weight loss clients who would say, like, well, can we make this. This the breakfast? Because this is what I already eat. I'm like, well, that breakfast got you that body. So we gotta change something, right? Gotta change the change, right? And so we walk through it. I'm like, maybe you're. Maybe you're not heavy enough. Maybe this isn't enough pain for you. And then they're like, why don't you.

Put on 50 more pounds and then you'll finally make.

Exactly. Yeah. Then all of a sudden, they're like, no, no, no. I'm like, all right, well, then maybe today is the day. Right? So time, money, and each of those has three. So, like, time has three. Which I go macro, micro, when, then. Which is Right, right. Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, money, I could go through.

When then.

Yeah, I would go through too many of them.

Sure, sure.

But that's circumstances, Right. The next level. And this is peeling back an onion. So if you're a salesperson or you're selling someone and they blame money, or they blame time, or they blame the fit of your specific program, understand that you're actually talking to someone two steps away from being in power.

So making the decision.

Yes. And so if we believe ourselves as salespeople to be coaches first, because that's what we're really in serving the customer. The goal of the sale is not to get the person to buy. And this is a huge thing for most sales people. Everyone has to understand the goal is not to get the person to buy. The goal is to get them to decide. If you get someone to decide, then you have already given them power, more power than they've ever had in a very long time, probably. And I guarantee you that you will make more money and you will also disassociate success in selling from purchases. You will also get more purchases. But if you do it this way, then you won't have an ego that's invested in being right. Because it's not about you, it's about them. Right. We get them to admit that it's never been about having enough time because it's about priorities. We all have the same 24 hours. And you know what? If you're really busy now, do you think you're ever going to be busy in the future? Well, yes, I do. Well, do you want it to be permanent? Well, I do want it to be permanent. Well, if you're going to be busy in the future and you're busy today, then you might as well start now when you get the most support, because you're already busy. Right. If you learn how to do it when you're busy, you'll know how to do it again when you're busy in the future. That way you'll stick with it. Make sense? Great. Time's overdone. Right. And so each of that's one of the three for time. Right. We drilled a lot of these. And so. And so the next one is other people with other people. A lot of times it's spouse often. Right. And so I kind of walk through a process which is, are they aware of the fact that you're struggling with this? Yes. Do they approve of the struggle? Well, they don't. I mean, they're like, well, I mean, no, they're not approving of the struggle, so. Well, then why would they be against something they already don't approve of? Right. Well, and if the roles were reversed, would you be support in support of them? And usually they'll say yes to that most of the times, like, well, then why would they be against you? And if you're anything like my wife, I would do everything I possibly could to support her, and I think she would do the same. Is that the same that you have there with your relationship? Yes or no? Cool. Finally, I'll walk through. It's like, honestly, just listen to you, Tom. I think you're asking for permission when you should be asking for support. And the reality is, let's play this out. Let's play this out. Let's say that you don't do this program, whatever it is, right? Let's play it out. And 12 months from now, you're more negative situation. Currently you're in more overweight, more poor, whatever. And if you keep doing that, who are you going to blame for your circle? Is it going to be you or is it going to be her? It's going to be her. So is that fair to her? Is that fair to your marriage? No. So I think what we need to be looking for is support, not permission. And so what we're going to do then tone comes up and we're like, so what we're going to do is we're going to take control, we're going to take the power you have to make decision for you, and then she will support you. And what you have to do is when you show up with her, you're like, listen, I've wanted to be an entrepreneur all my life. Who knew that there wasn't an entrepreneur school? And you go through the, you know, like, just like doctors go to school. But no one did it for me. And Instead of being $100,000, it's only $10,000 and other people. And I'm not going to moan about how I'm not making money because I'm actually supported with other people. And I'm committing to being more present here to be a better wife or be a better husband, be better, you know, spouse to our. Be a better mother to our kids. And you give them the script to tell the other person. And at the very end, you say, at the end of the day, sometimes, like I said, we have our three day no sweat guarantee. So for some reason you go home and your husband says, listen, sweetie, I don't want you to be healthy. I want you to keep the extra weight on. I want you to live 10 years shorter. I want you to pull up those sweatpants and reach your bag into those Cheetos and get them all orange and fingery and spread it over there and teach our kids not generational health and have early diabetes. If your husband says that to me, by all means. And usually at this point they're cracking up. You know what I mean? And that's why rapport matters a lot. With selling on the upfront, which the whole goal is there is to find some similar ground. Because if you're in Paris and you find out somebody else is from the same city as you, you think they're amazing. If you're in the same city, you don't care at all. They're from Paris. So it's just like, how can we find some similarities? Because people really are persuaded more by people that they find similarities with. Wow. And so the idea is, how can we find those? But anyways, all that to say when you are selling, first, people will confront you with time, money or fit. And you have to be prepared to know that you might have two more Layers you have to go through. So you might have to peel back that first layer. And then they hit you with a spouse, which is, do they approve if the roles are reversed? And then you're asking for support, not permission, right? And then you go three day, no sweat, guarantee. And then the last level here is self, right? And what people do here is they avoid. So what we're trying to conquer is avoidance. So now, and here's the good news is that when someone says, I need to think about it, I'm not sure we're talking to the decision maker. That's amazing.

Yes, you're the decision maker.

This is amazing. This is great news for salespeople because they should be like, oh my God, they're not giving me money, they're not giving me time, they're not giving me spouse. They're just saying they don't need to, they need to think about it. Well, what's your main concern? Right? Tell me what you're thinking about. What are the variables that you're gonna use to make the decision? Let's walk out together. Because at the end of the day, you don't need time to make decisions, you need information. I'm the only source of information you got. So what, what are your questions about? Right? And you keep going. And then from here, all we're trying to do is understanding the variables that they use to make the decision. And if they don't know them, which they usually don't, we say, do you know what it takes to make the decision about this? And then you actually physically walk them through confronting the decision. If they're not sure about it, you're like, listen, I use this all the time. It's called the rocking chair. Close. Let's be real. You're not going to go and actually like sit on your rocking chair on the balcony and be like, am I going to do this program? Of course not. Right? You're going to get in your car and your mom's going to call you and you got kids and you got the laundry and you got dinner and you got all these other things you got to do. And then five days from now, you're going to have some moment where you either put your pants on or you check your bank account, whatever the thing is that we're selling, and you'll be like, shoot, I really should have done that thing. And in that moment you will have made the decision. So you might as well do it today when you have all the information, you've got all the momentum, because you're six inches from gold, Right? And you don't want to be the guy who. Because, like, let's think about what you've already done. I know you want to do it because you're already here, right? You saw the ad, you put in your number, you set a time, you scheduled it, you drove in your car if it was here, or you showed up on Zoom. Even when you're in the middle of a work week, you did all this stuff, and you spent an hour on the phone with me up at this point, you're this far. And do you think that maybe the reason that you're on this call today is because you haven't been able to pull the trigger in the past? And then usually they'll come up with something like, well, you know what? I tried a program like this before, and I failed, and I don't want to fail again. Which. Then you go into, like, burn you twice, which is. Well, totally makes sense, and I understand that. I'm really sorry they had to go through that. Well, did you ever date anybody in middle school or high school? Well, yeah. Are you married to that person? If you are, they are. Then you can still. But it never happened. They're like, no. I'm like, imagine if you had gone your first sixth grade boyfriend or girlfriend, and after that, you swore off men or women after that one breakup. That'd be ridiculous, right? Well, it's the same thing here, because the thing is, if you had a bad experience, you. You're gonna let that person burn you twice. First time when they were with you, and now when they're preventing you from doing the thing you really do need to do or for preventing you from meeting the person you need to meet.

Ryan, if now you keep doing what everybody else does, you're going to end up like everybody else.

And so this is where now you want to think a little bit different.

And try to find what's right for you and try to get educated yourself.

Because when it comes to the mindset, the first thing you have to understand is that it is possible. Because if you're sitting there saying.