In this informal, podcast‑style conversation, Sam Parr (the host) and his guest Ben explore the background, businesses, and reputation of entrepreneur Alex Hormozi. They start by noting Hormozi’s striking physical presence and the ubiquity of his marketing on TikTok and YouTube. The dialogue traces Hormozi’s early career: opening gyms in his early 20s, scaling to three locations, and learning copywriting through ClickFunnels. This led to the creation of Gym Launch, a high‑ticket ($16‑$20K) mastermind/course that teaches gym owners how to grow their facilities. From Gym Launch, Hormozi launched Prestige Labs, a supplement line sold to his gym‑owner clients, and a lead‑generation service that handles online advertising and customer acquisition for gyms. The hosts cite publicly‑available figures indicating the combined businesses generate $70‑$80 million in annual revenue, and Hormozi reportedly sold a 66 % stake in the gym‑launch/supplement operation for $46 million, having paid himself $72 million over five years. They also discuss his acquisition arm (Acquisition.com) and a side purchase of a photography business called Enchanted Fairies. Throughout, Sam and Ben weigh evidence of Hormozi’s legitimacy, noting his impressive sales tactics, concrete advice, and transparent financial claims, while also acknowledging the broader industry’s reputation for shady practices (high‑ticket courses, supplement sales, lead‑gen). The conversation ends with the hosts leaning toward viewing Hormozi as a competent, possibly legit entrepreneur, but cautioning that the surrounding ecosystem contains many questionable actors.
Chapters
All right. I have to tell you about something interesting. Ben, cue the music.
Million dollars isn't cool.
You know what's cool? A billion dollars. All right. Billy of the week. This person is not a Billy, but they're incredibly fascinating to me. So I have been getting just targeted on YouTube like crazy, not from ads, but for like Things you also should watch because my first million. There's this guy named Alex Hormazy. Have you seen this person?
Yes, dude. This guy's all over my TikTok feed. I see this buff motherfucker in every TikTok. Every other swipe is this guy.
So who is this guy?
What's his story?
I will tell you. He looks like an '80s cop had a baby with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Like, he's like mustache.
Great mustache and just huge, jacked. Like, he looks like a good-looking dude and very fascinating look. He like, right when you see him, he stands out. Ben's pulling up a picture of him. Yeah. I mean, he's yoked and I've been getting these YouTube videos from him everywhere. Like, learn from me, a guy who has a business that's doing nearly $100 million a year in revenue. And I'm like, what? This guy looks like he's 30 years old and I think he's 31. So let me tell you about this guy and let me preface this by saying, I think this guy's legit, but it's so— it's almost too good to be true. And so I'm like, I wonder what the truth is, right? So, and all right, so his name's Alex. So basically he started out when he was like 22, 23, he opened up a gym. He scaled that gym to 3 gyms, still wasn't that good of a business. Met some folks at ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels is a little bit multi-level marketing-y. Incredibly, it's an incredibly—
just internet marketing. I wouldn't say multi-level.
It probably a trap, but it's, it's, it's, it's the cousin of it. You know, they all go to the same family reunion, Thanksgiving together. Yeah, they're all, they're all, they all go to the same Mormon church up in Utah. I would guarantee you that. They, let's just say they all know how to run a call center. And so anyway, he like learns about that guy, learns about copywriting, and then he meets one of the guys at at the company and he says, wait a minute, you're opening gyms? That's a horrible idea. Don't open gyms. He goes, are your gyms good? He goes, yeah, they're really successful. But like the best gym isn't that successful. And they said to him, dude, teach people how to open up a gym. So he creates this thing called Gym Launch. And Gym Launch is basically like a course that costs around $20K. I saw somewhere that it was $16K. Then I heard somewhere else that it was $20K. So let's just say $16,000 to $20,000. And it's, uh, like a course, but they like hold your hand and you meet with them like a mastermind. It's a course that teaches gym owners how to improve their gym. And well, on top of that, according to the website, it's financial freedom. Okay, sorry, it's financial, it's financial freedom. And he's running these great ads and he's got really good copywriting and he's getting these people to, um, he, he's getting his people to, uh, improve their gym, whatever.
Hold on, Ben, can you go up to that founder section on the website? What does that say? We slept on the floor. What does that say? I want to read this.
That's what he says. This story is— he was like, I was living in the gym because I didn't have any money.
Gotcha. Okay, gotcha. So, you know, I was a former gym owner who slept on the floor of his gym when it— when it was full. I couldn't acquire, serve, and retain enough customers. Over the next 3 years, I became a sponge— or he became a sponge. He experimented, blah, blah, blah, became great. Now he has gym launch Okay, go ahead.
Okay. And then from Gym Launch, he launched another company called Prestige Labs. So once he gets these gym owners coming to him, he says, hey, like, buy these supplements too. Like, you should sell supplements at your, at your gym. We did all the work and we know which ones sell best and we're making them. You can just go ahead and buy it from us. Then he starts this third company. It says, all right, what? Yeah, smart.
Two smart moves.
Yeah. Then he starts a third company. It says, okay, you've got a gym. One of the things that I told you was that you need more leads. I'm gonna create a lead company, which I don't entirely understand what that means, but it's kind of like a marketing company. And somehow they send, they maybe they set up your Yelp and set up your Google AdSense, things like that.
I think it's like they just, they, what they do is you search, uh, you know, gym San, like gym near me San Jose. And then they're gonna, they know that the gym owner is not buying that top click on Google and they're gonna buy that. They're gonna create a search engine and they're gonna let you say, put in your zip code. We'll find a gym near you. What's your email? And then they'll pass the gym owner your email or your phone number and say, you know, pay us per person who's interested in a gym near you.
And so collectively, these businesses, these 3 things that I said, are doing in the world of, according to his videos and my research, $70 to $80 million a year. In fact, he just sold one of the businesses, the gym launch and supplement business combined. He He sold 66% of it for $46 million. And in one of his talks, he says, over the last 5 years, both through the sale of the company as well as dividends, I've paid myself $72 million. And I thought, that is nuts. That is crazy. That is crazy volume. And this like kind of blew my mind.
But there's another business. So his wife has a business, right? Or him and his wife, they have another business like acquisitions.
I don't know, man. This is one of those guys that's just like prolific. He's got a book on Amazon. He's done all this. Steve Bartlett, who were you talking about? He just like has his hands in so much shit.
I don't know how they have something called acquisition.com. I was looking at this the other day because I saw a video on TikTok and I was like, what's up with this? Is this real? I was literally like, it's so funny you, you did the research on this. 'Cause I had jotted this down as like, dig in, find out. And so what acquisition.com is basically like, uh, it says, do you wanna scale your business? Um, you know, I will 3x the business, uh, I'll 3x the profits. Of 100 businesses that are doing between $1 and $10 million EBITDA per year that are service-based businesses over the next 5 years. If you want help scaling your company without giving up a majority interest, click the purple button below. And then, yeah, it basically says the same kind of story that you were saying before. And it's like, how do you want to— you want to learn from us? Here's my course. Here's my book. Here's my podcast. Here's my— here's my like you know, my link to join my accelerator or whatever.
But this, I, I don't know if he's selling a course on acquisition.com or if he's just trying to get leads on small businesses he could buy because he bought one business and that's a photography business. And I listed the name of it. It's called like a something fair. Um, I'll find it, but oh, here it is. Scroll down to the bottom.
Enchanted Fairies.
Yeah. Enchanted Fairs. F-A-I-R-I-E-S. Sorry. Enchanted Fairies. Uh, it's like a photography business he bought. Is that crazy though? I mean, so this is like a pretty wild, uh, enterprise.
Yeah. And he, um, he actually has some pretty good stuff. Like I sent, I, cause I send to my team, like I send like, I don't know, 20 TikToks out a day, but to 3 people it's like, this is the per— okay. So like I have my friend who I'm like, I can send offensive funny things. And actually you're in this bucket too, where you're one of the few people that like I can send something that's like cancel-worthy if you think this is funny, I can send it to you and I can send it to my brother-in-law. And that's what I do. I send it to both of those people. Like, I'll tell you what, this is bad. But it was like, there's this Twitter account I follow that's like a, like a meme account. He's got like 200,000 followers. And he tweeted out, he goes, men's mental health is not important. Follow-up tweet, he goes, he goes, just get more bitches.
That was his tweet.
And I'm like, I know I shouldn't. It's like a fart joke. It's like, I shouldn't think this is funny. But it cracked me up because it's so anti my Silicon Valley timeline, which is just like so super progressive. Everything matters. Everything is justice for everybody. Like, it's nice to just hear like where I'm from in Houston. Like, I went to like a pretty like ghetto school growing up and like the sense of humor that is like from that, it just like hits home for me.
Just potty jokes. Yeah.
Just like, you know, it's just like, it's like you don't bring You don't bring your pronouns to the hood type of thing. And so there's this like hood humor that I just find really funny anyway. So, so you and this guy, that's like my inappropriate jokes. And there's like, you know, I'll send my wife or my sister just like kind of like, oh, that's funny kid stuff, mom stuff, whatever. And then there's like little business or marketing hack tactics that like I think are actually pretty interesting. So this guy Alex, to me, uh, one of the reasons I suspected he's legit is because his advice is actually pretty legit. Yeah. And he's not just saying general, like motivational quotes. So for example, he was saying something like, he's like, little sales thing that helps. And these are TikToks, right? Those are 10 seconds. You don't have to like invest much in it. It's like, he's like, little sales trick that kind of helps me getting somebody to say yes is hard. It's like a commitment. So if I'm like, so would you like to sign up? It's like, let me think about it. Let me get back to you. That's like, like what you'll get frequently. He's like, I'll ask a no commitment. So I'll say, you know, um, if we're able to work out the details, would you be opposed to actually signing up with us? And they're like, no, I'm not opposed to that. Uh, like, no, I'm not against it. And actually this is something that when I heard it, I was like, oh, actually I've kind of like accidentally done this a couple times. And you know, that's a good point. There's something there in the psychology. Cool. Noted. And like, I'll pick up these little things from him and like 5 other people that are like, you know, in this copywriting sales persuasion world that I just think those are interesting to me. So I actually think this guy is legit for that reason, even though like people look down on like lead gen, they look down on course businesses. Like there's a stigma around course businesses, which is like, oh, you probably couldn't do it. That's why you're selling courses.
Let me change. Let me clarify how I feel. I think he's legit and he seems like a decent guy and he for sure seems like a smart guy. I don't know him that— I don't know him well, but he seems like a really nice guy. But he he's in a shady industry. Not a shady industry, he's in an industry with a lot of shady people. Not that he's shady, but supplements and like selling this type of stuff.
Supplements, courses. Yeah, yeah.
Not— of course, he— I don't know if he's shady. I'm just saying there are shady people. And also, it's a $20,000 course, and I frankly don't think I've got the chutzpah to sell that to someone on the phone. Yeah, uh, like, it's— that's really bold, and frankly, I find that to be challenging. So I wouldn't say that I think he's shady. I'm just saying that, like, that world has a lot of players who are.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm with you. Yeah, I don't think you said anything negative. I think we were actually quite complimentary towards him. But, um, okay, I like that.
