Wie Leila wirklich ein 100-Millionen-Business aufbaute

0:00the secret is that there are a lot of things that obviously I think Alex and I are good at and we have complimentary skill sets of but what a lot of people don't look at and what they don't understand is timing it's timing of the market there are people right now that we look at in terms of portfolio companies that we want to take on and I'm like if this company had hit the market two years ago he would be at 40 million but he didn't he hit it just now and for that he's not going to grow past 10 hello and welcome to sales secrets with your host Brandon banson Our intention for the show is to transform your life with the secrets to success from our new guest Leila heroi Leila is the CEO and co-founder of acquisition.

0:45comom you've probably seen her content all over the internet right now she's the former co-founder of gym launch and Prestige Labs we got to get into how they built this epic group of businesses she's a philanthropist thoughtless are passionate about helping entrepreneurs scale their business to be extremely highly profitable Unstoppable machines I've been following her journey since getting into digital marketing and seeing her and her husband win award after award zero to six figures six figures to seven figures seven figures to eight figures eight figures to nine figures faster than I've ever seen anyone do it and I got to unlock the secrets I know you guys are looking forward to those Secrets Lea thanks for joining us today absolutely absolutely thank you for the uh well thought out introduction so man it's so great to be here thanks for taking the time with our audience uh one of the ways that that I've I found you was I started getting into digital marketing for my SAS B2B company and there you know you were one of the first groups of entrepreneurs that I saw Russell talk a lot about oh Leila and Alex they went from zero to a million dollars faster than anyone so like I'd love to hear your background your story would just love to hear from you your your background your point of view yeah absolutely um I'll kind of give you the short accelerated version um which is you know prior to gym launch um my background was all Fitness and fitness sales so I had started honestly just like I was fat and overweight I lost weight I thought I want to be able to help other people and I went to school for exercise science because I thought for some reason that that would lead to uh being able to make money which reality check doesn't um got out of school and then realized I need to get around people who were successful and I think that's a huge point to people in your audience who are maybe just starting out which is you know one of the best things I did was I moved from Michigan I lived in page Michigan to California and when I got to California I thought to myself you know I packed up my Prius uh with everything that I had I didn't know anybody and I moved out there as like a 20 I think I was 22 at the time 21 um it was literally the day after I graduated college and I just said I'm just gonna get a job at any gym that will give me a job and I will figure it the [ __ ] out like I will just figure something out and make it work um got out there realized quickly that knowing how to actually you know get people to lose weight was not enough but I needed to learn sales and marketing like I went and I applied to every single gym I got accepted to every single gym but I need to make money I only had like I think less than maybe like between five and $7,000 in my bank account and like my rent was like 1,200 a month you know it went from living in Michigan which is like 200 bucks a month for an apartment to like 1,200 in California what made you decide to pick California by the way I just knew you know I used to listen to Tony Robbins tapes and there was one tape where he talked about had how he had a house in corono delmare and I remember thinking to myself like I want to buy a house in krono delmare one day that sounds amazing I remember I looked up online it looked beautiful and I thought to myself cuz he talked about going out there to network with people and so honestly it was just that it was like when I was 14 I started listening to his tapes and he talked about being krono delar and so I was like I guess I need to go there like that was it that's awesome so I got out there and um you know quickly realized that I had to get into sales because that was how I was going to make money at any of the positions and that is when I learned sales which was I had no money I was running out of money I had to learn sales I literally would never have considered myself a sales person person in my entire life but I think that I was really lucky in the sense of one being able to not flounder when my back is against a wall but I can actually rise the occasion um and two selling something that I actually believed him right and I think that was the unlock for me and that's what helped me get into sales and learn sales in the first place which honestly you can use across everything and as you continue to grow your business obviously you're not selling you know prospects anymore but you're selling employees selling investors um and that was when I really learned because the unlock for me was understanding that I think sales is only hard when you are selling something that you truly don't believe in you don't get behind it's not part of your value system but for me I actually went from never having sold anything in my life to being one of the top producing reps at that gym because I sold something I believed in which was transforming people's lives through weight loss and then that translated over to essentially I did that for a while I built up my own roster I took my clients went to a private facility started doing half online training because that was like booming back then um and then half in person and then I met Alex and Alex saw that I had the sales aptitude and he said I have this idea for this company called gym launch like would you do it with me and at first I was like absolutely not we like met on Bumble and I didn't even know who he was I was like what the hell um and then within a few weeks I was like you know what do I have to lose at that point I'm like 23 or 24 I'm young you know I have the experience and I was like worst case I just go back to like selling more personal training or you know building my roster back up so um I basically gave away all of my clients and I took the ones that were online I kept doing that for a little bit and then we started gym launch and took the sales aptitude from doing the iners sales for personal training and the online sales for personal training translated that over to gym launch and that was the thing that we both had was we both had a background in Fitness and a background in sales and the thing about sales that I love so much and why I encourage people to start off in that is the in the first place like if you could get your first job I'm like go get bdr or SDR because you can learn how to sell you can also learn how to recruit you can learn how to get investors like literally everything in business revolves around sales it's just you're selling somebody different as you get further and further up the chain and so I think the reason there were a few reasons why Jim launch was successful because I think that's what you kind of wanted to understand is how did it go so fast oh yeah and real quick before we dive into that what was there what were you doing in the the health sales like you said you got into you know you had to sell in the healthcare or Health Fitness at the gyms what were you doing differently than all the other sales people there where you were able to build such a large client roster like were there different Secrets or things that you were leveraging that helped you stand out and perform you know I really think it comes down to this which is I think every everybody in sales has something different you know like two of my top producing reps in gym launch one of them he's incredibly good with followup and establishing relationships the other one is just fantastic with scripts on the phone but he won't follow up for [ __ ] they both are super high producers what I think that I've always done incredibly well is I've had a really great frame so when I'm talking about a frame it's am I controlling the conversation or is the Prospect and I can always control the conversation in a way that makes that person feel like they are also participating I've never been someone to clamor over the Prospect and you know do it in a manipulative manner but I've always been able to meet that person halfway and still guide them towards the solution and I think that's because I truly believe I have never tried to sell something that I haven't believed in right and belief is something that comes through repetition of thoughts and so you can really learn to believe in anything right um but it's just what extent you believe in something and so I think what my strength always was was the frin when someone came in like I was certain that the product that I was selling them would change their Liv and so the question is how can I work my words in a manner that can influence this person to that decision like I don't care what I have to do but I realize it is my responsibility to guide them towards this and everything in their mind is going to make them want to go the other way it's my job to get them to make this decision because they've walked in here they've expressed what they want to do with their lives like the goal is that they want to change their life I can help them do that I have the right vehicle so the question is how am I going to get them there and I think I always was able to keep an authoritative frame without making the person feel belittled or badly about themselves because I think that that's there's a very fine line between selling and manipulating someone in a way that you make them feel badly about themselves I can sell in a way that encourages somebody that I Inspire belief in them they can borrow belief from me as salesperson in order to make that decision and then come to that conclusion themselves and I think I've gotten that actually from my this is crazy to think my dad is not a salesperson but my dad has always been able to sell me on myself and that's what I think I've always been able to do prospects which is sell them on themselves and their ability to achieve the goal using our product and together we can reach that goal yeah I love that I that's I've been good at and probably you I don't know if it also tying in like your transformation that you said you went through health and and fitness if you're leveraging this Authority like I'm the expert I'm going to be a challenger consultative salesperson I'm not going to try to manipulate you and then you tie that to the transformation that you know you experience that Authority consultative Challenger freaking you know transformation and I'm going to do the same for you I feel like that's like an Unstoppable way to to go to market yeah I think it's relatability right which is like I can relate to the Prospect and if that's why I'm I am a big proponent of a lot of salespeople you know getting into something that they can relate to the prospect with because then they have this it's like an equal ground right you're not adversaries at the table you're sitting on the same side of the table because you've been there too and so I think in any way that you can relate to the person that's there I think they're just going to ultimately feel more trust with you okay so we got the secrets before gym launch now now comes like the good [ __ ] so let's hear it like what was the idea the products the market and how the heck did you scale it to so many customers well okay the secret is that there are a lot of things that obviously I think Alex and I are good at and we have complimentary skill sets of you know I think think it's hugely advantageous that both of us have a sales background we also both have a fitness background those two things were extremely necessary to make gym launch work but what a lot of people don't look at and what they don't understand is timing and so like I would love to sit here and tell you that there's some like crazy sales secret and crazy funnel that we use but there's not Brandon it's timing of the market there are people right now that we look at in terms of portfolio companies that we want to take on and I'm like if this company had hit the market two years ago he would be at 40 million but he didn't he hit it just now and for that he's not going to grow past 10 we came into the market when there was a gap okay when we entered what we both saw is that there were franchises and franchisors right and then there were marketing agencies that were just starting to pop up there was barely anybody that was in the middle saying let's teach these people how to be successful themselves let's grant them autonomy let's give them the tools to be successful let's teach them how to fish rather than fishing for them at the same time that Facebook was actually easy as [ __ ] to use that people could run an ad of what's her name I don't even know you know Kim Kardashian's butt they could get people in their gym and it was for like 50 cents we were the first ones to do that and but the thing was is that we saw it when we sought out and we started gym launch we could see and we were not like business you know sants at this we didn't even know anything about this but we could see that is that there was a gap and we were like you know what I am one of these people right like we're in the fitness industry we're doing this and we're like why has nobody made this why is nobody doing this for gym owners that is what we could see we didn't have the business Acumen we didn't have the knowledge we have now we didn't all this sophisticated stuff but what we could see is the big fat obvious which is there's a demand in the marketplace that's not being fulfilled and we happen to have this skill set and we happen to have this great partnership and we're going to fill that Gap that's really what we did and then we rode that wave of momentum and built something because if you don't have that momentum it's a lot harder to get something off the ground once you get past the first few years of business and if you've established yourself as a as a market leader as we did with gym launch it's a lot easier to continue to grow from there incrementally not exponentially and I and especially when the Market's not trending like it was right like Boutique Fitness was booming when we got in it was like doubling year over year it's not doing that anymore right and so businesses grow a lot of the times in accordance with the market and so that's what we did um now what I will say is this is that the advantage that we had is that if Alex and I did not have the skill set of sales like we did I do not think we would have been able to capture the value that was sitting there but we were able to capture it because of our skill set and so what we did early on is in the very beginning both Alex and I were kind of splitting our responsibilities of like the sales team right like I was more management he was more coaching and it was like that's kind of how we've always complimented each other and then as the team continued to grow Alex focused on the external Market Mar and I focused on externally how we're going to Market to get employees and then we're both thinking of how am I going he's thinking how am I going to sell to bring people into business I'm thinking how am I going to sell to bring people to work in the business and that's how we split our skill set and the reason that I think we're able to grow exponentially is that I was fully focused on that Talent acquisition funnel and he was fully focused on client acquisition funnel and what a lot of people do is they have one or the other but they don't have both and if you can get both and you can get a really strong funnel for both then as you get more clients you get more talent and it just continues to go at the same time most people it's like this and that's why their businesses continue to Plateau grow Plateau grow we were able to grow without having a plateau because we were able to do both at the same time and and the product like the the audience may not know this so at the beginning you you you basically took over a gym got a bunch of people to it it was like it was like you're launching these gyms on your own and you made like a a fee like a REV share or what was that deal before you kind of went from We're GNA do it all for you to we're going to teach you how to do it yeah so in the very beginning what we would do is like Alex and I would fly out to a gym we would do the marketing for them and then one of us we'd be each at a different gym I'd be in Hawaii he'd be in Virginia we would sit at their front desk call the leads then they would come in we would sell the leads and then we would take The Upfront revenue from that sale and then the gym owner would keep them on recurring and we would teach them how to like oh got it that's cool it's almost like an affiliate model but like live in person I'm GNA take a a cost per acquisition and my CPA is what they pay me sure yeah I mean it wasn't that sophisticated thought out you we were just like we're trying to make money and we don't know how to do this so we're going to sit at your desk and do it for you um and then it transitioned into this licensing model which was honestly just we came across because we were trying to get out of the gym space um and the first guy that we called we were like we're not going to do this dude like we're so done flying out we're done like sitting at people's front desks like it's not sustainable for us it's not sustainable for our sales people like we're just over it and it turned out that people were so desperate for something and that is when we really saw this opportunity that they said I'll just pay you if you can teach me how you did it and that's really how we came across to the licensing model which what we did in the beginning the structure was it's $166,000 for 16 weeks I called it an intensive so was like this is not a program is not a mastermind this is not a course this is an intensive that you're going to go through um and we're going to teach you how to fish and that was kind of our pitch which was most people are fishing for you agencies yep or they are uh teaching you saying that they're teaching you how to do it like franchise but they're not actually giving you any autonomy there's lots of red tape we're in the middle which is like we're going to teach you how to be self-sufficient and that was kind of our pitch early on in the 16 Grand so I'm a gym owner you come like you call I come you through an ad on Facebook or whatever or you could call me and I'm like hey Leila my my gym is I'm doing okay like I'm making a few hundred grand in profit we're we're doing good your pitch your like the offer the package the program what is that again 16 weeks and then like what is everything included because it sounded like you know from my research you did a lot of different things in the program not so in the beginning versus where it is now are different in the beginning it was it's $116,000 for 16 weeks and our guarantee was that you will make back your investment in the first 30 days so the reason that gym launch has continued to be a market leader and I can tell you this because PE firms have done plenty of research on it is that our average customer makes back that $166,000 in 30 days still and the way that you did the guarantee so how do you do the GU one how do you come up with a guarantee two how do you deliver on the guarantee it's a conditional guarantee if you're in a service business where that person has to put in like we can't put the guarantee fully on us right because it just doesn't make any sense because that business owner it's not like we're in their business we have to put some on them so our guarantees have always been conditional service guarantees which means that they have to do X Y and Z so that might mean you have to get your ads up and going within five days of starting the program you have to attend all of our Zoom calls you have to meet with your coach four times and you have to price according to our pricing system if you do those things and you don't make your investment back then you know you can get your money back if you really want it right but most people what we know is that people that take those actions almost all of them make their initial investment back in the first 30 days the reason we were able to do that is because we took the data from the first however many months we're in business and we took it and we looked at it we're like well this is it's honestly pretty easy to hit most people actually make it back in their first three weeks saying 30 days is not even that hard to do so we always tried to go under what we knew is possible so that most people that's not going to end up being the case do that make sense and you yeah totally no I I love it and you were able to figure that out so these clients these gyms they would just like here's all my sales data you get access like how did you get access to it the data to figure out like oh yeah we could do a guarantee and it's going to be like you'll make everything back in 30 days or less so our coaches in the program they'll capture that from them right which is you know they they have to report on their cohorts and what their progress is um and you know what we're able to see is that what I think a lot of people don't think about and you know this and you can probably appreciate at being in the SAS industry is like a lot of service businesses don't think about time to Value but in gym launch that was our biggest indicator of success was when does the person derive value from the program which is the first time in someone a coaching program like that or like a that's what I would call it it's a coaching program right essentially they're doing all the work is when do they make their first sale and then when do they recoup their initial investment and those two things are like the two leading indicators of success in the program and so that's why we try to tie all the guarantees around that because it's also helping them be more successful sales reps love list building actually no they don't with seamless.ai you can build lists of thousands of prospects in minutes just input the details of your ideal customer profile and buyer Persona and seamless uses artificial intelligence to find validated contacts emails cell phone numbers and More in just one click you can easily bulk import your new targeted contact list into your favorite tools like Salesforce zapier and more sign up for seamless.ai for free today yeah I love that no I I don't think I've ever actually heard anyone in the services business use the word time to Value like ever so that's awesome and I love how you tied it to the GE like it's just it's just ingenious so this thing was 16 weeks you said you you get coach you get coaching calls like what do you get in that that offer and then I want to hear how you know where you took it so 16we intensive coaching calls coach what what else did you in in the team package to like accelerate their growth the biggest thing that we did and continued to do is this is that we spent we've spent anywhere from you know 20 to $50,000 a month on R&D so what gym launch is always doing is staying on top of what's working in the marketplace the advantage that we have is that we serve one Avatar in gym launch it's gym owners and it's local Boutique gym owners it's not even yoga it's not even Pilates it's like Boutique small gym business owners right strength and conditioning style we can constantly be testing what is working on Tik Tok Instagram Facebook YouTube all the time for that and it's very specific and then we can take that Those ads and that you know collateral and we can give it to our gym owners in real time or they can let us run it for them if we want and so that's what we've always done it's not just showing them how to do it but if we can take it to the next level and give them the things that are working right now then we will because we're such a niche business we have that Advantage a lot of people when they service you got plumbers you've got HVAC you got you can't do that but if you serve one specific Avatar that's why they say the riches are the niches you can charge more because you can also do more like I think a lot of people think oh Jim launch was so expensive I'm like yeah and we spent $50,000 a month on research and development to make sure that we were always had like the the hottest ads like what was working the most we were getting like the lowest CPAs like everything for those people because you that that's why you do that right it's like you charge the customer more so you can acquire more money so you can get better talent and that Talent can spend more money on figuring out what's working even better for the customers and before I go into like scaling it it's were you ever nervous hey we're going to go after gym owner strength and conditioning uh and we're gonna sell like super tight Niche and super high ticket if I told that to anyone right now they'd be like you're you're freaking crazy you'll never make it no one's gonna pay it like I just wouldn't believe it like you telling me 16 Grand gym owners strength and condition I still don't believe it like how did you like pick it and then stick with it did you ever feel like we'd run out of total dressable Market you name it I think in the beginning I think you know it's so funny mean Al you saw be like we've got like 18 months till we run out of the market um here's what you don't realize is that when you have a small Market uh a lot of people think oh I'm going to run out I'm going to tap out my market okay but how many new strength and conditioning gyms are popping up every year every month every week tons tons and so why can't we take on those new ones so it's like yes there are ones that are dying and ones are going out of business and ones that aren't going to be here for some am of time or you know they're going to be in our program and then leave or go do something else or whatever right natural turn there's always new ones coming and I think that's what people don't factor in and our minds tend to go to like worst case which like I'm gonna run out of the market and it's actually a joke with us because me and Alex used to say like we're going to run out in like 18 months this business is you know going to go down and like just keeps going and growing um and so I think that a lot of that's fear-based you I can tell you when we had our software Allen we worked with agencies and I can't tell you how many agencies would tell us they'd be like dude I think I've tapped my market and I'm like you're spending 20 grand a month what you know what I mean like I'm like you tapped your Market you think all the eyeballs in the world have seen your business by now like it's ridiculous right but I think that it's just it's just it's an easy it's an easy out because I think when things get hard a lot of people look at they're like guess my Market's too small like that's got to be what it is and I can think of 10 different examples of extreme Niche businesses that are doing multiple hundreds of millions a year but it's just the the advantage of Niche is that you can provide that much more outsized value to those people the problem is that a lot of people go into a niche and all they do is try to extract value rather than reinvest some of that value they're getting from their customers back into their business so they can continue to provide outsid returns for their customer so you would basically everything you were doing you would take these cheat codes swipe files you'd have like courses coaches swipe files pretty much everything that you would do if you were running it yourselves and you would just like I'm gonna give it to you I'm gonna give it to you I'm GNA give it to you and you do that over the course of the 16 weeks and probably a community and all of that jazz and that was like gym launch going from we're we're running it to now we're coaching you on how to do it is is that a good summation yeah and honestly I think what what made all of that possible was that Alex and I knew the product so well we had launched those gyms ourselves for a year beforehand had a team launch gyms for six months after that and then started that program we were 1,000% convicted in our product and I was 1,000% certain that I could make someone succeed and if they didn't know how we could figure out a way and so that drips down to everybody in the organization you know if you're going to be selling something that's really high ticket if anybody has any uncertainty about your ability to help that person or to navigate a tough situation when it comes or a tough customer that's where people falter and I think that a lot of people they don't understand like there is not if you any gym owner that were to come to me now even today to me or Alex like there is just no way that it's possible that I do not add value to them or that our team wouldn't add value to them like I just it's impossible and it's like there's so much evidence of how many multiple million dollar gym owners we've made at this point and like the thousands of testimonials like it's undeniable evidence and so I think that's a huge piece of things that people don't understand is that because we had so much product knowledge we had been our Avatar we had lived it we had done it ourselves and now we're selling it there's just so much in-depth knowledge it's almost unreasonable to think that we wouldn't succeed and yeah no it it's also like shiny object syndrome getting excited about more markets more [ __ ] to do how you know were you guys chasing a lot of different acquisition channels or did you just like the one thing that just kept producing producing producing you know how did you because you were super focused on the niche and then what about you know oh we need to do this like you know how did you stay disciplined there or maybe there wasn't discipline I don't know I think that lot of what we would do is you know Alex tends to be the one with more ideas of how we can expand and then I usually tend to be more frugal in terms of like where we should put our focus and I think that we've balanced it out in terms of uh what he's figured out is he focuses on he would take all that energy and put it into making new marketing material and doing R&D for the company so like all that energy that a lot of entrepreneurs Ed to then [ __ ] up their company by adding in new things he realized he could channel into marketing and into R&D and that it would be helpful to the company rather than harmful I think what a lot of people do is they have that energy and they don't understand how to channel it into maybe it's marketing maybe it's content maybe it's R&D instead they put it into like I need to go after a new Avatar I need to expand this Market I'm like you're 18 months old that doesn't make much sense right and so I think um we we constantly rep pouring that new creative energy into those rather than into more product lines for gym launch because it's always just looking at the opportunity cost which is I could sell more of what I'm currently selling or what ises it look like in terms of like the cost of change the cost of the team the cost of the added overhead the cost of split attention for this new thing and often times that new thing doesn't win it's very seldom that it does but I don't think most people look at it that way they think out of scarcity they think I need to add on more I need to do more I need to get a new product line in right but they don't think of the cost of that and would you actually just make more money if you figured out more ways to sell the first thing you have and so that's actually what we did we started with paid ads and that was what get got Jim L started and then rather than adding in Crazy new product lines and stuff we've always just had like two levels of service and that's what we still have to this day um we added an outbound so we said let's keep our paid traffic running and let's build an outbound team and do outbound awesome and that was you know like one of the bigger things that grew the company after a certain point and so I look at it like that new energy should just be put into new acquisition channels before it's put into new products at least in the first couple years of business that's awesome and and how far did at like you know if you if you recall how far did at paid ads take you like into the millions and then how far did you know when did you put on outbound like what ARR were you at and then what did you scale it to um I think that we started doing outbound only two years ago so we were at maybe like close to 40 million okay million um damn so PID ads PID ads took you far zero to 40 well paid ads and I'll tell you this which is at every event that we'd ever had 85% of gym owners in the room at each of our events were referred by somebody else so is it the ads or is it like is the ad what tipped them over the edge after their friends told them like six times they should go join this thing you know what I mean yeah so like ads plus virality referral you know and probably a high net promoter score if you guys are kicking ass like that's where those referrals come in yeah I think that there's just what I think was the undeniable part was that people always said this even if somebody would like end up leaving the program or they would be upset about because I look at all that stuff right they would always be like well I got my Roi like what Jim launch is best in the Market at if you look at like ratings was making people money so it's like the the product that people were promised which like we'll make you more money was always something I felt confident we could deliver now a lot of the other ancillary stuff around that when you start making a business more money other things are going to break and then they might be upset about that they're like well now I've got all these problems on the back and I need more trainers and I can't get trainers like all these things right but the core promise of making people more money was something we were always able to uphold I love it and when it came to so sales you you added up on sales at 40 where did where did you take it from there and how big did the company get like ARR and headcount I don't own the company anymore so I am not to say current day numbers um now that we have sold the company but it is doing uh a lot better uh now in terms of like you know when you sell a company um you're like is it going to grow or is it not going to grow and like I can tell you that like quarter over a quarter they doubled the last time that we had a board meeting so they're doing really really well right now amazing and did you sell it at 40 like around 40 50 where when did you guys decide to sell it we decided to sell it um I think that the at the point when we made the decision I think we had done we'd close out that year at 38 okay I want to say awesome um like what what inspired you guys to sell it I think a lot of it was I one knew what the business needed to do to grow to the next level and it wasn't as appealing as everything else had been at that point um but more so that that would have been appealing if the opportunity as a whole was one I wanted to stay in but I realized partway through there was a call actually I had with the gym owners and I was talking to them and I realized that I kept saying to them your company your direct reports your I started talking and I realized that I no longer related to the client because they don't talk like that they say my trainers my staff my team I was talking like in words that weren't even relatable to them anymore and I think Alex got to that point too and that was when I realized like I became more passionate about business and building my team than I was working in the fitness industry and I no longer identified as somebody in the fitness industry like when people now they're like oh you guys like Fitness something I'm like oh my gosh I do not it's not part of my identity anymore and I realized do we want to keep building this thing within this industry because we know we could and like that's the hard part is like once you've done something for long enough like we could probably more easily in the next few years if we had stayed in gym launch made more money and been more successful because we have seven years under our belt doing that right like we could build that Fitness Empire and take over the whole industry that's something that I don't feel is that hard to do for us because of our skill set our background our experience the timing everything and what we'd already built but I realized I'm like we're young enough this is not the ladder I want to lean like this isn't the wall I want to lean my ladder against you know I want to change walls and that was what we both realized and I think we knew it was going to be more challenging it was going to be harder in the beginning we're going to have to start over and do a ton of work that we just did in this other company I'm going to have to redo it all again because building a team is hard and takes a ton of energy and we just sold that team had to restart and build a new team but I feel the opportunity is much bigger and my skill set I believe can expand to fill that opportunity and I think that I felt I don't know if you want to say label or boxed or what but like I just didn't want to be in Fitness the rest of my life you know like you did it you did it since you were out of college really I mean that's that was a long run was an awesome like successful run it sounded like you were talking to uh the owners like investors like private Equity like a part an investment partner and it you know was that the bridge on I'm basically advising these guys like I'm an investor I should be an investor and was that what led into acquisition.

35:51comom no I think what led to acquisition. comom was this as our business became more suc successful people were like climbing up the walls asking us for advice right on their businesses which were completely unrelated software e-commerce service like all these different Industries and Alex and I we like helping people you know like I think that's inherent to me like I I'm also terrible at like I will always help someone if they ask right like if I meet someone somewhere it's like I can't help but help them because you want to right if you've been there you've had the pain you had done the experience like you want to help people and so I think what we realized is that like we used to attend groups and masterminds and join different networking groups and uh I'll never forget one couple came to a group and we were not running this Mastermind or a networking group by any means we were just participants there and they came and I sat down in my seat and there was a paper and it said 30 questions for Alex and Lea and I was like what and the rest of the Mastermind it was like we were teaching it and we looked at each other and I was like I feel like we're really pretty good at this you know like I think because we've been teaching the gyms we've learned the skill of teaching and now we can teach in even more valuable skill which is how to build a business like this and so we started seeing that the people that we were giving advice to just ancillary like in our Network and Friends their businesses started really blowing up and multiple of them went from low six figures low seven figures to multiple eight figures in a short amount of time with our advice and we were like that's really interesting you know and so at the same time we're exploring routes of what we're going to do to monetize gym launch are we selling it are we doing a dividend recap or we doing an ESOP and we start meeting with all these P firms and bankers we start seeing what they're doing and we realize that their skill set is more in line with you know tuck-ins and add-ons and like basically inflating the business it's artificial growth it's not organic growth but what we realize is we're like if we could pair our organic growth like the ability to organically grow business with some of that artificial side that PE uses right like the financial engineering and I feel like that would be more valuable right because you can take a business to its organic Max and then you can add in all the artif artificial growth and so that was what inspired it and so then we decided to test it by taking on about two and a half years ago we took on two businesses and those businesses have massively grown um more than we would have ever anticipated and so it kind of proved out the theory to us we were like we're not bad at this um and obviously a lot of things like luck and timing with businesses in general like you can't take a business what type of businesses were were like are you allowed to disclose them what type of businesses were they I can tell you what type I mean one was a chain of photography studios the other one was um a book publishing business and those two businesses now are you know multiple eight figures one is at nine figures and wow it was just using the same principles and so I think once we saw that we were able to do that we said I think that our skill set is better suited for a different opportunity than the one that we're in and though we knew that we could keep the business and we had we've basically already been promoting a COO and CEO I just I know myself and Alex knows himself and it's like if you are still the sole owner you're still signing the documents you still own the bank account it's just different you know and I think me in five years might have been able to do it differently and just keep a CEO and a CO in there but me a year ago when we sold it wasn't there yet awesome so to distill gy launch's success and then we're we're going to wrap up and learn more about acquisition. comom the top three to five Secrets if if you had to like break them down how you went from zero to nearly 50 million in AR in one year selling the company what would you say like looking back here's the cheat codes what are they yeah I would say the first one is industry knowledge so both Founders had insanely in-depth industry knowledge that's the first thing second thing is sales aptitude both Founders had incredibly High sales aptitude which is transferable across different functions of the business third is Market timing looking at are there a lot of competitors here is this oversaturated is the market growing or is it declining the market was growing and there were no competitors the fourth is the partnership Dynamic Alex and myself have extremely complimentary skill sets and so it wasn't just like two people working on the same stuff it was I've got this half you've got this half let's go and then I would say the last piece um mean those are really the most important I I would say the last piece is probably Arbitrage which is what platform so if I were starting a company over today I'd be looking at like we were on Facebook right and that was when Facebook was booming and it was like nobody was on it yet and so if I were starting the company over today and you look at the companies that are thriving today they typically get on a platform when it's early and they're able to ride that wave and that makes it a lot easier so it's like the Market's growing you've got a new platform you have Founders that have complimentary skill sets and you have insane product depth and knowledge I mean those are the secrets to any business with seamless.ai you can build lists of thousands of prospects in minutes seamless uses artificial intelligence to find validated contacts emails cell phone numbers and More in just one click sign up for seamless.ai for free today I know you didn't mention it but amazing product Suite that you built for this Niche this irresistible offer and guarantee what was the you said you had two products so the first one was the 16k what was the other one uh the other one was a it was we've changed the price on this so many times uh I think now it's probably 36 to 40,000 a year um it's a it's a high level basically you get one-on-one coaching and in-person masterminds um I hate using that word but yeah that's basically what they are masterm more Hands-On from the experts themselves one to one which is yeah and more access to the top talent of the team you know you have more of the top level coaches looking in- depth on your business you're working on like you're sharing cohorts with people who are all higher level business owners and they have different problems in the beginning the problem is how do I make more money get more clients then it creates a new problem which is how do I build a team how do I become a leader how do I you know read a p&l I mean it's different problems at that level and so it's Services people that are more already at a point where they can scale and then maybe they're looking at having multiple locations are they franchising what are they doing to expand that's the top level and what was it what were the tricks Secrets strategies to scale your coaches right because you two were the main coaches and then did this thing how many coaches did this scale to and then how like how did you do that I think at the at the peak uh right before covid um which is probably close to now um we had 800 people in the top level and 22 coaches wow so I'll tell you two things that enabled us to scale that a lot faster one is having tapping clients to be Advocates so one thing that we did was I would we would identify what are who are the best clients and what are they the best at and we would select clients uh and we would call them SM subject matter experts we would say we would love for you to be a subject matter expert for us which means you get a discounted discount in terms of like your service um so maybe it's like you know we give them 25% off in terms of you know paying us and then what they have to do is they answer questions for other clients pertaining to that one area it might be lead generation it might be lead nurture it might be sales it might be fulfillment it's never it's never a generalist because then they become a little more edified which you don't want to do because you at risk in a service business of losing people but if you categorize them as one thing then it's easy for people to understand and it's there's less risk in terms of clients leaving with that person and so we had about 15 of those people that were really subject matter experts that the clients they were kind of able to field a lot of the day-to-day stuff from the clients well and then in terms of getting more coaches I can tell you that because we have a lot of businesses that we've consulted with and looked at and examined uh the ones that will scale coaching the biggest difference between those that can scale it and those that can't are two things one do you pay your coaches well because you're not paying them is this Priced Right for the job you're paying them in accordance to is this a better opportunity than you having your own business and so it's not actually that hard with gyms because the average gym owner makes $30,000 a year oh wow so if I pay a coach $80,000 that is actually a much better opportunity you don't have the liability you don't have the overhead you don't have to work your face off 247 you know 24 hours a day seven days a week yeah right versus if I'm trying to scale a real estate business a real estate coaching business the opportunity of real estate might be less work and more money and so it's a lot harder for those businesses that's the first thing that's why it was easier for us to scale specifically with within this Niche the second piece is that most people that want to be a coach are people like coaching because they like learning do they have someone well to learn from so there's a lot of businesses the most successful businesses I've seen they have leaders that the coaches want to learn from if they don't want to learn from them or those leaders don't want to teach then it doesn't work out and so what we would do is we would run basically Alex and I would run little masterminds with our coaches you know like we're running trainings with them we're doing boot camps with them to educate them to invest in them and a lot of people just aren't willing to do that um but we were because we want them to we want them to follow our methodology and we want them to be good coaches and I think a lot of people just don't want to put the effort in because they're afraid those coaches will leave but on the other end that if you don't invest in them then they're definitely leaving so you kind of lose either way all right I love it and you guys heard the five secrets so write them down apply them replicate this management coaching Style style strategy so acquisition. what is it how you know what is it how how are you doing it and then how can people get involved with it and then we've got rapid fire Q&A after we cover acquisition yeah um acquisition. comom is basically uh it's a madeup business model that we made up um which is like the intersection of PE management consulting and VC right management consulting uh we take from that what we like which is like the Hands-On tactical you're getting in there with the partners um what we don't like is that typically management and Consulting is limited to one problem and you get in there to solve the problem to realize that that's not even the problem so for us every function of the business is considered a problem that we're investigating the uh piece from VC that we like is that they're smaller businesses and they take more of them um and uh we like being able to get in there early before things are built incorrectly and so that's an advantage for us however VC is usually like a spray and prey approach which we don't do we take them when we're a little bit bigger you know they're at three million so like they've proven product Market fit at this point um and then we're investing in those ones and then PE you know they're typically just doing Financial engineering they're not doing as much organic value ad um we've kind of paired the two together which is you know how do we create a business that's either scalable or sellable um and then how do we add value organically and so it's kind of the intersection of all those where we're basically doing majority work for minority stake in these businesses um that are of a smaller size that we know either have the potential to scale to say 50 to 100 million or Beyond um or the ability to sell at a market value that the founder findes enticing and so those are the businesses that we're looking at right now and we essentially have you know a phase strategy of how we Implement our strategy within their business so it starts with doing a deep diagnostic on their businesses which takes I want to say from engaging with the business to having that done is probably three months um and then like a full audit essentially of everything going on in the biz yeah it's full diligence and then working with them to phase out when those things are going to occur over the next three years so and then obviously adjusting along the way because things change Market changes there's always unexpected stuff um and then we work with them in a Hands-On manner so you know we've got our marketing expert our sales expert our customer success expert and they're constantly working with those Founders on each of the you know constraints of the business whatever we deem to be the constraints to fix those and then we just continue to the next constraint and so that's that's essentially what we do awesome and and is this are they paying you are you investing in them uh like how how would companies who may be tuning in or entrepreneurs listening you know what is the deal there typically that you see or that you're trying to architect yeah um it's a little bit of different based on the size of the business and we've just decided to change it a little bit more so uh typically we're looking at you know smaller size we're looking at more so business that are around five million a year in Revenue um and then we do a you know a combination of um equity and uh profit or Revenue share uh to basically make up for what we're doing and the reason that we like to have a split between that and it's not just one or the other is because these Founders you know they might change their minds maybe they want to sell maybe they don't want to sell maybe they want to keep going maybe they don't we want to make sure that we're incentivized either way with them to do and follow whatever path that they want to take love it so you'll you'll get in there coach them skill up the business you have an equity stake rev share so you're you're putting in the skin in the game but you're also making money you're the entrepreneur and the company's growing and making money everyone's happy yeah and I mean you have to also understand too like you know for example we Source all their leadership that is very expensive um so some of that too is like you know a lot of the things that we're doing with them for how much tactical work we're doing with these people you know like reviewing calls going through their funnels making their funnels adjusting their funnels you know training their team like those kind of things like it doesn't make sense just to have Equity typically Equity is when you're doing strategy only awesome I like it and people companies that are tuning in we obviously we know the domain they just go to acquisition. comom and and apply if they want to join the portfolio yeah just apply and you know we reach out to everyone no matter what and let them know you know if they're not big enough or whatever we'll give them we always try to leave people better than we found them if we talk to them on the phone awesome so this this is what we call Rapid Fire Lela thanks so much again for the secrets whatever comes to mind you know in a sentence or less quick Rapid Fire for the entrepreneurs and salespeople tuning in um first one you know because I know we've got just a few minutes what are the books that have greatly influenced your life what are the people that have greatly influenced my life uh the books books okay sorry it cut out or people book you know if you're like I don't read books than people uh books one uh the hard thing about hard things Ben Horwitz I think that is such a good book for entrepreneurs to relate to in terms of growing a business and it made me feel like uh even when the business is growing things are really hard uh and that's normal that was a fantastic book a second book that really changed my perspective on business was uh pour your heart into it Howard Schultz um because he talks about the ups and downs with Starbucks and I think that a huge illusion that people have in business is that businesses that are successful are constantly on a linear path it's not the case it's not realistic at all um most businesses Nike uh Starbucks you know huge businesses ups and downs um and then last book would probably be Man's Search for meaning uh Victor prinkle because book so good yeah great book just just a great perspective shift yeah that's awesome and uh okay the habits what are the habits that changed your life working out first one uh I think I think if you can establish discipline in one area of life it is unlikely that it doesn't seep over to another area maybe it doesn't but it's more likely to than not um second one would be being highly action oriented so I have trained myself that when I learn new information I take action pretty much as quickly as possible despite how I feel uh which has been signing up trained over time um and I think makes it a lot easier to grow faster and then if I had to pick one last one I would say habits that's tough um probably how I plan with the business so every week looking back looking forward constantly doing diligence on my own business to make sure that everything's going in the right way it needs to go and putting things in order um I think a lot of people don't take the time to do that in terms of that's how you really run a business rather than start or pivot um but run it is to constantly Look Backwards look forwards and then prioritize on a really regular basis so strong what failure or challenge taughts you the most over promoting people in my business and you know what my one of my strengths is believing in people and encouraging people I think I think I'm decently good at that uh on the other side of that is believing in people too much when they don't have the capability and I put people in leadership positions that didn't yet have the capability and I had to pay for it in terms of I had to fire people I had to fire them I had to fire people under them I had to reorganized departments and it was really painful um and not good for the morale of the business and so that was tough to learn from but incredibly valuable in hindsight last one you know right now with the economy the recession all the challenges what do you do you know throughout your experience and your success when you feel lost stuck unmotivated distraught challenged strug struggling what do you do to get unstuck I think that stuck is a term people use when they're scared I don't think anybody's stuck I think that they know what they need to do and they're too scared to do it there's a lot of studies done on this most people say I'm stuck because they see the decision that has to be made and neither outcome or neither path is appealing and so then they would rather just not make the decision because they understand that either way is hard and so I think a lot of times when someone comes to me and tells me that they're stuck in their business I'm like you're not stuck you are frightened and you're scared to make a decision because both ways look hard and unappealing and so I think that for most people that are feeling that way right now there's a hard decision that you have to make that you do not want to confront but you have to confront otherwise you will continue to remain stuck and so instead of saying I am stuck I think you just say I am scared and that is easier to figure out than being stuck because we're not stuck I love the I'm scared like I'm scared I'm not stuck and then how do we overcome that fear it's strong uh and then lastly where can people connect with you follow you for more uh acquisition um and then uh you know my Instagram I'm probably on the most there in YouTube If YouTube you can just go Leo Heros Instagram Le laosi uh LinkedIn le la horos just all the same of those Leila heroi leader of acquisition. the new pevc consulting firm agency investor you know this new age model I'm super excited to see you guys grow these portfolio companies and take everything that you learned it seems like it's hypers scalable to other businesses like you did with this photo company book launch company uh I'm trying to learn from it you know I I met you know we've been talking I'm like [ __ ] what can I what what how do I apply what these guys did and uh use it to scale seamless into into billions and uh audience thank you for tuning in I hope you enjoyed this episode of sales secrets with Lila Heros make sure you check out acquisition.

57:27comom if you're coming to seamless for the first time you you know because of the episode drop Lila as the referral code we'll make sure you get hooked up and uh thank you for tuning in be sure to share this episode follow Leila Hermos follow acquisition. Mom tell your entrepreneur friends to apply to work with them uh these people know how to hyperscale companies so get in now thanks Brandon thank you for listening to sales secrets with Brandon bernon if you enjoyed the show please don't forget to hit that subscribe button right now so you never miss an episode that drops on The Daily your success is our success …