Was Alex aus seinem ersten Business lernte

0:00So, with you, like, um, my understanding is that you quit your corporate job, um, to and started the started the gym business. And I wonder if we can kind of explore explore the story there a little bit more. >> I can actually even rewind up there was a half step in between there. So, this is also covered in in the LEAP's book, but I'll I'll give a I'll give a sneak peek. So, what I did, um, is I actually cuz I'd been interested in fitness, right? That was my interest. So, like, I had past experience. I I was obsessed with fitness. I'd been in At that point, I was 23. I'd been I'd been training for 8 years. I had several state records. So, like, I was a pretty, you know, I was pretty into it, right? And it was to the point where people were asking me for stuff all, you know, workout programs and things like that, just cuz they knew my interest, right? And so, as a as a quick, you know, pro tip for everybody, if you've got stuff that people ask you to do for them because you're good at it, maybe you're good at tech. It's like, "Can you help me set up my like Wi-Fi and stuff, you know, blah blah blah?" It's like, that means you're solving problems. You can charge like what people ask you to do as a favor is an indication of the things that you can charge for later, right? So, I had all these people who were asking me, uh, not all these. I mean, a handful of people who would ask me for programs and stuff. And so, what I did was during my last year of consulting, I started something called the Free Training Project. And so, the Free Training Project was I would charge $500 to $1,000, but I would I wouldn't charge it. They had to donate that to the charity of their choice in exchange to work with me, right? And so, that way I wanted people to value it, but I they weren't paying me directly. So, they'd get a write-off.

1:24They felt good. I had a ton of goodwill also in the marketplace, too, cuz I was like, "I'm doing all this stuff for charity." I got I got all these people reaching out to me like, "This is so cool, blah blah blah." Right? And so, after a year of doing that, I had probably, I don't know, 12 really good test like great before and after pictures that I had collected from my clients and I told them that was part of the deal. I was like, "I'll like, you have to donate it. I would like to do this for real later, but, um, you have to let me use your testimony."

1:50And they were like, "That's fine." So, once I had that, um, I had those first, you know, 10, 12 customers who had who had great before and after pictures. Um I transitioned many of those customers and said, "Hey, I'm doing I'm going to do this full-time now. Are you comfortable paying the same amount you're paying to charity except just making it charity of Alex cuz Alex can't eat either." And so and that was actually how I transitioned uh from not-for-profit or donating everything. Uh and I'd even set up the entity. I just told them to to literally donate and send me the screenshot. I didn't even do anything like that. Um and so I didn't have a website.

2:21All I had was an LLC and a PayPal account. So like for everybody who's like, "I don't know how to start a business." I was like, "You literally just need a bank account and a way to process money. That is it. Like two things." And you can Google how to figure out if you can't figure it out from Google, entrepreneurship might not be for you. All right? But you look like think about there's 30 million businesses in the United States. 30 million other people have figured this out. Which means you can, too. So bank account, payment processing.

2:48Make the first 10 free or some sort of charitable thing so that people like don't feel weird or you don't feel weird about selling, etc. After you have it, after you're providing this service to people, you can transition people from free service to paid service. And if they don't want to start paying you, then that gives you insight as to either you suck, right? Or they suck, which is also possible, too. But either way, a certain percentage of those people will continue to stay and pay you and now you have income. Now, you can also ask those people for referrals, which is exactly what I did. Um so I think half that business came in just from I got, you know, the initial ones came in from friends and family and me posting and so I was I'll I'll close the loop on what I said earlier. A year later after I had those testimonials, I made a public post being like, "Hey, I've got this thing now. I I made a website." Which is That was my big announcement. I made a website. I still have the post. I found it. It's 2013. Uh I was like, "I made a I made a website and uh I I am now open for business."

3:41And so if you would like, you know, training stuff, let me know. Um this is what I'm doing now. And I you know, I had some testimonials and go check out the site, whatever. And so from there, I I able to get, I think, about 20 guys uh who were willing to let me do just like almost bodybuilding type stuff cuz I was kind of like what I was probably doing bodybuilding back then. And so, I think I want to say I got 20 guys at 200 bucks a month.

4:05And so, I was making $4,000 a month uh from those people and it took me 4 hours every Saturday to do the fulfillment. What was the fulfillment? I would just I would just update their training programs and and send them nutrition like update their macros, updated meal plans, um and then like, you know, new workouts planned for the week, etc. Um and then I and everyone had my cell phone and I would just text them the new stuff and if they had any questions, they could hit me up. Like it was a very simple business. Um and so that's what I did. It was just one-on-one online and it only took me 4 hours on Saturday morning. And to show you what kind of person I am, I hated it even though I loved fitness. I hated having to do something the same thing every day um like on the delivery side. So, I ended up having the genius idea of saying, "Oh, I need to own a gym because then I'll be a business owner.

4:55I'm really just self-employed right now." Um and so that's what got me to start my gym rather than probably doing the wiser decision and saying, "Okay, this guy costs you 4 hours a week and you're making four grand a month. Maybe you should do this for 40 hours a week." But doing more of it to me felt like a horrible idea. So, I didn't want to do any more. Um >> So, how did how did you jump from that to therefore I should probably own a gym? Oh, I don't think that The inferential jump was not high. Yeah, it was not it was not an intelligent one. I always thought I was going to own a gym. That was I mean, that was the not always. I had done a So, So, these are the three things that I was deciding between for my business. I was deciding between a test prep company because I was really good at standardized testing and I had a process for how I how I did it. I had a yogurt business idea cuz I was a big yo fro yo guy. Yeah, I know I know. I was like I'm a avid consumer of this I like I like I know and I and I hated there's so many things I knew that I thought I could I actually know a lot about the yogurt business now.

5:52Um and I was good at fitness. So, those are the three things that I felt like I could do. For anybody who's listening, like those are the three that I was picking between. The yogurt business cost 250 grand to start up. I didn't have that money. So, I couldn't do that one. Um I had saved about 50 or 60 grand. I can't remember 50 or 60 at the time. Um I was 23. And then uh the test prep business I actually did a ton of work on. Um and I was going to partner with a professor from my university to do it with me. And so I set up all of the initial materials.

6:20Um and based on a miscommunication, I'll just put it that way. Um he ended up either taking the materials and not and using them without me to start a a business consulting thing. Either way it it became clear that what I thought was happening versus what he thought was happening were not the same thing. Um and that left a very sour taste in my mouth with test prep. I do think it was the smarter business I probably should have done. Um and so all that was left was fitness. And so fitness I was like already know that. Um people already want me to help them with it. So, I'll just start that.

6:49And so the gym was the that was the what I what I would have said is like the legit business. I didn't think that the online thing was legit business. Remember, this is 10 years ago. So, like it wasn't it No one even thought it was that was a that was a concept of legitimate business. You know what I mean? So, it was really early days on it. And so uh you know, from there I hit up 40 gym owners uh to see if uh I could just basically apprentice for them and just work for free. Uh one guy hit me back.

7:16He had a mastermind. Uh I joined his mastermind for $10,000 even though I didn't have a gym. And I said, "Are you sure that that makes sense for me to join?" He was like, "Oh yeah, sure." Um and it did actually make sense for me because then I could learn from all the mistakes everybody else was making before I started. So, I was like, "Okay, this works." And so I learned all the stuff that I could from that mastermind and from him. Uh he ended up signing me as an employee. Yeah. Yeah. I have a couple of questions on that front. Yeah. So, um yeah, the the test prep thing is interesting. I didn't I didn't know that part of the story. So, um my first business that went well was also a test prep business and I still have the Evernote document from 2012 where I was like, I need to make some money.

7:51What am I good at? Uh, and what could I possibly do? And it was like test prep and web design. I was like, cool, let me make a test prep course thing and let me advertise it on a website cuz back then it was hard to make a website look pretty. And that that's what ended up ended up making the money initially. Um, on the on the gym front, so it it it seems to me like there's two leaps there. Um, leap number one is I want to do this thing. Like I start a gym maybe. Uh, and therefore I'm going to work for free. Oh, sorry. I want to own a business. Yeah. I want to own a business. Therefore I'm going to work for someone for free. That that is seems a like a bit of a leap. Uh, which these days seems very unfashionable to even say because everyone then goes down your throat for being that's only available for the privileged etc. etc. What's wrong with the privileged working for free?

8:36Yeah, the working for free thing. It's it's quite un- unfashionable to suggest that people work for free. Um, Oh, all right. At least >> I mean I was making four grand a month from my little online thing. So, I made money from that. Now, I offered to work for free, but I he quickly was like, I don't feel good about it. I'll just pay you. And so, he paid me. He paid me like minimum wage, but I mean, I think I made like, I don't know, 2,800 bucks a month, whatever it was. I don't even remember what it was cuz I made more from the 4 hours a week on Saturday than I did from that. But I again, the point wasn't to to to earn, you know what I mean? It was to learn. And I had saved up 50 grand.

9:10So, I knew I could live for, you know, at least 2 years on that. Um, I tried to live on those I was I spent 400 bucks a month splitting a bedroom. Um, and then I ate not, you know, I spent $100 a week on food. I was eating, you know, I was spending nothing to live. And then the rest of my time was at the gym trying to learn. Real quick, if you are a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the $100 scaling road map, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so we broke it into these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you, what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources and finance. And so no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information and if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page, you can just book a call with my team and we will look at the business, see if we can help and if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live.