Erfolgsgeheimnisse für Business und Ehe

0:00what's up ladies and gentlemen boys and girls around the world I would like to welcome you back to the real talk with zooby podcast today we are coming to you live from Las Vegas Nevada we've got a very special guest in the house had to travel all the way out here to come see him over the pond over the coast and I'm here today with the one and only Alex ormozzi welcome to the show thank you for having me I'm very honored genuinely awesome man Alex it's so good to have you on the show I've been following you for a while listening to your interviews listening to the videos you're putting out there on YouTube and other platforms and first of all I love what you're doing it's awesome it's inspiring so for people who have been living under a rock and are not familiar with who you are and what you do please introduce yourself to the audience so I uh I own a portfolio of companies right now that that makes a good amount of Revenue um before that I sold uh three companies in 2021 uh two for 46 million and one for an undisclosed amount that was an all-stock deal uh before that I owned a chain of gyms uh that I grew organically uh started sleeping on the floor there um and before that I was a guy who graduated college didn't know it's due I went into management consulting for two years decided I didn't like that and decided to quote pursue my passion which was Fitness at the time and it was also the only business of the three businesses I thought of starting that I could pretty much start without too much money and so I put my fifty thousand dollars I had saved up at 23 into that and so I kind of reverse told you the story but but that's uh more or less how I got to where I'm at now and so now we uh after we sold the companies we started acquisition.com which is the portfolio um and the whole idea was you know I'm a big believer that there's magic between something old and something new uh and so you know the investing private Equity model is not is not new by any means uh but like social media and influence is kind of still a new thing overall and so I was like I wonder if there's something in between there where we can use social media to build trusts provide value and then hopefully just have companies come inbound that are like hey I've read all your stuff I've gone through like I love how you do business we do business the same way and so it would create a more lubricated deal process and that was just kind of a theory when we started it um but it has worked out and so uh that's what we do now so we just we buy businesses both majority and minority interests in them and help them grow that's awesome man well I think a lot of people who know you will sort of be aware of you and everything you're doing just over the last few years as you've come to more prominence and become a public figure but I'm always curious with any guest that I have on or anyone I'm speaking to who's achieved success in something I'm always curious to go way back and find out more about their life Journey so tell me more about your growing up what was Alex hormozzi like as a kid in through school I was an only child for the first half uh that my dad remarried and then I had two step siblings um I was I was pretty much just raised by my dad for the most part so I was a pretty quiet kid um just did my homework did you know did my sports uh kind of kept to myself for the most part uh once I got into Middle School that was really tough for me getting to high school I started to like I went through puberty kind of earlier so I had like muscles uh there's pictures of me on the internet like like I was I was pretty fit um and I had pretty good genes for that stuff and so that's actually what kind of got me into fitness was I had a teacher who was like hey he's like you left and I was like no he said you've got the jeans he's like I'll show you after school if you want so I so I went with this guy after school and he showed me how to work out during my freshman year of high school and um I looked like I worked out and uh that kind of said a little bit of the direction of my life uh that kind of got me into what I would consider my relatively angry phase of my life okay uh you know late high school early college I had a very Like Woe Is Me um outlook on life I felt like I had been wronged whether it's true or not it's kind of irrelevant but that was how I how I perceived the world at that point what did you feel you were wronged about uh you know who knows teenage angst um but you know I felt like I had a bone to pick with both my parents um in general uh the classic feelings of being misunderstood not giving your Liberty you know having approval from parents withheld from you despite at least for me I tried very hard to gain the approval of my parents and so you know I was on three Varsity Sports Teams I was the editor-in-chief of the Larry magazine the vice editor of the newspaper I was in shape like you know I tried to do everything I could um but I didn't think that I felt like it was continued like the goal post continued to move and that's fine because at the end of the day like where I am today I'm grateful for who I am and I can blame them both for that but coming up I definitely didn't have the perspective I think that I do now and so I was an angrier kid and that was kind of it and it the everything kind of broke through for me around like 19 ish okay um I had this psychology course that I was taking in college and we had to write an essay about someone we knew who had a mental disorder or something like because it was psychology so you had to like pick something and then tell the story of how they could have potentially gone in that direction from their perspective so it's a really interesting assignment um and I wrote about my mother and in so doing uh one of my favorite quotes uh Pascal is uh and he was the mathematician Pascal's triangle um Blaze Pascal he was also a Christian Theologian so it's kind of interesting and uh he said to understand is to forgive and so when I wrote my mother's story from the fact that she was you know born in France came here when she was four got beat up as a kid because she could you know didn't speak English the classic you know for you know and this was you know before it was uh not before it was frowned upon to beat up foreigners uh We've progressed in something yeah yeah we've progressed you're right and so um and so anyways I was thinking about that and her father was a super immigrant from Serbia and so you know you have a Serbian man who escapes uh the Nazis uh with with his you know with his family comes here builds a life for himself uh and you know kicks them up out of bed no matter what every morning like just militant and that's okay because that's you know he realized the opportunity they had but I was like going through this and thinking you know it makes sense that she had some like she she is this way right and so all of a sudden I remember coming back um from college and seeing her and I didn't see her that much beforehand didn't anyways and uh I remember I don't know she mouthed off at me for something um and I just remember this kind of very disarming moment being like I can't be angry with you and then she just looked at me I was like I get it I get it it was tough yeah I'm like I'm sorry and then she just like burst into tears and you know and it was like a nice moment there um but I so that that was like a big life lesson for me it was like most of the times if I'm angry it means I don't fully understand the situation or both people's contacts and so I think that was kind of a big a big breakthrough for me as a person because I was like huh this person that I've like held all this anger towards if I just like if I understood more my anger came from ignorance yeah and so that's that's been a frame that I've tried to approach situations and when I start feeling angry about something I'm like what do I not understand um and that kind of helps me diffuse those things and so I think over time that's that's helped me um in business scenarios and business settings make better decisions yeah um because I mean we're all human we all have emotions but you know the degree to which we allow the emotions to affect our decisions I think is is is the is the thing that we have some some level of control over yeah absolutely and that's powerful and I think that of all emotions and feelings people can have I I think resentment is one of the most deadly ones both for yourself and for other people I think it's so it's so limiting and I think there are so many people in this world you know sometimes with with good reason right who feel and harbor resentment towards other people within their family people they've met people who wronged them when they were in school 20 30 40 years ago you know some sometimes even their own spouse or their own children whatever it is and it just it just eats people up and it's such an impediment because if you are angry I mean there are times when you can use anger as a motivator if you Channel it well to go on and do something successful but it can just be it can be disruptive and disruptive and it manifests in all these sort of different ways and I just think there's so many people in this world right now walking around with that within them do you see it offline you see it online just that person who you know you you post uh you you post a video of you working out and they're like mad at it and it's like I'm like why why are you angry why are you laugh lashing out at someone posting a video or a photo of them in the gym and it's like all right there's something that's I'm not trying to psychoanalyze everyone but man there's something going on in the background there and you're not angry at this person but there's there's something here that's like triggering you um so you had this breaking point at 19 where you really shifted your mindset were you already an entrepreneur at this time in any sort of way I was in zero zero ways I was an entrepreneur at this point okay um so yeah at that point I kind of got my got my [ __ ] together darn yeah uh and uh I I started cleaning up my act so I had I had been kind of like a party boy um leading into that so I just always was out drinking always partying always just chasing after girls um and then at that point I was like I need to take life seriously because this is uh my track is not good and so um I kind of Applied the same thing that I was doing in high school from an achievement perspective back in college and then I did did well the last uh two years because I graduated in three um and uh kind of followed the path got a got a job as Management Consultant which was at least for me it was investment banker Management Consultant the primary reason was they made the most money yeah and so that's why that's why I picked it I used to be a Management Consultant as well oh yeah where yeah yeah uh Accenture okay yeah yeah no we were a subcontractor under Booz Allen so it was defense it was a defense Contracting public sector stuff anywho in a past life I had a top secret clearance and all that fun stuff that came with it it sounds only cool to say yeah uh but uh did that for two years realized I didn't really enjoy the work and uh that was when um I got really depressed um and uh I just I just it was it was a very hard time in my life at that point because I felt like I had done everything I was supposed to do and it hadn't resulted in what I had hoped and so at this point I had moved back home so I went to school you know away from home went back home where was home at this point by the Baltimore and so I went back home had this job and I done at this point everything that my my father had wanted me to do and it was his approval that I was seeking and uh and the thing is is like I had his approval but it didn't it didn't hit the way I wanted it to and so what I realized was I didn't have my own approval and so in realizing that um as at least for me the source of my depression was that I was not proud of who I was because I did not feel like I was free because I felt like I made a lot of the decisions I'd made up to that point in my life because of expectations of other people that I was trying to meet got it and so um having met those expectations and not met mine my own uh I felt a big discrepancy and so uh it was about six months of me going back and forth of like I really want to get into fitness I really want to start my own business um and I would you know I'd always call my dad up and he'd be like ah you know give it time you know go to you know whatever whatever and so then I I was in the process of applying to Business School and you know do your two years and then you do that whole game and uh the first question for Harvard's uh for HBS was how will Harvard Business School uh MBA help your short long-term goals and I stared the question for like three days and I realized for me it didn't because I wanted to ultimately start a business and so I thought about okay well 180 000 plus the opportunity cost the time uh versus what I can learn in two years not spending 180 000 and making money during that period of time and I looked at the average incomes after HBS was like between 120 and 180 and I was like I think I could I think I could figure that out yeah and so um I still didn't get my dad's approval and so I ended up actually driving um across the country from Baltimore without telling anyone and I called my dad halfway through or halfway across the drive being like hey by the way I'm gonna be doing this thing and he's like ah just come over we'll have lunch we'll talk about it and I was like I'm in Ohio and uh and then it kind of like Snapped um rightfully so I guess and uh and yeah and we had a we had a pretty hard time for the next five years um didn't really talk too much to either of my parents uh because I was just trying to run this gym and so that's when I went to California and started a gym without knowing anybody uh which was uh honestly not as scary as it should have been because I was ignorant okay but I do remember when I was sleeping on the floor of the gym and I was reading those motivation manifestos it was not as cool as I thought it was going to be because like you want credit for the the rocky cut scene but when you're in the Rocky cut scene it's a lot longer than 30 seconds oh yeah and so you know I'm sleeping in a warehouse where there's there's cars that drive over the top of it and there's these metal partitions and this concrete box it was like and it would sound like a gunshot and so I was sleeping there and so I'd wake up every hour of the night with to new you know to new cars driving over it um and I've pretty much like didn't sleep for the first like six to nine months of me being in business because I would wake up at four the first people show up at 4 30 in the morning teach all the sessions which ended at 10. then I would do I would work the leads that came in overnight and clean the gym set up the the workouts for the afternoon first people show up at four uh four until eight taught sessions and then I would do my sales consults from eight until ten meeting with people and then from 10 o'clock until my I could keep my eyes open I'd run credit cards do the do the billing and all that kind of stuff and then I'd wake up again at four and so it's just kind of this blur uh of life for me at that time and um I honestly don't think I would have been able to get through it if it had been for the amount of resentment I had for my parents at that point and it was just the fear of going back not successful that continued to drive me through that and so like a lot of people when they're they're thinking about starting a business or going on their own they're always like I just I don't know what I'm passionate about or like I just can't find my you know whatever the thing is and um you know the vision for me was don't be broke yeah um and the motivation was not let my parents be right and so you know I'm a big fan like it's cool you know a lot of people see where we're at now and they're like must be nice and um and the real answer is yes it is much nicer now than it was then and I can have bigger visions that are that can motivate much higher tier people you know to go towards a cause but the thing is like when you're started you don't have that luxury and I'm a big believer in the first rule of Entrepreneurship is use what you got and so if you've got pain you've got anger you've got shame you've got fear whatever that you've got insecurities yeah like if you don't have the passion use the pain I think something else you need to have it's so interesting you telling that story because there are a lot of parallels with what I did after leaving my management consulting job so people don't understand the the grind right there's this period oftentimes it's seven to fifteen years of just intense grind where the amount of work you're putting in versus the reward you're actually getting back is so minimal and then of course you reach a certain stage after a decade plus and you start getting the oh must be nice or you got oh you got lucky or oh you know I wish I wish you know I got that lucky or whatever it is and I think that's often because people don't people see the end result although this is not the end stage right they see that but they completely missed the 10 to 15 years prior to it and they weren't there for it and they probably would not trade their comfort to go through all the nonsense and all the rejection and all the discomfort so for me myself I became a so I worked in uh I studied at Oxford University I graduated with a degree in computer science at the age of 20.

17:00um and I I did music full-time for a year but then I moved it to London worked in the corporate world uh Management Consultant for three years 20 2008 to 2011. throughout this time I mean by the time I went full time with my music I'd put out three independent releases sold a few thousand CDs just traveling around selling on the street hand to hand and then from literally from 2011 when I went full time 2011 to early 2019 I was just hustling I was just out there my primary income for the first six years literally just being out there on the street I'm sure in certain cities whether it's Vegas or New York or La London you've come across guys selling their CDs in the street right so that was me I was just out there every day five six days a week traveling all over the UK north south east west rains no UK doesn't have the best weather snow Sun whatever I was just out there on the street all day talking to people I sold over 25 000 CDs hand to hand wow to sell 25 000 CDs you know how many people you have to talk to a lot so when I tell people I've met over half a million people in real life they always like oh no you just talk on Twitter or whatever I'm like dude you you've missed the past 15 years yeah I was just out there and then eventually 2014 I started doing pop-up shops so you know in shopping malls you get those little kiosks in the middle so my friend and I we started our own shop and we were selling our hats t-shirts CDs we used to have our own brand of headphones so we were selling all that so from 2014 to the early 2019 that was my main bread and butter so I do one pop-up shop a month for kind of half the month just be in there you know make a small profit sometimes barely Break Even because you have to pay all the rental fees for the uh shopping mall and all that for the space and you have to pay for all the merchandise and all that and that was it I only I told people this on Twitter last year but I think something important for people to know about my own story is 20 20. was the first year that I made more money than I used to make in my corporate job I left my corporate job at 24. so it wasn't until I was 33 years old that I I surpassed what I was doing back then because so many people thought oh you know oh you're a rat people think if you're a rapper you're just making money right just just because magic right yeah um and people people don't understand the grind that goes into it so I even had people who thought that I went into this for explicitly oh you did you just want to make more money I was like dude if I want to just make money and be comfortable I I've got a degree from Oxford I would have just stayed on that corporate path and you know what I mean just stayed there would have been comfortable but people miss all that and then yeah so it's interesting there's a lot of parallels with that story so coming back to you starting this gym in California what made you actually want to do that and why in California because that's a if you're in Baltimore that's a seems a little I know you're interested yeah that's very far to just go over and start a gym yeah uh so there was two there's two two reasons one was I wanted to get as far away from home as I could okay um and that was it was I mean it sounds more dramatic than it was it was uh I just wanted space you know I mean I just wanted to I just I didn't want to be in a day's drive away like I wanted to be in my own area because I think the thing that I felt like I felt very constrained I felt like I was trying to meet the expectations of other people and so I just wanted to have go to a place where as little of that physically could affect me emotionally yeah um the other reason was I was between South Beach and California because they were the two Fitness Capitals in my opinion of the world at that point or at least in the US and so my thought process was if I can win there then I can win anywhere okay and so I want to go where it's most competitive so that I can learn the best most Cutting Edge stuff and then win there and then I can kind of expand nationally at least that was my my thought going into it but uh those are that was that was the main reason and uh to a point you said earlier I think I think people would be willing to do the grind but they can't deal with the uncertainty because the thing is is like if you if you say hey hold your breath and you hold your and the person starts holding the breath it's easy to do that if you know the person is going to say you can breathe again in 10 seconds yeah but if you just sit there you're like just staring at him like I feel like that's a lot of what the entrepreneurship thing is it's like you save up some money and then you take the dive and you hold your breath and you're like how long am I going to have to hold my breath and the answer is just don't know yeah and so I think that's the answer I think that's the thing that most people are afraid of and for me that was my big fear because I just didn't know how long it was going to take I knew I wouldn't stop but I know I was going to take yeah I love that analogy I think another core part of it for someone like yourself or someone like myself is we had taken the more normal option to begin with so you know yeah it's almost like you're doing that and there's also a rope that you know you can grab onto so for some people it truly is sink or swim right there's people who totally you know they've got no family whatsoever they're gonna fall flat on their face and you know be on the street if they don't make it you know if it's like oh you've got a University degree you worked in the corporate world before it's like man I know I can just grab this thing and live a quote-unquote normal life and be comfortable but you're still there holding your breasts have with this delusional level of self-belief knowing I know somehow some way this is going to work out I don't know how long it's going to take it could be 5 7 10 15 years yeah um and also people don't understand it right people are there like why are you holding your breath like why don't you just be a normal person yeah and do what normal people do why are you going through why are you sleeping in the gym yeah like what are you doing right with me I'd be I'd be just all over the place just yeah you know I when I left my job I got a I got a Volkswagen transporter van and I wrapped it with like I wrapped it in purple with the zoobie logo on the side yeah I still got it it's called the zooby tank and I usually would just go on road trips up and down the country just you'll fill it up with CDs and just travel around and of course to keep costs down I mean I had I didn't normally sleep in my van I did a couple times but I just saying like the cheapest hotel possible I'm going to Manchester for a week I'm just gonna stay in the cheapest crappiest Hotel uh or if I've Got Friends there cool I'll stay on there so far I'll stay on their floor whatever because if I go you know I'm not making that much money I'm going making you know on a good day you know maybe 100 to 200 pounds yeah and then if I go and I get a 100 pound Hotel it's like well what's the point yeah I'm not making any profit at all so there's a lot of discomfort and then with the musician grind you add that the gigging as well so traveling around and doing shows and again people are like oh wow you're on tour that's awesome like maybe it's awesome at like the top level yeah yeah right where you don't need to organize anything yourself and you just show up you know collect a giant bag of money and perform a couple songs which everyone already knows the words to and you don't actually need to rap but like if you're a low level lower level independent artist like touring is touring is a grind it's not it's not fun you have to bring your A game you've got to bring your A game even if there's 10 people in the car you can go there you know you're looking at the crowd half the audience is the staff right the sound new sound man the people working the bar the security guys whatever and you've got like five six like hardcore fans who have been following you on MySpace or on on YouTube or whatever and um you know those ones you don't even you don't even break even and um this is all the stuff that I like talking about it because I wish more entrepreneurs and more creative people did I think so many interviews and so many conversations it starts with a here and now it's like oh cool yeah I'm here I'm already a millionaire yeah and this is all my stuff now and it's like well wait how did you I'm more Curious how someone made the first million than how they made the next however made because that that first one the zero to the zero to one that's the hardest and that's where I think most of the life lessons are so with that said let's continue on this journey from you setting up this gym in California and sleeping in it having the trains going over your head yeah uh what was the first what was the first success so um I was fortunate very fortunate and so I I want to let the record show I am just a lucky person and everything I have is from genetics and picking the right parents that way nothing I have is my own um but I uh when I moved out there I had the so I'll back up because I think this might be helpful for some people so when I when I decided to go to California I had emailed I think 40 or so gym owners that looked like they were doing okay online no one got back to me except for this one guy his name was seven figure Sam that was what his his thing was and so he was good at like helping James be more profitable and so I got on the phone with him and I told him that I was gonna be there and he was like all right whatever I mean you're in Baltimore and so I just drove for 36 hours and then I showed up on his doorstep and he was like are you serious and I was like yeah what's up let me like let me learn and he was like I have things to do uh like you can like he's like where are you staying I was like I don't know yet he was like Jesus he's like you can stay at my place tonight and so it was really nice of him to do that and then the next day he said you know um you could be my Apprentice he said I'll uh I get to the gym at four so be here at four and I stayed and he works till four so he would work 12 hours you do four to four he's like all these people think they can't have a family because he had kids and a wife and he's like they just aren't willing to wake up early he's like I get home at four and I spend the rest of my I was like huh that's interesting and so um I was able to learn the ropes relatively quick I only did it for three or four weeks just kind of like shadowing him around understanding the business a little bit then I found a spot and he connected me with somebody in his group gym owners said you guys should partner on this thing and so we were going to split a location together because I had you know some savings he had some savings we're gonna do it which by the way terrible way to do a Business Partnership uh you guys have the exact same skill set and might as well just split the money anyways uh so needless to say the night before we're supposed to sign the lease uh the other guy backed out and so all of a sudden I had to stomach the whole thing and all the money and all the info costs uh which ended up being one of the biggest blessings in the skies but a week before that that guy had said hey let's go to this marketing conference and this is 2013. and at that marketing conference it was it was it wasn't even a conference a workshop it was 10 people um the guy taught this thing called Facebook ads it's 2013. let's talk about luck you know what I mean like cpm's there so customer impressions for anybody who's listening is like that's what you have to pay to advertise and on Facebook it was like three dollars and so uh I was running ads for a gym as soon as I started as soon as I opened the gym um and so that was so that allowed me to I remember the first month I made the exact amount of money that my rent was which was four thousand nine hundred and seventy two dollars and mind you I had never made four thousand nine hundred and seventy two dollars of my like me making it I went from a job to that and um that was where actually the Panic said it I was like what if this doesn't work I was like I'm just going on this and I I had five thousand dollars saved up so I spent like 45 or whatever opening the gym and I had one or two months of rent's worth of money and then I was out that was it yeah and so I broke even on that and then you know the next month I signed up the same amount of people so we did 10 000 then 15 then 20 and then 25 20 30. all the way up to 35 000 a month at that gym and uh by month nine I uh you know had trainers and I had a a manager and it started it started working and so uh month 15 opened my second location and then I opened up a new location every six months after that um I mean I can get in the tactics around this but uh the way that we're able to do it is I had a a pretty cool cool model which allowed us to get a ton of customers for a low cost and a high amount of cash up front so we could liquidate our acquisition cost and then we still had the back end so people would I could get paid to get customers which is why I could open it for gym at full capacity on the first day and so I didn't even have to front the money for the new gyms I would open I would pre-sell them use the cash from the pre-sale to buy all the equipment paint the walls get the sign all that kind of stuff and so I would open up in the in the black without ever having to front any money and that's what allowed me to grow really quickly from like 23 to 26 in terms of my age um and so at that time I have a I had six locations um these are all in California five were in California and then the sixth one opened in Virginia okay so there's a there's here's where here's where here's where it starts to get interesting okay uh so I I start to get to this point where I'm like you know what I've got five gems uh I was actually kind of bored um I was like this is all there is to life I reached like a different you know moment um and I had seen this guy speak at this conference and he talked about internet marketing and all that kind and I didn't know anything I didn't know much about it um and so I like Googled his name again and it was like hey I've got a mastermind and so I was like all right whatever I'll I'll sign up for this thing so I signed up for it and I explained my whole business model and he says right after I go through this like 30 minute way more tactical the one I just went over uh breakdown of like how I get all my gyms profitable and stuff and he's like shouldn't be running James man and I I was it was it actually like crushed me in the moment I was like what do you mean this is like my whole Vision United Fitness was like I got this really strong brand at the trademark I was like we're gonna be America's gym yeah and uh he was like I think you should be showing other gyms how to do what you do he's like opening a full capacity is like that's not a thing I was like oh really I honestly because I was so in my own bubble I was like of course you would open to full capacity why not do that yeah it's way better and um and so I actually from there started uh doing these gym turnarounds so I started flying because I had the time so I started flying to gyms and uh turning them around so like I would I camp out in front of them I'd run my ads and I would do all the sales myself and I'd sell them in the gym so I just fill the gym up and the deal was I got to keep the money I brought in and they would keep the customers to get the back end so that was no risk for them and I didn't have to worry about dealing with the gym so I just made all the money of opening a gym except I didn't have to open a gym okay and so I did 30 turnarounds over the next two years so we like the Gordon Ramsay of James Kinda Yeah I mean we'd be like I think you're using this yeah their footage wrong like I you know it kind of became like a a system um but the rewind to me doing the first one I do it I I think I did two or three launches in like a month um I made like 100 Grand take home you know and mighty that was way more than I made for my gym because there's cost and all the other thing sure and so I was like holy crap no employees I just made 100 Grand like this is what I should be doing and so I I sold all my gyms in 90 days uh I was just I just fire sold them because I just I thought this was the opportunity and of course at this point like my everybody in my life is like you work so hard to have these five gems what do you mean you're just giving them away whatever whatever and so the first guy that I ended up doing the thing with he that that Mastermind guy had a had a at an event and so he asked me to speak on local businesses so I spoke and I had a hundred people come up to me afterwards because I got all their business cards say like what can I buy from you and I was like nothing I'm a gym owner like I have nothing to sell you um and so but one guy said here's my credit card he said charge me for five thousand dollars and let me know what I get later and I took the credit card um and uh and somebody was when I got back from the conference I called the guy up right before I was actually going to run I was like are you sure and he was like yeah run it so I ran the card went through and I was like okay he's like cool what do I get and I was like oh uh well you know what I promise you I'll make you more than five thousand dollars and so it I again luck child of luck uh he had a Jimmy had to open Okay so this wasn't a gym conference just oh okay the guy had a gym and by chance he was opening one up okay and so I was like perfect I'll fly out and do it and that was the first gym I actually launched and so that was what got me into figuring out how to like help other gymers do it that's that's what got me into it now this guy in particular I was like dude I I can run these things if you just open one up every month I'll just come behind you and I'll like staff it and then we can open a new gym every month I was like that sounds great um and so when I did sell my gems to go all in on this kind of new opportunity um after I transferred all the money over to the account that we had shared because I thought that's how you did it um like one morning I woke up to the second gym I was launching with with this guy and uh all the money was gone I was like oh that's not good uh that was all of the savings from the five years of me doing these gyms and selling them uh that's tough and so uh you know I called him up I was like hey what happened he was like well I know you're skimming I was like what do you mean uh he's like well that was just my half the profits I was like I haven't taken anything out yeah I was like there's there's stuff you know and I had pre-sold like 370 people into this new location which is Monster launch for a micro gym and but there was no cash to run the business and so um and I had all these contracts I had to deliver on and so at this point I had sold my five I had this one in Virginia and I just like I said what do I do and this point is when you know my wife at the time was just my girlfriend and um she was like you know we should probably keep doing that other gym thing where you just like fly out watch the gym and move on because that was working yeah and this guy's trouble and so um I lost all the money and then I had I think I had like 25 or 30 000 just not in that account and um I funded all the payroll and I didn't sell any new customers because I didn't want to own a gym and run it because I was like I'm already done with that season in my life and so I just watched my personal savings just dwindle um and then I was able to shut it down in six weeks and I I paid every refund that I needed to uh to basically start over again and at this point we go to my girlfriends parents house uh for Christmas to meet them because I was this guy from the internet that was killing it and uh I told her to quit her job to join me to do this gym watch thing and of course now we have no money and I have no place and so I'm where I'm staying in in her her bedroom and I'm working in their grandkids room with like a little chair and so I'm like I've got my laptop and I'm crunched over trying to like do work but I was like I can't believe this is my life and so to your point about like the the parachute of like I could just be a Management Consultant like what am I you know what I mean but here I am five years later and I was like I have nothing to show for this like and this is what I think is kind of interesting is that I had nothing on paper to show for it but I had all the skills that I developed because over that time period I had done 3 000 sales just like you with the CDs boy I was just selling memberships um and so she got six of her friends to quit their jobs as well wow yeah to start this thing mind you we hadn't started yet wow and it was going to start with all this money that I didn't have because it just got taken and so uh is now Christmas uh so we have this one more launch I was going to do that I lined up and we needed to crush this launch and uh by chance again child of luck I am born of luck uh a guy reached out to me that he'd see me speak something like two years earlier and was like hey do you have any sales jobs and I was like well actually kind of maybe where are you and he was like San Diego and I was like that's actually where the gym is that I'm trying he had no idea like well where in San Diego he was 10 minutes from the gym that I needed to do this launch at I was like you know if I could get this month back I could get all this other stuff ready and so we launched the gym the guy crushed it did a hundred thousand in sales amazing in the first month and I was like okay I'm scot-free and uh but all but I saw the credit cards went through were stacking the contracts but I was looking at the bank account and like nothing was happening I was like what's happened what's going on here and I knew Tuesdays if anybody's a small business owner like you know what days you get deposits you know what I mean because you're like you know your deposit days and Tuesdays as well as my big day because I got all my weekend money and it would all it was always drop on Tuesdays and so Tuesday comes and like nothing happened and then Wednesday and then Thursday then Friday and then I called him up they're like oh it's a standard reviewer account we do it every year it's like I've been with you guys five years I've never had a review okay you know Monday to next Tuesday hits nothing I was like okay what's going on here and so uh I called two more times they didn't give me the time of day and then finally it was Christmas Eve and I got on the phone with their support I said I will not get off this phone until you send me money yeah like do you have you have 100 I need the money yeah because all of her friends were starting on the 26th two days later and the long story short of this is they said um it's been a regular activity you're selling you know you're processing credit cards in different areas and this is supposed to be for a local gym because I didn't know that you had to switch payment processors if you had a new business so I'm running all this Revenue through one location like a location that was meant for a gym which made no sense yeah and so rightfully so they were like this is suspicious we're gonna okay we're gonna stop it and so they held all the funds and so I didn't get the money yeah and so I had at this point exactly twenty three thousand dollars left in everything I'm rough I just remember each of the moments twenty three thousand dollars less I owed him twenty two thousand in commissions for sales that I never got yeah and so I didn't want to like give myself a chance to think about it until I wired him 22 and I had a thousand dollars left it was it was December 20 20th uh or 20 whatever day it was 2016.

37:59yeah so if everybody's like see what we're doing that like that was 2016 December um one thousand dollars and so I still had my credit card from all my gyms now even though I didn't have them anymore I still had the card and the AmEx hadn't changed my limit yet it's about a hundred thousand dollar money on my card and so two days later I pushed the ads live for six sales guys to be launching six different gyms in areas I didn't have a way to process money but I'd always spend money it's a terrible combination and so I'm spending three thousand three hundred dollars a day 3 300 a day wow I had one thousand total so by lunch I had you know I was I was now broke and by dinner I was 2000 in debt yeah um and that was rental cars airfare hotel rooms uh commissions ad spend everything uh for six guys and the to be fair I did not treat these guys well from uh like they were saying at the cheapest motel I was like just deal with it you know get get McDonald's I don't care and so at the end of the month I had all these contracts and I still couldn't run the money caught everything everyone I couldn't finally got I got a high risk processor so if you don't know what that is like when you go to Chipotle they have a normal bank that processes their money but if you if you uh if you if you see like online gambling and like porn and casinos and stuff like they go to high risk processors who pay way higher fees and they have all these crazy terms and so I got one that said sure we'll process for you but we get 10 of all revenue boy yeah that was the fee and at this point I was so desperate I was like fine just take it like I just need to process money and so I got a 50 000 limit mind you I'm 23 300 a day if you add it up that does not work so I do 50 000 on the last day of January and uh the the guy who set it up and was like hey good news is it's it's 50k a month so it starts per calendar month so on the first of February can run another 50. okay so I did 50 and then 50 and that 100 Grand covered my credit card bill it's like to the dollar and so for everyone who's tracking at home I'm still broke and um and so then I got two more online for 50 and 50 and then like you know and then I I bought my limit on the other one whatever and so uh that next month we did 200 something thousand in sales uh and I made like thirty thousand dollars in profit I was like ah I'm hungry but then the next month the next month uh the gyms that we launched the six gyms that we launched in January and we launched another six in February uh I lay Latasha in the shoulder because I'm thinking I'm like entrepreneurial Genie I'm like I'm a phoenix baby like you know what I mean I come back and uh and so she tabs me on the shoulder and I'm like what what is it my love and uh she just spins her laptop towards me and she's like look at this and I was like what am I looking at and it was our bank account and it was all these negative transactions and each one of them was as big as as the rent that we now were able to afford uh mine it was like a thousand bucks uh and I'm just seeing like 500 500 500 500 for 300 500 like all the way down she just kept scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and I was like what is going on and she said hey well you know those gyms that we were selling the memberships at I have I have a cell phone for all of them to call me for support issues whatever and all these people are saying that uh this gym owner stood up on a chair because we had sold too many people into his gym and he just told them all to refund he said just just refund go home I don't want to deal with this because it wasn't it wasn't their money you know I mean like the deal was we would collect the cash they would service the customers and they got the back end but some guys like when you have a 70 person gym and you take it to 270 in 30 days they don't they can't they can't handle that too many people yeah you just triple quadruple their chip and so again I was an inexperienced entrepreneur I didn't know that and so I was like just deal with it you have all these customers but they didn't they didn't collect any Revenue so like it was just in current cost for them to do this I understand a little bit more now um but then and that was like fifty thousand dollars and I was like oh [ __ ] and then darn uh and then two days later another wave hit and it was a different situation where the guy saw that we had made 40 50 000 from his gym and the average gym order for perspective takes some thirty six thousand dollars a year so when you see that CrossFit down the street they're not killing it they're probably getting killed um he saw us some you know some kids from the internet take out 50 Grand from this place in a month and he didn't make that last year and so he was like Hey everybody just signed up with them refund through them and I'll let you do it through me for half the price oh boy yeah and so now and mind you I had already had all these processing issues so I'm freaking I'm like oh my God we're going to lose processing again and I will tell you this when you don't have the ability to process money it is very hard to do business because like I I couldn't sell my way out of not being able to process money there's nothing I could do and so I now have to somehow and it ended up being 150 000 in total um I was like I have to come with 150 Grand in 30 days in profit and profit and this is after just going through oh yeah after the after losing it all from the theft thing and then after losing it all again from the processing thing and then now we're doing it again so so here I am and I have to figure out 150 Grand in 30 days and so I'm just like staring at the screen and I just I'll try to like brainstorm it's like okay what if we sold everybody's supplements what if we you know I'm just thinking and so uh Layla we're sitting you know I got up earlier it was really getting up I really couldn't sleep but uh she gets up you know the next morning or two mornings later and uh and she starts working on her laptop and she had this little side business of personal training clients that she was doing online she had transitioned she was a personal trainer before and so all of a sudden I like starting Target it's okay how much money do you make from that she's like I'm like four grand a month and she's getting defensive she's like she's like hey it pays for the rent and our food you know I mean like you're a big entrepreneur idea is like you just make a lot and then lose a lot like ours pays money you know like he puts food on table yeah um but I was like but how much time does it take you she's like I don't know two hours a week and I was like you make four thousands I was like that's not a bad gig and and that's it there's no other cost you it's like no I was like I got it so what if I start running ads and we'll just sell direct to Consumer we already know how to this the whole gym thing hasn't worked out like let's just sell weight loss and so she was like is this really what we're gonna do and I was like yeah let's do it and so I built a the best sales letter of my entire life started running ads to it and she starts taking phone calls and we start doing a thousand bucks a day and it's all pro you know profit is digital products and so I'm like holy crap okay well that this is kind of working now if I have my at this point we had eight sales guys because I had to start out selling the refunds to cover the refunds yeah it was terrible and did you still have first six friends working for you at this time okay yeah and we added two more okay um and so she starts doing a thousand bucks a day and I was like wait if we get the eight guys they could each two thousands eight thousand a day with basically no cost I was like that that's 240 minus commissions I was like we could we could we could we we might could get out of this and um how are you just to clarify how were you doing the the 1K a day yeah so we're running ads to a sales page that was like Hey we're doing a 16-week transformation it was called Queen transformation I made it her brand because Layla lost 100 pounds so I had all these pictures like had this whole story anyway and so just we went from there to uh to just uh uh scheduling got a scheduling link and then a group instead of Facebook ads yep Facebook ads and then she would post content in a group and anybody who commented you're trying to get on call with just like just normal you know online hustling and um so anyways uh that that was the plan and so I was like okay well I'm gonna call the gyms up that are supposed to launch next month um and let them know that we're not going to be flying out and so I'll call the first guy up and I tell them the whole story I was like Hey we're not doing any more blah blah and he said dude you've launched my buddy's Gym and you crushed it for him like I know you can do this and I need this I just I just maxed out all my credit cards I refinanced my house for the gym like I really need like I just need customers man and honestly at this point in my life I was at such a low point that I was like I don't have a lot of empathy right now oh my empathy tank was low um and so but anyways what ended up coming out was I was like listen man um I can't do it but he said can you just show me how to do it instead if you can't fly out here I was like well I'll show you but if you can't close I'm like I'm not flying out there he said no it's fine and so he's like well how much and so I said the highest number I could think of at the time because I wanted him to say no because that thing was working I just wanted to do that so I said six thousand dollars and he's like 6K I was like yeah and he's like oh done and I I remember just just staring at the phone and then like you know pushing my jaw back into my I was like oh uh what car do you want to use uh start with a four you know like I start going through and I wrote it down to like some napkin and then Layla comes back in 15 minutes later she's like I just got another one for 500 bucks whatever someone think for and I was like I just sold our whole way of opening gyms for six thousand dollars she was like what I thought we were doing weight loss I was like yeah I know I I just maybe maybe Jim's is the right thing we're just doing it wrong and so I was like well I'm gonna so you so you sold him the blueprint yeah basically all the ads all the landing pages the scripts the show because I'd already built all that stuff internally for my team so like everything was done the only thing that wasn't done was how to run the ads but like I had a training for the gym owner so that they could like process the people and like give them nutrition I had whole plans that were all white labeled I you know everything was done I I just it didn't have the ads part so I just basically filmed an ad training on how I ran the ads and I'd let them use videos of me because I knew those videos converted the best in every market and so uh I I get you know the guy was like when do I get it and I was like uh Monday and it was a Friday so I had to like put all this stuff together and so I'm telling Layla between lunch and like between mouthfuls and uh that next Monday or sorry over the weekend I I told her I was like I'm gonna I'm gonna call these other guys up and so that Friday I finished calling uh the seven more guys and uh did sixty thousand dollars in sales that day sixteen sixty sixty yeah in one day and that was The Day My Life changed wow and so that was when I was like holy [ __ ] darn it's like this like this is working and I saw that I could get the 150 000 that I needed to just cover the bill on the refunds and so she's like what's the plan now I was like well we did 30 launches I'll just call all those guys up too so I called all those guys up over the next you know week or so um and we ended up doing like I want to say high 200 000 in sales but of this 100 margin product and uh and then from there each one of those guys that used our whole blueprint because they were now making the money instead of me and they didn't have all the costs I did I had to fly somebody out there at hotels all this like they didn't have any of that they just like brand the ads and then they'd make money the average gym collected over thirty thousand dollars in new cash in the first 30 days wow I mean that's how I did it right that's how I was able to fund all these launches so like it worked and uh so they would get a 30 to 1 return on Advertising up front before the back end that's massive that's how I open all the gyms for free and so these guys like they loved me do you ever want to know how to like make friends in business make people money yeah uh and they were like what else you got and I was like oh uh well I have this three-year uh thing that's a licensing which shows you everything else about how to run a gym not just getting clients in the door but like how I start your semi-privates how I do high ticket stuff how I you know run the class more efficiently like my whole model not just the front end um and that's when the word of mouth just went nuts and what year was this this is 2016. so December 16 is when I lost everything for the second time um and this is now like uh April april-ish of 2017. so this all this happens in like four or five months um mind you the period where I just went to go see loyola's parents my mother I just got admitted to the hospital and I got in a DUI head-on collision also in that same time period oh wow rough spot but here here we are um you know aprilish and uh and then it just it just took off like a like a like a rocket we you know we did for 480 the next one than 780 then a million then one two then one five then one eight then two then two two then two four and we kept going yeah per month um yeah and so the First full calendar year we did 26 million top lines 17 million in take home and I had been looking at bankruptcy lawyers 18 months earlier wow and that like 18 months before that and this is and this is so wild and this is selling the blueprint to how to run a gym from start to finish yeah we turned into basically it was basically just a licensing program so we just licensed uh because what we would do is we would test out ads in every market and so I'd spend like 50 Grand testing ads and you know 10 or 20 representative markets find the winners and we already had the back end system down so we would basically just license these winning ads because one of the most expensive things when you're running a local business is ads that don't work yes and so if every one of them is just like a home run ad then you just print and then we already had the money printing system we just need to make sure that they had leads and so um that's what we did and so it was incredibly High margin um I mean very high margin yeah um and so that was you know and then and that was that was when you talk about like what was the what was the you know the big clicking point you know getting my first gyms to start working I made some money uh and then I went up into a higher leverage business you know vehicle which you know licensing and media just has higher margins than brick and mortar stores not that there's anything wrong with brick and mortar shorts because you get really good Returns on Capital there like we're we're heavily invested in Chains pers like because I like brick and mortar I just I love the the model but um but when we did this it uh yeah it took off and then you know the next year we grew more and we started a supplement line and that did like 20th first year um because we sold throughout this distribution base of gyms because I had a supplement selling system because I knew how to sell supplements in gyms because I did it and so um it was just you know when I had that Rock Bottom moment or which one uh when I had the memorial I was like I just lost everything I hadn't lost these skills and the education that I learned in that process and so that was the thing that was valuable and so that was a really good perspective shift for like and I should have known better because you know my father's Iranian and so he fled During the Revolution um and he was always big on education which most immigrant parents are um and he he always said this to me and I still I still take it with me was he said education is the only thing that no one can tax you out of you can't lose in a divorce and the government can't take it from you and um because we had had everything obviously confiscated because that's how the revolution works by the way yeah uh they're like that's not your house that's our house that's not your money that's our money um and so he had nothing you know what I mean when he came here and so but he was a doctor yes and so he was able to start anew in the U.S without being able to speak English um again that kind of empathy thing of you know I think what my dad was able to do in the U.S coming much later in life you know not even being able to speak the language um and then you know becoming a doctor and he started his own private practice in some ways is more impressive than you know what we've been able to accomplish because we got that Head Start and so uh again child of luck but that uh that was that was the that was the gym watch story wow wow that that's a that's an incredibly that's an incredibly powerful story because there are so many there are so many lessons in there and I think something that's so important about that and you you kind of touched on it is that if you go through this kind of process and ups and downs you develop both a skill set and a mentality that you'd simply could not shortcut your way through right and it's interesting because you were you were forced to innovate many many times right like if it were not for these it sucks that these Financial situations that like that sucks man like I can't even imagine that like I've taken some L's before but like that completely sucks to be going from doing well to being broke to doing well to being broke again right and then you've got this pressure and you know okay I need to come up like I mean talk about pressure okay I need to come up with 150 Grand in the next 30 days probably anyone listening imagine putting yourself in that situation you've got 30 days to make 100 like your mind is going to be like spinning like every single tactic angle skill set you have it's like all right I need to find a way to make this happen and you and you made it happen and without that type of pressure I don't know like the the pressure forces The Innovation so as much as it sucks um it's it's powerful and with everything that you go on and do now and in the future you've got that it can't be taken away it can't be taken from you I mean if you see some of the ways that you know I mean like I love to see people have success in anything now right but now in this age of the internet we do live in a time where there are some there are some kind of quick and easy ways to make a lot of money that yes they require you pulling the trigger and being proactive but there's also some luck in there right you you you throw a thousand dollars into some meme crypto coin right and it blows up and you've turned your thousand into a couple million yeah and you sell and awesome you've made a few million the problem with that is you didn't really learn anything yeah right so if you were to lose that money and go back to where you were if you've if you've built up a business or you've got a skill set you're a doctor or whatever it is you know you can build back up from zero but in those type of situations you're you're a little bit screwed because you never if you didn't put in that time and effort and develop those skills and you know maybe you can get lucky again and you might find the next one that's going to do a thousand X or a 10 000 X but maybe you can't you know um so I think that's incredibly powerful what I do want to ask you is from a mental perspective and also from a relationship perspective because there's a lot of people here I do want to talk about how you how you met your wife and everything like that but managing all these relationships both professionally and personally and then dealing with your own stuff mentally what was that actually like to go through because it's cool to hear the story but I I mean what was even going on in your mind what was that pressure like um it was it was tough uh yeah it was tough um I mean it was tough enough that you know I I was drinking like a half a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black every night um during most of that early gym when we were doing the turnarounds um and the thing is is uh and I I feel like I can say this pretty confidently like I wasn't an alcoholic um and it didn't affect my performance in terms of like I still showed up and I still sold every day and it was it was what it was um but I drank to basically like decrease the noise in my head because I felt so much pressure it was like I felt like I could take my first breath of the day after I had like a massive you know half a bottle of that stuff um and that obviously you know the pressure eventually led to you know me you know getting the the Collision um driving back from a family event ironically um and what was interesting for me and that mind you that's not when I like I didn't I didn't stop drinking after that um because again like I still felt honestly that it wasn't really an issue um but I had a a coach like a performance coach at the time and after I got I walked away from the accident if you saw pictures of it it was 60 miles an hour and I walked away had on collision um and he was like Alex your stress is going to kill you he's like and you now see this and his big thing was um basically like conversations unsaid which is like you have all this attention that's spread between these things because you aren't willing to look at them like you just you avoid these things you avoid these higher conversations and so at this time I was so spread thin um I actually asked Layla to just go away basically for a month and so we still talked but we were like on a break and she she basically came in one day and was like do you still want to be with me and I was like no you can do whatever you want and so she went and launched the gym in Hawaii we actually need it and she crushed it she still has the all-time record from that launch um and at this time I had I had I think I had nine businesses okay because I was the classic like shiny object entrepreneur and so I had Partners I had all this stuff and I had a dental a dental agency okay a chiropractor agency I had five locations I had the sixth which I was now in spending my days in and then I had the launch business so I I had like no mental bandwidth whatsoever and mind you like I'm still not really making any money I'm just like I'm like making revenue and just spending it again like I'm just not doing I'm not making anything and so um the thing that really helped me get through that was after I did get in that DUI in that Collision I think Stakes became really clear to me which was that I didn't die and if I didn't die then everything that I looked at was framed through the image of like will it kill me and so then all of a sudden like the next day I called all of these partners and was like can't do business and they're like but you said and I was like can't do it sorry and um I I was usually the breadwinner for you know I was The Rainmaker for most the businesses that I was part of and uh I was like I'll do whatever deal you want I was like I'm not doing it and so I exited all of those businesses within the next like 48 Hours what was your role in those businesses like the dental and the chiropractor marketer okay yeah marketing and sales that was always my my game um and so I I just stepped out of everything and uh and that was when Layla was like we should do this launch thing it's actually working so that's like concurrently going on um but from a pressure perspective the thing that I mean the perspectives that have shaped my life is have have since then been all framed around death um and that's been kind of my my single point of absolute truth is that like I am going to die and so if I look at things from that perspective it just helps me get out of the like the day-to-day expectations management of other people because I lived the first part of my life more than half of my life with the you know choked by the expectations that I perceived of other people and so I would say that probably the second half of my life uh has been just a slow and deliberate process of trying to disengage as many of those as I can so that I can just hear the one voice that matters most uh which for me is is mine and trying to meet that man or the ideal version of myself's expectations so I think about like my 85 year old self and I'm like what does he want me to do and so I'm like does he care about what this person thinks I'm like he said that that person didn't even show up to your funeral okay well if they're not going to be at the funeral why do I care about what they think today and so I just I use that frame a lot um and that's what actually gets me it allows me to get out of a lot of social like perceived social constructs and uh expectations people want to put on you or at least that you perceive that they're putting on you and then you can just make decisions that make sense and so I think that that was my big unlock uh from that that little season and then that allowed me to kind of I got all my attention back and then that's when you know I had a little breakthrough a few months later and then that was it when you are 85 years old and you're looking back on your life what do you want that Legacy to be so I would say internally and externally so internally it's that I leave no potential unused so I you know I think everybody has an idea of what their potential is and so I just want no potential Alex left I want all of it actualized every every ounce of it squeezed out um why because I find that meaningful okay um I will get into that the meeting conversation but for me I find that meaningful um and then from an external perspective the more I thought about it like I'm a big believer in what what Socrates said that ignorance is the only evil just not knowing so it's like people are mean to one another because they don't understand one another like if they really understood the other person then they wouldn't and you've everyone's seen these TV shows where people hate each other they find out more about one another and all of a sudden they're actually fine with each other and so it's just people like context and so I see you know the opposite of ignorance is knowledge or education and so um you know our mission acquisition.com is to make real business education available to everyone and so that's why we write the Books why we write make the courses because like that education is what I what allowed me to lose everything and then still get it back and if you play out different scenarios like if you accumulate all this wealth and you pass it on to a generation and they don't have the same education as you and then you pass it on to more Generations they lose it all because they don't know how it was made and so um all of it like we're here with like cameras and recording items and we're able to do it because other humans who we don't know figured something out they passed it on so it's very much like Newton's you know I can see so far because I stand on shoulders of giants and um I know that in five thousand or five million years like my name will definitely be forgotten but I can still help Humanity uh by having some level of contribution from an educational perspective and so from an external impact education I think is the greatest Legacy because it's the only thing that like if you if you have kids and they lose all your money but they have all your education they can get it back yeah um and then from like a combating evil perspective if you have complete if you have everyone had complete understanding of one another and of the world which only comes through knowledge and education then we I think a great amount of evil would be would be avoided and so um that's that's what I think my 85 year old self um I I see myself in it it's it sucks to say this I don't know how to say it the light in a good way but I really enjoy teaching um and uh or rather if I was too many precise I enjoy instructing um as in teaching is organizing the environment to reward or punish for behaviors I don't do that but instructors and like if these are the things and how I do them that have worked for me use them if you want um that is something that I I really deeply enjoy like right before I came here I spent the entire day redrawing um images for the next book that's coming out just so that they're like a little crisper and a little clearer and there's there's no thing that I enjoy more in my life like if I did only that for the rest of my life like if you stopped um and so that's that's like my that's what I that's what I love most I think of my 85 year old self saw me do that for the highest percentage of my life possibly you'd be pretty happy to that's awesome man that's powerful I think something really interesting about the time we're living in is there's something you said there which brought a thought to mind which is you said in 5 000 years or whatever you know people aren't gonna people aren't gonna know your name yeah that might not be the case I think you know something that's so interesting and I don't think anyone really most people don't think about this or or talk about it which is that we actually due to technology we now live in the first ever time in human history where the things that you create and put out there Beyond say a written manuscript can exist forever and be accessed by everybody all over the world right this podcast we are recording right now this conversation and there's no in five thousand years people can come back and not just listen to the conversation they can watch us all the videos you put out on YouTube all the clips all the long-form stuff that was never ever true I mean if you go back I don't know exactly what your um photography let alone videography was invented but I mean we don't know exactly what all these historical figures look like right because there was no photography there were definitely no video cameras we can't hear their voices there's no recordings of them I mean maybe the earliest you can go back is to maybe one was photography invented I don't know lately late 1800s early 1900s something like that right but it's only been let's say 150 or so years where you could even see an image of someone before that it's statues it's paintings we've got yeah we've got an idea of what these people look like but we can't go oh let's let's watch a video of this guy and I think it's actually so fascinating that we now live in a time where everything we are now creating our great great great great great grandchildren can go and be I wonder I don't know what my I don't I don't even know what my great great grandfather look like right but they can go back and be like oh okay this is how this is him this is his video These are his videos this is voices we've got this is yeah and I think that's actually it's kind of scary in a way it's a little bit scary in a way but I think that's that's incredibly powerful because we've already got this stack of human knowledge but I think it's just going to be exponential now all of this all these videos people are putting out all their all their tweets all their posts all that everything I'm like it's kind of scary that it's gonna live on forever so you know be careful of what you post but but it is going to and I do wonder how that's going to sort of bear out for for Humanity because I often say that in this modern era we only have two advantages um you know human human nature hasn't fundamentally changed over the centuries the two advantages we have over our ancestors is we have better technology and we have access to the Past that's it really we're not you know we're the same human beings as people were 500 years ago that's kind of all we've got so if we choose to use that to our advantage rather than to our destruction then I think that's how we move forward right now we seem to be uh doing doing a little bit of both but human nature doesn't change that's why you can go back and read a book written 2000 years ago and the life lessons are as applicable today whether you're reading the Bible or you're reading Marcus Aurelius it's like oh it sounds like this could have been written last week because it doesn't change it's the same lessons humans have we have the same flaws we're prone to the same you know Silly thinking same cognitive problems we have the same survival needs we we need food you know we need water it doesn't it doesn't change and I think that we think that we're changing and we think that we're so Advanced and whatever and I'm like now we've just got better stuff it's kind of it we're not the people in the 1920s were the same the people in the 1820s were the same they just didn't have as much history and they didn't have as much stuff no air conditioning no Wi-fi basically pretty much yeah it is interesting because I think a lot about how um you know the one of the poorest people today live better than you know Louis the whatever uh the royalty of a long era ago um that that always that always uh tricks me out and also that those people are still just as unhappy and happy as the people are today um and so I mean none of this is new stuff that more stuff isn't going to satisfy us um and I think that like when we die or at least for me like I'll probably be equally satisfied and dissatisfied yeah as I am today because the thing is is like I've accomplished things that I said would make me happy years ago so I already know that that's a false you know false premise and so um I I have um and I'm going to tangent here but um I've just I had this I had this Mentor early on and I had a particularly good weekend and you know saw some people I liked did stuff that I was that was fun for me and I came in just like kind of a little bit upbeat and uh I told her that and she said you know I'm pretty sure that's that's the secret to to living a good life is is putting as many of those days in a row as you can and it was uh it was actually like a really it operationalized uh joy for me which was like okay doing things that I like with people that I like many times I can't I've never heard someone say operationalize it's a joy yeah as a true entrepreneur well it's just because like a lot of it's like these amorphous words and we're like what do they mean it's like how to make that real um and so for me that was that and so that's that's what I spent a lot of time on and even today uh because we get a lot of time I'm sure you get lots of people pulling on your time right and um one of our one of our teammates our director of people um made a presentation on how it takes about 80 hours to make a friend I'm a true friend okay and that was actually really profound for me in a different way more so because now I just think to myself I'm about to take a lunch with someone am I going to spend 80 hours with them if the answer is no it's giving me an easier way to say no she's like I don't think I'm gonna spend 80 hours with this person okay I'd rather I'd rather spend it with friends not to say that I'd never take you know new meetings but it's given me a nice lens to say no uh which I try and do as much as I can so you've uh you've mentioned your wife yeah previous girlfriend now wife yeah multiple times throughout this podcast uh I'd like to learn more yeah how did you guys meet so we met on Bumble uh which is the dating app uh it was the best one then so I don't know I don't know what the kids are doing these days but it was it was weird you don't want to know what the kids are doing yeah I don't want to know yeah it was where all the talent was and so anyways uh we we It's Kind of a Funny Story so I I I called her up because I quickly for me my game plan was always like get the phone number as fast as I could so that I could get off the app um and so I called her up and uh said a frozen yogurt date uh because I said hey it's low commitment right if you know if we don't like each other we can dip in 10 minutes um and uh she tried to cancel me the day before the date and so I called her up and I was like you're not canceling uh I just said no I just refused for request to cancel uh and so she ended up you know she showed up uh for the frozen yogurt thing and uh we immediately just start talking about business uh and that was like awesome because I never I was all is all I cared about was business and so I felt like all my other dates I always had to like pretend to be interested in what they were interested in and so this date I just got to talk about stuff I was interested in and she was interested in that stuff too and so we spent like four hours on our first date only talking about business and at the end of the date I said hey uh I don't know if this is gonna work out but you should only work for me and so I uh I offered her a job uh and I was like I'm gonna do this new thing I'm going to call Jim launch Malik it was right at the time I was like I'm gonna go around the country and launch these gyms and so she said no I literally just met you like I'm not I actually had a whole book of business as a personal trainer and so uh but anyways that you know I went and I did my first launches and I came back and I hadn't processed any of the money because I was I I could I can do the talking thing so I got I did that got all the credit cards got them on a sign and then I'd have the next person so I hadn't processed any of it and so she picked me up from the airport like a month or a month or so later and we'd spoken every night not always I was like oh 21 for 23 today I went 18 for 18 for for 21 you know like whatever it was and uh she said you need to take me on a date because you promised you're gonna take me somewhere that wasn't Chipotle Panda Express or and I was like we're eating together what else is there and so anyways I said yes I said can you do one favor for me first and she's like what what uh it's like I just need you to help me process these contracts and so I got back and I had this fast stack of contracts and so I taught her how to process something like an hour we processed like a hundred and something thousand dollars and she I mean she could do math she looked at it and she was like what is this I was like this is the thing I was telling you about and then she just she's like is it legal that was her first question like is it legal and I was like yeah she's like all right a bit that's so funny and so she quit her job and uh so when we started so I only did the first two or three Launches on my own and then Layla came with me uh for so anytime there was a launcher it was just one it would just be it would be both of us and if we had two she would fly to that one and we'd talk every night um and that was that was that was basically our early days so we went from like we just met to traveling the nation living out of the one-room motel room together within like six weeks uh and so you can imagine this so this is a little bit of the context when I went back to see your family yeah they're like so this is the guy that you met on the internet and then six weeks later dropped everything for and are sleeping in a motel room Middle Eastern father first yeah oh boy yeah so huge fan of mine right uh right when I came back I had no money either so I lost everything too but like when she met me I was a successful five location gym owner uh but but anyways we we started doing this and that's when that it was I mean we met in April of 16 okay and so if remember the the chronology there uh we met in April 16 I did the first launches then we did launches together I opened that sixth location with that guy in August um which I crossed that one to 370 plus sales uh and then he uh so then then I sold the gyms uh and then I put all the money into that account then he emptied the money from that account uh and then I got my DUI and then got my DUI my mom went to the hospital and then we uh lost I I had to close that gym down drained my bank account for the most part then had the processing issue then launched all the gyms and then had the chargeback and refund issue with them doing everything and then it started to work and so that was the first 12 months of our relationship wow and so uh after it's like things quote turned around which was like may like two months later uh things were but like was crazy though is that like two months after that we were taking them like I mean we took on like 300 000 in personal income like two months after that so I honestly I remember I remember looking at her the month after that when I had a hundred thousand dollars saved up after having nothing again um and that was that was like one of the most significant moments in my personal life because up to that point even with the gyms I always left the money in the in the business account so it never felt like it was mine it was always like yeah it's gonna be for the next location or whatever and this was the first time at a hundred thousand dollars in my personal account and I remember like being in the kitchen with her and like pulling it up and like getting really choked up because I couldn't even like say it because I've been such a goal for such a long time I mean mind you like everyone was listening it was six years you know I mean or five whatever it was five or six years and um it was it was it was tough five or six years and um I like she came over and she like dropped everything while she was cooking and then she just like gave me a hug and I just like wilted um in her hands because it felt like uh like we had made it and I still to this day don't think I've ever felt as rich as I did in that moment because and I think I think about it a lot because the relative change in income was like a hundred X you know what I mean I went with a thousand to 100 like I don't think I'll ever have 100 Exchange in personal like ever again and I remember like after I get like I caught my breath or whatever I uh I was like we can screw up there we go for the next three years and we'll be okay yeah because for me we were living together on thirty thousand a year both of us and so I knew that I was like we're good we're good and then obviously the next month we made more and more but like that moment that was I felt like I could exhale finally um and then that that uh I proposed to were two months later and my proposition was in the same style of uh I I walked in one day our employees were worried because we were dating and running this business I was growing really fast and they're like what happens if you guys break up and uh I was like it's a good point I understand their their concerns and so I just went to Leyland I said uh I have to handle something um we're going to take a detour in the story uh I had had a fiance before this and we had kind of left things like open loop you know I mean like maybe in the future and so I was like I need to like close this Loop and so I said I'm gonna go fly back to see my fiance and kind of close things off she took that as us breaking up uh oh gosh so she flew back home oh gosh yeah yeah um and we came back you know two days later together and we were at that point in Albuquerque New Mexico and uh I came in with flowers and I was like these are for you and she was like okay I was like so I've been thinking uh what do you I think it would make sense I think the exact version says I think it would make sense if we got married [Laughter] fellas listening this is the line right there from Alex I I didn't have a ring I didn't do the one knee one knee down thing um I will say I probably surprised her um and so yeah I entered the flowers that I think it would make sense if we got married and then she like looked at me and I was like well what do you think and uh and she was like I mean yeah yeah I guess so and I was like okay well then I guess we need to go get you a ring and so I was like well there's a jewelry store around the corner I was like you want to go there and so he got in the car went to the grocery store he looked at a bunch and she was like I like that one I was like I like that one too and so we bought it in 10 minutes and then uh went back to the apartment and I was like I guess we have to do the church thing and so I called it the church and the pastor was like uh you sure son like this is like a free Wednesday and he was like yeah it was six days from that point yeah uh I was like yeah no that's fine and so uh we worked and we worked that day that Wednesday and then after work we went to the church we got married with Noah no family wow um didn't tell anybody because we we thought our parents would disagree with it because they'd say you guys are moving too fast you're being so irrational blah blah blah um but we were both like we're doing this for us it's not about them and so we got married we showed up to work the next day told the staff we're like hey you're good all your concerns have been have been accounted for we are married so you don't have to worry about that anymore and they were like what uh and so that was it and so we got engaged and married in six days and then uh been rocking and rolling since wow that's that's that's a heck of a story right there I do have to ask what was the response when you uh eventually told your respective parents uh uh uh my um they were pumped about it I'll say that yeah my dad was not happy about it um so this is another random story but uh we I went back home uh for something and my dad threw a surprise wedding kind of oh okay yeah it wasn't a wedding though because there's no vows or dresses or anything and so it was just like a dinner so it's kind of like or surprise reception okay but it was only his friends okay so there's a bunch of people I didn't know ah yeah it was it was it was it was an odd uh it was an odd experience okay um and so that was my my dad's taking it um uh my mom found out over the phone whatever and then uh I do remember her parents that was the funniest so uh we facetimed her dad I finished so funny so we FaceTime our dad and he fixed up he's like hey sweetie and I'm like hey I'm in the you know in this thing too and uh she was like I've got an announcement and so she shows her ring right and they're like oh congratulations you know and then and she was like uh and we got married and then it was silence oh boy it was it was the silence was so long that um I stepped in on the phone and was like Dr kurosh I was like nobody died that was my first line after the silence was nobody died there's no funerals everyone's okay like it's all good you know like you know we expect we spent 13 months together from beginning to end we've been through a ton and like it's all good and um yeah that was how about parents found out and then uh what was it was interesting though is that we had to go back and uh we spent like six weeks uh I I had a a nice place at this point that I was renting out I had a tenant and so we had gone to Puerto Rico and then to try and do tax stuff uh which didn't work out because four days later hurricane Maria hit if you remember that it doesn't oh yeah yeah so four days after we moved to Puerto Rico the biggest hurricane in 90 years hit the destroyed everything and so Leila was like I don't want to live there and so we basically were homeless but now we were making more than her parents house every week um and so I went back now it was kind of a cool 360 of like two years earlier and so now we're staying at her parents house in the same room uh and we spent I spent like six weeks with them and so then you know he her dad and I have been close since like yeah he's he's great he he helps you with my books like we're we're things thieves awesome uh but that was so that was the that was the they were like okay this guy's not so bad [Laughter] just just showed up from the internet and just snatched my daughter and then uh but to to piggyback real quickly uh Layla is the reason that I'm here uh like all of the success that I've had has been uh in part or 100 due to her like a lot of the like early days I I made my gyms relatively successful but not super successful um and it was only when I met her because she is like kind of the yindima Yang um she's like got a massive heart she really is so good at judging people she's like she's never been wrong about like the partner she was like I wouldn't do the business with this guy and I was like ah what do you know I'm the entrepreneur and she was right and um the amount of times that we've had like actual Crooks try and steal money from us and then later get indicted like true like actual like criminals yeah and she like will get like halfway through a product she's like I don't know I just something's off like it's happened three times in the last like few years and she just has like an amazing people picker um and so she she can build an infrastructure of people around anything and so I've always been able to like outsell and out Market any company I had but until I met Layla I couldn't do anything about it and then she came in and was able to just organize people and she's been I mean it depends on how you define CEO but like she is the CEO of all the things that we do like her title is CEO at acquisition.com I found her I'm just like random guy who shows up on stuff but she like I have one direct report she has many yeah um and so it's really it's been because of her like I couldn't you know a lot of people try and pay lip service to like boost their wife up like it's not that and I would just always get the credit because I'm a guy um but like Layla's a vicious entrepreneur um I mean she was successful personal trainer she was making more money uh you know before we met and then um and then yeah and since then we've we've fully integrated our lives so we work we live we live life together so we both wake up and work all day and we work out and we eat dinner like we spend all of the the day pretty much together and we've been doing that since and if you think about like marriage stats it's kind of funny it takes I think it's the average couple spends I think two hours a day together and like 45 minutes of that is watching television 45 minutes that is eating and then there's like 30 actual minutes of like wow yeah and [ __ ] two hours that's your U.S statistics yeah it does it it's crazy because it sounds crazy but then I think of how most people live their lives and people spend what eight to ten hours at work or on the way to it and then you know especially if they've got children in the picture whatever yeah it it sounds shocking but actually if you think about it it's not surprising and so Leila and I by the math have been married for 50 years so we spent all the time a lot of time together yeah and um and it's been it's been good that's no man I mean it's such an unorthodox story but it's also it's also very beautiful right it sounds it's extremely romantic whilst being extremely unromantic you know um I so I remember I was engaged before this and um wonderful woman wonderful family everything was awesome and you know being a sensible person uh I was talking to her sisters and was like Hey I'm planning on proposing and um they're like what's your plan I was like well the plan is we're gonna go grocery shopping and then I will just like propose there because my whole angle was this is what life's going to look like um not the flowers and the I was like this is life and so if you want to do this with me like I'm game and uh her sister heard that story and was like yeah it's a terrible idea uh uh you this is not about you this is about her and you know she wants all these things and so I I did a whole the the the the classic song and dance the whole thing and um I think that for me uh the way that Leilani's story has pinned out um is the way I want it to pan out because like to your point of like it's maybe romantic it's maybe it's not romantic for some people but it's like it's ours yeah and so that's that's my vibe and well no I I it's it's funny because it's it's not wrong it's it's romantic and an unorthodox way yeah but if you think about the things that are I'm not married yet but if I think about the things that are genuinely important in a lot in a marriage and in a relationship and just that everyday stuff spending times together going through the ups and downs taking the L's getting the wins together all that all that stuff I mean that is that's kind of what it is all this stuff of you know fancy this and you know the the just all the song and dance all the whole Disney kind of thing yeah it's like okay cool like people do all that stuff yeah but then I think in the western Society in particular and not even just Western honestly like globally because of the kind of commercialization of a lot of it you know there's so much focus on the wedding yeah but not the marriage totally just in what I see in many people's relationships all this one day of like Pomp and grander and spending tens yeah or hundreds of thousands and then it's like okay well what about what about the rest of it and people aren't thinking that I mean if you're spending only two hours a day yeah with the person I'm like that explains a lot of the other marriage statistics to me I'm like two hours that's that's nothing and I get that people's lives are structured in such a way you know this person's got a day job that person's got a day job and they're apart for so long but it's even though that's normal when you when you really think about it it's kind of crazy yeah that you're spending what you spend 10 hours at work or on your way to work in some office say yeah and your spouse is also doing the same you're over there they're over they're literally spending more time with your co-workers and with your boss and whatever than you are with the person you're married to and then you get home and you're tired and maybe you and maybe people fight and they're just you know you know what I mean because they're stressed out from the work and I'm like that's as an entrepreneur myself even though you know I'm not married I'm not married yet but I'd like to talk to people who are and learn from them because so much of what I'm doing now and the way I'm trying to position things is to think towards that future of being married and having a family and everything and I don't want to be a husband and a father who is not who's not there because I'm forced to be kind of going into something so I'm like let me set stuff up now so that I will have that flexibility yeah sometimes you know I have to go on a trip I might have to travel there or whatever but I want it to be on my Accord I don't want it to be because you know I have to do this or I have to do that I have to be away from my kids I have to be away from my Wi-Fi so I think the way that that's worked out even though it sounds so it sounds unorthodox to people right even the running a business together a lot of people are told you know don't run a business together yeah with your spouse or whatever although I've actually heard that that is the opposite of what is correct I've actually heard that couples who do run businesses together you make one dollar together in a business you have a 90 likelihood of not getting divorced is that an actual statistic divorce rates among people divorce rates among people who have made a dollar together in business together um is 10 that's that's incredible that's incredible what's that from do you know do you know the source of it's uh it's definitely I would love to I would love to rip I want I wanna I want this that I want I want this stat especially when I'm hearing all these other ones because yeah 100 that's powerful let me ask because a lot of young men do listen to you I'm sure you've been asked you know that we we do live in a time and an era and in a place where there's a lot of new challenges for young men and women out there there's a lot of challenges a lot of men are both men and women I think are operating from a position of fear in many cases right literally fear of the opposite sex but also fear of marriage fear of commitment fear of having kids fear of doing this fear of doing that fear of judgment um what do you what's the best way to what's the best way to phrase this for let's okay let's be specific for for a young man who is out there who is looking for a relationship a wife someone to spend their life with and to create a you know to create their future with what type of advice would you give to that man whether in season is 20 season is 30s whatever but he's aware of all the madness going on in the world he's concerned about this concerned about that doesn't really know his position when it comes to the wife part in particular yeah what would you suggest to that man because I saw you did a post on Twitter about this recently so I'd love for you to expand on it so three things one is check your stats and so what I mean by that is if this person came into your life what happened to your stats did you get in better shape or worse shape did you start making more money or less money is this person trying to trying to take you from the things that you want to do is it trying to encourage you to do things that you want to do um that's number one like they have to all my stats had to go up like that coach that I was talking about I was debating whether I should you know stay with I was at that point I was a stay with Layla because it was during that break where we were she was going to come back and he was like check your stats and when I thought about it I was like well shoot she's she's in shape and she works out and she eats well and so I've been doing better about that and you know uh she doesn't she doesn't drink like eye drinks that's probably good you know uh she like you know I'm making more money than I did before so like all these things I was like well yeah I mean I guess my stats have gone up and that was that was actually as silly as it sounds that was like a huge point for me and then we got we got back together um the second one is uh you want somebody in my opinion who believes in Mew who who believes in your dreams even more than you do um because I'm a big believer that you should only listen to somebody or take advice from people who have bigger dreams for your life than you do and I think most people don't have bigger dreams for you which just means that for me like their advice is invalid and so you want someone who really believes and I think that Layla always believed um I mean really when there was when it was definitely Faith there was not a lot of evidence you know what I mean like she believed and um I think that like in the dark times that you that you will inevitably have in life like having someone who believes in you is just it's just everything it can be everything um the third one um I had it in my head and then I lost it it was it was what I said in the in the Tweet I'm trying to remember what it was so you've got you've got check your stats yeah have someone who believes in you even more than you do and um the last one is uh you know so the Bible talks about this and uh I I wanted to just get any ancient wisdom around around getting married and uh right after Leland I got married we went through all the divorce stuff so that we could understand why people get divorced and so we went through all of these marriage Retreats that are meant for like Crisis marriages um you went you went to them we went through that no we went through like the materials um and it was super helpful for us uh there was a great one it's a Christian thing even if you're not faith-based um I'm not uh it was called love and respect and it was basically talking about how like men have different needs than women do uh men need respect women tend to need love and so talking like in those terms was really helpful for us and I think in a lot of ways um just validated how we had set up our relationship um but the only line in the Bible about picking of me not being married there's tons of stuff on being married but only one on picking and it was pick someone you go to war with hmm and uh when I think about that that was I thought about it before we before we did get married and like she was somebody who had gone through a war with me you know what I mean and um when she went to Hawaii which is when we did that launch uh when we split up right everyone on a break whatever when she did that think about it from her perspective for a second so she met this guy on the internet four weeks later he's flashing some money she quits her job which she had a good career starts flying around the country as soon as he starts flying around the country meets a partner she disagrees with it opens up more businesses I thought I quit to do this thing with you but now you're doing lots of things then says I don't think I want to do this anymore and then at that point when you're living in a motel with this dude who says he doesn't want to be with you you then fly to Hawaii and still make him money and so like when my world was crumbling at that point like Layla stood tall and she crushed it like she didn't just like do okay she broke and set the record to this day for a single single launch location and so like to me when she came back and like I like I had had some space I'd finished this partnership you know I'd cleaned up some of my my personal space it was like when when the chips were down and not everyone can be that lucky where you get to like like see someone go like test you know what I mean that kind of thing um it's kind of like you can say you're loyal but until you have the opportunity to cheat you aren't anything yes like you need evidence to claim the trait and so like lay let's have his nails and so when she did that and came back and that was all the money that I needed to like do try yet again and then fail uh only temporary yeah right my next temporary success leading only to failure um that was like she was somebody that I would go to war with and uh you know the last thing that I'll add to this is again I want to put the big giant disclaimer here which is like this this is just what worked for us do whatever you want there are no shoulds live your life you don't you don't have to get married there's I I believe like I'm not even like pro-marriage I'm just Pro my marriage like I see most marriages I'm like I wouldn't want that you know what I mean so I as an institution not the biggest fan we talked about what it would look like for us to split up uh what would we do about the business and we both agreed and even to this day uh nothing would really change I would just live somewhere else and we'd still do business together because we enjoy doing business together and so I get questions from guys who are like how do I get my girl to like whatever and I'm like you're not she always liked it you're not going to change the person and so one of the things that I loved about Layla was that up front she said I'm never going to try and change you and to me that was very freeing because like I'm weird in my own ways you know what I mean and uh almost like that little microcosm of that story with the The Proposal yeah and mind you lovely family lovely people awesome um but she it was just pure acceptance and so I think that like if you can find somebody who just accepts you like truly isn't like hey you should dress this way or hey you should cut your hair like this or hey like all the because like there's big implications in that statement it's I don't care what you want for you I want you to look like this for me now you could make the argument well I'm the one who looks at you all day and you want me to be attracted to you Etc but like in my opinion again one man's two cents is that you should be attracted is that I think it works better if you were attracted to that person's natural state because if they if the way they act the way they dress the way they like the way they are is someone that you are attracted to then I think that's the game I think you've won and so I'm I'm a big believer in Layla and I call it loving logically which is counter to all the Hollywood stuff but like we talked about like okay well what happens if we get divorce what happens with the business how are we going to do that I was like we're just gonna keep running it's like okay cool um Layla and I have had one argument and it wasn't like a screamer match it was just like she really didn't want me to do this business thing and I really wanted to do it uh and I stayed rolled her and I did it um and it was the wrong call it was the wrong call yeah that was the wrong call and uh and she was right but you know what she's never once brought it up yeah that's that's actually that's dope yeah she's never once been that way and so I got a piece of advice from uh uh a pastor about it and yeah he said something to us that was really helpful he said if you don't agree don't move forward and we've we've actually stuck with that so people were like what happens when it's a 50 50. it's a it's a it's like you keep [ __ ] working sorry keep you keep working on it yeah you know you keep you keep working on it and eventually you come up you come up with a solution you know that works your brother you compromise if you need to um but I'm a big believer in uh if you have the same information you should make the same decision and so if we don't agree on something the first thing we'll usually say is what information you're working off of yeah which means that I have income I have an incomplete data set compared to yours and so then we share info rather than like arguing it's like hold on what are you thinking about and like sometimes she's like oh what about this employee might take it I was like that's a great Point didn't think about that good call or sometimes I have something you know what I mean um but loving logically in that like I think arranged marriages have they've and I think they have higher success rate significantly and I think there's I think it's a combination of two things one is low expectations second is high commitment so like if you define a successful marriage as one that does not break which is not I mean it's a low bar but at least it keeps you it keeps you married right um I don't think Layla and I had huge expectations um both of us weren't like planning on getting married if anything I was getting out of like a fiance thing and when we met I said I'm not interested in anything long-term like I was like I'm just like I'm living life and if you want to live it with me you can and so our dates we hung out every day after that first date was I'm working all day if you want to work next to me yeah cool and so that's how our like that's how our quote dates work I think something just that in itself is very powerful just just enjoying being in someone's presence yeah even if you're not like entertaining one another or in date mode or whatever like just liking hey I'm working you know what I prefer I like you just being there yeah I think that in itself says a lot and I'll give you my last one because I know I just gave a bunch of them this is great right yeah this is great um I think three pieces and they're actually the same as they are with business is that you want someone with an aligned Mission aligned values and similar tastes or lifestyle so a line missions like do we want to go to the same place right and one like I've looked at a lot of past relationships they wanted different things from life and again I wanna like there's nothing wrong with that like if you want different things then awesome like just go do what you want to do and try and find somebody else who also wants to do that thing and then that way you don't have to spend the rest of your life either resenting that person or compromising like again I'm not like a huge Pro marriage guy I I'm Pro like do you and if there's somebody else that's doing them and you can do that together I think that's great yeah I mean men live 12 years longer on average who are married sometimes it's a life so you want 12 more years there you go um so one is aligned Mission you want to go to the same place the second is aligned values which is you want to get there the same way right it's like how are we going to choose to navigate how we're getting there and Layla and I share very similar values I remember I think it was the first date I was talking about upsells and something you know some business thing and she was just parroting back to me like all the stuff that this business was doing and I was like so you see that she was like yeah and I felt really seeing because I was like I don't talk to anybody who thinks this stuff's interesting and she was like yeah and then they do this that's how they get you and um and I think that that for me made me feel a lot less alone because I think a lot of times I mean probably a lot of guys are guys and girls like you feel very alone and I think if you can have someone who doesn't make you feel alone that's a really big gift because a lot of people are in relationships where like when you when you go to sleep at night and the person's next to you you're laying on the pillow you're like darn there you go see I didn't curse um like what am I doing like what's it like and you feel more alone in that moment than than you were when you were alone right um or lonely whatever the quippy's saying is um and so you want to have somebody who wants to get there the same way as you because I think if you have a shared experience of reality then you get to enjoy everything together if you have a different experience which is why like when people Spent live lives together and they live Separate Lives I think one of the tough Parts is like if the lady is at home all the time and the guy is getting exposed to work stimuli all the time you're going to adapt to the environment you're in and if you're in different environments like in the beginning the Opposites Attract part is what creates the chemistry but if there isn't enough overlap then it just Fizzles because they're just two strangers that it doesn't actually make sense for them to be together because like why would you just be with this random girl who's like sure maybe she's attractive but then like then what like she's into completely different things than you right and it's like you have no shared interests which is really the last one which is like the tastes and lifestyle and the things you enjoy doing yeah so it's like we both like Fitness if I liked Fitness and the person I dated didn't like Fitness that would be a big part of my life that I wouldn't really like the way I eat that's the way I work out it's a big one it's a big chunk right like if I didn't have somebody who was into that like that is a pain like that's just like now now for me to be me I actually it's like uh it's like a give on the other person like I have to ask for like there's a whole all this time I'm not going to spend with you for the rest of our lives together because of this interest that I have yeah so yeah and I think with that one in particular and I've seen this happen in other people's situations is it can create resentment yes right because if you're someone who is training and you're looking after your body you're minding what you eat you're putting in all this effort and you're with someone who just wants to sit there and eat trash and not exercise and not train and you know get out of shape party yeah and in the process of that leads to people getting out of shape and you know they're you're that you're there and you know you're you're in good shape and then you know your your wife or girlfriend is kind of slowly ballooning up over the years right it creates resentment on both angles because you're like hey hey like stop being a slob like eat probably you know you know you want to push them in that way not in a mean way but you want you want to encourage them and you do want them to look good um and then they can also have that Envy or jealousy of like hey like I don't you know you I'm sure you've seen situations where women want to like fatten up their men a little bit to kind of like keep on right like they're like no I don't want you you're a little you're a little too ripped you're looking a little too a little too good right and it creates this very odd yeah it creates a very weird dynamic so something like you know being into fitness might not seem on paper like oh this is something important but I actually think it is I think it's very important I think it's also important that I can see with you and her you both have a the self-improvement streak right if you're someone who's into self-improvement and you're with someone who is not again over time that Gap that Gap just grows if you're just like I'm getting better all the time like I'm working I'm trying to get better I'm trying to level up level up level up and the other person's just happy to just stay the same they just stagnate again over time it creates it creates the shift and I think it yeah I don't know I I've seen I've seen that play out with other people I'm very observant of other people's relationships whether it's whether it's successful or or unsuccessful I like to learn from it all and then be like okay cool I'm making notes on all this stuff just like I do with other aspects of life I think the growth one's huge it is like arguably the biggest I mean I think there was I'll give you an example so if I had to name one trait about Layla that I value the most it's that she's coachable and so she responds to feedback immediately and aggressively and so earlier on when we were dating uh you know like if if someone's laughing they're like ah you're so stupid right um she used to say that and I remember she said that to me and uh I said I don't like it when you say that um and maybe it was my own insecurities maybe identify as being smart whatever whatever reason right and somebody could say hey you should just work on that Alex you shouldn't protect it on her blah blah blah whatever it's a hell of a lot easier to just ask somebody to just not do this thing right and I'm telling her that and to this day she's never done it again yeah and it wasn't like some big punishment or anything like that it was like some like I was just like can you say I was like I just I don't like I don't like it when you say that yeah and her speed to correct behavior is unlike anything I mean she's faster than I am like she like she can hear some once and just immediately that's why I think she's such a good operator um for our companies but like if you have somebody who cannot take feedback and that's what that kind of growth perspective um that's tough because then you can't Orient yourselves with one another yeah and I think there's a difference between changing like values versus changing uh a small Behavior you know what I mean and it's it's also that thing you said before like men do want respect again it's not it's not taught What Men actually want is not talked about a lot in our society right I think we hear a lot about what women want we don't hear a lot about life it's true right we don't isn't there a woman there's a movie called that right like you don't hear you don't hear a lot about like what men actually desire right and I think something like that it's you know I don't think it's an ego thing I think it's just a respect thing right you know calling someone you know even if it's a joke yeah all right saying oh you know the stupid it's it and I also think if someone if someone Lo if someone loves and respects you then they don't want to disrespect you even if it's something that seems like silly or frivolous or whatever you know like if someone if you said hey you know I don't I don't like when you do that like they make a huge thing about it to me that would be like a red flag because I'm like hey I'm just yeah I'm doing I'm I'm doing all this you know if you ask me if you said hey you know zubi this thing you're doing is like really bothering me or whatever and it's like some very minor thing I'll be like okay cool no problem like yeah I'll cut that out because I love you yeah right and I think the other way around cool like I love and respect you so yeah like whatever why why why hang on to that thing look so um Alex man I know you've been super generous with your time um I know we're coming up to we're coming up to the two hour mark yeah so one last question before we uh before we close it out is for anyone who is out there who is entrepreneur curious right yeah one entrepreneur anyone out there who is there you know either they're in a they're in a job already or they're just coming out of college or they're considering going to college whatever lots of different situations but for that guy or that gal who isn't just not sure of what to do what should I do next what should I do first what would be your advice for that person so I think you have to decide whether you want to make the work that you do right now your main hustle or make your main thing the side hustle and your side Hustle the main hustle meaning if you're in a career that you enjoy and you just need to put your reps in then stop being distracted and go all in on that because not everyone is going to be an entrepreneur right it's it's definitely like uh glamorized right now um on the flip side if you are like I I want to do this thing I want to get into this entrepreneurial game then you need to work really hard at your job because Excellence is a trait and then you also need to work really hard outside of your job and they were like well then that means that you're asking me to sacrifice my family or you're asking me to sacrifice yes I'm asking you I mean I'm not asking you anything you can do whatever you want um don't literally sacrifice it yeah yeah do not do on the altar um there's trade-offs and there's seasons and if you have zero to start then you need to get the momentum in the moments I'm just like you have to work double time like you have to do your normal job then you got to work to get ahead um and so my kind of steps there is like start the thing start making money from the thing start making enough money that it replaces your current income do that for six months and then at that point you can get the rest of your time back and go all in on it I think that's the the safest bet to do it I to be clear I did not do that I saved up what I thought was a year and a half of living or maybe two years living for me which is 50 Grand but then I spent that opening a gym and then I had two months of rent left and so I definitely went a little bit more do or die and again I've said before I'll say again I was I was lucky I don't I would not have advised myself to do that I just think I was I got a one out of five shot and I and it worked awesome man and Alex where's the best place for people to find and follow you online well if your podcaster have a podcast called the game by Alex and Rosie or with Alex and Rosie type my name in you'll find me um and if you're on the interwebs of YouTubes and stuff if you type my name in Alex from Rosie you will find me and if you're a company that does over you know a million or Plus in profit and you're looking for a minority party and help you grow or a majority exit just uh go to acquisition.com and we're happy to take a look at the company and see if we can help awesome Alex formosi thanks for coming on the show bro it's been really good getting to know you and to finally have you on I've been wanting to the chat for a while hopefully hopefully we delivered no doubt man 100 appreciate it appreciate you …