Wie Alex Hormozi ein 150 Millionen Imperium aufgebaut hat

0:00and I think the big problem is that people expect that they're going to have a perfect business I can't think of an entrepreneur beside Chef Bezos who's a freak of nature most people have a graveyard of failures behind them the idea is you start not with the intent of saying this is going to be the one thing for the rest of my life which is the fallacy that employees have when in relatives I just have to do a thing that I'm good enough at that I can learn the game and the thing is once you start taking steps The Next Step becomes illuminated you trying to think a hundred steps into the future when you have no context is irrelevant because chaos is going to break your plan and a lot of people think they need to have some novel idea the best way to start a business is just look at what everyone else is doing and just try and do it better what are things that I already know how to do or I have past experience in what things because I have past experience I know that other people struggle with that sucks about this thing and then I will solve that specific problem and it could also be a problem that other people solve too you just try and do a little bit better hey friends and welcome back to Deep dive the weekly podcast where every week it is my immense privilege to sit down with authors and academics and entrepreneurs and creators and other inspiring people and we talk about how they got to where they are and the strategies and tools that we can learn from them to apply to our own lives to help live our best lives now what you're about to hear is an interview between me and Alex hormozzi Alex has been absolutely taking the Internet by storm over the last year or two he's a business owner I guess who's just he's also absolutely jacked and just produces loads and loads of content which is all around helping you start and build a business he and his wife Leila they own businesses together their portfolio is worth over 150 million dollars and Alex has written an absolutely fantastic book called 100 million dollar offers which is a book basically all about how to craft an offer which converts people and which sells well and he's genuinely one of the most inspiring people that I've ever come across in the world of Entrepreneurship he has nothing to sell you that's like one of his one of his selling points at his whole mission is to help people start businesses because starting a business and growing his business was what allowed him to become free and Get Ridiculous levels of wealth and be able to do whatever you want on it and so in the conversation we talk a little bit about how let's say someone working a normal job could potentially be taking those first steps to start that business which could potentially allow them to quit that job if that's what they want to do and we touch on a bunch of other things around the importance of learning versus owning investing in the S P 500 versus the sne500 and we explore a little bit of Alex's backstory where he quays corporate job and then started gyms and like all of the various lessons I learned along the way so I hope you enjoyed this interview with Alex formosi yeah so thank you so much for taking the time um no this is a conversation I've been looking forward to for a while because I've uh discovered your stuff around the time you were blowing up seemingly on all of the social platforms um and then and then I came across your book and I listened to it on Audible and around the same time all of my friends had also discovered the book and they were just like we were all messing being like Oh my God have you read 100 million offers it's just absolutely sick and it's just like jam-packed with value so firstly thank you for that um and for providing that as a 99 service to the world broadly um how did you think about pricing for that for that book by the way I mean I think it's always like what's the you know what problem are we solving and so for me like the point of the book is not to make money from the book the point of the book was to you know help as many businesses make money and then I mean the the play fragments.com is a very long play you know what I mean which is just I believe that there's lots of there I think that the biggest inflow of deals will actually come in five years from all the people who've consumed the stuff and have gotten to you know three five ten twenty million and they want to work with acquisition.com who are not at that threshold yet um but it's guys who want to go to 100 and they're capped at 10 and they're trying to figure out what to do um that's that's what I'm making all the stuff for um but yeah so the problem that we're solving is like how do we get this and as many hands as possible and so giving it away for free I actually don't think would have gotten as many hands because I wanted to use because if Amazon makes money Amazon will push it right and so I did make and so at 99 Cents Amazon gets two-thirds of the revenue from the thing if I was at 299 then it's I get two thirds and they get one third and so my at least my men's argument was it's easy to sell a 99 thing uh I can tap into the traffic that Amazon will provide and what problem am I solving which is mass distribution you know as many people as possible and I think there is also a tiny element of free versus paid there's like an emotional difference of like I paid something I mean it's a difference between a customer and a voyeur you know what I mean and so um that was that was at least the the thought process behind it and um yeah just that was that was it there wasn't there wasn't too much more thought than that so one of the things that you open a lot of your content with is um the phrase to the effect of my name is Alex Mosey I own acquisition.com uh uh and I'm gonna help you get to 3 million in Revenue if you're more than three million in Revenue then talk to me I want to acquire you but if you're less than three million in Revenue I want to help you get there and I have nothing to sell you um and that's that's interesting so it's it's interesting a because like the way people were describing you when it was sort of on the Grapevine when you first started blowing up was that phrase that and and I have nothing to sell you and that was that really tapped nicely into some something in the Zeitgeist where everyone knows someone's always trying to sell you something and then just the fact that you're so blase about throwing the word three million out there where for most people they hear that number and they like [ __ ] their pants because like three million's a lot of money but the way you seem to talk like it it's it's almost like it's it's not and it helped like for me at least helped me change my mindset around multiple Millions to the point is that it it didn't seem like such a big deal so I wonder if you can just kind of speak to that a bit like what's the philosophy behind the introduction yeah I mean so many many of the things uh that I feel like I've gotten some notoriety for have been uh you know sheer accidents that it's it's it only seems masterful in retrospect then more than it was you know um intelligent design um I got frustrated because a lot of people were like he's just trying to sell a course this is like early on um because you know and I was like I was like I'm not I have nothing to sell you I was like I have nothing to sell you and so the very first dude I can't remember which one it was I just said it like I was just annoyed uh when I said that and then you know the comments just like poured on if it's like oh so I just need to be more like more explicit about this I people just don't know I was like I have nothing I have a 99 cent book like you know what I mean like if that and that's actually the one thing that I've struggled uh with is because like the internet doesn't do well with Nuance um and so they're like you know super like he's trying to make money I'm like dude like yeah and the book does make money the book makes uh probably about 60 000 a month in income um that I make from the book yeah um so I mean like it makes money um but like relative to my income it's just like it's irrelevant like it doesn't even you know what I mean like it doesn't it doesn't my top employee makes a million plus a year like it doesn't do anything for me so um it's just like for context right um so um anyways all that say the thinking processors more to me we're trying to be explicit and in terms of talking about three million I may even change it I may I've changed it on some a lot of my profiles to 10 million um and up but the biggest issue that most people have between zero and three specifically um is just ignorance people just don't know what to do you know what I mean so like just you know getting to six figures is literally just like sell something to someone like that's that's all you have to do to get six records like one channel one product one Avatar like that's it you don't have to do anything else and then you know when you get you want to get to Seven figures then you just do that and then add the word consistently which is you do you know you input the inputs in the system in a way that's consistent so that you get a consistent output so it's whatever way you acquire those customers whether it was reach outs whether it was content whether it was paid ads whether it was Affiliates whether it was referrals whatever the thing was that got you the customers cool do that consistently and you'll be in a million you know what I mean which is which is still only 20K a week it's not like a huge number you know one to three is usually uh increasing output of that that main thing to a small degree um and really just like Baseline efficiencies and building out the core team so usually at that point going one to three is getting the person out of delivery um to a large you know to a large extent and usually they get their first kind of first follower first like one or two uh I'm trying to think the right word to how to say this um competent individuals uh who are helping them out and then you know a handful of Frontline and so it's usually like companies that's yeah three million they're like five to Fifteen employees and so and there's usually really only like two-ish good ones um and the rest are okay right and so at that point you know going from three to ten is usually where we can it's the minimum level that we take people on and it's not because there's something magical about three million is that three million typically checks two boxes box one is that they have product Market fit at some level people want something from them like something they're selling is resonating enough that they can generate sales and the second thing I guess there's three boxes one is that the second is that they have at least one reliable acquisition channel that they're currently doing and the third is that they have a core team in place so they've demonstrated product Market fit they have a reliable acquisition Channel just at least one uh and they have a core team in place which may be relatively dysfunctional and have very few key players but at least they have some semblance of structure and so if they have if they meet those minimum requirements then we can at least start from at least some level of Leverage um to start helping them grow okay so I'd love to talk a lot about that that initial bit that you sort of threw away with like oh one product one channel one one yeah um so forbid context a couple of weeks ago I I happened to be on on vacation on some Greek island and I posted an Instagram reel of like hey this is the creator life I'm working on my iPad and stuff and there are a few comments from people being like I'd love to live this sort of Lifestyle but I just don't know where to start and that sort of that idea of I'd love to be able to you know if we imagine 99.9 listening to both people listening to this if you told them they could make six figs a year doing what they love they'd be like mind blown would absolutely love that so I wonder if we can kind of explore that zero to six figure jump uh or sort of process let's say someone has got a full-time job let's say they're working in I don't know consulting or some Something Corporate and they love the idea of I want to make a living doing what I love how how would we break that down and this is under the assumption that they hate doing what they're doing yes I was like because I I always like to be clear I was like I've got employees that make a million bucks a year plus so like you can absolutely become filthy wealthy and that's income right and so a lot of businesses that are at 10 million dollars a year the owner might only take a million bucks in income depending on you know margins Etc and so like a lot of a lot of employees will wish for they see Top Line as income which is just a very employee mindset um they're like oh if I make six figures a year I'll make six figures a year it's like Well if you really want to make six figures you gotta probably make 500 Grand a year um you know I mean revenue wise at least if you don't want to have just bought yourself another job right because so let's let's talk through this transition so if you're an employee when you make the switch you're still an employee you're just employee of a different business that you happen to own and you are basically 100 of the expenses and so the business itself actually makes it money you as the sole employee of that thing and the boss um gets to call your own shots but you were still the employee right so you're wearing all the hats Etc um and so it's relatively nuanced you know I mean like if you had a six-pear consulting job and then you start Consulting on the side for example through your own LLC you have the same job you just got rid of the person who is giving you Direction and now you are responsible right the thing that most people have to do is they have to go get money right you have to go make money and the way you do that is you sell stuff right and the way that you can even begin the conversation to sell stuff is that you have to have people who show interest in the thing which means you have to make your products known and we do that through advertising right there's five ways to advertise a child which I just went over earlier um and so it's like pick one of those five ways start doing it on a consistent basis bring people in what do you sell them that's what 100 offers book is for it's like this is how you figure out what to sell um and then you sell them the thing and then after that you'll have some delivery now usually if you have a consistent method of advertising and selling with a with a what to sell from the offer then you can start getting people to help you uh on the level of delivery you have which comes down to Breaking the delivery into chunks rather than holistically and saying how can I specialize the labor because you trying to say I just need somebody to do what I do is silly right you need to figure out how could somebody do how can I get how can I get five people to do 20 of what I'm doing and do it consistently right and then you can increase your advertising sales is a very high leverage thing in the beginning if you spend all day selling just you you would have enough for five people to do work right and so then you would have a business you know just a quick announcement from one of our sponsors and we'll get right back to the episode and this episode is brought to you by Heights Heights is a brain care smart supplement that I've been taking every morning for the last 12 months I love it so much that I actually became friends with the founder Dan who we actually had on season one of the Deep dive podcast we also have an interview this season with neuroscientist and psychiatrist Dr Tara swart who's the chief science officer of heights and I like the product so much that I actually became an angel investor in the company it's great everything they do is completely evidence-based so on their website they've got a list of all 20-something micronutrients that they've got in these two capsules along with links to all of the various scientific papers and consensuses on why these sorts of nutrients are good for you and why they've got them at the appropriate dosing which they have in the capsules in the capsules it's super easy to sign up you just go on the website which is linked in the show notes and in the video description and you put in your address and they send you one of these little boxes of pills every month or every quarter now I sign up to the quarterly subscription so I get three of these every three months and the quarterly subscription is great because a it's discounted from the monthly subscription and B if you use the coupon code Ali 15 ali15 at checkout then you'll get an extra 15 off the already discounted price of the quarterly subscription now obviously it's ideal if you can actually get all these micronutrients from your diet that would be the gold standard but as studies show 99 of us in the Western World don't in fact have the absolutely perfect gold standard Mediterranean diet I certainly don't I eat a lot of takeaways and so these two capsules just two capsules Every Morning has my base is covered and it's a lot easier to take just two little capsules with water than it is to try and drown green sludge or whatever else other other companies have in the market that kind of does the same thing so anyway thank you so much Heights for sponsoring this episode and let's get right back to the podcast so let's say someone's listening to this and they're thinking all right cool I know I like I've realized this bookie he's telling me I've got I've got a seller thing I don't I don't know what to sell I don't know if I have any skills I don't I don't I don't know what I could possibly offer to the world yeah how do we how do we break that down yeah this is actually a topic that I um I cover more in the leads book that's coming out soon uh soon relative terms six months-ish everybody knows something all right and so the idea is what do you have like everyone has unique depth of knowledge in certain areas because you've been alive and your eyes and ears have taken inputs period right and so I like to think of of people starting like so if you look at are you familiar with black combinator yeah but so yeah yeah so why combinator is one of the most successful you know uh I don't know if they're technically VC there's you know seed Capital startup investors in Silicon Valley and they have a very standard gel structure and they have criteria for what they look for in companies and one of the most important criteria that they look for is past experience and so they're okay with somebody who's super young Etc but they wanna they want you to have experience in the industry because there's just so much ignorance debt that you have to pay down if you literally know nothing about an industry like there's just so much like if your dad was a mechanic you know so much about cars just by osmosis of being around a mechanic for 18 years and so I like to think past jobs you've held you will know stuff about that industry the jobs of your parents are things that you will know about that industry and then you've got personal interests and so I think that if I put those into three buckets it's like parent stuff past jobs of self and current interests and so it's like of those three things which of those three buckets do you think you could help someone do a thing better and so the idea is you want to sell the most valuable thing right and so the most valuable thing is what is the problem that I can help somebody else solve that I could charge the most money for or in reverse that could make them the most money and then I will be able to charge a percentage of the money that I'm able to make somebody else in this thing now that's in a B2B setting in a b2c setting it would be how valuable do people perceive uh the problem that they have as right whether it's like I can teach music tons of people want to be able to learn how to and if you're better you know because you've had a side interest in that awesome maybe you have a side interest because you're really good at editing the songs well there's tons of musicians who would love who hate that part and would love to have them so it's like we all know how to do stuff and all we have to do is package the thing that we're doing and I think the big problem is that people expect that they're going to have a perfect business but if you look at the track record of all of I can't think of an entrepreneur beside Chef Bezos who's a freak of nature whose first business becomes the most valuable business in the world is most people have a graveyard of failures behind them and so the idea is you start not with the incentive saying this is going to be the one thing for the rest of my life which is the fallacy that employees have that whatever they pick as me they think they're gonna do for the rest of their lives when in relatives I just have to do a thing that I'm good enough at that I can learn the game and the thing is once you start taking steps The Next Step becomes illuminated you trying to think 100 steps into the future when you have no context is is irrelevant because chaos is going to break your plan anyways and so do what you know exchange I like service businesses to start because they are the in my opinion the lowest risk to start because you're just it's just your time right so service businesses meaning do stuff for money clean houses like whatever like all of those are just service businesses right and they're fine and a lot of people think they need to have some novel idea to start a business when I mean the best in my opinion if you're if you're getting into it the best way to start a business is just look at what everyone else is doing and just try and do it better like that I mean and there's obvious holes like if you've if you've gone to if you've gotten your dry cleaning it's like can I do this in half the time as this guy if I do the lawn care what are the things people hate about lawn care they leave the the trimmings around the edges they're all shitty the person doesn't speak English that well like well cool then I've got advantages right so it's like what are things that I already know how to do or I have past experience in what things because I have past experience I know that other people struggle with that sucks about this thing and then I will solve that specific problem and it could also be a problem that other people solve too you just try and do a little bit better like it's it's just not rocket science you know what I mean and then you exchange you start selling your time for money so yes you're still trading time for dollars you don't need to read Rich that poor dad just yet right you're still trading time for a dollar right but the point is that you're you're you're trading that time for money in order to learn not to earn you need to earn in order to pay your pay your rent eat Etc but the the major thing you're doing is you're paying down ignorance debt so the vast majority of your income is coming in the terms of in the form of Education rather than earning yeah there's a few a few things that I think are really interesting uh the first is that um I think if if we think of sort of how an employee thinks of us as how an entrepreneur thinks we're a business owner an employee sort of mindset is often sort of the activity that I'm doing where the entrepreneur is more like the problem the specific problem that I'm solving um and I found that when people in in our team have started doing freelance work and now they have more of an idea of what a creative business looks like and they can solve a specific problem they're just like oh my God it's so easy to make money whereas before they were thinking of this service as like oh I am I I offer writing as a service or something like that but as soon as you connect it to a problem that preferably a business has because businesses can pay for it suddenly the eyes light up and you realize hang on what does money even mean if I could if it's seemingly so easy to make it um yeah I I like what you're saying about service based businesses because it's it's not that sexy like when you hear people on podcasts you don't tend to hear of someone who built a service based business and it went pretty big you tend to hear the stories of like the tech entrepreneurs that build it in the built in Innovative product and stuff um they don't see the 100 failed startups like the failure rate on Tech startups it might like is just as high as everything else except it usually takes capital and it doesn't take Capital to start service business so with you like my understanding is that you quit your corporate job um and started that started the gym business and I wonder if we can kind of explore explore the story there a little bit more I can actually even rewind that there was a half step in between there so this is also covered in the leads book but I'll give a I'll give a sneak peek so what I did um is I actually because I'd been interested in Fitness right that was my interest so like I had past experience I I was obsessed with Fitness I've been at that point I was 23. I've been training for eight years I had several State records so like I was a pretty you know I was pretty into it right and it was to the point where people were asking me for stuff all you know workout programs and things like just because they knew my interest right and so as a as a quick you know Pro tip for everybody if you've got stuff that people ask you to do for them because you're good at it maybe you're good at Tech it's like can you help me set up my like Wi-Fi and stuff you know blah blah blah it's like that means you're solving problems you can chart like what people ask you to do as a favor is an indication of the things you can charge for later right so I had all these people who are asking me uh not all these I mean I had a full people who had asked me for programs and stuff and so what I did was during my last year of Consulting I started something called the free training project and so the free training project was I would charge 500 to a thousand dollars but I would I wouldn't charge it they had to donate that to the charity their choice in exchange to work with me right and so that way I wanted people to Value it but they weren't paying me directly so they'd get it right off they felt good I had a ton of Goodwill also in the marketplace too because I was like I'm doing all this stuff for charity I got I got all these people reaching out to me like this is so cool blah blah blah right and so after a year of doing that I had probably I don't know 12 really good test of like great before and after pictures that I had collected from my clients and I told them that was part of the deal I was like I'll like you have to donate it I would like to do this for real later but um you have to let me use your testimonial and they were like that's fine so once I had that um I had those first you know 10 12 customers who had who had great before and after pictures um I transitioned many of those customers said hey I'm doing I'm going to do this full time now are you comfortable paying the same amount you're paying to charity except just making a charity of Alex because Alex can't eat either and so and that was actually how I transitioned from not-for-profit or donating everything and I'd even set up there today I just told them to to literally donate it and send me the screenshot I didn't even do anything like that um and so I didn't have a website all I had was an LLC and a PayPal account so like for everybody's like I don't know how to start a business I was like you literally just need a bank account and a way to process money that is it like two things and you can Google how to figure out if you can't figure it out from Google entrepreneurship might not be for you all right but you look like think about there's 30 million business in the United States 30 million other people have figured this out which means you can too so bank account payment processing make the first 10 free or some sort of charitable thing so that people like don't feel weird or you don't feel weird about selling Etc after you have it after you're providing the service to people you can transition people from free service to paid service and if they don't want to start paying you then that gives you insight as to either you suck right or they suck which is also possible too but either way a certain percentage of those people will continue to stay and pay and now you have income now you can also ask those people for referrals which is exactly what I did um so I think half that business came in just for I got you know the initial ones came in from friends and family and me posting and so I was I'll I'll close the loop on what I said earlier a year later after I had that testimonials I made a public post being like hey I've got this thing now I made a website which is that was my big enough I made a website I still have the post I found it it's 2013. I was like I made it I made a website and uh I I am now open for business and so if you would like you know training stuff let me know um this is what I'm doing now you know I had some testimonials and go check out the site whatever and so from there I was able to get I think about 20 guys uh who were willing to let me do just like almost bodybuilding type stuff because I was kind of like what I was powerless back then and so um I think I want to say I got 20 guys at 200 bucks a month and so I was making four thousand dollars a month uh from those people and it took me four hours every Saturday to do the Fulfillment what was the Fulfillment I would just I would just update their training programs and and send them nutrition uh like update their macros updated meal plans um and then like you know new workouts before the week Etc um and then I and everyone had my cell phone and I would just text them the new stuff and if they had any questions they could hit me up like it was a very simple business um and so that's what I did it was just one-on-one online and it only took me four hours on Saturday morning and to show you what kind of person I am I hated it uh even though I loved Fitness I hated having to do something the same thing every day um like on the delivery side so I ended up having the genius idea of saying oh I need to own a gym because then I'll be a business owner I'm really just self-employed right now um and so that's what got me to start my gym rather than probably doing the wiser decision and saying okay this cost you four hours a week and you're making four grand a month maybe you should do this for 40 hours a week but doing more of it to me felt like a horrible idea so I didn't want to do anymore um so how did you jump from that to therefore I should probably own a gym oh I don't think that's that's the difference yeah it was not a good it was not an intelligent one I always thought I was going to own a gym that was I mean that was the not always I had done a so so these are the three things that I was deciding between for my business I was decided between a test prep company because I was really good at standardized testing um and I had a process for how I how I did it I had a yogurt business idea because I was a big yo Froyo guy yeah I know I was like I'm a Avid consumer of this [ __ ] yeah I feel like I know and I and I hate it there's so many things I knew that I thought I could I actually know a lot about the other business now um and I was going to finish so those are the three things that I felt like I could do for anybody's listening like those are the three that I was picking between the yogurt business cost 250 Grand to start up I didn't have that money so I couldn't do that one um I had saved about 50 or 60 Grand I can't remember 50 or 60 at the time um I was 23. and then uh the test prep business I actually did a ton of work on um and I was going to partner with a professor from my University to do it with me and so I set up all the initial materials um and based on a miscommunication I'll just put it that way um he ended up either taking the materials and not and using them without me to start a business Consulting thing either way it became clear that what I thought was happening versus what he thought was happening were not the same thing um and that left a very sour taste in my mouth with test prep I do think it was the smarter business I probably should have done um and so all that was left was Fitness and so Fitness I was like I already know that uh people already want me to help them with it so I'll just start that and so the gym was the that was the what uh what I would have said is like the legit business I didn't think that the online thing was legitness remember this is 10 years ago so like it wasn't what I don't even thought it was that was a that was a concept of legitimate business you know what I mean so I was really early days on it and so uh you know from there I hit up 40 gym owners uh to see if I could just basically Apprentice for them and just work for free uh one guy hit me back he had a mastermind uh I joined his Mastermind for ten thousand dollars even though I didn't have a gym and I said are you sure that it makes sense for me to join he's like oh yeah sure um and it did actually make sense for me because then I could learn from all the mistakes everybody else was making before I started so I was like okay this works and so I learned all the stuff that I could from that Mastermind and from him um he ended up signing guys yeah there's actually a couple questions on that front yeah so um yeah the the test prep thing is interesting I didn't I didn't know that part of the story so my first business that went well was also a test prep business and I still have the Evernote document from 2012 where I was like [ __ ] I need to make some money what am I good at uh and what could I possibly do and it was like test prep and web design I was like cool let me make a test press of course thing and let me advertise it on a website because back then it was hard to make a website look pretty and that that's what ended up ended up making the money initially um on the on the gym front so it it seems to me like there's two leaps there um leap number one is I want to do this thing like I start a gym maybe um and therefore I'm gonna work for free I wanted to own a business yeah I want to own a business therefore I'm going to work for someone for free that that is seems like a bit of a leap uh which these days seems very unfashionable to even say because everyone then goes down your throat for being that's only available for the privilege etc etc privilege working for fun yeah the working for free thing it's it's quite unfashionable to suggest that people work for free um at least I mean I was making four grand a month from my little online thing so I made money from that now I offered to work for free but I he quickly was like I don't feel good about it I'll just pay you and so he paid me he paid me like minimum wage but I mean I think I made like I don't know 2 800 bucks a month whatever it was I don't even remember what it was because I made more from the four hours a week on Saturday than I did from that but again but the point wasn't to to to earn you know I mean it was to learn and I had saved up 50 Grand so I knew I could live for you know at least two years on that um I tried to live when I was I was I spent 400 bucks a month splitting a bedroom um and then I ate not you know I spent a hundred dollars a week on food I was eating you know I was spending nothing to live and then the rest of my time was at the gym trying to learn just a quick message from one of our sponsors and we'll get right back to the episode and this episode is very kindly brought to you by short form short form is the world's best service that summarizes books but it's way more than just book summaries they almost have a whole study guide for every book that they've got on the platform where they've got a one-page summary and then they also have chapter by chapter breakdowns and it's not just chapter by chapter breakdowns also in between the chapter breakdowns they have interactive exercises where you can engage more readily with the ideas in the book short form covers non-fiction books from a bunch of different genres that you might be interested in for example they've got a load of stuff in the business world so if for example you're an entrepreneur or you want to become an entrepreneur that'll be great for you they've got books in motivation they've got books in education they've got books in lifestyle and communication basically any genre of like non-fiction personal development is self-helpy stuff that will help you level up your life it's all there on short form short form Publishers new book guides and articles every week and if you're a subscriber then you get to vote on what book they cover next and in fact through the that system I have voted for various books for example one book I've recently rediscovered is on writing well by William zinser now this is a book I actually read absolutely ages ago and I read it and I thought oh wow this is really really good and I'd actually forgotten I'd read it until I saw that this was actually covered on short form and so I went on the app on my phone I usually go on short form when I'm on the toilet if I'm feeling particularly productive and I saw oh my God they've got on writing well on here and so I Revisited the key ideas which I immediately applied to the Articles and to the book that I'm writing anyway if any of that sounds up your street and you would like to sign up to the world's best service that summarizes books then head over to shortform.com forward slash Deep dive and that will give you a completely free five-day trial and you can try out the service to your heart's content that link will also be in the video description and in the show notes and thank you so much short form for sponsoring this episode the thing that's always struck me about you like when I've when I've heard other interviews is that you're so matter of fact about all of this stuff and wears to me like at every stage of the journey I know people who are at that point who have gone the other way and decided you know what oh I couldn't I couldn't possibly leave my 40K a year job even though I'm living with my parents and I don't have any any kids or anything I couldn't possibly leave that and take a pay cut because that would be bad and you're supposed to make more money as you go older rather than less and yeah do you kind of get that problem like uh I guess the sorts of people you speak to these days are mostly the sort of three to ten million plus rather than the people they're just struggling to get started but I imagine most of the people that follow you tend to be in the beginner Camp 88 so what if you can how do you know that uh we have a survey on our site oh yeah nice yes 88 of people uh want to start a business at least that follow me so I wonder if you can speak more to this idea of like learn versus earn um because I think that's a good model and this idea of paying down ignorance debt I think I think that's a great model that more people could yeah it's the most expensive cost every like right now everybody it costs everybody costs me a billion dollars a year to not be to not know what to do to make a billion dollars or I do know how to make a billion dollars and I just have to wait and pay down my time debt which is what I feel like I'm doing right now just paying down time and so I think understanding whether it's a lack of knowledge or or it's just a timeline thing like those are big differences you know I mean at the Baseline right you could be doing the right thing you could just be 10 years behind when it's going to come to fruition you will get outsized Returns on the on the information right on the knowledge and the lessons that you will learn and so you want to you want to pay that ignorance down as fast as you can because as soon as you have that knowledge you'll be able to Skyrocket straight to 20 50 100 500 000 a month like very quickly because you know how to do it right so people are like getting obsessed about these micro changes when the big scheme changes like this is why in my opinion all of the money that someone would be spent and like this is relatively controversial um it's a whole S P 500 versus SME 500 but like you will get a significantly higher return investing in your own ability to make money than you will in any any market and so if you look at all the the vast majority of very very wealthy people they have tremendous earning capacity right they know how to do stuff that makes money right so it's like we got to go get that and so there's really not like if you were to if you were at a dollar cost average a thousand dollars a month into the S P 500 for for you know 50 years sure you'd also not live a fun life but you could do that if you wanted to you could do that you absolutely could right um or you could take that thousand dollars a month join a mentorship program every year you know what I mean this is why my whole argument against like college is not that I'm against College I think it's just overpriced and so you could take 200 like you want to you want to have a Trippy thought Inc like in the US you can get a student loan for the full amount of college about 200 000 if you go to like a really nice private school like that's that that's what you can get subsidized through the government 200 000 and you don't have debt payments for like a very long time here's a crazy thought you could take that two hundred thousand dollars you could buy a [ __ ] rental property that makes you four thousand dollars a month and then you would literally exit the system before you even got into it with the money that they're giving you to become a worker which is just fat and you wouldn't even have to pay the pay Down The Debt Service for the real estate a buddy of mine did this he's a PhD student he got grants to go to school he still took out the student loans and he finished uh finished his his PhD with 20 homes and ten thousand dollars a month of income from from doors that he didn't even have Debt Service on because it was it was student loans crazy just as a fun side vessel yeah I know so but but I won't even get into that one but if we just think okay I'm paying two thousand dollars a month if I'm paying if I if I if I if I'm working for not working if I'm going to school for 25 000 a year it's 100 grand for four years whatever I pay 2 000 a month is there another place that I could spend two thousand dollars a month and get a superior return on my ability to earn money and my argument would be yes there are many places most places arguably will give you a better return on your money than a traditional four-year degree at this moment right and so you take the you take the two thousand dollars a month you go and you buy a six month Mastermind on placing ads you buy a six month thing on selling you buy a six month thing on making courses whatever maybe it takes you 18 months well you're still two and a half years ahead of the other guys so what you know what I mean yeah I think this is this is like a key a key like mindset shift because I'm just thinking there's so many conversations I've had with friends and people in my audience over the over the years where it's like you know they've got like a regular job maybe earning 50k or something and they're like oh or even 30k like whatever and they're like I I know I want to make some money on the side therefore um you know talk to me about investing I I've I like do I pick stocks or index funds and I'm like I mean Index Fund but like the hangers how much money how much money do you make yeah you're poor there's no like you're not gonna make you're not gonna make breathtaking in the thing and here's here's the thing is when you when you do the dollar cost average thing because everyone likes to put in the Excel sheet everyone gets Excel Rich the thing is is that by the time you retire with four million dollars on that Excel sheet four million dollars will be a million dollars today which is not a lot of money now people are like there is a lot of money it's not when you're trying to live on it and you got like 30 more years to live it's not it's not a lot of money right and that's in you know I mean like it's it's just if you just take take the compounding of four percent a year on inflation and do that for 40 years and then see what the money really looks like right like people aren't taking the inflation into account and that's just not because it's hot topic now that's just always whatever it is I think it's around four percent it's been the compounding rate of inflation and so point is and this is the simplest example I have that can illustrate the concept the same PhD guy that good friend of mine he is a daughter his daughter got a job at a bowling alley minimum wage she just you know lets people to the tables and gets some shoes or whatever it doesn't matter she could spend 500 and get a weekend certification to become a phlebotomist our phlebotomists draw blood for people all right all you need is a two-day certification so you get the certification cost 500 bucks her earning capacity would go from Seven dollars an hour to 25 an hour just from that one thing so she has two options she could wait eight weeks save up the money and then spend the money on their certification right and then her earning capacity would go up it would triple immediately or she could borrow the money from her parents and then do it that weekend pay the money back the next week from the earnings that you had and then and then be seven weeks ahead of her other other path right or she could save up to 500 and put in the S P 500 and make two dollars and fifty cents a year nice and so the and so the thing is they're they're making these these these assumptions and they're just not thinking through the math which is like the problem they have is they don't make enough money they have an income problem they don't have an investing problem right the nice thing is that if you're poor right now means you have learned how to live on less which is a good habit so keep living on not a lot but then this is where like this is where I don't understand people because like my my plan B for like if the gym didn't work because you have to like for me it's always risk mitigation so plan B was um if I didn't want to do the entrepreneurship thing after that I'd have a good story for business school so that was that was one path which they love you know having people try stuff whatever the other path was and this is probably the real path as soon as I started I knew I wasn't going to go back um was that I would strip at night and I would drive Uber so if I drove over during the day I could make I and if I drove all day if I drove 12 hours a day I could make like 80 90 grand a year if I just did that and then at night in four or five hours I could probably pull another 150 in and so I could make 250 000 a year just stripping and driving Uber maybe even more now once I got the first level of skills so I learned how to sell I realized that my base levels my base level opportunity Rose because then I was like I could just sell cars and make 400 000 a year and keep my clothes on right I could sell cars and then I wouldn't have to stress so that became my my you know my new Baseline now once I knew how to once I knew how to Market and sell then my new Baseline became actually what started which which became my my inner intermediary model between when I owned my chain of gyms and when I started doing gym launches when I flew out and would do the turnkey sales system because I knew how to Market I knew how to sell and so what I did was I would just run ads I would spend the money on the ads I would get the leads I would work the leads I'd sell the leads and I I kept all the cash so when I did that on my own no employees I'd make 100 a month like zero employees I mean I had to work 14 hours a day but that's all I did if I did that for a month I would make 100 grand and so that became my new Baseline right of how much I could make on my own and so like my Baseline has continued to rise as my skill set has improved um and so I could go down that trajectory but basically going back to the girl going back to the girl a lot of people are in the girl's position and are saying I am going to save my 500 over the next eight weeks and try and earn two and a half to five dollars a year on that money when they should be trying to solve the problem how do I create another fifty thousand dollars a year in income well let me let me like boom she can triple earning capacity and if she lives on the same 750 she now has a thousand dollar whatever that is 25 an hour times times two thousand she's making fifty Grand a year so now she can still live at her parents house have thirty thousand dollars a year and for thirty thousand dollars a year you can buy any education you want in the world any skill you want is available for thirty thousand dollars a year any any sub 10 million dollar skill I'll put it that way so with a girl we we want to spend money on increasing our our ability to earn more rather than trying to screw around with three percent returns in the S P 500 yeah so hence uh sort of when you're when you're working for free and maybe I don't know taking a bit of a pay cut apprenticing for someone else you're understanding you're learning how the business works and you're learning how specifically that business Works I.E the gym business because you maybe wanted to own your own business and you were interested in Fitness and you're also learning how generally business Works through like sales marketing operations all of that sort of stuff um so what happened next in in your story yeah so I joined the Mastermind and then he quickly was like you know what I'm asking it felt weird for him to not pay me because I was just there all the time so he started paying me whatever it was minimum wage um and so I was there from 4 AM to 4pm every day with them so that was that was what we did so 4 AM to 4 pm I was there with them every day and then he would go home I would stay for a few more hours to just like work out hang out at the gym so I was pretty much there all day every day and then uh for the next I think 12 weeks that's what I did is I just you know hung around the gym uh learned learned how to sell learned how stuff worked learned that email like learn I learned sales was a thing I didn't know the term sales I didn't know email lists existed like I didn't know any of this stuff like I truly had no idea how any of this stuff worked and so I learned a lot very quickly just from observing normal business happening right and I think small businesses are more useful for people to be at because like corporate it's so specialized because the cover is so big you have such a myopic view of how business works you have no idea you are actually the very special Cog that does one thing right so you don't see the holistic you wear a small business is because everything's so shrunk down you can see end to end how things work it's like we do this we do this direct mail piece a certain percentage call call phone we set the appointment they buy a membership they go to the trainer who helps them like you know what I mean like you can see the whole life cycle right so 12 weeks later I was do it every weekend I would go out and look for uh locations uh when I found location that I liked I still had my 50 Grand saved up um and so then that's what I spent I spent I think most of that to outfit the facility I think I had 10 000 left over um because I knew I had two months worth of rent uh saved up which is 5 000 a month in rent and I had and honestly in retrospect it was one of the riskiest things I've ever done like I went straight to a five thousand dollar a month lease and I had no idea what I was doing that's a lot for rent oh I'd never even made money before I mean like I didn't it was funny because I can only think about this in retrospect but like the the the online business that I had I didn't have a reliable way of getting customers I just like the people that I knew and I immediately was making money from that but I wasn't keeping everyone always and they're starting to go down I was like oh what do I do so I was like I'll just sign a lease for way more money than I've ever made in my life um that sounds like a reasonable thing to do and so that's what I did I wonder if we can zoom into the sales thing a little bit because I think selling is a massive black box for a lot of people and even for me like when I first started actually selling stuff I've been doing YouTube for five years but you know yeah I don't feel like I was selling anything for the first three because it was all like sponsorships and you kind of and then sort of two two years ago when I had an idea for like a course that teaches people how to be YouTubers um I came up against so much like internal like mental friction around the idea of selling and feeling weird about it and like then realized sales is a thing so I wonder what was your experience sort of on the ground in the gym how did you learn how to sell yeah I hated everything in the sales and the Side Story that was that when I quit my job my dad's body was a uh or my dad my dad's Financial his investor dude right the guy who managed this money uh was like dude you should just come work for me he's like you can sell and I was like me I was like I'm an academic all right I'm uh I'm a cerebral thinker I'm a Management Consultant like that I am known for you know I am not a Salesman like that was my thing and so I was like I was I thought it was beneath me I really didn't and so anyways I got the job um I I did the interviews got the job and I ultimately like they told me what it was and it was like here's the phone here's names bang and I was like oh I don't want to do that so then I started my gym and I realized that I had to pay five thousand dollars a month and then it was like the first day and I was like oh [ __ ] how do I get people to give me money I was like oh sales and so it was a it was a forcing function so I had gone to a weekend Workshop that I spent three thousand dollars for which was a tremendous amount of money for me at the time um to go learn how to run Facebook ads it's 2013.

44:56so I learned how to run Facebook ads in that weekend um and I ran Facebook ads for my gym and that was when people came in I signed up 27 people the first two weeks uh I charged 300 bucks ahead I think I spent a thousand bucks on ads so I made you know spent a thousand made 8 700 or whatever it was um and that was that was how that's how I paid my first month's rent and my my selling was just literally I had an empty gym with no equipment it was a Turf and a table and they were like are you gonna be here is this like a scam I was like No And people just believe me I was like I promise I will do everything to get you in the best shape ever and they were like are you sure like I'd have some people come back like two days later like make sure I was still there um in the two-week period And I also didn't understand a lot of stuff like I I thought I had to open as fast as possible because I wanted I thought that opening meant that I would make money when really I should have had a really long pre-sale just collected cash the whole time like I didn't know any of that stuff worked so I just tried to open as fast as I could that was I had my first 27 clients and I and I taught all those sessions so I was doing six sessions a day um and then I would run ads I'd have sales appointments then I'd clean the gym and then I would do all my billing at night um and then work the lead like it was I was I was it was the hardest I've ever worked time-wise like I've never I've still to this day never worked that hard it was uh okay yes let's zoom in to some of these so you had the idea of like I want to start a gym he works in a gym for free for and then minimum wage for a while so you understand how how AGM works and then were you just like roaming around looking for a warehouse that you could convert into a gym yeah and then you signed a lease for five thousand dollars a month you're like all right cool I now have a box I need to put some gym equipment in there so you put some gym equipment in there you take a Facebook ad Workshop over the weekend you spend three grand on it um and that helps you run ads in your local area that says hey by the way new gym opening yeah something or other and then people walking through the door and then what happens when people walking through the door do you just say hey this is this is the gym can you give me your money or how what is that I had an offer I had an offer which was a six week challenge I said if you lose because it was similar to my whole charity thing where I wanted people to like have skin in the game so it was uh if you lose 20 pounds six weeks I'll give you your money back so people would bet it was 300 bucks I would train them for six weeks and if they lost 20 pounds I'd give them their money back so that was a stick so are you relying on then people not completing it to make money or no the real real is there yeah so so you've got you've got three buckets right you got people who don't hit it right which is actually not the bucket you want people in because then they're not happy um the second bucket is people who hit it and then have more weight to lose or want to keep working out because they just started this habit and want to keep going which is the vast majority I think we had just under an 80 success rate and then the third bucket is people who want to lose the weight and then say I'll take my money please right and the sale is actually very easy I mean you're just like hey do you think that working out six weeks and then going back to not working out is uh is going to be a good long-term solution no okay we'll wanna ride to take your 300 bucks I'll credit score it's the next year staying at the gym because now you've started this habit you don't want to lose it when you have the momentum and they say sure cool and I had people commit to the year before they even finish the challenge halfway through I feel like you like everything everything cool you're 10 pounds down awesome you're halfway there so I mean how much weight do you want to lose because I promise you once you're 10 pounds lighter you are now you're still going to want to look different like you're not going to be perfect I've yet to meet somebody who's a perfect body you're still gonna have stuff you want to work on right they're like yeah of course I'm like okay so question is you want to do it on your own because that's what you were doing before this and that wasn't working or do you want to do with me they're like I want to do with you and I'm like cool I'll take the money I'll credit it for it so you won congratulations high five big hug you won it you get it because the point of the challenge is not for you to actually lose the weight is for you to understand it's a lifelong process not six weeks that was it that was the whole process how did you do the Transformations like how do people lose 10 20 pounds in six weeks it's all food okay so you're giving the meal plan yeah I would give a meal plan's grocery list for Preparation instructions eating out guides the whole thing I'd give them a whole custom thing and then they'd work out at the gym uh originally it was five days a week and then I switched to three days a week um but yeah and so that's your offer so the offer isn't like a monthly gym membership it's just like hey get into the weight loss challenge you do the thing and then you're signing up people as they walk through the door yep I and what what happened is I like and I still do like this in terms of businesses in generals I do like having to find in programs on the front end because it gives a very specific outcome uh for someone on a specific timeline and what it really becomes is your onboarding process so you can typically charge more for a one-time expense usually three or four times more than you can on a recurring basis and so what that affords you is the ability to liquidate acquisition costs more easily and so it's like if I can charge four times more for the first six weeks of service with somebody I should do that because it costs me more a to onboard someone B to acquire them and so I should make more money in that first period of time it makes sense and so structuring business models that way it's I've almost done that in every business I have got it um did you feel weird about selling initially no I was begging for money I needed the money right I got over it very quickly I mean it was just like I had this ethical I had this like uh I'm I'm superior I'm not going to lower myself to selling and then I was like oh [ __ ] I'm gonna lose all the money I have and so I didn't even know it was sales I just said like I will help you I promise yeah please you know like I didn't know what I was doing but the thing is I you know I I done 4 000 sales consults before I ever consumed a piece of sales training so like a lot of the stuff I got I learned most of things I've learned through just doing it um and uh just on this notes so you paid three thousand dollars for a Facebook ads weekend workshoppy type thing um these days somewhere sort of tip almost 10 years on from that do you think there's value in people paying for something like that or can everything just be learned on YouTube and there's no point in paying for a thing yeah I think things can get you learned on YouTube I think what you pay for is speed so you pay for Speed you pay for trouble troubleshooting you pay for somebody else who's already done it and not [ __ ] up as many times as you're about to to get you there faster like I remember most of I've I've paid for tons of one-on-one stuff so I had a guy who had a course this is later this probably two three years later I didn't I knew enough to make you know to get ads going but like I really did I wasn't like a genie at it I just knew enough to get lead so I could sell them um but a few years later I wanted to get more sophisticated I wanted to learn how to retarget I didn't know any of that stuff and so I paid a guy who had a course he said I don't do one-on-one I only do courses I don't sell my time and I was like it's America everyone sells their time just tell me what the price is went back and forth and finally it was like 750 an hour and I was like done cool and I think I did eight sessions with them so it cost me like 5 600 bucks and because I didn't want to learn how to run ads I want to learn how he would think through running my ads and so the deal was she would get on and then I would be like this is all the stuff from last week this is what I have this is what I'm thinking of doing what why is it wrong or what would you and then he I did all the clicking of the buttons and he would tell me why he would think about things in different ways and so that was how I learned how and it only took me like eight sessions so I was like now like I didn't have to go through a course I took eight hours and I and I learned the scale probably by the sixth time I was like I'm good and I just did two more to make sure that nothing happened yeah and now you've leveled up your Baseline for how much money you can earn by having totally having this so I spent 5600 5600 if I wanted to go run ads for gyms if that was all I wanted to do and have no employees I could make 10 20 grand a month easily if that's all I wanted to do so like there's you know I mean like you just keeps adding to your to your skill set and stacking on top now I also knew how to sell there so I you know you stack those two skills together all of a sudden I'm a hundred thousand dollar a month skill right so they just keep multiplying and multiplying and multiplying nice okay so how old are you at this point when you just start your gym and you've signed this 5000 a month at least 23.

52:33that sounds crazy okay yeah and so you said that was the riskiest thing that you've ever like what was going through your mind at the time if you can remember for like that because that's a pretty big big decision not not much not much honestly I it was ignorance like it was it was it was it was I mean I I got lucky you know what I mean I got lucky that um I didn't know what I didn't know I probably would have advised myself to do that now um but I was fortunate that I by chance went to a workshop for I was a marketing workshop I don't even know his Facebook ads was even advertised as the thing is no even knew what they were they'd known even new Facebook ads were a thing yet and so I showed up they're like oh there's these things you can run on and I didn't I didn't use Facebook I had one but I didn't like I was like active on I was like very like productive mindset like I don't use social media like I was very big on that whole thing but he was like oh we can run ads on this so I learned and it was two weeks before my gym opened if I had not had that the plan going into the gym was the guy who I I apprenticed under he just ran Groupons and that was how he got so that was my whole plan I was like I'll just run a Groupon and I'll just get people in the gym from that and I'll convert them that was his whole business model that was what I was sold on and then I ran a Groupon too and I didn't get anybody no one came in and I ran the same group on because I was in the most competitive part of Southern California I was in Huntington Beach I was in Orange County there's a hundred [ __ ] gyms that are running Groupons and so and he had a he had a more established business he'd been doing it for 20 years like he had you know so when he ran a group on people all about it every every every month he was getting like 120 people a month coming in for Groupons so he was it was free customer acquisition it was free he was getting paid to get these people in the door I didn't have any of that and so I by chance went to a workshop two weeks beforehand and that is only like honestly it's the only reason I mean who knows I might have figured I probably would have tried to figure out another way but it would have been tough um you said that quitting your job felt like the riskiest thing yeah what did that feel like but because at that point you were making like 4K a month off the the personal training stuff weren't you so why did you feel particularly risky but it didn't feel it didn't feel uh regular it didn't feel consistent I was like this is one time I don't know how long this is gonna last you know I mean like it didn't feel like a regular thing but it wasn't even that because that would have been a math decision uh which at the time it was not a math decision it was an emotional decision which for me was I'm leaving the path that I spent the last however my basically my entire life leading towards which is management consulting business school like the whole thing um yeah and then you know middle aging father same deal um yeah you know he was like this is a terrible idea um I strongly disapprove of this and we didn't talk for a while you know what I mean um because he's like just Throwing It All Away so that was very tough for me it was that it was just that and I mean at the end of the day like my my final decision came down too I mean I gave you the risk things which is like I'll have a good story like blah blah blah but I was I was not really willing to let that be the story uh because I just didn't want him to be right and so I was just gonna do anything to not make him have that I Told You So moment I just like I was gonna I was gonna [ __ ] die I just wasn't gonna do it and so um the final decision came down to a point where I was so miserable at the job that I had because I really didn't like the job like I was fortunate I think if I had liked my job I don't know if I'd even be an entrepreneur I just really hated the job I was in and so I dislike the position whatever or at least that my day to day enough that I said I would either have to die to him or die to myself and I felt dead inside at the time and so I was like I don't want to continue life living this way I would rather accept myself and have him reject me than me reject myself and have his approval and that was ultimately the decision that that allowed me to do it now I was still [ __ ] about it and I drove halfway across the country before I called and told him because I didn't want him to be able to like tell me to come over to convince me that I could that I could come back because he did he was like ah come over for lunch we'll talk about it because he would always just like yeah sure you want to we'll talk about over lunch you know I mean then you would always talk me off the cliff off the edge and I was like no I'm in Ohio it's like I'm gone he's like what about your condo and I was like it's there and he's like well what are you gonna do I was like I'll sell it he's like well you're not gonna sell it I'm gonna have to deal with it I was like I'll figure it out you know I was like I'm gone though I'm not coming back damn how's how's your relationship with your dad today I'm good we're good yeah I mean he's he's proud of me now and he's happy about all that stuff so I mean he's got plenty to be proud of in terms of material success so you can he can rest easy on that yeah I had a similar um I think when I took the decision to leave medicine after two years of working and you know at that point my YouTube channel my YouTube channel is making like way more than I ever would as a doctor but it's it still didn't feel like a mathematical decision it was very much an emotional thing the whole Asian family like medicine is like the Pinnacle of all of the things like 10 years et cetera and what it took weirdly was uh I was on uh Lewis hose's podcast yeah he told me this story and he was he just like sort of talked me out of it uh which is bloody hell I've never considered it in such Stark terms before and that was what made the decision to be like you know what let's say goodbye to Madison at least for a while and see what happens and yeah it's only for a while and I can always go back the thing is once you I mean you have an MD you can do it I mean you always go back to it okay so we at this point you are sort of in your early 20s you've got your gym you're paying 5K a month and you're getting people coming in through through the door to do your six week transformation program and you're upselling them on uh the longer term thing I think after the fact what happens next in the story the gym starts being successful gross by five thousand dollars a month for the first seven months goes up to thirty five thousand dollars a month by week by month nine I had the whole gym outsourced so I was just managing it by month 15 I took the profit from that gym to my second Gym um launched that one um profitably now this one I learned a lot at that point so I pre-launched it at full capacity did you know did it the right way um then I opened location three four and five and then uh using the same concept then I went and I felt like I was stagnating I felt like I didn't know what to do next I joined an internet Mastermind um and they were like if you're really this good at business you shouldn't be owning gyms you should be like teaching people how you fill your gyms up so fast and so then and then I transitioned to the turn key like I fly out and do the thing which I make 100 a month on with no employees I was like this is cool so I did that for a year-ish and then um there's a series a million series of unfortunate events that happens during this period of time lose all the money like twice um I sell the gyms I go all in on the New Concept we switch from doing the turnkey system to doing a licensing model and then that was 2017 and that's when everything that's when everything just took off like a rocket what does it like so let's say someone's listening to this and they're into fitness and they're thinking you know what I'd like to own a gym what does like is is it something you'd recommend like can you make any money owning a gym these days what's what's the deal with that you can't you can't you can make money owning a gym if you love if you you have to love small business ownership and it has to be about um really being in love with the product and the experience it's just like you know we have this kind of thing with a lot of the gyms is once someone understands how to run a seven figure multi-seven-figure gym you now have the skill set to run a 10 million other business it's just a limited opportunity vehicle it's a great vehicle to learn how to do everything because you have to do everything in a gym and I think some of the best entrepreneurs are the best sales people especially learn how to sell Fitness because you get so many reps you talk to 10 20 people a day just rep after rep after like so you get very good at that and you have to deal with people because it's an all-service business so you have a lot of head count for very low Revenue like there's lots of things that are very good to learn when I had the same head count with TurnKey sales model I had 30 employees and I was making four times the revenue you know what I mean and then one went from there to the licensing model I went from I took I went from eight employees to like 30 employees that just like that first year and we did like seven million and then the next year we did 26 you know it was just like it was just huge growth so it's just more leverage what does TurnKey mean they didn't have to do anything I would fly out we do the marketing we do that we'd spend the money we'd work the leads we did the sales like they didn't do after doing it I just hand them customers you were confident enough in your ability to get customers and convert them to things that they were just absolutely signing up for this but hell yes you can transform my gym yeah whatever yeah they didn't have to pay me anything I just took 100 of the cash I collected okay so then what are they getting out of it oh are they are they getting the recurring Revenue yeah levels of wealth so you are very open about kind of net worth and money and stuff and I just love the way you talk about it in such a matter of fact way um one thing that um I I've been curious about is like what are the levels of Wealth Beyond which like you get significant diminishing returns people say 75k is the peak happiness and then but like clearly there are people that you know 300K is better than 75k a million has been 300 like yeah have you got in mind a rough sort of ladder of at what level of wealth's unlock certain certain things yeah I think there's like the I don't have to worry about any basic needs level um and then there's the I don't have to worry about discretionary spending level within reason you know what I mean like I can get I can go out for drinks I can go to a fancy restaurant and it's not gonna you know affect me I can buy appetizers and not just buy you know the cheapest thing on the menu with no appetizers no alcohol and call that the dinner so Layla spends a lot more money than I do because we just have different but that being said I spend money on other stuff so like I spend a lot of money only on information that's all I spend my money on it's just information access like that's all I spend my money on and that stuff is expensive you know I mean she offered one guy 350 grand for an hour um so I could just learn from him you know what I mean just for context so like we'll spend whatever it takes to learn anything yeah but like it's always been the highest return for me so for me it's just I like sure let's go you know what I mean like I just I I've made so every every penny I've made has come from knowledge and if I can buy someone else's 10 years and say if I can save a year of my life for 350 Grand why would I not spend that you know what I mean so we've got needs we've got discretionary spending where you're not worried about appetizers and stuff what yeah and then you have what I would consider like luxury wealth which is probably like you know 100 Grand a month but it all depends on what you're willing to save and so like Layla and I have always lived on less than 10 of what we make so whatever we make it's 10 of that is what we're kind of willing to spend and I don't even think we spend that now um we probably spent about five percent of what we make still a lot of money but it's not a lot relative because we're both actually pretty risk-averse but we're not illogical because some people I know there's some people in the in the YouTube space I was having conversation with their you know clearing clarinet figures and are like splitting entrees at dinner I mean dude like you we literally made more money than this dinner cost while sitting here you know what I mean like I was I was having a conversation with my father-in-law and he offered to pay for for lunch or something and I was like while we have waited in line I have made more money than this lunch costs let me cover lunch I don't care so it really depends on your on your your savings versus uh spending uh percentage that you're comfortable with so that's the big multiplier on those levels but I think those are the three levels and it just depends on what that percentage is for you so if you're a five to one person I want to make I want to save 80 spend 20 then your needs before when you go from needs to uh you know for level one discretionary you need to still five extra income to do that but it's just that that smaller percentage so I do think that's individual I'm super risk-averse ironically so what do you do with a cash like if you're spending 10 or and sort of what happens to the other 90 are we are we now going S P 500 or is that still like no I I count it um we invest but I have a bigger I kind of a bigger play for what we're going to do so right now I'm just stacking it and I've always been a pretty big cash Decker um I always have a lot of liquidity I just feel better with it people like you're not getting the return I was like dude I make a ton of money like that's not like what what am I going to return for so I would rather have big chunks of cash that I can go on big offense when I want it then it's just different ways of doing things you know I mean I also have Layla and so she handles a ton of stuff internally and so I wouldn't be able to do some of the investment stuff that we do I probably wouldn't do something investment stuff we do right now that takes a little bit more time like deal analysis Etc uh if I didn't have her so like if I didn't have Layla and I was trying to live the most passive Chill Lifestyle I'd probably just put everything into a dividend ETF makes three four percent a year and still gets the appreciation and I would just love paying down or paying up that dividend check every month and just watching it go up and it would probably just become a game for me uh because it's truly passive you know I mean like that's just truly zero management passive income which I do like from a cash flow perspective and qualified dividends for anyone who's curious gets taxed at capital gains rates which are lower so even if you make a ton of money you're still only paying you know 20 23 depending on where you're at so for me I was like okay that works it's still relatively tax efficient to get the the cash flow from the from the from the investment um but for me though I am going to take bigger risks with the wealth I have because that's the kind of the next level of the game for me is taking big bets um so what does what does that look like broadly you'll see more stuff for me on the media side um probably in the in the next 12 to 18.

1:05:50I'll be probably making really major investments in media um because like you know here's a fun one which you can appreciate from a YouTube perspective it cost me like less than a dollar or does it cost me a dollar whatever it's around a buck per subscriber per month now I'm taking my entire media team cost which goes across all platforms which is not really fair but if I were to if I even took that whole media team and put it against YouTube um it cost me around a dollar-ish a month per subscriber and I make more than a dollar a year per subscriber just in AdSense so like from a return you know what I mean like that doesn't include like what I actually make money which is fine you know my deal Flow side um so it's you know I mean it's like well then I should you know put my money there and I will be I'll be taking bigger and bigger chunks of companies uh right now we do minority deals but I will be taking majority uh interesting companies where it makes sense uh so it's like if I see a company that makes sense within the entire portfolio so I'll give an example so like if somebody has an accounting firm it would be great to just have the accounting at holtco and I'll just buy a hundred percent and then I can provide those Services internally and then because of the buying power that I have between the entire kind of conglomerate for lack of better term you know if I have you know 200 250 million dollars a year in in business that I can push towards something it's like I'm not going to push that kind of money towards something that I don't own majority of at least so those are kind of the two directions that I'll probably go and it's just reinvesting more in the team um and you know taking I mean from a from a money allocation perspective more of that would go towards the majority purchases than the team but that's just you know fundamentally how I see it like I'll get better Returns on that stuff than I will in the s p and I have to take if I want to get to a billion I have to make some bigger bets which is fine what's the goal here is the goal to get to a billion like what is it 10 billion yeah the goal is to get to 10 billion um but the the mission is to just make real business knowledge available for everyone and so that's that's what I'm trying to do and so everything I do at lunch that's why I make the books so I make the courses that's why we do the YouTube stuff that's why we make the shorts that's why we do podcasts that's why we do all of it um it's just to make real business education available to everyone but I have to answer the question why should I listen to you and I want to be unassailable in that perspective a and then B I do believe that I'll gain more perspective as as things grow so it's more than I'm just curious what I'm going to learn going from you know 200 million portfolio to a billion dollar year portfolio to a 10 billion dollar your portfolio and so I have wished that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Warren Buffett will come out of the course I wouldn't that be amazing but they didn't and so my goal is to just document the path that we learn along the way um and you know when I die hopefully there'll just be a whole bunch of people who are younger than me who make way more money than I do at my age because they were able to just shortcut a lot why is that the mission like I'm making business education available like what was the kind of emotional resonance with you for that thing because that's what set me through freezing free from the corporate wage slavery yeah not even corporate ways like I'm free I can do whatever I don't have to do anything if I didn't want to so I just get I just get optionality which is all I want I just want to have options and so I wouldn't have that if all of this stuff didn't exist and I have had many mentors and many coaching programs and many courses and so you know I would say that I differ from the vast majority of the talking heads in the business space in that I to my knowledge I'm the only one who came up through that world like you look at Andy for sale you look at my life you look at Gary you know what I mean like there's there's they've none of them came up through learning stuff on YouTube going to seminars going to coaching programs I did so I'm a huge advocate for the for for alternative education and you know paying for skills as fast as you can to what extent do you think about the balance between I guess optimizing for freedom freedom fun flexibility all of that like living whatever life you want kind of Vibes versus some people say that once you get to a certain point you realize that oh actually more money more status more success more freedom is not actually thing and actually the thing I care about is investing in a relationship and like having a family and having kids and like buying a house and the sort of putting down routes versus having wings kind of vibe I have options so if I change my mind I can change my mind um but as I see it right now from where I said the thing that lights me up every day is is making business knowledge available to everyone and I mean I spend an inordinate amount of time like I spend so much time on those books and presentations that I make when I give speeches and stuff like every presentation I make up to this point in my career has been custom and that takes me like three days you don't need to make a presentation so like if you've seen Last Dance Michael Jordan there's this there's this moment where he says that he always has to bring his all because it's the there's some person who spent hard-earned money and it's the only game they're ever going to see and he wants to bring his best for that and so that's how I see it you know I mean like there's people who will never you know they spent real money to be there and it was like they're hoping that they can get one thing from this thing that's gonna like change their life and I want to honor that what is like a day in the life look like for you oh it's I mean I could share my screen but it's it's it's it's uh I I I work on my own stuff until about one most days so usually five to one is Alex time to do whatever um which is on 5am to one yeah um and then usually from one to four on to 4 30ish is when I do meetings and then um that's it go to the gym eat and then I'm done sounds pretty chill and where are you based at the moment we're all over right now uh The Hub is in Vegas but we're here we're all over I mean we travel a lot so it's kind of like this is our in between when we're traveling spot I remember you just talking into me about like how you like your office to be very like sparse and not overly fancy and stuff and that's one of the things that really I really Vibe with with in your in your videos and that you seem to I I except until recently uh you seem to just be filming on some shitty webcam and just like spouting knowledge and it's just like mind-blowing because you haven't got the and there's like a charm to the junkiness and it's just like whoa [ __ ] I'm I'm getting the real truth without any of the production value that like normally gets in the way yeah again was that deliberate is that just accidental is that just how it's ended up being I mean that's how it started you know I mean like I'm a big I'm a big believer and just start and you'll the path eliminates as you walk you know I mean we now have I mean I started without a media team so I just clicked record and I would send it I mean I had my media team at gymwatch but it wasn't that business wasn't built on content it was built on outbound and pay that so I just said you know CL you know clip it put a thumbnail on it and post it on my YouTube I don't even know how to upload them just to show you how silly it was I was like just upload it and so I just put in a Dropbox and they would upload it and then that was um that was what I did for the first I don't know six nine months and then um we hired somebody to uh to actually do recordings with the camera um and so he's like you know if we did it like on the couch it would look a lot better I was like okay that's fine so it took the same amount of time for me now I just had some more people who could who could help and it has shown despite you know as much as I would lament you know I would love to just do it like this the uh you know the audio quality is better the video quality is better um and the newer videos definitely do better from a objective standpoint so some people need to you know can't focus this long and so they need a little bit more um happening and so we can now again the whole point is to make it available to everybody so that means that people who don't have the attention span I need to make something available for them so um so I'm just doing my best to I'm just not going to [ __ ] and moan about the fact that like people's attention's been short and like some people like I I can't cover anything in 60 seconds I'm like there's a hell of a lot you can cover in 60 seconds if you know what you're saying so you know what I mean like I I'm just not I just I'm just not one to complain about what it is what it is and so I will do my best to match you know providing value to the context that that people are consuming it it seems like you're spending like I don't know half a million a month on content no no no no no no no no no no not even close I think we're spending about 100 a month oh okay maybe it's a one dollar per subscriber per month is what it's costing you yeah per year I make a dollar per year oh per year oh okay cool I was thinking like per month for [ __ ] that's a lot yeah no my channel makes I think as of today like right now it makes 41 42 000 a month and then Layla's Layla also use the same team I think hers makes six or seven something like that so that's just that and then the book the book Revenue comes on top of that which I count those kind of the same thing because I think that's where a lot of people find us those two things together you know are more than that so I am I technically spend a little bit less uh than I'm making which kind of further reinforces the point um just depends if we're just saying only AdSense if we include the book whatever so what does 100K a month like oh what does what does that look like at the back end of the content production engine yeah it's not huge right now we've got four in-house um I still do Twitter so I do Twitter full-time that's still just me um it's because I like it I would do it anyways we have a a podcast vendor a LinkedIn vendor uh YouTube vendor um a short slash Tick Tock slash reels vendor and by and by vendor you mean like uh a company that yeah okay now we have our internal components because like my whole Playbook is is pretty simple which is go find the best person who's already doing this at a high level pay whatever to get them to do it be clear that your intention is to take it in-house over the Long Haul starting with them only hire somebody to be the the inner inner the interface between those two who has the skill set and then eventually get to the point where you double your volume because you do half from the vendor half from the in-house person when the in-house person beats the vendor you fire the vendor and so what does it look like to work with like an agency on the YouTube side are they telling you that hey Alex we need to do a video with this title and this thumbnail go talk or like what does that look like so my team does it so because remember because I haven't asked team too so they will they'll send me like I could show you a document but it's like the next film session they have like eight ideas for videos I'll just pick the three that I'm feeling um and so they have like uh headline idea talking points that they've grabbed from my other videos and shorts that they've kind of combined together into one video um and I use that as a loose outline uh for what I'm going to talk about it has to be minimum and this is one of the things that my team gets it's like it has to be minimal on my side because I'm still doing other stuff you know what I mean um so yeah that's my that's the that's the big big and so is the is is part of as part of the overall mission of making business knowledge accessible to everyone it's part of that like you getting as big as possible in all the social platforms as quickly as possible with as much content as possible like the garyvee model yeah probably 100 nice we're still not even like we're barely scratching what I would consider to be phase one of that but we're on just phase one what are the next few phases we're right now we're just getting all the platforms uh then we need to maximize all the platforms which we're currently not doing uh we have to take it all in-house so we have to do that which we haven't done yet um I'm not running any paid of any kind um which I would add on I don't have any Affiliates or endorsements which I would add on um I don't have any like in terms of level of content I would like to do some more like custom production stuff that's more show-ish than just like you know seven ways to make a million dollars without any money so those are kind of like the direction of where I'd like to go uh with it and it'll just it'll take time and that's fine like great things take time and do you think at all about sort of pitching certain content like like for example pitching it to a complete beginner who's never even heard a business versus pitching it to someone who here's how to level up your sales which is a bit more advanced like how do you think of that balance um it's a discussion that we actually have internally a lot so I believe because our beliefs shape our world that we can make content that helps both so 100 million dollar offers if you don't know what to sell that will help you if you sell shitloads of stuff it will help you so I do believe that if you I think there's if if things are packaged and presented properly uh like sales to your to your point could I make a half step and just call it persuasion and all of a sudden it's not sales guys it's sales guys marketers and general population that want to influence people so all of a sudden it becomes a much more open topic so I'm trying to think about all the like this is what I'm actually like this is today Alex is what I'm thinking about right now because I think that they're and you know this better than I do but this is just my inkling is that there's a natural ceiling that start you start to approach now we're we haven't seen any slowdown at all but like I would imagine that there's a ceiling that you begin to approach as you start to kind of own I don't say own but like take up a Big Slice of like brain brain share of a certain Niche right yeah and so the only way to expand beyond that and I think I've uh you know I've known people who went from sales to Marketing sales to business to make money you know what I mean so they just go they go broader and broader but I think if you have the depth of knowledge behind you you can make something wide yet also deep so that's a belief that I'm choosing right now is that we can do both we can make content that is wide and deep it's just harder but I think we can do it so that is what I'm committing to if you were to start the whole content thing again like from scratch um what are what are some things that you might do differently I would have started five years ago that's what I would have done the only thing I could wish for is for things to happen faster the only thing that would happen faster is if I started earlier so that's that's it but then there's also the caveat of like I have credibility now that I didn't have five years ago so I mean you could make the argument I did I could probably show my tax return When I was 27 show 17 million dollars of income like I could show that I could have done that um maybe I don't know I could have but like I don't I honestly don't spend much time thinking about it I'm content with what we're doing now um we know what plan we have to execute and so now we're just we're just laying the bricks final thing I wanted to ask you about so I think I think I heard you say in one of the interviews that you've had six pack abs since the age of like 16 or something something like that um no oh love it I I've had six pack abs on my kind of annual bucket list for the last several years and just never really gotten there is there like a single resource there's a lack of knowledge or it's a lack of knowledge or motivation motivation okay well that's that's a totally different thing yeah I mean like you might you might also want to be a trillionaire you might want a lot of things but like if you don't want it enough it doesn't matter I think it's just more accepting that you're not going to have it you're not willing to pay the price and that's fine what is the price you would want to be motivated foreign it's not that hard though that's why I'm like yeah um and everyone is who's listening is like [ __ ] this guy um I don't know I've counted my macros for 20 years have you okay uh so go away uh but but it's just calorie deficit you know I mean it's just it's like there's tons of people in Africa who have six packs they just don't see the stats there it's just everyone's everyone's skinny you know what I mean and so six pack is purely body fat percentage that's it it's just body fat percentage it just means you eat too much that's all and a six-packed plus being jacked is Progressive overload protein I've seen one of your videos where you sort of break break that down and then to get to six-pack abs you just sort of calorie deficit and while training broadly it's lit I mean truly that is it and so like I've hit every muscle group do it three times a week add weed or reps Over the Bar over a long period of time that's all you have to do and then eat less than you burn do that for a long period of time you'll gain muscle you'll lose fat and then you'll look up after 18 months you'll have a six-pack if I could just that's it yeah when people are signing up to the weight loss programs or like a gym program and stuff presumably they know this so like is it that like the motivation Gap the accountability Gap like what is it that is the the secret sauce that makes someone so to your to your point even of alternative education in general when you say Hey you could learn the stuff on YouTube etc etc the issue that we're solving for is not that it's not a knowledge Gap the issue is an accountability Gap is that people don't do stuff like that is the primary issue with all humans in general is that they will not endure short-term discomfort for a long-term achievement that is it you hack that you hack success that's all it is and so it's just how can I how can I make it more inconvenient for them to not follow than to follow so I can still lean into their humidity and just say how can I make it more uncomfortable for them to not follow it that's an element of that is accountability is that someone says Hey bad boy um you had a cookie when you shouldn't have you feel bad feel bad I am punishing you because like the only way to change you only have two things you can do to change Behavior right you can reinforce or you can threaten you can punish that's it you have carrots and sticks that is literally it and so currently they're getting reinforced by their you know by their current way of living so think about this way what does not having six-pack do for you it does something for you because you keep buying it what does not having a six-pack do for me yeah because you mean something else over a six-pack so yeah the food the food just tastes too good and I know that I should yeah but it's probably not and I get a McDonald's drive through at like midnight and I know it's bad and like it could be convenient convenience and then the story you wrap around like I'm an entrepreneur I need to just do things on my own time Etc right so I think if you if like it's unpacking those things of just trying to find your own [ __ ] and or if it if it's meaningful for you because like I understand why it wouldn't be I was on this podcast that I got an argument with the the spokesperson who's like don't you agree that every entrepreneur should be working every day and I was like no and it did not go the direction he was expecting he looks at me and he expects I'm going to say that I'm like no like what are we solving for if you just want to live a long time then just walk walk and don't eat a lot like that's all you have to do like literally it that's all you have to do if you don't live the longest amount possible like I am going to live a shorter amount of time because I have more muscle mass I'm shortening My Life by being how big I am so it just depends on what's what problem we're solving but given how you look now you could you could look fit in 12 months like you could look like a person that people are like oh wow this guy works out because you don't have a baseline effect that you really left I mean you do you have you have body fat but like you're not you're not overweight you're just you have your body composition is poor not poor but you I'm saying it's not it's not what you want I know you're saying yeah nice so figure out what you want uh find out what the price is and just be willing to pay that price uh yeah or don't which is also fine I don't buy everything that I see on the Shelf if it were free I'd want it right maybe if I were you know a hoarder of some sort but like like the thing that everybody has is we all have a wallet with the same dollars in it we have 24 right and so it's like everything has a ticket on it and we're just choosing to spend that dollar whatever we want now eight dollars we got to spend on on sleep it's like okay well now I only have you know 16 left I'm like all right well what does this cost well this cost a dollar it's pretty every day I'm committing to a dollar of my twelve dollars or whatever my my 16 it's a big cost does it make sense coming back to the six-pack example again like how much time effort do you how how many dollars do you pay each day to maintain the six-pack minimal I have a passive income body now okay fine I already yeah this is this is passive dividends I don't need to do much to maintain this to get to here is much harder to maintain here is easy I mean think about this how much effort does it cost you right now to maintain your current body oh zero absolutely right that's how it really does not take like unless you give your body a reason to eat muscle it's been a lot of resources to to build it right and so you can have minimal stimulation on a weekly basis to maintain contractile tissue and provided your eating sufficient protein your body will take the protein it needs from your intake rather than its stores of protein which is your muscle I mean you if you watch the video there's it's like you just um a pound a pound a day of mate or something yeah yeah nice Alex thank you so much this has been absolutely wonderful um any any final asks for the audience who might be watching or listening to this if you like watching stuff you can check out my YouTube channel Alex stromoza you can just Google my name um and if you are listening then you can also search my name um Alexi and my podcast called the game will come up and you can check that out uh so loved it love to hang out with you more if if that uh that sounds like the pants that you want to wear and uh hopefully I'll see you or talk to you soon Amazing Alex thank you so much and if you're ever in London anytime soon would be great to do a round two in person uh yeah that would be awesome yeah epic all right I appreciate you thanks so much man take care all right so that's it for this week's episode of Deep dive thank you so much for watching or listening all the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are going to be linked down in the video description or in the show notes depending on where you're watching or listening to this if you're listening to this on a podcast platform then do please leave us a review on the iTunes Store it really helps other people discover the podcast or if you're watching this in full HD or 4k on YouTube then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode that would be awesome and if you enjoyed this episode you might like to check out this episode here as well which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode so thanks for watching uh do hit the Subscribe button if you aren't already and I'll see you next time bye …