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0:00how people perceive the information matters almost more than the information itself the reason I'm so big on this evidence is because that's the frame that people consume your message in if I have a book that says how to Market a book and it has 10 reviews on Amazon do I need to consume the book no I already know the book sucks because I have evidence that the book sucks I have visual proof that everything you're saying is not true or that you aren't even doing it I want people to have the evidence so that when they speak about something they can be confident about it Alex ramosie it's great to have you here on the learning leader show welcome man nice to be here I heard a stat and I need just need to confirm if this is true man you are great great grandfather had 400 children is that correct that is correct wow can you share a little bit more about your background and where you come from and what your great grandfather did yeah so he was from the kajar dynasty which was the one that preceded the Shah in Iran and so he mind you that was not with one woman obviously and he had the means to support 400 kids good for him but yeah I'm Iranian and he was one of the last Persian Persian Bros who was leading the place and then he had a kid one of those 400 and one of those 400 had 19 Kids and one of those 19 kids was my grandfather and one of and then that guy had two kids and one of those was my dad and then there's me I know you don't have children yet and I think that's still up in the air although you've made lots and lots of money you do not want to give any of that to your potential future kids is that correct yeah why is that well I didn't get anything from the emperor of the guitar Dynasty so I mean like why should they no I mean I just think that on any okay so you played out like micro macro right so like on a from a macro perspective you multiply out generations and like it doesn't matter how much wealth you have it's gonna get it's going to get spread in almost nothing which is the situation I'm in with indirect correlation with that and the other is on the micro level I think wealthfit is given is not a gift I think it's a curse but I think it ends up hurting more people than it does helping because like a lot of meaning in life comes from struggle and work and who would become in the face of stress and hardship I mean one of my favorite quotes is the work works on you more than you work on it and so like to Rob someone of the ability to have struggle in their life might rob them from becoming the person they ultimately should or would want to become and so I think if I have the desire to have my kids become certain types of people then I want to set up the conditions so that they become that if you have a kid you don't want like no one's like man I just want my kid to be rich like no one thinks that they want their kids to be good people and so it's like if you want to get kids to be good people then set up the conditions that create a good person and that doesn't come from Easy times not necessarily are you guys gonna have kids don't know not yes not no yeah just I mean Layla's young I'm 33. like it's a time yeah I think it's just a fascinating way to view it and I think it's a really mature way when it comes to because you're so right I mean you think about how you've built what you've built it didn't come from Easy times it comes from being willing to grind through it and that is actually a gift even though it doesn't always feel like it in the moment and I think reframing reality and having more of those is basically Tools in your skill set to go through hard times reframing them as times that make you harder and if that's the ultimate goal then like why would we be upset about it's like a hard workout being like man this workout's hard it's like yeah but it's making me harder as a person and so that's what I want and so then it's like I don't present the workout anymore I think it is just an a requisite for where I want to go you have one of my favorite quotes ever when it comes to confidence and I use it a lot when people ask me about imposter syndrome perhaps they've gotten promoted early or earlier than they think even though they went for a job and and the quote and I'd love for you to expand is you don't become Confident by shouting affirmations in the mirror but by having a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are outwork your self-doubt when someone comes to you with imposter syndrome or not fully sure of themselves what do you say to them it's really reasonable that you'd feel this way maybe you shouldn't be confident because that's the thing is it's like if we were to zoom in like what does the word confidence mean like let's look at statistics right people are like what is our confidence in this statistic and so they have evidence they have data to support how confident they are in whatever the stat is right and so if we are confident in something that it means that we believe we have a high probability of achieving whatever the prediction is right so like how strong is the prediction we have well how do you make predictions you usually use a basis of data and so if our past is the data set that we have then we can like if I've worked out every day for four years and then somebody comes up to me is like dude you're just so like confident about working out or it just seems like you're so certain like how are you so uh motivated all this stuff it's like I'm pretty confident to go to the gym because I have gone to the gym every day for four years I think confidence if you're wearing it doesn't feel like confidence it feels obvious and I think that's the big difference because I remember that tweet got taken from multiple different instances and then glued together so the outwork yourself doubt came from of small speaking event that Layla and I did and someone said how are you guys because I just presented all the stuff on sales and Building Sales teams and they were like how are you so confident like you seem so certain about this stuff and I was like and it was weird because I like I don't come from the personal development world so this was like all new to me and I kind of like I was like I don't know this is just what it is this is how you build and scale sales teams I know this because I've done it like this is it I don't need to beat my chest and look in the mirror and be like really like I'm gonna crush the speech today it was just because like I was talking about stuff I knew and I knew it because I had done it and so if someone isn't confident they might be they might be right for them to be unconfident now the flip side is and this is what I would add to answer that person not tongue-in-cheek if somebody actually to come to me I would say what would you require someone to have done for you to say it would be reasonable for them to talk about this subject and if they listed out these stats and then I said okay do you match that or do you exceed that now if they said I do kind of match that and exceed that then I'm like then just get out of your own way man just talk about what you know and if you feel like you don't know it then don't say it and on the flip side if they're like no I don't match that then I'm like then get off the [ __ ] stage go back in the trenches go do the Reps and then when you come back you will feel confident because you will have quote outworked yourself out which is really giving yourself undeniable proof because like I don't like the the chess beating thing if you are confident without data your delusional like you're a faker yeah I just think it's fake you're either faking it or you're copy pasting someone else's experience then otherwise where would you get the data from like what you're saying where would you get it from you get it from somebody else that you heard which means you're irrelevant like they probably said it better because they did it so just like stop and go do your own thing how was it for you at the beginning so before because I've seen all the stories of when you were poor had nothing meet your wife right so you're living with her parents all this stuff so there was a time that wasn't that long ago actually where you had none of this stuff none of this Fame and Fortune what were you like at the beginning of that well to give the full context there I had six gyms when I met later okay so I was reasonably successful I then lost it all okay so you messed it up key point so I lost it all but I still have the skills which is why I'm a big proponent of having skills and I knew so I sold the gym successfully and then I and I wanted to do this new model the new model didn't work or I had to have some tweaks on it and so the evidence that I had like did I have evidence that I knew how to generate leads yes that evidence I knew how to sell yes evidence that like you knew that this promotion would work yes I know that I tested in multiple markets yes and so I was relatively confident despite the fact that it was an insane risk which I mean like people see my stuff now and believe me it still took all that I had from a Ball's perspective to put a hundred grand on a credit card when I had a thousand dollars in my bank account but it was also because I was used to making 100 Grand a month and I was very confident that we would make it again and so like it was a risk but I'm not a [ __ ] you know what I mean and so it makes a dramatic story but at the same degree like the month before that I'd done 100 Grand in sales too I just hadn't been able to collect on it because the processor didn't process the money and so that's the thing it's like if I had put a hundred grand on a credit card instead of having a thousand dollars my bank account having never done whatever this new business was needing to make 100 Grand in the first month of a brand new thing with no experience that would be stupid like to such a large degree that like the likelihood of success would be really low I had evidence that I had six figure months multiple many months before that right it was just that I had lost everything and then I had gone all in on this next launch crushed the launch and then not gotten the money for it and then because I was supposed to have had that extra hundred grand to float this next one six guys had already quit their jobs to start so I was confident enough to launch six gyms the next month but I didn't have the money so that was where the risk came from but I would say that like a lot of the stuff that's happened and I'm gonna go in a little tangent here but I think it'll maybe be useful most of the quote status and asking to speak on stuff has come always after the fact so I got asked to speak about launching gyms after I already launched a bunch of jibs and I was just talking to somebody he's like dude you should speak at my event he's like I don't ever do this but like you would be great and I was like I don't I was like dude I'm just a gym owner man and he's like no I want to have some brick and mortar this is mostly online so it'd be cool to show that I was like all right and so I I just it was weird because I do remember this and this is my like might be an interesting point it's like when I'd always been nervous to speak when I was in school like you have like a presentation or a project or whatever I was always like really nervous to talk but for the first time in my life when I got up in front of a it was like a 1500 person audience like I I was nervous in high school and this is the first time I talked it's 1500 people and I remember not being nervous at all and I was like why is that I was like I'm just talking about what I did and so that was it and so like the slides that I had I was like well this is the ad I ran and this was the lead cost and this is how we follow up with leads and this is how many people schedule this how many people showed there's so many sales we made and this is how I launched the last however many gyms that I've done and then everyone went [ __ ] nuts and I was like this is so weird and so it was like it was very it was weird for me and so a lot of times I prefer to be on the opposite side of it which is like I don't want to talk about hitting a billion until we're out of billiard all right someone comment being like oh you don't know how to hit a billionaire I was like well I have a pretty decent idea of what I'm gonna do I was like but I'm not going to say I know it until I've been there I can talk about Crossing nine figures because I know because I've been there and so it's just like I prefer to talk about that way mostly because maybe I'm just a big pansy and I can't front anything and I feel so insecure about anything unless I have absolute proof that I can stand by it because I call like my closest friend Dr Kashi we call it the podcast test which is like if someone drills down on this in a podcast what are you gonna say and so for me the easiest thing to always have is just a big [ __ ] stack of proof they're like I don't think you're good at sales but okay like I don't know what good at sales means closed 4 000 of them I was like I don't know if that makes me good or bad I've done a lot of it and I'll say this is what's worked for me and if it helps you awesome if it doesn't no worries because it's not going to change the data so for for that person that hasn't done it do you just have to act and do your way into gaining the confidence so it when in doubt take action start before you're ready get going to get good all of those types of things is that what you're thinking so I actually think you need to chunk down so what it is like you're not gonna so if you're like I want to get started in sales right let's say that's the thing well there are lots of things that are required to be successful in sales that you might have evidence to be good at are you going to communicate it can you show up on time are you good at doing repetitive tasks are you how can you handle rejection these are all things that you could test before you get into sales and so you'd say I think I'm going to be good at sales because I have this data and so I think this is a good match for me as a career path now if you're like I hate rejection I can't show up on time I'm super like I I hate talking to people every day and and rejection crushes my soul sales might not be the career for you and so it's just like what are the micro things that are like again if you were to make the perfect sales person who had zero experience but you thought you'd have a really high prediction that they would be good at sales what would you make them do I make them do all these things cool then do that speaking of sales I was a college athlete played a little bit after college football and then a lot of guys who have no idea no plan because I only wanted to play sports got a job in sales um and I never sold a thing in my life and but luckily had a guy take a chance on me and then it went extremely well for 12 years and now I do this full-time but that I just I love talking sales because I was my first real job and it felt not exactly like playing playing football in front of a lot of people but there are some elements that felt pretty good when you get wins I'm curious Alex to hear about like your overall philosophy when it comes to the profession and the Art of selling how like at a high level before we drill down how do you feel and how what do you think about selling I mean I love selling and as a side note to your point like it thought if it felt a lot like football and and like the sports that you were playing and then it's like I had a lot of transferable skills and so although you had never quote sold before you had done maybe 80 of the things that are required to be successful in sales and then you just had to learn the 20 mechanics and then that made you a good salesman right yeah and so for me I think sales comes down to clear communication yeah and conviction because fundamentally like if you really believe in the thing then you don't have an issue with rejection because you feel like you're trying to help the person right now a lot of times and this is like let's talk real a lot of times people are in they get a job and they were promised things great and then they get in and then they find out that there's actually like other problems with the thing right well what do you do like you still need to eat right and so as a salesperson it's you have to set clear expectations and honestly what I have found in most of my selling experience is that the more honest you are the more you still end up selling because it's so counter what sales people do that people are like wow I can trust this guy one of the biggest things I found out on accident was how to sell supplements and it happened when I ran out of product one day right so I ran out of uh fish oil and so somebody was coming in and I had sold her friend fish oil and then she was next later in the day because I would do weigh-ins I would stack them all and I was like okay blah blah blah and she's like what about the fish oil my friend got fish oil and I was like oh I I don't have any fish oil and she was like ah I was like okay and I wrote it down I was like this is the one you should get go to this store it'll plug it's not ideal but this will be great and she was like okay and then she was like well what else do I need and I was like whoa because I referred business away she was like oh I'll take all of your recommendations now and so then I learned that I was like oh this whole fear I had around like just like trying to help keeping the customer at the center of the conversation keeping the relationship first long term is ultimately how you saw the most people like all you have to do is just measure on a longer time brexit and so I think that big kind of Awakening and I stumbled into a lot of these things you know what I mean like I didn't find out on purpose I didn't go to any sales training stuff until I already had six gyms I didn't even know that sales training exists you mentioned a lot that you're playing the long game with 100 million dollar offers your book one of your books you price the Kindle version very low and I've heard and read that you've done this because it's not about the short-term money from the book it's about the long term maybe five years from now somebody who reads that's a business that you acquire or you work with that person I just love the thought of being a long game player I feel like the people who sustain Excellence over time think this way what's your overall thought process on playing the long game I think it's being better at being greedy like you get more you just measure over a longer time Rising it's funny because even like even the whole like givers thing it's like givers have just learned a better way to be greedy you get more by giving first it's literally like having a loss leader in business it's just having a loss leader in life is that you choose to give to everybody and a certain percentage of those people will give you something back and the thing that you can't quantify is how valuable the thing to give back to you is but you can quantify what you give to them and so more times than not you get more back than you give and even if you got back fewer times you will still get more back so talk about frequency versus intensity you know what I mean in terms of how much you get so like for the book thing for example me getting 30 cents or 70 cents from Amazon when you know an ebook sells I would have to sell a tremendous amount of books in order to make any money from it right but the thing is that one good deal that comes from the book makes more than 99.99 of books so like why would I play that game you know what I mean and so different purpose like it feels like though you have developed the skill which a lot of people have not of delayed gratification or and and maybe like we could go back to like well maybe in Fitness it's delayed gratification but then again I also know tons of short-term thinkers and fitness so like I don't know how much that transfers and I'm just maybe ascribing a reason to it but I think the the real is that the longer I wait for things to happen the more rewarded I am for waiting and so that behavior has been positively reinforced over and over again and the longer I wait the more I am reinforced for doing so and so then what happens it becomes this kind of like delayed game because what happens you start winning along the way right and so I think a really helpful thing to Define and this like changed my life was defining patience so I am not a patient person by my character like at least how I feel like I constantly want things to happen faster I constantly compare my progress to where I think I should be based on an arbitrary thing which will always be 25 further than wherever I am right now I should be there I must I like I need to why are we not but when I Define patience not as how I felt by simply what you do in the meantime like if you say hey be patient that's not helpful for someone because it means nothing like right now you and I are being patient for the the stock market Investments that you've made right now for some deals that you have in the pipeline that you're not pushing but you think they might come to fruition for a split test that you're running on one of your websites like you're being patient while we're on this podcast right now but like you're not really being patient you're just keeping busy you're doing something in the meantime and so when I defined patients that way it made it operational for me so when I like I know all right I feel very confident that we're gonna be able to hit a billion on some timeline and so between now and then it's just figuring out what to do in the meantime and part of that is like I love writing I like writing is a terrible way to make money in general I got a writing scholarship in college like so like I've liked it for a long time and so this almost just gives me an excuse to write and draw about the thing that I like just business and I almost Justified or rationalize it because I just say okay cool I'm gonna put this out there and then like maybe we'll get a deal from it and it'll it'll make it all back but the the real thing is kind of like a software programmers if you talk to them like what do you want out of the software they just say one thing they just I just want people to use it and it's kind of the same thing with the book it's like I just rather I just want people to read it I just want people to use it and get better from it because I'm going to die No One's Gonna remember me my great grandfather was Emperor of whatever and no one here has ever heard of him and he [ __ ] killed life so what and I'm like I'm he's related to me and I barely know anything about him and that's like what five generations it's nothing so whatever I do is gonna amount to nothing and so I just think of it as Mo everything that we have is because of some human in the past that figured something out for us and like we don't know their names but they helped us and so like for me that is a noble Pursuit that I'm willing to dedicate a life to at least in my life consistencies of another big word you published work online a podcast right everything that you've done and there was a big portion of the beginning of that where I don't think anyone ever heard of you or listened to it or watched it or very little and then all of a sudden at least to the outside world not to you but all of a sudden you're everywhere everyone's seeing you everywhere what was that like at the beginning stages and then the transition point and it's still I guess technically happening but the transitional point to where it's at yeah we're still early like but you but very early though wait I think you said for years from the videos I watched years and years you did it and like nobody listened nobody paid attention yet you kept at it you stayed consistent kept going and then all of a sudden for whatever reason there's probably a variety of reasons you're everywhere can you walk me through your stages of being willing to be consistent and then seeing it how it's paying off for you now yeah so I'll give three maybe insights off of six years of podcasts so I started July of 16 was my first podcast and I think it was called like the gym Secrets podcast because that's what it was called then and this is right as I was starting gym launch and I had gym owners who were in my world and so I wanted to just kind of create this is my lattice work of thinking about how we grow gyms right now at that point I already had six gyms and it sold them and had done 30 turnarounds so like I had evidence that I knew what I was talking about just for context and so I talked about just varied like here's how you fix churn here's how you sell membership here's how you deal with like the spouses and their objection here's how you can get someone to commit to three days a week on your off hours so that you can increase the capacity facility like here's how to arrange your lobby so you can increase your sales percentage like here's how you can weave in reviews and test it like I mean just all the [ __ ] that you do to run a business so number one the reason I was able to stay consistent with it was because it was easy for me to do because I always try to interweave it in my normal work schedule and so for me it was like twice a week I would go live in a Facebook group and I'd get questions from all the licensees of like what whatever the issue is and if I saw a recurring issue that would be the topic that I would talk about so I just it was very responsive for me and I already knew the answer to the question and I just would dive deep on it for X period of time and sometimes I'd get riled up and I would do one impromptu because someone was like man all these leads are broke and then I would just lose my [ __ ] on camera about how they were selling out of their own wallet and they should be trying to help people blah blah and so that was inside one number one is that it had to be natural and easy for me to do to work within my current kind of constraints that's kind of what led to the consistency the two things that led to the Breakthrough at year four and a half was number one is I rebranded the podcast to the game because you can imagine how many people are like oh you got to listen to this podcast called gym secrets doesn't matter what the episode's about you're not going to listen to it unless you own a gym like it's just like why would you listen to it and the second one or the I guess this is Insight this is the third Insight the second of the breakthroughs was that I started asking people to share it that was it those are the the three things that changed but the actual format itself has not really changed I stopped talking about gym specific gym only in September of 19.

25:08so that was when I said I'm not going to talk about Jim stuff anymore I'm just going to talk about General business and then literally that month like the next month ago in the next month it grew the next month it grew and then when I started saying hey if you're enjoying this podcast like auto run ads I don't do anything like just share with a friend that was like the next increment of growth but that was it you know what I mean that I mean I didn't make content anywhere else besides my podcast and I stayed for for four and a half or whatever it was four and a half years at two thousand dollars a month wow and I feel really confident that the content in there is still good but I didn't package it for Mass consumption and that's probably one of the biggest lessons I had over the last two years growing my personal brand whatever you want to call it is that I've learned a lot about packaging and so like when you're making like a short are you making a tweet or making an ad like the first three seconds is 80 90 of it like I want to tell this story because I think it like it'll hit it'll help somebody in the audience so good friend of mine huge marketer back in the infomercial days television and he had done two or three home run infomercials and he recorded one with Larry King all right and so there he flew Larry King out he was going to interview him about his book so it was like a big ego moment for him he was like he's like hey and tonight you're live with Larry King and he just did it just like an episode of Larry King and he ran the ad and it bombed and he was like I know this is a killer like he's like I've done this I know this is a killer ad like why isn't this working so he went back he watched all his best infomercials and he realized that he just missed the hook so he flew back the entire production crew flew Larry King back to re-record the first minute he re-recorded the first minute with the new script did a hundred million dollars the next the next year how people perceive the information matters almost more than the information itself and this is what like zooming out a chunk the reason I'm so big on this evidence [ __ ] is because that's the frame that people consume your message in if I have a book that says how to Market a book and it has 10 reviews on Amazon do I need to consume the book no I already know the book sucks because I have evidence that the book sucks I have visual proof that everything you're saying is not true or that you aren't even doing it right it's just like the teacher who says I'm giving Financial advice to people and they're like my advice is better than Warren Buffett's it's like yeah sure you just forgot to build an 800 billion dollar company no big deal that's it and so the it's the lens right it's the lens that everyone's gonna perceive everything you say through and so like I want people to have the evidence so that when they speak about something they can be confident about it confident because they have a high degree of probability that it is true because they've experienced it no I love it man I love it well I have a million notes dude that this would go on for eight hours but I I just saw recently another one flying through that I thought I'm gonna talk to him about this even though it has nothing to do with anything else what's the deal with never skipping dessert this is great there's a segue into something that I've been wanting to talk about good so like I see the videos that are like the hermosi content method the how Alex removed the four pillars of Alex tremose's brand they like they try to like ascribe marketing terms so like what we're doing when in reality we do none of that I'm always curious I'm like oh what are my pillars and so like never skip dessert happen because I come from a fitness background and everyone in my early audience was Fitness people and they're always like never skip Monday never Skip Leg Day and I was like [ __ ] it never skip dessert you know what I mean and so it was just counter to everything else I just thought it was cute and funny because I like eating dessert and I still have a six-pack and so maybe there's another way to do it and so anyways the point was it's just me being me right and then I had no idea it was gonna I mean it was just one time I did never skip dessert and then like 50 people tagged me the next week with desserts and stuff and so I think it was a relatively cute saying put around an event that people usually want to document anyways when dessert comes and it's all fancy like you want to take a picture of it but you don't want to be that person and it just it gave people permission to post something they wanted to post anyways and so I think that's why those two things kind of combined but for me like somebody's like so did you like think about the the wife beater and I was like I get hot a lot and so I wear wife beaters like I can work out on them and like I can throw something on top if I get cold you know what I mean and I throw the flannels on that I have because they're really soft and comfortable that's why I wear it like I wear the shorts that I wear because they can get wet I can go to the gym and I can go to a nice restaurant in them and I can get my phone in my side pocket and while I'm sitting down right now without having to take it out of my pocket every time I had one of my my team asked me this he was like so what is what do you tell somebody who is boring if you're just like interesting I was like I don't think that's true I think that people suppress themselves because they're afraid of other people's judgment I think people would do more things that are more like them if they weren't afraid of looking different but if the whole point like the point isn't to stand out the point is just do you and because everyone else doesn't do them you will stand out as a result but it's more the outcome than it is the desired result did you ever have that fear and you had to get over it or have you just that's you've never really worried about that and just always have done you no of course I've had insecurities I mean I just think that over time they just become less and less important I mean I think a lot about my 85 year old self good old grandpa grandpa Alex and I just think that guy doesn't give a [ __ ] yep and I'm just thinking like if that guy doesn't give a [ __ ] then I might as well not give a [ __ ] now old people are happier than everyone else except for kids it's a smile you've probably seen the graph the smiley face where it's like you're happiest when you're a child you're really miserable at 40 and then you become happy again at like 60ish when you realize that like nothing mattered to begin with right and then you just do you right and so I was just like if I'm gonna come to that conclusion eventually anyways I might as well just start now and like I wear comfortable shoes that don't look cool but if I'm gonna do it I'm 85 I might as well do it now like they don't care they're not worried about it they're like I got a bunion you're like [ __ ] hurts I Gotta Wear the nice soft shoes right now I'm good with it I'm just fine with it I don't know just doesn't bug me but so but that's still Against the Grain most people do they struggle with this they think about that I remember my dad specifically this moment I've shared it a lot I'm getting ready for like this banquet or something and I'm like I don't remember these pants these pants he goes they don't care about your pants they care about their pants and I just thought like I thought that part of it as well as being worried about that but you've come to this realization and able to act on it which is even harder sooner than most how do like how do you think you have you've done that I think about the fact that I'm gonna die every day really it's probably the thought that I think most frequently throughout the day are you scared of that no just the realization this is going to happen I'm gonna die yeah I could die tomorrow yeah what a shame it would be if I cared about what pants if I think about this imagine I died tomorrow and I was wearing something really uncomfortable for this meeting wouldn't you be like man I can't believe like what a shame he didn't do what he wanted to do so like as long as what you want to do is legal right and it's not hurting anybody so to the point about patience or I've been reinforced over and over again for being more and more patient for figuring out things to do in the meantime while my longer goals continue to to compound to the same degree I have been reinforced for just doing me and so maybe you need to take that first step of just do like maybe if you're just afraid to wear a hat or maybe you like like mustaches and you don't want to have a mustache the first big thing I had was I I did wear I had a huge handlebar for five years yeah and that's weird it was super weird I look like a porn star like a 70s porn star but like I remember I was shaving one day and I came out of the bathroom I looked at my wife and I was like this is funny and then I the thing is it's like it made my day bright and so like every morning I'd wake up and be like I can't take myself that serious and I don't know maybe I'm more insecure than most people and so this is just my visual reminder to myself to not care about I don't know but I will say that doing me despite the fear of what other people will quote judge me for and then surviving another day with their judgment or without their judgment that's really just like the more evidence that I have that I can continue to live like to the dad example that you have right in my situation my dad would be like you're not going out like that are you it's like I had to at an early time just be like I'm gonna [ __ ] do me I don't want it like and so my I would say like my big breaking right as a human was when I was probably 20 21 22.

34:32and that's when I quit my job and I left right I left Baltimore I left everything behind and I think that was by far the most that was the scariest thing I'd ever done to this day has been the scariest thing I've ever done in my life was quitting my job because it wasn't just quitting my job it was what quitting my job signified about everything else it meant that everything that I had done at that point I had been building this life that I didn't want to live I was building a life that my dad wanted me to live to get his approval and the thing is when I when my approval rating for my father was at its absolute highest one is when I was my absolute saddest as a human being and so when I left that job I basically started from scratch and was like what do I want to do and I was like well I like Fitness I'm gonna get into I'm gonna I don't know I'm gonna figure that out and he's like what are you gonna be a personal trainer you know what I mean it's like you're a Vanderbilt grad you've got you graduated in three years you have this white collar job on a fast track to go into a top ivy league Business School he's like you're set as I was about to culminate in like the ultimate setness by his standard I quit everything and started a gym which is like as a personal trainer like a blue collar not a very high income thing and so I think being willing to die to him then was what allowed me to live to me and my father's approval was the person whose opinion I cared the most about in the whole world and so once I was able to not care about his opinion no one else's opinion really came even close you know I mean like I was raised by a single father who was Middle Eastern like I had no siblings I barely had a mother and so like imagine your brother your mother your sister your uncle all of the people that you used to care about their opinion all in one person and that person's approval made or broke your day month week year and like that was my life and my dad God bless him would always move the the flag for what achievement was so if I aced everything he's like you should have aced it faster like if I got a 99 it wasn't like congrats on the a the question was just what did you get wrong it was always like that like to the point that like it's not weird for me to say that it was just always like that like I was just used to I didn't know that other people's parents didn't do that right and whoever that person is that I think you care the most about their approval is I think the person that you need to be willing to get disapproval from to do what you want to do and to me it felt like death and the only way I was literally able to do this was because I didn't want to live anymore and so I don't know how extreme of a circumstance other people are some people probably aren't as dissatisfied as I was I was incredibly sad I was 21 22 right I I'm at this point I have a consulting job I have my own condo I'm Successful by all means by all you know external means and I'm going on my balcony every night and just thinking to myself like is this it and always thinking that night like I didn't wake up tomorrow like I wouldn't be that upset like I wasn't like I'm gonna jump off this thing but I was just like if I didn't wake up I'd be okay with it and the more times I kept thinking that I was like dude if you don't want to wake up then [ __ ] it you know I mean like if death is if you if right now I basically felt like The Walking Dead like if I feel like death then whatever else is out there can't be worse than that and so that was what I kept repeating to myself was like sometimes you have to let his dreams die for yours to live and they were mutually exclusive some people were like you know what they just want what's best for you [ __ ] them I did not like he does long term but not for the first few years like he was not stoked like I I was so afraid of my father that I literally drove across the country and called him when I was already halfway there to tell him that I left so I didn't want him to convince me he had a lot of influence over it so I knew I had to change the environment I had to change my conditions and so like if you were in one of those states where it's like you feel paralyzed it's usually because you have conditions that make it very difficult for you to leave the easiest way to change behaviors to change your environment and so I went to California literally from the I went to the furthest place possible from Baltimore Maryland I went to Southern California like on a map there's like there's basically nothing that's further away from Baltimore Maryland and I went there and I didn't know anybody one guy on the internet said I could stop by his gym so I drove straight to this guy's gym and I was like hey I'm here and he's like oh where are you staying I was like I don't know yet he was like what do you mean you don't know I was like oh I just got here and he was like well I got [ __ ] to do I'm not like I'm working and I was like okay he's like well [ __ ] he's like you can stay at my place tonight but you got to figure something I was like okay thanks it's the next day I went into the gym with him that morning and he just got in a chair and was like hey I got this kid who here can give him a room one guy came up to me I was like aren't you bro I rented a room for 400 bucks a night or 400 bucks a month from this guy in Gina that's how and like I went from this top secret clearance defense Contracting three-year mad commodity Vanderbilt Ace my GMAT all that to sleeping in some guy some random guys I'm actually still friends with them some random guys room because I was just like I need a reset the game that I was trying to win wasn't a game that I had designed it was my dad's game so I was trying to win at my dad's game and I just realized I didn't want to play that anymore what was that call like when you're driving across the country what was that what was that car ride like the call like you called yourself you're already on the way uh I mean he was pissed what was he gonna do you're like is he still alive my dad yeah so what's your relationship with with him like now we're good we're good we're fine I mean I mean you saw that it worked out so he's good well there's got to be more to it than that man I mean this was a this is obviously the the most pivotal person in your life and now you've gone from that you quit you left you started Anew and then boom like I I can't even imagine what he's thinking like I'll tell you how proud is he now yeah I'll tell you the two conversations that matter okay so in the car ride when I called him he basically I was like hey I'm gonna I'm gonna go do this gym thing and he was like ah come over like have lunch we'll talk about it which he knew was like I'll talk you off the cliff like because I this is like a weekly Cadence we had I would say I don't want to do this anymore I want to start my own business and he'd be like just it's fine just follow the path go to business school get a business degree and then you can do business later like it's fine and so that was just like the routine we were in and I was like I can't he said you can't I was like I'm in Ohio what do you mean you're in Ohio and the tone changed and he was like you're so unbalanced you're so extreme it's always all or nothing with you this is ridiculous you're throwing away your education why did we do all like all this stuff and I was just like I'm not coming back and so that was kind of and then we didn't talk much occasional texture in there but like I'm alive I still cared about me but he was not he didn't approve whatever you do when you have somebody who you absolutely love because I know my father loves me to death but completely didn't approve of my life so that level of communication we didn't talk about anything because anything we talk about we couldn't fight right so very short conversations so fast forward five years right six years I now have gym launch right and we're past the losing everything part right I'm taking home a million plus a month in income and so I get a call from my dad and I'm we haven't spoken much right and so I'm out to dinner with Layla and her parents in Michigan or in the summer and so I I'm like I gotta take this this is weird it doesn't really call me out of the blue so I answer the phone I step outside I'm like what's up and he's like you're going to want to sit down for this and I was like either he is cancer or he's apologizing that was it like literally a month I was like okay and he was like you ready I was like okay he was like I'm sorry and I was like huh and I was like for what he was like for everything for all of it you were right this was a good path for you to take he's like but for the record if it had been in my time I would have been right and I should have taken it for what it was because like in the culture that my father was brought up like fathers don't apologize to Suds ever it just doesn't happen and this is the first time I'd ever watched so I should have taken it for that right it's like a really strong attempt at an olive branch but I didn't and I just remember saying like I stopped caring about what you thought five years ago when I packed the car and I left and I was like so your apology doesn't really mean anything to me I was like I got over what you thought a long time ago I was like so I'm glad you're over it and he was like well we'll see how long it lasts so that was my kind of exchange for my dad at that point and so obviously we're fine now we've we've made amends but like it had now been five or six years right and I had already gone through losing everything multiple times and I had slept on the floor for that long period of time right I think there's a saying that says like every man becomes a man when his father dies and I think I don't think your father has to die obviously but I think that your need for your father's approval has to die at some point so either the person like your need for their approval dies or they physically die and there's no way you can get it again and so I think that is what ultimately like unchains most people and then allows them to be their own man and so I had quote been my own or become my own man when I was 21 22. and after disappointing the man that I cared the most about in my entire life comments on the internet you know what I mean like you can hear in the tournament like help like like Susie Q who says that like she doesn't want to buy a gym membership but one of the reasons that Layla and I have worked out really well is that Layla expects nothing from me and she's never asked me to change I mean her expectation is that I keep being me now me keep being me is I'm going to go for it you know what I mean but she's never tried to ask me to be less of who I am in order to be with her and so she's always just been like our relationship has been both of us wanting to go to this place both walking in the same direction being like you want to walk together and that's what's worked for us I'm not saying that's I think most people won't find that to be honest with you because it's weird and it's not common you've written that for anyone debating whether to marry a partner these two lenses were useful one how have my stats changed since they entered my life which would be wealth health and time that's for you and two would I go to war with them I thought about that a lot with my own marriage and thought like man that's a really good point and I think about a lot of the good things that have happened since Miranda has come into my life my wife and like that's a I like that man and it sounds like this is something that you think about what about your stats and going to War and why that's so important for the person that you choose to spend your life with what I like evidence yeah that I have I've made a good decision so that's where the Stats come from the war thing is more of a projecting into future situation so the it's kind of like a past for prediction of future right I didn't think about it that way when I was writing it but I agree with it I'm glad I still agree with Paso the war thing is I've got to want to go to war with this person have them covering my six right shoulder to shoulder Etc back to back because where I want to go not many people have gone and it's going to be by its very nature difficult and fraught with hardship and so if someone wants a puffy life that I could have I could give someone you know what I mean then that's not going to be the person who's going to help me get to where I ultimately want to go and the where I want to ultimately go isn't really a place to who I want to become and the place I want to go is just my mountain to climb in order to get there but it's really more about my lungs being able to breathe at the top of the mountain than it is me being at the top of the mountain itself do you think you think bigger than most people no I think that I've achieved things earlier and so then I set my goals to the next thing is because I've achieved a decent amount from a material perspective I've just moved the goal line I think that's really all it is I don't want to think I I don't really think I think particularly bigger it's just that like if you're making 10 grand a month then your next goal is 100 when you're making 10 million a month your next goal is 100 million a month you know what I mean like it just I'm just moving zeros like everyone else did but like I just checked the Box off earlier but outside of money and not just talking about I just like overall life like think like you you the extension of that is that you said they flow from what I want which is growth and two is hard goals I need someone who can handle both of those things so like hard goals are are probably big goals or big things that you want I'm just wondering if that's kind of the way you view it is I I want something bigger I want something harder I want something more than what the average person wants that's why I can't be partnered with an average person so I would say that the goals again are so instead of saying I think bigger about the goals it's like I want to be bigger yeah because a person as a human and so if we Define like how do you make how do you make someone patient you put them through hardship right how do you make someone who's tough you put them through hard times so if I want to have these character traits then I have to Vanquish big dragons and big monsters along the way the bigger the monster the more epic the hero and so it's like if you want to maximize the hero then you got to go and slay big monsters and so that's what I want I want to maximize the hero in the story I want to just I want to squeeze like my goal is to squeeze every [ __ ] drop of potential that I've got out of me and so I have to face big bosses and that also means using whatever path I have behind me to try and predict the path I have before me so I keep trying to do [ __ ] so I can prove to myself that I can do more do you ever get tired from that though do you just want to chill out and relax and say God I've been going hard for a while I just want to chill out man macro micro macro no micro sure you know what I mean like how do you do that how do you chill how do you relax I'm like a I'm a basic [ __ ] when it comes to that stock uh like I'll I'll pool day you know I mean like I'll pull and drink Margaritas you know what I mean how do you eat dessert and drink margaritas and look like that yeah well that's just counting your Macros and knowing what you're doing but the step one pick the right parents step two start training when you're 14. step three go into your tea at age 30. I haven't done this as much because Layla doesn't like this much but I I'll binge I would love to just binge movies or TV but usually for me it's about a half day yeah so it's like I can work six and a half out of seven but and that's usually what it ends up being six and a half out of seven I can work you work six and a half out of seven days so you're just I can work six and a half out of seven yeah yeah do you get to the point where say man I made a lot I'm flying private I'm doing whatever I need to do maybe I can work four and a half instead of seven and enjoy more of this or is the work part of the what you enjoy you got it okay what would I do I just want to like I want to do epic [ __ ] and so doing what you want to do and like in your free time you're doing what you want to do yeah and that's the thing so I get every once in a while I work Twitter lifestyle Twitter whatever will come out and uh get get really aggro about something and I say about work but it's just because their definition of work and my definition of work are different like I Define work is what I do every day you know what I mean and like it just so happens to make money but I enjoy the game and so I just want to play the game as much as humanly possible because it has reinforced me for playing it so I apply as much of it as I possibly can until my work per unit of time drops and then I hardcore relax but for people who make sacrifices with their work which I absolutely respect if you don't like the job that you're in but you need to because you've got people who are depending on you I think there's honor in that and I think in some ways like you can actually reframe your work again because I'm big on perspectives like you can reframe the work into something you do enjoy it's like I enjoy providing for my family like this is what higher cause is there but I I don't need a break from the game unless I physically need a break from the game and then I take one when you think about all the people in your life that you've surrounded yourself with that you've been intentional to bring into your orbit that you've attracted to your orbit which are a lot of people who have made it happen these are a lot of people who have sustained Excellence over an extended period of time what have you found to be some of the commonalities among those people they don't try and change me and they want to grow and that's about it that's really that's about it yeah they gotta want to grow like there's nothing that drives me more crazy well one is if someone tries to change me they're out okay it's not oil and vinegar that's not gonna work what about people in your life you're saying you try to change do you have people in your life though who say Alex is a bad idea no don't do this or hey maybe this way like the kitchen cabinet so to speak to say hey man like do you have those no people sure okay well there's difference between like criticizing an idea or criticizing a way of living so if someone's gonna attack values and that's like I feel very strong about my values but my ideas yeah Loosely helped you know I mean this is my best sure like when we introduce an idea to the group it's always like this is my best bad idea you know I'll say love my idea for five seconds and then I'll say it and then it's like you can you can tear it apart right but the growth thing I love to you know grow my business I'm like cool man like what's your students that I see me a year later and I'm like how'd that go oh you know boss busy man a lot of stuff's been coming up I'm like yeah sure has and they're like I've been meaning to pick your brand I'm like I don't think so I think I already said everything I thought last time I heard they're having multiple times they're like I'd love to speak I was like you already did and I already gave you what I thought you haven't done it so I was like there's really no point in me repeating the same statements do that what are your values giving first thinking long having work itself be Noble trying to motivate a reward not punishment I think truth in general in all its various forms but if I were to tell you the the companies ones it's competitive greatness sincere Candor and unimpeachable character which we haven't brought up acquisition.com I know we got to run in a second but briefly why start acquisition.com why was that the next step and what exactly does acquisition.com do yeah well and I from the exit and we've taken about 40 million out before the exit we had enough money to start a family office and so acquisition.com exists as our family office for Investments and while we still had some of the companies before our bigger exit we had made two or three Investments that worked out really well and so we said you know what I think I want to do this I think that's what I want to do I want to go buy buy businesses buy chains buy brick and mortar stuff buy normal consumer businesses or business services businesses just normal businesses and do what we do and so we look for founder Sue Howard sincerely cancerous they tell the truth and can take the truth have unimpeachable character we're proud to associate with them on and off the field and they're competitively great they want to go after the big hill they're not afraid of a heart Challenge and they Revel in the hard challenge they're eager to attack like that's what we're looking for and so if we see Founders who are doing for us the minimum is a million in ebitda the largest company we have is 20 million in ebitda so it's kind of the range I think the media is probably four or five um a bit of being profit for anyone who's newer brought forward for profit so we invest in those businesses sometimes as a minority a growth partner sometimes as a majority just depends on the situation and then our goal is to just hold and grow but if the founder like really wants to have a big exit then we can optimize for that but like for us I'd rather like I'd rather just continue to grow tax-free and grow the equity value and the Enterprise value of the business I don't need a liquidity event but if they want one then we can go optimize for that love it man where would you send Alex have been amazing where would you send my viewers and listeners to go to learn more about you online I know you had a big thing coming up soon oh well I'll give you two things so one is we're always looking for talent and if you're a leader you're a manager you have a valuable skill and we have 13 portfolio companies I think we employ just under a thousand people we are always looking for talent and just go to acquisition.com and you can click the careers Tab and it has all of our job openings when you can join Mosey Talent which I think twice a month we do like I don't say like a job drop but we basically let everybody on there know what new leadership roles we have coming first like we only recruit leadership roles at the holding company the portfolio companies recruit the smaller uh roles from directly and then if you're trying to get more leads my second book 100 million dollar leads is coming out and I have a live event right now we have 360 000 people who are registered for the live event which is uh pretty wild and so you can go to acquisition.com forward slash leads and I show their live it's on August 19th on Saturday at 9 A.M Pacific it's going to be it's gonna be a show is that your birthday the 18th this 18th okay so I did in the day after yeah good way good way to celebrate man it's awesome yeah if it goes well otherwise it'll be a terrible work oh I love it man well I super appreciate for your time man it was great to catch up obviously been binging your stuff for a while and I'm uh very appreciative of you and I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progress man appreciate you thank you ma'am thanks man thank you to the audience hopefully you got something from me love it …