What's up? Yeah, bam. Today we are replaying iconic episodes and that is with Alex Hermosy. Alex Ramosi is one of the most well known entrepreneurs, and he's a sales and marketing expert. He started his entrepreneurial journey running brick and motor gyms and after taking some good advice from Russell Brunson, who by the way is now in my YAP Media Podcast Network, he ended up selling those gyms and eventually licensed his business model to start the company GymLaunch.

So he was able to scale what he did with his own gym with GymLaunch and then he helped 4, 000 plus locations in four years do the same thing. During the same period, Alex and his wife, Layla Hermosi, bootstrapped and grew three other companies to 120 million in sales across four different industries. And in 2020, they launched Acquisition.

com to help promising internet companies scale and grow their portfolio to over 100 million per year. Talk about couple goals. Alex also wrote one of my favorite business books of all time, 100 Million Dollar Offers. I find myself time and time going back to that book. It is a classic business book. And we cover a lot of the concepts found in that book in part two.

But today we are replaying part one as our yap classic. We're going to go deep into Alex's super inspiring rags to riches story. There's so many lessons to learn just from his story. And then next Friday we're going to get really tactical with sales and marketing strategies. So mark your calendars for part two next week.

[00:01:41] Hala Taha: If you guys can't wait for part two, we're going to put episode 199 in the show notes. I'll also link out to my episode with Laila Hermozy.  So if you guys want to binge the Hermosi's and yap this weekend, go for it.

Right now, let's get into part one. Young Improfiters, I give you Alex Hermosi. 

[00:02:01] Hala Taha: Tell us about what your parents were like. I know you haven't really talked much about your mom and in terms of your upbringing and what was young Alex from Moseley growing up before you went off to college? 

[00:02:11] Alex Hormozi: I mean, I was a pretty quiet kid, I think for the most part. I was, it was just me and my dad for the most part growing up.

I didn't see my mother very much. And so that's probably why I don't, I don't mention her as much. That being said, it was, I had a Middle Eastern father. He was like, I got out of Iran because of school. And so do well in school and you too will succeed. That was kind of the path. There wasn't really like an option of not trying hard at school.

Like it just, it just wasn't a door. You know what I mean? Like, I think there's some things in America that are a little bit different. I genuinely believe that everybody can get straight A's. Now, I think the amount of effort that would be required for everyone is different, but I think given the time constraints.

That people have to apply themselves to school. Anyone could do it. That's just Alex's perspective on the world. I don't think it would be easy for everyone, but I think everyone could do it. And I think most people, or oftentimes there's. different things that are reinforced in their household. Like there's some people who are straight A's at football.

And so that's the thing that their parents reinforce and reward. Because maybe that dad thought that he relives his football days through his son or whatever. And so that's what gets reinforced. And they spend three hours a day practicing and 30 minutes a day on all of the homework for all the stuff.

So anyways, me growing up was mostly quiet. I think as I got into high school, I came into myself a little bit more. I was a little bit of an angrier guy. I was more of a, I would say I was more of a lone wolf during that period. I mean, I had groups of friends and whatnot, but I wouldn't say that I was particularly close with, you know, like deep, I'm still in touch with one guy, but that's kind of the extent of it.

From there, I went to Vanderbilt cause I did decently well at school. So I was able to get in. I think I needed to get out of the house for me to kind of. Just be me more because there's a lot of I'm sure from and this isn't just a Middle Eastern thing a lot of Asian parents Well, it's just probably just more foreign parents.

It's just a little bit more pressure I think than is common in the American standard to conform a certain way and I definitely conformed I definitely followed the path It was only when I was very very sad After I had graduated college and I did it in three years and did you know, I did all the stuff You know, I mean I was president of fraternity vice president powerlifting team You I did all that.

And then when I, when I got out and had my, my two years of consulting, it was a very miserable time for me. It had nothing to do with the, You know, with the people, anything like that, it was, it was me. I just, I, this, I was like, this is it. This is all there is. Like there's just more of this for the rest of my life.

And that was incredibly depressing to me. And so that was when I had to kind of challenge the original paradigm, which is maybe the plan that was laid out for me was not my plan, but someone else's plan. I'm making progress towards a goal that I do not want in terms of my, my dad's viewpoint of, of me and my success, which was at the time, all, all that I cared about.

And so for me, it was really just not wanting to be alive. Which became my kind of thing that got me to change, which I was like, if I wake up every day hoping that I don't wake up, then either I can just live the rest of my life like this, or I can just die to somebody else. I was like, cause right now I'm dead to me.

That was kind of the internal dialogue was I have to die to my father in order to live for me. And so that was 2012, 2013. I drove across the country. I called my dad to tell him that I had left halfway, halfway there because otherwise I knew he would try and he would talk me out of it. I mean, very transparently, like my dad had enough influence over me at the time that I literally had to physically separate myself in order to not be convinced because I knew that if I had not done that, he would have convinced me to stay because I had tried.

Multiple times before that to be like, I'm not going to do this. I hate this. I don't want to do it. And he would always be like, you know, when I was a resident, we didn't sleep. This is just, you know what I mean? This is to, and to be fair, there's probably a certain degree that's true. You know what I mean?

And he's like, just got to get through this and you'll get to the other side. And then I think there's an element of that. That's true. And maybe, maybe I was too soft. Who knows? Like, I don't know. I really was very, very sad. And so just the idea of being free was very liberating for me. Then I went to start my own business.

And Was shocked by just how hard it was for me sleeping on the floor at my first gym. I remember having these, the story of the come up and that everybody loves the idea of like, yeah, he slept on the floor. Like it was not glorious. It was very lonesome. I didn't know anyone because I was in California.

I'm from Baltimore, so I knew no one and I was sleeping underneath of a warehouse where homeless people would be on top, like breaking bottles at all hours of the night. 

[00:06:28] Hala Taha: You've missed a whole big part of your story. So let's back up. You ended up becoming an apprentice for some guy in California. So you ended up driving.

Where were you from Maryland to California? Like you said, you called your dad halfway. And you decided you were gonna basically work for free for this guy 4 a. m. to 10 p. m. or whatever it was. And you followed this guy around a gym and you tried to learn as much as you can because you were obsessed, right, with fitness and gyms.

And so you wanted to break out and learn from somebody else who had already done it. So tell us about that period of your life. 

[00:07:03] Alex Hormozi: So I emailed 40 gym owners because I knew from the consulting world, which is what I had graduated into, that the best way to learn is to seek out experts. And so they have already consolidated the information because there's no lack of information in the world.

Like the issue is. Is sifting through it at this point and so finding people who've already pre sifted it is more efficient. So I emailed 40 guys. He was the only one who got back to me. He had a seven figure gym. His name was Seven Figure Sam. And so anyways, I just showed up at his doorstep. A few days later, he was very surprised by that.

He had a mastermind, which I joined, even though I didn't have a gym. It was for gym owners. And he said, yeah, if you join, then you'll start the gym the right way. And I was like, okay. But then I didn't have a gym, so he said, do you want to work for me? So he ended up paying me as an employee, even though I paid him for a mastermind.

It was a very weird, uh, setup. But anyways, I worked for him at the gym and he said I could be his apprentice because he didn't really have a program for me, so I just hung out with him all day. And so he got to the gym at four and he would leave at four. So he worked four to four. I would usually stay an extra couple hours until six cause I didn't know anybody.

So I would just hang out the gym cause at least there was people there that I kind of knew. Now I worked there for 12 weeks. It was kind of a crash course. I mean, imagine spending 12 hours a day with somebody who is a decent business owner at the time, you know, he had a seven figure business. And so, There's just so much that I learned so quickly.

It's more like constructs. Like I didn't know things existed. It wasn't like I learned tactics. Like I just didn't even know email marketing was a thing. I didn't know affiliate marketing was a thing. I didn't know what a landing page was. I didn't know what ads were. I didn't know sales as a term existed.

I didn't get it. And so I remember the first time somebody walked in, he's like, Oh, go sign this girl up. She walked in. So I, no training, no script, no nothing. He just said, go sign this girl up. And I came from a management consulting background making slide deck. So I had no idea what I was doing. And so the girl came in and I was like, yeah, so, uh, yeah, the gym's one 29 a month or whatever it is.

And you want to sign up? And she was like, yeah, I have to, I just have to, I don't have my credit card with me. I just have to go get it. I was like, okay. And then I walked out two minutes later and I was like, yeah, she's going to sign up. He was like, you closed her in two minutes. And I was like, yeah, I guess.

He's like, you got the card? And I was like, no, but she's got, she'll be back. She said, she's just going to go get a credit card. He's like, ah, like, it was like a bunch of guys around. They all cracked up because I had no idea how it worked. And so I was like, dude, if you don't get the card, you didn't close.

Anyways, I went to a workshop for a weekend. Uh, it was like 3, 000, which was a tremendous amount of money for me at the time. They promised that you'd make 10, 000 by the weekend. I did not make 10, 000 by the end of the weekend, but they taught Facebook marketing. And this is 2013. And so I came back to Sam and I was like, Hey, we should try this stuff.

I think it's going to work. He said, I tried that. It doesn't work. I was like, just give me, you know, give me a grand and I'll, I'll test it. So he said, I'll split the profit with you after we, after I make my money back. And so, um, I ran the ads the way I had learned at the, at the workshop and made 6, 000 and true to his word, he gave me 2, 500 bucks.

And uh, that was kind of like the beginning of my taste into marketing. And uh, during that period of time, I was looking for my own location that was like far enough away from his thing that I wasn't going to compete, you know what I mean? Close enough that I could still be there. So I went to Huntington beach and found an old warehouse.

I On Gothard and Talbert and that's where I, uh, started my first gym. 

[00:10:06] Hala Taha: That's so cool. What a great story. And so I want to talk about giving up something good to go after something better. I feel like this is such a big lesson. I can relate because when I started my company, everybody was against me. I had a great corporate job.

I was running a marketing department at Disney streaming services. Everyone was against me. My boyfriend of 10 years who I thought I was going to marry was, you know, so upset with me. I had to break up with him to start my business and I moved out and that's when everything took off for me because I felt like somebody was stepping on my neck and I finally was like released from it.

I'd love to talk about why it's okay to leave something good, to go after something better and what you learned from that. 

[00:10:48] Alex Hormozi: This is a really, really deep topic that I like a lot. And I don't think I've talked as much about it as I really like to. I think the hardest decisions in life are giving up good for great.

And I think oftentimes What makes it hard is that your good is someone else's great who's casting their projection onto you and saying, why would you give up great? And so it's really just about expectations and standards that we set for ourselves and like, not buying into people's dreams. About you that are smaller than your dreams for you.

And so I think it's really just continually trading up dreams as you realize what you can do. Because like my dreams now are significantly bigger than they were 10 years ago. And it's the scariest thing to do is to trade what you have now. It's basically trading the one in the hand for the two in the bush.

So it's going counter the traditional common sense that people espouse. And most people are security driven. Most people don't achieve big shit. It makes sense that everybody around you will tell you not to do it because for most of them, it wouldn't make sense. And many times you will fail. They will be right most of the time.

But the thing is is you only need to be right once. And that's the piece that I feel like is missed is that they will see someone try something on their own and then fail and then say, see, and then they will confirm their bias. Rather than thinking like, well, if I do this a hundred times, I only need one time to be successful, to be set up for the rest of my life.

The biggest cost is time against expectations that we have for ourselves or rather that we adopt from other people. And so this is for the listeners. If you could fail for 10 straight years, and then on your 11th year, make a 2 million a year business, you are further along than the person who made 100, 000 a year that entire period of time.

It's just people measure outcomes on too short of an interval, and that's why they don't get what they want. The goals that they have, because they measure with such a small interval, they can't see success anyways. Right? It's like you can't make a billion dollars in a year. It's just not going to happen.

Like, no one, I don't, I don't think there's anybody who's made it from zero to a billion in a year. I could maybe nowadays, who knows, but like it's, but if you extend it on 10, anyone can do it. 

[00:13:00] Hala Taha: And also people don't understand your experience, what you've done for yourself, you know, what failures you've had in the past, how you've learned.

And sometimes these big hard jumps actually have the most rewards. So let's go down a little tangent. I think this is a great place to talk about nihilism. You are a nihilist and at this point in your time and your journey, we'll get back to your journey. You weren't one, but you are now and you don't let other people, people's beliefs really impact the way that you move.

And so I'd love to understand what nihilism is because for me, it was sort of a new, like not many people talk about it. And what is it that you like about being a nihilist? And how does this philosophy enable you to take on your dreams without worrying about what other people think? 

[00:13:43] Alex Hormozi: Yeah, I'm glad you asked.

Mostly because, like, I don't really like the label of nihilism in general. I think it's just, I got on an interview and someone said that, and I was like, sure. But, like, nihil, I think it's Greek or Latin, comes from nil, which means nothing. But it really just means that you don't, you don't believe that something has inherent meaning.

And so for me, that's incredibly liberating because it means that we are devoid of circumstance. Nihilism, people ascribe meaning to that word, which is by and large negative. I reject the term. I just inherently believe that things don't have inherent meaning. And that we choose the meaning things have.

It does not mean that I live a meaningless life. It means that I choose the meaning that I want to ascribe to things. So I don't inherit the meaning that my father gave to having a job. I choose to ascribe my own meaning to that. And so all that happens from a behavioral standpoint is that we're changing the meaning of circumstances.

And so it gives us a lot of liberty to live life as we see fit. And a lot of that comes, at least for me, big picture because like, I have the belief that when I die, People will come to my funeral. People will argue over my belongings, over who gets what. People will think that some people shouldered more of the responsibility of dealing with my funeral and my death than other people.

Some people will not be able to make it because something came up. And two months, three months, two years after I die, I will never be mentioned again. And so if people are not going to even care to show up to my funeral, why would I live? Let them have any say over my life. 

[00:15:19] Hala Taha: Yeah. 

[00:15:20] Alex Hormozi: For me, a lot of it was unlearning projected judgments that I believed people had over the actions that I was taking when they weren't even thinking about me at all, nor do they really care.

Like, You get a hater comment, it ruins some person's day, but like, they don't really care about you. Like, they don't care. And even the very few people who really care, who might actually speak at your funeral, like, how many people are actually going to speak at your funeral? Probably not many. Even then, those people are going to go home, they're going to look at their to do list, and they're going to move on.

And so it's like, you have this whole life. And the whole time we're catering it to a lot of beliefs that we, that other people have about us and we don't take actions and we put things off for, for years, decades, because of judgment that, that isn't real. It's made, made up. And it's just hard to unlearn that.

Believing that things don't have inherent meaning and then that we have the choice to ascribe whatever meaning we want to things has been very liberating for me in terms of how I can approach business timelines that I can ascribe to success, how I see marriage, like, you know, all of these things. 

[00:16:20] Hala Taha: It's so interesting to me because we talk about death a lot on this podcast because a lot of business people bring it up.

I had Robert Greene on the show and he talks about the law of death denial and that's all about people avoid the thought of death because it scares them. But really when you think about your death, it can help motivate you to accomplish your dreams. And you're giving us a whole other perspective, like, thinking about your death to realize that nothing is that big of a deal and who cares what other people think, you should just do your own thing and do what you want in the moment.

All this stress, all these problems that we have, they don't matter. 

[00:16:54] Alex Hormozi: No. I mean, there's a poem, I always forget the name of it, but it's like a, it's of an Egyptian king or something like that. And there's this, this head that's buried, it's sort of worn with time, 5, 000 years old. You can imagine the nose is off, you can barely recognize it.

And there's an inscription on the side that says, Here lies so and so, who, I'm loosely paraphrasing, who ruled everything that the eye could see. I obviously don't know the name of the thing. And so like, here's somebody who was king of the world or the known world at the time. And we, not even a hundred thousand years later, but a few thousand years later, don't even know who they were.

I talked to entrepreneurs a lot too. And they're like, I want to, I want to leave a legacy. But like when you zoom in on that, it's like, for what kids get ruined when you give them too much stuff. So that's kind of out the door. If you want to go like extended time horizon, um, The earth is going to disappear when the sun gets too big.

And so like everything that we're doing is just a stimulus for us to stay busy while all of our material needs are completely taken care of. I see it as liberating. Many people see that as dark. But like, I think a lot of times it's just because like, people don't want to confront that. The sun will get big enough and eventually evaporate all the oceans and the earth, there will be no water here.

Like, that's what's going to happen. We could be a multi planetary species, Elon can kill it, who knows, you know what I mean? 

[00:18:13] Hala Taha: Yeah, yeah. And I'm glad you went over that because that was a huge interview that millions of people listened to, so I'm glad that you cleared that up. That's great.

 Okay, so let's get back to your come up story. Let's talk about when you first started opening up gems. What was that like for you? Like just talk about, you know, your first experience opening up brick and mortar gems. 

[00:18:43] Alex Hormozi: Well, my first gym, I was sleeping on the floor. Very fortunately, I had a, I was supposed to open it with a partner, not Sam.

Sam was going to be like a minority partner, like an advisor kind of thing. And he set me up with another guy who was in the area and said, this guy's in the mastermind. You guys should just merge your gym. He has a tiny gym. You want to have a bigger gym. You could start with his clients. You could split it, whatever, which is by the way, not a good way to start a partnership.

But I said, sure. You know, I don't know anything. You're my advisor. I'll, I'll do that. And, uh, the night before the lease was supposed to get signed and we're going to put the deposit down. He couldn't come up with the money. And so I actually had to take on the whole thing, which I wasn't really financially prepared to do.

So I ended up going from having thinking I was going to have like 25 saved up to having five when I opened a gym with no customers in a place I didn't know. And at least that was 5, 000 a month. So I had one month of basically savings for this business before I would not have money. But the gift that that partner gave was that he was the one who told me to go to that workshop.

He's like, we should do this marketing workshop. And by chance, The thing that that guy taught in 2013 was Facebook ads. Like, I have been extremely lucky many times in my life and this is one of them. It's crazy because something as small as that, if I hadn't gone to that workshop, the recommendation that my advisor had given was that I should just run Groupons to get customers because that's what he was doing for his gym and it was working.

But in Huntington Beach, there was 10 times the gym density compared to where he was. And so every gym, there was literally three gyms on the same block as me. And so when I ran a group on nothing happened, I had not gone to that workshop. I might not even be in business. Like I might've just gone back to corporate world and had to like come back with my tail between my legs because I would have Failed so i'll go on this quick tangent Like my plan b was that I would strip and drive uber if I couldn't make it Because I figured I could make probably 250 000 a year doing that if I needed to And then I could start again because once I was out I was like, this is what I want to do I knew even though it was hard I liked the freedom.

I knew that I enjoyed that. So anyways, did the workshop. I learned about Facebook marketing. That was what allowed me to sell my first 27 customers, which paid my first month's rent. The next month I paid more and we added 5, 000 a month in revenue to the business for the first, I think, 7, 8, 9 months, somewhere in there.

I didn't know employees were a thing. So for me, I thought like a business was you pay the rent. Everything else is yours. And that's pretty much how I ran it when we were, you know, starting out. But, uh, quickly I was like, I, I cannot, like I was not sleeping much and I was doing the billing and I was doing work in the leads and I thought all eight of the sessions every day.

And it was just very, very hard for me. I was very tired. And so then I found out that you could hire people to do some stuff, but I still slept at the gym. So they would still get in there four o'clock in the morning anyway, so it didn't buy me a lot of sleep back. But at least I, you know, I didn't have to teach all the sessions.

Yeah. From there. By month nine or 10, I was able to get a manager in and I had a fully, you know, out, outfitted facility. And then from there we were able to, uh, open the next location at month 15 and then open a new location every six months after that. And, uh, you know, the big claim to fame was that once I got better and better at marketing and sales, I was able to open each location, uh, at full capacity on the first day.

And that's what ended up springboarding into the next thing. 

[00:21:51] Hala Taha: That's awesome. How much did you scale that up? You had like six, six of them or something? 

[00:21:55] Alex Hormozi: Yeah, it's six locations. So I opened a new location every six months. And so year three, I had six. That was roughly where I was. And I think. Honestly, I never added up the top line, but you know, all of them, I know my biggest one did 600.

So it wasn't like a huge business in terms of, I mean, each look like my biggest location did 600. And so anyways, I got to this weird point where I, um, I wasn't needed. So like I had managers at each location, they could all sell like the locations were working. I was making okay money. I had a nice little condo that looked fancy.

So I felt like felt cool. And so anyways, I went to go to this, another marketing conference, it was trafficking conversion years ago. And a guy named Russell Wright got up there and was selling people on internet marketing. And I was like, man, this is really interesting stuff, but he wasn't allowed to pitch.

So he did his whole pitch webinar and then just didn't close. It was very weird. And so I was like very sold to this opportunity, but there was no call to action. What happened? Nothing. I just kept living my life. But I was like, that was really cool. A year later, I'm up at night, nothing to do. And so I was like, you know what?

I wonder what that guy, maybe I should do some of that stuff. And so I just Google his name. The first page that comes up is his application to be in his mastermind. This is again, six, seven. I mean, a while ago I applied, they called me up, I paid the money and um, they were like, Oh yeah, there's tons of different owners here.

And you'll like, you know, lots of people go to, I was the only brick and mortar business owner in the room. But anyways, I went up there and I was like, here's how I opened my gyms, you know, profitable day one. I don't have to put any money down. Like I pre sell them to pay for them. Like I had this whole strategy.

And, um, after I broke down, like everyone was silent and he was like, you shouldn't be running gyms, man. And I was like, I had this whole plan to be America's gym, like United Fitness was the, was the brand. And, uh, no, he was just like, you have a level 10 skill set and a level two opportunity. 

[00:23:42] Hala Taha: And this was Russell Brunson click funnels, right?

Just so the listeners. 

[00:23:45] Alex Hormozi: Yeah. This is years ago. This was before he was Russell Brunson click funnels of the, of the Lord that he is now. I think click funnels is maybe doing like a million bucks a month then. Like, I mean, it was. You know, it was, I think, year two, you're 18 months into ClickFunnels, it was very, very young.

So anyways, he said that, but you know, I, I'm a big believer, like, if someone's, if someone's further, because he was much further ahead than me when I was in the mastermind, and he said that, and I was like, well, if I'm not, if I paid for advice, I'm not going to listen to it, I might as well just burn my money.

And so, I took the advice, and so, he said, you should start teaching people how to do what you do. And so, I, uh, I took that not quite as literally as you probably meant it. So I started doing gym turnarounds. So I started flying out and launch other people's gyms. Did that for almost two years. Um, did 33 turnarounds.

We'd fill the gym up 30 days. That was the offer. It was free to them. I would just keep all the upfront sales. I make about a hundred grand every 20 days doing that just on my own, no employees. And I was like, this is chill. I like this better than just running the gym. So I got really good at the marketing sales and I would say that me running all my gyms, I got very good at sales.

But where it really got one from, like, I just got so many reps in during that, during that period of time. I mean, I was taking 20 plus one to one consults a day, every day. And like, when you have that kind of level of transactional sales over and over and over again, like you just, there's a depth of knowledge that you learn.

You learn when to pause, you learn when to shift, how to say certain things, how to like, just how to shift tone. Like there's just lots of things that you intuitively learn just from that many repetitions. I got pretty good at it. And then I got pretty good at teaching it because I had, I'd have a team of guys who could start doing it.

Cause we started doing like two, three, four, five, six gyms a month that we'd start doing these, these turnarounds for. Logistically got really difficult flying people out guys said their wives were threatening to divorce them because they weren't home and like all that kind of stuff. And so I need to have a different model.

There's like many terrible instances during this period of time. I like lost my money. I had a partner stole everything. I'd start from scratch again, like. I could keep going into it, but 

[00:25:36] Hala Taha: yeah, let's pause. Let's pause here. Cause I do want to talk to you about the sales experience that you got. So would you say that you learned most of it on the job or were there certain books that you were reading and what were you really into at that time period?

Because I think sales is one of the most important skills that any young professional can have. 

[00:25:55] Alex Hormozi: Agreed. Yeah. The ability to persuade. And I would just say persuade in general because marketing and sales like marketing is really just sales done at, at scale. 

[00:26:01] Hala Taha: Yeah. Marketing and sales. Yeah. 

[00:26:03] Alex Hormozi: No, I wasn't really consuming anything.

It was all done. Just the first time I bought a sales training program was after I, like it was when I had a team of sales guys and I was like, you know what, this would probably be a good idea to add it in. But at that point I'd already done like 4, 000 closes. So like I was. Yeah. Yeah. Again, a lot of the stuff I did, I didn't know the terms for it.

I just knew I needed to get somebody to give me money. You know what I mean? And so that was like, this is how I have the conversation that gets the most people to say yes. That's how I started it. 

[00:26:30] Hala Taha: That's so interesting. Well, part two of this, we're really going to get into some of those sales and marketing strategies.

So this was around the time you met Layla, right? 

[00:26:38] Alex Hormozi: Yeah, this is, I think within one month of me joining Russell's thing was when I met Layla. 

[00:26:44] Hala Taha: You have some unconventional views on marriage and I have a few questions. First of all, let's talk about why your life partner is so important to your ultimate success.

[00:26:56] Alex Hormozi: I mean, I think that people either are contributing to your goal or they're taking away from it. I think a lot of people compromise on their partners because they're convenient. Yeah. Rather than thinking like, is this person going to make it more likely that I achieve my outcome that I want? And so, you know, for me, Layla was the first, to be fair, I hadn't dated that many people cause we were pretty young when we met, but she really, really not only like wanted to encourage the dreams, but like participate.

And so I think a lot of times entrepreneurs will make compromises on, okay, well I'll do this, but then I'll do your thing this weekend or whatever it is. And so like the nice thing with Layla is that she never really tried to change me. And. Because I probably wasn't that changeable. I would have just resented someone more for making me do things I didn't want to do or asking me to do things I didn't want to do.

And so it was really just a new construct. I had just gotten out of a, like a basically on and off relationship that was a five year engagement that we ended up calling off. And um, I had no desire to get into anything. I was like, I'm going to do me. And you can like roll with if you want. And so like our entire first few months of dating was just, I'm going to work all day.

You can work next to me. That was what we did. From the day we met, like the next day I called her up. I was like, I'm working all day if you want to come after your shift. And so she just worked with me. And that's what we did. And this really hasn't changed. Like we went from like first date until today with very little changing in our relationship.

It was just, it was very easy. And so that's been even running a business together. Like I think because we had such low expectations getting into the relationship, it made candid conversations much easier. I was like, Hey, I think it was six months in, I was like, you're a little cold for this to work. I need you to be less cold.

And then she was like, okay. And that was it. Like literally never again. Like Layla is one of the most fast changing people. I've ever actually not one of she's the fastest changing behavior person. I've ever met my time. It's almost freaky If I'm like she used to say, um, you know when someone laughs and they're like, you're stupid, you know Like, you know girls will say that she said that to me once like early on and I was like I don't like when you say that I was like, I just don't like being called stupid even if it's a joke and she was Like, oh, okay.

Never did it again. Like if you define learning as Same condition new behavior, like if you haven't changed your behavior with the same condition you have not learned You And intelligence is speed of learning, which is speed of behavior change. So in that way, Layla is incredibly intelligent. Like her ability to change behavior is insane.

And so that's also why I think she's been such an adaptable COO, uh, or rather CEO now. She's really CEO of acquisition. com. I just, I make the content and write the books, but like, she's really the one running everything. I think you gotta, there's so many ways to have marriages. This is what worked for me.

And I am weird. If we're defining weird is not standard, like different from the average, like I am not the average. And so my marriage is atypical. And so this is just what has worked for us is that I like working all the time and I wanted someone who would work all the time with me because if I didn't, then I wouldn't see them.

And then we would drift apart because I'm getting way different stimuli from my life than they are. Inherently, we're going to adapt to the things that are, that we're exposed to all day. And eventually we're going to look at each other and be like, Oh, we don't know each other. And some people that's exciting to me, you might as well be a stranger and I can just keep doing my own thing.

So probably contrary, but that's just how I see it. 

[00:30:08] Hala Taha: Now it's very interesting stuff. And I'm sure because she was so smart and you know, had her own thing and very career driven. You obviously respected her a lot. So how did that respect factor play into you being attracted to her and wanting her to be your wife?

[00:30:26] Alex Hormozi: Yeah. So two separate things. So from a respect standpoint, she was the first girl that I respected professionally. And so that was new for me. And I think it was probably one of the keys of our relationship is that it was based on respect rather than chemistry. The second part was kind of like what you alluded to with like the attraction part.

I wasn't like super, I mean, I was attracted to like, she's pretty obviously, et cetera. Like there was that, but I didn't have like a romantic, I wasn't like, Oh my God, I'm getting swept on my feet. And neither was she. So we honestly were just like buddies, like, We liked the same stuff and so we just did stuff together all the time because we enjoyed doing it together more than alone.

And then it got to the point where it would be, it was where our employees at gym launch started saying, Hey, what happens if you guys break up? Because we weren't married and the business was scaling like crazy. And I said, you know, we should probably deal with their concerns and get married. My proposal to her was, Hey, what do you think about getting married?

And she said, that sounds fine. And I said, okay, then I'll, we should, I'll get you a ring. And so we went together to the store, literally after I said that we got the ring 45 minutes later back home. So I guess we should call a church called the church. Six days later we were married and then we didn't take off the day of our marriage and we didn't take off the next day.

We just showed up the next day at work and they're like, Hey guys, we're married. So all of your concerns about the stability of the business are gone now. You can keep working and everything's fine. And it was like, that was it. You know what I mean? And since then we'd haven't, we didn't do a wedding. We didn't do a honeymoon again.

Well, it worked for me. I'm just saying like that worked for me. My vibe. 

[00:31:57] Hala Taha: Yeah. And so you guys are obviously a power couple that a lot of people are looking up to. And I learned from you that people who have businesses together that are married only have a 10 percent divorce rate, which I think is pretty incredible.

So what would you say are like the pros and cons of marrying your business partner? And the other question I have is, do you feel like Layla fills in your weaknesses or do you feel like you guys are more similar and kind of just help each other accomplish the same goals? 

[00:32:24] Alex Hormozi: This is really interesting. So even the way that you phrased the question, I thought it was cool.

So I recommend marrying your business partner. I don't recommend trying to make your wife your business partner or rather your spouse your business partner. So we already were business partners and then I married her. And it worked. And people ask me, what happens if you got divorced? We'd probably still run the business together because I never want, and neither of us would want this for the other person to get a free ride.

You know what I mean? Like she doesn't get special treatment because she's my wife. She is CEO of the companies that we have together because she's the best CEO. She's amazing that you can look at the tracker. She's amazing. She fucking knows how to run businesses. That's why she's CEO. You know what I mean?

I have so many entrepreneurs who are like, how do I get my wife to want, like, dude, you're trying to change somebody. They don't like it. That's it. That's fine. Yeah. But don't try and make her who's not Layla into your version of Layla. She has to be her. And I think to a great degree, a lot of, and this is, again, this is countercultural, but like, I do think people pick wrong.

I think people use the wrong assessment to judge whether or not they're going to have a good longterm relationship. When I say good, I would say, that's going to be. Minimum strife, maximum achievement of your personal goals for both people. 

[00:33:33] Hala Taha: Yeah. 

[00:33:33] Alex Hormozi: And I think people think about marriage differently. And so for me, marriage was, is this somebody again that's going to support my longterm goals and am I going to support her longterm goals?

And for us, our longterm goals were aligned, which honestly was rare and weird. I didn't actually expect to see anybody who wanted to do the same thing as me and work as much as I do, but I did. I'm very happy and very lucky that we found that. I just think the reverse you get in trouble. 

[00:33:54] Hala Taha: Yeah. And would you say that she has strengths of where you're weak?

[00:33:59] Alex Hormozi: Complimentary skill set, shared values. So, I think, was it mission, values, lifestyle? So, these three have to be the same, and then you want complementary, so different. So, it's like, we want to go to the same place, we want to get there the same way, and we want to have the same stuff happen in between. Right?

So, mission, Values is how we're going to behave. Lifestyle is what we do in between, right? Like we like all like, or you can say interests if you like that. Those have to be aligned in my opinion for it to just be maximally fun. The complimentary skill sets is if she did the exact same thing as me, one of us wouldn't be necessary.

And we've also gravitated that way. Cause when she came in, she was top salesman. So she came and she was top salesman at 24 at one of the top locations in the country. So she's a savage at closing, but the requirements of the business required, I was like, well, I'm going to still sell because that's what I'm good at.

And I was older and it was my, you know, when I started, it was my business. So I called the shots. But so, so she just, again, so adaptable, like Layla can learn. And change her behavior like that. And so she was like, I'm going to be an operator. And so then she just went all in. She the books, the courses, the podcasts, the masterminds, the workshops, she just, all the stuff she consumed was different than stuff I consume, which was cool.

Cause then we got to talk about different stuff. And like at the end of our days today, like every day we download, it's like, what were your meetings that we just go through each other's calendars? Oh, how is that meeting? How is that meeting? How is that? And so we download at the end of the day, we do a walk for an hour every day.

That's our download. And so yin and yang, I think, okay. It has to make sense like that. Otherwise, one of you isn't, I've seen the entrepreneur assistant wife or husband. It's tough. It's tough. I think you have to have equal power and that's rare. It's rare because it's usually uncommon for both people to be like equally yoked.

I mean, you want them, want both people tread in the same way and it's hard to find that if you want to do rare shit. 

[00:35:41] Hala Taha: Talk to us about that. How did you meet her? 

[00:35:42] Alex Hormozi: Bumble. So I swiped right, swipe right, literally and swipe right in terms of right and left. I swipe right, swipe, correct. She was an Iranian girl and was into fitness and when I met her on our first date She really wanted to talk about business the whole time and I'm like, well, this is great I don't have to like pretend to like what you like So this is so much more efficient for me.

And so we talked for like four hours only about business I was like, this is great And then she was telling me what her dreams and aspirations were and she had big dreams And she wanted to open a gym someday at the time. I think I had five I had five or six, I can't remember. And, uh, I was like, let me just leapfrog you.

I already know what you're about to try and do. I know all the failures. Like, just like, I already have like the ones that I have. I'm starting this new thing. You should do it with me. She didn't really believe me yet because I hadn't even started it yet. So it was just kind of like an idea, you know, right on her.

And she had built up her own personal training business, like a roster of clients. And so she had her own thing going, but I was like, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this. And so I went and I launched three gyms, came back, I processed like a hundred grand in front of her. And she was like, what the hell is this?

And she, I mean, she ended up processing it with me, but she was like, is this legal? And I was like, yes. And she was like, okay, I'm in. So she ended up quitting and joining me there because she knew it's like there's product market fit. There was a, there was a viable, like people wanted this and I was good at it.

And so that's when we started flying around doing the launches together. Now my gyms kept running, but it was very clear that as I left, like they weren't doing as well without me like being there. There's just all the intangibles. And so I ended up selling those. And just going all in on the launch thing, put all my money from the sale.

I mean, I've, I've, I've told this story before, but I'll tell it to your audience quickly. I had all the sale of my gyms went all in on gym launch, started launching gyms, doing well with that. One of the gym owners I launched with was like, dude, you should be owning all these gyms. Like you're literally filling them up and you're leaving all this money on the table, which by the way, most dangerous term in business is leaving money on the table.

It's okay to leave money on the table because you're, you will fuck up the big money that's in front of you by trying to chase the little money that's still on little tables. Anyhow, thank you. He had bad credit. So I signed the lease. I fronted all the money for the locations. We were going to split them, uh, 50, 50.

Of course, that's a terrible deal for me. I'll do all the work front, all the money, and then we'll split it. But I didn't know anything. So anyways, he was supposed to come in after I launched the first gym with him. That was number six and crushed the launch. And then he was like, Hey man, I'm going to keep running mine.

You got that one. And I was like, Whoa, I'm doing launches now. Like that's not my business. You were going to come behind me. We're going to launch open two, three, four gyms a month and own them all. And then it kind of rapidly spiraled down from there. And then he thought he accused me of stealing. So then he took all the money out of the account.

I went to go line for line with him. Be like, I haven't taken any money out of the account. Like it costs money to open a gym. And when he didn't want to look at the financials, that's when I knew that he, that was just a line that was just like a strategy. And so I basically lost everything. So I lost all the money that I'd had from my own gyms and lost all the money from that gym.

But the thing is, I still had a gym, so there was no money to run the gym and I didn't really have any money. So I just had whatever was in my checking, which every month, basically I couldn't sell anymore cause I didn't want to keep the gym open cause he wasn't going to run it. So my savings just got drained.

If you have payroll, rent, everything, and you can't make new sales. In a new gym that does never occurring revenue, really, really tough. And so I got drained almost of everything. And then I started doing launches again, sent Layla out. She did a launch on her own first solo launch crushed. It still has the record to this day to 240 sales in 28 days.

Made me a hundred grand and that basically helped me pay off all of these debts of refunds that I had to do for people who bought a year and all this stuff, like upfront, I just refunded everybody their money, which just came out of all the money that I had. The one thing I had a coach at the time and he was like, just do right by everyone and you'll be able to get out of this.

And so it was really good advice. And so I just, I did right by everybody. Like no employee was unpaid. Every client who wanted a refund got a refund. And I was able to just like walk away unscathed. And so I was at. Ground zero again. We did another launch. So the first hundred grand went to cover all the refunds and stuff We did another launch to kind of like recapitalize ourselves It's like okay We can go make another hundred grand because I was kind of like you make a hundred grand every launch and so we went To go do a launch a guy said his he had a baby on the way He was just happened to be in the neighborhood of the gym that we were gonna launch of all places in the entire nation A guy reached out to me.

He crushed it. All of a sudden we're not getting the deposits, even though I'm processing all this money. And I'm like, where the hell is the money? Call the processor up standard annual thing. Well, you'll be getting your money soon. Called again, two days later, same thing. And then finally it's been 10 days since I'd had a deposit.

Imagine anybody who had like no stripe, like not getting deposits, but still processing money. I was like, dude, I need this money. Like what's going on. And so I called Christmas Eve and uh, I said, I'm not getting off the phone until you send me my money. Okay. And, um, turns out, uh, they can keep your money and I had no leverage and they said we, uh, you will get, you will get off the phone because we're not sending you the money and we're going to hold it for six months because of regular activity.

Because what I was doing is processing money from all over the nation through what used to be my brick and mortar gyms processor. I didn't know how it worked, so I just was, I was running like credit cards from Virginia through my Southern California. Local gym processing. They're like, what is going on here?

So it seemed irregular. So they held all the money, but my sales guy had that the guy who had done it I owed him like 22, 000 in commissions and I had 23, 000 left after all the refunds and the everything that I had done and then that got me to my my last thousand dollars and So that is that was my rock bottom moment.

I Screenshotted it After everything, four years or five years or whatever it was, like, I was like, wow, I have literally nothing to show for it. That's tough. 

[00:41:16] Hala Taha: And was this around the time where you got your DUI and got into a car accident? 

[00:41:22] Alex Hormozi: So my mother went to the hospital for tough stuff. I got a head on DUI, 60 miles an hour on a highway, walked away, crazy, nothing, walked away, walked out of the car.

The car's crushed. And then I lost all my money from my partner. And so that was all 90 days. 

[00:41:41] Hala Taha: 

[00:41:49] Hala Taha: what I found was really interesting when I was researching your story, you didn't mention it, but you also had like a dental and chiropractic agency, I think at the time, and you were like running these gyms, you were doing your gym launch business and you hired an attention coach. So, what did this attention coach teach you about having to focus and make decisions?

[00:42:11] Alex Hormozi: Well, like, the one output of the entire time that I had with him was just untangling loose attention. It's like I was just spread so thin. So I had all these things that you just alluded to. I had a chiropractor agency that I had a couple clients. I had a dental agency that had one client. I had my five gyms from home.

I had the new gym. And then we had gym launches that were going on, basically paying for all of my stupid mess ups during this period of time. And, um, you have no power. You were so spread thing that you, you can't accomplish anything. And so what it was was that I was not confronting many hard conversations.

So I would do any, I would start another business. I would avoid it was all avoidance. So I didn't want to have hard conversations with the partners or I partners at all of these things. And for most of them, I was the, I the breadwinner, but I was the one who was bringing it in. So I ended up just partnering with people because I felt insecure about doing things on my own.

This is where partnerships have to be long term. Like, even if this is a side note, like if you have the opportunity to get 50 percent of a business that you know you're not going to contribute 50 percent to, don't take it. Because two years from now they will resent you and it will not work. So there's no point in getting the short money cause it's going to blow up in your face and really ugly.

And so I learned that on the opposite side, being on the receiving end of that. And I was like, I will not do this to anyone. And so anyhow, every day he would ask me the same question, which is what is your attention on? And so piece by piece, it was just every day we would just start peeling back all the things and just removing things from my life until there was basically nothing left but one thing, Laila and I went on like a six week breakup.

Basically, she went to go launch a gym and I was like, I just don't have headspace for this. Fundamentally, we talked every day, but like, but like from attention standpoint, I was like, I can't deal with anything. I had too much on my plate. And so I broke, broke everything down to nothing and then just rebuilt with a few things that mattered.

And I think that since then. That has, despite my proclivity for wanting to do more things, it has been the hardest, hardest one character trait I have is being able to focus by far. 

[00:44:08] Hala Taha: Yeah. So let's get back to gym launch. You start this company. You basically start licensing your business model. So talk to us about how, why is that such a scalable opportunity for the new entrepreneurs out there?

Like, why is it better to take something and teach people how to do it rather than trying to do it one by one? 

[00:44:28] Alex Hormozi: So just big picture, I don't think it's necessarily better. I think that it has faster scale. Like, for example, we have a handful of companies in our portfolio that are brick and mortar. So I had a company recently that was an agency for photography studios and they had a very good model for growing photography studios.

And I was like, and he was like, Hey, I want to do what you did with Jim launch. But there were a couple of key differences in the business in terms of how much it costs to start up. The nature of the service itself is one time versus recurring, et cetera, et cetera. And it made more sense for us to actually own all of them and then compound by adding more, more locations every month.

So we open like four locations a month right now. And so if I knew then what I know now, real, real acquisition. com might not even exist. I might have 200 gyms, but the thing is, is that my operational skill set at that point wouldn't have been able to scale that business. It is easier to scale something that has more leverage.

So media has leverage, software has leverage, capital has leverage. Like one person can raise a billion dollars. One person can write code and a billion people can use it. One person can make a video like this and a million people can listen to it, right? There's leverage there. Limited input, unlimited output.

With labor or services, right? Like you have to be able to operate people. And so I didn't have that skillset. I think that now we have a team, et cetera, like we could do something like that, but then I didn't have it. And so given the skillset I had at the time, me switching from brick and mortar operations to licensing it and basically taking a fraction of the revenue, I was able to make other people, I was able to scale that much faster.

And so I could help 4, 000 gyms make an extra hundred grand a year in profit and then take a percentage of that profit. So realistically, I would be able to take probably 25 to 30 percent of the added profit to the facility through my licensing. They would win. I would win. And that's just the nature of capitalism.

And so that was the trade off. Now, a licensing business or any business has value insofar as the future revenue is stable and predictable. So, The reason that I like brick and mortar a lot of times for scaling is that if you count the locations, almost like customers, if you think about it like that, they're not going anywhere.

And so it's like every time you open a location, it's like you can bank on the fact that they're going to just deliver 150, 000, 200, 000, 400, 000 a year in income to the main business. And then we just reallocate capital and keep doing it, which is why it's such a nice, nice and scalable business. That's why franchising versus licensing, franchising, those contracts are more ironclad.

You're in for 10 years. There's a lot of law that protects the franchise or to make sure that they can collect on that for 10 years licensing. It's much less so. And so anyways, not to go into a big tangent here, but the main point is. Me switching from brick and mortar to licensing made up for the fact that I was not as good at operating it because my constraint was my operational ability, not my marketing and sales.

And the product that I was selling was marketing and sales. I was really good at marketing and sales. And then the thing I sold was marketing and sales. And so like, I was better at teaching marketing and sales than I was at like weight loss experiences. So if you just think of quality of the product, like The marketplace valued making 100, 000 a year in extra profit far more than Susie values, six weeks of group training and losing 20 pounds far more.

And so I was able to switch my vehicle that I was, that I was selling. And that was a big part of why I was able to make a lot more money. 

[00:47:36] Hala Taha: Talk to us about how you started acquisition. com. 

[00:47:39] Alex Hormozi: Oh yeah. So, um, I mean, acquisition. com started in 2021. The first company we took on was 2020. So June of 2020, I think was the first company we took on, which is that photography business.

We also took on a personal training certification business. We took on a publishing business in 2020. Those three businesses between the three of them added over a hundred million a year to those businesses in total. And so we thought, hmm, we should do more of this. And so once we had that as like, okay, we have a, we have a workable model here where we can just take all the knowledge we have of scaling our companies.

And the reason 2021 was so was boring and difficult for me was because I had to, I had to sell, I sold three companies. So for anybody who's ever sold, like going through a big sales process is a year and you usually don't change much in the business. You don't want to do anything crazy. And so there was just not a lot for me to do.

So I just had to sit there and mind you, they made money, which then gets into the whole meaninglessness thing, but I just had to sit and wait. And so acquisition. com and these companies that I was working with on the side took my focus and to the point that we were making earlier about focus. I know myself well enough to know that.

I have to do one thing. And so I needed to exit these companies so that I could focus full time on acquisition, but I wanted to just have like a quick test in the water that it worked. And so once it did, then we sold December 24th of 2021 is the day that the last deal closed and the 25th. So then, you know, Christmas day, we were working on acquisition. com. And so I started making content in 2021 because again, I had extra time and so I was just making stuff and people seem to like it. And then everything really took off in 2022 when we brought in a team and editors and all that kind of stuff. And yeah, now we have 16 companies in the portfolio and we do, we take minority, minority interest in businesses.

The average company we have right now does about 17 million a year. With margins above 35 percent as a portfolio average. And so, yeah, so our goal is just to get as many of them as we can over a hundred and then it's really the founders cause we're minority partners. You know, we're 20 to 30 percent equity holders in those businesses,

[00:49:37] Hala Taha: