Alex Hormozi on media strategy, AI for small business, and School hitting 30M users and $1B+ GMV
Jul 7, 2026 · Full transcript · This transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.
Featuring Alex Hormozi
me tell you about public first investing for those who take it seriously. They got stocks, options, bonds, crypto, treasuries, and more with great customer service. Alex
there. Grab that seat. Sit down for us. Do you still own a Hummer EV? Uh yeah, we do actually.
You do? Give us your review. We were just talking about the Fiat Topelino. I don't think
you're going to be in the market for that. Neck and neck.
Neck and neck.
It's 1,000 pounds.
So I think what we could do is like if you just lined up like 10 of the like chariot like
that's what I'm saying. The Hummer like be my chariot. Imagine Imagine if the Hummers of the the Hummer is kind of the front of the the train and then you have like you you see the Hummer coming at you and then and then a bunch of the top lenos kind of pull out in like a Vshape Fast and Furious. That would be that would be badass. Yeah. Take over the whole smog.
How is How is life these days?
Good.
Is there a new book coming?
There is another book coming.
Okay.
Yeah.
Do you have a strategy for book launch cadence? Is it an annual thing? It's more like every 18 months to two years.
But do you imagine that um continuing for your entire career?
Every book I write I say is the last book I'm going to write and then I have like a six-month refractory period and I'm like yeah, you know, I could I could write a book about something and then I just start writing again.
What's the process like? Um, I have a bunch of notes on my phone of a topic because right now I've have like probably like 10 books that are at different stages of so I just mind dump wherever and then once there's enough stuff that I think this is like this is interesting I'll then start the book writing process. But I'm a big believer in um
surface area of thought.
Like if you were to sit down and say like I'm going to write a book about this and then you have two weeks it's like you don't have enough experiences that are diverse in a twoe period while you're writing to like let the paint dry. Sure. So, I kind of want to like have I want to be in, you know, a totally different state talking to somebody and be like, I didn't think about that. And then I add it to the book. And so then all of a sudden it's like the the density of of thought and ideas per word is much higher. But I think you just have to do it by like spreading out the time that so like the time I'm thinking about a book is much longer than the time I'm writing the book.
Is it purely thinking and you want a lot of thought to go into the different sections of the book or over the course of 18 months? Is there actually a benefit to going out and having real world experiences?
Oh, that's I mean that's
and anecdotes, right? It's 100% that because I'll have a working theory of like I think this is how I think people are missing this part of it
and then I'll kind of start battle testing it functionally and then when I realize that I'm using the same framework over and over again and successfully overcoming some issue I'm like this is it and then that's what the book becomes.
How narrow do you want to stay? How narrow have you been in the surface area of thought around mainly the last three books?
It's a really good question. um problem definition for the book I think is the hardest part of any book. Like the leads book, which is the second book, was the hardest book I've ever written. I'll never write a book that hard because I was like, I'm gonna write a book on advertising. It's like Jesus Christ, there's so many ways to get leads. And I put it all in one book. It took 19 versions to get there.
Yeah.
The Money Models book was uh the fastest book because it was really just about rappers for promotions. Super valuable, but really easy to consume and use. And so I was like, "Okay, this is the lesson for me." Like, and offers super narrow, super narrow. And that book too was like all three of those books started as one kind of gigantic thing and I gave it to somebody and they're like dude you cannot. It was you like this and they're like I because I was like I'm going to have a tome
and then I decided to I want people to actually read it. Is there a itch in the back of your mind where you want to do sort of the Tim Ferrris thing where you go from 4hour work week a business book to chef body lifestyle money management personal finance like there's so many topics that you talk about and people are interested
and I'm sure you could sell those books and they might be edifying at a certain point because you're like I've I've scratched this itch three times, four times, 10 times. But is there a level of focus that you have to discipline yourself or does it come naturally?
I only write about stuff that I feel like I have some unique take on. I think rewriting a book that already exists, other people already know, there's no point. Um especially if like you're in the thick of it and you're thinking,
"Oh, this has already been written before. It doesn't really motivate you."
Like I think it like I want to write something that only exists because I made it.
Um
same thing with businesses. Like there's Oh yeah. I've had the experience of building a company or or just like starting to work on a company and being like I can stop working on this and it will not matter at all.
Yeah. The world there's a bunch of alternatives and and and that you can make that case for like most businesses but there are some where you're like if I don't build this no one's going to build it at least in the right way.
Yeah. No, I have 100% that perspective when it comes to bookw writing.
Yeah. It's funny uh as as we talk about this uh Jeremy Gon I know is a good good friend of yours, good friend of ours uh and
every time he talks people just listen
and he's somebody who I would love to write
a book almost because I just want him to go on another podcast proper podcast tour. He just kind of pops up does invest like the best and then like goes goes dark for like 18 months. But like it's somewhat of a tragedy that he'll probably write a book someday but it'll be in like 40 years. So in the meantime you have to like in the in the meantime, you have to just like, you know, take notes and and uh try to pick stuff up from from the podcast. But there's so many people that like so many people that should be writing books just don't have the time and they'll eventually come and take like a victory lap at the end of their career. But I think it's like you could just do a lot of stuff other than write books. Uh but it's but it's it's it's very valuable to be like writing in real time versus like saving up a bunch of lessons and then kind of summarizing it at the end. I think you miss out on the the the wrinkles, like the tiny little details that like if you if you think about like the story of how you met your wife and you go back like you've told it a bunch of times, but if you told it the day after you did it, you'd have so much richer memory of all the tiny little things that happened. And so I'm a big believer of like while it's wet like paint it um and then let it dry over time. But that's why like I always want documentation to be as real as
Yeah. It's funny the final book will actually be the easiest to write cuz you have all the books and you're like okay what what was actually like worth kind of
greatest hits at that point. Yeah,
we we had Mark Pinkis on the show, founder of Zingga. He wrote a book and he said that he thinks everyone should write a book in their life, but he also said everyone should build a house.
Huh.
Do you have any aspirations to build real estate physically like me do it,
you do it or not?
Not by hand, but just take a take a piece of dirt and turn working with an architect and team. But is that something that you know a lot of people that's on their bucket list? I don't know where you've been in your real estate journey, but how do you think about that as a uh as a bucket list item?
It's not like why not?
I mean, we buy big multif family that are already existing and we do that. But if there were an investment opportunity that made sense, I would
it's you're not interested because it's not productive.
It's just not on my list.
Purely for like, you know, the satisfy like have you listened to like thought about listening to Beyonce today? I'd be like, not really. But I mean, like if it was on, sure. You know, I'm not against it.
Yeah. I think some people just have the the itch to like customize their own living environment. And I'm I'm curious about how you see your living environment because I mean from those first YouTube videos like the monastic what were you closet? You were in the closet like like that that was I don't know if that was intentional but it was uh it was somewhat deliberate. You picked that space over a big living room, right? Uh, and I'm wondering how you think about your li your living space, your work space, your office space today.
So, I would say all of the time that I when I work, I'm very intentional about that space.
When I'm not working, it's whatever Ila wants. I don't care. Like, if she if she's 10% happier,
I have like a percent correlation to my happiness. And me being more comfortable has no correlation back. So, so like whatever she's good with, I'm good with. Uh, but in terms of like where I work, it's almost all how do I how do I eliminate every sense of distraction for me personally. And so it's like I don't have windows. Some people like having windows. I don't think anything wrong with that. For me, it's like I need no stimulation because I'm
I'm very distractable. And so I have to have like I earplugs in, no light, all artificial. I have like soundproof like you know, like I want nothing.
Yeah.
Uh and then I can finally focus on what I'm what I'm trying to work on.
Yeah. Uh, can we go back to the early YouTube days on the latest channel, I think 2020,
uh, in that closet. We both launched YouTube channels around the same time and we were talking about this. You com you completely smoked me.
It was John is, you know, obviously pretty good at media and but and was like the the his channel was like just following his interest like Silicon Valley history. The the execution was like by all means amazing. Like got to like half a million subscribers. I treat it like a blog and you treat it like a business.
Yeah. Yeah. And it was like but it was a much smaller TAM and like when you compare the two channels and like your strategy the execution difference was like was it me and like I had one remote editor for years and I was like not monetizing, not really thinking about it as a business. But I'm interested to know uh on day one of of that YouTube channel because I know you've done media stuff before but like the the the the current media business uh what was the team like? What was the strategy? How much time were you putting into it? Because I know you had exited some businesses, you had some space to breathe, but how serious were and then what was the evolution of that?
I'll walk you through as fast as I can. So, uh, the first thing was I found any media editor, uh, like an agency. And they were like, uh, three YouTube videos a week is what we do. And I was like, all right, then that's what I'll do. And so, I just webcammed like, and I had a little suitcase that would open up so I could travel cuz Leila and I were traveling for the year of the sale. Um, and so that's what I did. Wherever we were, I was like, open up. And then because at that time, I didn't have really any work. So, I had all these thoughts that I was like, I'm just going to get them. I'm going to dump them all out. And so, that's basically what YouTube strategy 1.0 was. Yeah.
Um, I had somebody cold reach out like legit uh to when right as short started. They were like, I'll do everything. You already have YouTube stuff. I'm just going to clip it. Just give me permission. Yep. And I was like,
oh, cool. And so, that's
accidentally started clipping
100%. And so, that was like we were really early on shorts.
So, good. And then as soon as he did a pretty good job, uh he's like, "You know, if I actually recorded you doing these, they'd do even better." And I was like, "Fine, but I only want to do one day a quarter." And he was like, "Fine." So he'd fly out for one day and we'd do a 100 shorts in one sitting, 100%. I would just do 100. And that that kind of style of of filming and recording is pretty much how I still kind of rock that way, which is like I want I prefer a marathon day. Like I'd rather just start at, you know, six and then just rock until every ounce of juice is gone and then it's like great, we'll do it again in a week or whatever.
Yeah. We're sort of like that marathon every day. Yeah. Yeah. One of my one of my questions is like what goes into a 2hour YouTube video because you'll do these like master classes two hours and I'm like that is insane. And then I'm like I do three hours every day. So like now it's become more possible. But I imagine that there's lots of
but three hours was kind of like just going until we got tired.
Yeah.
Like by 3 hours we're usually like okay like probably need to go to the bathroom probably want to eat some food.
Yeah. And and this show is much less structured. But when you're when you're thinking about like the portfolio like
you the volume is just incredibly important to everything in media these days. You agree with that?
Oh 100%.
Volume negates luck all day. Volume negates luck. Violence is the answer. Yeah. It's like on our wall at HQ.
What formats are you most excited about for 2026 2027?
Live interactive.
Okay.
Separate and together.
Okay.
So just going live like with the audience Twitch style, YouTube live style.
And that was the book launch strategy, right? Was that your first taste? You've done live.
No, I've done lives before, but that was obviously, you know, intentional. And then um and then interactive, which is not like
sure there's chat interactive, but like
how do I bring the audience in so that we can talk? That's why you see the uh first it was cash cows, now it's scale or fail, which is the show we just launched. Um and we're doing we're doubling down really hard on that because if you think in a world of AI, it's like what are the things that can't be faked? Yeah.
It's people, you know, like I want stakes. So for example, like if Mr. beast sto uh videos if it was not a real $5 million um or not a real Lamborghini, the stakes disappear. Now, to be fair, there's for sure other like a fictional story. The whole thing we know is fake and we're fine with it and the story is the story and it will crush that. But
people still want stakes. Like right now, chess is more popular it's ever been, but like humans haven't been able to be computers for a long time. And so there are definitely these some areas where we want the drama, we want the stakes, and so I don't think that's going to change at all. Uh, I love the series that you've been doing with uh, entrepreneurs that attend a conference, they stand up, they give you the P. It's so so good. I I just love all those
live interactive.
Live interactive.
I'm interested to know how you think Legacy Media will fit into your media strategy going forward. Is it about prestige? Is there actually an audience there still? Because you're part of the New Guard. Yeah. and yet you signed with CIA. I'm sure you have the ability to walk into a large media company and get a TV show. Does that make sense? Is that something that's interesting to you? What would the value be to
I think it's distribution that I don't have access to.
Okay.
So like I think one of the biggest like unspoken advantages that exists right now in media is Dave Ramsey has been murdering for 30 40 years because he has 600 radio stations syndicated. Everyone's like radio's dead. It's like he's murdering it and it's because no one's looking. So like I'm I'm an equal opportunist when it comes to attention. And so even if it's less or more, if it's something that's completely in this other bubble over here that I have z I have no access to
and the beauty is like there's still like closer to like there's no monopoly online, right? The feed is like you can just get anybody can log on and it's beautiful because anyone can log on. You don't have to have an audience. You can suddenly have an audience. Maybe it's one video, maybe it's a flash in the pan. But uh TV still like if you can figure out the right lane you have this sort of like differentiated access to attention and so it's like a different group of people and it's differentiated access that's not just like log on immediately have access
and when something super pops like you look at all the real estate shows that have come out you've got selling sunset uh sir has his show like like there's a huge distribution base that they gain access to as a result of that all you have to do is look at those stars look at their look at their social media and I would say this is I say this lovingly it's pretty weak in terms of what they're doing, but their following Exactly. but their following is still really strong because it's carried over. And so I'm like, if those people actually tried
on this side and had So I'm an and it's like how do we get it all right? And that's kind of the the
I think this is uh just underrated broadly for mostly tech people. They see the trend of the internet growing exponentially or e-commerce and they think,
oh well in a couple years like 100% of everything will be bought online. And it's like, no, retail still exists. And you know, for certain categories, you probably need to be in retail as well. And the same thing with, you know, the aging audiences on radio or TV, they're still there. They have they still watch. And so, uh, interesting. What about the level of production polish? I imagine that there's a tradeoff there. If you go with something uh more produced that's not just you opening your laptop and and yapping, right? uh you can get stuck you can you can get stuck in like the production quagmire if you're trying to build the Mona Lisa or or some incredible show at the same time there's prestige that comes with that there's a new level of authority uh how do you think about that trade-off
I think it's barbo
so it's either like make it the Mona Lisa and like play to win that game
or you're in the volume game and the volume is just value per second and just trying to get as many of those seconds out as you possibly can and like I just think it's it's it's both and they're I think they serve They serve different objectives to your point of like you gain authority in different ways. It's definitely there's an element that it shifts the brand. There's access to new distribution and eyeballs. All of that happens over here. Yeah. But over here I think is where you get a lot of the closer to buying behavior, believe it or not. And so I see this as more top of funnel and this is like closer to middle and bottom. Obviously you can get discoverability. Like I said, this is full stack, but you get way closer to purchases on the site.
Yeah. Is there can we offer you a diet coke? Can we offer you anything? Uh we have a variety of beverages if you'd like. What's a category of business that you haven't uh built or invested in uh that you're excited to at some point?
I'm still looking for the the magical med spa.
Um I think med spas are super I love pseudo medical.
Um because you
What's maxing?
Yeah. All of it. Well, think about it. Like there's this aging population that has more money than anyone else. They don't want to age. They see the Brian Johnson's like it is the zeitgeist of right now of like I want to live forever. I want to look beautiful and young forever and they have all the money. And so if you look at the demand side of that, it's huge. And you look at the supply, med spas are are t they're still wildly understaffed. And I know this because I see business owners every single week. And so I've like there's a handful of categories right now that I'll meet business owners and they're doing better than they should be.
Like there's some business owners.
I met a I met a med spa owner when I first moved to LA. They had started their business and within a year they were doing like 1.2 2 million of like like straight free cash flow off of like $400,000 invested. Yeah.
And it was like actually unbelievable. Yes. The entrepreneur in this case was like very talented
cuz he watches this and he's like, "Oh yeah, he's great though."
No, but this was this was, you know, years ago. But yeah, I'm I'm surprised that also like differentiated shots at that category because if you look at like I would expect Brian Johnson to do something like this, right? because there's a lot of people that follow him and he has, you know, as many maybe he probably has like 10 times as many like critics as he does people that are like, I'm going to do exactly what he's going to do. But that group of people that will just like copy what he's doing is actually pretty pretty meaningful, right? And so meds boss, you go into these like high ticket kind of like procedures, treatments, things like that. To me, that's where I think he could uh really start to print. He had 1,200 people apply for his million-doll per year thing.
1,200. Do that math
real fast, right?
That's a lot of money.
And then there was a $60,000 per year thing that was underneath and multiply that by just probably an order of magnitude greater.
Yeah.
Wildly underestimated. So you take that and then you have these 10,000 or 15,000 med spas that exist. It's like it's nothing. And the it's super fragmented because still no one's really like gobbled that up. Well, not that that I've seen. Um, and to your point of like when I asked them like, "Hey, so what are you doing right now to get your 6 million a year topline and you know 40% margins and they're like kind of just, you know, we just opened up and put the sign up and you just did a good job and and you know you know people customers tell customers like you know that's not how it [ __ ] works.
Yeah.
And it's not how it's going to work forever.
They're just in a completely uh supply constraint environment. They just don't know it because when you're on the inside you don't know. You're like oh I'm doing a good job. Is part of the problem that a lot of the med spa like founders get a little bit too sucked into the biohacker nature of these things and it feels a little bit too scientific.
I don't I don't think it's that at all. I think it's like it's it's so shortterm. A lot of the med spas I think are like very short-term cosmetic driven. They're like how do we make you look good for the next 3 to 6 months
which is not necessarily what makes you look good over the next 3 to 6 years
or over the next few decades. So that's at least
generally
there's a slice for Johnson to attack which he obviously that's he's a very smart dude.
Yeah.
How would you attack the problem? Roll up find a bunch of operators put them together start something from scratch.
I mean yeah I mean the role model would make the most sense. Um the thing is is like denovo is not that expensive. Sure. Yeah. Um, and if you are a good operator, you can go in and just smash. Yeah. Yeah. Because when when when people are coming in, when your when your CAC's zero and your your gross margins on these services are absurd, the the actual difficulty in that model right now is getting the talent for the technicians because
because it's supply constrainted at the business level, it's also supply constrained at the talent level. And so,
and it's so easy for them to open up a door.
Exactly. They hang their own shindle. They take the customers and like that's the issue that those companies have. And so, um, the key to really winning that game is having a really good talent strategy for
how do I make their lifestyles? How do I how do I compensate them as directly as possible on what they're generating and get it to the point where
my godfather is in wealth management and he has a really cool model. He's managed several billion dollars and he but he started at nothing and built it all himself and his big thing was heyo um and his big thing was uh basically letting the other person have a little more.
Yeah. And so it's like he'll he's like I'll give you 51
so that you don't ever want to leave.
Uh but then you do all the work.
Yeah. It probably looks more like a law firm over time.
Yeah. 100%. It's more of a partner pro. And to be fair, if you've been to any of these uh I would say it's a high touch service. They're they're not loyal to the business. They're loyal to the girl who does her injections or does their lasers or whatever.
And so it's like we just got to tie those people in like a partner firm.
Yeah.
Uh speaking of Brian Johnson, do you care at all about living forever?
I don't even think about it. I expect to die. Um I would prefer not to, but like
I'm good. I'm good either way. Like I I think Marcus really has said um the the old and the young lose the same thing when they die, which is the present.
That's all we got.
So yeah,
I love it.
I'm a similar way. I want to have a full life, but I never at any point in my life have I thought, "Oh, it would just be the best thing ever if I could never die."
Yeah. Uh going back to sort of core audience
I think of like the sweet spot is like mid-market owner operator founder types. Is that roughly accurate?
Yeah. 1 to 50 million.
1 to 50 million.
What is the expansion opportunity? Is there a business for you where you're giving keynotes at Fortune 500 companies, motivational speaking for like, you know, middle managers at companies or or or is it or is it getting people on the founder journey who are leaving companies, breaking out into their own and going from zero to 1 million? What do you think?
Well, from an expansion opportunity, like I think there's still plenty of people in 150 million who don't know who I am and haven't consumed my stuff or whatever. So, like
plenty there. Um, but the like if I just focus there, I get the zero to a million.
Sure.
Anyways, because if you're helping people go from one to 10, people are like, he can probably help me go from one zero to one, right? Um, and so
I'm super broadly zooming out. I'm a big fan of capitalism and I think as many people as possible participating in a free market is a good thing for the country and for that person uh and for everyone else that they serve. And so I would like as many people to taste that that uh that forbidden fruit as humanly possible. And so I try and make it as simple and as easy as possible for people to get started.
Yeah. What mistakes do you see entrepreneurs making around AI? Because I'll give you one.
The the small business owners that I know that get too in like into AI and maybe they're listening to podcasts and they're on X and and and uh we're
orange glasses ready to go.
Um
they'll like they won't just apply AI to their business. they'll like start a new company that's like AI oriented and uh and I just think that's like the worst possible mistake because they end up doing something that like the model just does well and it's like okay so you're going to compete just directly with like all the biggest companies in the world on something that you don't even know as well as the biggest companies in the world when you could just like and so and so there's like this like
grass is greener thing happening where instead of seeing like oh I can just make you know these parts of my business even if it's just 10% more efficient. Uh I can I can, you know, keep compounding. But what are you seeing?
All right. Uh one, they're using AI to do dumb things really fast. Um so they're doing the wrong stuff with AI. So even like they were like a small business owner that wasn't making money now still doesn't make money but has a lot more token cost than they did before. Number two, they're
meeting meeting summaries. Like I've never been successful. Like I I've never
That was my bottleneck. I just need a
summary. No, but but it's one of those things like like I think it's cool that these apps exist. I've never uh I've never needed to take notes to achieve my goals in business. Like I'm just like, okay, what's the next most important thing to do? I'm going to do that thing. Okay, what's the next most important thing? I'm going to do that thing. I've never I've never been like, okay, like what did we say? I mean, and I've worked in like small companies, right? I've only only been a founder. Um but but that's just such an example of like yeah, my meeting note system is like so dialed. I'm like okay like how much money have you made today?
Okay.
So I'll tell you to to to counter answer the two things that I think are the right way to use it which is number one how do we take every function of the business
take it from an org chart based thinking to workflow based thinking and then saying okay this editor used to be involved in these six workflows. uh we actually only need him to be now involved in three of those workflows and the other three we can have AI do the vast majority of the work and so all of a sudden we can three 5x output uh and so revenue per headcount on service based businesses should decrease which means margin should go up now there's this great opportunity window right now where prices aren't really going to adjust for a minute which means that your margins get absolutely stupid and so like you should do that so there's two flavors of that one is the uh the like I'm I'm an advocate of like don't tell people you're using AI like go have a service business that people think is all humans in the background and then charge human prices and then have costs of tech and have the scale and operational or the the lack of operational drag of tech. That's the good game, right? Or take it department by department so you can just become more efficient at at it, right? So those are I think the two good ways of doing it to your point of like well uh being distracted is still a terrible idea as a founder and so this has just made it so much easier for people to get distracted because like I could start a business on this or that or that and it's like yeah but you still have your dry cleaning store dude like
what are we going like and to be fair if you have if you want to be a trillionaire you are going to need to get into bleeding edge tech and AI but you probably should get rid of your dry cleaning store and go all in. And so they're trying to juggle two plates and not really succeeding at either.
Totally. Totally. Yeah. the the dry cleaning example is like use AI to constantly be monitoring every possible
new space that you could expand into within your area or in in the county over etc. and just do that, do that, do that. But it's like grass is greener. Like oh what if I what if I made the operating system the agent operating system for dry cleaners. It's like no just like do the thing.
Just win at dry cleaning because it's also so much easier to compete against other dry cleaning owners cuz you for sure know that they're not adopting it the right way because they're doing the same thing with orange glasses and and banging out their their replicated software, you know, like fine. Yeah, I mean there's also like a fair amount of AI that a lot of small businesses are probably getting for free just in the sense of like if you have a CRM that's sending emails like that company has probably adopted AI and is doing somewhat smarter targeting and so you might not need to go and build your own CRM that sends emails that are customized for every customer because like you get it for free out of the box.
There's also this this tendency to rebuild the existing software that you're using. So it's like, "Oh, I've got, you know, I don't I don't need to pay Calendarly, you know, $9 a month when I" It's just like, "Oh, so instead you're going to use 200 hours to try and recode what they just did and it breaks all the time.
If there's an error, then you lose nine grand,
but like that is what I'm saying all the time."
Yeah, we did have a uh Ben on our team here was having had been we he does uh a lot of the automation that we do around like captioning videos. he had reached a point where all the existing software didn't do the thing that he needed to do that he built something yesterday that now works and that it's saving him a bunch of time. So there is the there are these edge cases
very narrow point solutions for us
I think specifically one
flip live streams very quickly with captions with our ads added on at the end and it saved a bunch of time in Premiere
in media it's huge right like we're using it like I'll give you two examples we're using on the ad side what we did was we built this gigantic data repository which by the way I think that's what the big the huge gap that small business owners are missing is they don't have a data layer and so it's like if you want to have anything that's unique it starts with data if you want to build any kind of AI right that's actually useful
and So one is like how do we build a repository of all the data that we have in terms of sales copy, testimonials, videos, collateral, all of that in one place and then have that get piece meal out into ads
um in real time and then also match those to dynamic landing pages. So we have that live right now at acquisition.com in terms of how we're doing it. So we have several hundred landing pages that are getting pushed against several hundred different uh ad ads that are going out all being done programmatically with AI which is really but like we're we're not a we are not an AI company. Um, but we use the [ __ ] out of it. And so I think that those are like those are the the the on the paid side where it's really really exciting. Yeah.
And then on the on the organic side, it's like right now we started More Mosy, which is like the highlights channel.
Yeah.
Um, and I've got one one cracked out teenager um who's doing who's putting out 20 20 clips a day
on his own.
No, no,
he's doing five five mids. So like we call mids, which is like call it like three to 10 minutes clips. And then he's putting out, I think, 15 or something like that shorts per day on his own. And so he just takes all the time if I'm talking to business owners, takes it, runs it through, it highlights the points from there. He just basically just makes sure that it's good, inserts automatically the the the CTAs that we want, and then boom, it's all
What's your philosophy on uh bringing the cracked out teenager inhouse uh remote inperson versus agency versus platform where clipping can happen. in a discord that just you hear about these discords with like 200 clippers and they all get paid on a CPM basis randomly. It feels deeply chaotic, but if you can harness that, maybe it's powerful, but what's your philosophy?
Uh, yes.
Okay.
That's 100% my philosophy. Okay.
Um, but like are you an agency fan or in-house? It's like I want three agencies working for me and an in-house team. Like it's all all the impressions are out there. Like got to catch them all. Like go get them. You know what I mean? And same thing with um like if I I pay a lot of attention especially on the paid side to e-commerce. I think they're almost always the most cutting edge when it well actually porn's the most cutting edge right before that is I'm being real right e-commerce is second most cutting edge um and those guys are all completely the ones who are crushing it going to zero to 100 million plus and call it like 12 to 24 months like all the companies that are running the same playbook is decentralized um UGC with kind of like AI backend for screening for control and then just letting it [ __ ] rip.
Yeah.
And there's obviously some considerations for brand right which is like how do we make sure but If the raw footage is
and you only put money behind the things that are exactly
Yeah, it's probably pretty safe.
Do you expect to uh integrate parenting content into your universe?
I don't think everything that's not business has not been like super deliberate. I just don't hold back. So, if someone asks a question about it, I'll just answer honestly. Um,
but everything I try to think like the middle spoke is still I'll use this. There we go. The middle spoke is still business. And then it's, you know, how am I seeing parenting through the lens of business as a business owner? if you want.
How do I get an exclusive? We got it over there.
And like how do I see like my my relationship with Ila, but it's we're business partners, but we're also married. So, it's it's always I try to keep that at the middle.
Um, but some people are like, I just want to talk,
you know, with with with Taylor and and Travis pairing up.
Hopefully, they have children. You guys having children. I think we could see a real baby boom. Yeah.
Uh, but uh we need to get it out there.
That's what we're doing. The Lord's work. Uh, can you walk me through how to sort of evolve a brand through what I expected to be more difficult, but you executed it very well. The headline was, "I have nothing to sell you. Now you sell books. I people want to buy stuff from you. Obviously, you sold a ton of books." Uh, but there's probably like a, "Oh, I wasn't expecting this." How did you work through that? Because I think there's a lot of companies where the business model evolves and they need to change their communication strategy and they need to deliver
like an lab is like we're not gonna compete with all
what it's crazy asking for a friend here.
Um
I'm I'm such an like I I think the absolute simplest media strategy for any kind of change is the whole truth.
Yeah.
Not halftruth. And I think if you just manage that so it's like I didn't have anything to sell.
Yeah. And I was like, "Now I do."
It's so simple. I love it.
That's amazing. Wow.
And And if if you don't want to buy it,
here's the great thing about capitalism. It's voluntary exchange, so you can just keep getting the free [ __ ]
Yep.
All good.
There's tons of it. There's tons of free stuff.
Tons of free stuff. And we still continue to do that. If you choose to want more help with stuff in person where we're limited.
Yeah.
Spend money and we'd love to have you.
Yeah. Yeah. It's fascinating. What is the term for like the economic ladder that you help build help companies build? I feel like the first time I was exposed to this with Jaco Willink, you you get to the end of the show and it's like if you want to spend a dollar with me, I got something for you. If you want to spend a $100 with me, I got something for you. If you want to spend $1,000, you can come to my conference, $10,000, I'll hang out with you for a weekend. $100,000. And that ladder of price discrimination is a hard for a lot of businesses where it's not token based pricing where it's just as you know uh consumption based usage of the product but actually getting the place where look if you have a billionaire in your audience who loves what you're doing how do you actually get an offer to them that's the right size. Um I'm a so customers are super fractal right and so you can absolutely make the same amount from 1% of your customers as you can from the other 99 and have half your revenue from one. Um, and typically like at each level you have another double. So it's like if you're at, let's say, $100 a month price point, there's going to be another double of revenue at a $500 a month price point. Another double of revenue at $2,500 a month, uh, another double at, you know, whatever five or 10 times that is going to be. And so, um, I think making offers available to people, that is where business owners like struggle. They feel weird about it and they sell out of their own wallet
when it's just like just make them available and state the facts and tell the truth. So, it's like if we had one big plaque in our our marketing team, it's state the fact, tell the truth, but it's the whole truth, which is, hey, we're going to do this thing. It's absurdly expensive. And it's only for somebody who if you're reading this and you're like, oh, that's not exly expensive for me. It's for you. And if you read that and you're like, oh my god, I'm offended by that. Good news. We have less offensive prices that are lower. And for that, we do all these other things that you're going to get way more people who are going to be doing it with you. But if you're a special snowflake, we have special snowflake prices. I just don't think and to be fair, you're not going to make everyone happy. Like there's always going to be trolls. There's always going to be people. But like I think you have to make the decision of like do I care more about the people I help or the people who are angry at me for trying to help?
What's your international strategy? I imagine the content goes everywhere. Yeah. At the same time, you can't be flying around the world constantly. How do you think about different countries? I struggle a lot with international um because
the business side of me is like I don't want them to clog up our funnels.
Oh
yeah.
And like have people who can't speak English that well talking to the team and it's just like it's like we don't have Italian versions of whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah. Right. So I struggle with that part. Um on the other hand, we're taking steps now to have something to, you know, serve that audience. That being said, I don't think I'm going to be traveling internationally anytime soon. Um, but having called services and offerings for that audience, I'm I'm more inclined to be able to.
Yeah. How are you thinking about scaling acquisition.com, the investing side of the business, raising outside capital, scaling up the fund? We talked to VCs all day who are just like bigger and bigger mega funds.
Yeah, we're like 30 days away from closing a gigantic deal. So, um,
come back.
Yeah, it'll be great. Uh but like uh I would say that what Acquisition.com was when we started was a cash flow-based family office that Leila and I ran and that was honestly the chillest my life has ever been. I was also bored to tears. Um but like a good life and probably might have been better for the season I'm about to get into.
Um but it became apparent after we did something like 24 deals in 24 months and these were not like VC style deals. They were like real, you know, purchases. um that you know portfolio theory rules and of the 24 like you know three-ish were like the really good companies and then on top of that there was like our brand blew up in this time period and so we had to basically have this recalculation of like okay well
these are all the resources we have at our disposal. We have cash but like this brand is getting really big even almost greater than the cash that we have access to just our own money. Yeah.
And so then it was like, okay, well, we started the advisory practice in January of 24 and I think we did 36 million in a year
just on that one unit. And so I was like, okay,
founder.
And so and then obviously, you know, the book launch uh last year we did, you know, 105 and we still had the advisory practice which grew the next year. And so, um, I've we basically we stopped doing, um, deals that we were just investors in,
and now it's brand plus capital plus work. And I'd rather have fewer eggs that we're going to get huge outsized returns on. Like school,
uh, was junior of 24 as well.
Um, but school has, you know, we have 30 million users now.
Um, and, you know, we have a billion plus GMV. Like, it's it's a very big platform. And so like I you know Zuckerberg didn't have Airbnbs as a side hustle, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
And so it's just like if you have if you have a stallion like run it. And so I think that's where we're at where it's like we're being really really specific. I'm I'm willing to put more capital at risk now because I'm going to put my brand behind it.
Um and make sure the product's exceptional. And that's I mean the bar is the product has to be [ __ ] insane.
Yeah.
And then we bring distribution and cash and like that's when it's like the the holy trinity.
Yeah. Uh Jeremy, our friend Jeremy has this idea that that everyone is like pre or postfall,
where are you?
You familiar with this concept? No. So yeah, uh he he says you can instantly tell if someone has had their downfall, had their darkest moment. You know, they've been through the ringer. They got chewed up and spit out by Silicon Valley or private equity or whatever industry they were in. And you can tell that this person is now they've they've been humbled. And so they're ready to build back appropriately, not get over their skis. And then you can also see the founders, it becomes a massive advantage. And then you also see the founders that are sort of prefall and they're doing a lot of things that are like,
yeah, this is like the 24year-old who's like on a crazy tear, has raised money back, they're spending it, and then suddenly like, you know, the business stops growing, like execs are leaving, things like that. But I'm wondering if you there was like this like crucible moment for you before this latest run that you've been on.
I So two answers. One is I'll reject the premise, but um just because I don't like
to say it's super binary, right? Like people are either before or after the hard thing in their life. It's like I think people have lots of hardship that happens at different seasons in their life. Like I've lost everything two times.
Um like twice.
Um but like that then it's like okay am I now postfall? It's like, well, I mean, I I hope that nothing bad ever happens to me again, but I'm pretty sure bad shit's going to happen to me again.
Um, and so I just commit to not stopping.
Yeah.
Controlling the controllable, and that's basically all I can do.
Do you have a good answer to pathy advice for young people? We got asked this on a podcast recently and it was like the closing question. It was like, you got one minute. And I was like, I could you could talk for hours. Like, where do you even start? How do you think about packaging information like that? And I actually want your your your advice for young people if you have one thing.
It's so hard to like work hard. It's like good general advice, but then I I' I've been in points in my life and I know people that are like working hard on like the dumbest thing and like that ends up being the worst thing that they can do.
Well, think so. what you accomplish is a direct output of the volume of activity that you do multiplied by the leverage of the activity itself. And so you have to pick the right boat. You have to pick the right opportunity based on your goals. Some people only want to make a million dollars, some people want to make 10, some want to make 100, some make a trillion. Like everyone has different. So like the the leverage that what's interesting about that is that you just get to pick and it's going to be hard no matter what. I think Nal said this thing where it was like it's really hard to build a restaurant that's really successful. It's also really hard to build a, you know, billion-d dollarar unicorn. They're both gonna be 80 hour weeks. And so, you know, and Stuart Schwarzman from Black, uh, Blackstone said like, you might as well play big because level 10 talent has only attracted level 10 opportunities. It's harder to attract good people for bad opportunity because then you got to do it all yourself. Which is why I have so much respect for some of the guys like um, uh, Peggy and Andrew Chung who are Mr. and Mrs. Panda, Panda Express. Yeah,
dude. Deca billionaires selling selling chicken,
passing royalty,
dude. Like but like like so much respect for that level of grit. 45 years selling Orange Chicken, right? Um all that to say,
you will pick based on the level of awareness that you have at that time.
Where it gets more difficult is that you learn more [ __ ] as you go and you realize that there are higher leverage opportunities. Mhm.
The difficulty is that if you're four years into one thing, year five of an existing thing that you have four years of reps on versus year one of even a slightly better opportunity, you have to compare year one versus year five of the other one, not year one versus year one because time you can't get back. And so that's where the compounding of getting better at something at some point does have outsized returns even it's an inferior vehicle.
Yeah. Talk about that idea of uh you're an A+ uh operator but you're going after a C+ opportunity. How do you assess your opportunity? Because I feel like I run into people who are working on A+ opportunities and everyone will say that's the dumbest idea ever. You're going to put couches, it's going to be called Airbnb. That makes no sense, right? And then it's a boom and it's huge. And then simultaneously, you can be working on a terrible idea, but if you went and got, you know, a puff piece in Business Insider in Forbes, it's like your parents are like, "Oh, it's amazing. Good job." Even if you're grinding and it's not going anywhere.
Yeah. The way the way I look at it is like in every single category there's an amazing business and the funny thing the funny thing with everyone thinks about like Airbnb as like the dumb idea when it's like it wasn't a dumb idea it just seemed ridiculous and that's very different than
uh like somebody that like chooses apparel as a category which everyone knows is like structurally really really really challenging really really competitive. Yes, there's like a hundred companies in the world that absolutely print and if you're one of those companies then you're then you're great. But some people like choose apparel and then 3 years in then they understand the competitive dynamics and they're like I'm in a shitty business. I think that's very different than like choosing the thing that seems silly even though Airbnb at this point is now
like the best business, right? Massive scale network effects, uh a great product, uh all these things. Yeah,
I think if you look at the marketplace that you're trying to get into, there's usually going to be a bolus of businesses at some part and that gives you some idea of where the difficulty in that business is. And so like for example, if you're going to get into I want to start a social media marketing agency. It's like well there's a bullis at the bottom and then very few who ascend to the top and it's because it's really really difficult operationally because if you're really good at marketing then you can usually make enough money to not work at one of those types of businesses and so you're constantly uh you have to be so good at ops and so good at marketing and branding and sales in order to just slowly get these bigger and bigger accounts and you kind of level up the types of customers that you can go after. Um because all those businesses go after SMBs and SMBs are inherently volatile and so even if you do a great job, they'll still cancel and so it's just a turn and burn business.
Yeah. Not not to mention your flagship client will eventually say like, "Hey, we're spending $100,000 on this service. We could hire five people that are the best in the world at what they do and they'll just focus on us. Let's do that instead."
Yeah. Like there are there are impediments to that business scaling. Can you do it? Absolutely. But I'm just a huge advocate of just like just look at what the biggest version of that business looks like because this is obviously a more tech forward show. But like the vast majority of businesses are not tech businesses,
right? There's like HVAC businesses all over the place. There's pool cleaners there. Like there's a lot of [ __ ] you can do for money.
And so I like unless you want to be a trillionaire like you can be a billionaire in just about any boring business. You look at you look at um what's his name? Is it Brad Jacobs?
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. actually six times over make a few billion.
Yeah. A few And then he has a sequel. A few more billion.
Few more billions.
You guys are kind of You guys are very Yeah. I never I never thought of you as home building materials.
Yeah. There's just a lot of businesses out there. And so it just depends on like what the goal is. But any business done for like zooming all the way out, if you do one thing for 40 years and you get better every year, you're going to [ __ ] dominate. And so on some level going after the tech opportunity though there there for sure are the big the big mega winners. It's easier to compete against the people who are going after the pool cleaners. There's just there's like there's less sophisticated players. There's less capital. Um and so having a little bit of street smarts and a lot of work ethic can get you pretty far there. And you look at that compared to like you know you look at the guy who's doing 7 million a year topline, $2.5 million in bottom line. Doesn't really work that much. has a crew of guys.
Is that the life you want?
Yeah.
Cuz there's nothing like there's nothing wrong with that. And so I think it's deciding first to the younger guy like what do I want
or what is an acceptable outcome? And then what of the many many paths that are ahead of me have the highest likelihood of me getting there. And then once you pick that path, know that if you stick with that path for 20 years, the likelihood that you fail is basically zero. As long as you have some feedback loop for improvement.
That's basically it. Figure out where you want to go. Find the highest likely path of getting there. And then do not let the opinions of strangers or people who do not have what you want dissuade you from getting there.
Yeah. What do you think about uh there's this odd trend of uh entrepreneurship like uh I don't know like mindset stuff where you got to be doing sauna, cold plunge, meditation. And I feel like that only makes sense once you're successful. And then you look at the successful people and you're like, "Well, yeah, the rich guy has a sauna." But what was he doing when he was broke? He was waking up and getting on his laptop. But yeah, how have you react?
Yeah, rich people fly private, so I should fly private in order to get rich. It's it's conflation. Um,
okay. So, at the most basic level, you have to do work.
Yeah.
And if it is not the work, then you have to have a very strong argument that is going to increase your output per unit of time.
Period. And so if you have a 3ine, have the most energy, you would have to have an incredible Do you curse on the show?
We don't.
Okay. A credible darn argument for You're welcome. Our kids are our kids are watching, but you know, by all means,
you have to have an incredible argument for why that's going to improve your output. And so like the morning routine that I'm a big advocate of is you wake up and then you caffeinate.
You shut off your your distractions and then you begin the work. and how how much you can compress the time from waking to beginning work.
Sure.
Is the ideal and you are the freshest whenever you are post sleep.
Yep.
And so I like if you want to do that stuff I'm like by all means go for it. But like just understand like you can
plenty people have hobbies. You can have hobbies. Like there's nothing wrong with that. It's just is this actually and you also didn't need to work 16 hours a day in order to get what you want. I I have plenty of friends who are super successful and don't work that much. Now, did they work 16 hours a day to get there? Probably. And so, this is the modeling the rise, not the plateau. And what's difficult is the plateau is what's more visible.
Sure. What do you think there? And then you can make the content, right? No one's making this part.
No. No.
What do you think about uh people sort of like staging out their sort of career as an entrepreneur? I was talking to
a friend of mine who has a something like an agency business and fashion. He's gonna do like about a million dollars this year of like profit. It's a fantastic business.
He has he he eventually wants to have his own his own brand. My my advice to him is like fashion is such a like bad business until it's a great business till you have like a flagship brand that takes 20 years to make. Uh I was like get your business to like a couple million a year. Get it like established. It's a couple million a year of profit at least. Get it established. get, you know, 10, 20 flagship clients that are on sort of long-term contracts and then basically use that cash flow to invest in your brand. And like a lot of people would be like give them the advice now of like just go all in on go all in on the brand. Like why are you wasting time with this other thing? And I feel like that's very uh that that works super well like if you have a trust fund. But for somebody who's like 27, let's assume they want to have a family in a few years. I was pushing him to say like make this thing great even though you know it's not the thing that you want to be doing for that 40 year chunk of your career. But how would you talk to to somebody in that sort of space?
So I don't think there's a right answer because it's all dependent on risk which is entirely personal. Yeah. And so if you want to go balls on the line, that's not cursing. Um then then do it. Go all in. But like just understand the risk that you're taking on. And so I would say that that's not a risk that I would take. Um I would say that I'm relative.
There's there's risk to being allin and then not having the capital to actually fuel the opportunity. Right? My point of view was like you're going to be way way way higher likelihood of success if you sort of build slow and you can put half a million a year of like outside capital into the business versus like trying to build this brand when you don't have a a capital source.
Depends on goal depends on risk tolerance. Like I want to be a trillionaire and then and I'm willing to take the risk then it's like yeah I mean you should have started yesterday. You know what I mean? Um, but my perspective is I would like to get my oxygen mask on personally and I was able to make I've been able to to take significantly bigger and bigger bets in my career because I don't they're free swings.
Yeah.
If I lose my ch my life changes zero.
And so in thinking about big life changes, what's been really helpful for me is what is my what tactically changes about my life? Do I change what I eat? Do I change what I wear? Do I change where I live? Do I change the car I drive? And and do these things matter? Right? Does it change who I'm married to? If none of these things change, then almost none of these decisions are gonna actually have a huge impact on my life, which then makes the argument for like maybe I should take a higher risk adjusted return move. But I would say that from the emotional side rather than the logical side. Um it was I have tried I very quickly tried to have a nest egg to be like I'm good
and that's what's allowed me to take really big bets like things like school. School's a platform. thelihood that
oxygen mass is a is a great way to put that on if you're going to be
if you want and if you have responsibilities too. If you're if you're a parent and you've got kids and you've got mortgage and and you want a certain lifestyle for them and certain schools that they you know that cost money um then then you're also risking their futures to a degree and so again it's your decision but just know what you're putting at risk and how much is my life going to change if I lose. Keith Cunningham has a great frame on this which is just um what's my upside? What's my downside? And can I live with my downside?
If you can't live with the downside, don't take the bad.
You mentioned that uh you know the success and the habits are visible at the plateau but not on the rise.
At the and I agree with you like you're not actually seeing the accurate picture of the upand cominging entrepreneur, the future trillionaire as it's happening. But at the same time, a lot of businesses increasingly need to do some form of social media on their way up. And the risk there is like sometimes companies just get sucked into just being full media companies or the or the brand value and the and the cash flow from the media business outgrows whatever they were doing originally. Uh what is the right balance? How should entrepreneurs think in the modern era? Like if you're starting a company, consumer product in 2026, what's the right level of social media and and actual owned content without it becoming like fake work?
What do you mean by fake work?
Fake work would be like you're you're growing your following account, but you're not growing your cash flow or your actual
Yeah. There's a generation of entrepreneurs, and like you're probably a huge driver of this, that are like uh that are like I need to work. I need to like I need to build my personal brand. They don't realize that like if they just make an amazing product that millions of people benefit from, they just default get the personal brand and they could just if you care about like attention and being on camera, then you could just do that later, but maybe just make something amazing.
And also, your personal brand is an actual media company that has cash flow and is like a successful business.
You wouldn't you wouldn't be you wouldn't I I don't think you would be like on camera if you weren't making No, I wouldn't. I hated it. It was like it was very hard for me to decide to do this.
Yeah. There's a lot of people that are basically doing the media for the cloud and they don't and they and they think put it it's fake work because they're saying they're justifying the cloud chasing by uh saying oh it's marketing for my business.
If what you do does not translate into the money that you make and money that you make is the goal then you are doing work that is not effective.
Yeah. Um, if to the the example you gave earlier, if you start a a business and you get better at media and the media is making more money than your existing business, then maybe you're better at media than you were at your business and maybe that should be your business. And so I think constantly being flexible about reassessing what the market wants versus what you have. Um,
you know, I think Basos says this, but you know, uh, determined on goal and flexible on path or whatever way he says that. And he's also a great example of what's Basos's personal brand. Well, everyone knows who he is. Does he make a lot of content? No. Why? just happens to own Amazon, right? Um and so I think
it depends on what what um sphere you want to get into. This is kind of interesting. Um if you were to say I want to be a big B2B influencer,
you cannot be a big big B2B influencer without evidence that you are good at business
period. You could take and there's plenty of people who take word for word the stuff that I say.
There's some aren't there there's probably some good counter examples to that. We don't need we don't need to name them.
Yeah. You know, it's it's tough. It's tough. Like I would say the biggest the big I think the biggest B2B influencer right now is Elon. Oh, sure. Sure. Right. And he also has the biggest business and is the richest man.
Right. And so and that I think that just cascades all the way down. The only reason that so like I was I had a podcast that started in July of 2017. That's when I started was called Gym Secrets and I rebranded as just the game.
Um
but the as I continued to make it uh we went from like you know 2,000 downloads a month to millions
when I sold my company for 46.2 million. And then people were like, "Oh, this guy actually knows what he's talking about." And then the brand took off because I had evidence.
Legitimacy.
And so I think that the amount of legitimacy that you need to be an influencer depends on the risk that the consumer has in taking action on the nature of the content that you're making. And so if I'm a beauty influencer, if I buy lipstick or I do a a you know a lash technique, I'm getting the waters I'm not familiar with here. You paint your face in some way, right? Um the risk is relatively low. Sure. Right now you move a little bit over here and you got like personal finance. Well, it's like who's the biggest there? Dave. And then there's there's some of the new age ones. Erica Clover. She's got her, but she was also um
and there's Vivian too, I think. Uh, but like they have some credibility behind and like there's tons like if a teacher is in in her basement talking about how you should invest in the S&P 500 and says exactly what Warren Buffett says and maybe they even say it a little bit more compelling than the way than what Warren Buffett says.
They won't be Warren Buffett because they just forgot to build Berkshire Hathway.
Sure. Sure.
And so it's like the proof is the pudding. I think at least my perspective on media is the proof is the pudding. But it varies in terms of how much proof you need. Now, if you're ugly as [ __ ] very hard to be a beauty influencer.
Yeah.
But if you can use But if you are ugly and then you paint your face so well that you become hot,
then you absolutely Yeah. Because you have evidence,
right? And you have a more dramatic point. No, 100%. This is how it works. Yeah.
I like that. Uh talk about status seeking. It seems like in Silicon Valley there's often uh you know, Nal talks about this like there's value.
Silicon Valley.
Yeah. Well, well, that's what I want to know. Uh in Silicon Valley there's a lot of trend chasing. there's a lot of status seeking and there's value in like doing low status activities and I'm wondering in in mid-market entrepreneurship small businesses like what is the shape of that is it different than Silicon Valley is it less pronounced more pronounced like what is the version of look you just need to run a series of golf courses and be happy with that that type of thing or whatever whatever the equivalent is
I think it depends on who they compare themselves to I think it just comes down to that I think tech guys compare themselves to other tech guys and they want approval from tech guys and so they do the the activities that tech guys approve of. If you're an HVAC guy, then it's going to be you're going to do the activities that HVAC people think are cool if they're the peer group that you actually uh compare yourself to, which they might not be.
Um, and to be fair,
I love the tech guys that that sell their business for nine figures and then are like, I need a cash flowing lifestyle business ASAP.
I know a lot of them. A lot. Like a crazy amount. Like buying gas stations. Like it's a lot.
How how bad is that?
Bad? What do you mean? Like because I I imagine it's a grass is greener on the other other side thing where they enjoyed building their business. They sold it. They have all this cash, but they want cash flow. They want the stability of the cash flow. And so they want the idea of of running a small business every month
and they don't Exactly. But they don't think about what it means to like at 2 a.m. your gas station got robbed and you got to go down there and sort it out with the cops or something like that. And so I'm wondering about like what is the actual lesson there for someone who's like about to get over their skis? Yeah, I think humans are inherently dissatisfied.
Okay.
And I think whatever you have, you want what you don't have. And so if you're married, you're like, "Ah, what life would be different if I was single?" If you're a parent, you're like, "Ah, can you remember when we didn't have kids?" And when if you don't have kids, you're like, "I wish I had kids." If you're an employee, you're like, "Man, I wish I had an entrepreneur." And somebody you're an entrepreneur, you're like, "Man, it would be so nice to just show up and clock out of five and have to think about it and get a check." Like, we just always we want to make we want the benefits of a trade-off without the negatives of the trade-off.
Sure.
Yeah. And so when guys are in the cash flow business, because I'll because I that's who I talk to the majority of the time is like what they're thinking about all the times is like it's hard to sell this business. Um I'm not really building my net worth. The multiples that I'm getting on this aren't going to necessarily be that high. Um I'm dealing with people all day. I've deal with low skilled labor and I've got, you know, turn issues or finding texts that aren't going to show up drunk on the job. Like there's like my one of my favorite quotes of all time. I'm gonna try not to cuss on this one, but um
my CFO was uh deep South Texas when we were when we were in Texas when we were building Gym Launch. Um Suzanne Shifflet, shout out to Suzanne. Um she was the reason we were able to sell Gym Launch. Um she's she had been she had been a CFO for four companies from 1 to 100 million plus had done a $5 billion exit and I think she had she'd been either buy side or sellside over 20 times.
Wow. She was just like she was a mur like just so weathered in a good way, right? Um and she said, "You know what, Alex?" She's like, "It's all shit." She was like, "It's all [ __ ] Every business is [ __ ] It's all shit." And I and it was but it was like she said it with so much sincerity because I was like at the time I was like, "Man, it'd be cool if we got this kind of multiple blah blah blah." And she was like, "It just doesn't it's it it all sucks." And it's just different type of suck, but it all sucks.
Be satisfied. Uh, we're at time, but give us a pitch for scale or fail.
If you like seeing entrepreneurs try their absolute hardest and have a completely new paradigm shift in 90 days, uh, to scale their business the most, uh, then watch the show. I meet with them for an hour, give them a whole blueprint of what I would do if I bought the business 100% today. Um, and then they execute and they compete.
I love it.
Amazing. So, reminds me of PMF or die.
Yeah.
We we we experimented with the show last year. Uh it was like yeah it was like it was like we we we put this team in an apartment in New York. They were not allowed to leave for 90 days until or or until they build a million-dollar AR business. Uh it it it it descended into chaos and it was situation for sure.
It was totally crazy and we were like we don't have time to do this and this.
But it had it had like hundreds of people watching at all times. It was actually gripping
and it was just a live stream of them in the apartment just like cooking. It was
but one of them got really good at talking to chat. It was a whole thing and it was sort of opened us up to that was a good example because like one of them clearly was like a gifted content creator and the other one was like why am I on camera? This is terrible. This is terrible.
Did he become a content creator?
Uh we got to check in with
we got to check in with him.
But they're both veryent a little bit.
Yeah, they both needed to like disconnect. It was
but uh yeah. So, so don't do the show live. Then people will will actually go
the edit is is awesome,
dude. Thanks for having me.
Thank you so much for coming on.