Fix These Bottlenecks to Scale Past $1M | Ep 861

In this Q&A episode, Alex (@AlexHormozi) gives founders raw, unfiltered advice on scaling, covering everything from seasonal hiring models and family business drama to overbuilt upsells and why “doing more of what works” is still the best growth plan. Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast, you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned and will learn on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth. Wanna scale your business? Click here. Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials: LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition Mentioned in this episode: Get access to the free $100M Scaling Roadmap at www.acquisition.com/roadmap

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  And I think that was

• 0:02Alex Hormozi?

  Can I tell you a secret?

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 0:04Alex Hormozi?

  Very small business owners will never build a stable business because they are not stable. So it's nothing to do with you.

• 0:17Speaker 02

  Okay. Hello.

• 0:17Alex Hormozi?

  How are you?

• 0:18Speaker 02

  Good. My name is Kyler. I sell landscape lighting and exterior lighting, basically to homeowners north of half a million dollars for the

• 0:27Alex Hormozi?

  Dude, this is great.

• 0:28Speaker 02

  home.

• 0:29Alex Hormozi?

  Well done. Very good.

• 0:30Speaker 02

  I'm at three 10 revenue, 310 K, 142 EBITDA. And what's stopping me is I literally make all of that money from that lighting division. Temporary lighting, so holiday lighting. So now I know I need to add on landscape lighting, permanent lighting to be sustainable all year round.

• 0:48Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 0:49Speaker 02

  I haven't started advertising for landscape lighting, except for the warm outreach that I've done to my temporary lighting customers. So now I need to start working on a proven acquisition channel for new customers. And that's what's stopping me.

• 1:02Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. And it's usually like Christmas lighting type stuff?

• 1:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. When you, when you spin that up every year, do you just hire a bunch of temps and then you guys put them all up and then you fire everybody kind of thing?

• 1:12Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, yeah, but we also have a washing side. I talked to Ed about that. We might kill that. So I didn't really want to get into the weeds of that. But I keep a couple on that do washing with me.

• 1:22Alex Hormozi?

  Washing?

• 1:23Speaker 02

  Exhilarating cleaning, concrete house washing, gutter cleaning.

• 1:28Alex Hormozi?

  That's actually a pretty decent business side, but okay. You're like, I'm selling water, you know, like not a bad, not a bad gig. Okay. But you prefer the lighting business because it has higher margins and okay.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39Alex Hormozi?

  So two potential ways to think about this. So one way is you look at the Halloween store, which you've probably heard of and they, you know, they run for 90 days or two months, whatever it is, leading into Halloween and they every year just do more and more of it. And that's the model and he just sticks to that and he just takes off the rest of the year. And so then the question becomes, how do I continue to gain access to a scalable workforce that is, that I can basically turn on overnight and train up in a weekend to do all, and basically to deliver all these services? So that is Not an unattractive business, to be clear. I mean, a lot of people would love to own a business that they only have to work ninety days a year and they just, I wouldn't say chill, but like, kind of, right?

• 2:19Alex Hormozi?

  And so the other nine months of the year for that business would be you building out the inroads and laying in all of the, basically building out the rapid work infrastructure. So that when people come in, it's just like, boom, this is the training or like, boom, we, we send our messages out. You guys have fourteen days to respond. And you know that every year you get verbal commitments around the year from a hundred people and you know that that translates into twenty people who are actually proficient in work. And so then you just work your, you're basically work backwards from the model. Does that make sense?

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:46Alex Hormozi?

  So that's the Halloween store path, which I don't think is necessarily a bad path. Like when I have something, you're like, okay, I'm making three ten on five hundred. I'm like, cool, let's do like five million and make three million. Like that sounds chill.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56Alex Hormozi?

  Right? Rather than like, how do I start another business to like, give my people something to do in the meantime? So if I'm you, I would probably try and say like, and Leila has a great frame on this, which is when I, when we're looking at two business decisions, there's always problems on either side. And so we asked the question, which problem would we rather solve? Or which problem do we feel like we're more equipped or more likely to solve? Given our current resources, skill sets, et cetera. And so if we're looking at this path, path wouldn't be like, do I believe it's within my skill set to build the network nine months a year? And build the training out so that when people, when I send the, the mass blast out, like we're about to go into high season, ready to rock and roll. I can get this percentage of people and I can get them trained up in a weekend and then we're off and running.

• 3:41Alex Hormozi?

  Do I want to solve that problem? Or do I want to build out basically the ascension path from temporary lighting to permanent lighting? And kind of build that whole other business?

• 3:52Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:53Alex Hormozi?

  The way I asked the question seemed one sided, but like, that's, that's, that's a, it's a real question.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's, it's a real question because I could spend nine months doing that, but I'm not gonna lie, I think I may just get like a little bored, you know?

• 4:04Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  Through the rest of the nine months.

• 4:06Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, get a dog, you know? Well, one of the things you can do and like, okay, so, okay. So I define patience as figuring out what to do in the meantime. Right? So we have to figure out something for you to do in the meantime. And so the question is, what can I do in the meantime that could make my core business money during that high season?

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:23Alex Hormozi?

  Well, I could probably pre-sell that season all year.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  So I did do pre-sales basically last month. We do our pre-sale, just, you know, get cash flow and just real quick side tangent. Basically, I went to a permanent lighting training end of last month. They actually said you can lease that permanent lighting essentially, you know, year-round lighting, for all y'all that don't really know. Yeah, year-round lighting, but basically, you know, have that just recurring every single year. So they're leasing it basically, and then if they want, they could buy it out. So I was thinking about upselling those customers. We have one-year, three-year, five-year contracts, and then upselling to people that are on those contracts for just year-round lighting and say, hey, do you want this thing all year? And it's not going to cost you the six to 10K if you don't want to pay that upfront.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Of course, we'd like that, but then offer that same exact price every single year.

• 5:16Alex Hormozi?

  I don't think it's a bad model. Which one did you rather do? I think both will work.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Honestly, I'm leaning towards just figuring out the landscape lighting because I don't think it's that hard. Great margins to add on to the business in my long-term play of making this scalable potentially to other markets. I would like a full year-round business instead of just seasonal.

• 5:38Alex Hormozi?

  So I'll say this. It's not that it's not a year-round business in the first year. This is me trying to convince you of this, just kind of for everybody else to. It's not that it's not a year-round business. It's just that you do delivery for 90 days.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:49Alex Hormozi?

  The fact that you're not working the other nine months is the problem.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  You're right.

• 5:53Alex Hormozi?

  Because could we take 500K and make it 5 million if you worked the other 75% of the year?

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:59Alex Hormozi?

  Rather than kind of like creating this other business to keep yourself busy?

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 6:05Alex Hormozi?

  Like, that's how I think about it. Like, you're like, man, if I work, I work a little bit, I make, I make 500, I make 300 grand in a quarter. I'm like, we work a lot a bit, maybe make 1.2 million in the next year. That's with zero changes in like current capacity.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. And honestly, you answered my question. Sam is in the room. Really sorry. I tried to ask her a question. She's like, I need literally 98 other data points, but you just figure it out. Because that's literally the problem I run into is like, I had to pull all my advertising, all that stuff last season because I hired on all these people. Half the people don't know what they're doing all the way. There's no time to train. So that makes a lot of sense.

• 6:41Alex Hormozi?

  What will happen, what would happen next is like, if you went the other path of, if you decide to do the temporary leasing thing, the demand that you'll be able to generate for temporary lighting will still exceed your capacity with your existing workforce on the recurring work. So you're gonna have the problem either way.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:58Alex Hormozi?

  So which problem would you rather have?

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 7:01Alex Hormozi?

  That's a you problem. Business wise, either model works. I would recommend not doing both.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. Okay.

• 7:08Alex Hormozi?

  Cool.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 7:09Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, you bet. Thank you. A little round ball something.

• 7:16Alex Hormozi?

  These have been easy ones. These have been fun ones. All right.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  So my name's Christine Mattis and I sell legal services in the form of estate planning and helping clients with real estate matters. Basically to families and there are families.

• 7:30Alex Hormozi?

  High net worth families.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  High net worth families.

• 7:32Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 7:33Speaker 03

  We did two million, so we've been growing 20% every year for the last five years. My goal is 10 million. What's stopping me is really was an eye opener yesterday doing that scorecard. My EBITDA is terrible, like zero. And but yet I know we want to get more.

• 7:49Alex Hormozi?

  Look, you just do nothing for zero. It's so much easier.

• 7:52Speaker 03

  And our, I know I want to get more leads, but also sales. So I'm trying to figure out, well, what's the first thing you would attack? When you have this kind of situation?

• 8:03Alex Hormozi?

  Well, I don't understand why we weren't making money.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  Right.

• 8:05Alex Hormozi?

  So I would probably be tackling that first.

• 8:07Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 8:08Alex Hormozi?

  I think we're talking about Doll's Restaurant yesterday, like. We need, you need to fix the core model unless there's some, what? I'm pretty confident because I understand the business fairly well, like there isn't some massive fixed cost, like your cost is, is people. It's payroll. It's not like you have some machine that you have to pay or some massive rent that must get paid before you can make, you know, incremental revenue. And so I would probably be looking inwards first at basically how I'm compensating people? And how I'm pricing. So it's likely that, so are you at capacity right now? With your current team?

• 8:41Speaker 03

  They think we are, but I'm feeling there's more room to grow.

• 8:45Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. So you, you have a, you have a pricing issue. So you're either underpriced or overpaying or a combination of both.

• 8:51Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 8:52Alex Hormozi?

  And so I would fix that first because then you'll fix cash flow and then that freed up cash flow will allow you to go more, get more aggressive on the front end.

• 8:58Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 8:59Alex Hormozi?

  But like for me to say, hey, let's go get more customers is probably not the solution right now.

• 9:02Speaker 03

  Makes sense.

• 9:03Alex Hormozi?

  Like we have to free up cash so you can breathe.

• 9:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. Appreciate it. Thank you.

• 9:07Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, you bet.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  How's it going Alex Moneyless, also Alex. I own a company that-

• 9:15Alex Hormozi?

  Are you having the best day ever because you have that name? I mean, that's how I wake up every day. I'm like, I'm called Alex. Like, I'm having the best day.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  I sell trivia nights to bars and restaurants across the country. So they'll bring us in on their slow night of the week and we will come every week and basically fill out their bar for them.

• 9:29Alex Hormozi?

  Cool.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  Currently at 1.1 million in revenue.

• 9:32Alex Hormozi?

  It's like a bar launch.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Sure, if you will.

• 9:34Alex Hormozi?

  No, man, that's what I did. That's what I did for a living for two years.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  So currently 1.1 million, would like to be at 10. What's stopping me right now is capacity, but I think really I just a couple hires away from getting that. So my question is really more about our up sell. We do have an up sell that we present to bars right now, but it kinda sucks.

• 9:53Alex Hormozi?

  Cool.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  And that our core offer, so the trivia nights themselves, our LTV to CAC is about 12 to 1.

• 9:58Alex Hormozi?

  Love it.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  So I like where we are there, but our up sell, I mean, people churn out after like three months.

• 10:03Alex Hormozi?

  You mean they do a couple trivia nights and then they dip? Or the bars?

• 10:06Speaker 02

  The bars themselves, we use it for about three months, the up sell, and then they'll-

• 10:10Alex Hormozi?

  What is the up sell?

• 10:11Speaker 02

  The up sell is basically a different type of trivia night. It's called music mashup.

• 10:15Alex Hormozi?

  More of that thing.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  It's like a music style trivia.

• 10:18Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  So my question is-

• 10:21Alex Hormozi?

  This is fun.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Right now, I'm trying to just improve the music mashup game to make it something better.

• 10:26Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Do I keep doing that or do I just bail?

• 10:28Alex Hormozi?

  Okay, so this is, this is like super applicable to a lot of people here. Okay. So let's say this is a customer journey. This will be trivia.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  All right.

• 10:39Alex Hormozi?

  So where do you sell? Ideally. On this, on this lifecycle, where do you sell?

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Where do I sell?

• 10:48Alex Hormozi?

  That's the best time to sell. This is our value line.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  At the bottom, at the pain point, right?

• 10:54Alex Hormozi?

  Yes. Okay. So you're delivering trivia nights, right?

• 11:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 11:01Alex Hormozi?

  We have now provided value. And we're selling here, but they're already full. So I give the analogy of if I go to, I go to y'all's restaurant, right? And I say, hi, I want a steak. I'm starving, right? And sorry, I go to the restaurant, I say, I'm starving. You say, would you like a steak? And I say, sure. I eat the steak and you guys come back over and you're like, how was it? I'm like, oh my God, it was amazing. And you're like, awesome, do another steak? I'd be like, no, no, I'm, I'm good. Like, I'm, I'm good. And they're like, oh, you don't like the steak? I'm like, no, I, I like the steak. I'm, but I'm good. It's like, well then why don't you have another steak? You're like, ah, right? It gets really awkward, right? But that's actually kind of the situation a lot of business owners are in. And so, but after I have my steak, I might have the desire to have something sweet. And so now I'm, I'm full on my value vector for steak eating,

• 11:46Alex Hormozi?

  but I'm empty on my value vector for dessert eating. And so then I'd be like, ah, you should try our apple cobbler. It's delicious, whatever. And so what we want to figure out is sometimes the point of greatest value also on another vector becomes the point of greatest deprivation. And that's why sometimes they overlap. Often they don't. And so I think it's one of the big mistakes that people make is when they time their upsells. And so for, I'll give you a B to B example and then I'll, I'll circle back to the bar. So if I help someone get more leads, right? I have now provided value, but now that I've provided this value, they're like, shit, now I have to work all the leads.

• 12:22Alex Hormozi?

  And so then that creates the opportunity to sell the lead nurture services or the other things that they need to go with this problem that I just created by solving their first problem. And so upsell timing is one of the big mess ups, I think, in a lot of businesses. Okay, back to the bars. So trivia nights is the, the core. So what's the, what stops you from just having basically just continue to do trivia nights with them?

• 12:43Speaker 02

  What do you mean?

• 12:44Alex Hormozi?

  So you do a trivia night, you bring a bunch of people on Thursday. Next Thursday, I still want a bunch of people. Why don't I do a trivia night?

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Oh no, that is, that is the business model. Everything is weekly. So Ball will hire us and we will come in every week on that day at that time and bring back that crowd. So we develop regulars.

• 12:58Alex Hormozi?

  Okay, and that's, and that's sticky though, right?

• 13:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 13:01Alex Hormozi?

  Okay, then what's the problem with just doing more of that?

• 13:03Speaker 02

  That was my question is whether I should just focus on doing more of that.

• 13:06Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 13:08Alex Hormozi?

  You're like, I've got this really sticky thing that we're really good at and people like it. It's like, do that.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  Okay, so follow up question to that would be, at what point, so let's say I just, the next however many years, I just keep milking the trivia nights over and over again.

• 13:20Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  At what point do I even consider bringing on an upside? Cause right now we have no upside.

• 13:25Alex Hormozi?

  I don't think you necessarily need one. Are you running good margins?

• 13:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're fine. They're 25 ish percent.

• 13:30Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, 12?

• 13:31Speaker 02

  25.

• 13:32Alex Hormozi?

  Oh, 25. Okay. I was like, 25, that's fine. Okay. Yeah, I think you're just in a, you're in a more situation. So how do you get bars right now?

• 13:39Speaker 02

  Primarily cold outbound, a lot of cold email, cold call, some inbound, about 20% of new clients come via referral.

• 13:46Alex Hormozi?

  Cool. So, and that's, I can understand that because they're not trying to refer the bar down the street. Cause it's like, I get it. So we had some of the issues with Jim Watch. They only refer somebody who's like out of state.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:56Alex Hormozi?

  I get it. How many outbound actions are you taking per day to generate your sales velocity?

• 14:01Speaker 02

  One sales guy full time and he'll make about a hundred sales calls, cold calls per day.

• 14:06Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. So, I mean, that guy should probably rip like 300, but just as a baseline. But I think hiring like three more guys and having all those guys do 300 a day would probably get you a bunch of sales. As long, because the biggest thing that I would want to solve if I'm you is how do I make sure that bars that do trivia night, just keep doing trivia night with me?

• 14:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:25Alex Hormozi?

  If that's not a problem and they are just all continually doing that, then you have solved the hardest problem in business, which is that you have revenue retention. So we just don't need to be fancy. We just need to do a shitload more of it.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Cool. Thank you.

• 14:37Alex Hormozi?

  Rock and roll.

• 14:40Alex Hormozi?

  Yes, ma'am.

• 14:41Speaker 04

  Hi, my name's Zara Mutawakil. I sell-

• 14:44Alex Hormozi?

  Zara?

• 14:45Speaker 04

  Zara.

• 14:45Alex Hormozi?

  Nice to meet you.

• 14:46Speaker 04

  Nice to meet you. I sell kitchens and bathrooms to residential homeowners. I would, our revenue is about 320, would like to be at 1 million. The problem we're having is we have a sister company that is commercial real estate development, that is taking the money from the construction. It's my father's interest to keep that, the real estate. I want to focus on the commercial or the construction.

• 15:15Alex Hormozi?

  Who founded this business?

• 15:16Speaker 04

  My father, both.

• 15:17Alex Hormozi?

  So you founded both of them? So it's a family business?

• 15:19Speaker 04

  Family.

• 15:20Alex Hormozi?

  Your father here?

• 15:21Speaker 04

  No.

• 15:21Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 15:24Alex Hormozi?

  All right.

• 15:26Speaker 04

  So I want to focus on the construction. We are partners with Home Depot for three of their stores. I was told try to like do more with Home Depot, get more stores. But we do have all those leaks in the real estate, like properties aren't selling, properties aren't being rented to the max. All these bills and they take the construction money. So I was

• 15:48Alex Hormozi?

  So you have one business that makes you money and another business that loses money?

• 15:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:52Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 15:53Speaker 04

  And we're kind of stuck in the

• 15:54Alex Hormozi?

  Are you stuck?

• 15:56Speaker 04

  It's like a fight with my dad.

• 15:58Alex Hormozi?

  Well, yeah.

• 15:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. So I tell him, relax, take a chill pill. Let's do the construction, but he's like, real estate is what makes you rich. And I'm like, no, that's like, you save and you invest with real estate, but that's not the business. And that's where we have different opinions. So that's where we're starting to plug in the holes and

• 16:20Alex Hormozi?

  I want to, I want to just give you this, which is that your father's logic is sound. The practicality of it tends to be different in reality. And so the vast majority, this is super, I would say it's more common than it's uncommon. Is that people who get into construction, they make some money and they're like, oh, I'll just start also doing construction and real estate. And then I'll start flipping things. And then all of a sudden they've got like four businesses that are kind of real estate adjacent. And they're like, well, it's actually an ecosystem. And you're like, oh God, anyways. Real quick, guys, I have a special, special gift for you for being loyal listeners of the podcast. Leila and I spent probably an entire quarter putting together our scaling roadmap. It's breaking scaling into 10 stages.

• 17:01Alex Hormozi?

  And across all eight functions of the business. So you've got marketing, you've got sales, you've got product, you've got customer success, you've got IT, you've got recruiting, you've got HR, you've got finance. And we show the problems that emerge at every level of scale and how to graduate to the next level. It's all free and you can get it personalized to you. So it's about 30 ish pages for each of the stages. Once you answer the questions, it will tell you exactly where you're at and what you need to do to grow. It's about 14 hours of stuff, but it's narrowed down so that you only have to watch the part that's relevant to you, which will probably be about 90 minutes. Um, and so if that's at all interesting, you can go to acquisition.com forward slash roadmap, R O A D map, roadmap.

• 17:41Alex Hormozi?

  So I think, let's say you're on stage here, what do you tell you?

• 17:47Speaker 04

  What was it?

• 17:47Alex Hormozi?

  What do you tell you?

• 17:48Speaker 04

  What do I tell me? I wanna focus on construction. I like to focus on one thing. I don't like doing multiple. And it just gets to the fight. Yeah.

• 18:01Alex Hormozi?

  You know what to do.

• 18:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:03Alex Hormozi?

  So I think you have, so, so let's get real for a second. So you have a question of what you wanna do in your life.

• 18:10Alex Hormozi?

  So you can continue to work in your father's business. So you have basically three paths. One is stomach it. I don't think your dad's gonna change his mind. How old is it?

• 18:20Speaker 04

  I'm waiting like five years for him to retire. He's fifty-six. Yeah. Cause he tells me, he's like, I'm gonna give you like five years. And then he tries pushing it like ten years.

• 18:29Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, I think it'll be five years away for the next like fifteen.

• 18:32Speaker 04

  And I tell him, I'm like, I'm gonna take over. It's me and my sister. And hopefully my husband comes back. Cause he kicked them out.

• 18:39Alex Hormozi?

  There you go.

• 18:41Speaker 04

  Like.

• 18:42Alex Hormozi?

  It's a whole family affair.

• 18:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 18:43Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. This is eating so juicy.

• 18:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 18:46Alex Hormozi?

  So this is one where there's high drama, very simple solutions. Sure. Other ones you have like no drama and very complex solutions. These are more fun.

• 18:53Speaker 04

  I tell him like, I'm gonna take over. You should focus on what I want. And it's kind of just like repeating that into him.

• 19:02Alex Hormozi?

  Wait for your dad to retire. In five years.

• 19:10Alex Hormozi?

  Know that it's not gonna be five years. Or

• 19:15Alex Hormozi?

  I'm leaving. That's what you start with.

• 19:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:20Alex Hormozi?

  And under these terms, I'll stay.

• 19:22Speaker 04

  I feel like I've done the third and that's why I'm here.

• 19:27Alex Hormozi?

  But do you believe that, but you just said he's moving them, he's pushing them back.

• 19:30Speaker 04

  We fight, but I tell him I'm the boss.

• 19:33Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 19:33Speaker 04

  It's very, and he listens, but it's a fight, like it's a fight. But.

• 19:37Alex Hormozi?

  Did you sign something?

• 19:39Speaker 04

  Sign what?

• 19:41Alex Hormozi?

  An agreement?

• 19:42Speaker 04

  No.

• 19:43Alex Hormozi?

  I put it in paper. And I know this sounds wild, cause it's like it's family. The thing is, is that. I don't think he's gonna take you seriously. You're his baby girl.

• 19:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:53Alex Hormozi?

  Right? And this is big, rough construction. They're gonna take advantage of you. You don't know as much. I've been doing this longer than you. Right? And you're like, and in the short time that I've done it, I've made more.

• 20:02Alex Hormozi?

  So my units of, you know, my income per unit time is actually way higher than yours is. You don't even say that. He'll hate you. So, but honestly, you have, you have life choices right now. The business decision is actually really easy. You know, the construction business is what you should be doing. Stick to the one that you have really good margins in. You have all these growth opportunities that are sitting in front of you. And you have, you're throwing good money after bad. Right? That's like a pretty standard thing that happens in the entrepreneurial journey. But you just have that choice to make. Now, if you're like, well, I already did three, it's like, then you didn't do it right. And so fundamentally, he doesn't believe you. Now, there is a world where he will just never relinquish power. And then you've got to figure out what you want to do with your life.

• 20:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. I'm gonna hope for three and then we'll see what happens.

• 20:47Alex Hormozi?

  But you have to, he's gotta take it seriously though. So here's how I would do it. This is how I do it. I want to buy the business from you. Because you saying, wait until you retire. It's like, what am I gonna do with my time? And like, I, you know, I gotta do something, blah, blah, blah. Right? So it's like, I'm gonna buy the business from you. Effective today. And I will pay you over the next five years. Then you have a clear date. Or three years, whatever. And then you work essentially for free. And then you take the profit that you would, you know, you agree on a price and you start paying it. Like you have to have an agreement and you have to send, money has to change hands. Either way, he's gonna have to change hands, otherwise you're gonna have a tax event regardless. When he gives you a business. So you might as well do it now. You talk to the estate attorney. Right? Like, there's a way to do this in a tax efficient manner.

• 21:30Alex Hormozi?

  But if he is gonna transition the business to you, which I'm sure he does want to do. Then we need to put a clock on it. We need to start making payments towards it. That's how three actually works. If it's just like, hey, I'm the boss now. It's like, you're just gonna keep doing this loop for the next 20 years.

• 21:44Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 21:45Alex Hormozi?

  And you seem like a very kind person. And so I need you to put your, take your teeth out a little bit.

• 21:50Speaker 04

  That's what my sister is.

• 21:51Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 21:51Speaker 04

  She's a mean one and I'm like.

• 21:53Alex Hormozi?

  Is she here?

• 21:54Speaker 04

  No, she's not. So the deal I made with him, when I wanted to come here was to invest in the construction. And he said, okay, you go, you pay for it. If it works, I'll give you your money back. So that's what I hope to be like, okay, I mean, if I say you can do this. Yeah, I don't want to do the real estate. Yeah.

• 22:14Alex Hormozi?

  But this is it. There's not, there's really no more to, to go over on this one.

• 22:17Speaker 04

  So do the paperwork. This is the deal.

• 22:19Alex Hormozi?

  Agree on a price and then agree on the terms and then start the car.

• 22:22Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 22:23Alex Hormozi?

  And if he says no, then you'll actually be able to say, this is like, I'll give you a totally different example. Girl dates guy, guy promises to marry girl, girl asks for engagement ring. He says, I'll give you a promise ring.

• 22:36Alex Hormozi?

  Wait, when are we getting married? Don't worry, I gotta close up some things at work first. Two years pass. When are we getting married? He's never gonna marry you. And so you just have to like, you have to, there's a decision that has to get made. And so, and if you want to use this quote, you can, which is, decision comes from the Latin root of decedere, which means to cut off, which means that we have to cut off one of these paths. Otherwise you haven't made a decision. I define commitment as the elimination of alternatives. Right now you have three alternatives. You have to eliminate two.

• 23:09Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 23:10Alex Hormozi?

  Cool?

• 23:10Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 23:17Speaker 05

  Hey Alex.

• 23:18Alex Hormozi?

  Hello, sir.

• 23:18Speaker 05

  My name is Adam Howard. We sell health insurance, life insurance, retirement planning to middle income Americans. We currently have about four million in top line, want to be about 10 million here. I think we can do it in two years. Our constraint is we've got two locations, brick and mortar. We have a DMA about 90 miles from our, you know, brick and mortar. We're at max capacity at this point. And so we need to, you know, we're looking to bring another location out outside of this DMA, right? And so how do we efficiently, as we're thinking through the strategy, find good talent that we can eventually groom into leadership to lead that office? And then do so cash flowing as quickly as we can, because one of the challenges is taking somebody from unlicensed to licensed to learning the business,

• 24:03Speaker 05

  to we have a six month sales cycle as it is, once we start marketing. How do we do that as efficiently as possible?

• 24:11Alex Hormozi?

  What stops you from taking one person from your current locations and giving them the opportunity to own a small chunk of that one?

• 24:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, we, we've, we've thought about doing that. And then the thought process is there where we kind of disrupt the flow of that existing office.

• 24:25Alex Hormozi?

  How many guys are in each office?

• 24:26Speaker 05

  They're small. So our, our, our west, west office is two people and then we've got five in our, in our home office.

• 24:32Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 24:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:33Alex Hormozi?

  You think you can take one of the five?

• 24:34Speaker 05

  No, not, no, I don't. I don't think so.

• 24:37Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. Well, which problem would you rather have? So either you can take your five location and bring it down to four and then backfill within that location that's already cash flowing positive, has the culture there and bring somebody else in. Or do you think it will be harder to get somebody who's brand new, not surrounded by anyone to get up to speed?

• 25:00Speaker 05

  It's a great question. I don't know without testing it. And I know that, you know, both have risks and, you know, you know, we might.

• 25:05Alex Hormozi?

  You're only intentionally said.

• 25:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. So I'm always thinking about how do we mitigate the risk and how do we?

• 25:10Alex Hormozi?

  So I'm, I'm, I'm leading you where I, where I, I think that it is lower risk to take one of the five and bring them over to the other location and have them seed that with all the values and the culture that you know, they already know how to run the business. And so now you only have one new variable, which is the location. You know, the guy's good. You know, he's going to do your values and then you can spin that location up. And then the location that you have that is your mothership, it can take a little bit of a dip, right? If it needs to, because it can weather that you've got cash flow, you've got existing contracts, you've got premiums that are coming in. If you do new guy, new location, everything's new and you're not sure, is it the market that's bad? Is it this guy who's bad? Maybe he's good, but he's not a culture fit. But now I gotta turn the whole location over because he ends up hiring two other people

• 25:54Alex Hormozi?

  underneath him that also aren't culture fits. So like to me, it's, it's, it's a pretty straight, like, I think the risk on going from five to four, taking the, one of the best guys, give him the opportunity for his career to advance, which also paints a picture for everyone else in the organization that, hey, you do a great job, you might be able to have your own office that you can leave. I think that's a really good story and you're in the talent business. It's hard to find good guys.

• 26:19Speaker 05

  Right, for sure.

• 26:20Alex Hormozi?

  I own insurance companies, I, I get it.

• 26:23Speaker 05

  Question for you to follow up on that then. So to efficiently scale that quicker and continue to duplicate that then, you know, we thought about that as, as, as a model for it. So then, but it's kind of slower. We gotta build this up, find a guy from here and then move them here, right? Guy or gal from here. Or how do we eventually cross state lines and I'll find somebody that's two states over, you know, and you got somebody that's like, I don't want to move two states over. Maybe they do because the, the upside's so good, you know?

• 26:47Alex Hormozi?

  So opportunity.

• 26:49Speaker 05

  Creating a good enough opportunity.

• 26:50Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 26:50Speaker 05

  And this is career path.

• 26:51Alex Hormozi?

  I think it's actually really good for the business. Cause people do eventually they build a big enough book a bit, you know, I'm thinking about hanging my own shingle. It's like, cool. Let me just take care of that for you. Hang your own shingle, but under our bigger flag and you get all of our systems, all of our infrastructure, our, our support, our lead generation, everything that's in that area will just immediately send to you. You'll hit the ground running.

• 27:10Speaker 05

  So from initial onboarding, having a good process that's thought out in, you know, from A to Z. Hey, if you get to this point, this is an opportunity.

• 27:16Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. And I think that paints a really compelling picture.

• 27:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:19Alex Hormozi?

  That's what I would do. I also would just, this is for everybody. A lot of the problems that you have are based on timeline. Which is just like an arbitrary line in the sand that is like, I must get to this point by this, you know, by this date, which is basically irrelevant, just made up. And so I think at the end of the day, if you thought, well, what would it take to make this, you know, insurance company, one of the biggest in the, in the U S in 20 years? You probably grow very strategically off of this culture that has worked really, really well and trying to seed each location with the best, best seeds from the ones before. So you just keep those values kind of all the way throughout. So I think that's the much lower risk path.

• 27:57Speaker 05

  Appreciate it. Thank you.

• 27:58Alex Hormozi?

  A hundred percent.

• 28:04Speaker 06

  Hi again.

• 28:05Alex Hormozi?

  Yes.

• 28:05Speaker 06

  My name is.

• 28:06Alex Hormozi?

  Seller, Ukraine, number one seller in all Ukraine spends lots of money on ads. You've gone to Poland. And you haven't been able to get the market to convert. We talked last night. Should you take the words, look at the cultural differences on chat G P T, translate your existing marketing copy back into the Polish cultural norms so that the right language is used so that it converts there. What's the question?

• 28:26Speaker 06

  Wow. You have, you have A I here already, Neuralink, something like this. I prepare a little bit different question. Thank you. Thank you. I promise that you don't remember me and we sell crypto education to a wide audience and mostly who want to meet their basic needs. So there are no specific audience. We make over one million in revenue. We operate in Ukraine and are watching in other countries. I want to reach 10 million. I more or less understand how by expanding to new markets. And we run cold traffic from Meta, Google, influencers, Telegram and etc. Through funnels.

• 29:07Speaker 06

  And one auto webinar funnel had generated over 20 million dollars and still working. And we tested VSL. We put same content like in our auto webinar, but shorter and without comments activities. We tested advert or also we tested lead magnets funnels and nothing works as well as auto webinar funnel.

• 29:29Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 29:29Speaker 06

  That's where the magic happens. Where we are creating new auto webinar funnels and testing new topics, even new faces within these funnels. And I want to reach the audience that doesn't attend webinars. And my big question is how to find best practices? And what else could hypothetically work? And I'm reading your book about offers right now. And it inspired me to build funnels for specific high paying segments instead of just wide audience. And I'd like to ask you your opinion about this and is it the right way that I think right now?

• 30:10Alex Hormozi?

  So are you doing a million dollars a year or because I remember the 20?

• 30:15Speaker 06

  Million dollars, more over a million dollars per month.

• 30:18Alex Hormozi?

  Per month, okay, okay, that makes me feel better. Okay, because you're like, we're the biggest in Ukraine. I'm like, million bucks a year, I don't think so.

• 30:23Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 30:24Alex Hormozi?

  Maybe in crypto at, you know, maybe at 12 in Ukraine. I don't know. I don't know what the proportional GDP is there. And I know there's war and all sorts of stuff, so I'm sure it's tough over there. Okay, so if the goal is to get bigger, either, I mean, the simplest thing to do would just be to add an upsell to the existing Ukraine market. That would be the simplest thing to do, highest likelihood impact. That would just make you more money. That's the, that is for sure the easiest money button. If you wanted to expand front ends, then I think the idea of like trying to hit the people who are not on Google and Meta is not the framework that I would use. And the reason for that is one, everyone's on it. Secondarily, the people who aren't on it probably aren't buying crypto. Like if you're not on Google,

• 31:10Alex Hormozi?

  you're probably not buying crypto. You're not on Web 2. Web 3 is going to be like, what is going on? And so I think that like the first thing I do is probably add the Ascension path. That'd be like thing one. And then in terms of expanding into new markets, it was kind of what we talked about last night, which is I think that the marketing that you're doing is just simply not resonating in these other markets because it's not your first language. And so, marketing is so nuanced in terms of how copy is written, how like what analogies are persuasive, what visuals resonate within a given, a given audience, that that's in my opinion, what the, the highest likelihood gap is for why it's not converting in these new markets.

• 31:45Speaker 06

  Yes, I understood. We do upsells. We have continuity. We have high ticket products inside and we, I think, do everything. The main point is what, hmm, what the best practices in funnels can work with us. Maybe I don't understand clearly about Google. Yeah, Google banned us every day and we can't work with our crypto. We had not a crypto project. We are not some, but it's not.

• 32:11Alex Hormozi?

  Well, everything crypto related, there's a lot of.

• 32:14Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 32:14Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. So, I mean fundamentally, the business as it is today is just going to be a cash business. It's not going to be something that has enterprise value. And so you're, you're running a basic arbitrage business, which is just I buy media for a buck. I make eight dollars on gated media and I just run that as much as I can. And so really the only, the only way to grow that business is to just market more, spend more. That's it. And the only way that you can do that is that you continue to increase LTV. And so you're going to reach a natural cap based on the amount that you make per customer and the cost of eyeballs. And then over time, that gap is going to shrink and your margins are going to compress, which is why like right now you have, when I remember I did company one, company two yesterday, I walked across here and I said,

• 32:59Alex Hormozi?

  you're, you're company one. You're a marketing machine and you're, you know, blowing tons of cash flow in the door and that's a good thing. I call this a smash and grab opportunity. It's unlikely that it becomes something that has like sustainable long-term enterprise value. When I say long-term, you're like 10 years, like you can for sure run this for more years than now, but it's just going to be a more thing. Like how do we spend more money and how do we make better ads? But if you have converting. Language, if you like auto webinars, whatever is converting really well for you, then there's lots of little things. So, which is probably out of the scope of what I could answer in a verbal Q and A. But it's like, have we split test the first thirty seconds of the VSL with three or five, you know, three to five different hooks? You know, on the ad side, like how many new pieces of creative are we putting out a day?

• 33:41Alex Hormozi?

  I don't know how many you're putting out, but like, if you get up to, it's basically about fifty, fifty pieces of creative per ten thousand dollars per day.

• 33:50Speaker 06

  Yes, five increases per hundred, hundreds per month.

• 33:53Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, so that would be from a creative perspective. So it would really just be looking at every step of it and just looking against the checklist. Basically like, like all we're gonna be doing with that business is just improving it. There's not gonna be a big order of magnitude change that's going to happen. It's just gonna be a hundred small things. Cause it's already profitable. You already have a client acquisition system. So it's just like, how do we go from eight to one to twelve to one? So that we can then double ad spend and be at eight to one again, but at twice the spend. And that's literally the process. You just do that over and over again.

• 34:21Speaker 06

  Got it. Thank you so much.

• 34:22Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, you bet.

• 34:28Speaker 00

  Hi Alex.

• 34:28Alex Hormozi?

  Hello.

• 34:29Speaker 00

  My name is Nico. I'm from Quebec also. There was another guy from Quebec too, my friend. So, yeah, we help home service businesses stuck between a hundred K and their first million a year to reach their first million a year with a three-step client acquisition formula called TNT. But before that, for five years, we were a WAS, so website as a service. We sold two point one million over the last year and net profit is like nine fifty K. We would like to reach five hundred K a month collected for Quebec market and have less complexity. Okay, situation here. So we have like seven hundred active client on the whole old system, which was a WAS. Two hundred dollar a month thing. It was super cool, but super frustrating. The team was started, started to feel like robots.

• 35:13Speaker 00

  So we got emotional and we're like, okay, let's move to high ticket. So that's what happened four months ago. We started high ticket. We're like, woo, cash flow is here now. But the thing is, I realized yesterday actually that my LTV to CAC is now very low. Because my clients are home service businesses. I'm in Quebec. We can only run ads for like four months for them because there's, there's snow everywhere for like seven, six, seven months a year. The other thing is once the ads work, they stop the ads. Because they are limited by capacity. So what's stopping me to grow?

• 35:47Alex Hormozi?

  What do you want to do with this business?

• 35:49Speaker 00

  What we want to do actually is, well. You wanna.

• 35:52Alex Hormozi?

  Cause the first business sounded like a great business.

• 35:55Speaker 00

  Right. I know. The thing is, we wanted to create a real transformation. And I think that was.

• 36:03Alex Hormozi?

  Can I tell you a secret?

• 36:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:06Alex Hormozi?

  Very small business owners. Will never build. A. Stable business because they are not stable.

• 36:13Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 36:14Alex Hormozi?

  So it's nothing to do with you.

• 36:16Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 36:16Alex Hormozi?

  And this took me a very long time to figure out and I kept trying to bang my head against the wall being like, how do I fix churn? How do I fix retention? Like Shopify. Has best in class retention for V S N B. So very small business owners, prosumers, if you will. And they keep fifty percent per year.

• 36:31Speaker 00

  Right.

• 36:31Alex Hormozi?

  That's best in class, hundred billion dollar company. And so I have only seen one model work with small business owners. And it's ultra low priced. And you build the entire business around. Having high gross margins but low prices.

• 36:45Speaker 00

  Right. So the West.

• 36:47Alex Hormozi?

  Yes.

• 36:47Speaker 00

  That was the good thing because I feel like I'm trying to push a high.

• 36:50Alex Hormozi?

  Only thing that happened is you just got impatient.

• 36:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:52Alex Hormozi?

  You had seven hundred customers, making two hundred dollars a month, you're making one for you a month.

• 36:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:55Alex Hormozi?

  Probably good margins.

• 36:56Speaker 00

  Yeah. It was nice.

• 36:59Alex Hormozi?

  And you're running a lot. Right. And so I think honestly, like. You know, the best thing that would have happened would have been that you didn't take the last four months and build this other thing. And you would have just kept doubling down and taken all that extra energy and said. What were you doing in sales per month with the W A? I just like saying W A.

• 37:13Speaker 00

  The West were onboarding like. Forty to fifty new clients a month.

• 37:17Alex Hormozi?

  What's churn?

• 37:18Speaker 00

  Was, we were keeping like. Eighty five percent of people year after year.

• 37:24Alex Hormozi?

  Good business.

• 37:25Speaker 00

  Right. The thing is.

• 37:26Alex Hormozi?

  Super high gross margins.

• 37:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:27Alex Hormozi?

  Eighty five percent annual revenue retention.

• 37:29Speaker 00

  When we started high ticket, we're like, whoa, cash flow is insane now, like on month one. But then maybe not later.

• 37:37Alex Hormozi?

  Well, you're certainly not making transformations now. They leave in four months.

• 37:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:40Alex Hormozi?

  So here's, okay, so. Instead of thinking about transformations, just think. So Elon has this really good framework on this. He said, either we can have a very small amount of people, a ton. Or we can help a lot of people a little bit. And he's taken the perspective to helping a lot of people a little bit. And so. I think with this business, like they have demonstrated with their dollars that they value what you give them. They don't cancel it. They like it. When you give them the other thing, you think you're selling, you're selling out of your own wallet. You're saying, I wouldn't want this. I would want this. And then you're saying, they're not like me. Duh.

• 38:17Speaker 00

  And we can still like sell the high ticket to the nuggets in the West. Yeah, that would get it there.

• 38:23Alex Hormozi?

  You know what would be even cooler? We're not doing that.

• 38:25Speaker 00

  Okay, not even?

• 38:27Alex Hormozi?

  No, like, hear me out. So, so, no, this is, this is like, I will, I will keep the entertainment for, for entertainment purposes, but I want you to, I want you to really think about this. So, okay.

• 38:43Alex Hormozi?

  There is going to be, I didn't explain one of these other frameworks, but Crash Course. So with every one of the implementations that you do, you have limited resources, time, effort, money, right? And so strategy is prioritization. It means how do we take these limited resources and allocate them against unlimited options? And so if you're not sure, it's because you're not doing the job of the entrepreneur. There is always only one thing that is the most important in the business. And if you can't decide, that's on you. And so you have the stuff, you've got your team, you've got your money, whatever. And so instead of being like, man, we should start this Ascension thing, because you probably have really good L2B to CAC on this other business, the WASP business.

• 39:19Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah, this one, yeah.

• 39:20Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, right. And so instead of saying, hey, let's start this whole other business, right? Because it's a totally different service, totally different price point, whatever, right? Just say like, what if we took all of that energy of starting this other business? And just said, how do we get to 200 customers a month?

• 39:37Speaker 00

  True.

• 39:38Alex Hormozi?

  That would quadruple the business.

• 39:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:40Alex Hormozi?

  And if you did that, you'd be at 500,000 a month in six months.

• 39:42Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 39:43Alex Hormozi?

  And it would be really good 500,000 a month.

• 39:46Speaker 00

  Amazing. That helps.

• 39:48Alex Hormozi?

  Cool.

• 39:49Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 39:49Alex Hormozi?

  No, you bet.

• 39:55Alex Hormozi?

  My name is Cole, so I sell solar. I'm like a marketing company for solar providers in California. So we sell to homeowners. I'm currently, we opened up last April and I did 850,000 dollars last year. So I want to be at 10 million dollars.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  The biggest, I know, I know. The biggest concern that I have.

• 40:16Alex Hormozi?

  Yesterday.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  Yesterday, yeah. I think that our, my biggest concern right now is that I think we have a very much of an apples to apples comparison to other solar companies. I don't think our offer is actually that special in terms of like, you know, relatively speaking.

• 40:28Alex Hormozi?

  Commodity.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And so I've been trying to find ways to create an apples to oranges comparison. Our sales are, it's like me and my business partner, we're very good at sales. We have like a, you know, we did door to door for like decades. So, you know, we're like 80% close rates. Um, but it's a battle, right? And we, and we do lose people to price shopping, which is, you know, we're a hundred percent virtual. So I'm trying to figure out how to create an apples to orange comparison in the solar industry, which is very much a commodity market.

• 40:56Alex Hormozi?

  But you don't have control over the product, right?

• 40:58Speaker 02

  That's correct. Yeah.

• 41:00Alex Hormozi?

  I'll, I'll be honest, it's very tough. Like you can't, you actually can't really change your offer, right? And so the only thing that you can do is change the terms, but it's a zero sum game. So every dollar you take out of your pocket, you put it into, you know, the cut, like every dollar you give the customer, you're taking out of your pocket because you, you can't control the variables, right?

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:19Alex Hormozi?

  So what were the margins that you made on the 800?

• 41:22Speaker 02

  We made half of that.

• 41:23Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:23Alex Hormozi?

  So I'll say this.

• 41:26Alex Hormozi?

  I don't think the constraint of the business is that it's commoditized.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 41:30Alex Hormozi?

  So although it may be frustrating, you're running 50% margins on a business that you have very little operational complexity around. And so if you want to hit 10 million, you absolutely could hit 10 million. There's tons of solar companies that go from zero to 10, zero to 20 in like 12 months, 24 months. Not that uncommon.

• 41:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:44Alex Hormozi?

  But the business that you're really in is the recruiting, hiring, training of salespeople business. And that's, that's the game, right? The business is not super sellable. You know, I mean, it is sellable, like you can sell like one times and then you can basically meld your team into some other guy's distribution base and it all gets aggregated.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:01Alex Hormozi?

  And that's kind of how that industry is going. But I don't like, basically you don't have enough control over the business to really materially change the offer.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:12Alex Hormozi?

  And so I don't normally say that, but essentially, and like this is probably not taken as a slight. It's just like you're hired gun, you know what I mean? And so you've got two hired guns and you guys are both really, you're mercenaries. You're both really good at, at sales and you're making basically the same amount that a top tier sales guy would at, at a sales org. And so the only leverage that you're going to get is training, your ability to train onboard recruit, other guys who can do the same thing as you and you get an override on, on their commissions.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:36Alex Hormozi?

  And so if anything, I would say that, so we're getting to the answer. So basically where you can have a competitive advantage is not on the customer side, but on the salesman side. And so I would reorient all my attention to being like, how can I make the best offer to salespeople? How can I get more salespeople onboarded? How can I have superior training? How can I have better data and analytics and better lead gen for them so that their job of selling is made easiest with me for everything else minus the core offer?

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, my, my vision long-term is with solar, especially in California, it's, it's a savings oriented sale. So it's like your bill is this, you're going to pay less money, et cetera.

• 43:18Alex Hormozi?

  As long as the credits are there.

• 43:19Speaker 02

  What's up?

• 43:19Alex Hormozi?

  As long as the credits are there.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  Which is also a problem, but uh, so.

• 43:23Alex Hormozi?

  Soon.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, real.

• 43:25Alex Hormozi?

  My, I divested from the solar company.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  Was that you?

• 43:27Alex Hormozi?

  I divested from the solar.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  Oh, did you really?

• 43:29Alex Hormozi?

  Or this exact issue.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. My ultimate vision, what I, what I'm kind of been obsessed with is instead of selling on savings, I would way rather find a way to add services on top of that, where it's like, you know, some sort of HVAC, aerosol thing, or you know, the tax services with depreciation losses.

• 43:47Alex Hormozi?

  Dude, I'd rather you just like you, so let's say, so when we're going zooming all the way out strategy stuff.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:53Alex Hormozi?

  What you have is an ability to sell.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 43:55Alex Hormozi?

  And you know how to generate leads.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:57Alex Hormozi?

  And if tomorrow you said, I'm not selling solar, you'd have to fill out the, you know, the next 180 days max of contracts and make sure that the shit gets installed, whatever, right?

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 44:06Alex Hormozi?

  Then for that, you could do whatever you want, right? How many employees do you have?

• 44:10Speaker 02

  We have four.

• 44:11Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, so it's not, I mean, it's you, your partner and two other people?

• 44:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:14Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Or no, three of them.

• 44:15Alex Hormozi?

  Three, okay.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:17Alex Hormozi?

  So I think that it just might be, you might be better served. And I don't normally give this kind of advice, but like you might just be better served taking that skillset and putting it in a different opportunity.

• 44:27Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 44:28Alex Hormozi?

  And just like you were like, how do I do this solar thing with HVAC? It's like, just do HVAC. Just go to, to sell HVAC and HVAC has phenomenal multiples and has great revenue retention. Once people do the HVAC, the person comes back every year, services again, upsells more stuff. Cool. And there's problems in that business, getting HVAC, you know, people, the fixers, the technicians. Yeah. Is the constraint of that business. Usually getting customers is actually not the constraint. So it might be kind of fun for you to be like, oh, my phone's ringing. This is weird. People are calling me because their AC is broken. Not like, hey, can you sell me solar? Like, no one does that. Yeah, sure. Right? And so I think like, if the goal long term is to build something that has pure enterprise value, given the fact that you have so little control over the existing process, you're basically just an acquisition machine.

• 45:09Alex Hormozi?

  To our respect, I came from that in the gym world, then recombine it into a business model that actually has enterprise value. Yeah, cool. Probably not way effective, but. I don't know. Thank you. Sure.

• 45:22Alex Hormozi?

  Sweet.

• 45:24Alex Hormozi?

  Was that helpful? Was that cool? Interesting? All right. Good.