The Secrets Of A $100m Business - Alex & Leila Hormozi

Alex and Leila Hormozi are founders of Acquisition.com, entrepreneurs, podcasters and authors. The last 18 months has seen Alex & Leila burst onto the business advice scene like pretty much no one else. Alex's book has been one of the wildest successes of the last decade and yet they made $100m before having any social media presence. Getting to dig into their philosophies around life, business, dating and productivity makes for a very interesting story. Expect to learn what drives you to keep going once you're worth $100m, why Alex refuses to rely on a daily routine, Leila's most important tasks to outsource in your life and business, whether Grant Cardone is a hero or a villain, how to avoid getting distracted by good opportunities, whether they want to have kids, how to avoid becoming bros with your business partner wife and much more... Sponsors: Join the Modern Wisdom Community to connect with me & other listeners - https://modernwisdom.locals.com/ Get a 30 day free Trial from The Economist at https://economist.com/wisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 10% discount on your first month from BetterHelp at https://betterhelp.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and Free Shipping from Athletic Greens at https://athleticgreens.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Extra Stuff: Buy $100m Offers - https://amzn.to/3mUUTCc Follow Leila on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/leilanhormozi/ Follow Alex on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/hormozi/ Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #business #marriage #money - 00:00 Intro 00:24 Beginners Undervalue ‘Doing’ 08:10 Impact of Having Siblings 13:14 Motivation After Achieving $100M 22:10 Importance of Creating Content 29:09 Creating Healthy Structure 36:29 Practical Ways to Stay Focused 41:09 How to Begin Outsourcing 48:28 Using Insight & Instinct to Make Decisions 53:15 When Alex Lost Everything 1:02:30 Keeping a Relationship Fresh 1:11:17 Cultivating a Good Life 1:16:28 Working with Brad Cardone 1:22:28 The Price for Success 1:27:15 Where to Find Alex & Leila - Join the Modern Wisdom Community on Locals - https://modernwisdom.locals.com/ Listen to all episodes on audio: Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  It doesn't take time to make decisions. It takes information to make decisions. And if you have the information to make the decision, then you should make it. And so a lot of people will belabor a decision when they are not gaining more information to make it. Time is not a requirement of decision making like information is.

• 0:17Chris Williamson?

  Worth a hundred million bucks and sharing a set of headphones to get the podcast.

• 0:21Speaker 00

  Bro, geez, just like middle school.

• 0:24Chris Williamson?

  I saw a tweet from you not long ago that said, beginners overvalue thinking and undervalue doing. Advanced people do the opposite. What's that mean?

• 0:32Speaker 00

  So I think a lot of times beginner, so the way most people took that as, is, was a, everybody should be like advanced people and execute. That's what, that's what people thought I meant by that quote, because I could just see that from the comments, which was not what I meant. What I meant by that is in the beginning, most people overthink everything and they try and find like the perfect path. They try and say like, oh, this is going to be the perfect business model or like, I want to nail my niche perfectly and get my everything done before they start. When in reality, like all you need to do is just sell shit to someone to get going. And so they overvalue the thinking and undervalue the doing. So it's really just productive procrastination for most people in the beginning. Whereas advanced people, they've gotten the habit of doing things, right? And so they, so what happens is the doing becomes compulsive.

• 1:17Speaker 00

  So they're just doing and doing and doing and doing, and they feel like activity is progress because in the beginning, activity was progress. But as it gets bigger and the amount of work that is required to be done gets bigger, you need to be more strategic in what work you're choosing to do and how you're choosing to make sure work, ensure work gets done. And so the whole thing flips where as you become more advanced, it's more about what chess piece am I going to move rather than even beginning the game. And so that was kind of the dichotomy or the flip between beginner to advanced. And I think there's a lot of those complete flips that happen in business, which is why the entrepreneurial journey is a, is a cool, interesting and fun one.

• 1:54Chris Williamson?

  The way that I see it, a lot of entrepreneurial journeys are kind of like an hourglass. So you start off at the bottom with a big wide set of doing things and then you narrow in. And that's when you don't have any time to do anything anymore. You're constantly doing everything and then you widen back out again to be this person who thinks about everything. But you're right, if you're not able to relinquish control and believe that the tools that got you here are going to be the ones that are going to get you there, you're going to start bouncing off the ceiling of your own capacity. No matter how leveraged you are and your productivity systems, everybody only has 24 hours in the day, right?

• 2:25Speaker 00

  Yep, a hundred percent.

• 2:28Chris Williamson?

  Do you want to switch to that, Alex?

• 2:29Speaker 00

  No, no, you're good, you're good. I'm just gonna put this in so it doesn't, doesn't fall out.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  Mine's fine.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  No, my ear just, I've never had like good earphone ears. Like this thing's, this isn't falling out, we're good.

• 2:43Chris Williamson?

  Right, so you're using a set of AirPod Pro Max to hold in an earbud.

• 2:48Speaker 00

  Now I feel great, now I'm, now I'm ready.

• 2:51Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  He's probably doing it so he doesn't hear me, that's actually why.

• 2:54Chris Williamson?

  Nice.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  It does feel more peaceful.

• 2:59Chris Williamson?

  What are some of the things that you struggled to let go of when it came to flipping from doing to thinking?

• 3:08Speaker 00

  It's usually the things that you're best at, you know what I mean? I mean, in the beginning, it's obsession that everything has to be done a certain way, rather than certain outcomes need to happen and they can be done. Everybody has different flavors and different styles of working. And, you know, in the beginning, you just think, everything has to be your way because to be fair, everything that was your way worked, because that's where you are where you are. But realizing that some things can be done differently and still achieve as good of a result, and oftentimes better, is something, it's a belief that has to get broken for most entrepreneurs. And then it's easier to break them in fields that they are not experts in. And then it becomes more difficult to break it in fields that they are experts in. So it's like easier for me to give up finance, HR, you know, maybe even customer support, customer success, those are things that I might not have been as good at.

• 3:51Speaker 00

  But like product, marketing and sales might be things that I feel, you know, much stronger in. And so I'd be more particular, more, more likely to want to micromanage or, you know, keep control. But usually it's that control that ends up, you relinquish your freedom when you, you can't have both control and freedom.

• 4:06Chris Williamson?

  What about you, Leila? What did you struggle relinquishing as stuff grew?

• 4:11Speaker 02

  You know, I think I had as hard of a time with not knowing everything that was happening in the business. Because like in the beginning, Alex had to let go. I think Alex had to let go of more control in the beginning and I had to actually take more control in the beginning. Because by the nature of how we start the businesses, it's usually like... I'm going to have most people report to me. And so then at the point where he has, you know, me and one other person that he's talking most time and I have the eight and I feel like I'm providing transparency to Alex and to, you know, anyone else that's asking about the business and then I have to let go of that transparency. So I think it was relinquishing control of honestly being the internal, I want to say like feeling like the internal leader almost. And so I, it gave me a self of sense of self-importance that I didn't realize would be that hard to give up.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  And so when we decided that we're going to sell GymLaunch, I remember the feeling of not leading the monthly team meetings and not leading the quarterlies and not doing the leadership training and not doing the management training and feeling this like immense sense of loss. And like I realized that I didn't gain my self-importance from like being forward-facing. Like everyone's like, oh, don't you want to be forward-facing like Alex? It's like, oh, I don't need that. I don't need recognition from others, but I didn't realize I was getting it from the team the whole time. That's where I was getting my sense of self-importance and from recognition.

• 5:25Chris Williamson?

  You're not immune to it. You've just got a different flavor of it.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. So it was like, once people started saying, hey, and you know, this is a good thing. But I had to train myself to understand that when they were like Maggie, Kale, Dave, Ed, you guys are amazing leaders, this and that. And when they started saying like, hey, it's actually really great that you guys are like letting go and it's been so much better with them stepping in. I'll never forget, there was a phone call where I sat with one of the leaders and I said like, hey, how's it going? You know, we're stepping back more, you know, obviously we're close towards the end of the sale. Like, is there anywhere I can support you, anywhere that I can add clarity? Is there anything that you think I should know about? Those are kind of the questions I asked. And he was like, Leila, can I be real with you? And I was like, yeah. And he was like, honestly, it's like a way better with you guys out. I was like, and it was like knife. And then I was like, oh, no, no, this is good. This is good, right?

• 6:12Speaker 02

  But like my immediate like, you know, human instinct was just like loss and like, you know, just feeling terrible.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  Worthlessness and unneeded.

• 6:20Speaker 02

  He's like, no, honestly, he's like, because you guys are just so, you know, intense. And so it's just better. We've all been able to be more creative, be more innovative, really like step into our roles now that you guys aren't so involved. And hearing that was like fantastic for where we're at and like logistically speaking, like I was like, this is right on track. This is amazing. Like it made me super proud of like Kayla and Maggie and everyone else that stepped up. At the same time, it was kind of like the, the, you know, the, the final knife where you're like, dang, like I really did have a lot of self importance there. And so for me, it was just letting go of that and letting go of being what I want to say is like the rock to everybody in the company, like being the person that everyone confided in, everyone went to and they were having a hard time. Not being that person anymore was really hard for me.

• 7:01Speaker 00

  And just to piggyback on it, I think we, like, I would say both of us get the same fulfillment of being the person that people can bring complex problems to and be like, ooh, cool, let's, let's solve this together.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  They're just different problems.

• 7:13Speaker 00

  Right. And so the thing is, is that when you really want the company to run on its own, you can't be that person, right? And that's really hard. That's really if you're just trying to transition out from CEO to really like owner shareholder. And you don't necessarily need to do that, but that was the transition we're trying to make to make the business sellable. And being able to, you know, look at someone who's like really in help, in, in need of help and just saying like, you're gonna have to figure it out.

• 7:37Chris Williamson?

  Well, remember as well, it'll make you guys feel needed and wanted and a part of the organization. And it's like letting someone, I don't know, you've taught your son to ride a bike for the last five years and then finally he goes off to his first bicycle riding class and you watch the teacher doing the thing that you were doing and you're like, well, no, that was, that was my job. That was what I did. I, I just want to be needed again. But I mean, Ferris has this, is it in the four hour work week where he talks about the more that he extracted himself out of a business, the better that the businesses did?

• 8:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Alex, we're both only children. Have you reflected on what impact having no siblings has had longer term?

• 8:21Speaker 00

  Not really, honestly. I actually have, I don't give it any thought. Like it's not a thought that I, I give. I also had step siblings from, for all of high school. So I had like, there were other kind of kids in the house, you know, per se, we were obviously high schoolers, not, you know, lower than that. So there was that element, but I've never given it any thought.

• 8:42Chris Williamson?

  I just find it interesting. I've got some friends that aren't, some friends that aren't. I always wonder what. There has to be a difference in socialization. There has to be a degree of difference. You know, real formative years, things before you can even remember them, that change and shape the way that you see the world, that you interact with people. Maybe you view social situations in a more deconstructed way. At least, that's something I see as a common theme amongst some of the only children that I'm friends with.

• 9:09Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 9:12Chris Williamson?

  What about you, Leila? How would you say, are there any echoes from sort of your childhood that you see when it comes to the way that you operate as an adult? Certainly for me, I'm always on the outside looking in a little bit. That was kind of a typical dynamic that I saw when I was a kid, and that's definitely one that I see reflected. Now, or maybe that's just my bias. Maybe that's just the framing through which I put everything for the world, but...

• 9:35Speaker 02

  You know, I think I used to look through that frame a lot more. I don't really anymore. I think I kind of like thought about it enough that just my brain moved on. But I think, you know, I was the youngest. I had an older sister, and then I had a lot of step siblings, and I was still the youngest. I mean, I'm sure that I'm probably more receptive to authority than Alex, if I were to say like one difference. Like, I'm okay with people being like, like, you know, I think there's a reason that Alex is more of the visionary and I'm more of the integrator. Like, I'm, that's just like what I'm good at. It's also what I enjoy doing a lot. I would say that, you know, the really, the things that are more impactful probably weren't like siblings. Probably like being more autonomous in terms of like how I probably raised myself for like some of my more formative years, just because of the nature of kind of how my family structure was.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  So I think that contributed a lot because I have a lot of self-trust and independence, I want to say.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  But that's, I mean, that's how I would say it formed me. I guess what I would never say is that I don't think that it is an excuse for people who are dysfunctional adults to say, "Well, my childhood X." I'm like, "Well, you're a functioning adult now. You can figure out how to do it."

• 10:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, and if I could, I piggyback and maybe give a little bit more color to the original answer of, "I haven't thought about it."

• 10:47Speaker 00

  I have difficulty ascribing reasons to current behaviors because I think we just don't know why. So it's like I could create 16 different stories around why I am this way. And I could probably find people who have similar character traits to me who were not only children. And so was it the fact that I was an only child that made me this way? Who knows? You know, I know, I know that I am this way. I know that I behave in these ways in these conditions. And so they are what they are. And I think a lot of people, I'm not saying this is good or bad, I'm just saying, I have observed that many people will create stories to justify the way, the reason, like, well, you know, I never got, you know, chocolate as a kid, and that's why I eat chocolate now. Like, well, maybe you just like chocolate. Maybe it has nothing to do with the fact you didn't have it as

• 11:30Speaker 00

  a kid. Maybe if you had as a kid, you'd still eat a lot of chocolate. It has nothing to do with that. Right? And so people will use circumstances to explain current reality as though it's a reason for, rather than just like, accepting it for what it is, which is, I just am this way.

• 11:42Chris Williamson?

  Post hoc rationalization is a hell of a drug. You can pretty much justify anything to yourself. I've got this narrative. And that's, that's one of the dangerous things, right? You start to see some sort of consistent theme in your life. And then everything gets filtered through that lens. And you're like, look, it's not a one size fits all thing. Maybe there was something. Maybe there is one singular piece of code, right, that underwrites everything. It's the bootstrap upon which the entire program of your life's built. But probably not. Right? Probably not.

• 12:10Speaker 00

  And who knows? And, and how, and how helpful is it? Because if we won't, if we, if, is it important? Is it knowable? You know, to quote Charlie and Warren? Is it important? Probably. Is it knowable? Probably not. And so if it's, if it's not importable, important and knowable, they just don't focus on it. And so I've always, I've tried to use that to not drive myself insane.

• 12:28Chris Williamson?

  That's a really good way for people to let go of things that they can't find answers to. I mean, I mean, Austin at the moment, and there's a lot of talk of trauma work and integration and, and healing past selves and, and stuff like that. And coming from the most working class town in the UK, this is language that I'm not like super familiar with. And there's, there's part of me that thinks there's probably things that you need to do if it continues to play on your mind. Jordan Peterson has a thing. If something continues to make you cry, write it down. But I think that you can take it to the extreme where you just end up trying to create just so stories that sound plausible, until you arrive at one that you then attach and start to see it as the lens for the world.

• 13:11Speaker 00

  Agreed.

• 13:13Chris Williamson?

  All right, so you guys, you guys sold your businesses last year somewhere in the region altogether, a hundred million bucks, something like that. Tell me what drives you to keep on going once you have a hundred million dollars in your bank account, because when it comes to usable money, there's nothing really, unless you have an unbelievably ostentatious taste, there's nothing that you need to buy that you can't already buy. So what drives you?

• 13:43Speaker 00

  I mean, I think Leila and I both see all the things that we would have done differently or done better, or just new things that sound exciting that we, because we, Caleb and I were just talking about this before this podcast, is that, you know, one of the biggest lamentations I have are things that I'm bummed about is that I, I only have one life that I can live, and there's so many lives I'd like to live in terms of like, I'd like to start a hundred different businesses throughout my lifetime, but I probably only have, you know, five, four or five good entrepreneurial seasons. And so we have to be really, really judicious because the way that Leila and I choose to operate in terms of how we do business is we prefer to have one big focus and then put all of our attention to it. There are entrepreneurs who have lots of different things going on and they enjoy that

• 14:24Speaker 00

  kind of chaos, but Leila and I prefer to focus, you know, very hardly on, on one thing. And so I think with this season, the thing that gets us excited is the opportunity that, you know, we spent 18 months before choosing to sell, crafting and going back and forth with what business we were going to do next. And we only sold because we were more excited about this business that we're building now than the ones that we had before. And so that was kind of our litmus test. And, you know, as a total side note, for any founders who are thinking about exiting, it's my belief that you should be crystal clear on exactly what you're going to do next, because I've seen so many of my founder friends, et cetera, who exited and did not have a plan. They just got the check and then they were like, what do I do with my life? And they had no plan.

• 15:06Speaker 00

  Leila and I started working the next day because we were just so excited to start to building what we're building now.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  So stoked.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think just to go with that, in terms of why do we keep doing what we're doing, you know, I think that there's If you want to become a certain kind of person, right? You're like, this is who I see myself when I'm 80 or 90 being. It's a lot easier to become that if you put yourself in a condition or in a situation where there's conditions that put some pressure on you to do that. Now, should it be like immense pressure, like your life is on the line? Like, I don't really want to do that. I don't think I need that kind of pressure to change. But I think knowing that a company relies on me, knowing that people rely on me, knowing that I've committed to this mission publicly. I think that that kind of puts like artificial pressure on you to become the kind of person that you want to be. And I think a lot of people that are public facing probably have that too. But I think it works and it kind of keeps you. You know, one thing that we were just talking about before this, I was like, I just never want to get soft. You know, we were saying like, we don't want to be soft.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  You know, we've seen a lot of people who sell their business and then they just become honestly like really weird, like really particular.

• 16:06Chris Williamson?

  What does soft look like to you?

• 16:07Speaker 02

  Like, I can't go on this trip unless I have my special pillow, you know? Or like, I absolutely can't stay unless the hotel has X, Y, and Z. And the room is set to 63 degrees.

• 16:15Chris Williamson?

  Is this a byproduct of selling a business for a high amount of money? That you have like odd pillow connoisseur shit?

• 16:21Speaker 00

  Well, I think it's, I think it's when you have, this is, we were literally just talking about this before we got on. Like, when you have a tremendous amount of money and you have nothing to do, you still have the same tendencies of focusing on things, but you start focusing on things that are trivial in nature. Now, you can make the argument, everything's trivial, but let's just, let's forget that one for a moment. And like, you start focusing on really trivial matters, but then everyone who's around you is only there because of money. And so you kind of create this realm of suspended reality that everyone in it is someone who's receiving money from you. And so you don't actually get feedback from the world anymore. And so you just create more and more ridiculous beliefs, but you believe them because the feedback loop is positive. And you're like, oh, I guess this isn't ridiculous. But, oh yeah, if my, you know, if I can't fly private somewhere,

• 17:05Speaker 00

  then this is ridiculous, there's no way I'm going. It's like, well, you know, come on, let's, let's.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, if the room isn't 63 degrees and I have this fluffed pillow and I don't have this and that.

• 17:13Speaker 00

  I can't function.

• 17:15Chris Williamson?

  I'm pretty sure Good Charlotte sang a song about this not long ago. Was it Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous? They're always complaining.

• 17:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, I believe it.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, pretty much. I mean, because if you're not challenging yourself, you don't have something that you're driving towards, something really that's pulling you towards the future, then I think you're constantly fighting, focusing on the little stuff that doesn't matter because your brain doesn't have anything else to focus on. There's nothing to chew on.

• 17:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  You know, you don't have anything to gnaw on, so you gnaw on all these little things that don't matter, and they become these big things. And then I see a lot of people, it's like, they sell their businesses, they develop weird tendencies, issues, like all sorts of stuff.

• 17:48Speaker 00

  Maladies, they get sick, they're suffering from weird pain.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  And they're always like, now I can't start the next thing until I resolve this problem. And I'm like, what if you did the next thing and the problem resolved itself?

• 17:57Speaker 00

  Which we have seen multiple times happen. Like, they were going to all these specialists, and they had all the money, right? So all the doctors were happy to...

• 18:03Speaker 02

  I've got some weird stomach thing, something, something. It just goes away once they start a business.

• 18:08Chris Williamson?

  Just needed a new business.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  Or they do something else.

• 18:10Speaker 00

  A hundred percent. And Leila and I, at least Leila and I, are of the belief that work is required for a living. Like, you know, I'm not religious, but like, God gave Adam work to do before he gave him a wife. Like, you got a job first, right? And so it's something that is quintessential to being human. We work. And so I think also in terms of what you see the goal as, like, the activities are the goal. Like, hard work worth doing is the goal. And the byproduct of that, hey, if we create the next thing as a billion, or 10 billion, or 100 billion, whatever, I know that we'll enjoy it if... Because if someone could just hand us that money, we wouldn't take it. Or maybe we would take it. But like, but I would still, I would take it, but I would still do the exact same thing we're doing now. We'd still be working.

• 18:55Chris Williamson?

  There's some studies that show people that retire early die way earlier than the ones that keep on working, right? This is one of the problems. This is one of the problems, I think, with UBI. You know, you can talk about the fact that there are people who fall through the net, who need to be raised up, but for a lot of people, they take their sense of purpose, and pride, and belonging, and position within their family and their community. They take that from the job that they do. And don't forget as well that we play status games. You're gonna tell me that you're gonna flatten down the status hierarchy so that there's no one, there is no one that's superior? Everybody gets flattened down? Then what are they doing? What are people gonna be competing on then? We're gonna have some... And that's the pillow game, right? It's like, oh, now I've decided that I'm gonna go and become a pillow connoisseur.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  Well, you know, it's funny is like I've seen it for myself, which is, you know, my dad was a college professor for almost 32 years. And during COVID, basically, like, you know, he was like, he for years was like, I just don't want to do this anymore. I don't like this. I'm not passionate about it. He was engineering. And so I was like, Dad, you know, at one point, they basically said, if you're a tenured professor, we'll offer you two years upfront pay to leave because they just knew they could save that in, you know, whatever young guy they're going to bring in, pay less. And he's like, isn't this crazy? And I was like, yeah, crazy. If you don't take it, you should take it. You hate this thing. Like, you're done. You can move on.

• 20:12Speaker 00

  He had not thought about it. He had literally not even, he's like, how crazy are they? Who would take this offer? We're like, you. You should take this offer.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  This is a really great offer. So anyways, after like many phone calls, he ended up taking it. And, you know, he took a little time off and then he was like, Leila, I need to do something. And one of the companies that we invested in, they basically do, it's a business that, you know, basically, there's no marketing, there's no sales. It's like an online, you know, income generating opportunity passively through a sort of book publishing type thing. And so I said, Dad, you don't have to talk to anybody. You just get to sit by a screen. You can make this thing. Try this. And my dad, for, you know, 20 years, has always had like weird aches and pains. And he called me the other day and we were talking. He's like, wow, I've never had this feeling before. Like, I wake up at 3 a.m. with ideas. Like, I'm just so immersed in the community. I just love everything we're doing and what I'm learning. And like, he's writing copy. He's learning hooks. Like, it's crazy shit that I never thought my dad, the 60

• 21:03Speaker 02

  year old engineering professor, would learn. And then he said, you know what's crazy? He's like, my back pain and like, all my aches have gone away. And I was like, boom, that's it. Like, you're doing what you love. You're focused on something that you enjoy doing. You have like a worthy challenge. And it's just like, those things just disappeared.

• 21:20Speaker 00

  Yeah. He also broke all my beliefs around entrepreneurship because I literally used to use him as the example of what I would say is like the least entrepreneurial human being alive. Because he was so risk averse, Dr. Kiroshi, you know, I love you. He's so risk averse. He was a tenured mechanical engineered professor. He was the department chair. Like, you cannot get more secure, except maybe a government position, but like, it, you know, I mean, equal, like, equal, right? And he was so risk averse. And I mean, I know that he was like, well, I would quit if, if, you know, but I still have the house to pay off and all that stuff. And we took care of that. But he still didn't want to quit because he was so, so security driven. But him quitting and making his first dollar online as an entrepreneur, he's like

• 22:02Speaker 00

  more excited than ever. And now it's like, now I believe that everyone can be an entrepreneur if confronted with the right conditions.

• 22:10Chris Williamson?

  So you guys sell this company, right? And you make all of this money and then you move on to the next thing, which is acquisition.com, which is playing proper big leagues stuff now. Or at least it's moving towards playing proper big league stuff. What are you doing spending all this time on Instagram and making stuff for YouTube and things like that?

• 22:28Speaker 02

  Okay, so I'll tell you the one thing is that we had a lot of time to think about, not just what does the ideal business look like that achieves our financial goals and the impact goals, but also like what do we want to do with our time and like what do we want to be known for? And so I think realizing that we can have more impact if we are more known and through a series of different conversations that we had was probably one of the biggest realizations for both of us because I think we both prior to that, myself more because I think Alex just had to do it for the business and so he was used to it, enjoyed being more private. But we said like at the end of our lives, if we look back, what will we be more proud of? What will take us closer to the version of ourselves we want to be? And it's, you know, the mission of the company is to document and share the best practices

• 23:12Speaker 02

  of building world-class businesses because, you know, there's just a lack of people actually sharing tactically what really works for building businesses. And we're like, what do we want to be known for? It's like, we want to be the people that put better free stuff out there than any courses that you could buy. And that's just because when we were coming up and we were building the businesses, like the amount of pain that you have to endure, because it's relative pain, right? Like is this real pain? Like, no, we're not in like Africa, like starving or anything like that. But like, it feels terrible. Like you feel like you're gonna die sometimes, which is like ridiculous, but you do when you have to like fire someone or a client steals something or someone says they're gonna sue you. Like, these things feel horrible. And if we can just save people that pain and make them realize like, one, that's all completely normal and it's just part of business and you're okay and it's absolutely fine. And it's just like you need to accept.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  But then two, here's the tools that we wish we had had when we were doing it, that if you use these, you could probably at least mitigate your pain.

• 24:04Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that's a good, that's a good reason. I mean, also as well, when you think about what you guys are doing with acquisition.com, expediting someone's degree of trust in you to come in with some social status, you know, that no one, the likelihood of you screwing somebody over when tons and tons of thousands of people on the internet know who you are, decreases massively because the scandal would be way higher. Everyone's concerned, everyone likes the idea of like the, the secret master that lives in the cave that nobody knows about, but nobody would trust him.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  That's interesting. I haven't thought about it like that.

• 24:39Speaker 00

  I haven't thought about that angle either. For, and from, Leila covered kind of one angle of why we're doing it. The other, you know, from a utilitarian's perspective, like we have a lot of leverage that we can employ to do this. So like, we can, we can compensate people to do a lot of work on our behalf that, that can expand what looks like a lot of time when, and really like, you know, if we do two podcasts a week, it's not a tremendous amount of time investment, but if those get chopped up and repurposed and, you know, across all the platforms and the long forms go out and we have podcast pieces, like all that stuff can get done if there's people who can run it. And running teams is something that we're very, you know, we're fine doing that. And so from a time, time to output ratio, there's much more output than there is input. And that's kind of the nature of building wealth in general.

• 25:22Speaker 00

  In terms of the strategy behind it with acquisition.com, I think you're a hundred percent right. Cause when I looked at, there was like, I had, I'll do it as fast as I can, but I had probably five or six things that happened in a row that on, on one angle, when we started this, I had no desire to ever be famous. I just wanted to be rich. And that was, and I said that publicly, I was like, I just want to be rich. I don't care about being famous. I want no one to know who I am. But then Kylie became a billionaire at 20 and that really affected me because I was 20, I think, I don't know, whatever, you know, and I, and I honestly was like depressed for a day. And I was like, why do I suck so much? Like, why am I so bad at everything? I am just the worst, right? And I was like, I feel like I know more about business. But I have the fundamental belief that if someone's making more money than me,

• 26:06Speaker 00

  they are better than me in some way at the game of business. And I have to learn what that is, right? And so that happened. And then Conor McGregor came out with Proper 12, and it's now a $600 million enterprise. And then The Rock has Terra Mana, which is probably worth between two and four billion right now. And so I was like, man, having these massive audiences to people who weren't even necessarily business folks instantly gave them billion-dollar status. And I was like, that's interesting. So that was like, big belief breaker number one. I still didn't want to do it because I was like, it's not worth it. I can just do it in the shadows and do the billion either way and just have no one know who I am. But then we had a conversation with Dean Graziosi, who's Tony Robbins' right-hand man, very good friend of ours.

• 26:50Speaker 00

  And he said, and I was like, don't you get weirded out by people like leaving weird messages at your door? And like, you know, just being weird. He said, if that's the price I have to pay for the impact I want to have, I would do it every single day of the week. And when he said that, it like really hit both of us. Because as after we left the house, I was like, did you hear that? And she was like, yeah, I know, I thought about it. And so that was actually, that was the turning point for us, where we said, if this is the impact that we want to have, we're willing to pay the price of, you know, some of the negative aspects of becoming more known. And so that was, that was, that was the big part. And from a strategy perspective, you know, you got it. It's much, it's much easier. Charlie Marker talks about this, but like, trust is the ultimate lubricant in business. It makes business transactions much more fluid, faster, et cetera. And it's long-term greed for both parties

• 27:35Speaker 00

  if you can actually maintain trust. And so the idea is if we can just put lots of stuff out there that is valuable, people can utilize, already know it works, then we kind of operate on shared trust from the get-go. And it saves, it just saves so much time, so much effort, and it makes everything that we're doing better. So that's, that's the big picture for us on the strategy.

• 27:54Chris Williamson?

  Well, think as well about the fact that as you're putting this content out, there's going to be future potential partners that you're going to work with, with acquisition.com that are going to see that stuff. Everybody, this is something that I thought the other day. You know, Elon Musk, doom scrolls, YouTube.

• 28:08Chris Williamson?

  Everybody does. Everybody dooms scrolls everything. So you don't know, if you're putting content out there, you don't know which person that you might really value connecting with. Some dude, some guy that was on Pretty Little Liars and is filming in Austin, reached out because he loves some episode. Never seen an episode of Pretty Little Liars. This guy's got 20 million followers on Instagram and is like a heartthrob of heartthrobs and all this stuff. And I was like, oh, cool. Like, we didn't, we haven't had a chance to catch up, but it's, if I needed a guy from Pretty Little Liars at some point, I've got one, you know? I'm starting to acquire the Pretty Little Liars community.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  You know, it's funny is because like we were talking about the other day, I was telling Caleb, I was like, I've had a bunch of like famous rappers reach out. And they're like, dude, I love your content. And I'm like,

• 28:54Speaker 00

  Very famous. You would know they are.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  And I was like, what? And you know, like beyond confused. I'm like, they follow me? And then I was like, and he's like, yeah, people like, if you have good content, you just never know who's gonna see it. And I'm like, wow.

• 29:05Chris Williamson?

  Everybody dooms scrolls, man. Everybody dooms scrolls. That's the, that's the lesson. So I've heard you talk, Alex, before about the fragility of a morning routine. Basically, sort of relating that to kind of like superstition, that you create a particular standard for your day that if it's not met, you begin to have a sort of a negative thought loop about the fact that you haven't prepared. You can't deny, though, that there are certain ways that are better to prepare for things and other ways that are worse to prepare for things. If you were, you, you're going to make sure that you eat and sleep and drink and, you know, do the things. How do you balance those two? How do you guys both now have enough structure in your day that allows you to stay focused on the things that you need to,

• 29:48Chris Williamson?

  whilst not committing this sort of superstition fallacy around having a very precarious put together daily routine?

• 29:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it's more, I mean, to use Leila's, one of Leila's isms, it's more a dichotomy to be managed than a problem to be solved. So I think it's really just managing the balance between those things. I think, you know, if you sleep well, yeah, I think everyone can agree that they feel better if they sleep well. But the question is, if you then create the story that I must sleep well, it's all the shoulds, have to, need to, all those, all of that language. If you make it a requirement to function, then that is where I would say the positive of having the belief that you, it is, it helps you is more. You get more negative ramifications from having the belief that you must have it. Whereas if you see it as a preference, I prefer to sleep more, but if I don't sleep, I'm still gonna show up because winners win.

• 30:38Speaker 00

  And so I think having different beliefs around behaviors is more useful. It has had higher utility in my life.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would say that, just echoing that. I think a lot of high performers, people who call themselves high performers, put like an exorbitant amount of pressure on themselves. And so basically trying to control things to an extent where the control that you're trying to exert on those things adds more pressure than if you were to not do the thing itself. Right? So if you're like, I must, you know, eat this way, sleep this way, drink this way, and feel this way to have my speech tomorrow. And then, you know, you miss a flight, and you don't get a meal, and then you sleep like shit, and you wake up and you whatever, you have a pimple. And then it's like you fucking fall apart, right? And so, but we can't control a lot of those things. We just only have the illusion of control. And I think a lot of people, those routines create even more illusion of control than, you know, people who don't have them.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  And so, you know, like for myself, if I have like a big speech the next day, or I have like a huge day, I actually like prepare myself. I'm like, I'm probably gonna feel like shit, probably asleep like shit. I'm gonna feel like I'm gonna stomach ache, a headache. Like, I'll just think all that, and I'm like, I'm not fucking crush it anyways. Because that's like, that helps me think, well, then everything else is gravy because I know I can feel like absolute terrible, and I'm still gonna perform. So that relieves the pressure and also takes away that need to feel like I have to control the situations, like make sure everything's happening at the right time. So I'm doing all these things and having all these routines because I feel like a lot of people kind of spin up in that way. And then there's so much pressure from that, it actually makes it worse.

• 32:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think net-net, it's also just way less decision fatigue and way less mental effort. Just not like, just not even worrying about it and just thinking like, it's preferences with an overshadowing or an umbrella of acceptance. Prefer these things, but either way, I'll accept whatever, whatever happens.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  I always like to tell myself, I'm like, Life is not always fair. Like, I don't deserve to feel good today. Like, there's no like, "I deserve to feel good. Like, I should be feeling great." And I'm like, "I feel like shit." And like, life, like, I don't deserve to feel anyway.

• 32:37Chris Williamson?

  Well, think about what the more heroic narrative of those two is as well. The much more heroic narrative is, "I didn't sleep right, didn't eat right, had an argument with the missus this morning, and I'm still going to go out there and close this." There's a great story from Ben Bergeron when he's talking about the CrossFit Games in 2017 or 18, and it was the first day of the Games, and they didn't realize that they were going to be flown out one day before the entire set of Games started. They were told that they needed to be downstairs with passports and bags, no coaches, no nothing else. And they basically went and did an entire extra day of programming out at the CrossFit Ranch. Nobody knew. Everybody was on the plane. It was four hours sleep. No one had their coaches with them. Maybe somebody had left their special weight belt at home and stuff like that.

• 33:20Chris Williamson?

  And you had two types of athletes in this situation. You had one that said, "Oh, my God, I don't have all of the right things," and the other one that said, "I've trained for this. I've gone into the gym a ton of times when I haven't slept enough, and I've said, 'What an awesome opportunity for me to see whether or not I can still eat shit whilst not being fully prepared from the day before.'" And that, I think, is like similar to the ethos that you guys have got here.

• 33:48Speaker 00

  Hundred percent.

• 33:49Chris Williamson?

  What was that paradox to be solved, dichotomy to be managed thing?

• 33:57Speaker 02

  It was a, actually, I got it from a book. You know Esther Perel?

• 34:00Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, so she talked about desire and basically, you know, a lot of people think like wanting more desire or having, you know, not having enough security or not having enough desire are like problems to solve. Like, "I need to feel more secure with my spouse," or "I need to feel more desire with my spouse." And she said it's not... A problem to be solved, but a dichotomy to be managed. And she kind of went on a little rant how people in America always want to solve these things, thinking everything's a problem, whereas they're not problems. They're just dichotomies that need to be managed. And I took that and I was like, wow, this applies to everything that I see in business, things in your personal life, things in pretty much everywhere where everyone's like, how do I solve this problem? And you're like, it's not a problem. It really exists like on a pendulum and you want to make sure that it doesn't swing too far one way or the other, but that you're able to manage it. So it kind of just stays in the middle at all points in time.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  And I think that a lot of humans are really good at getting something to one side or getting something to the other side, but they're not great at keeping things in the middle. It's like moderation is actually usually harder than going to one extreme. So we just probably both use that a lot with different aspects.

• 34:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, and just for the audience, for examples here, it's like a dichotomy would be like justice and mercy. They're both ideals, but you don't want to solve for perfect justice because then most people would say that that's probably not perfect justice in absence of any mercy is probably not the ideal outcome if we're just talking from a values perspective. And so the same thing can be translated in business language, which would be like delegation versus micromanagement, right? Okay, well, these are, these are two extremes. Like we, we're not solving to eliminate delegation. We're not solving to eliminate micromanagement. We're solving, or abdication, rather. We're, we're trying to find that middle ground. So it's a dichotomy to be managed rather than a problem to be solved.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  And I think that a lot of humans, when you see something, you immediately label it as a problem and then you overcompensate to solve it, which then swings you in very far in one direction. You know, it's like you don't perform well on something and so you think I'm a piece of shit, I'm a failure, X, Y, and Z. I need to go take a course on this, get a coach, do all these things. But it's like, in reality, maybe you need to tweak two things.

• 35:52Speaker 00

  Or maybe it's not even a problem to begin with.

• 35:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe it's okay to suck.

• 35:54Speaker 00

  Maybe it's okay.

• 35:55Chris Williamson?

  This is the narrative that we come back to again, right? The framing that you put through things. If you want a lot more control, if you want to be able to fix the problems, then you're going to see every dichotomy is not just a little bit of discomfort that is par for the course of being a human. Maybe a human trying to run a business with a family, with a life, with some pursuits and some hobbies. It's like, yeah, obviously there's going to be, there's going to be paradoxes in there. Obviously, like there's always going to be things that are difficult for you to work out. So given the fact that you are at least preferences with your acceptance over the top of it, how do you avoid losing focus throughout the day? I, I wouldn't like to guess how many opportunities and phone calls and different things and bits and pieces you guys have potentially got to do.

• 36:39Chris Williamson?

  What is it that you do to ensure that the day stays focused and that the, the things that need to get done, get done?

• 36:45Speaker 00

  We have different ways of of running our days, dramatically different. And I think part of that is because of the nature of the work that we do is somewhat different. And so for me, I've I've probably only had two habits that I would describe the majority of my productivity to. You know, the first one is that I wake up early and I begin work early. And for me, that has worked. I think it's more, but I also have multiple friends who are billionaires who they work really late at night. And so I don't think it's like mornings are important or evenings are important. I think what's more important is to have dedicated time to think without distraction. And so for me, it works better in the mornings. And so that's habit one. And habit one paired with habit two, which is that I don't take meetings before lunch.

• 37:28Speaker 00

  And so I will have between 5 a.m. until noon, roughly, to have seven hours of more or less uninterrupted work to do whatever it is that I want to do, to move things forward, to work on projects, to create SOPs, presentations, whatever it is. And then after that, I can correspond with the team, respond to slacks and emails and all the other things that kind of pull you in a million directions. And I have been more or less doing that for years, and that has worked for me. I don't have any other habit besides that.

• 37:58Chris Williamson?

  Your job role has changed, right? You've done different things throughout that time, but you've found that that same get up early and avoid interacting with other people until around about midday has served you well across all of the different domains that you've had to do.

• 38:11Speaker 00

  Yes, and I would still even say, even though my role has changed, the nature of my work is not is not too dissimilar over that same time period. What I was working on might have changed, but the nature of the work has not.

• 38:22Chris Williamson?

  And what's the difference for you, Leila? What do you do?

• 38:25Speaker 02

  I think because of the nature of my role, you know, I need to be a little more available to people and a little more.

• 38:30Chris Williamson?

  Not in a cupboard.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  Not in a cupboard, yeah. I try to also keep my mornings clear, at least like early mornings, because I know that I have my list that I, you know, I always have a working list basically like backlog, what do I need to get done this week and then today? And so it's like I try to get my today tasks done before I start my meetings. But if I don't, because things pop up and I've got to hop on a meeting at seven or at, you know, 6:30 or whenever it is, then I will. And I'll just be flexible in terms of like, I have my things that need to get done, but I can be flexible when they get done, if that makes sense. And then I would say that in terms of staying focused. If I'm looking at all the things that pop up during the day, if I'm feeling like I can't get done what I said I'm gonna get done for that day, then I'm not thinking strategically enough. What I'm typically not doing is I'm not thinking, who else can do this besides me?

• 39:14Speaker 02

  That's usually when it's, when it's, I can absolutely get these things done if I focus on the most important ones that only I can do. And so what I'll do is I'll look at my list. If I have like 17 things and I'll say, these are all the things I'm gonna delegate and here's who I'm gonna delegate to. And then I just go do it immediately and then I go back to focusing on my thing. And so.

• 39:33Speaker 00

  I was gonna say, I've just observed Leila doing this. So just to give more context for the audience, like she has now tuned her like mental muscle to whenever she gets this like level of, I don't wanna say overwhelmed, but like backlog of stuff that needs to be done, that, you know, I would say earlier days, having observed her, she would just like stress out, sleep, you know, sleep last, try and, you know, try and get it all done. And now she uses that as a warning flag or a red flag where she's like, oh, I probably needed to go, I need to delegate this stuff. And so her like auto correction cycle has, you know, sped up faster and faster since, since we've been together doing this.

• 40:07Chris Williamson?

  It's just a threshold that you meet. And then at that point, you start kicking some stuff out the side.

• 40:11Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 40:11Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think honestly, it's usually a little bit reactive, unfortunately. Like I should have been delegating those things anyways because my team has capacity and it's an opportunity for them to learn and to take on more responsibility. And so I'm doing them a disservice when I forget to do those things. So, but it's, I'm probably in a season right now where for a good amount of time, it was like me doing everything. And then, you know, because even though we have all, you know, we have the resources to like, we could have built a team of, you know, 50 from day one. It doesn't make sense for a business and it's, in my opinion, it's not the right way to build the business if you want the outcome that we want. Like I do not think that everything's shapen at once. I don't think that hiring 10 or 15 people overnight is ideal. So we're trying to do things gradually and I'm okay with being in some pain doing that.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  But I have to also then remind myself like, oh, you've been in the habit of doing a lot. Now you've gotten to get in the habit of starting to delegate more. Because when I left Gymwatch, I was only delegating. There was barely any doing. And then I had to switch back to doing and now it's kind of like a mix in the middle.

• 41:09Chris Williamson?

  When it comes to hiring people, whether this be for personal or for business, what are some of the most important things or roles to hire for when you begin to start making money? How do you outsource your life in a way that facilitates you guys to do as much as you can?

• 41:27Speaker 02

  I think general advice for people would be that the first thing that you want to do is you want to outsource anything that's non-revenue generating. So a lot of people, because they're spending all their time doing sales or marketing, they think, "I should go get somebody to do sales and marketing." But in reality, you don't want to outsource the thing that makes the money and that you're good at. You want to outsource the things that you're bad at and probably aren't making money, like the fact that you're probably doing your own books, the fact that you're answering all the customer support questions, the fact that you're the primary source of value or innovation in the product. And so I think there's a lot of things that you want to outsource first, and it's usually things that you suck at and don't like doing. That's what I usually like to say. And then adding on top of that that are non-revenue generating. So it's just like, do you suck at it? Do you hate it?

• 42:11Speaker 02

  And then, does it not generate revenue? Then it probably makes sense to outsource that first.

• 42:16Chris Williamson?

  What about personal life? Chef, cleaner, gardener, masseuse?

• 42:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, except I think there's trade-offs. Which is like, we've outsourced everything. We've had like house manager and stuff like that. And like, we do outsource a lot, like cleaning and food and things like that. We just, I mean, we just don't eat much besides dinner. But it's, at some point, when you outsource so much, then you actually have like a team you're managing. So what you have to kind of ask yourself is, would I rather do the thing? Or would I rather manage the person? Like, I know for us, having a house manager and having a big house, like, we literally are not getting a house because people are like, "Dude, you don't have to manage your own house." I'm like, "Oh, we're aware, but we don't want to manage the people that are going to be running the house."

• 42:58Speaker 00

  We just don't care enough. There's a lot of extra decisions that have to be made constantly on the house. Like, you've got, I mean, if you have a bigger home, you've got landscapers, AV guys, the pool guy, the cleaners, the laundry people, like, the cooks. Like, there's all these other things that people don't think about. And, you know, we did it, and we were like, "This is terrible." Like, I'd rather have a tiny footprint and have, and just, and we get our food delivered. We eat it. That's it. It goes straight in the trash. We dump it down at the, next to the hallway, next to the elevator. Done. Like, we, it's all, it's all, you know, and the cleaners come twice a week when we're not here. It's just simple.

• 43:34Chris Williamson?

  I think optimizing for as little friction and as little annoyance as possible, especially if that's like you can't get away from the annoyance in your business. That's literally what you're paid for. You're paid to make difficult decisions, right? That are hard to work out. And then to come home and find out that Paolo's not been this week. So they've had to get somebody else in to do the pool and that's been a nightmare. And oh, do you like the payment's not gone through? Oh, well, it's because someone changed their account like, no, no, no, no. Yeah, that that does make a lot of sense. Although I didn't, I didn't think about houses that were so big that you basically need a second business.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  You need a staff. Right. And then you, I mean, you have your own problems with that staff. You know, one time we were running our quarterly meeting and our house manager, we'd had for like five months, I guess her boyfriend broke up with her. So she comes in, we're running the quarterly meeting, just a frigging mess, makeup everywhere, bawling and we're like. Howling, really like howling. Yeah, it's almost like scream crying and we're like, uh, and then we're like, obviously we would send this woman home, but we had a huge delivery of gym equipment coming that day. And so we're like, you know, we're running the quarterly meeting, we're like, just sit in the garage and just tell them not to break anything, please. And she's like sobbing.

• 44:41Chris Williamson?

  Carrying kettlebells in, like wiping tears away with kettlebells and stuff.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  This is not even an exaggeration. Yes. And so, you know, it comes with its own. It's like, if you want to have, we would just rather not have enough stuff that we need a lot of people to outsource it to.

• 44:55Chris Williamson?

  Would you say, because you guys had nice house, houses, Austin, fancy car last year, got rid of it all. I've been playing around with this idea for ages about your materialism set point. So kind of like a degree of manifested wealth in the things that you have that impacts your level of happiness. It seems like you guys kind of tested the water last year to see if having more stuff would make you happier. And the answer came back as a resounding no. Is that right?

• 45:31Speaker 00

  More or less. And I would say it wasn't like we tested it last year. I would say it was slowly accumulated and then we just looked around and we're like, I, and you know, we traveled not that, not that long ago to a, um, just a tiny little place and we had been only in our massive house for a while and we were there for a few weeks and I was like, I don't need more than this. Like I like not having all the excess. I feel less wasteful. And I remember when I threw away like 90% of the clothing that I had, I felt better every time I walked into my closet and I was like, man, this conferred not even, not even neutral. It was a negative. Like having more stuff was negative. And so that was kind of eye opening, at least for me. Um, and Leila and I have, have slight differences in preferences around those things. And so those are a little bit more individual.

• 46:12Speaker 00

  But for us, I think I probably have a lower materialism set point than Leila does. Um, mine is arguably very, is odd.

• 46:19Chris Williamson?

  You understand that most, most high net worth individuals, that that's outwardly expressed, right? And not through like,

• 46:25Speaker 00

  That they do that?

• 46:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that they've, you know, like you are worth a lot of money. It's obvious that you're worth a lot of money and not through like real niche things like expensive flannel shirts and like, you know, trips, trips away with friends and stuff like that, like through actual ostentatious like horse shit. So yeah, I wonder whether it's kind of back to the start. You know how you were talking about, people become rich and then they start sort of obsessing over certain things. I wonder whether there's an expectation that when you're rich, you do the things that rich people do. What do rich people do? Or will rich people blow loads of money on art that they don't care about and multiple homes and blah, blah, blah. I, I wonder whether there's an expectation effect going on there.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  And you know what the thing is? It's like, it's just not stimulating. Like picking out like random pieces of art, like what chandelier are we going to import from Italy? Like the stuff that some people that I know like kind of focus on, I'm like, it's not enjoyable for me at all. Like it just, it's not, it's not stimulating. It's very boring. It's almost like drudgery.

• 47:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, we're not fans. Some people are, though. Like, I was having, we had a conversation earlier with a friend of ours, and he was talking about cars. He loves cars, so he has like multiple Ferraris and all that stuff. And I was like, like, you love this. You know what I mean? Like, I don't love this. But if I had an at-home gym, or we built a gym in the office, like, I do love having great gym equipment. Like, I enjoy that. The cost-to-benefit ratio is in my favor to obsess about it. I'll look up new equipment. I follow equipment, things to see what new equipment's coming. Like, I like it. So I understand it. It's just for us, we don't, it's, I think, it's making sure that the reason that you're buying it is because you want to buy it, not because you believe you should be buying it.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like, I like certain expensive clothing or jewelry, and I'll buy it, but like, it doesn't, like, it's not like I'm doing it for, I do it for myself, you know what I mean? Like, people are like, oh, you bought that because of X, Y. I'm like, when I was a kid, I had like fake bling all over. Like, I love shiny, big things. Like, now I can buy real ones? Sure, I'm gonna buy it.

• 48:17Chris Williamson?

  Well, it's the same with going out for nice dinners, right? I think that's one thing that very few people ever regret doing. I've never regretted, unless the dinner was of terrible quality, I've never regretted going out and spending a lot of money on dinner. Going back to, to sort of the decisions and stuff, I'm really interested in this tension between sort of thinking and feeling that you guys have had when it's come to making decisions. So it seems like a lot of the decisions have been made with an insight of thinking, right? There's a bit of inspiration there, but a good bit of just sort of gut and commitment. The way that you guys met was you basically saying, do you want to start working together? And then from there, very quickly, Leila's going around collecting cash for you on your behalf. Like, that's, you can't, you can't have thought your way

• 49:00Chris Williamson?

  through all of those things, right? You can't have logically played out every single step. So there has to be a little bit of insight, and then a ton of gut that just says, yeah, we should go for this. Or you up sticks and decided to move to, like, California to go and work in some guy's gym, and you just rocked up and he wasn't even expecting you. Like, that, again, it's a little bit of insight, but a ton of gut. And increasingly, I see, maybe it's been since COVID as well, a lot of people are in their own heads, people are very cerebral, they rely on cognitive horsepower to get themselves through things, and that stops them sometimes from tapping into that more sort of gut, intuitive sense. Is that a tension that you ever feel, sort of knowing that something's right, and stopping yourself from talking yourself out of something that is good?

• 49:42Speaker 00

  This is definitely something I'm sure Leila and I will both enjoy jamming on.

• 49:48Speaker 00

  At least I am of the belief that you learn a lot more through doing than you do through thinking. Not to say, not to counter what I was saying before, but like from a learning perspective. You learn more from doing. Now, there are some lessons that are worth not doing, not learning without doing. Right? But I think that both of us would agree that when we are afraid to do something, and I would say it's a fear. It's not like jumping out of a building. That's, that's the good fear. You know what I mean? But fear of failure, fear of risk, like starting a business. I mean, there, I guess there is some sort of gut reaction that, that has to, that has to happen. I feel like this is a poor answer that I gave, actually.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  A gut reaction is in?

• 50:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think I gave a poor answer.

• 50:33Speaker 02

  You know, I, I know for myself at least, like I've never.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  It's, it's, you could say it's gut to like maybe pull the trigger, but it's probably things I've thought about for a long time. So like when I moved to California, you know, like immediately after I graduated, like I was like, that makes sense to move to California because logically, I know that the industry there is booming that I want to be in, so it makes sense to move there. You know, when I met Alex, he literally fit the bill for like every single thing that I've been looking for in someone, and I just knew.

• 51:04Speaker 02

  And I just knew that like, I'm like, Leila, if he matches everything that you've been looking for, like, why are you waiting on this? Like, just do it, you know? And so I think it's usually been, there's supporting evidence. And it's like, they're supporting evidence that's obviously there, but my brain is going crazy, usually being like, fear, fear, like scared, fear of unknown. And I just say like, oh my God, my brain is freaking out right now, but I am totally aware that this makes no logical sense. And so I'm able to talk myself into being like, my brain is making these wacko stories again. You know, it's not like I'm telling, I'm not saying I'm crazy or making wacko stories, but my brain is making them up. I'm like, you've got to go do it anyways. And so I think for me at least, that's usually how I've gotten myself to take action. It's just like, there's, I pay attention way more to the evidence in the situation rather than the belief that I may have.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  Because oftentimes, the belief comes after you do something. You know, I think most things that I've done in life, I have not believed that they would be possible until after I did them. Even now, it's like, I know, this is my thing, it happens with every business we have. I'm like, we lay out the numbers and it's like, here's where we're going to get to. And I'm like, yeah, that makes complete sense. In my mind, I'm like, oh, I don't think so. And then we get there and then I'm like, oh. That was nice. But it's like every time still like I still and a lot of people I think think you have to have the belief you gotta believe in yourself to do it. I'm like, no, you don't. Like, I have not believed there's so many of the things that I've been able to do and to like a very large degree, too.

• 52:20Speaker 00

  And just as a one liner, like we are of the belief that it doesn't, it doesn't take time to make decisions. It takes information to make decisions. And if you have the information to make the decision, then you should make it. And so a lot of people will belabor a decision when they are not gaining more information to make it. Now, if you have emotions that are involved and you want to decrease the time, you know, so that you can be less emotional, then I can understand that. But decisions, time is not a requirement of decision making like information is. And so if you have the, if you have the evidence that would support it, so that probably to delineate what I was saying earlier, like good fear, bad fear, like if you have the evidence that would support that this is a good decision, then if you still have fear, then that is more fear of the unknown or of the hypothetical, which is not knowable. We don't know what's going to happen, but we have this evidence

• 53:05Speaker 00

  that would support that this decision makes sense. If we still don't want to make it, that is not logical. And so it's making sure that we can recognize like logical versus illogical fear.

• 53:15Chris Williamson?

  I saw a tweet from you a little while ago saying, nine months into dating Leila, I lost everything I had. I stared at her and said, I'm a sinking ship. If you want to leave me, I 100% respect that. At which point she grabbed my chin to tilt my head up to meet her eyes and said, I'd sleep with you under a bridge if it came to that. What's the story there?

• 53:34Speaker 00

  Ah, the Leila and Alex love story. So I, so I had a Tana gyms, Leila came in, she started collecting cash from me. I wanted to start the gym launch business. I started flying around doing these launches. They started working. She quit her job, followed me. We started doing launches together. Series of unfortunate events. I, there were multiple. I'll tell you, there's three big ones, but I'll, there's like six big ones, but I'll give you the highlight version. I had a head on DUI that I got in head on collision. Right after that, I put all the money from selling my five gyms into a new company. And then the partner that I had in that new company ended up taking the money. After that, I thought

• 54:15Speaker 00

  we were like, okay, clean slate. We lost everything, you know, we're at zero. And we then did another launch to give us cash to do the next business. We had about $100,000 that was supposed to come in, which when you have zero, $100,000 is a lot.

• 54:29Speaker 00

  Didn't come, got on the phone with the processors like every single day for 10 days straight and then finally, and they kept giving me the runaround and then on that day, they were like, "Oh, we're not gonna give it to you." And so, the last money that I had was I had $23,000 left to my name. I owed the salesman who had made the $100,000 in sales, $22,000 in commissions. So I had $1,000 left and so I paid him the 22 on money that I hadn't received. And so, the next day, and this is Christmas Eve, so on the 26th, and that's when I found out. Mind you, at this point is when I'm meeting Leila's family for the first time. The guy from the internet that she quit her job for and are immediately sleeping together in motels around the country. So her father loved me, Dr. Kurov, for the win. This guy's a winner.

• 55:13Speaker 00

  And so, I had now lost everything multiple times. He was like, "This guy knows what he's doing." And so, Christmas Eve, find out that we're not gonna get the money, Christmas Day happens, and on the 26th, she had gotten six of her friends, pretty all of her friends from high school to quit their jobs to start this next business with us. And this is before I didn't know that I wasn't gonna get the money to start the business. So they had all quit their jobs. And it was starting 48 hours later. And for that model to work, we were gonna spend $3,300 a day, per day, on advertising, hotels, airfare, rental cars, per diems for food for all of these sales guys, all six of them, to fly out to these locations and then do the launches that we were doing successfully.

• 55:53Speaker 00

  And so, it was at that moment where I said, "I have a $100,000 limit on this credit card", which I still had for my gym, that Amex hadn't canceled yet. So for whatever reason, I still had the credit limit. They didn't know that my life was in shambles. And I'm at her parents' house, sleeping in their, in their room, because we couldn't afford anything. And at this moment, I was like, "Okay, this could go horribly wrong. I'm about to spend, I'm gonna be going into debt at $3,300 a day." And given my track record up to this point, which has been now all failure, I think it would be wise for you to exit because this is probably not going to be pretty, but I really don't know what else I'm going to do, so I'm going to do it.

• 56:35Speaker 00

  It was like, I think I'm a sinking ship right now, like nothing else has worked. And so like, I respect you if you want to dip out, like I, we're cool. And so that was when she said she would, she would stay with me. And so for me, that was a big, a big moment where I knew that she was, she was going, she was willing to hang with me when shit was going to be hard. And I knew that where I wanted to go was not going to be calm waters. And I knew I needed somebody who wanted to be next to me and would want to weather those storms. And so a lot of people can claim that, very few people can walk it. And she did, and so she gave me evidence to support that. And so I felt, I mean, for us to get, you know, married after that, both of us were like, yeah, I think we should get married. And we didn't have any stress about it and just got married six days later.

• 57:19Speaker 00

  And it was not from that point, but you know, a few months later. And yeah, and so it's been, it's been the same since.

• 57:27Chris Williamson?

  How was that from your perspective, Leila?

• 57:33Speaker 02

  You know, I think there's a few things, which is like, you know, when I, when we started doing everything together, you know, not to sound, you know, I'm super young, Alex has like a lot going on, it was a lot of chaos. And I didn't know how I think it was going to turn out. And I just kept, I kind of just always play out worst case scenario. I'm like, worst case scenario is I end up at my dad's house like, hey, I like stopped doing everything I was doing. I gave up all my clients, I like stopped pursuing my own stuff, started doing this thing with this guy and it didn't work. And so what, I start over, like I'm 23, who cares? You know, I've gained a ton of experience, a ton of knowledge, and I've had a lot of good, you know, takeaways from that stuff. And so that was kind of my mindset going into everything. But then, you know, upon like getting to know Alex and seeing everything, I think I just had like this unwavering belief in him.

• 58:18Speaker 02

  Despite circumstances and evidence, like-

• 58:21Chris Williamson?

  Despite evidence to the contrary.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  I, and honestly, I think that the way that I saw it was I was like, he's so brilliant. I just don't think that he has been surrounded by the right people. Like, I think there's a lot of people that are around him that didn't necessarily amplify his strengths, or maybe took advantage of his strengths, or maybe, yeah, I want to say, and not everyone, because he had some really great partners, but there were some that I think- You know, we were both young. It's just like, and I was like, if he just was in a different situation, didn't have seventeen businesses, and had people who actually really believed in him and supported him, like, I really think that he could, he's gonna do something huge. And so, I think I just always saw that, and I always wanted to be the person that could help bring his vision to life, just because, you know, and I have, I probably

• 59:05Speaker 02

  have more vision now than I did then, but, but I've always wanted to be the person that could do that for somebody that has that. He has so much to give that, I think when he said that, it was almost like funny to me. I was like, I'm not going anywhere, you know, because I could just see it. And I remember there were so many moments where it was really tough for us, and I could just see, I was like, I just know that there's a version of us that gets out of this and is great together. And I think that we can make some really big shit. And I think that, just seeing the amount of progress we were even able to make while going through all that stuff, stressful stuff, I was like, imagine what it'll be like, we don't have these kind of circumstances, how much progress we'll be able to make in our lives, and in our relationship, and in our business. And so I think it's, you know, just being able to see the worst of someone, but still see the

• 59:47Speaker 02

  light in them, is not hard. I think, you know, everyone now is like, you bought low, like, must've seen it coming. And I was like-

• 59:54Chris Williamson?

  Penny stock, yeah. No, no, he was, he was an idiot.

• 59:59Speaker 02

  I think it's just, you know, I see it a lot, and we see it a lot, and like, people that have businesses, you know, where like, where we pick the businesses in acquisition.com, it's like, I see it in so many of them, and they probably resonate with Alex, like, they just see the right people around them. They've got people who are taking advantage of them, they've got people who don't understand them, they've got people who are telling them their dreams are too big, and it sucks. And so I think, you know, I've just always wanted to support someone who does have that, like, big creative vision like Alex does, and that means also being there when shit sucks.

• 1:00:24Speaker 00

  And mind it, like, this was the first, like, seven months of us being together. Like, that, everything I just said all happened in the first seven months of us being together. And I remember, there were a couple, like, refrains that we went back to, and she was like, think about how epic this story's gonna be, like, when we make it, you know what I mean? Like, how cool is that gonna be, you know, for us? And so that was, that was always, like, very powerful. And I think I always valued loyalty above love, because I just, like, me personally, it was just something that was very meaningful for me, because I, she was just always down, you know what I mean? And like, I was like, this fucking might not work. And she's like, cool, let's go, you know what I mean? Like, giddy

• 1:01:05Speaker 00

  up. And, and like, in my first book, I said, like, ride or die. And, I mean, I very much, like-

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  Leila and I are not religious, but in the Bible, there's only one thing that it says about picking a mate. Like literally only one. Everything else is about marriage, but only one thing about picking the right person. And in it, it's an Old Testament verse, and it says that you should pick someone that you would go to war with. And I think that's a really interesting frame to think about for like selecting a mate. And it felt like we were going through a battle the entire time. And I can say truthfully, like, the first 12 months of our relationship were significantly harder than any period that we've had. Since most people were like, marriage gets harder over time. It hasn't been that way for us. I'm not trying to do anything, but I mean, the first 12 months were tough. And so we're like, well, if we can get through being broke multiple times, losing everything, stabbed in the back, DUI.

• 1:01:58Speaker 00

  My mom was in the hospital after, I'll just put it out, tough circumstances. All of that in that same period of time. If we can get through that, then like the rest of it should be easy.

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  Which has been true.

• 1:02:12Speaker 00

  Which is more or less been true.

• 1:02:13Chris Williamson?

  Well, it's a baptism of fire. If you started off so difficult that nothing after that can be any more difficult. Where we, so we can only go up from here, you know?

• 1:02:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:24Speaker 00

  That's what I kept telling. I can't get poorer.

• 1:02:28Chris Williamson?

  How do you, so one of, one of the things that you talk about is, is the fact that you've obviously got this sort of collaborative vision. You guys are working together, even though you try and separate your days a little bit, which I think is quite interesting that you're working separately. So that if you sit down at dinner on a nighttime, you can actually say, well, how was your day? And you don't just go, you were there idiot. Like I was with you. How do you avoid becoming bros instead of lovers?

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  I think that's been something that has taken time. You know, I think that in the beginning, it was a conversation that we would actively have, which is like, I feel like we're spending so much time together.

• 1:03:06Speaker 02

  And I think it's because we also hadn't really figured out how to, you know, separate things, you know, how to distinctively separate our roles, how to kind of like come into, there's the things we do together and the things we do apart. We have our own interests and things like that still. And I think now we've come to a point where we're much more defined in terms of what each of us do and then what we do together. And we have a lot of shared interests, which is really nice because that means that outside of work, we have things that we enjoy, both enjoy as well. But we also have things that we like and do differently. You know, like if people observe us on a daily basis, they would think they are very different in a lot of things they do as well. And so I think the way that you don't become that is you always, you're always looking at ways that you can add in variety. And I

• 1:03:50Speaker 02

  think that the ways that we add in variety are doing new things together especially. You know, I think that if you're doing constantly the work together, because a lot of people have spouses, you know, they're working together, doing that same stuff, what you want to do is like go travel together, go to new restaurants together, go watch a new show together, go meet new friends together. And so it's not that you need to change anything about the work, but probably adding in things of more variety to your relationship. And so I think like us, I love when we travel together and we go meet new people together and we go do new experiences together. And I think we do a lot more of that now than we used to because I think, one, we both dislike it, but also I think that's really good for a relationship.

• 1:04:27Speaker 00

  And if we didn't have, you know, the means that we have now, I would, we could still do the same thing. We just do like staycations. You know, you spend a hundred or 200 bucks for a day or two at a hotel for the weekend, just, you know, 30 minutes away. And it just, and it feels like an entirely different experience, even though it's not that far off. And like little things like that, changing the environmental conditions can still give you that kind of novel variety. And then, I mean, I'm really more quoting Leila here, but it's just creating space to be missed. You know, I think if you, if you've been with someone for a long time and then all of a sudden you don't see them for a week, you're like, oh my God, like when you see them again, you're like, I just fucking missed you. I love you so much. My God, this is great. And so it's like, how can we create? You know, how can we purposely separate our days? Like, we always work on separate sides of our home.

• 1:05:11Speaker 00

  We really don't attend the same meetings. We pretty much have our meals together. So we have coffee in the morning, we have lunch, and then we have dinner. Dinner, we usually go out to different places if we can. And so we try and create, you know, variety in that way. And because we also don't work on the same things, at the end of the day, we catch up. And so we go for a walk for forty-five minutes and, you know, she's like, oh, yeah, I interviewed this new candidate. I was like, oh, how'd that go? I was curious how that went. So we have all these novel things that we can talk about because we're not actually literally doing everything together.

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  It goes through different phases in the business. You know, like, in the beginning of any business, we have way more overlap. And that's just because the nature of, you know, teams are smaller, roles are less defined, so we always have more overlap. But I think what we've gotten way better at, too, just to kind of like, it's a little tangential, is kind of switching between like, you know, co-CEOs versus husband and wife. So like, how we are, and, you know, I hope one day we can get comfortable enough in front of a camera to be how we actually are. But like, how we are outside of work and outside of like, things that are public-facing is like, so much more affectionate and playful and lighthearted and funny than it is how we show up at work. And so that was something that we were really intentional about, I want to say about three and a half years ago, is

• 1:06:21Speaker 02

  learning how to switch between those modes because, you know, you're going to be in a heated discussion. And we have a lot of things we disagree on in the business, which is why we come to good decisions, because we disagree. But then we have to be able to, you know, be on a meeting where we disagree and then get off, and then be husband and wife. Not that we have to, but that we prefer to, you know, because like, we want that aspect of our relationship as well. We like both sides. And so that's been something that we intentionally worked on, kind of like, husband hat, you know, CEO hat, which one are you wearing?

• 1:06:52Chris Williamson?

  It seems like there's a compatibility problem that a lot of people in businesses get to. So I've, my business partner for fifteen years was the first guy that I ever sat next to in university at my first ever seminar. And fifteen years later, we're still business partners. And we have had, it can only be described as sort of marital problems. Like, that's the, even though he's married with three kids and two dogs, the level of... Vitriol in some of our arguments, like personal insults, the way that the way that he used to squeeze the toothpaste tube when we lived together in Edinburgh like 14 years ago. Anything, I will pull anything that I can out, right? I've always been like this and but the there is something really unique about.

• 1:07:34Chris Williamson?

  Our ability to reset will go completely wild and then five minutes later, one of us will go, do you want a coffee? And it's it's done. And I don't know what it is. I genuinely believe that it's something like beyond, you can't just think it. It's like a compatibility when it comes to personality types. And the dynamic between the two of you and the power play between the two of you, that there is no residual. And I've had, I've had arguments that are 10% as bad that have lasted for 10 times as long in terms of the after effect and the lingering resentment and bitterness and all that sort of stuff. And then there's just people that you have those with and they just dissipate. They go away into the ether. So, yeah, I think that.

• 1:08:16Chris Williamson?

  Like just straight up compatibility is probably a big part of that. But the unique thing is that you guys had to have compatibility squared. It's like, not only do we need to be compatible. Within the relationship, but also within the business and also within the relationship between those two.

• 1:08:29Speaker 00

  I think if you can do a business partnership well, where money is always present and other people are always involved. So like you think about the variables that create problems. And the the number of decisions that you have to make in a business and agree on compared to the number of decisions you have to make in a marital life. I think they're far more high stake decisions in a business than there are in a marriage.

• 1:08:47Chris Williamson?

  Are you saying that I should have married my business partner?

• 1:08:49Speaker 00

  I think you might have considered it.

• 1:08:53Speaker 00

  And so I think if you, and so I think that in in many ways, I feel like the marriage has been significantly easier than than, well. I don't want to say the marriage has been easier than business. I think that the the skills that we learn being business partners just directly translated to to being married.

• 1:09:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, honestly is. I think it's forced us. I think our our communication as a couple has gotten so much better, so much faster than I think a lot of people probably. Experienced because we had the pressure of the business. So we had to learn to how to in that setting, which then translates over to the personal setting. Like it just can't not. And so the way that we give feedback, the way that we encourage each other, the way that we, you know. Deliver news that we don't want to to each other. I mean, it's all just kind of one.

• 1:09:34Chris Williamson?

  Have you talked about kids?

• 1:09:36Speaker 00

  We have.

• 1:09:38Chris Williamson?

  That's gonna be.

• 1:09:39Speaker 02

  That would be a little awkward if we hadn't.

• 1:09:44Speaker 00

  No, we have talked about kids. We're right now, we're in the no kids camp. Not that we have any belief that it's wrong, or it's bad, or it's like, people, I say this for the audience, because a lot of times if people express their opinions about kids, people take it as an attack or an insult on their choice, which is not our thing at all.

• 1:10:03Speaker 00

  At current, we have things that we would like to do, that if we had children, we would be precluded from doing. And we don't think that we would give up those things. And if we had the kids, then we wouldn't be the type of parents that we would want to be for them. And so, given where we're at right now, our age, what our goals are, it is not a priority for us.

• 1:10:27Chris Williamson?

  It's the same reason that I don't have a dog. Like, I absolutely love dogs. I'm not comparing, like toddlers and dogs, okay? But I absolutely adore dogs. I've been around them my entire life. They give me more joy than any single other creature. But I watched my mom and dad, and the way that they treated our dogs, and the sort of life that they got, the frequency of walks, and attention, and food, and diet, and everything. And I know that I'm going to end up resenting the dog, in a little way. I'm going to end up resenting it, because it's put a rate limiter on what I can do with my life. And the only way that I can live the life that I want to live is if I treat the dog in a way that would make me feel completely disgusted with myself. So, there's this, like, whatever, no man's land in between the two, right? And,

• 1:11:11Chris Williamson?

  you know, people go over to one side, or they go over to the other. But, yeah, kids and dogs, that's, um, so, given the fact, you know, a lot of people, a lot of people, sort of, especially couples, see their, um, their future investment as the kids, right, as the sort of family. After having spent a good bit of time building up businesses, and then reflecting, what does a good life look like to you now?

• 1:11:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, It's kind of funny because I think a lot of times too when people ask us like, "Well, don't you want to have kids?" Because like, "What's the vision for your life?" And I'm like, "The vision for our business and our life are not one, they're not like separate things." So I think we've kind of intertwined our mission with what we want our life to look like into our business. And so that's why we're okay like immersing ourselves in it completely. You know, since to us, a good life is to have challenges that are worthy of our time, right? Like things that we enjoy, but are challenging and hard. And I think that for both of us, it doesn't necessarily mean being comfortable and happy all the time. It means feeling fulfilled and like we put in a hard day's work. And so I think for both of us, that's probably what it looks like to have a good life.

• 1:12:19Speaker 02

  And to be a person of integrity. Like for myself, to have my thoughts aligned with my words, aligned with my actions is really important to me, and same with Alex. And so to just always make sure that, like I want to have a big impact on the world. If I do not align my thoughts, my words, and my actions, then I will not speak that into the world, right? And so you have to kind of get your shit together in order to put it out there. Otherwise, I just wouldn't feel right about it. And so like in terms of what the life looks like for us, you know, we focus much more on like the impact we want to have on others, not necessarily the gain in which we will accumulate for ourselves. So like, we're not like, "Oh, we want this enormous house with all this stuff in the woods of Montana and this and that." You know, I think what we've kind of said is we would like flexibility. You know, we like, we would like the opportunity, right?

• 1:13:04Speaker 02

  Like what it is, I think, is we all want the freedom to have flexibility. And so like, if we wanted a big house, we could have one. If we wanted to live in Montana, we could. But that doesn't mean we want to. I think we both like options. And so I think optionality is probably a big one for both of us.

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  Having kids, not having kids, I don't think that that would, that's not like a necessity in what we want our life to look like. Because, you know, I could make an argument that we'll have more impact if we don't have kids because we have more time allocated to the mission.

• 1:13:37Speaker 00

  And if you look at, you know, Tony Robbins talks about the six human needs. So you've got consistency, variety, growth and contribution. And then you've got recognition and connection, right? And so, I said consistency instead of certainty. You get what I'm saying. So there's six human needs, right? And so, most people, oftentimes, women will not be as satisfied in all six of those arenas if you rank them on one to 10. And so, having a child will fulfill those needs, right? The flip side of that is more often, men will have other things, are more satisfied by their work because more of their needs are met by the work that they have, right? And so, within the dynamic that we, you know, sit in, the business that we're doing right now with acquisition.com, you know, if we talk about, you know, certainty and variety

• 1:14:21Speaker 00

  or consistency and variety, we get both of those through the business. Talk about growth in terms of us personally getting better and then also contribution because the nature that we've, how we've built it is, you know, it's all about document and sharing the best practices. And then you talk about love and, you know, status or love and recognition. We get plenty of recognition, you know, from the business for the things that we do. And then the love we have within our marriage. And we also love the work that we do. And so, in many ways, the business fulfills all of the needs that we have from a human perspective. And so, we don't feel this hole that, that many people do. Not to say that it's right or wrong, just saying like, we haven't felt this pull to have kids probably as a, probably as a result of that.

• 1:15:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's actually something that, you know, we, when we met with Tony Robbins, it was like a few weeks ago, we went to, he was coaching people in front of us for like eight hours. That was one of the things I learned about myself. And I, you know, I have no problem with the fact that I have a desire to have kids right now. You know, a lot of people are like, you don't want kids? And I'm like, I don't know why, but I don't. Like, I just don't have a desire. And we talked about, we're like, why don't we want, like, I don't know. We don't think about it. It's not like I'm like, ID eating in the corner. Like, I'm like, it really doesn't cross my mind. And when I see them, I'm like, mm, you know? No, and not to say like, you know, plenty of children are great, but you know, there's obviously for every great child, there's lots that are like whining and crying. And so, and there's no lack in any of those areas. So that's why there's no desire for it. I could see like a world in which we're like 45 or one kid, you know.

• 1:15:43Chris Williamson?

  You've got to be careful that that wall of hormones can come and hit anybody. I've watched guys as well. Everybody talks about sort of women and they get towards their 30s and blah, blah, blah. I've watched my friends as well, my dude friends that were the laddiest lads that you can imagine through their 20s. And they get into 30s and then maybe they're in a relationship. And then they just get slammed with this paternal instinct that they they can't wait for and they make they make fantastic dads. So I think the the way that you guys have got it at the moment, which is like, this is where we're at now. We know that we're fulfilled on a bunch of different domains that we think are important for the time being. And remember, like, this is the beautiful thing about optionality, right? That it always is flexible in the future. Like, the amazing thing about optionality is the fact that you permanently have the ability to go in different directions.

• 1:16:28Chris Williamson?

  Speaking of Tony Robbins and some of the other big gurus, you've worked with Grant Cardone. And a lot of people on the internet talk shit about him. But as people who have worked with him directly, what was your experience like?

• 1:16:44Speaker 00

  So for context, Leila bought me a Christmas gift two years ago, which was four one-on-one calls with Grant because it was like available on the website. And she called and the sales guy didn't even know that he could sell it. And so she had to get transferred to a manager because he didn't. And she was like, I'm trying to give you 130,000 or 100, whatever it was, $1,000 for four hours. And he was like, I'm not sure. And the manager was like, I'm so sorry about that, man. I will be happy to accept your money. And so anyways, we've we've done three calls with Grant.

• 1:17:15Speaker 00

  They've been they've been very valuable. I will say that every experience we've had with Grant has been positive. He's been attentive. He's taken notes during our calls. He's asked about things that we had spoken about the last time.

• 1:17:27Speaker 00

  He waits to try and provide, you know, contextual feedback overall. And overall, it was a great Christmas gift for me because like, what do you? What do you get someone who can get themselves, you know, whatever? And for me, the thing that I love more than anything is just knowledge, you know what I mean? Like, everything I did. So and sometimes the the knowledge gets rarer and rarer and harder to find, right? And especially stories and experiences, like, they're the most valuable things. Because if I have a story, I can get the lessons from the experience without having to go through it. And so I always think those are the most valuable things of all. And but yeah, I mean. I think people will hate anyone who's

• 1:17:59Chris Williamson?

  I was gonna say, what do you think, what do you think it is that causes people to have this?

• 1:18:03Speaker 00

  He's polarizing. He's super polarizing. I mean, he makes very, you know, strong claims. He talks about money. A lot of people just hate anyone who talks about money. He has money. A lot of people hate people who have money. He shows off the money that he has, which a lot of people just hate because it makes them feel a certain way about what, you know, their lives.

• 1:18:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think polarizing is usually, what I think it means is that people speak in absolutes.

• 1:18:28Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:18:28Speaker 02

  So if somebody doesn't believe what he believes, they believe that him saying that makes them wrong. And so then they immediately say, I'll hate you so that then it basically discredits anything that you're saying, so I feel good about myself.

• 1:18:38Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:18:39Speaker 02

  But I think a lot, I mean, you know, a lot of people don't have that self-awareness. I mean, I get people all the time and I think I try to add a lot of context of like, hey, there's no right or wrong. And they're like, fuck you.

• 1:18:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:18:49Chris Williamson?

  It's, it's strange with nuance, right? When people add caveats in, what ends up happening is they dilute down the impact of the messaging in the hopes that they're going to front load a little bit of criticism, defense, defense. So

• 1:19:06Chris Williamson?

  Seth Godin came on the show and he told me about, he's got one of the biggest blogs on the planet, right? He's been writing daily for 15 years or something absolutely wild. And he said, it was about 10, 12 years ago, he removed comments from his blog. And this is when Medium and Substack and stuff didn't exist. And people said, you can't remove comments from your blog. It's a blog. A blog has comments. And he was like, no, I can and I am. And the reason that I am is I know, as the audience grows, every blog post is going to become a little bit longer with a little bit more caveats in there, with a little bit more exposition and nuance and a lack of commitment,

• 1:19:43Chris Williamson?

  because I'm always going to be playing defense ahead of what's going to appear in the comments below. And say what you want about Grant, like, the guy's committed to the views that he has. You know, and that degree, two things happened with that. One is, you're right, it creates a delta between what his view is and what your view is that can't be breached by you saying, oh, but he did say sometimes, or I think, it's like this. And the other thing that happens with that is that you cannot, it, it, it causes people to feel uncomfortable seeing somebody that's that certain about anything, because it shows into very harsh light. I don't believe anything that much and this guy's talking about something which is pretty aspirational with that degree of confidence that I wish that I had.

• 1:20:30Speaker 00

  Good point. Yeah, a lot of people don't like him. I admire him for it, so. I think a lot of people don't understand the goal, right? Like his goal, and he's very transparent, is not to be liked. His goal is to be known.

• 1:20:43Speaker 00

  And I think that's a very powerful nuance. Like, he wants to be known. And so if he has, he's happy to have more haters. He doesn't care. I really like, having spoken to him, I mean, maybe on some deep emotional level, like it's there, but like, I, he has trained himself to love the hate. And he's like, you know what haters do? They talk about you more than anyone else does. He's like, you know what that does? Gets more people in my world. He's like, when I, he did that stunt where he pretended like he lost all his money at the beginning of COVID, and like so many people hated him. He's like, look at my stats, bro. He's like, website's up 200%, sales are up 200%. He's like, look at the stats, man.

• 1:21:21Speaker 00

  And so like he, it's just, it's purely about what, you know, does this serve me? And I think Grant is very good about ruthlessly prioritizing like the things that serve him and cutting out things that do not. And so in that way, and this is just for everyone, like, I said at the very beginning, but if someone is making more money than me, they are better at the game than I am in some way. And so I think just from a fundamental standpoint of belief about who to look for, or what to look for, or where to look rather, for information, look at people who are ahead of you, ideally far ahead of you, and then look at the delta and say, one of these deltas is, if that is what I want, one of these deltas is the right way to do it. And there may not be this particular tactic, but the principle behind it might be.

• 1:22:06Chris Williamson?

  Remember as well that an absolute genius position to get yourself into is to have both people who like and dislike your content, share it. But that's playing chess, right? Not checkers. That, that really is like fucking four dimensional. Hang on a second, you're telling me the people that disagreed with it gave you extra reach? Yeah.

• 1:22:28Chris Williamson?

  Given the fact that we're talking about Grant Cardone as somebody that's sort of liked and not liked in equal measure, people might look at your lives, the business that you guys have built, and the position that you've managed to get yourselves to, and it's admirable. It's one that probably a lot of different people will very much want to try and emulate. This is one of the reasons that people are following you online, because they presume that if they consume your content, they're going to be able to model whatever it is that you guys have done. What I'm interested in is the price that people pay to get themselves to the level or to be at the level that other people admire. So what would you say is the price that the Hormozi family pays to be the people that people admire?

• 1:23:14Speaker 00

  Well, I'd say there's, I mean, I've talked a lot more about this recently, which is a lot of people are trying to make content, especially like in the Hormozi Nation community. They see what we're doing, et cetera. And they aren't able to, they can do the stuff, right? But they don't get the heart right, which is they're doing it to serve them rather than the audience. And they're also doing it for a place of zero expertise. And so they talk about things that they don't have evidence to support. And so what they'll do is they'll watch a video of mine, or they'll watch a video of Grant's, or they'll watch whatever, right? And then they'll just parrot back a diluted version of what they heard, right? And so that does not make an expert, because there is no context. There is no experience that backs and supports that knowledge. And so at the end of the day, somebody could take every word that I say and remake a

• 1:23:59Speaker 00

  clone video, and the underlying question will always be, why should I listen to you?

• 1:24:05Speaker 00

  And unless the audience has a clear answer, and I think unless the speaker has a good answer, it will never go viral. Even if it's amazing savings and investing advice, if you're a broke teacher...

• 1:24:19Speaker 00

  And you say the same exact thing that Warren Buffett does. Warren Buffett's advice is going to be the one that's taken. His video is going to be the one that's shared. Why? Because he's the one who built Berkshire Hathaway. And so it's like you did everything right, except for you forgot the one thing that mattered, which was building a $600 billion company. Except for that little thing, you got everything else right. And so I think it's like they go for themselves and they don't go to serve the audience. And they speak about things that they don't have the authority to speak on. And so, you know, our shift is to try to get people, at least in the price point is like, instead of, if you want to be a business icon, you have to accomplish a pretty significant amount of business accolades in order to really be taken seriously. And so it's like, don't go broad. You can still be the absolute best person who talks about dog training in Austin.

• 1:25:04Speaker 00

  And you can be king of that pond. And if you become more successful, then you can talk about dog training in general. And then you can talk about marketing for a local business. And then you can, you know what I mean? Like you can expand outwards as you gain the recognition, the evidence that would support your expertise in the arena. And so the cost or the price that I think the Hormozi's had paid was that we are now, I'm 32, she's 29, and we are really now doing the content thing as of really just the last 12 months.

• 1:25:29Speaker 00

  But I started, you know, my first, I've been in business 10 years. And so I did, you know, we did a first $100 million run without any of the brand. And so there's like that one thing that people miss. Like that was the, that was the little price.

• 1:25:45Chris Williamson?

  It's strange when you think as well that the reverse can happen to people who give shit advice, but have tons and tons of credit because they've been successful in the past can be listened to.

• 1:25:55Speaker 00

  Totally. 100%. Absolutely. Which is dangerous, which is why Leila talks about this a lot. But it's, I mean, and it's hard to do this because people are not very good at like. Contextualizing. Right? They're not very good at adding filters. And it's because, the reason that people seek out experts is because it actually takes less effort to consume the information. Because if you're talking to somebody who's normal or potentially a moron, they will have things that they will say, and you have to take effort and be like, okay, let me apply this in a couple scenarios. Does this make sense? Okay, yes. And they say the next thing, and then you have to apply it in a couple scenarios. Does this make sense? No. Okay? Whereas if you listen to Warren Buffett and he gives you investment advice, you don't need to apply a lot of filters because you think he's the best at this in the entire world.

• 1:26:40Speaker 00

  And so I can just take what he says. And so it becomes less effortful for the consumer of information because of the authority. That's why people are persuaded by authority figures because they don't have to think about it as much.

• 1:26:50Chris Williamson?

  Success is basically a hard to fake signal of authenticity, but it can be weaponized by people who don't actually know what they're talking about. And then you see people, that's, that's kind of what stay in your own lane should have meant. It got weaponized by people that were using it in a stupid way, but stay in your own lane is like, look, I'm, I'm going to take your advice, Warren, about finance, but I'm not going to let you give me cues on deadlift form. Like, I know where your expertise lies. Look, Alex and Leila Hormozi, everybody, if people want to keep up to date with the stuff that you're doing, where should they go?

• 1:27:20Speaker 00

  If you search us on whatever platforms you tend to use, we will probably be there. So we're currently on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram. We have a podcast called The Game, if you guys are interested in that, or I have a podcast called The Game, Leila's starting hers soon. We have a YouTube channel, if you guys are into that. Leila and I both have separate ones. We talk about different things, so people get different, different pieces from it. Leila talks about her side of the house in terms of scaling companies, scaling the teams, building infrastructure, really just getting N to 1,000. And I talk about a lot more money stuff, so marketing, sales, product stuff, how to increase profits, all that kind of jazz. I also have a book, it's 99 cents, called Hundred Million Dollar Offers, it's on Amazon.

• 1:27:58Chris Williamson?

  Link in show notes below. Guys, I appreciate you. Thank you.