Throwback: 5 Stages of Niche-Hopping | Ep 220

Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned and will learn on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth. Wanna scale your business? Click here. Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials: LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm telling you this right now. It has everything to do what's going on in your head. You have to go through the shit and you have to figure out the stuff that they aren't figuring out. Every problem that you encounter, instead of running away from it, which is exactly what niche hopping is, exactly what new opportunity hopping is, you have to confront. I want to tell you a story that will hopefully break some of your beliefs and I think will be one of the reasons that you, like, if you can internalize this story, this may be the way that you get to eight figures or seven figures, if that is your goal. When I started in the information marketing agency world, Leila and I were dating. At that time, I had six gyms that I was, that I owned.

• 0:41Speaker 00

  I had GymLaunch, which was a done-for-you sales and marketing system where we'd fly out and launch other people's gyms.

• 0:50Speaker 00

  And I had a dentist agency where I would generate leads for dentists. And I had a chiropractic agency where I generated leads for chiropractors. And guess what? I made no money. The reason I made no money is because I could not focus on anything. And so what happened there was I developed an initial set of skills, sales and marketing, and then immediately saw this whole new world of opportunity that was in front of me. But what I had not developed yet was the character trait to associate with the skill, which was discipline and focus. And because of that, my lack of character, I was not able to reap the rewards or the fruits of the skill set that I had acquired.

• 1:36Speaker 00

  And so what ended up happening was probably one of the hardest year and a half's of my life. All right, I ended up having, I sold five of the six gyms, I just shut one of them down. A partner stole all the money from the sale of those gyms. I had the GymLaunch that started happening, was working, and then all of a sudden we had chargebacks from one of the gyms that I shut down, which then wiped that account clean again, all right? The dentist that I sold did not get results because I did not have a system for them put together. I just generated leads on a sheet and just told them on calls what they needed to do, and they didn't do it, obviously. And so I had two dentists that had paid me $10,000 each. I had chiropractors that had paid me $10,000.

• 2:16Speaker 00

  And all that was left is that all of the money that I used, that I'd gotten from that was literally just to pay my bills and eat and do whatever. All right, and the issue was that I had no focus. As soon as I see an entrepreneur that comes into my world and they say, I have a couple of companies. I immediately know that they are a new, that they are a new. And some of you may be hearing this right now and be like, well, I have a couple of companies. Cool. You're probably a new, alright? It's very unlikely that you have the ability at this point to have multiple entities, alright? Like I'm, I'm telling you this right now. And so, the issue is, there are five stages that you go through when you are a new, alright?

• 3:01Speaker 00

  And I'm saying this, and if this affects you, I'm purposely doing it this way, uh, because I, I'm not going to help you unless, unless we break some beliefs, alright? And that's what has to happen. And for some reason, fuck it, I'll just make another sheet. Alright, here's the five stages. You got one, you got a little up, you got a down, and then you go up higher at the end, alright? One, in the beginning, is called uninformed optimism. That means you're optimistic about something that's going to happen. You're excited about the opportunity that's in front of you because you see with your skillset, you imagine how much money you could make and you start doing this math in your head and you put it on Excel sheet and you get Excel rich. And you sell yourself and you talk to your partner and you talk to your parents, you talk to your friends. And all you do is get excited, right?

• 3:44Speaker 00

  Your dopamine starts sprouting, you know, oh my God, this is going to be amazing, make so much money, right? Then what happens? You get into it and then you go to here, right? And right here is called informed pessimism. You now know that it's not as good as you thought because now you have more information. You find out that just like every other niche, there's going to be issues, there's going to be constraints, there's going to be problems, right? Because guess what? They all have problems. And then you go to here. This is called the valley of despair. This is where you're in the thick of it, you can't figure it out, or like you're figuring it out, there's tons of hair all over it. And so what do you do? You jump.

• 4:24Speaker 00

  To the next niche and you start all over again and you do the dance. You say uninformed optimism, informed pessimism, valley of despair, and you never make it past step three. Step three is where you have to go through the shit, right? And the only way to get through the shit is to focus. When you keep going into new niches, you never put your roots deep enough to learn the game. Right? There's a reason it's not Cairo launch, you know, dental launch and, you know, PT launch and whatever launch, right? There's a reason that we chose not to do that. Because you can have a $100 million dental agency. You can have a $100 million Cairo agency.

• 5:08Speaker 00

  You have a $100 million PT agency. What you probably can't have is three of them. And so you have to ask yourself, what is the reason that I think I need to do more niches? What's the reason? Is it because I think that's going to make me more money? No, why? Why would it make you more money? Because wouldn't it be easier to just get more of the customers you already have and can demonstrate results for, right? And so the next two steps of this are now informed optimism is step four. What that means is at this point, you've gone through the shit and you've figured out the solution. Right? And it's starting to work and you're starting to get into a rhythm. And then all the way up here, number five is achievement. All right?

• 5:52Speaker 00

  And that is where you realize the potential of this new opportunity. Most people never make it past here, ever. And depending on the entrepreneur, they can continue to repeat this cycle for years, years, and they cannot figure it out. It's like the guy that you know. Who continues to date the same girl, identical, different chick every time, but it's the same chick, right? And they keep going and they keep doing the same mistake over again. They fall in love, they get really excited and then they actually realize they have to have a relationship and they bail. Right? And they do the same thing over and over again. They never get to the part where they can achieve the potential of the relationship. It's the same thing in business.

• 6:35Speaker 00

  And until you learn the skill, you will never get to any figures. I'm telling you this right now. It has everything to do with what's going on in your head. You have to go through the shit and you have to figure out the stuff that they aren't figuring out. Every problem that you encounter, instead of running away from it, which is exactly what niche hopping is, exactly what new opportunity hopping is, you have to confront it. You have to face it head on and you have to figure it out. Right? If they can't sell over the phone, you have to figure it out. You have to make a better script. You have to make a better training. You have to do daily calls with them. You have to do team training their team. You have to think, how many ways can I solve this problem? Right? If they're not making enough money, it's because you did not create a mousetrap that was valuable enough for them to extract value from. And whose fault is that? It's yours, right?

• 7:22Alex Hormozi?

  Hey Moz nation, quick break just to let you know that we've been starting to post on LinkedIn and want to connect with you. All right, so send me a connection request and note letting me know that you listen to the show and I will accept it. There's anyone you think that we should be connected with, tag them in one of my relayless posts and I will give you all the love in the world. All right, so let's get back to the show.

• 7:42Speaker 00

  And so just like I'm putting this out there because the number one thing I'm seeing right now, and if any of you guys were on my, on my presentation yesterday, the third, the third framework that I introduced was the niche duplication framework, which is how you can repeat this in as many niches as possible. And I put that in there because I know who I'm talking to. Right? In their minds, the inexperienced mind, they think, oh my God, if I made $10,000 in one niche, I could do $10,000 in another niche. Because they don't even have the belief yet that you can make a million dollars a month in a niche. You can make $10 million a month in a niche. Right? You just have to have that belief. All right. And so getting to another niche, tell me what problem it solves to double your operational issues, double. The types and number of problems that you have to solve in real time.

• 8:28Speaker 00

  Tell me how that's going to make your life easier. Explain it to me, make an argument to me, right? Because if the question is, I don't, you know, my, my niche is super saturated. Welcome to the fucking world, right? It's all saturated, a hundred percent of it saturated, right? And the only way to win is to be better. And the way to be better is to stick through the shit. It's to go through the third step where everyone bails, right? And on the other side of that is where all of the green grass is. The green grass is not only other niches, not on the other side of the fence. It's not in the new opportunity. And so I'm through going through the manure and digging down and then letting it grow, right? You gotta work the field. That's how it works. All right. And I'm telling you this because I lived it. All right. I had six gyms, one done for you agency.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  And then I had three niches I was serving. It was impossible. Same guy, all right? Six months later, I cut everything out and just said, I'm going all in on gyms. And why did I do that? Because my wife was like, if you don't pick something, she's like, I'm not going to be with you. And I was like, fuck. All right. And so maybe some of you need someone.

• 9:32Speaker 00

  Maybe you don't have a, a couple of people that maybe she has no idea, whatever, right? And so hopefully this can just be a voice to you from your past. All right. Because I feel like as I'm talking to some of you guys, I just feel like I'm talking to myself. Right? And so I don't want you to make this mistake. And some of you will keep going around this merry-go-round over and over and over and over again. And you will not beat the level until you learn how to unlock the boss, right? And to put him on his ass. And the way to put him on his ass is not to do more different things. It's to do more of the same thing. It's to get better. And every entrepreneur wants something that's new. The marketplace wants new, but the business world wants better. And that's how you win, right? There's no shortcut.

• 10:16Speaker 00

  And so you have to put in the work, you have to run beta tests, right? You gotta say, okay, we're gonna try this new script. We're gonna take four of our facilities and have them test this new script out. You're gonna make a little training for them, present it, get them to give you stats every day and focus on it. And then what happens? If it improves, great, roll it out to everyone. If it doesn't improve, learn from it, try something else, right? And like, the reason Jim wants through the way it was is because every single step of the process, we tested and tested and tested, right? Even in this online model that we've been pushing right now, right? We have, we've already changed and tweaked and improved each part of that process. Like, it wasn't like, alright, let's do chiropractors. You know what? Gyms, gyms don't work, right? Gyms don't work, let's do chiropractors. No, right?

• 11:01Speaker 00

  We just stick through the shit. And so, I say this with like, a lot of love, and I'm trying to say this because some of you guys, I feel like I could be a big brother too. Like, I wanna give you like a noogie sometime. But I'm saying this with love because I need you to get through this. I need you to get through this like creepy best in phase of new entrepreneurship of, I wanna do everything. You gotta pick one. You can win at any of them, but you can't win at all of them. And that's, that's the reason, right? So many of you have so much skill, right? You guys are so good at promoting, you're so good at selling, right? So we guys are great marketers. You just have to use that and channel it into one channel. Otherwise, you're spread too thin, and that's why you feel like you're working all day, you're putting out fires all day, and you can't move forward, right?

• 11:41Speaker 00

  If, imagine right now, if all you had to do was get one person to be successful, and then all you do is duplicate that one person and just clone them, and do it again, and do it again, and do it again. And I'll tell you, like, right now, we're learning on the agency side, how to make you guys successful. One of the mistakes that I made early on, like with Alan right now, is that in the beginning, a lot of the messaging that I have, or I talk to you guys, was that Alan is a platform that you can run your agency on and make more money. In reality, Alan is, Alan is a platform that supports the business model that I'm telling you, right? It's more, switch to my model and you will make more, we just so happen to use out, to extract the value. It is a piece, but the model is the thing that's going to make you the money, right? That's the game.

• 12:26Speaker 00

  And so, some of you are not following instructions. You're half in, you're half out. You're like, I want to do half the things one way and half things another way. It's not gonna work, right? It's like the girl who's trying to lose weight and she's like, well, I'm gonna do keto on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I'm gonna do high carb, you know, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. You can't mix shit. Doesn't work that way, right? Gotta follow the sequence. The guys who are doing the best are just following the play, right? Are following the play. Some of you guys got to follow your fucking egos, right? You're not hot shit, myself included, right? But I'm saying like, like, I don't know how, like, and I'm, I'm, just so you guys know, well, I'll, I'll leave there. I'm gonna reach out to a couple of you guys, but you have to just, ugh. So I want you guys to win and I don't want you to make the same mistakes I did. And I want you to level up.

• 13:10Speaker 00

  And the way to level up is not by doing more things, it's by doing the same thing better. And it's not sexy. And that's the character trait you have to develop to get to the next level. So anyways, I hope that made sense for some of you guys. And if maybe it made sense for another you, hopefully it made sense for one of you guys. And hopefully that's a turning point that you can say, you know what? I'm not gonna do six niches. I'm gonna pick one and I'm gonna get really good at. And that's what I'm doing. And when it gets hard, I'm gonna stick with it because I know that every other person who's gone and tried this niche gets to this point and bails. And that's why they can't move forward. They all do a mediocre job and then try and spread themselves too thin, but I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna be better than them because I'm gonna win and I'm gonna get through this piece. Because what it took to get you to here, which is learning how to sell and promote, is not the thing that's gonna get you to there, which is learning to be disciplined with

• 13:55Speaker 00

  your focus, with your attention.