Solving 6 Scaling Problems | Ep 969

Download your free personalized $100M scaling roadmap in under 30 seconds: https://www.acquisition.com/roadmap?el=yt-alex-486r&htrafficsource=youtube Bigger businesses demand bigger tradeoffs, but most business owners just don’t want to pay them. In this episode, Alex coaches six business owners through the real bottlenecks stopping them from scaling. He breaks down why inbound and outbound sales teams should never mix, why premium businesses require premium talent, and why the fastest way to grow is often killing the thing that made you successful in the first place. In this episode 00:00 The real cost of scaling from $6M to $100M 07:14 Raising prices to fund staffing needs 10:46 Outreaches to get more “whale” HVAC partners 12:52 Building the dream team to handle high-end clients 18:18 Lead generation strategies for a roofing company 26:41 Doubling down on networking to generate more leads 27:55 Calculating the opportunity cost of exiting a business More Value: Join The Live Scaling Workshop In Las Vegas: https://www.acquisition.com/o-vegas Download your free personalized $100M scaling roadmap in under 30 seconds: https://www.acquisition.com/roadmap?el=yt-alex-486r&htrafficsource=youtube Discover The Easiest Business I Can Help You Start (Free Trial): https://www.skool.com/hormozi Free Books and Video Courses: https://www.acquisition.com/training Get the $100M Book Bundle: https://shop.acquisition.com/pages/100m-book-bundle Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials: ⁠⁠LinkedIn ⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠YouTube ⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠Acquisition ⁠ DISCLOSURE Information shared here is for educational purposes only. Individuals and business owners should evaluate their own business strategies, and identify any potential risks. The information shared here is not a guarantee of success. Your results may vary. Copyright © 2026.

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

• 0:00Alex Hormozi?

  I've been in business for 14 years. I recently did $106 million book launch in a weekend. And our portfolio of companies at acquisition.com is over $250 million in aggregate revenue. And a portion of that is brick and mortar chains that we own. And so in this video, I'm answering your questions about how to scale specifically a brick and mortar HVAC business. And for all those questions, I try to do my very best to make the solutions as tactical as humanly possible. So that you watching from home can actually use this stuff. Enjoy.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  My name is Thomas. I sell roofing and exterior remodeling. We do close to 6 million this year. I would like to be at 100 million. What's stopping me and I'll be a little bit vulnerable? I would say it's comfort, distractions and fear.

• 0:38Alex Hormozi?

  And food?

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Fear.

• 0:39Alex Hormozi?

  Oh, sorry. I was like,

• 0:42Alex Hormozi?

  all right, good to know.

• 0:45Alex Hormozi?

  Sometimes I feel that way, too.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  So the comfort is I have built the business. I've replaced myself in every aspect. I can work two to three hours a week and it run fine.

• 0:56Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Fear, I would say the fear of losing family time, the work-life balance.

• 1:03Alex Hormozi?

  Sure.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  And the distractions are my other, I've got another business, drunk removal business. I've got real estate. I've got just all kinds of little.

• 1:13Alex Hormozi?

  What do you think you should do that you're not doing that you want me to tell you to do?

• 1:17Speaker 01

  So, so I know I need to go all in again.

• 1:20Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  And I did that the first five years that I.

• 1:22Alex Hormozi?

  And that worked out.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  And it worked out great. Went through COVID. I got, you know, kept the business going really well. And I worked myself out of a job, got comfortable.

• 1:34Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  So I don't know what I'm looking for you to tell me to do.

• 1:38Alex Hormozi?

  Well, I'll say, I'll say this differently. I think regrets come when we imagine the upside that we don't have without taking into account the cost that we didn't suffer.

• 1:50Alex Hormozi?

  And so I think we regret when we imagine the upside that we didn't get without also considering the downside that we didn't suffer. To get it. And so I think that's where a lot of regret comes from because it's not, it's not real. So it's like, maybe there's some girl that got away or some business opportunity that got away and we just imagine. This amazing thing, but not the trade off that we would have to do in order to get it. We just imagine the upside without downside. And so I would say a couple of things. So one is, I think that there are, there are trade offs that we always have to make. And I don't, I don't think they're right or wrong. I think they're just their preference. There's no right answer to how much work life balance you want to have. It's right for you.

• 2:29Alex Hormozi?

  And so said differently, if I like cookies and I'm good with that, and I also want a six pack. I just prefer cookies to a six pack. It's just that's the trade. And I think the dissatisfaction comes from wanting both.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:43Alex Hormozi?

  Right? And so either want less or trade more. And I think that's really what it comes down to in terms of like, is there a path where I can work no more than I currently am? To go from six to a hundred, there probably is. It depends on how much you're willing to pay other people. And so you might have to take a short term hit in terms of profitability. Uh, to bring in the level of talent that you want to expand the business on your behalf to where you want it to go. And so as long as you were the type of person, character wise, that they would want to follow and believe in your vision. And you can make your vision big enough that they think that their aspirations can fit within it. You can get that type of person. But like it's, it's a hundred percent like you're, you're graduating right now into the who game.

• 3:23Alex Hormozi?

  Um, but there's levels of who's, you know, like I remember, um, the first time I hired a 50,000 all year employee. And I was like, this is shit. This is what I'm talking about. You know what I mean? Like I went from minimum wage, you know, labor to 50,000, I was like this, they're, they can read, they can write, like let's, let's go. You know what I mean? Uh, and then I hired my first six figure employee and I was like, oh, what was I talking about? Like this is what's going on. And then I have my first two 50, first 500, first million, first multimillion dollar per year employee. And it's just levels. And so, um, Sharon, who's our president, said this to me years ago, but I always remember he said the best, the best talent's always in the future. So whatever we have today, the best people are always ahead of you, not behind you. And so I think for you, if we, if you really do want to accomplish it without making the trade, you will make a trade.

• 4:08Alex Hormozi?

  Cause if you change nothing, nothing will change, right? So we have to change some, some component of your life. And so the question is, which thing do you value the least? Do you value having more profit or more time with your family in the short term? In the long term, you can make it up. You won't make up family time in the long term. You can't make the profit up in the long term.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:26Alex Hormozi?

  So if you're willing to give up short term profit, you can bring in high level talent and then they can lead the growth. In terms of the, uh, the fear stuff, I mean, I would just say like, just hold, hold the line. If you're like, I'm afraid of losing time with the family, it's like, just don't like I, you know? And then in terms of the real estate thing, I see real estate because I know a bunch of entrepreneurs. I have a ton of real estate. As long as you're not like actively running it. Like that's why I'm a fan of like REITs and funds. Uh, because you have, if you have, you know, good partners in that stuff, they can just run it. You can make better than the market and then, but it's not, it doesn't change anything about what I do. Like me putting in the S and P or me buying another big building changes nothing about my life. And so it's not a distraction unless you're like, you know, if we could add a gazebo and what if we added a different roof?

• 5:10Alex Hormozi?

  Cause I'm a roofer and what if I combined what I'm really, and you're like, dude, stop just like, let the real estate be the real estate. Let the business be the business and just keep them apart as long as you're good there. Cause I think he's a distraction. Actually, let me double checking that real quick, which is when you said your, uh, the distraction thing that you're afraid of. Why are you afraid of that?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  I'm not afraid of it.

• 5:27Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  I'm just, I've got ADHD and I, I, I collect gold and silver. I buy houses, I buy buildings. I've, I mean, it's just.

• 5:36Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  A little bit of the red dress.

• 5:38Alex Hormozi?

  Well, as long as it doesn't change anything about what you do, I don't care. But if it's like, no, I check this stuff all the time and it like eats up my days, then yeah, I would say that's a problem. And it's only a problem if you decide it's a problem. Like you might just like that stuff. It's just like, I sacrificed my goals because I enjoy this ADD. You know what I mean? Like the cost of the big thing is the new stuff that you have to give up to keep it going.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:59Alex Hormozi?

  Thank you. I feel like there's some amens. This is great. This is like a good meal, right? Yeah. I appreciate it. But yeah, that's like the cost of the big thing is all the new stuff you have to give up that you don't get to pursue. All the exciting things that you will no longer participate in because you want to do one thing big. And I think for me personally, I had this moment, I think a while ago, but like I had this realization of how long it takes to get good at anything. And then I thought about, oh, I only have like 30 or 40 more productive years at most. And so I'm like, I've got like four or five big seasons in me left. And so that's it. And so I don't have like unlimited shots on

• 6:40Alex Hormozi?

  goal. I've got four or five big runs in me. So, hope that helps.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  I appreciate that answer because I thought you were gonna say sell everything and.

• 6:49Alex Hormozi?

  I mean, they're investments. I mean, I'm not gonna tell you to sell your investments. I would say keep passive stuff passive. Don't make it active. That's like incurring cost. Because if you're gonna make it active, then make active money. If you're like, I want to take my passive money and then make it cost me more time to get 5% better returns. It's like, you're gonna get way better returns in your active income than your passive. And I would just keep active, active, keep passive, passive.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 7:13Alex Hormozi?

  Appreciate you.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  My name's Corey. I'm an electrical contractor. I do 1.6 million a year. Probably keep about 650 of that. I'd like to be about five is kind of what I can see right now. My biggest constraint is myself plus hiring quality candidates.

• 7:29Alex Hormozi?

  So you can handle the volume you have right now? So you can't handle the volume you have? You could get more business, but you can't handle it?

• 7:35Speaker 02

  I can handle it when the whole crew's here. And then as soon as one guy's gone, I'm back in the van.

• 7:40Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, so you need more people.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  More people.

• 7:41Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. So we have to think about like, so this is probably a multi-step thing just for everybody, like as we're following through this is like, if we have, if you have enough business, which it sounds like you do, that's not the constraint, then it probably means we need to bump price. And we bump price so that we can have the cash flow, so that we can hire the extra person, so that you have redundancy in the team. Right? Like, if Alex had to hop in, if, if Tim's sick, that's not gonna work, right? We have to have two or three backups for any person who's here, so that I can keep doing my job, right? And so, but I can only do that if I have the cash flow to sustain. Multiple tips, right? And so this is where sometimes it's like a multi-step solution. So it's like, we have to fix the pricing component.

• 8:23Alex Hormozi?

  And it's like, okay, well, I feel weird charging more because other people in my market charge even less than I do, and I'm a little bit above the market. Right? So then we have to think about the offer. It's like, okay, so the offer might be the issue, which is like, okay, can we make our thing faster? Can we make it more reliable? Or we can make it easier, right? And can we guarantee around that? And if the answer is yes, and it's like, great, well, then that's what we're going to charge our premium and bump prices by 20 to 40%, which sounds like a lot, I know. But we say, hey, if we don't meet any of these qualifications, I'll give you all my profit back, which means that you raise the price. And if for some reason you don't meet it, you go back to the exact same price you're charging now. But everyone that you do meet everything on, you get all the juice. And if no one else does those kinds of guarantees, which basically no one does, then you can basically say, well, the reason that they're not doing that is because they're not confident

• 9:08Alex Hormozi?

  they're going to be on time and on budget, right? And I am. And so it's very easy for somebody else to say, hey, I'll do this job for you, and maybe I'll be on time and maybe I'll be on budget. But if I have no teeth in that agreement, I promise that it'll be free and I'll be done tomorrow. But if I don't have to be right about it, who cares? Sure, I'll be done tomorrow. And they'll be like, oh, I guess I get your point. Like, right, I'll be done by this time and it'll be done satisfactory at this price, period. And you know that when you sign this, you get that. That's it. And if for some reason something happens, we'll come back and fix it. Right? And so by doing that, you'll be able to increase the cash flow, which will then allow you to go recruit the extra tech that you need so you can stay above the business. And then ultimately, honestly, just keep advertising it so that you can keep hiring and backfilling.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Okay. I can see that totally for my service calls and stuff like that. Kind of my bread and butter is I chase six or seven different heating and cooling companies around and do all their electrical work.

• 9:58Alex Hormozi?

  Cool.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  So they take the lead. They, I have a flat rate sheet for that. But the biggest thing they always complain about is price. And we're super efficient. We get in, get out, but they're always complaining about the cost that we came in at.

• 10:11Alex Hormozi?

  Do they still buy from you?

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Have for six years.

• 10:16Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. I mean, I care more about what people do than what they say.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 10:21Alex Hormozi?

  Everyone would like it cheaper.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:23Alex Hormozi?

  I would like it cheaper. I would like all of you guys to get paid less.

• 10:28Alex Hormozi?

  Right? But it's, it's, it, yeah, I just, I pay very little attention to that.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 10:35Alex Hormozi?

  Like customers will always want it cheaper. They will always want it faster. They always want a guarantee. Like, these are all things, like, that will not change.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  So when I'm moving my prices, don't even.

• 10:43Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, I'd be like, this is what it is.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 10:45Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. Now, to, to make yourself sleep better, you have six or seven guys. It's like, wouldn't it be cooler if you had like 60? Right? So then we go back to the top here, which is you have your way of getting customers, which is mostly chasing these six or seven heating and cooling companies around. And so it's like, what do you get? What do you do to get the heating and cooling companies?

• 11:02Speaker 02

  Basically, I've worked for one for 15 years and it's just constant.

• 11:06Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  And then the other ones, since I opened my business shortly after, they've been with me. And so really, I have no.

• 11:13Alex Hormozi?

  You have no marketing function. Yeah. So you should start doing, this is what I would do if I were you. I'd start doing outreach to other heating and cooling companies. Hey, let me quote some of these jobs for you. Like, a lot of people are just stuck with the person they're, they're with. They're not happy. They're not unhappy. They're just whatever. Like, let me at least get some, it'll just keep them honest at least. Right? And so then you can just start bringing business for yourself and that'll just give you more leverage with all of the other kind of negotiations that you have with the existing companies.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 11:39Alex Hormozi?

  Because right now, you're just dependent on them. So they have all the leverage.

• 11:42Speaker 02

  Well, yeah. And then as soon as they, like, I'm missing out on work.

• 11:45Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Because as soon as they say, hey, we have a job tomorrow.

• 11:48Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  I'm going because they're my.

• 11:50Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  They're my whales.

• 11:51Alex Hormozi?

  Right.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  So it's.

• 11:52Alex Hormozi?

  So you need more whales.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 11:54Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. So we need more whales, but to get more whales, we have to tweak price to get, so that we can hire the manpower. Like, it's usually multi-step solutions because, like, for most businesses, it's, if it were one thing, you probably would have already seen it. So it's usually second order or third order that has to change so we can reverse engineer back to fixing the core problem.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  Gotcha. Thank you.

• 12:12Alex Hormozi?

  That feel good though?

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:13Alex Hormozi?

  Okay, cool.

• 12:14Speaker 02

  Appreciate it.

• 12:14Alex Hormozi?

  Real quick, I'm going to show you the exact 10-stage roadmap from zero to 100 million plus that less than 1% of companies finish, I've now done multiple times. And so I can say with a lot of confidence that these are the stages as headcount increases that you need to get through. And I broke each of these down by eight different functions of the business, what the constraint feels like, like what are the symptoms of it when you're going through it? And then what steps we actually took to graduate? And we've done this across software, physical products, service businesses, brick and mortar, all of this, and it works. And it's my gift to you, it's absolutely free. And so the link's in the description, but you just go acquisition.com/roadmap, just enter your info and it'll spit it right back to you, all free.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  My name's Tanner Jarrett. We're at 1.5 mil to date.

• 12:55Alex Hormozi?

  Amazing.

• 12:56Speaker 03

  700 net. My big concern is how do I make the dream team like you have here? How do I get technicians on board, sales guys?

• 13:06Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 13:06Speaker 03

  Like make it work?

• 13:08Alex Hormozi?

  So, okay. What breaks when we do more?

• 13:12Speaker 03

  What breaks?

• 13:12Alex Hormozi?

  Like what stops you from doing this?

• 13:14Speaker 03

  Uh.

• 13:14Alex Hormozi?

  We're going to figure out which one, like order ops. What stops, what breaks when you do that?

• 13:18Speaker 03

  Biggest issue is technicians.

• 13:20Alex Hormozi?

  Okay, so techs is the, is the issue. Okay.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  Techs, office staff.

• 13:24Alex Hormozi?

  What do you make on a tech?

• 13:26Speaker 03

  Uh, anywhere from 180, 200, 300,000 a year.

• 13:31Alex Hormozi?

  Per?

• 13:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:33Alex Hormozi?

  After costs?

• 13:34Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 13:35Alex Hormozi?

  Damn.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  Well, this year, yeah.

• 13:37Alex Hormozi?

  Cause you're dentists, you're giving your run for your money there, I'm just saying, man. All right. All right, so we've got 300K for the techs. Got it. Um, all right, and you need them local in Bozeman?

• 13:47Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 13:48Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. Um, and what are you doing right now to recruit techs?

• 13:51Speaker 03

  Uh, honestly, kind of just gave up lately.

• 13:55Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 13:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:56Alex Hormozi?

  I would imagine that would make it difficult to recruit more techs.

• 14:01Alex Hormozi?

  So then, then let me, then let me ask the next question, which is like, what stops you from recruiting more techs? Not the decision, there's, I've like.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:09Alex Hormozi?

  Some of you guys have probably seen that management diamond that I have, which is like, people don't know that you need to do it. They don't know how to do it. They don't know when to do a buy. They have something blocking them or there's a motivation issue. I'm assuming you're motivated. I'm assuming you already know that you need to do it and how to do it.

• 14:21Speaker 03

  Hundred percent.

• 14:22Alex Hormozi?

  So, and you need to know the when is now. So I'm guessing there's something blocking you.

• 14:26Speaker 03

  My thing that's blocking me is I have to be involved, I believe, in every single.

• 14:32Alex Hormozi?

  Strong words.

• 14:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. Every single aspect of the company.

• 14:36Alex Hormozi?

  Have to or choose to?

• 14:37Speaker 03

  Choose to.

• 14:38Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 14:38Speaker 03

  Choose to. Hundred percent. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:40Alex Hormozi?

  You know, staying from saying him. Okay.

• 14:42Speaker 03

  And so I can't, I can't let it go.

• 14:43Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. So can't or won't?

• 14:46Speaker 03

  We have some, okay, we have some very high end clients.

• 14:49Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 14:49Speaker 03

  So we work at the Yellowstone Club.

• 14:52Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 14:52Speaker 03

  In Montana, Spanish Peaks. I know Matt Damon, Jennifer Garner, Mark Zuckerberg.

• 14:58Alex Hormozi?

  I mean, you don't need to name drop.

• 14:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, sorry. But I.

• 15:01Alex Hormozi?

  You're a big deal.

• 15:01Speaker 03

  I'm not a big deal. It's tiny. Ed told me that.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  Anyway, and so it's, it's hard to let that go, you know, that.

• 15:13Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 15:14Speaker 03

  That ego.

• 15:15Alex Hormozi?

  So, so fundamentally, this is, I guess this is, I mean, key man is the number one risk of every business. For two reasons. One, no one will survive. But second, you want to kill it yourself at some point because you're like, I don't want to do it. You said you burned yourself on the ground, right? So what we have to do is if we look at all of the things, like, look at your behaviors, not your feelings around them. And say, okay, these are all the things that I do on a daily basis. Some of those things someone else can do. Now, there's for sure things that are higher leverage, higher value. It might be that for you, doing the design for stuff is the highest leverage thing. I don't know. It might be. It might, it's definitely not using your hands. I can promise you that. It might be getting the relationship and managing the relationship. That might be the most valuable thing. So if we just did, if we, if we did a rank order, this is what you'd have to do is like, we do a time study, which is step one.

• 16:01Alex Hormozi?

  So take an Excel sheet, you can open it up on your phone. Every 15 minutes you have an alarm. It'll annoy everyone. Don't worry about it. And every time it goes off, you just write what you did in the last 15 minutes. And at the end of the week, you can look at all those activities and rank them in terms of revenue. Like which of these is the most valuable and most unique? And then when you look at the bottom half of that list, does it neatly fit into some person that either exists currently? That has bandwidth or somebody that we can hire? And part of the good news that you have is that when you serve premium customers, which you do, you can charge a premium, which you do, which means that you should have excess margins, you can get premium people. And so, right now, what will probably be required is

• 16:42Alex Hormozi?

  that you have to lower your tolerance for mediocrity on your team. And so, it might cost, so if you're gonna make $300,000 per year for a tech, it's like, would you be willing to spend $50,000 to go get another tech who's good?

• 16:57Speaker 03

  100%.

• 16:58Alex Hormozi?

  Right. And so, that's a combination of like, you could try the recruiting firm thing, which is a thing. One that you probably haven't thought of, but I would strongly recommend, this will probably be the unlock for you, is run national ads, and then offer a really generous relocation package. So make the 50 basically a signing bonus. You get 25 now and 25 a month, six.

• 17:18Speaker 03

  What do you think about, instead of having W2 employees, and how much they cost, running 1099 service techs?

• 17:25Alex Hormozi?

  You're a business. Do they have to show up at certain times and do work specific the way you want them to do?

• 17:31Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 17:31Alex Hormozi?

  They're employees.

• 17:32Speaker 03

  Employees.

• 17:33Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. Unless they're like, they're not vendors, they work for you. If you have meetings and they have to show up, they're employees. So, no, you like-

• 17:41Speaker 03

  Keep it W2.

• 17:42Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. You wanna go more legit, not less legit. Yeah. But fundamentally, like, if you were to spend this $50,000 to go get another tech, we just have to, like, getting the tech, I don't think is gonna be that hard, honestly. If you're just willing to spend money for it, which you have the money to do it. And then the other piece is, okay, now that this person comes on, I have this big stack of stuff, how can I give them a third of it, or half of it, and then all of a sudden, get those time back? And so, let me ask you a different question. If you got half your time back, could you double the business?

• 18:12Speaker 03

  100%.

• 18:13Alex Hormozi?

  Right. And so, that's the game.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you, Alex.

• 18:18Speaker 04

  My name's Trenton. We sell roofing. We're gonna do about 3 million this year. We'd like to be at 10 million. My biggest constraint or what's stopping me is that, for the last, you know, eight years, all of our lead gen has been from-

• 18:31Alex Hormozi?

  Weather?

• 18:32Speaker 04

  From doors.

• 18:33Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 18:33Speaker 04

  So it's been 100% door-to-door lead gen, and now when we're trying to knock for retail- It seems to be like, like heavier of a weight on the team.

• 18:44Alex Hormozi?

  When you say retail, what do you mean?

• 18:45Speaker 04

  So, uh, like just people on market that need a roof.

• 18:48Alex Hormozi?

  It's like residential?

• 18:49Speaker 04

  Residential.

• 18:50Alex Hormozi?

  Okay, got it. Yeah. And when you were doing door knocking before, you were knocking on?

• 18:53Speaker 04

  Residential doors.

• 18:54Alex Hormozi?

  Okay, so it was the weather was the difference.

• 18:55Speaker 04

  But we were getting funding from the insurance company.

• 18:57Alex Hormozi?

  Got it, word. Okay.

• 18:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. So now with me being a door to door guy, like purchasing leads and all that was like sacrilegious to me. So there's some limiting beliefs there that I started to, you know, explore last October. We bought leads.

• 19:12Alex Hormozi?

  I just want you to be lead curious. That's all I'm asking for.

• 19:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I'm very lead curious now. And, uh, but I basically got slaughtered learning this.

• 19:22Alex Hormozi?

  Just don't be acquisitionary binary. You know what I mean? Like be non-binary with your leads. Like as many as you want.

• 19:26Speaker 04

  Yes, yes. No, that's what I'm trying to do here. And when we did purchase leads and I was like.

• 19:31Alex Hormozi?

  The unedited version, by the way. Yeah, go ahead.

• 19:34Speaker 04

  And when we started to, you know, stack the guys' calendars, there was a big culture shift.

• 19:39Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 19:40Speaker 04

  Where we actually saw like more buy-in from the guys, but then like the door knocking just.

• 19:44Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, because it was easier.

• 19:46Speaker 04

  It was way easier.

• 19:46Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 19:47Speaker 04

  But like our CAC and all of that was absolutely horrid, right? So I'll spend like $7,500 just to acquire one customer over the summer. And it wasn't sustainable. So I saw.

• 19:58Alex Hormozi?

  What do you make from a customer?

• 20:00Speaker 04

  Um, on average, $6,500.

• 20:02Alex Hormozi?

  So that does not work?

• 20:03Speaker 04

  No, it doesn't work.

• 20:04Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 20:05Speaker 04

  And it was just like, a lot of the marketing agencies that we worked with were like younger people. They were like using AI tools, go high level like.

• 20:11Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, sure.

• 20:12Speaker 04

  So we decided that we were going to build it in-house.

• 20:15Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 20:15Speaker 04

  So with that being said, now it comes into, you know, a leadership issue. Because I need somebody that like knows how to, you know, market better than I do. So that I can focus on training and.

• 20:29Alex Hormozi?

  Can I pause you real quick?

• 20:30Speaker 04

  Yes, please.

• 20:30Alex Hormozi?

  Okay, cool. So you're at three, you want to get to 10, you rebuilt it from storm chasing to just straight up door knocking, whenever. Fine. I think that was a good idea. You had a door knocking team, you took the same sales guys, brought them on leads that you got them. They got lazy, fat and don't want to do door knocking anymore. So great rule number one, outbound and inbound are separate teams.

• 20:51Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 20:52Alex Hormozi?

  Inbound is what you graduate to.

• 20:55Alex Hormozi?

  And so if you're an absolute savage, like you just take children's souls and just rip them out every day because you're a terrible person, but you're just unbelievable at sales. Then and only then do you get the opportunity for me to feed you leads because these are the most expensive leads that we have to work very, very hard for to make sure and like we cannot waste them on anybody who cannot close everything. And so, thank you. I hope that was an amen. And so, so first off is the team should be separate, but you're in this mix now. You're in a little bit of a mess. And so my, my two cents would be like, take the, because I'm sure their commissions have gone down since they now are selling nothing, basically.

• 21:31Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 21:32Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. So I would say, guys, my fuck up. I went to this thing. He told me I did this big boo boo, which is inbound and outbound were together, which is not how it should be. Everybody get back on the streets. You guys do that. And then for the absolute savages of you, because you can usually have far fewer people on inbound, that becomes the Christmas tree of the career path.

• 21:50Alex Hormozi?

  Because on inbound, I can feed you and you can do like five sales a day. You can't do that door knocking, right? But I, you can do it if I'm feeding you leads that are already qualified, already set, already gone through a VSL, whatever, in the sales motion. And then those guys can absolutely clean up, but you get, you earn the opportunity to get that level of commissions. Now, the commission's structure should also be different on inbound because you have to pay for those leads. So it's a different role. They graduate to it. It's more volume, lower per, but it's more reliable, which guys with families, things like that, if you have a bad day, you close two and a good day, you close seven. It's different than you have a bad day, you can close zero, zero, zero, right? It's much more, it's much more stressful. And so guys will be happy to even give up, they'll even make the same money, but just

• 22:33Alex Hormozi?

  have it be more reliable. They'll be make, and you don't have to be in the sun. So.

• 22:37Speaker 04

  So then we should hire for inbound sales.

• 22:40Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. Or take one of the guys you have who's really good at it and put everybody else back on the streets. So you just funnel everything to that guy who, because then you can iterate faster because you're new on this. And so you want to, you never want to have too many news because kind of like the brick analogy I gave at the beginning, the more news there are, the more likely something's going to fuck up, right? And so it's like, I know this is an absolute savage salesperson. If they're closable, he'll close them or she'll close them. And so then the only variable we have is just what offer slash lead source am I getting? And like what process are going from lead to talking to them? Those are the only variables you have to play with and you can control. It's much easier to iterate on that and then get it to go faster.

• 23:17Speaker 04

  Okay. Okay. And then, okay. So then I want to hire a marketing director or leader to manage that.

• 23:27Alex Hormozi?

  Outbound team goes out, inbound team becomes the one guy. You need to hire a marketer person who actually knows what they're doing, probably pay more than you expect. But then that person will be worth it. Your entire business is sales and marketing, so you should have the core elements of the business in-house.

• 23:39Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 23:39Alex Hormozi?

  Great. If you need help with the sales process, we can help.

• 23:42Speaker 04

  Excellent. Thank you.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  My name is Art. We sell junk removal and demolition to commercial property managers. Currently do 1 million a year. Would love to be at 10 million a year. What's currently stopping us is knowing which sales channel to focus on. I know it's important that we pick one, capitalize on it. And I'm wondering how much time, energy, or volume do I spend on one while I determine if that's going to be our channel or not? And know whether to leave that one or focus on that one.

• 24:08Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. So I'll give you two answers to that question. So before I answer it, I'm going to do the first thing though. Really the second thing first. What do you do currently right now to get customers?

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Right now, it's been mostly referrals.

• 24:19Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. So you can't do more referrals because there's nothing for you to do besides do a good job. Okay. That's fine. If referrals is the way you're getting business, what ways have you begun or you haven't started doing sales channels yet?

• 24:30Speaker 01

  So I, we started to lay the framework for doing email, cold outreach as well simultaneously with LinkedIn outreach. And then also converting some of our social media efforts into a bit of outreach as well with people who are engaging. So those are some of the things that we're.

• 24:45Alex Hormozi?

  Like many chat and then DM and then all that.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. More, more manual for now while we get the, the flow going. And then also I'm in a networking BNI, so that's.

• 24:54Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. I would prefer you stick with one of them and just do more in that thing. And so if the question is, how do I, so the original question was, how do I know which one to pick and how long to stick with it? So I think I will reject the premise, which is that one of them is going to work. Like you will make one of them work. And so you could make any of them work. And so I would take the hypothetical extreme of, is there a business that acquires other businesses' customers in each of those different channels in your market?

• 25:28Speaker 01

  I'm not sure.

• 25:29Alex Hormozi?

  I'll bet there is. There probably are some junk removal people who do it via social media and they take it that way. Some people probably do it via LinkedIn. Some people do cold outreach. All three of those are super repeatable channels that anyone could run. So all of them can work. My recommendation to you would be the one that you have the highest overlap with existing skillset between you and team. So if you and/or your team have more knowledge around social media stuff, they'd be like, just double down on social media. If it's I have, you know, we're better at kind of the outbound motion, then I would say go do the outbound motion via via email. And if it's like, well, we want to booth these things. It's like, well, why don't we just send more emails? You know what I mean? Does that help?

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it does.

• 26:13Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. That was, that was like, you sure? Everything else you guys, that was, that was, that was an easy one. That was like a warm up.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Well, for, I guess, follow up. Since you're taking more questions. I guess if you had to just say one, like, let's irrelevant to what the team has.

• 26:31Alex Hormozi?

  Which one do you have the best skillset?

• 26:34Speaker 01

  To be honest, I just don't have the skillset. And I guess networking is number one. Like, when I'm in person with people, I'm doing the best.

• 26:40Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. So, so hear me out then. Wild idea. So you do networking stuff. And so if I said, I want you to spend four hours a day to find every local, community-based, related event with 20 people or less or 50 people or less in it, that have people who are similar to your avatar. Would you be able to do that?

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:00Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. So why can't we do more of that?

• 27:03Speaker 01

  We can do more of that.

• 27:04Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. So how many of those events do you currently go to? And I'm guessing you get customers from when you go there, right?

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, they, they compound over time. We go to currently a few a week and then we're meeting one-on-one with a lot of people we meet.

• 27:15Alex Hormozi?

  Afterwards, right. So I would say, all right, well then, what would it take for us to go to like several a day? That would be my first kind of like risk-adjusted move. Because the other things you haven't done yet at all. So it's like, how do I go from one to three? Just like this year? I would do that. Because then it'll free up more cash flow. Because the issue that you have right now, especially like in the, in the, in the swamp that you're in right now, I would just do way more of the thing you're currently doing. As my path of at least getting to one to three, it's probably super profitable for you as well. And then I would invest more of those resources into learning one of the other channels.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  Got it. Thank you.

• 27:54Alex Hormozi?

  You bet.

• 27:55Speaker 05

  My name's Adrian. I own a commercial construction company, did 11 million this year, 10 last year. Read the book Built to Sell. So I started analyzing my company and I said, or I figured out that construction companies are not an easy asset to sell, that their enterprise value is based off of assets or backlog of work. As a commercial contractor, I thought to myself, okay, well, how am I going to do that? So we started doing public works projects, bought some heavy equipment. Now we have contracts that are for several years. At the same time with the clientele base that I had in the multifamily space, I started thinking about, okay, well, if I don't want to sell this company, if it's going to be that difficult, how do I get recurring revenue? So I started an elevator company. And over

• 28:39Speaker 05

  the last 12 months, we did 3 million to start.

• 28:41Alex Hormozi?

  It's a racket. Congrats. I have elevators. It's ridiculous.

• 28:47Speaker 05

  We can help you. So if you were me, you know, with the two companies and the combined revenue, what would you do next in order to go from 10 to 100?

• 28:58Alex Hormozi?

  What's profit on 3 versus 11?

• 29:00Speaker 05

  30% on the 3, 18% on the 11.

• 29:04Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. So you're making roughly double on the construction side, but cash flow sucks and it's a pain and you never take the money out of the business probably, I'm guessing.

• 29:13Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. So it's a tough call because you already did it, right? You can't like not have the kid. It's already out there running around.

• 29:18Speaker 05

  That's what I had said.

• 29:20Alex Hormozi?

  Can't insert. It doesn't, it doesn't go back up, right?

• 29:24Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. So I think again, it depends on what you want to do. So I think the elevator company totally could sell if you wanted to sell that business.

• 29:34Speaker 05

  I do.

• 29:35Alex Hormozi?

  Are you splitting your time right now?

• 29:36Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 29:37Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. So it might take $800,000 in profit on the construction side to get the two or three leaders that you need to do it without you, and then it would continue to exist. I do think the elevator is the better opportunity for the reasons that you already are aware of, and it probably grew significantly faster than the other one did.

• 29:57Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:57Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. This isn't normally what I would say in this type of situation, but I'm just familiar with it. What timeline do you have? Like selling five, selling 10?

• 30:05Speaker 05

  Definitely 10. Um, okay. You know, if I could do it in five.

• 30:08Alex Hormozi?

  Okay, you could sell in five. I mean, what's the growth rate on the elevator?

• 30:12Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, year one, three million.

• 30:13Alex Hormozi?

  Oh, year one. Right, right. So it's a straight up elevator. Okay, sorry.

• 30:17Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 30:17Alex Hormozi?

  Straight to the penthouse. Okay. There's the reasonable advice, which is, hey, hire the people and then let them continue to run that thing. And then I would say like what the quote Alex advice would be, which is super unreasonable. And I only give it because this is what I did. I burn things down. And so if I can't exit it, so like you could exit the 11 now for way less than you think it's worth, right? I'd, I would just be willing to exit it. I had six gyms and I fire sold them in 90 days. I made, I made in total on six what I should have made on one.

• 30:50Alex Hormozi?

  And then within six months, I was doing a million a month on the next thing. And so once it was like, clear that this was a way better opportunity, like the orders of magnitude better, which I think you are in that situation right now. It's super niched. It's, you've obviously got ins in terms of understanding how to work. It's already recurring. It is a racket, a legal racket, but it is, oh, it is. If you're willing to take a step back, like you will, if you had, if you're like, I want to do this in two years, you'll like the break even point on this is two years, which is like, if you got rid of the construction firm in the next 90 days and you said, I don't care what the price is. I just want all the headache back. You will grow so much faster on the elevator side. Like it'll, you did three while splitting your attention. If you had had full attention, you might be at eight.

• 31:36Alex Hormozi?

  And so I tend to think only exclusively on opportunity cost. I don't normally give that advice because it's like, it's just so hard for people to do. But I burn things down when I like, am very clear that this is the next thing I'm going to do. Just because I know that my, the opportunity cost of the time of just continuing to wind this down or get it ready for sale, I could make more than I'm going to make on that sale in this opportunity.

• 32:00Alex Hormozi?

  So like, let's say that a perfect, a perfect exit for that business would be like $5 million or something, right? Based on the assets and the AR that you have coming. It's like, for me to build another million dollars in recurring revenue in the elevator business, I can do that in a quarter, which equals the enterprise value of the other thing. And so as long as you can get out of your head around like, because everyone, if you do this, everyone will tell you that you're crazy. Everyone has told me that I was crazy every time I've done this. And that's why also, none of them are wealthier than I am. You know, just like, like, no one who was wealthier than me told me that. So as long as you're good with it, and you can just stomach the fact that your wife's

• 32:44Alex Hormozi?

  like, "You work so hard on this," and your dad's like, "This is ridiculous, all the blood, sweat and tears and all this stuff," and you're like, "I did this so I could learn all these skills and apply it here. It was not a waste, because I was the asset."

• 32:58Speaker 05

  Thank you.