Alex Hormozi's Playbook for Building Billion-Dollar Businesses

This is our full conversation with Alex Hormozi. We discuss his philosophy on choosing the right business, the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make with AI, why volume beats perfection in media, how he built one of the largest business education brands in the world, what founders get wrong about personal branding, why opportunity selection matters more than most people realize, and how Acquisition.com is evolving from a family office into a brand-powered investment platform. TBPN is made possible by: Ramp - https://ramp.com Public - https://public.com Cisco - https://www.cisco.com Console - https://www.console.com CrowdStrike - https://www.crowdstrike.com Figma - https://www.figma.com MongoDB - https://www.mongodb.com NYSE - https://www.nyse.com Railway - https://railway.com Shopify - https://www.shopify.com/ Codex - http://openAI.com/codex Sign up for TBPN’s daily newsletter at TBPN.com Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.com https://x.com/tbpn https://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235 https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

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

• 0:00John Coogan?

  Grab that seat, sit down for us. Do you still own a Hummer EV?

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, we do actually.

• 0:06John Coogan?

  You do? Give us your review. We were just talking about the Fiat Topolino. I don't think you're gonna be in the market for that. Neck and neck, it's a thousand pounds.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  So I think what we could do is like if you just lined up like 10 of the Fiat, like kind of like chariot.

• 0:19Jordi Hays?

  That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Like it'd be my chariot.

• 0:24John Coogan?

  I think the Hummers.

• 0:24Jordi Hays?

  Imagine, imagine if the Hummers.

• 0:26John Coogan?

  Literally nine of these.

• 0:28Jordi Hays?

  The Hummer is kind of the front of the train and then you have like, you're, you see the Hummer coming at you and then, and then a bunch of the Topolinos kind of pull out in like a V shape.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  That's infuriating.

• 0:37Jordi Hays?

  That would be badass.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, take over the whole Hudson log.

• 0:40John Coogan?

  How is, how is life these days?

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Good.

• 0:43John Coogan?

  Is there a new book coming?

• 0:44Speaker 01

  There is another book coming.

• 0:45John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:46John Coogan?

  Do you have a strategy for book launch cadence? Is it an annual thing?

• 0:53Speaker 01

  It's more like every 18 months to two years.

• 0:56John Coogan?

  Okay. But do you imagine that continuing for your entire career?

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Every book I write, I say is the last book I'm going to write. And then I have like a six month refractory period. And then I'm like, yeah, you know, I could, I could write a book about something. And then I just start writing again.

• 1:11John Coogan?

  What's the process like?

• 1:12Speaker 01

  Um, I have a bunch of notes on my phone of a topic. Cause right now I've have like probably like 10 books that are at different stages of, so I just mind dump wherever. And then once there's enough stuff that I think this is like, this is interesting, I'll then start the book writing process. But I'm a big believer in surface area of thought. Like if you were to sit down and say like, I'm gonna write a book about this. And then you have two weeks. It's like, you don't have enough experiences that are diverse in a two week period while you're writing to like, let the paint dry.

• 1:39John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  So I kind of want to like have, I want to be in, you know, a totally different state, talk to somebody and be like, I didn't think about that. And then I add it to the book. And so then all of a sudden, it's like the, the, the density of, of thought and ideas per word is much higher. But I think you just have to do it by like spreading out the time that, so like the time I'm thinking about a book is much longer than the time I'm writing the book.

• 1:56John Coogan?

  Is it purely thinking and you want a lot of thought to go into the different sections of the book? Or over the course of 18 months, is there actually a benefit to going out and having real world experiences?

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Oh, that's, I mean, that's.

• 2:08John Coogan?

  And anecdotes, right?

• 2:08Speaker 01

  It's a hundred percent that. Cause I'll have a working theory of like, I think this is how, I think people are missing this part of it. And then I'll kind of start battle testing it functionally. And then when I realize that I'm using the same framework over and over again, and successfully overcoming some issue, I'm like, this is it. And then that's what the book becomes.

• 2:24John Coogan?

  How narrow do you want to stay? How narrow have you been in the surface area of thought around mainly the last three books?

• 2:34Speaker 01

  It's a really good question. Problem definition for the book, I think is the hardest part of any book. Like the leads book, which is the second book, was the hardest book I've ever written. I'll never write a book that hard. Cause I was like, I'm gonna write a book on advertising. It's like, Jesus Christ, there's so many ways to get leads. And I put it all in one book. It took 19 versions to get there.

• 2:50John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  The Money Models book was the fastest book because it was really just about rappers for promotions. Super valuable, but really easy to consume and use. And so I was like, okay, this is the lesson for me. Like, and offers, super narrow.

• 3:00John Coogan?

  Super narrow.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  And that book too, was like, all three of those books started as one kind of gigantic thing. And I gave it to somebody and they're like, dude, you cannot. It was like this. And they're like, I was like, I'm gonna have a tome. And then I decided to want people actually read it.

• 3:14John Coogan?

  Is there a itch in the back of your mind where you want to do sort of the Tim Ferriss thing, where you go from four hour work week, a business book to chef, body, lifestyle, money management, personal finance? Like, there's so many topics that you talk about and people are interested. And I'm sure you could sell those books and they might be edifying at a certain point. Cause you're like, I've, I've scratched this itch three times, four times, 10 times. But is there a level of focus that you have to discipline yourself? Or does it come naturally?

• 3:51Speaker 01

  I only write about stuff that I feel like I have some unique take on. I think rewriting a book that already exists, that people already know, there's no point. Especially if like you're in the thick of it and you're thinking, oh, this has already been written before. It doesn't really motivate you. Like, I think, like, I want to write something that only exists because I made it.

• 4:09Jordi Hays?

  Same thing with businesses. Like there's, I've had the experience of building a company or, or just like starting to work on a company and being like, I can stop working on this and it will not matter at all.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, the world will be fine.

• 4:21Jordi Hays?

  There's a bunch of alternatives. And, and that, you can make that case for like most businesses. But there are some where you're like, if I don't build this, no one's gonna build it, at least in the right way.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I have a hundred percent that perspective when it comes to book writing.

• 4:34John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 4:34Jordi Hays?

  It's funny, as, as we talk about this, Jeremy Giffon, I know is a good, good friend of yours, good friend of ours. And every time he talks, people just listen. And he's somebody who I would love to write a book, almost because I just want him to go on another podcast. Proper podcast tour. He just kind of pops up, does invest like the best and then goes, goes dark for like 18 months. But like, it's somewhat of a tragedy that he'll probably write a book someday, but it'll be in like 40 years. So in the meantime, you have to just like, you know, take notes and, and try to pick stuff up from, from the podcast. But there's so many people that like, so many of the people that should be writing books just don't have the time. And they'll eventually come and take like a victory lap at the end

• 5:17Jordi Hays?

  of their career. But I think it's like, you could just do a lot of stuff other than write books. But it's, but it's, it's, it's very valuable to be like writing in real time versus like saving up a bunch of lessons and then kind of summarizing it at the end.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  I think you miss out on the, the wrinkles, like the tiny little details that like, if you, if you think about like the story of how you met your wife and you go back, like you've told it a bunch of times, but if you told it the day after you did it, you'd have so much richer memory of all the tiny little things that happened. And so I'm a big believer of like, while it's wet, like paint it. And then let it dry over time. But that's why I like, I always want documentation to be as real.

• 5:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. It's funny, the final book will actually be the easiest to write. Cause you have all the books and you're like, okay, what was actually like worth kind of?

• 5:58John Coogan?

  Greatest hits at that point.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:01John Coogan?

  We, we had Mark Pankas on the show, founder of Zynga. He wrote a book and he said that he thinks everyone should write a book in their life. But he also said, everyone should build a house. Do you have any aspirations to build real estate physically?

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Like me do it?

• 6:18John Coogan?

  You do it?

• 6:18Jordi Hays?

  No, no, not by hand. Not by hand. But just take a, take a piece of dirt and turn it into a home.

• 6:24John Coogan?

  With an architect and a team. But is that something that, you know, a lot of people that's on their bucket list, I don't know where you've been in your real estate journey. But how do you think about that as a, as a bucket list item?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  It's not.

• 6:37John Coogan?

  Why not?

• 6:38Speaker 01

  I mean, we buy big multifamily that are already existing and we do that. But if there were an investment opportunity that makes sense, I would.

• 6:44Jordi Hays?

  It's, you're not interested because it's not productive.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  It's just not on my list.

• 6:48Jordi Hays?

  Purely for like, you know, the satisfaction.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  If you're like, have you listened to, like, thought about listening to Beyonce today? I'd be like, not really. But I mean, like, if it was on, sure. You know, I'm not against it.

• 6:57John Coogan?

  Yeah. I think some people just have the, the itch to like customize their own living environment. And I'm, I'm curious about how you see your living environment. Because, I mean, from those first YouTube videos, like the monastic, what were you, closet? You were in a closet? Like, like that, that was.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  My business thoughts.

• 7:15John Coogan?

  I don't know if that was intentional, but it was, it was somewhat deliberate. You picked that space over a big living room, right? And I'm wondering how you think about your, your living space, your workspace, your office space today?

• 7:28Speaker 01

  So I would say all of the time that I, when I work, I'm very intentional about that space. When I'm not working, it's whatever Leila wants. I don't care. Like if she, if she's 10% happier, I have like a percent to percent correlation to my happiness. And me being more comfortable has no correlation back. So like whatever she's good with, I'm good with. But in terms of like where I work, it's almost all, how do I, how do I eliminate every sense of distraction for me personally? And so it's like, I don't have windows. Some people like having windows. I don't think anything wrong with that. For me, it's like, I need no stimulation because I'm, I'm very distractible. And so I have to have like I, earplugs in, no light, all artificial. I have like soundproof, like, you know, like

• 8:11Speaker 01

  I want nothing. And then I can finally focus on what I'm trying to work on.

• 8:15John Coogan?

  Yeah. Can we go back to the early YouTube days on the latest channel? I think 2020, in that closet. We both launched YouTube channels around the same time. And we were talking about this. You completely smoked me. It was insane.

• 8:32Jordi Hays?

  John is, you know, obviously pretty good at media. And, but, and was like, the, the, his channel was like just following his interests, like Silicon Valley history. The, the execution was like, by all means amazing. Like got to like half a million subscribers.

• 8:44John Coogan?

  I treated like a blog and you treated like a business.

• 8:47Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And it was like, but it was a much smaller TAM. And like, when you compare the two channels and like your strategy, the execution difference was like.

• 8:55John Coogan?

  Yeah. It was like me and like I had one remote editor for years. And I was like, not monetizing, not really thinking about it as a business. But I'm interested to know on day one of, of that YouTube channel, cause I know you've done media stuff before, but like the, the, the, the current media business, what was the team like? What was the strategy? How much time were you putting into it? Cause I know you had exited some businesses, you had some space to breathe, but how serious were, and then what was the evolution of that?

• 9:22Speaker 01

  I'll walk you through as fast as I can. So the first thing was I found any media editor, like an agency. And they were like, uh, three YouTube videos a week is what we do. And I was like, all right, then that's what I'll do. And so I just webcammed, like, and I had a little suitcase that would open up so I could travel. Cause Leila and I were traveling for the year of the sale. And so that's what I did. Wherever we were, I was like, open up. And then, cause at that time I didn't have really any work. So I had all these thoughts that I was like, I'm just gonna get them. I'm gonna dump them all out. And so that's basically what YouTube Strategy 1.0 was. I had somebody cold reach out, like legit, when Rite is short started, they were like, I'll do everything. You already have YouTube stuff. I'm just gonna clip it. Just give me permission. And I was like.

• 10:03Jordi Hays?

  Oh, cool.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  And so that's what's.

• 10:05Jordi Hays?

  You accidentally started clipping?

• 10:06Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. And so that was like, we were really early on shorts.

• 10:09John Coogan?

  So good.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  And then as soon as he did a pretty good job, he was like, you know, if I actually recorded you doing these, they'd do even better. And I was like, fine, but I only want to do one day a quarter. And he was like, fine. So he'd fly out for one day and we'd do 100 shorts in one sitting. A hundred percent. I would just do 100. And that, that kind of style of filming and recording is pretty much how, I still kind of rock that way. Which is like, I want, I prefer a marathon day. Like I'd rather just start at, you know, six and then just rock until every ounce of juice is gone. And then it's like, great. We'll do it again in a week or whatever.

• 10:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, we're sort of like that. Marathon every day.

• 10:40John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. One of my questions is like, what goes into a two hour YouTube video? Cause you'll do these like master classes, two hours. And I'm like, that is insane. And then I'm like, I do three hours every day. So like, now it's become more possible, but I imagine that there's lots of

• 10:52Jordi Hays?

  But the three hours was kind of like just going until we got tired.

• 10:56John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 10:56Jordi Hays?

  Like by three hours, we're usually like, okay, like probably need to go to the bathroom.

• 11:00John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 11:00Jordi Hays?

  Probably want to eat some food.

• 11:02John Coogan?

  Yeah. And the show is much less structured, but when you're, when you're thinking about like the portfolio, like you, the volume is just incredibly important to everything in media these days. You agree with that?

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Oh, a hundred percent. Volume negates luck. Okay. Volume negates luck.

• 11:16John Coogan?

  Volume

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Violence is the answer. Yeah. That's like on our wall at HQ.

• 11:20John Coogan?

  What formats are you most excited about for 2026, 2027?

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Live, interactive.

• 11:26John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Separate and together.

• 11:28John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  So just going live, like with the audience, Twitch style, YouTube live style.

• 11:32John Coogan?

  And that was the book launch strategy, right? Was that your first case? You've done live before.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  No, I've done lives before, but that was obviously intentional. And then, um, and then interactive, which is not like, sure, there's chat interactive, but like, how do I bring the audience in so that we can talk? That's why you see the first, it was Cash Cow, now it's Scale or Fail, which is a show we just launched. Um, and we're doing, we're doubling down really hard on that because if you think in a world of AI, it's like, what are the things that can't be faked?

• 11:56John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  It's people, you know, like I want stakes. So for example, like if Mr. Beast's store, uh, videos, if it was not a real $5 million um, or not a real Lamborghini, the stakes disappear. Now, to be fair, there's for sure other, like a fictional story, the whole thing we know is fake and we're fine with it and the story is the story and AI will crush that.

• 12:14John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  But people still want stakes. Like right now chess is more popular than it's ever been, but like humans haven't been able to beat computers for a long time. And so there are definitely these some areas where we want the drama, we want the stakes. And so I don't think that's going to change at all.

• 12:26John Coogan?

  Uh, I love the series that you've been doing with, uh, entrepreneurs that attend a conference. They stand up, they give you the, it's so, so good. I, I just love all those.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Live, interactive.

• 12:36John Coogan?

  Live, interactive.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 12:38John Coogan?

  I'm interested to know how you think legacy media will fit into your media strategy going forward. Is it about prestige? Is there actually an audience there still? Because you're part of the new guard.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:53John Coogan?

  And yet you signed with CIA. I'm sure you have the ability to walk into a large media company and get a TV show. Does that make sense? Is that something that's interesting to you? What would the value be?

• 13:06Speaker 01

  I think it's distribution that I don't have access to.

• 13:08John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  So like, I think one of the biggest like unspoken advantages that exists right now in media is Dave Ramsey.

• 13:13John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Has been murdering for 30, 40 years. Cause he has 600 radio stations syndicated. Everyone's like, radio is dead. It's like, he's murdering.

• 13:22John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  And it's because no one's looking. So like, I'm, I'm an equal opportunist when it comes to attention.

• 13:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  And so even if it's less or more, if it's something that's completely in this other bubble over here that I have, I have no access to.

• 13:32Jordi Hays?

  And the beauty is like, there's still like closer to, like there's no monopoly online, right? The need is like, you can just get, anybody can log on and it's beautiful because anyone can log on. You don't have to have an audience. You can suddenly have an audience. Maybe it's one video, maybe it's a flash in the pan, but, uh, TV still like, if you can figure out the right lane, you have this sort of like differentiated access to attention. And so it's like a different group of people and it's differentiated access. That's not just like log on, immediately have access.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  And when something super pops, like you look at all the real estate shows that have come out. You've got Selling Sunset, Sir Han has his show, like, like there's a huge distribution base that they gain access to as a result of that. And all you have to do is look at those stars, look at their, look at their social media.

• 14:14John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  And I would say this is, I say this lovingly, it's pretty weak in terms of what they're doing.

• 14:18John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  But their following, exactly. But their following is still really strong because it's carried over.

• 14:22John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  And so I'm like, if those people actually tried on this side and had somewhat, and it's like, how do we get it all?

• 14:28John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  And that's kind of the, the

• 14:30John Coogan?

  I think this is, uh, just underrated broadly for mostly tech people. They see the trend of the internet growing exponentially or e-commerce. And they think, oh, well, in a couple of years, like 100% of everything will be bought online. And it's like, no, retail still exists and you know, for certain categories, you probably need to be in retail as well. And the same thing with, you know, the aging audiences on radio or TV, they're still there. They have, they're, they still watch and so, uh, interesting. What about the level of production polish? I imagine that there's a trade off there. If you go with something, uh, more produced, that's not just you opening your laptop and, and yapping, right? Uh, you can get so, you can, you can get stuck in like the production quagmire.

• 15:13John Coogan?

  If you're trying to build the Mona Lisa or some incredible show. At the same time, there's prestige that comes with that. There's a new level of authority. Uh, how do you think about that trade off?

• 15:23Speaker 01

  I think it's barbell.

• 15:24John Coogan?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  So it's either like make it the Mona Lisa and like play to win that game.

• 15:28John Coogan?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Or you're in the volume game and the volume which is value per second. And just trying to get as many of those seconds out as you possibly can.

• 15:34John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  And like, I just think it's, it's, it's both. And there, I think they serve, they serve different objectives to your point of like you gain authority in different ways. It's definitely, there's an element that it shifts the brand.

• 15:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  There's access to new distribution and eyeballs. All of that happens over here.

• 15:47John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  But over here, I think is where you get a lot of the closure to buying behavior, believe it or not. And so I see this as more top of funnel and this is like closer to middle and bottom. Obviously you can get discover building, like I said, this is full stack, but you get way closer to purchasing on the side.

• 16:00John Coogan?

  Yeah. Is there, can we offer you a diet coke? Can we offer you anything? Uh, we have a variety of beverages if you'd like.

• 16:06Jordi Hays?

  Um, what's a category of business that you haven't, uh, filter invested in, uh, that you're excited to at some point?

• 16:14Speaker 01

  I'm still looking for the, the magical med spa. Um, I think med spas are super, I love pseudo medical.

• 16:20John Coogan?

  Mm hmm.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Um, because

• 16:22Jordi Hays?

  Looks maxing.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, all of it. Well, think about it, like there's this aging population that has more money than anyone else. They don't want to age. They see the Brian Johnsons.

• 16:30John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Like it is the zeitgeist of right now of like, I want to live forever. I want to look beautiful and young forever. And they have all the money. And so if you look at the demand side of that, it's huge. And look at the supply, med spas are, are, they're still wildly understaffed. And I know this because I see business owners every single week.

• 16:48John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  And so I've like, there's a handful of categories right now that I'll meet business owners and they're doing better than they should be. Like there's some business owners I meet.

• 16:55Jordi Hays?

  I met a med spa owner when I first moved to LA. They had started their business and within a year they were doing like 1.2 million of like, like straight free cash flow off of like $400,000 invested.

• 17:08John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:08Jordi Hays?

  It was like actually unbelievable. Yes, the entrepreneur in this case was like very talented.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Cause he watches this and he's, oh yeah, he's great though.

• 17:15Jordi Hays?

  No, but this was, this was, you know, years ago, but yeah, I'm, I'm surprised that also like differentiated shots at that category. Because if you look at like, I would expect Brian Johnson to do something like this, right? Because there's a lot of people that follow him and he has, you know, as many, maybe he probably has like 10 times as many like critics as he does, people that are like, I'm going to do exactly what he's going to do. But that group of people that will just like copy what he's doing is actually pretty, pretty meaningful. Right? And so meds bars, you go into these like high ticket, kind of like procedures, treatments, things like that. To me, that's where I think he could, uh, really start to print.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  He had 1,200 people apply for his million dollar per year thing. 1,200, do that math.

• 17:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Real fast.

• 17:59Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, that's a lot of money.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  And then there was a $60,000 per year thing that was underneath and multiply that by just probably an order of magnitude greater.

• 18:06Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Wildly underestimated. So you take that and then you have these 10,000 or 15,000 med spas that exist. It's like, it's nothing. And the, it's super fragmented because still no one's really like gobbled that up well. Not that, that I've seen. Um, and to your point of like, when I asked them like, hey, so what are you doing right now to get your six million a year top line and you know, 40% margins? And they're like, we kind of just, you know, we just opened up and put the sign up and you just did a good job. And, and you know, you know, people, customers tell customers like, you know, that's not how it fucking works.

• 18:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And it's not how it's going to work forever.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  No, they're just in a completely supply constrained environment. They just don't know it because when you're on the inside, you don't know. You're like, oh, I'm doing a good job.

• 18:43John Coogan?

  Is part of the problem that a lot of the med spa, like founders get a little bit too sucked into the biohacker nature of these things and it feels a little bit too scientific?

• 18:53Jordi Hays?

  I don't, I don't think it's that at all. I think it's like, it's, it's so short term. A lot of the med spas I think are like very short term cosmetic driven. They're like, how do we make you look good for the next three to six months? Which is not necessarily what makes you look good over the next three to six years.

• 19:10John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 19:10Jordi Hays?

  Or over the next few decades.

• 19:12John Coogan?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:12Jordi Hays?

  So that's at least generally.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  There's a slice for Johnson to attack, which he obviously is. And he's a very smart dude.

• 19:19John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:19Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 19:20John Coogan?

  How would you attack the problem? Roll up, find a bunch of operators, put them together, start, start something from scratch?

• 19:26Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, I mean, the roll bottle would make the most sense.

• 19:29John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Um, but the thing is, is like de novo is not that expensive.

• 19:32John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 19:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Um, and if you are a good operator, you can go in and just smash.

• 19:37John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Because when, when, when people are coming in, when your, when your CAC is zero and your, and your gross margins on these services are absurd, the, the actual difficulty in that model right now is getting the talent for the technicians because, because it's supply constrained at the business level. It's also supply constrained at the talent level.

• 19:52Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 19:53John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:53Jordi Hays?

  And so And it's so easy for them to open up a door.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Exactly. They hang their own chindle, they take the customers and like, that's the issue that those companies have. And so, um, the key to really winning that game is having a really good talent strategy. For how do I make their lifestyles? How do I, how do I compensate them as directly as possible on what they're generating? And get it to the point where my godfather is in wealth management and he's a really cool model. He's managed several billion dollars and he, but he started at nothing and built it all himself. And his big thing was, and his big thing was, uh, basically letting the other person have a little more.

• 20:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  And so it's like, he's like, I'll give you 51 so that you don't ever want to leave.

• 20:29John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Uh, but then you do all the work.

• 20:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it probably looks more like a law firm over time.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, a hundred percent. It's more of a partner. And to be fair, if you've been to any of these, uh, I would say it's a high touch service. They're, they're not loyal to the business. They're loyal to the girl who does her injections or does their lasers or whatever.

• 20:42John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  And so it's like, we just got to tie those people in like a partner firm. Yeah.

• 20:46Jordi Hays?

  Uh, speaking of Brian Johnson, do you care at all about living forever?

• 20:52Speaker 01

  I don't even think about it. I expect to die. I would prefer not to, but like, I'm good, I'm good either way. Like, I, I think Marcus really has said, um, the, the old and the young lose the same thing when they die, which is the present. That's all we got. So.

• 21:07Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. I'm a similar way. I want to have a full life, but I never, at any point in my life have I thought, oh, it would just be the best thing ever if I could never die.

• 21:18John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 21:21John Coogan?

  Going back to sort of core audience. I think of like the sweet spot is like mid-market owner, operator, founder types. Is that roughly?

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, one to 50 million.

• 21:32John Coogan?

  One to 50 million. What is the expansion opportunity? Is there a business for you where you're giving keynotes of Fortune 500 companies? Motivational speaking for like, you know, middle managers.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  No interest.

• 21:46John Coogan?

  Or, or, or is it, or is it getting people on the founder journey who are leaving companies, breaking out into their own and going from zero to one million? What do you think?

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Well, from an expansion opportunity, like I think there's still plenty of people in the 150 million who don't know who I am and haven't consumed my stuff or whatever. So like, plenty there. But the, like, if I just focus there, I get the zero to a million.

• 22:07John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 22:08John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Because if you're helping people go from one to 10, people are like, he can probably help me get from one to zero, one.

• 22:12John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  Um, and so I'm super broadly zooming out. I'm a big fan of capitalism. And I think as many people as possible participating in a free market is a good thing for the country and for that person. Uh, and for everyone else that they serve. And so I would like as many people to taste that, that, uh, that forbidden fruit as you can be possible. And so I try and make it as simple and as easy as possible for people to get started.

• 22:34Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. What mistakes do you see entrepreneurs making around AI? Cause I'll give you one. The, the small business owners that I know that get too in, like into AI. And maybe they're listening to podcasts and they're on X and, and, and we're.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Orange glasses.

• 22:54Jordi Hays?

  They'll like, they won't just apply AI to their business. They'll like start a new company that's like AI oriented. And, uh, and I just think that's like the worst possible mistake because they end up doing something that like the model just does well. And it's like, okay, so you're going to compete just directly with like all the biggest companies in the world on something that you don't even know as well as the biggest companies in the world. When you could just like, and so, and so there's like this like, grass is greener thing happening. Where instead of seeing like, oh, I can just make, you know, these parts of my business, even if it's just 10% more efficient. Uh, I can, I can, you know, keep compounding, but what are you seeing?

• 23:33Speaker 01

  All right. Uh, one, they're using AI to do dumb things really fast. Um, so they're doing the wrong stuff with AI. So even like they were, like a small business owner that wasn't making money now still doesn't make money, but has a lot more token costs.

• 23:45John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Than they did before. Number two.

• 23:47Jordi Hays?

  Like meeting, meeting summaries.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:49Jordi Hays?

  Like I've never been successful. Like I, I've never.

• 23:52John Coogan?

  That was my bottleneck. I just need to summarize.

• 23:54Jordi Hays?

  No, but, but it's one of those things like, like I think it's cool that these apps exist. I've never, uh, I've never needed to take notes to achieve my goals in business. Like I'm just like, okay, what's the next most important thing to do? I'm going to do that thing. Okay. What's the next?

• 24:08John Coogan?

  Or like a note on your phone.

• 24:09Jordi Hays?

  I'm going to do that thing. I've never, I've never been like, okay, like what did we say? I mean, and I've worked in like small companies, right? I've only, only been a founder. Um, but, but that's just such an example of like, yeah, my meeting note system is like so dialed. I'm like, okay, like how much money have you made?

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  So I'll say to, to, to counter answer the two things that I think are the right way to use it, which is number one, how do we take every function of the business? Take it from org chart based thinking to workflow based thinking. And then saying, okay, this editor used to be involved in these six workflows. Uh, we actually only need him to be now involved in three of those workflows and the other three, we can have AI do the vast majority of the work. And so all of a sudden we can three, five X output. Uh, and so revenue per headcount on service based businesses should decrease, which means margins should go up. Now there's this great opportunity window right now where prices aren't really going to adjust for a minute, which means that your margins get absolutely stupid. And so like, you should do that. So there's two flavors of that. One is the, uh, the, like, I'm, I'm an advocate of like, don't tell people you're using AI.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Like go, go have a service business that people think is all humans in the background and then charge human prices. And then have costs of tech and have the scale and operational, the, the lack of operational drag of tech. That's the good game, right? Or take it department to my department so that you can just become more efficient at, at it. Right? So those are, I think the two good ways of doing it. To your point of like, well, uh, being distracted is still a terrible idea as a founder. And so this has just made it so much easier for people to get distracted because like, I could start a business on this or that or that. And then it's like, yeah, but you still have your dry cleaning store, dude. Like, what are we going, like, and to be fair, if you have, if you want to be a trillionaire, you are going to need to get into bleeding edge tech and AI.

• 25:47John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  But you probably should get rid of your dry cleaning store and go all in. And so they're trying to juggle two plates. And not really succeeding it either.

• 25:54Jordi Hays?

  Totally, totally. Yeah. The, the dry cleaning example is like, use AI to constantly be monitoring every possible new space that you could expand into within your area or in, in the county over, et cetera. And just do that, do that, do that. But it's like grass is greener. Like, oh, what if I, what if I made the operating system, the agent operating system for dry cleaners? It's like, no, just like do the thing.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Just win at dry cleaning. Cause it's also so much easier to compete against.

• 26:21Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Other dry cleaning owners, because you for sure know that they're not adopting it the right way. Cause they're doing the same thing with orange glasses and, and banging out their, their replicated software, you know, like, fine.

• 26:31John Coogan?

  There's also like a fair amount of AI that a lot of small businesses are probably getting for free, just in the sense of like, if you have a CRM that's sending emails, like that company has probably adopted AI and is doing somewhat smarter targeting. And so you might not need to go and build your own CRM that sends emails that are customized for every customer. Because like you get it for free out of the box.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  There's also this, this tendency to rebuild the existing software that you're using. So it's like, oh, I've got, you know, I don't, I don't need to pay Calendly, you know, nine dollars a month. When I, it's just like, oh, so instead you're going to use 200 hours to try and recode what they just did. And it breaks all the time.

• 27:11Jordi Hays?

  There's an error, then you lose nine grand.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. But like, that is what I'm saying all the time.

• 27:15Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, we did have a Ben on our team here was having, had been, we, he does, uh, a lot of the automation that we do around like captioning videos. He had reached a point where all the existing software didn't do the thing that he needed to do, that he built something yesterday that now works. And that is saving him a bunch of time. So there is the, there are.

• 27:31John Coogan?

  It's very narrow point solutions for us.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  I think.

• 27:34John Coogan?

  Specifically.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  Tammy was one.

• 27:36John Coogan?

  Flip.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:36John Coogan?

  Live streams very quickly with captions, with our ads added on at the end, and it's saved a bunch of time in Premiere.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  In media, it's huge, right?

• 27:44John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Like we're using it. Like I'll give you two examples. We're using on the ad side, what we did was we built this gigantic data repository, which by the way, I think that's what the big, the huge gap that small business owners are missing is they don't have a data layer. And so it's like, if you want to have anything that's unique, it starts with the data. If you want to build like any kind of AI, right? That's actually useful.

• 27:59John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  And so one is like, how do we build a repository of all the data that we have in terms of sales copy, testimonials, videos, collateral, all of that in one place? And then have that get piecemealed out into ads, um, in real time, and then also match those to dynamic landing pages. So we have that live right now at acquisition.com in terms of how we're doing it. So we have several hundred landing pages that are getting pushed against several hundred different, uh, ad, ads that are going out all being done programmatically with AI, which is really like, we're, we're not a, we're not an AI company. But we use the shit out of it. And so I think that those are like, those are the, the, on the paid side where it's really, really exciting. And then on the, on the organic side, it's like, right now we started more mosey, which is like the highlight channel.

• 28:39John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  And I've got one, one, one cracked out teenager, um, who's do, who's putting out 20, 20 clips a day. On his own. He's doing five, five mids. So like we call them mids. It's like, call it like three to 10 minutes.

• 28:56John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Clips. And then he's putting out, I think 15 or something like that, shorts per day on his own. And so he just takes all the time, if I'm talking to business owners, takes it, runs it through, it highlights the points. From there, he just basically just makes sure that it's good, inserts automatically the, the, the CTAs that we want. And then boom, it's all.

• 29:13John Coogan?

  What's your philosophy on, uh, bringing the cracked out teenager in-house? Remote, in-person versus agency versus platform where clipping can happen, a discord that just, you hear about these discords with like 200 clippers and they all get paid on a CPM basis randomly. It feels deeply chaotic, but if you can harness that, maybe it's powerful, but what's your philosophy?

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:36John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  That's a hundred percent my philosophy.

• 29:38John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  But like, are you an agency fan or in-house? It's like, I want three agencies working for me and in-house team. Like it's all, all the impressions are out there. Like, gotta catch them all. Like go get them. You know what I mean? And same thing with, um, like if I, I pay a lot of attention, especially on the paid side to e-commerce. I think they're almost always the most cutting edge. When it, well, actually porn's the most paid management. Right before that is, I'm being real, right? E-commerce is the second most cutting edge. Um, and those guys are all completely, the ones who are crushing it, going to zero to a hundred million plus and call it like 12 to 24 months. Like all the companies that are running the same playbook.

• 30:08John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Is decentralized, um, UGC with kind of like AI backend for screening for control, and then just letting it fucking rip.

• 30:16John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  And there's obviously some considerations for brand.

• 30:20John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Right? Which is like, how do we make sure? But.

• 30:21John Coogan?

  Yeah, but if the raw footage is.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  And you only put money behind the things that are.

• 30:24John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's probably pretty safe.

• 30:26Jordi Hays?

  Do you expect to, uh, integrate parenting content into your universe?

• 30:34Speaker 01

  I don't think, everything that's not business has not been like super deliberate. I just don't hold back. So if someone asks a question about it, I'll just answer honestly. But everything, I try to think of like the middle spoke is still, or I'll use this area. The middle spoke is still business. And then it's, you know, how am I seeing parenting through the lens of business as a business owner?

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Like, how do I see like my, my relationship with Leila, but it's, we're business partners, but we're also married. So it's, it's always, I try to keep that at the middle.

• 31:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Um, but some people are like, I just want to talk.

• 31:03Jordi Hays?

  You know, with, with, with Taylor and Travis pairing up, hopefully they have children, you guys having children. I think we could see the, a real baby boom.

• 31:13John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 31:14Jordi Hays?

  But, uh, but we need to get it out there.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Yes, we're doing it. The Lord's work.

• 31:17John Coogan?

  Can you walk me through how to sort of evolve a brand through what I expected to be more difficult, but you executed it very well. The headline was, I have nothing to sell you. Now you sell books. The, I, people want to buy stuff from you. Obviously sold a ton of books. But there's probably like, uh, oh, I wasn't expecting this. How did you work through that? Because I think there's a lot of companies where the business model evolves and they need to change their communication strategy and they need to deliver.

• 31:48Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Like an AI lab is like, we're not going to compete with.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  What? It's crazy.

• 31:54John Coogan?

  Asking for a friend here.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  I'm such an, I think the absolute simplest media strategy for any kind of change is the whole truth, not half-truth. And I think if you just manage that, so it's like, I didn't have anything to sell, and I was like, now I do.

• 32:11John Coogan?

  It's so simple. I love it. That's amazing. Wow.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  And if you don't want to buy it, here's the great thing about capitalism, it's voluntary exchange. So you can just keep getting the free shit.

• 32:23John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  All good.

• 32:24John Coogan?

  There's tons of it. There's tons of free stuff.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Tons of free stuff. And we still continue to do that. If you choose to want more helpful stuff, in person, where we're limited, spend money. And we'd love to have you.

• 32:34John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's fascinating. What is the term for like, the economic ladder that you help build, help companies build? I feel like the first time I was exposed to this with Jaco Willink, you get to the end of the show, and it's like, if you want to spend a dollar with me, I got something for you. If you want to spend a hundred dollars with me, I got something for you. If you want to spend a thousand dollars, you can come to my conference, ten thousand dollars, I'll hang out with you for a weekend, a hundred thousand dollars. And that ladder of price discrimination is hard for a lot of businesses, where it's not token-based pricing, where it's just, you know, consumption-based usage of the product, but actually getting to the place where, look, if you have a billionaire in your audience who loves what you're doing, how do you actually get an offer to them that's the right size?

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Customers are super fractal, right? And so you can absolutely make the same amount from 1% of your customers as you can from the other 99, and have half your revenue from one. And typically, like, at each level, you have another double. So it's like, if you're at, let's say, a hundred dollar a month price point, there's going to be another double of revenue at a five hundred dollars a month price point, another double of revenue at twenty-five hundred dollars a month, another double at, you know, whatever, five or 10 times that is going to be. And so I think making offers available to people, that is where business owners like struggle, they feel weird about it, and they sell out of their own wallet. When it's just like, just make them available, and state the facts and tell the truth. So it's like, if we had one big plaque in our marketing team, it's state the facts and tell the truth, but it's the whole truth, which is, hey, we're going

• 34:00Speaker 01

  to do this thing, it's absurdly expensive, and it's only for somebody who, if you're reading this, and you're like, oh, that's not absurdly expensive for me, it's for you. And if you read that, and you're like, oh, my God, I'm offended by that. Good news, we have less offensive prices that are lower. And for that, we do all these other things that are, you're going to get way more people who are going to be doing it with you. But if you're a special stuff like, we have special stuff like prices. I just don't think, and to be fair, you're not going to make everyone happy. Like, there's always going to be trolls, there's always going to be people that like, I think you have to make the decision of like, do I care more about the people I help, or the people who are angry at me for trying to help?

• 34:33John Coogan?

  What's your international strategy? I imagine the content goes everywhere, at the same time, you can't be flying around the world constantly. How do you think about different countries?

• 34:43Speaker 01

  I struggle a lot with international, because the business side of me is like, I don't want them to clog up our funnels. And like, have people who can't speak English that well talk into the team. And it's just like, it's like, we don't have Italian versions of whatever.

• 34:58John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. I struggle with that part. On the other hand, we're taking steps now to have something to, you know, serve that audience. That being said, I don't think I'm going to be traveling internationally anytime soon. But having, call it services and offerings for that audience, I'm more inclined to.

• 35:16John Coogan?

  Yeah. How are you thinking about scaling acquisition.com, the investing side of the business, raising outside capital, scaling up the fund? We talk to VCs all day who are just like, bigger and bigger mega funds.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. We're like, 30 days away from closing a gigantic deal, so.

• 35:33John Coogan?

  Come back.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  But like, I would say that what acquisition.com was when we started was a cash flow-based family office that Leila and I ran. And that was honestly, the chillest my life has ever been. I was also bored to tears. But like, a good life, and probably might have been better for the season I'm about to get into. But it became apparent after we did something like 24 deals in 24 months, and these were not like VC-style deals, they were like, real, you know, purchases, that, you know, portfolio theory rules, and of the 24, like, you know, three-ish were like, the really good companies. And then, on top of that, there was like, our brand blew up in this time period. And so we had to basically have this recalculation of like, okay, well, these are all the resources we have at our disposal. We have cash, but

• 36:19Speaker 01

  like, this brand is getting really big, even almost greater than the cash that we have access to, just our own money. And so then, it was like, okay, well, we started the advisory practice in January of 24, and I think we did 36 million in EBITDA year one, just on that one unit. And so I was like, okay.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  And so, and then, obviously, you know, the book launch, last year, we did, you know, 105, and we still had the advisory practice, which grew the next year. And so, I've, we've basically, we stopped doing deals that we were just investors in, and now it's brand plus capital plus work. And I'd rather have fewer eggs that we're going to get huge outsized returns on, like, School was January of 24 as well. But School has, you know, we have 30 million users now. And, you know, we have a billion plus GMV, like, it's, it's a very big platform. And so, like, I, you know, Zuckerberg didn't have Airbnbs as a side hustle, you know what I mean?

• 37:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  And so, it's just like, if you have, if you have a stallion, like, run it. And so I think that's where we're at, where it's like, we're being really, really specific. I'm willing to put more capital at risk now, because I'm going to put my brand behind it, and make sure the product's exceptional. And that's, I mean, the bar is, the product has to be fucking insane. And then we bring distribution and cash. And like, that's when it's like the Holy Trinity.

• 37:40Jordi Hays?

  Jeremy, our friend Jeremy has this idea that, that everyone is like, pre or post-fall. Where are you?

• 37:48John Coogan?

  You familiar with this concept?

• 37:48Speaker 01

  No.

• 37:49John Coogan?

  So, yeah. He says you can instantly tell if someone has had their downfall, had their darkest moment, you know, they've been through the wringer, they got chewed up and spit out by Silicon Valley, or private equity, or whatever industry they were in, and you can tell that this person is now, they've been humbled. And so they're ready to build back appropriately, not get over their skis. And then you can also see the type of founders. It becomes a massive advantage. And then you also see the founders that are sort of pre-fall, and they're doing a lot of things that you're like.

• 38:20Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, this is like, the 24-year-old who's like, on a crazy tear, has raised.

• 38:26John Coogan?

  Money showed up for free, they're spending it.

• 38:29Jordi Hays?

  And then suddenly, like, you know, the business stops growing, like, execs are leaving, things like that. But I'm wondering if there was like, this crucible moment for you before this latest run that you've been on?

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Oh, so two answers. One is, I'll reject the premise. But just because I don't, like, to say, it's super binary, right? Like, people are either before or after the hard thing in their life. It's like, I think people have lots of hard shit that happens at different seasons in their life. Like, I've lost everything two times. Like, twice. But like, that, then it's like, okay, am I now post-fall? It's like, well, I mean, I, I hope that nothing bad ever happens to me again, but I'm pretty sure bad shit's going to happen to me again. And so I just commit to not stopping.

• 39:11Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Controlling the controllable. And that's basically all I can do.

• 39:14John Coogan?

  Do you have a good answer to pithy advice for young people? We got asked this on a podcast recently, and it was like, the closing question. It was like, you got one minute. And I was like, I could, you could talk for hours. Like, where do you even start? How do you think about packaging information like that? And I actually want your, your advice for young people, if you have one thing.

• 39:36Jordi Hays?

  It's so hard, too.

• 39:36John Coogan?

  It's so hard.

• 39:37Jordi Hays?

  Like, work hard, is like, good general advice. But then I've been in points in my life, and I know people that are like, working hard on like, the dumbest thing ever. And like, that ends up being the worst thing that they can do.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Well, I think, so, what you accomplish is a direct output of the volume of activity that you do, multiplied by the leverage of the activity itself. And so, you have to pick the right boat, you have to pick the right opportunity, based on your goals. Some people only want to make a million dollars, some people want to make 10, some people want to make 100, some people want to make a trillion. Like, everyone has different, so like, the leverage that, what's interesting about that is that you just get to pick. And it's going to be hard no matter what. I think Naval said this thing, where it was like, it's really hard to build a restaurant that's really successful. It's also really hard to build a, you know, billion-dollar unicorn. They're both can be 80-hour weeks. And so, you know, and Stuart Schwarzman from Blackstone said, like, you might as well play big, because level 10 talent is only attracted to level 10 opportunities. It's harder to attract

• 40:33Speaker 01

  good people for bad opportunity, because then you're going to do it all yourself. Which is why I have so much respect for some of the guys like Piggy and Andrew Turner, who are Mr. and Mrs. Panda, Panda Express. Dude, deck of billionaires, selling, selling chicken.

• 40:45John Coogan?

  Passage royalty.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Dude, like, but like, like, so much respect for that level of grit. 45 years selling orange chicken, right? All that to say.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  You will pick based on the level of awareness that you have at that time. Where it gets more difficult is that you learn more shit as you go and you realize that there are higher leverage opportunities. The difficulty is that if you're four years into one thing, year five of an existing thing that you have four years of reps on versus year one of even a slightly better opportunity, you have to compare year one versus year five of the other one, not year one versus year one, because time you can't get back. And so that's where the compounding of getting better at something at some point does have outsized returns, even if it's an inferior vehicle.

• 41:26John Coogan?

  Yeah, talk about that idea of you're an A plus operator, but you're going after a C plus opportunity. How do you assess your opportunity? Because I feel like I run into people who are working on A plus opportunities and everyone will say that's the dumbest idea ever. You're going to put couches, it's going to be called Airbnb, that makes no sense, right? And then it's a boom and it's huge. And then simultaneously, you can be working on a terrible idea, but if you went and got, you know, a puff piece in Business Insider and Forbes, it's like your parents are like, oh, it's amazing, good job. Even if you're grinding and it's not going anywhere.

• 42:01Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the way, the way I look at it is like, in every single category, there's an amazing business. And the funny thing, the funny thing that everyone thinks about like Airbnb is like the dumb idea, when it's like, it wasn't a dumb idea. It just seemed ridiculous.

• 42:14John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 42:15Jordi Hays?

  And that's very different than like somebody that like chooses apparel as a category, which everyone knows is like structurally really, really, really challenging, really, really competitive. Yes, there's like 100 companies in the world that absolutely print. And if you're one of those companies, then you're, then you're great. But some people like choose apparel and then three years in, then they understand the competitive dynamics and they're like, I'm in a shitty business. I think that's very different than like choosing the thing that seems silly, even though Airbnb at this point is now like the best business, right?

• 42:47John Coogan?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 42:48Jordi Hays?

  Massive scale, network effects, a great product, all these things.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think if you look at the marketplace that you're trying to get into, there's usually going to be a bolus of businesses at some part. And that gives you some idea of where the difficulty in that business is. And so like, for example, if you're going to get into, I want to start a social media marketing agency. It's like, well, there's a bolus at the bottom and then very few who ascend to the top. And it's because it's really, really difficult operationally, because if you're really good at marketing, then you can usually make enough money to not work at one of those types of businesses. And so you're constantly, you have to be so good at ops and so good at marketing and branding and sales in order to just slowly get these bigger and bigger accounts and you kind of level up the types of customers that you can go after. Because all those businesses go after SMBs and SMBs are inherently volatile. And so even if you do a great job, they'll still cancel. And so it's just a churn and burn business.

• 43:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, not to mention, your flagship client will eventually say like, hey, we're spending a hundred thousand dollars on this service. We could hire five people that are the best in the world at what they do and they'll just focus on us. Let's do that instead.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, like there are, there are impediments to that business scaling. Can you do it? Absolutely. But I'm just a huge advocate of just like, just look at what the biggest version of that business looks like. Because this is obviously a more tech forward show, but like the vast majority of businesses are not tech businesses.

• 44:02John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Right? There's like HVAC businesses all over the place. There's pool cleaners. Like there's a lot of shit you can do for money. And so I, like unless you want to be a trillionaire, like you can be a billionaire in just about any boring business. You look at, you look at, what's his name? Is it Brad Jacobs?

• 44:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:20Jordi Hays?

  Six times or.

• 44:21John Coogan?

  Yeah. Make a few billion dollars.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, a few, and then he has a sequel, a few more billion.

• 44:24Jordi Hays?

  You guys are kind of, you guys are very, yeah, I never, I never thought of you as.

• 44:28John Coogan?

  Home building materials.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's just a lot of businesses out there. And so it just depends on like what the goal is. But any business done for, like zooming all the way out, if you do one thing for 40 years and you get better every year, you're going to fucking dominate. And so on some level, going after the tech opportunity, though they're, they're for sure are the big, the big mega winners. It's easier to compete against the people who are going after the pool cleaners. There's just, there's like, there's less sophisticated players, there's less capital. And so having a little bit of street smarts and a lot of work ethic can get you pretty far there. And you look at that compared to like, you know, you look at the guy who's doing seven million a year top line, two and a half million dollars in bottom line, doesn't really work that much, has a crew of guys. Is that the life you want?

• 45:13John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Because there's nothing like, there's nothing wrong with that. And so I think it's deciding first to the younger guy, like what do I want? Or what is an acceptable outcome? And then what of the many, many paths that are ahead of me have the highest likelihood of me getting there? And then once you pick that path, know that if you stick with that path for 20 years, the likely that you fail is basically zero, as long as you have some feedback loop for improvement. That's basically it. Figure out where you want to go, find the highest likely path of getting there, and then do not let the opinions of strangers or people who do not have what you want dissuade you from getting there.

• 45:47John Coogan?

  Yeah. What do you think about, there's this odd trend of entrepreneurship, like, I don't know, like mindset stuff where you gotta be doing sauna, cold plunge, meditation. And I feel like that only makes sense once you're successful. And then you look at the successful people and you're like, well, yeah, the rich guy has a sauna, but what was he doing when he was broke? He was waking up and getting on his laptop. But how have you reacted?

• 46:12Speaker 01

  Rich people fly private, so I should fly private in order to get rich. It's, it's, it's conflation. Okay, so at the most basic level, you have to do work.

• 46:23John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  And if it is not the work, then you have to have a very strong argument that is going to increase your output per unit of time, period. And so if you have a three hour morning routine, and that's the first three hours of the day when you're probably the cognitive, like the freshest, have the most energy, you would have to have an incredible, do you curse on the show?

• 46:39John Coogan?

  We don't.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Okay, a credible darn argument.

• 46:42Jordi Hays?

  You're welcome to. Our kids are, our kids are watching, but you know, by all means.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  You have to have an incredible argument for why that's going to improve your output. And so like the morning routine that I'm a big advocate of is you wake up and then you caffeinate.

• 46:53John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  You shut off your, your distractions and then you begin the work. And how, how much you can compress the time from waking to beginning work.

• 47:01John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  Is the ideal and you are the freshest whenever you are post-sleep.

• 47:05John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  And so I like, if you want to do that stuff, I'm like, by all means, go for it. But like, just understand, like you can, plenty of people have hobbies. You can have hobbies, like there's nothing wrong with that. It's just, is this actually, and you also didn't need to work 16 hours a day in order to get what you want. I have plenty of friends who are super successful and don't work that much. Now, did they work 16 hours a day to get there? Probably. And so this is the modeling, the rise, not the plateau. What's difficult is the plateau is what's more visible.

• 47:31John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  And then you can make the content.

• 47:33John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Right? No one's making this part.

• 47:36Jordi Hays?

  What do you think about people sort of like staging out their sort of career as an entrepreneur? I was talking to a friend of mine who has a, something like an agency business in fashion. He's going to do like about a million dollars this year of like profit. It's a fantastic business. He has, he eventually wants to have his own, his own brand. My, my advice to him is like, fashion is such a like bad business until it's a great business, till you have like a flagship brand that takes 20 years to make. I was like, get your business to like a couple million a year, get it like established, just a couple million a year of profit at least.

• 48:20Jordi Hays?

  Get it established, get, you know, 10, 20 flagship clients that are on sort of long-term contracts. And then basically use that cash flow to invest in your brand. And like, a lot of people would be like, giving the advice now of like, just go all in on, go all in on the brand. Like, why are you wasting time with this other thing? And I feel like that's very, that, that works super well, like if you have a trust fund. But for somebody who's like 27, let's assume they want to have a family in a few years, I was pushing him to say like, make this thing great, even though you know it's not the thing that you want to be doing for that 40-year chunk of your career. But how would you talk to, to somebody in that sort of space?

• 48:58Speaker 01

  So I don't think there's a right answer because it's all dependent on risk, which is entirely personal.

• 49:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  And so if you want to go balls on the line, that's not cursing, then, then do it. Go all in, but like just understand the risk that you're taking on. And so I would say that that's not a risk that I would take. I would say that I'm relatively.

• 49:17Jordi Hays?

  There's, there's risk to being all in and then not having the capital to actually fuel the opportunity, right? My point of view is like, you're going to be way, way, way higher likelihood of success if you sort of build slow and you can put half a million a year of like outside capital into the business versus like trying to build this brand when you don't have a capital source.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  Depends on goal, depends on risk tolerance. Like I want to be a trillionaire and then, and I'm willing to take the risk, then it's like, yeah, I mean, you should have started yesterday. You know what I mean? But my perspective is, I would like to get my oxygen mask on personally. And I was able to make, I've been able to take significantly bigger and bigger bets in my career because I don't, they're free swings.

• 49:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  If I lose, my, my life changes to zero.

• 50:01Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  And so when thinking about big life changes, what's been really helpful for me is what is my, what tactically changes about my life? Do I change what I eat? Do I change what I wear? Do I change where I live? Do I change the car I drive? And, and do these things matter? Right? Does it change who I'm married to? If none of these things change, then almost none of these decisions are going to actually have a huge impact on my life, which then makes the argument for like, maybe I should take a higher risk-adjusted return move. But I would say that from the emotional side rather than the logical side, it was, I have tried, I very quickly tried to have a nest egg to be like, I'm good.

• 50:34Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  And that's what's allowed me to take really big bets, like things like school. School's a platform.

• 50:38Jordi Hays?

  Oxygen mask is a, is a great way to.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, put that on.

• 50:41Jordi Hays?

  If you're going to be.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  If you want. And if you have responsibilities too. If you're, if you're a parent and you've got kids and you've got mortgage and you want a certain lifestyle for them and certain schools that they, you know, that cost money, then, then you're also risking their futures to a degree. And so again, it's your decision, but just know what you're putting at risk. And how much is my life going to change if I lose? Keith Cunningham has a great frame on this, which is just, what's my upside? What's my downside? And can I live with my downside? If you can't live with the downside, don't take the bet.

• 51:10John Coogan?

  You mentioned that, you know, the success and the habits are visible at the plateau, but not on the rise. And I agree with you. Like, you're not actually seeing the accurate picture of the up and coming entrepreneur, the future trillionaire, as it's happening. But at the same time, a lot of businesses increasingly need to do some form of social media on their way up. And the risk there is like, sometimes companies just get sucked into just being full media companies, or the brand value and the cash flow from the media business outgrows whatever they were doing originally. What is the right balance? How should entrepreneurs think in the modern era? Like, if you're starting a company, consumer product in 2026, what's the right level of social media and actual owned content without

• 51:55John Coogan?

  it becoming like fake work?

• 51:58Speaker 01

  What do you mean by fake work?

• 51:59John Coogan?

  Fake work would be like, you're growing your following account, but you're not growing your cash flow.

• 52:05Jordi Hays?

  There's a generation of entrepreneurs, and like, you're probably a huge driver of this, that are like, I need to work, I need to like, I need to build my personal brand. And they don't realize that like, if they just make an amazing product that millions of people benefit from, they just default get the personal brand. And they could just, if you care about like, attention and being on camera, then you could just do that later. But maybe just make something amazing.

• 52:27John Coogan?

  And also, your personal brand is an actual media company that has cash flow, and is like, a successful business.

• 52:33Jordi Hays?

  You wouldn't be, you wouldn't, I don't think you would be like, on camera if you weren't making money.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  No, I wouldn't. I hated it. It was like, it was very hard for me to decide to do this.

• 52:40John Coogan?

  Yeah, but there's a lot of people that are basically doing the media for the clout, and they don't, and they think, put it, it's fake work, because they're saying, they're justifying the clout chasing by saying, oh, it's marketing for my business.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  If what you do does not translate into the money that you make, and money that you make is the goal, then you are doing work that is not effective. If, to the example you gave earlier, if you start a business and you get better at media, and the media is making more money than your existing business, then maybe you're better at media than you were at your business. And maybe that should be your business. And so I think constantly being flexible about reassessing what the market wants versus what you have. You know, I think Bezos says this, but, you know, determined on goal, flexible on path, or whatever way he says that. And he's also a great example of, what's Bezos' personal brand? Well, everyone knows who he is. Does he make a lot of content? No. Why? He just happens to own Amazon, right? And so I think, it depends on what sphere you want to get into. This is kind of interesting.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  If you were to say, I want to be a big B2B influencer, you cannot be a big B2B influencer without evidence that you are good at business. Period. You could take, and there's plenty of people who take word for word, the stuff that I say.

• 53:50Jordi Hays?

  Aren't there, there's probably some good counter examples to that. We don't need to, we don't need to name them.

• 53:54John Coogan?

  Yeah, you know, it's tough. It's tough.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Like, I would say the biggest, I think the biggest B2B influencer right now is Elon.

• 54:02John Coogan?

  Oh, sure, sure.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  And he also has the biggest business and is the richest man. Right? And so, and that, I think that just cascades all the way down. The only reason that, so like, I was, I had a podcast that started in July of 2017. That's when I started, it was called Gym Secrets, and I rebranded it as Just a Game. But as I continued to make it, we went from like, you know, 2,000 downloads a month to millions, when I sold my company for 46.2 million. And then people were like, oh, this guy actually knows what he's talking about. And then, the brand took off, because I had evidence. And so, I think that the amount of legitimacy that you need to be an influencer depends on the risk that the consumer has in taking action on the nature of the content that you're making. And so, if I'm a beauty

• 54:44Speaker 01

  influencer, if I buy lipstick, or I do a lash technique, I'm getting waters, I'm not familiar with here. You paint your face in some way, right? The risk is relatively low.

• 54:56John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Right? Now you move a little bit over here, and you got like, personal finance. Well, it's like, who's the biggest there? Dave. And then there's, there's some of the new age ones, Erica Culver. She's got hurt, but she was also, and there's Vivian too, I think. But like, they have some credibility behind, and like, there's tons, like, if a teacher is in her basement, talking about how you should invest in the S and P 500, and says exactly what Warren Buffett says, and maybe they even say it a little bit more compelling than the way that Warren Buffett says, they won't be Warren Buffett, because they just forgot to build Berkshire Hathaway. And so, it's like, the proof is the pudding. I think, at least my perspective on media is the proof is the pudding, but it varies in terms of how much proof you need. Now, if you're ugly as shit, very hard to be a beauty influencer.

• 55:38John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  But if you can use, but if you are ugly, and then you paint your face so well that you become hot, then you absolutely, yeah, because you have evidence. Right? And you have a more dramatic, no, 100%, this is how it works. Yeah.

• 55:52John Coogan?

  I like that. Talk about status seeking. It seems like in Silicon Valley, there's often, you know, Naval talks about this, like, there's value.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  Just Silicon Valley?

• 56:00John Coogan?

  Well, that's what I want to know. In Silicon Valley, there's a lot of trend chasing, there's a lot of status seeking, and there's value in like, doing low status activities. And I'm wondering, in mid-market entrepreneurship, small businesses, like, what is the shape of that? Is it different than Silicon Valley? Is it less pronounced, more pronounced? Like, what is the version of, look, you just need to run a series of golf courses and be happy with that, that type of thing, or whatever, whatever the equivalent is?

• 56:26Speaker 01

  I think it depends on who they compare themselves to. I think it just comes down to that. I think tech guys compare themselves to tech guys, and they want approval from tech guys, and so they do the activities that tech guys approve of. If you're an HVAC guy, then it's going to be, you're going to do the activities that HVAC people think are cool, if they're the peer group that you actually compare yourself to, which they might not be. And to be fair-

• 56:44Jordi Hays?

  I love the tech guys that sell their business for nine figures, and then are like, I need a cash flowing lifestyle business ASAP.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  I know a lot of them. A lot. Like, a crazy amount, like, buying gas stations, like, it's a lot.

• 56:58John Coogan?

  How bad is that?

• 57:01Speaker 01

  Bad? What do you mean?

• 57:02John Coogan?

  Like, because I imagine it's a grass is greener on the other side thing, where they enjoyed building their business, they sold it, they have all this cash, but they want cash flow, they want the stability of the cash flow. And so, they want the idea of running a small business.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  Check every month.

• 57:15John Coogan?

  And they don't, exactly. But they don't think about what it means to like, at 2:00 AM, your gas station got robbed, and you got to go down there and sort it out with the cops, or something like that. And so, I'm wondering about like, what is the actual lesson there for someone who's like, about to get over their skis?

• 57:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think humans are inherently dissatisfied. And I think whatever you have, you want what you don't have. And so, if you're married, you're like, ah, life would be different if I was single. If you're a parent, you're like, ah, can you remember when we didn't have kids? And when, if you don't have kids, you're like, I wish I had kids. If you're an employee, you're like, man, I wish I were an entrepreneur. And somebody who's an entrepreneur, you're like, man, it would be so nice to just show up and clock out at 5:00 and have to think about it and get a check. Like, we just always, we want to make, we want the benefits of a trade off without the negatives of the trade off.

• 57:53John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  And so, when guys are in the cash flow business, because I'll, because that's who I talk to the majority of the time, is like, what they're thinking about all the time is like, it's hard to sell this business. I'm not really building my net worth. The multiples that I'm getting on this aren't going to necessarily be that high. I'm dealing with people all day. I deal with low skilled labor, and I've got, you know, churn issues or finding techs that aren't going to show up drunk on the job. Like, there's, like, one of my favorite quotes of all time, I'm going to try not to cuss on this one, but my CFO was deep South Texas, when we were, when we were in Texas, when we were building Gym Launch. Suzanne Shiflett, shout out to Suzanne. She was the reason we were able to sell Gym Launch. She had been, she had been a CFO for four companies from 1 to 100

• 58:35Speaker 01

  million plus, had done a $5 billion exit, and I think she'd been either buy side or sell side over 20 times. She was just like, she was like, just so weathered, in a good way, right? And she said, you know what, Alex? She's like, it's all shit. She was like, it's all shit. Every business is shit. It's all shit. And I, and it was, but it was, like, she said it with so much sincerity, because I was like, at the time, I was like, man, it'd be cool if we had this kind of multiple, blah, blah, blah. And she was like, it just doesn't, it's, it all sucks. And it's just different type of suck, but it all sucks.

• 59:09Jordi Hays?

  We're at time, but give us a pitch for Scale or Fail.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  If you like seeing entrepreneurs try their absolute hardest, and have a completely new paradigm shift in 90 days, to scale their business the most, then watch the show. I meet with them for an hour, give them a whole blueprint of what I would do if I bought the business 100% today. And then they execute and they compete.

• 59:31Jordi Hays?

  I love it. Amazing. So, reminds me of PMF or Die. We experimented with the show last year.

• 59:38Speaker 01

  Talking about niche audience.

• 59:40Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it was like, it was like, we put this team in an apartment in New York. They were not allowed to leave for 90 days until, or until they build a million dollar ARR business. It descended into chaos.

• 59:56Jordi Hays?

  Totally crazy. And we were like, we don't have time to do this and this.

• 1:00:00John Coogan?

  But it had, it had like, hundreds of people watching at all times. It was actually gripping.

• 1:00:04Jordi Hays?

  And it was just a live stream of them in the apartment, just like, cooking.

• 1:00:07John Coogan?

  Yeah. But one of them got really good at talking to chat. It was a whole thing. It was sort of opened us up to like, live opportunities.

• 1:00:13Jordi Hays?

  That was a good example, because like, one of them clearly was like, a gifted content creator. And the other one was like, why am I on camera? This is terrible.

• 1:00:19John Coogan?

  This is terrible.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  Did he become a content creator?

• 1:00:22Jordi Hays?

  We got to check in with him.

• 1:00:23John Coogan?

  Yeah, we got to check in with him. He took a vacation and traveled a little bit after.

• 1:00:26Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, they both needed to like, disconnect.

• 1:00:28John Coogan?

  But, yeah, lots of success.

• 1:00:30Jordi Hays?

  So, don't do the show live. Then people will actually go crazy.

• 1:00:33John Coogan?

  Yeah, the edit is a good one sometimes.

• 1:00:38John Coogan?

  Thank you so much for coming on. We'll talk to you soon.