How to Price High-Ticket Without Fear | Ep 870

In this Q&A episode, Alex (@AlexHormozi) answers questions from early-stage founders on everything from pricing high-ticket offers to overcoming the fear of selling, and breaks down why scaling is often a systems problem, not a talent problem. Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast, you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned and will learn on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth. Wanna scale your business? Click here. Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials: LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition Mentioned in this episode: Get access to the free $100M Scaling Roadmap at www.acquisition.com/roadmap

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

• 0:01Alex Hormozi?

  I am a big believer in having like almost the same size recruiting team as I do sales team. And so that was also one of the big ways that we were able to basically fill in exec teams and leader teams within these portfolio companies we bring them in. It's like there's only two winners. Either we can pull the winners out, or we can put three more winners in and now we have a full company.

• 0:21Alex Hormozi?

  Pest control, eight million, pacing 12 million this year, running really good margins?

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 0:25Alex Hormozi?

  Yes, sir.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  Biggest constraint we have now, we have a marketing agency, we're paying about a hundred grand a year.

• 0:30Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  You want to pull that out, all that marketing in-house, but we don't want to lose performance. What would you do if you were in my shoes?

• 0:36Alex Hormozi?

  Why?

• 0:37Speaker 01

  I just feel like there's a disconnect there somewhere.

• 0:40Alex Hormozi?

  Were they performing?

• 0:41Speaker 01

  It seems to be doing alright, yeah.

• 0:43Alex Hormozi?

  Why? Why is that the most important thing?

• 0:47Speaker 01

  I just feel like we can get a better LTV, like in this, like I just don't know if we're getting a lot, a lot of quality leads.

• 0:54Alex Hormozi?

  Why not just start marketing and not cancel them?

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Could do that too.

• 0:58Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Like we do a lot of online social media stuff now. We have the YouTube channel, big GitHub.

• 1:03Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, I'll give this as a rule of thumb in general for me, I will typically never stop flows.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:09Alex Hormozi?

  I'll just add flows. So it's like, okay, we've got this marketing agency. It's like, cool, we can hire two more marketing agencies and they can all market for me. I'll probably not make less money. And then like, we also want to build it in-house. Cool, we'll also build it in-house. Like more promotion almost never makes you less money, provided you have a product that has gross margin and makes sense.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:27Alex Hormozi?

  So yeah, I would not, I basically will never sacrifice the thing that puts food on the table.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:32Alex Hormozi?

  Even if it's not as efficient as I want, I'm not going to risk, I'm not going to risk the whole business, just because I want to gain efficiency. So I'll add. So I would suggest adding, not canceling. Now, if the added thing then crushes it and it's like, makes the other thing superfluous, I still am like, well, we're paying these guys a hundred and we're making, you know, a million, we're making 500. If somebody gave me an investment that I put, you know, a hundred grand in and make 500 back, I'd still probably say yes.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56Alex Hormozi?

  So just more.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Smart. So I asked.

• 1:59Alex Hormozi?

  Pretty straight. Easy. That was an easy one. It's usually not like that.

• 2:05Alex Hormozi?

  Dude's like, I've got this partner and they're not here. They don't, they don't support me. What's up, Ben?

• 2:11Speaker 02

  Uh, Nate, I'm a deck builder in East Tennessee.

• 2:14Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, you've niched down?

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Decks niched down.

• 2:17Alex Hormozi?

  Made more money?

• 2:17Speaker 02

  Do about three mil. I'd like to get to the point where we're above 10. Uh, I think the biggest thing that's stopping us is really me, first of all. Um, I was here a couple of years ago and learned how to one call close from a gentleman. And I overcomplicated that whole thing and now I can't train and sell it to the people that are working for me because they don't have what I have. So, uh, I've kind of come to the point where I think the pitch is, the offer is a little too much and I want to kind of-

• 2:42Alex Hormozi?

  Too much as in what?

• 2:44Speaker 02

  As in like, it's kind of slimy. It's, uh, it's called an ambassador program.

• 2:49Alex Hormozi?

  Right.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  Um, basically the month that I'm building your deck, uh, rather than me spend a bunch of money on advertising, I'd rather partner with you. And, uh, in exchange for a few things. So for instance, um, I spend quite a bit on ad spend. I'd rather spend that in your deck, make your backyard look like my billboard and you be my radio ad, my spokesperson. In exchange for, you know, that Google review, that kind of thing. So I'll cut the bill down quite a bit. And people seem to kind of think that that's a little pressure sale and then we don't really get anything from it. When I did it, it worked well. My guys are getting feedback that it's just not a good fit.

• 3:25Alex Hormozi?

  Do you have any recordings?

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Um, vague, no.

• 3:28Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, that's it, man. I, I guarantee if you heard them say, you'd be like, God, dude, no, you're just, uh, like that's, it, it's, there's no like, I think it's the, dude, they're, they're sucking ass at it. That's all it is. Like, it's all it is. Like, by the way, if anyone here doesn't record their sales calls, like, listen to them for the first time and you will want to kill yourself. Um, so no, I don't think, like, if you had the offer that already worked really well, they're just phrasing it wrong or they're presenting it wrong. So I think you just need to get, you need to get sales recordings. So it's like, how do I do that? It's like, you can have them put their phone in their pocket. Cause you sell in person, right?

• 4:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:02Alex Hormozi?

  It's at their house?

• 4:03Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:03Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. So you can just record it. And then based on laws of that area, you can let them know they're being recorded. That's what you should do.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:13Alex Hormozi?

  Disclaimer, I got you. Just want to be clear. Sounds good. Thank you. But you'll be able to get that feedback. I guarantee you, as soon as you listen to it, you'll hear it in two seconds. Like, rather, like, actually, this is a really good one. So many times we want to change our entire business because of something that's just like, oh, my guess, like, I have, I just haven't heard the sales calls, so like, record the sales calls, listen to the sales calls, see what the problem is, and like, not change my offer, my pricing, my marketing, like, all of that, because we just had to avoid, like, okay, I don't, I don't, I don't have any visibility. So if we're actually looking at which one this one is, it was a data one. The data was that you didn't have the calls. Man, these were, these are, these are light. These are light. These are normally not like this.

• 4:53Speaker 03

  Hello. I'm Thomas. I buy equity from business owners.

• 4:57Alex Hormozi?

  Buy equity from business owners?

• 4:59Speaker 03

  I run a private equity firm.

• 5:00Alex Hormozi?

  Okay, cool.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  So we're doing about 25 million across the group. We want to get to, you know, over a billion EV.

• 5:06Alex Hormozi?

  Do you have LPs or is this you?

• 5:09Speaker 03

  It's family office money, yeah.

• 5:10Alex Hormozi?

  Okay, so this is you?

• 5:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So we can scale through institutions of a family office LPs we need to, but.

• 5:15Alex Hormozi?

  So you don't syndicate anything, it's just all?

• 5:19Speaker 03

  We do it deal by deal. We'll go to family office or institutions that we need.

• 5:21Alex Hormozi?

  Got it, okay.

• 5:23Speaker 03

  What's stopping really is this scaled, like, institutional quality capability, a bit like you guys have, so, so like, I can go into portfolio companies, do a roll up, scale it, take it public, all that, etc. But what we want to do is obviously build out a capability so that we have lots of assassins going out and doing it.

• 5:41Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  How did you do it?

• 5:43Alex Hormozi?

  A lot of money and a lot of time.

• 5:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:45Alex Hormozi?

  I mean, to be like, so the-

• 5:47Speaker 03

  Like, phase by phase, what I'm kind of, if you go from where you guys started, through the phases of now getting to more of an institutional scale.

• 5:55Alex Hormozi?

  So I would say that, do you feel like you can't generate alpha in bigger companies?

• 6:01Speaker 03

  No, no, we've done, I've done big, we've done like a few hundred million companies.

• 6:05Alex Hormozi?

  So then, I think that, I think, I mean, you're, you're, you're, rather than reinventing the wheel, I think you're running into the issue that everyone runs into, which is like, we did, just for, I mean, for your sake, like, we did, 24 deals in 24 months from, let's say, 2020-

• 6:22Alex Hormozi?

  One to 2020, end of 23, somewhere in there. And so during that process, we quickly were like, wow, this is taking up a lot of bandwidth.

• 6:35Alex Hormozi?

  And a lot of these are just not worth it. And so the, you know, the star performers in the portfolio so much outperformed everyone else that I actually just gave people their equity back. I was like, you can keep the money and the equity. I just would rather not talk to you.

• 6:56Alex Hormozi?

  Some people took it well. I mean, we've done a similar thing too. Right. It's just like, this is just not worth the time. Right. And so I think the, the, the point that I'm making here is that almost every private equity firm just ends up raising more and more money and doing the same number of deals that they have bandwidth for and just doing fewer, bigger deals. And so it's like, that's why I asked, like, do you feel like you can still generate alpha with the bigger deals? If so, awesome. And I brought that up just because if you look at Constellation, you familiar with them? Yeah. Yeah. It's like they're, they know their alpha is just going after, you know, $3 million deals and doing 600 deals a year. And that's their, that's their whole thesis. And so they have to build a whole model around that. But if you're like, I can go bigger than it's like, maybe you do keep the few assassins and you slowly acquire people.

• 7:38Alex Hormozi?

  Through the process and one of the, one of the interesting tricks is like, sometimes you find, you know, you, you look at a company that the company sucks, but there's like a really fucking good marketer in there or there's a really good sales leader or whatever. And it's like, hey, um, maybe you should, we just pull you into holdco. And then we can get so much more return on this person's skillset across the whole portfolio than just in, in this one small deal. And so in a lot of ways, it's like, there's usually, especially in the small businesses, um, only like one or two people are good. And then it's just like finding who those key drivers are. And then just the rest of it, it's like almost more valuable to just pull out the diamonds, forget the business and then put it into a better business vehicle. So to answer the question of like, how did we do this? It's just like, we are always looking for talent.

• 8:22Alex Hormozi?

  And I would say that as a company, like internally, we're in the talent business. People like, we're like, what business, like we're in the talent business a hundred percent. And so I am always hiring and always willing to overpay. So we pay 90th percentile, which is pretty high. For all of our roles, because I just want the best and we get so much more alpha return.

• 8:45Alex Hormozi?

  By being willing to pay significantly above market. It's like for everybody, I would strongly encourage you. Let's say market for a sales director is $200,000 a year. If you have a sales director that you think is an absolute savage and they want $400,000 a year, you will make $4 million a year extra by getting the savage. And so, thank you. That's a little like amen.

• 9:08Alex Hormozi?

  So I think from a, you have your core team. You have these deals. I would start basically divesting time into the deals that are small. And then I'd see if I can pick off people from those portfolio companies, pull them into Holdco. That's going to start bolstering up Holdco. That might help you identify better opportunities that are bigger. If I can raise more capital, then I'll still do that. And then ongoing, I don't know who you have at your, at holding company, but having a director of talent who's experienced with executive recruiting. So like the core function that we ran as basically almost our primary value driver in the very beginning of acquisition.com was recruiting. We're just very good at it. And so, by the way, that's how you scale stuff. And so we had to get really good talent in.

• 9:49Alex Hormozi?

  And so I am a big believer in having like almost the same size recruiting team as I do sales team. And so that was also one of the big ways that we were able to basically fill in exec teams and leader teams within these portfolio companies. We bring them in, it's like there's only two winners. Either we can pull the winners out or we can put three more winners in and now we have a full company. Is that up?

• 10:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, cool. So go bigger and get better talent. Yeah, cool.

• 10:11Alex Hormozi?

  Just only the unsurprising, very painful reality.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  Thank you, Alex.

• 10:19Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, you bet. Solar sales, driving around.

• 10:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:22Alex Hormozi?

  Just did, in 10 months, you did 500,000?

• 10:25Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 10:26Alex Hormozi?

  All right. And we need to get more salespeople in the business. And the biggest lever would be selling remotely. But we're not ready for that yet because we need to get more cash flow. So let's just do more of what we're currently doing, which means we'd have to put in a satyr tape. Shoot.

• 10:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, my name is Anthony. We sell solar to homeowners. But yeah, about 500,000 in revenue. But we're operating around 78% profit. So, you know, doing pretty well. We'd like to be at 3 million. And I think the biggest things that's stopping us is BDR, our BDR team's performance.

• 11:04Alex Hormozi?

  Right.

• 11:04Speaker 04

  And retention.

• 11:06Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. What's compensation for the BDR SDRs?

• 11:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, so we do a super small base, 500 bucks every two weeks. So I think we need to change that. But we do the still uncapped commission. So our industry is usually door knockers.

• 11:20Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 11:20Speaker 04

  Which, which has just commission only.

• 11:23Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 11:23Speaker 04

  So we thought we were being competitive with the 500 every two weeks, but.

• 11:27Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. Are those guys door knocking?

• 11:29Speaker 04

  No, these guys are virtual all over the world.

• 11:31Alex Hormozi?

  Call it.

• 11:31Speaker 04

  We've tried different people from different places. I think US base is going to be the best with just a higher base, just not really sure how to structure it.

• 11:38Alex Hormozi?

  One thing you can do is do like a try before you buy type situation, which is like, we're going to make you a contractor for 30 days. And then if you pass the, you know, pass the KPIs, then we'll, we'll roll you in. That way it's way less of a, like, hey, hire and fire, hire and fire. Uh, but then that way it's like, and after 30 days, we'll lock in your base.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  So letting them like work for 30 days for kind of like a slightly adjusted lower base just to try it out?

• 12:03Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 12:03Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 12:03Alex Hormozi?

  Or you could just pay full and just say you have 30 days to prove it.

• 12:06Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 12:07Alex Hormozi?

  I mean, let's, we have to think about like, what are you going to lose money on? You're going to lose money on, but like, typically they're super padded on the upside. So the base of if you pay somebody like $40,000 a year, in terms of what you'd actually pay them, call it 50 for simple math. So it's a thousand bucks a week. If you pay someone for two weeks and you don't think they're good, you lost two grand. Like you're running 75, 80%, you know, net margins. Maybe you give up some margins so that you can scale. And just get better people in. Again, like the star BDRs are. Going to probably want some base when they come in because they're going to like, well, I gotta build, I gotta build pipeline. And so it's like, how reasonable is it for them to just immediately? I don't know, but like typically pipeline starts to build up usually within, you know, especially for a transactional sale like yours in 14 to 30 days anyways.

• 12:51Speaker 04

  Yeah. Would you say the comp plan is, is the biggest lever for this?

• 12:56Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. I mean, you're doing remote SDRs. They're like, you're like, we're being competitive. It's like, but you're not, the remote SDRs that are potentially working for you are comparing your opportunity not to other solar opportunities, but to all other opportunities. And so getting $500 every two weeks is like,

• 13:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, 100%.

• 13:13Alex Hormozi?

  You know, tough.

• 13:16Speaker 04

  So fix the comp plan.

• 13:17Alex Hormozi?

  I would probably fix the comp first. So I think for you, it's like, fix the comp, that gets the better SDRs in. SDRs increase sales, increase sales, increase cash flow, increase cash flow. Then we can start investing the extra time into getting the virtual sales so that you can go from doing, you know, four or five a consult a day to 20 plus. And then you can start duplicating that sales process to somebody else. But like, that gets us the, like, let's just do that first.

• 13:39Speaker 04

  All right. Thank you.

• 13:40Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, you bet.

• 13:40Speaker 04

  Appreciate it.

• 13:42Speaker 05

  My name is Sam Coleman. I sell luxury real estate here in Vegas.

• 13:46Alex Hormozi?

  Oh, sweet.

• 13:47Speaker 05

  Revenue last year I did a million three. This year I'm on track to do a million five.

• 13:51Alex Hormozi?

  Amazing.

• 13:52Speaker 05

  I would like to get to ideally in my world about 10 million. And what's stopping me is focus, apparently.

• 14:03Speaker 05

  The ascension plan for most successful people in real estate is buy rentals, whatever. So right now I started to fund a lot of my clients who have cash.

• 14:16Speaker 05

  Have just given me cash because they believe in it and I want to be a developer as my end game. So my question is, you know, and I also started doing paid ads.

• 14:27Speaker 05

  I know the answer. I started doing paid ads for more.

• 14:30Alex Hormozi?

  What do you think I'm gonna say?

• 14:35Speaker 05

  I started doing paid ads for my real estate business and then I started paid ads for

• 14:39Alex Hormozi?

  As an agency for other, of course.

• 14:41Speaker 05

  Teaching agents.

• 14:41Alex Hormozi?

  Why wouldn't you? You don't want to leave money on the table.

• 14:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:46Alex Hormozi?

  Do you want to, we should draw out this org chart, shall we? So, we've got, hold on, we've got, this'll be fun. So, we've got, we've got the, your Realtor, right? So, we've got this business. And then we've got, um, agency, right?

• 15:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:02Alex Hormozi?

  Over here. And then we've got fund, over here. And then your goal is to be a developer, over here.

• 15:12Alex Hormozi?

  Okay, cool.

• 15:13Speaker 05

  They're all in real estate, though.

• 15:17Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. You know what's crazy? All of my businesses are, are businesses. Isn't that like, same, same? I hear you.

• 15:23Speaker 05

  Trying to make myself feel better.

• 15:25Alex Hormozi?

  No, no, no. As long as you feel better. And like, let's play, hold on, I'm gonna play a fun game. And you have, one person on your team who's kind of like your right hand, you underpay her, but you're gonna pay her a little bit more because she's great. And then you have like, two other people who are irrelevant. And you do most of this yourself.

• 15:43Speaker 05

  I got rid of the other two, but...

• 15:46Alex Hormozi?

  So, just you and your right hand?

• 15:48Speaker 05

  And I have two showing agents that show all of my listings, um, and admin staff.

• 15:53Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 15:54Speaker 05

  The other two that were irrelevant, I got rid of those two.

• 15:55Alex Hormozi?

  Okay, okay.

• 15:57Speaker 05

  I was trying to replace myself, so I can like, go do the other things.

• 16:00Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 16:01Speaker 05

  And then I was losing clients, so I...

• 16:02Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, with low skill labor. You're like, "Yeah, what I do is so easy, I can train somebody who gets paid nothing to do it, to these luxury people who would be like, why would I go for this person's help?"

• 16:11Speaker 05

  Fifty percent of a lot is a lot.

• 16:14Alex Hormozi?

  Fifty percent of zero is zero.

• 16:15Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 16:18Alex Hormozi?

  So, so you've got one business per person, um, who works for you right now, roughly. So, what do you want to do, man? Like, this makes you money, right? And this, you know, is a distraction, obviously. But, you know, you have to figure that out. But, what, so like, what do you want to do?

• 16:35Speaker 05

  My end game is to be a developer.

• 16:36Alex Hormozi?

  Okay, what stops you? Yeah, okay.

• 16:38Speaker 05

  The challenge that I'm having now is focused, the amount of focus that is required to get into development and all the systems and processes and people and going to actually raise money. It would take me away from my everyday that actually makes me money. And to go raise capital and schmooze and do all this stuff is what I do now for my current business. So I thought originally that like, oh, I can just do both.

• 17:02Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 17:04Speaker 05

  But I'm, but I'm not able to do both.

• 17:05Alex Hormozi?

  So you want to do fund into development, right? That's what you want to do.

• 17:08Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 17:09Alex Hormozi?

  You might have a lifestyle issue. Like you make a million plus a year, right? So like you could stop doing that and then hit your base up and say, this is what I'm doing now. Give me money, I'm going to go develop properties now.

• 17:22Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 17:23Alex Hormozi?

  So you could just do that. So why don't you do that?

• 17:27Speaker 05

  Golden handcuffs, I guess.

• 17:28Alex Hormozi?

  Lifestyle?

• 17:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:30Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. So, I mean, it's just how bad do you want it? Do you want it enough that you would live in a different neighborhood, drive a different car?

• 17:36Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 17:37Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. Well, then do that.

• 17:38Speaker 05

  I don't have, I don't have any payments.

• 17:41Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. I mean, like it's a like, it's a like you, you can't, you're like, basically I'll, if I stop being a Realtor, I'm gonna stop making money being a Realtor. It's like, yeah.

• 17:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:51Alex Hormozi?

  But you'll do the other thing that makes you more money long-term.

• 17:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:55Alex Hormozi?

  So then you have to give up short-term for long-term.

• 17:57Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 17:57Alex Hormozi?

  And so we have to give up short-term for long-term.

• 18:01Speaker 05

  I'm married.

• 18:03Alex Hormozi?

  She's gotta go. Dude, I get it. I get it. Also, best response of the day, which is great, was awesome. Yeah.

• 18:14Alex Hormozi?

  Honestly, it's a, it's a conversation.

• 18:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:16Alex Hormozi?

  It's like, sweetie, I know you love all this stuff. What if we had 10 times more stuff? In like five years?

• 18:26Speaker 05

  I can text your number.

• 18:27Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. No, but that, that's it. That's the rock and hard place. I gotta give up this to get that.

• 18:34Alex Hormozi?

  Real quick, guys, I have a special, special gift for you for being loyal listeners of the podcast. Leila and I spent probably an entire quarter putting together our scaling roadmap. It's breaking scaling into 10 stages and across all eight functions of the business. So you've got marketing, you've got sales, you've got product, you've got customer success, you've got IT, you've got recruiting, you've got HR, you've got finance. And we show the problems that emerge. At every level of scale and how to graduate to the next level. It's all free and you can get it personalized to you. So it's about 30 ish pages for each of the stages. Once you get to the questions, it will tell you exactly where you're at and what you need to do to grow. It's about 14 hours of stuff, but it's narrowed down so that you only have to watch the part that's relevant to you, which will probably be about 90 minutes.

• 19:20Alex Hormozi?

  And so if that's at all interesting, you can go to acquisition.com forward slash roadmap. R O A D map roadmap.

• 19:28Alex Hormozi?

  These are fun. These are good ones.

• 19:31Speaker 06

  Hello.

• 19:32Alex Hormozi?

  Yes, ma'am.

• 19:32Speaker 06

  My name is Laura Roder. I sell industry vertical software to coaches, like executive coaches, life coaches.

• 19:41Alex Hormozi?

  You sell software to coaches.

• 19:43Speaker 06

  Yeah. So it's an industry vertical, run your business tool, payments, scheduling, client.

• 19:47Alex Hormozi?

  CRM.

• 19:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. And we make a website for them also as part of it. So a theme that came up a lot this morning was how to scale low ticket SaaS, because it has been a struggle and I thought you might have some relevant experience with school. So our price point is about $50 a month. We don't have anything higher or lower at this point.

• 20:10Speaker 06

  Our ad payback period is 12 months, which is.

• 20:13Alex Hormozi?

  Impossible.

• 20:14Speaker 06

  Right. Impossible and terrible. What has worked for scaling school?

• 20:20Alex Hormozi?

  It's your viral. So what's your viral coefficient?

• 20:23Speaker 06

  Um, I mean, coaches, you know, no other coaches, hire other coaches. So.

• 20:28Alex Hormozi?

  How many, how many, how many customers come to you every day and sign up for $0?

• 20:34Speaker 06

  For $0, we have about like 2,000 free trials a month, about like 6,000 leads a month.

• 20:41Alex Hormozi?

  That with no marketing?

• 20:43Speaker 06

  No, no, we do lots of marketing.

• 20:44Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. So if you did no marketing, how many customers would sign up?

• 20:48Speaker 06

  About half.

• 20:49Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 20:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 20:51Alex Hormozi?

  So then your payback period on those is immediate.

• 20:53Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 20:54Alex Hormozi?

  So basically, if you want to scale a low ticket software, it's all about virality. It has to be able to compound on its own based on word of mouth, based on quality of the product and based on, you know, the, the growth factors that you'll put into the actual software and customer experience. So like school obviously has ones like you start a school community, then you invite 200 people. And then of those 200 people, a couple of those people start school communities and they've turned by 200 people. And then it kind of continues onwards. And so that is what you have to solve for.

• 21:20Speaker 06

  So yeah, how do you do that? It's like, we're doing that very slowly. How do you do that? How do you make that happen faster?

• 21:26Alex Hormozi?

  It's a data question.

• 21:27Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 21:28Alex Hormozi?

  So basically, what you do is you look at something called M12 retention. So, so month 12, right? So you're like, okay, let's look at all of the people who've stayed for 12 months. Now, let's reverse that to the present. What did these people do? Actions? And then what do they look like? Demographics? That increase the likelihood? That that M12 retention occurs? And so when you do this correctly, you'll say, okay, if someone gets their site live, that 4X is the likelihood they make it to M12. If they add a custom URL to their site, it 8X is the likelihood they get to M12. So you'll basically rank order all of the things as they correlate to M12 retention.

• 22:11Alex Hormozi?

  And then you'll say, cool, how do I build this into the front-end onboarding flow? So that I increase the likelihood these things occur? And then it's like, okay, how do I decrease friction for each of these steps? And so this data problem first, and then it becomes an engineering issue for how you do onboarding. Once you do that, then basically the people who are coming in, then it's like, great, now that we're not, we're losing people. Now we can look at the basically virality of it, which is how can we encourage people to, you know, bring more friends? So like for Facebook, like growth in SaaS looks like this. 100 people sign up. That's what growth looks like. You're like, how does that look like growth? These 50 people never leave. And then you just can't stop growing. That's how, that's how it actually looks for growth.

• 22:56Speaker 06

  So would you reallocate? So now we're spending 30K a month on, you know, our super long payback period ads. Would you reallocate that to an onboarding engineering?

• 23:06Alex Hormozi?

  I actually don't think this is a money thing.

• 23:07Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 23:08Alex Hormozi?

  This is a, I have to do the math and have a good data engineer who can basically plot out looking at all customers and software. So you should be able to see what actions they're taking within the software. If you don't have that, then you have to get the tracking in place so that you can basically make the correlations based on the actions they've taken on the way in to M12. And if you're like, man, this sounds complex. It's like, there's a reason that billion-dollar companies don't get shit out of the sky.

• 23:29Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 23:30Alex Hormozi?

  It's hard.

• 23:30Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 23:31Alex Hormozi?

  But that's, that's the reality of it. That's the real answer.

• 23:34Speaker 06

  And how do you think about, so I imagine it would be similar with school. Most of our churn is just people being like, I didn't make any money coaching. I'm not coaching anymore. Should I think of that as a problem to be solved or something that's out of my control?

• 23:46Alex Hormozi?

  Part of that's marketing.

• 23:47Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 23:48Alex Hormozi?

  If you frame it as, if you use your R4, you're going to make money. You will get people who, if they don't make money, they will think that your software failed. If you say, this is the thing that helps you build communities and you can build a community for free, then they were successful if they got 20 friends to do skateboarding in a online community.

• 24:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. Okay, thank you.

• 24:05Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. Congrats on the business.

• 24:07Speaker 07

  Uh, my name's Jack. I sell TikTok shop agency services to econ brands. Uh, we do two and a half million in revenue. I'd like to be at 12. Um, and what's stopping me is a woman in the red dress who's with me today. Yeah, she's, there she is.

• 24:22Alex Hormozi?

  That's.

• 24:24Speaker 07

  Stunning. Um, so I started at the same time hedging my bets. I came out of a very sour partnership and um, both have grown really nicely in, since, since last year. I'm, I'm very good at growing the business, like kind of both sides. Theo is, it's a supplements brand, just for a bit of background. Supplements brand, growing like crazy on TikTok shop. Obviously the agency kind of services the, the growth, which is great.

• 24:48Speaker 07

  And Theo is great with content and product knowledge, right? I can't do both because obviously now we've hit a point with the agency service where we're bringing on like a lower ticket. And I also kind of wanna, and you're probably gonna, I know what you're gonna say, but um, on, on, on the higher ticket or like done for you service that, you know, are, are kind of main.

• 25:09Alex Hormozi?

  Who do you sell to for the agency?

• 25:11Speaker 07

  Econ brands that.

• 25:12Alex Hormozi?

  What size?

• 25:13Speaker 07

  It's a tough one because like the top two brands we have are completely different avatars. And hence is why, reason we also wanted to bring in a lower level service because like, we don't know what they're gonna be like till we get them the other side. Hence why we can kind of like incubate them for a lower level service and cherry pick hopefully. Econ brands will be good appetite for risk and throw money at it, it'll work.

• 25:32Alex Hormozi?

  So the question is?

• 25:33Speaker 07

  The question is, um, I wanna merge, so I know typically it's like one or the other. I kind of wanna merge it because we can also invest in these brands that look good at the.

• 25:45Alex Hormozi?

  A third business.

• 25:46Speaker 07

  Look good.

• 25:47Alex Hormozi?

  We could solve our two business problem by adding another one and investing on.

• 25:50Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, well, that's, that's the thing. Like, we have opportunities daily coming to me, like, saying, like, you know, I've got this brand, jump in. And I'm like, we could smash it. I just need, like, that extra little department to clean up the brand. And then it becomes a good client for the agency.

• 26:04Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 26:04Speaker 07

  And then, yeah, that's two places making most money. One with a big brand, so a whale, and one with the brand we own, which is also the next whale, which is why it's like, it's fucking fifty fifty. I don't know which way to go.

• 26:14Alex Hormozi?

  I'll tell you this. First off, there's, there's no right answer.

• 26:16Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 26:17Alex Hormozi?

  It's gonna be what you wanna do. Um, second thing, though, is that I, I like to, I like to think about things from like, what's the end state gonna look like? And then kind of reverse it into the present. And so the end state of your TikTok agency, there's gonna be two, there's two issues with your existing model that will decrease the likelihood that you have a very big agency. Number one is that you service small customers. Small customers are inherently volatile. Their volatility will relate back to your volatility as a business will make your business unsellable or not valuable, and definitely not very fun to run. Problem number one. Problem number two is that TikTok shop for now is a hot arbitrage opportunity and will not be here forever. And so in three years, um, the likely that it has the same, you know, returns is low.

• 26:57Alex Hormozi?

  And so you basically have, again, an arbitrage opportunity that exists. There's two kind of big, long-term issues there. You're selling to the wrong people and you're, you're selling to short-term people a short-term opportunity. So it doesn't build a long-term business. What I do like is that you have this good infrastructure, uh, for marketing. I don't think the idea of the whole merging thing is as, I think there's a tweak on it that would make it better.

• 27:19Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 27:20Alex Hormozi?

  So if I were you, I would take my existing very large infrastructure on the agency side, cut all my clients, and then take all of that marketing horsepower and put it towards Theo, and then own a big ass brand.

• 27:29Speaker 07

  I see.

• 27:30Alex Hormozi?

  What stops you from doing that?

• 27:31Speaker 07

  It's volatile. It's TikTok shop only, that brand. We're slow on meta, etc. We're getting there. We've got an agency on board. We're going for it. So that's, that's the only reason I would say, like, hmm, not sure.

• 27:41Alex Hormozi?

  Theo's volatile?

• 27:43Speaker 07

  None. No, no.

• 27:45Alex Hormozi?

  He gives many vibes.

• 27:46Speaker 07

  Theo, great. It's cool. Careful. Um, no, no, I'm busy. Um, no, no, it's good. I, I, and I love the agency side. And I think.

• 27:55Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 27:55Speaker 07

  I, I, I love it, but also I do see a huge opportunity in the info product model with it because it doesn't exist in the UK and a lot of people would buy it.

• 28:05Alex Hormozi?

  Well, yeah, but what do you want, what do you want to have happen?

• 28:08Speaker 07

  So I would like that to go, I would like the info.

• 28:09Alex Hormozi?

  You said you want to get to twelve million.

• 28:11Speaker 07

  Mm hmm.

• 28:12Alex Hormozi?

  Either this could get to twelve million.

• 28:13Speaker 07

  Mm hmm.

• 28:14Alex Hormozi?

  Cartridge business gets to twelve million. You can sell socks and get to twelve million. So what do you want to do?

• 28:20Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 28:21Alex Hormozi?

  Would you prefer to be an agency owner?

• 28:23Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, I would. What I would like to do is bring in a big hit of to make sure that that that the growth and stability of that side can go so feel can keep marketing the fuck out of it. That'd be great. And then agency side, I would love the the lower ticket, like three K, learn it all, etc. And buy pieces of the agency model where and when you kind of need to is much more scalable for us. And rather than doing like everything, sell that to masses and then cherry pick like the ideal clients out of that when we see them performing. In an ideal world, of course.

• 28:49Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, ideal world. Or great people fall out of the sky and immediately know what to do and just run everything for you for a fraction of the compensation. Oh. So you're fifty fifty on this brand?

• 29:00Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 29:01Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. It would be so elegant if you were like, you know what? I'm just gonna go all in on this D F thing. It'd be so nice. Um, but you're like, no, I want to be an agency owner. Uh.

• 29:11Alex Hormozi?

  It's it's it's really just it's it's limited by your ambition. So if you want to do twelve million dollars a year, literally any of those things will be twelve million, which actually doesn't serve as a really good filter. If you were like, I want to build a hundred million dollar thing, then I would say it's going to either, well, I mean, you could. Your existing agency model wouldn't get you there. You'd have to service higher end customers. You find like Hexclad and, you know, whatever, you know, Fly Yay, that's the yogurt brand, whatever, just naming consumer brands and you find big brands and then you probably wouldn't sell TikTok shop for for yogurt, but you get the idea, right? You'd you'd find those big brands and be like, okay, we're gonna build this whole thing out for you. We'll do some sort of rev share on it. And I think rather than trying to invest in the brands, just do a revenue share.

• 29:54Alex Hormozi?

  It'll be much easier, it'll be much cleaner, and most of these brands will never sell anyway. So you might as well just like get the cash because that's the only thing they're really gonna produce.

• 30:01Speaker 07

  Makes sense. Yeah, that's that's the model now. We that's our our main done for you service on the agency side is like we rev share and fix costs. And but it.

• 30:08Alex Hormozi?

  But you sell to small businesses.

• 30:10Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 30:10Alex Hormozi?

  You sell to bigger businesses.

• 30:12Speaker 07

  A mixture.

• 30:13Alex Hormozi?

  Stop selling to small businesses and you'll build a bigger business.

• 30:16Speaker 07

  So would it be would it be reasonable to say like, okay, so main service that takes a lot of manpower, like big businesses only, price raise, high ticket, and then the the info product a lot of people might be interested in, you can just sell that and then.

• 30:28Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, or you could just not sell it. You could just, you could just live your life and just service time customers and make more money.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 30:34Alex Hormozi?

  You like it. So last year was the first year that I noticed in my life that I didn't have FOMO. It was weird. It's been a lot of years that I've had FOMO where I'd see somebody doing something really cool and I'd be like, man, I really want to do that. I should stop what I'm doing and I should do that. I don't, I don't know what happened where FOMO disappeared for me.

• 30:53Alex Hormozi?

  But I can tell you that it is the worst, is the worst.

• 30:57Alex Hormozi?

  Drive as an entrepreneur is really fear is the driver. It's the first letter. And so it's this fear of missing out or like, and so there were you, there will always be more opportunities than you can possibly do. It's just the nature of life. Life's short and you like, and the more skilled you are, the more amazing opportunities you have to say no to. In order to do one opportunity all the way. Cause if you just do one thing really well for the rest of your life, it'll get really big. But if you do two things for the rest of your life, you won't either do either of them really well and neither of them will get big. And so it's like, you have to just learn to say no. And so you're like, but there's also this other, it's like, you know what? I also thinking like all these small guys, they also need a little software. And we could, I could put this to you. It's like, dude, stop.

• 31:38Alex Hormozi?

  Like, why not sell them newspapers, right? Why don't some of them are orange juice? They drink orange juice. I mean, you know, like, like, what are we doing? Right? So like, there's always something else you can sell, especially if you know how to sell and promote. But like you have to like, this is a discipline thing, like you have to learn how to say no. And you have to think about what's the most valuable version of this business? The most valuable version of this business can be big brands who you have big rev shares with. And they're, you're just their TikTok guy. They don't even think about it. You send them a check every month. They're happy. Those are the right customers. Everybody's like, hey, do you think you can make it big for me? Wrong avatar. They're going to churn out and, and you're going to be their savior, which also means that you're their villain. The moment it doesn't work.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  Makes sense.

• 32:12Alex Hormozi?

  Right? And there's volatility and you have an arbitrage opportunity. Does not make it a very stable business. So go big, go big companies. Make your rates appropriate, change the, the marketing, the brand. Like I'm saying, you wanted to have a big agency. That's what a big agency looks like.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:28Alex Hormozi?

  If you're like, you know what? I have this skillset of knowing how to do these things, then you can build a big brand. And you'd be like, fuck the agency. I'm really good at this.

• 32:38Alex Hormozi?

  But you, but like, you can also ignore my advice entirely and make a few hundred thousand dollars a month and like, and feel cool.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  Makes sense. Appreciate it.

• 32:46Alex Hormozi?

  Just being real.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  No, no, I hear it. Thank you. Appreciate it.

• 32:49Alex Hormozi?

  They're more like that. That's usually how it is. Just whelmed, you know? Just hard. It's a hard decision. Yes ma'am.

• 32:58Speaker 08

  Hi Alex, my name is Gri, I'm from Norway. I sell three different products to three different clients.

• 33:08Speaker 08

  And I've been telling myself.

• 33:09Alex Hormozi?

  This isn't Pokemon, you don't have to get them all, you know what I mean?

• 33:13Speaker 08

  So my issue is focus. Uh, I am at the revenue at a million.

• 33:18Alex Hormozi?

  So you're over expanded focus and avatar, okay, got it.

• 33:21Speaker 08

  Exactly.

• 33:22Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, and probably underpriced, but we're gonna find out, keep going.

• 33:24Speaker 08

  I have a business that's been making a million the last 10 years.

• 33:29Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 33:29Speaker 08

  And revenue about 500. Oh, we'll move, sorry, 500, yeah, yeah, 50, 50%.

• 33:38Alex Hormozi?

  Got it.

• 33:38Speaker 08

  I put that revenue into another business, which is Airbnb business. So now I have four different avatars.

• 33:46Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 33:46Speaker 08

  Yeah, and um, what's stop is so the issue is that I want to grow my business. And I've been at a million for the last 10 years. I wanted to grow it the last four years, so that's what's stopping me. I need a focus and I don't know which product to focus on. Because I tell myself that Norway is the smallest market in the world, only 5 million people.

• 34:09Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 34:10Speaker 08

  So it is a small market.

• 34:11Alex Hormozi?

  Do you speak Norwegian to your customers?

• 34:14Speaker 08

  Yes, of course.

• 34:15Alex Hormozi?

  I, you speak English, great, that's why I asked.

• 34:18Speaker 08

  I would.

• 34:18Alex Hormozi?

  You could still do Americans if you wanted to.

• 34:20Speaker 08

  Yeah, that's what somebody told me and then I'm like, yes, I'm gonna do that, but that would be a fifth one.

• 34:25Alex Hormozi?

  Fifth business?

• 34:26Speaker 08

  Yeah, so.

• 34:28Alex Hormozi?

  Why not?

• 34:28Speaker 08

  I wanted to that too.

• 34:30Alex Hormozi?

  Why not?

• 34:30Speaker 08

  But then again, I like to take a day off once in a while, not like you.

• 34:37Alex Hormozi?

  So, I'm gonna introduce this because this already came up. I think that entrepreneurs need to think about investing differently than most people do. And I, this is called a barbell strategy, I'm supposed to, you guys can see it, there we go. So this is called a barbell strategy, which is basically you have your business, which then produces cash. Which then, so this is active and this is passive. And this is, you know, gets your 10% per year, whatever, whatever you want here, I'll just, whatever you want then. To be. The problem is that we, because we know how to do business, we know how to sell stuff. We're like, man, I could get such a better return if I did this other thing, which is just starting another business. And so the highest returns you're going to get is if you can find ways to actually take money

• 35:22Alex Hormozi?

  in your existing business and reinvest it. That's the best case scenario. Like if there's another building that's across the street, so we're buying the building across the street because it came up, but it didn't really come up. I went to the guy, I'll give you a million above. And then he said, fine.

• 35:35Alex Hormozi?

  But I'm buying that building across the street because my team's growing. Right. And so like, that's a phenomenal return. Now, I just overpaid for real estate, but I'm going to make a hell of a lot more on being able to have more of my team in person than if I didn't have that. And so that's going to be a really good return. But I have to analyze it differently because that's going to be in my active income. If after you've reinvested every dollar you possibly can in the thing that you control that you know better than anyone else, which is your business, if you still have extra cash, then you put it into something that doesn't take any of your time at all. Zero. And you have to accept the fact that you're not going to get a better return on that than you are over here. But the key is it has to be passive. And it's not like, well, it's, you know, it's sort of, as soon as you start hedging, it's not passive. Yeah. Like if you can't forget about it for a year or two, year or two, then it's not passive.

• 36:18Alex Hormozi?

  So that being said, you have this business that does a million dollars a year, fifty, five hundred thousand dollars in profit. You want to grow the business. Where are the, so you, you name, so what, what do you sell?

• 36:29Speaker 08

  I have a marketing course for those who hate their jobs and want to start their own business. So from zero to clients, that's a three thousand dollar course.

• 36:37Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 36:37Speaker 08

  And then I have a mastermind that I call a mastermind, but it's really a group coaching program at twelve thousand right now. And, um, and then I have a VIP that is at twenty five.

• 36:49Alex Hormozi?

  Well, those aren't three businesses. Those are products. So is that what you're saying is the three businesses?

• 36:54Speaker 08

  Well, I thought so after.

• 36:55Alex Hormozi?

  No, that's not three businesses.

• 36:56Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 36:56Alex Hormozi?

  That's just three products.

• 36:57Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 36:58Alex Hormozi?

  The same avatar and you upsell them other things.

• 37:00Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 37:00Alex Hormozi?

  That's, that's one business. That's fine. Okay. So the issue is that you feel like you're limited. I mean, I don't think that Norway with five million residents is limiting to a million dollars a year. So I don't think that's true. Could you, if, if you had twice the leads, would you be able to make twice the money?

• 37:15Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 37:16Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. So your demand constraint. So you need, you need more lead flow. So what are you doing to get customers?

• 37:21Speaker 08

  Right now, we're just doing ads and we do just two launches a year from the, for the three K course.

• 37:28Alex Hormozi?

  Okay.

• 37:28Speaker 08

  Twice a year.

• 37:29Alex Hormozi?

  What stops you from doing it four times a year?

• 37:31Speaker 08

  Just that launching is.

• 37:34Alex Hormozi?

  Tiring?

• 37:35Speaker 08

  Pitch?

• 37:36Alex Hormozi?

  Is pitch?

• 37:37Speaker 08

  It's a bitch?

• 37:38Alex Hormozi?

  Oh, it's a bitch.

• 37:39Speaker 08

  My English is not that good.

• 37:41Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, no, I think you, I think you, I think you nailed, I think you nailed the English. I think the English was great.

• 37:48Alex Hormozi?

  But the thing is, is you said, I want to grow my business. But he said, I was like, okay, let's just do more of that thing that works. And you're like, but that's hard.

• 37:55Speaker 08

  It's not hard. It's just that it's just, it's just me. So.

• 37:59Alex Hormozi?

  So it's hard.

• 38:00Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 38:00Alex Hormozi?

  It's hard.

• 38:01Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 38:01Alex Hormozi?

  Right. So it's hard. It's like, how do I make money easy?

• 38:05Speaker 08

  It's not that it's hard, actually. I.

• 38:07Alex Hormozi?

  Well, then why not do it? I'm gonna win.

• 38:09Speaker 08

  Well, I'm telling myself, I've been, I've been telling myself, so there's just five million people. So the, the, the ads goes up.

• 38:17Alex Hormozi?

  That wasn't the question, though. I said, why don't you do it four times?

• 38:19Speaker 08

  Yeah, just because that when you do ads in Norway, it's just the ad cost just explodes from fifty to.

• 38:26Alex Hormozi?

  Has anyone else seen that in the United States?

• 38:29Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 38:29Alex Hormozi?

  Wild. It's not a Norway thing. It's a bad ads thing.

• 38:33Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 38:34Alex Hormozi?

  So, so if you're hitting a ad ceiling, right? So raise your hand if you've had an ad ceiling. You can't compete a thousand a day, ten thousand a day, whatever it is. Okay, cool. So this applies to you. So the ways that you can solve this, you have a superior offer, conversion and optimization, better ads. None of them are Norway. And so right now, it's, so is anyone familiar with the Old Spice guy on the horse? That ad? Okay. So cool enough, the creative director of design, that actually came to this, like two months ago. It's kind of fun.

• 39:08Alex Hormozi?

  So when Old Spice did that, they were, like, they had like ten or twenty percent of the market of men's soap, whatever. Post that campaign, they had over seventy percent of the market share, which is one of the most successful advertising campaigns of all time. And it was one ad. And so when I see that, that's what I consider the hypothetical extreme of advertising, is that if you make an ad so good, it converts fucking everyone. And that's what they did. And so, right now, you're limited in terms of your ability to scale your ads based on the quality of the creative you have. Do you make content?

• 39:39Speaker 08

  Yes.

• 39:40Alex Hormozi?

  How good's your content?

• 39:41Speaker 08

  Mediocre.

• 39:42Alex Hormozi?

  Okay, thank you for being honest. What's really interesting about now, I came from the direct response side and then started making content and my content is maybe better at direct response. If you get really good at content, ads are easy. Cause content's so much harder than making ads. Cause ads you get the reach no matter what, because you pay for the reach. With organic, you have to earn the reach. So you learn what actually makes excellent creative. And so it might be actually a really good exercise for you to get better at your creative. So that when you run ads, you can actually know what makes a good ad, which is the same as what makes a good creative. The only difference is that at the end, you make a call to action. So like, right now, you guys may have seen them. Some of my highest converting ads for, for acquisition.com are just my organic videos that are our top performers. And then I put five seconds at the end, but it's like, hey, by the way, this.

• 40:28Speaker 08

  Would you run ads to the online course then, or the 12,000?

• 40:32Alex Hormozi?

  Whatever's your current acquisition process, I'm not gonna break it. But I still prefer do four times a year as the most obvious choice for doubling the business. It's every 12 weeks, it's once a quarter. It's not that bad.

• 40:45Speaker 08

  You don't burn out your list then?

• 40:47Alex Hormozi?

  Well, you're marketing to cold, right?

• 40:48Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 40:49Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you might just have more cold and less, maybe you hit your list twice a year and you still do cold launches four times a year.

• 40:58Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 40:58Alex Hormozi?

  But that would be like, if I were like, I had to go and make sure that your business doubled, what would I do? I would do that.

• 41:04Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 41:05Alex Hormozi?

  But this is probably why you're hitting the ceiling.

• 41:08Speaker 08

  Thank you.

• 41:09Alex Hormozi?

  You bet. Long-term, go international.

• 41:11Speaker 08

  Alex, this is your last question.

• 41:12Alex Hormozi?

  Ooh. That'd be a good one.

• 41:15Speaker 09

  Hi Alex. Uh, my name is Jonathan. I sell dating services to single men and help them get their dating life together. Uh, revenue, we range between 250 to 900. I would like my revenue to be at 1.2 million because I like to net 100,000 a month, ideally. What I believe is stopping me is that the metrics on all my social media have gone down and my fans have been telling me, you're shadow banned, you're shadow banned, I'm not getting no vacations. So.

• 41:42Alex Hormozi?

  Do you do anything political?

• 41:44Speaker 09

  I mean, I was endorsing Trump, so maybe that's probably it.

• 41:48Alex Hormozi?

  I mean, might be it, honestly.

• 41:50Speaker 09

  Passively, not like a whole stream of like, why? Not like, why you should vote for him? Yeah.

• 41:56Alex Hormozi?

  Um, was that when it stopped?

• 41:59Speaker 09

  No.

• 42:00Alex Hormozi?

  Okay, well then.

• 42:01Speaker 09

  I have a theory. It was like when Andrew Tate went to jail in 2022 December. I noticed like a big change in my viewership and I, I don't know if my fans just really like me and they're like just lying to me like you've been shadow banned.

• 42:14Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 42:15Speaker 09

  But um, I don't know. I just, this is a problem because I like.

• 42:18Alex Hormozi?

  Do you have some videos that do better than others still?

• 42:21Speaker 09

  So I just, I don't do videos. I do live streams, but

• 42:24Alex Hormozi?

  Oh.

• 42:25Speaker 09

  Yeah, I consistently live stream. That's how I do everything. We, leading up to launches.

• 42:30Alex Hormozi?

  You don't make like videos?

• 42:31Speaker 09

  Not really. They just, it's just the live stream is kind of like you're, in my personal theory, like live streaming is like to a degree indoctrinating your uh, following and then lowering resistance and then eventually they buy in. So like I said, I've been able to do, and all my businesses have been organic. My best launch was like quarter million, five days.

• 42:49Alex Hormozi?

  Oh.

• 42:50Speaker 09

  Um, which is like, you know, 90, 85% profit, but nothing has really changed in what I do, but I'm seeing all metrics shrink and it's like,

• 43:00Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 43:00Speaker 09

  I'm freaking out.

• 43:01Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, no, I hear you. So, I mean, basically, at the simplest level, one of two things changed. Either you changed something unknowingly, which is the content's not as good or it's not, you know, as compelling or whatever, or something else changed, which is either the environment changed. So like, maybe it sounds tone deaf now. Or uh, the algorithm changed in terms of how it's uh, pushing out lives. Which not, I don't know. You're the, actually the only person that I know that does lives as their primary organic strategy.

• 43:30Speaker 09

  Yeah. I've yet to meet somebody to replicate my numbers. I'm also a one man business.

• 43:34Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, no, no, there's tons of people who do your numbers are bigger with a one man business. No, not with live streaming, but with making content on a regular basis. And so, I think, I think it's like, we just need to, you need more views, man. Like this all really comes down to. And so it's like, I, I'll, I'll say this, if you keep doing what you're doing, it will continue to stop working. And get worse. So let's not do that. I think you're gonna have to do kind of the um, a gentleman I was talking to earlier, uh, with pest control. He's like, I've got this agency and it's working. Well, it's like, let's do the live streams. Can we also clip that and make that into content? Like the best moments at least.

• 44:11Speaker 09

  So yeah, my, my shorts are like my largest uh, traffic source back then, doing like 16, 15 millions and stuff.

• 44:17Alex Hormozi?

  And do you not do shorts anymore?

• 44:19Speaker 09

  The hit has been pretty big. They've gone down to like eight, nine hundred sometimes. I am happy if it gets to a thousand.

• 44:26Alex Hormozi?

  Views.

• 44:27Speaker 09

  Yes, for sure.

• 44:28Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah. So, um, I mean, maybe you did get shadow banned. I don't know.

• 44:36Speaker 09

  Question just how to fix it if I am theoretically shadow banned, or how do I?

• 44:39Alex Hormozi?

  If you are shadow banned, it's like you'd probably need to start a new account.

• 44:41Speaker 09

  Okay.

• 44:42Alex Hormozi?

  That's like, then you'll, the good news about, about quote shadow banning is this. If you start a new account, because of how social media has changed, it has been largely democratized, especially for short term, uh, short, short form content. So somebody who has a brand new account that has zero followers can make a clip that gets 10 million views. So like, I would, it's not nearly the death sentence that it used to be because it's based on interest graphs more now far more than it is followership. So you can keep doing your lives on one channel. And I think that's like, again, that's the big if here is like, are you shadow banned? I don't know. Do you have a rep that you can reach out to? Cause usually they'll tell you.

• 45:19Speaker 09

  No, they just like, it's just some guy in Paraguay who doesn't give a shit.

• 45:25Alex Hormozi?

  Um, I, I don't like, I don't like pointing to things that I can't control. So I'm like, is there anything that I can do to make these shorts better? It feels unlikely that you went from, you know, five million a clip to a thousand a clip. That feels like a pretty tremendous drop.

• 45:41Speaker 09

  Fifteen.

• 45:42Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah, or 15 million a clip, sure. Uh, a big drop regardless. And so if I were you, I probably, like, I would be in hyperactive mode right now. Which is I'd be trying to find a new, a new way to promote. And so you keep the thing because you have to keep the lights on. But I would strongly consider, um, is it, but are you only YouTube?

• 46:02Speaker 09

  I'm, I mean, I have 58,000 on Instagram and.

• 46:06Alex Hormozi?

  Has it happened there?

• 46:07Speaker 09

  Uh, no, it does not happen there.

• 46:10Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. So can we double down on Instagram in the short term and then like create a new account on YouTube?

• 46:15Speaker 09

  I'm here to do what you say.

• 46:17Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. Um, do you monetize Instagram at all?

• 46:21Speaker 09

  No.

• 46:22Alex Hormozi?

  Well, dude, I mean, Instagram is one of the easiest ones to monetize of all platforms. Instagram is like the most monetizable, uh, because you can directly message your customers. Like every person who follows you, you could, you can DM, are you, um, you're selling to webinars, right?

• 46:36Speaker 09

  No, no webinars.

• 46:37Alex Hormozi?

  Or you sell to lives, whatever.

• 46:39Speaker 09

  I'm sorry?

• 46:39Alex Hormozi?

  You sell to, you sell via live.

• 46:41Speaker 09

  Yes.

• 46:41Alex Hormozi?

  Right. And you do that how often?

• 46:43Speaker 09

  Uh, my show, I've been running it.

• 46:45Alex Hormozi?

  How often do you pitch?

• 46:46Speaker 09

  Uh, once a quarter.

• 46:48Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. So it might be advantageous to, okay. I mean, is leaning more towards that you might've gotten shadow banned? Um, and if that's the case, let's walk through this. So for Instagram, I think you do a many chat integration and then DM new followers and, uh, replies. And then send them to lives. When you go live on YouTube, also go live on Instagram. Very easy. Just get a second phone if you need to go live on both.

• 47:15Speaker 09

  I do that.

• 47:16Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. So you do go live on this here.

• 47:17Speaker 09

  I get like four or five people.

• 47:21Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. So when we have this, you can add them to the broadcast and then let them know when you're going live. Cause you should get more than four or five.

• 47:30Alex Hormozi?

  Nasty. It's just because we have this big question mark of, are you bad at content now? Or did you have the gods of social media tell you that you're not allowed to promote anymore?

• 47:42Speaker 09

  There's a group of people I kind of like.

• 47:44Alex Hormozi?

  Instagram does tell you if you're shadow banned though. So you can look at it in your client settings. So I would check that. And if they haven't, then it just might like, I would so much prefer to know that like the content is just not that good. Cause that's super fixable.

• 47:56Speaker 09

  There's a group of people I'm associated with, and they've all kind of been throttled as well. Like the Fresh and Fit Podcast and some of these people, they're all like, we've all kind of been uniformly kind of flatlined.

• 48:05Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 48:05Speaker 09

  From 23 ish, you know, cause like they have a huge podcast and they've been stuck at 1.5 mil Fresh and Fit.

• 48:11Alex Hormozi?

  You mean on Instagram?

• 48:12Speaker 09

  On, uh, YouTube.

• 48:14Alex Hormozi?

  Okay. And they just don't get views there either?

• 48:16Speaker 09

  No, they get views, but we're all like our subscribership and whatnot is not necessarily growing. And their views have massively taken a hit. They used to do like three, 400. Now they're at one ish.

• 48:26Alex Hormozi?

  One ish thousand?

• 48:27Speaker 09

  Hundred.

• 48:28Alex Hormozi?

  Oh, a hundred.

• 48:28Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 48:29Alex Hormozi?

  That doesn't sound like shadow banning.

• 48:31Speaker 09

  Okay.

• 48:32Alex Hormozi?

  Going from like three hundred to one hundred just sounds like YouTube has shifted over time.

• 48:37Speaker 09

  Okay.

• 48:38Alex Hormozi?

  And like we just need to adapt to what's what's working now.

• 48:41Speaker 09

  The crazy part about my views is like my views have usually typically ranged between on the live streams, one thousand to five thousand, and then the money just kept growing. So I was like, great, I have a fucking money printer.

• 48:53Alex Hormozi?

  Yeah.

• 48:53Speaker 09

  But now the views are still same, maybe slightly dropped, but the sales have just like, it's just like abysmal. It's so terrifying. Yeah.

• 49:04Alex Hormozi?

  Um.

• 49:05Speaker 09

  That's why I'm here.

• 49:05Alex Hormozi?

  There may, no, I hear you. It's like you have this one trick that worked. And so I think you might just need to learn another trick.

• 49:12Speaker 09

  Okay.

• 49:12Alex Hormozi?

  But at least you have second platform. So it's like you've just only done live streams and that's how you've done it. It's like you might be able to just like push people to a phone call. You could push people to a webinar. Like you could probably do more than once every 12 weeks through a pitch. Like there's, there's plenty of levers that we can look at.

• 49:29Speaker 09

  And I have high tech invert immersion stuff that's like 10K and those are easy to sell, but I just need more eyes and views. That when you teach a guy how to date, he doesn't come back because he's out dating.

• 49:39Alex Hormozi?

  Outdating. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, it's education and like there's no continuity program on Harvard. You just graduate and then it's that. Um, and then they get you in the endowment and there's all that, but like,

• 49:52Alex Hormozi?

  I think we have to focus on the controllables, which is that the content needs to improve and you probably need to make more content and make more diverse content. Probably need to start using tools like oneoften.com. If you're not familiar with that, you know what that is?

• 50:02Speaker 09

  Oneoften.com?

• 50:04Alex Hormozi?

  Mm hmm. So oneoften.com is basically the, it's like YouTube repository where you can just search for topics and it will show you the highest outperformers in terms of headline packaging and thumbnails across all channels on YouTube. And then from there, you can basically create ideations of, okay, how can I apply this to my niche? And so I'm guessing that like, the fact that the other guys went from like three hundred to one hundred, like to me, that's not shadow banning. That's just like their content wasn't as good as it used to be, or it's just like, it's not as relevant as it used to be. Like people aren't like bitching about Red Pill as much as they were before. And so it's like, maybe part of any, like your content might have to adapt. So I would honestly prefer it just be that, which is the content's not good enough. Fine. Then like, let's look at topics and let's look at headlines and let's fix that. Let's, let's make it something that people want. We've had to change our stuff all the time.

• 50:49Alex Hormozi?

  And I think it's just like, you learn a trick, it worked, it was a great ride. Now you have to change it again.

• 50:54Speaker 09

  Okay. Thank you very much.

• 50:56Alex Hormozi?

  No, I appreciate you.