Alex Hormozi's Playbook for Building Billion-Dollar Businesses

22:55They won't just apply AI to their business. they'll like start a new company that's like AI oriented. And, and I just think that's like the worst possible mistake. Cause they end up doing something that like the model just does well. And that'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, I can keep compounding.

23:31But what are you seeing? All right. One, they're using AI to do dumb things really fast. 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 than they did before. Number two, they're starting – Meeting summaries. Yeah. Like I've never been successful. Like I've never – That was my bottleneck. I just need a summary. Yeah, yeah. No, but it's one of those things like I think it's cool that these apps exist. I've never needed to take notes to achieve my goals in business. I'm just like, okay, what's the next most important thing to do?

24:07I'm going to do that thing. Okay, what's the next most important thing to do? I'm going to do that thing. I've never been like, okay, what did we say? And I've worked in small companies, right? I've only been a founder. But that's just such an example of like, yeah, my meeting note system is so dialed. I'm like, okay, how much money have you made? Yeah. Okay. So I'll tell you 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 say, okay, this editor used to be involved in these six workflows.

24:42We 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 3x, 5x output. 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 – I'm an advocate of, like, don't tell people you're using AI. Like, 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 lack of operational drag of tech.

25:22That's the good game, right? Or take a department to my department so that you can just become more efficient at it, right? So those are, I think, the two good ways of doing it. To your point of like, well, 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 your dry cleaning store, dude. Like, what are we going to 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.

25:47Sure. 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 at either. Totally, totally. Yeah, 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 the county over, etc. 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. Just win at dry cleaning. Cause it's also so much easier to compete against other dry cleaning owners.

26:23Cause 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. 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.

26:53There's also this tendency to rebuild the existing software that you're using. So it's like, oh, I've got, you know, I don't need to pay Calendly, you know,$9 a month. 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. If there's an error, then you lose nine grand. But that is what I'm saying all the time. We did have a Ben on our team here. He does a lot of the automation that we do around 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.

27:29And it's saving him a bunch of time. So there are these edge cases. It's very narrow point solutions for us. I think specifically we need to clip live streams very quickly with captions, with our ads added on at the end, and it saved a bunch of time in Premiere. In media, it's huge, right? Yeah. 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 data.

27:56If you want to build any kind of AI, right, that's actually useful. 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 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 ads that are going out all being done programmatically with AI. which is really like we're not an AI company, but we use the shit out of it.

28:31And so I think those are on the paid side where it's really, really exciting. And then on the organic side, it's like right now we started More Mosey, which is like the highlights channel. Yeah. And I've got one cracked out teenager who's putting out 20 clips a day on his own. He's doing five mids. So like we call mids, it's like call it three to 10 minutes 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 make sure that it's good.

29:09Inserts automatically the, the, the CTAs that we want. And then boom, it's all on. What's your philosophy on, uh, bringing the cracked out teenager in-house, uh, 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 yes okay 100 % my philosophy okay but like are you an agency fan or in-house it's like I want three agencies working for me and in a house team like it's all the impressions are out there like gotta catch them all like go get them you know I mean and same thing with like if I pay lot of attention, especially on the paid side to e-commerce.

29:52I think they're almost always the most cutting edge. Well, actually porn is the most cutting edge right before that is, I'm being real, e-commerce is the second most cutting edge. 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. All the companies that are running the same playbook is decentralized UGC with kind of like AI backend for screening for control and then just letting it fucking rip. And there's obviously some considerations for brand, right? Which is like, how do we make sure? But yeah, but if the raw footage is greenlit.

30:23And you only put money behind the things that are, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's probably pretty safe. Do you expect to integrate parenting content into your universe? 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, I'll use this, there you go. 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 how do i like how do i see like my my relationship with layla 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 yeah um but some people like i just i'm thinking you know with with with taylor and and travis pairing up hopefully they have children you guys having children i think we could see a real baby boom.

31:13But we need to get it out there. That's what we're doing. The Lord's work. 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. People want to buy stuff from you. Obviously sold a ton of books. But there's probably like, 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 like a new business model.

31:49Yeah, like an AI lab is like, we're not going to compete with you. What? That's crazy. Asking for a friend here.

31:58I'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. Yeah. And I was like, now I do. It's so simple. I love it. That's amazing. Wow. 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. Yep. There's tons of it. There's tons of free stuff. Tons of free stuff. And we still continue to do that. If you choose to want more help with stuff in person where we're limited, spend money.

32:33And we'd love to have you. Yeah. Yeah. It's fascinating. What is the term for the economic ladder that you help companies build? I feel like the first time I was exposed to this with Jocko 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,$10 ,000, I'll hang out with you for a weekend,$100 ,000. And that ladder of price discrimination is hard for a lot of businesses where it's not token-based pricing, where it's just consumption-based usage of the product, but actually getting 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?

33:17Customers 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,$100 a month price point, there's going to be another double of revenue at$500 a month price point, another double of revenue at$2 ,500 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.

33:49When 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 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 extraordinarily 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.

34:18But 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 gonna be people. But 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? 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? I struggle a lot with international because the business side of me is like, I don't want them to clog up our funnels.

34:51Oh, yeah. And like have people who can't speak English that well talk to the team. And it's just like, we don't have Italian versions of whatever. Yeah. That makes sense. Right, so I struggle with that part. On the other hand, we're taking steps now to have something to serve that audience. That being said, I don't think I'm going to be traveling internationally anytime soon. But having called services and offerings for that audience, I'm more inclined to. Yeah. How are you thinking about scaling acquisition.com, the investing side of the business, raising outside capital, scaling up the fund?

35:23We talk to VCs all day who are just like bigger and bigger mega funds. Yeah. Yeah. We're like 30 days away from closing a gigantic deal. Come back. Yeah. But like I would say that what acquisition.com was when we started was a cash flow based family office that Layla 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. Sure. 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 purchases that portfolio theory rules of the 24, like three-ish were like the really good companies.

36:09And 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 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 it was like, okay. And so, and then obviously, you know, the book launch, uh, last year we did, you know, 105 and then we still have the advisory practice, which grew the next year.

36:47And 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 junior 24 as well. But school has, you know, we have 30 million users now and you know, we've a billion plus GMV, like it's, it's a very big platform. And so So like, you know, Zuckerberg didn't have Airbnbs as a side hustle. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so it's just like 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.

37:26I'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. Yeah. And then we bring distribution and cash. And like that's when it's like the holy trinity. Yeah. Jeremy, our friend Jeremy has this idea that everyone is like pre or post fall. Where are you? You familiar with this concept? 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 ringer. They got chewed up and spit out by Silicon Valley or private equity or whatever industry they were in.

38:03And 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. Yeah, this is like the 24-year-old who's like on a crazy tear. Yeah. Has raised money. Showed up for free. They're spending it. 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 like crucible moment for you before this latest run that you've been on.

38:41Oh, 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 hardship that happens at different seasons in their life. Like I've lost everything two times. Two falls. Twice. But like that. Then it's like, OK, am I now post fall? It's like, well, I mean, 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. Yeah. Controlling the controllable. And that's basically all I can do.

39:14Do 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 advice for young people if you have one thing. It's so hard, too. It's so hard. 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 that ends up being the worst thing that they can do.

39:49Well, I think 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 tens. Some people want to make hundreds. 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's like, it's really hard to build a restaurant that's really successful.

40:19It's also really hard to build a billion dollar unicorn. They're both gonna be 80 hour weeks. And so, you know, and Stuart Schwartzman from Blackstone said, like, you might as well play big because level 10 talent is only attracted level 10 opportunities. It's harder to attract good people for bad opportunity because then you got to do it all yourself, which is why I have so much respect for some of the guys like Peggy and Andrew Turing, who are Mr. and Mrs. Panda, Panda Express. Dude, deck of billionaires selling selling chicken, right? Dude, like, but like, like so much respect for that level of grit, 45 years selling orange chicken, right?

40:53Um, all that to say, 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, you're five of an existing thing that you have four years of reps on versus you're 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.

41:27Yeah, 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 the way if you're grinding and it's not going anywhere 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 everyone thinks about like airbnb is like the dumb idea when it's like it wasn't a dumb idea it just seemed ridiculous yeah and that's very different than uh 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 a hundred 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?

42:47Sure, sure, sure. Massive scale, network effects, a great product, all these things. 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 marketing, then you can usually make enough money to not work at one of those types of businesses.

43:18And 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 S &Bs and S &Bs 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. Yeah, not to mention your flagship client will eventually say like, hey, we're spending$100 ,000 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.

43:47Let's do that instead. Yeah, like 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. Yeah. Right? There's like HVAC businesses all over the place. There's pool cleaners. There's a lot of shit you can do for money. And so unless you want to be a trillionaire, you can be a billionaire in just about any boring business. You look at, what's his name?

44:17Is it Brad Jacobs? Yeah. Six times over. Make a few billion dollars. And then he has a sequel, a few more billion. You guys are kind of, you guys are very, I never thought of you as. Home building materials. Yeah, there's just a lot of businesses out there. And so it just depends on 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 for sure are the big mega winners. It's easier to compete against the people who are going after the pool cleaners.

44:54There'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 group of guys is that the life you want yeah 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.

45:36That'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. What do you think about, there's this odd trend of entrepreneurship, like, I don't know, like mindset stuff where you got to 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.

46:11But how have you reacted? Rich people fly private. So I should fly private in order to get rich. Right. It's, it's, it's conflation. Okay. So at the most basic level, you have to do work. Yeah. 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 a day when you're probably the cognitive, like the freshest of the most energy, you would have to have an incredible – do you curse on this show? We don't. Okay, a credible darn argument. You're welcome to.

46:43Our kids are watching, but by all means. 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. Sure. 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 is the ideal. And you are the freshest whenever you are post sleep. Yep. 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 play people hobbies, you can have hobbies.

47:15Like 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. And what's difficult is the plateaus, what's more visible. What do you think about it? And then you can make the content, right? No one's making this part. 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 something like an agency business in fashion.

47:52He's going to do like about a million dollars this year of like profit. It's a fantastic business. He eventually wants to have his own brand. My advice to him is like fashion is such a bad business until it's a great business, until you have like a flagship brand that takes 20 years to make. Like I was like, get your business to like a couple million a year, get it like established a couple million a year profit at least. 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.

48:34Like, 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 somebody in that sort of space? So I don't think there's a right answer because it's all dependent on risk, which is entirely personal. Yeah. And so if you want to go balls on the line, that's not cursing um 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 um i would say that i'm 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?

49:37Depends 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? Um, 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. Yeah. If I lose my chain, my life changes to zero. And so when thinking about big life changes, what's been really helpful for me is what tactically changes about my life? Do I change what I eat?

50:08Do I change what I wear? Do I change where I live? Do I change the car I drive? And do these things matter? 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 maybe I should take a higher risk-adjusted return move. But I would say that from the emotional side rather than logical side, it was I have tried. I very quickly tried to have a nest egg to be like, I'm good. And that's what's allowed me to take really big bets, like things like school. School's a platform.

50:38Oxygen mass is a great way to frame it. Put that on. If you're going to be. If you want. And if you have responsibilities, too. 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 cost money, 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 bat.

51:10You 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?

51:45How 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 own content without it becoming like fake work? What do you mean by fake work? Fake work would be like you're growing your following account, but you're not growing your cash flow or your actual… Yeah, there's a generation of entrepreneurs, and like you're probably a huge driver of this, that are like, I need to build my personal brand. They don't realize that if they just make an amazing product that millions of people benefit from, they just default get the personal brand.

52:21And they could just, if you care about attention and being on camera, then you could just do that later. But maybe just make something amazing. And also your personal brand is an actual media company that has cash flow and is a successful business. I don't think you would be on camera if you weren't making money. No, I wouldn't. I hated it. It was very hard for me to decide to do this. Yeah, but there's a lot of people that are basically doing the media for the cloud, and they think it's fake work because they're saying, they're justifying the cloud chasing by saying, oh, it's marketing for my business.

52:52If 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. Yeah. 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. Yeah. You know, I think Basis says this, but, you know, determined on goal and flexible and path or whatever way he says that.

53:23And he's also a great example of what's Basis's personal brand. Well, everyone knows who he is. Does he make a lot of content? know why he just happens to own Amazon. Right. And so I think it depends on what, what sphere you want to get into. This is kind of interesting. If you were to say, I want to be a big B2B influencer, you cannot be a big B2B influencer without evidence that you were good at business, period. You could take, and there's plenty of people who take word for word, the stuff that I say. Aren't there, there's probably some good counter examples to that. We don't need to name that.

53:54Yeah. You know, it's, it's tough. It's tough. Like, I would say the biggest, the big, I think the biggest B2B influencer right now is Elon. Oh, sure. Sure. Right. 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 what I started. It was called Jim secrets. And I rebranded it as just the game. But the, as I continue to make it, we went from like, you know, 2000 downloads a month to millions when I sold my company for 46.2 million.

54:25And 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 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, right? Now you move a little bit over here and you got like personal finance. Well, it's like, who's the biggest there?

55:00Dave. And then there's some of the new age ones, Erica Colbert. 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 in her basement talking about how you should invest in the s &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.

55:35Now, if you're ugly as shit, very hard to be a beauty influencer. 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 point. No, 100%. This is how it works. Yeah. 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. Silicon Valley. 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 doing low status activities.

56:08And I'm wondering in mid-market entrepreneurship, small businesses, what is the shape of that? Is it different than Silicon Valley? Is it less pronounced, more pronounced? What is the version of, look, you just need to run a series of golf courses and be happy with that type of thing or whatever the equivalent is? I think it depends on who they compare themselves to. I think it just comes down to that. I think tech guys compare them to some other 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.

56:44And to be fair, I love the tech guys that sell their business for nine figures and then are like, I need a cash-flowing lifestyle business ASAP. I know a lot of them. A lot. A crazy amount. Like buying gas stations. It's a lot. How bad is that? Bad? What do you mean? 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. Check every month. Exactly. But they don't think about what it means to like at 2 a.m.

57:19your 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? Yeah. I think humans are inherently dissatisfied. Okay. And I think whatever you have, you want what you don't have. And so if you're married, you're like, oh, life would be different if I'm single. If you're a parent, you're like, oh, can you remember when we didn't have kids? And 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 had an entrepreneur.

57:43And somebody, you're an entrepreneur, you're like, man, it would be so nice to just show up and clock out at five and have to think about it and get a check. Like we just always, we want to make, we want the benefits of a tradeoff without the negatives of the tradeoff. Sure. And so when guys are in the cash flow business, 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.

58:09I 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 my 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 in Texas, when we were building Gym Launch. Suzanne Shifflett, shout out to Suzanne. She was the reason we were able to sell Gym Launch. She had been a CFO for four companies from one to 100 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.

58:46Right. And she said, you know what, Alex? She's like, it's all shit. She's 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. Cause I was like, at the time I was like, man, it'd be cool. We got this kind of multiple, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she was like, it just doesn't, it's, it, it all sucks. And it's just different type of suck, but it all sucks. We're at time, but give us a pitch for scale or fail. So 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.

59:23I 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. I love it. Amazing. So it reminds me of PMF or Die. Yeah. We experimented with the show last year. Talk about niche audience. Yeah, it was like we put this team in an apartment in New York. They were not allowed to leave for 90 days or until they built a million-dollar AR business. It descended into chaos. It was Lord of the Flies. Lord of the Flies. It was totally crazy. And we were like, we don't have time to do this and this. But it had like hundreds of people watching at all times.

1:00:03It was actually gripping. And it was just a live stream of them in the apartment just like cooking. Yeah, but one of them got really good at talking to chat. It was a whole thing. It sort of opened us up to live opportunities. That was a good example because one of them clearly was a gifted content creator and the other one was like, why am I on camera? This is terrible. This is terrible. Did he become a content creator? We got to check in with him. Yeah, we got to check in with him. He took a vacation and traveled a little bit after. Yeah, they both needed to disconnect. But yeah, lots of stuff.

1:00:30So don't do the show live. Then people will actually go crazy. Yeah, the edit is a good one sometimes. Dude, hey. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for coming on. We'll talk to you soon.