In short
The Game with Alex Hormozi - Episode 984: The Shortcut to High Margin Income
Podcast Overview Host: Alex Hormozi Description: The Game w/Alex Hormozi is a podcast focused on strategies for acquiring customers, maximizing profit per customer, and retention, while sharing lessons learned from Hormozi's journey from a $100M to a $1B net worth.
Episode Summary In this episode, titled "The Shortcut to High Margin Income," Hormozi engages in a dialogue with a guest, Justin, about strategies for maximizing income through automation services. The discussion revolves around identifying effective business models, leveraging existing skills, and scaling up income without necessarily aiming for massive business exits.
Key Takeaways
- Income Goals and Business Models
- Justin aims for a net profit of $500K per year through automation services.
- Hormozi suggests that teaching valuable skills, specifically in automation, is a viable way to meet Justin's income goals.
- Leveraging Existing Media Assets
- Justin's previous content on automation has driven leads, mostly from freelancers rather than business owners.
- Hormozi recommends creating a high-margin product or service that caters to the existing audience interested in automation.
- Creating a Certification Program
- Hormozi proposes that Justin develop an automation certification program priced between $3K to $6K, requiring only two sales per week to achieve the desired income.
- The model could include annual memberships, which are appealing to both freelancers and business owners.
- Sales Strategy
- It's advised to use a sales call funnel instead of directing traffic to a purchase page directly, allowing for more personal engagement and higher conversion rates.
Audience Engagement Hormozi encourages audience interaction while eating a sandwich, creating a casual and relatable atmosphere. He answers several questions posed by listeners who are seeking advice within their business ventures, focusing on practical strategies to overcome common challenges.
Notable Questions and Answers
- Home Health Agency:
- Hormozi advises new entrants to consider cash payments over insurance reliance, emphasizing control over pricing and customer acquisition.
- Marketing for a Urologist:
- Hormozi suggests using content marketing and potentially shifting to a concierge model to build a loyal patient base.
- Scaling Wedding Photography:
- He proposes collaboration with wedding planners to generate referrals, suggesting a partnership model to drive business growth.
- Building a Medical App:
- The focus should be on finding early adopters who love the product and refining it based on feedback.
- Video Game Coaching:
- Emphasizes the importance of community and service delivery over mere education to create recurring revenue streams.
Final Thoughts Hormozi wraps up by expressing enthusiasm for the interactive format, hinting at the potential for future live streams and continued audience engagement. He invites listener feedback on the episode format and suggests regular sessions for business discussions.
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This episode is packed with actionable insights and advice for entrepreneurs seeking to enhance their business models and income strategies through automation and effective customer engagement.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOUnderstanding Justin's Business Model
0:30 to 2:20
Justin discusses his automation business and income goals.
“Okay, so before this you were doing what?”
Exploring Revenue Strategies
2:20 to 4:20
Discussion on strategies to reach $500,000 in net profit.
“That is, I think, for sure the easiest path.”
High Margin Product Ideas
4:20 to 7:20
Suggestions for creating high-margin products and services.
“I'm going to have this sandwich, and I will stay on as long as it takes me to eat this sandwich.”
Marketing Approaches for New Businesses
7:20 to 9:30
Advice on marketing approaches for various service sectors.
“And you should be able to run decent margins.”
Scaling Strategies in Business
9:30 to 12:00
Strategies for scaling businesses in different industries.
“So I would be more likely to probably recruit wedding planners.”
Handling Client Acquisition Challenges
12:00 to 14:00
Discussion on overcoming challenges in client acquisition.
“So how do you run that many if they don't exit the learning phase?”
Understanding Product Offerings
14:00 to 15:02
Learn how to differentiate between consumable education and community products for pricing.
“So we can all thank my Gen Z, Gen Z Luke the Duke, for being like, hey, live streaming is cool.”
The Value of Consumable Products
15:03 to 16:28
Discover the significance of consumable products and the pitfalls of mispricing education.
“And so it's far more likely that you deliver value up front, right, to people.”
Maximizing LinkedIn Reach as a Ghostwriter
16:29 to 18:20
Strategies to enhance visibility and engagement on LinkedIn as a brand ghostwriter.
“And so what happens is people say, okay, well, this thing's worth five, so I'm gonna bill$200 a month for a year.”
Building Experience by Starting for Free
18:21 to 19:35
Learn why gaining initial experience through free work is crucial for your marketing business.
“through micro sellers and affiliates or focus on B2B?”
Show all 12 chapters
Creating Valuable Finance Automation Content
19:36 to 20:39
How to build a content strategy around finance automation that appeals to potential clients.
“This is leverage To start an automation business for finance departments of companies of 20 to 200 people What kind of LinkedIn content should I make?”
Scaling Your Amazon Product Effectively
20:40 to 22:34
Strategies for scaling your Amazon product and understanding competition dynamics.
“I think this may be my last one, and then I'm actually going to eat lunch because I'm very hungry.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:28Let's rock. guys we did it Justin is on all right Justin are you doing$600 or 600 K a month$600 you can notice income is 120 K a year okay so you're doing 120 K away from that and what do you do you do automation for ERPs yeah okay simply order processing auto processing what is that order processing email that Yeah. Okay, so before this you were doing what? Automate anything for anyone. Automating anything for anyone? Yeah. Okay, so how were customers coming to you before this? Two years ago I did some videos on how to automate things. And that's been it. Those videos have driven everything. Do you still make videos?
1:16I'm about to start again. Okay. With a new type of video. Because those videos got me leads that were freelancers who wanted to automate for other people. There weren't that many business owners. Hmm. Would you ever teach people how to automate stuff? I've done lots of videos. I have lots of people on my LinkedIn who want to learn how to automate. I'm trying not to... And you don't want to sell to them. But I don't know how much money they have, to be honest. A lot of people just getting started. It's not about how much all of them have. It's about how much 5 % of them have. So what's the goal here?
1:49Do you want to make money? What's the goal? What do you want to do? The goal is like 500k net profit. You just want to make money. For a year. You don't care about building a sellable thing. You just care about making money. Yes. Okay. I think that if you have a, like right now you have a very valuable skill. I think that you teaching people this valuable skill might be something that will for sure be able to make you$500 ,000 a year net profit. If that's your goal. Okay. That is, I think, for sure the easiest path. easiest and fastest now if you're like I want to get to 20 million a year different but if you're like I just want to get to 500 ,000 a year super doable okay yeah so I think you just take all these people who are reaching out to you and the videos that you clearly do really well do more of that and then probably sell some sort of like automation certification something like in the neighborhood of like you know three to six thousand dollars so like you have to sell two people a week to make 500 grand right okay that sounds chill yeah okay just do it on school yeah exactly yeah i think the number one community on school right now is an ai automation thing like for sure people buy that just do it just sell it as an annual membership they get five you know five call it five or six thousand dollars a year if you don't feel confident yet start at three you can bump it to five or six um have it bill annually and they get you know access to 20 different types of automations that are most common for businesses and the nice thing is that you'll get both business owners and freelancers who all want to do it.
3:22Either they want to do it for themselves or they want to do it for other people, but either way works. Yeah, okay. And if you want to be more efficient with it, I would drive it to a sales call funnel rather than direct to a purchase page. And so I would just like sell them and then basically show them the about page, have them buy on the call with you, and then they'll be in. Yeah. Love this for us. Was that as good for you as it was for me? I mean, I've had to do that for a long time. That's good to have some permission. Everybody wants this one thing from you, that you have this very valuable skill.
3:52You have an existing media asset that continues to deliver these types of leads. Let's just go make a high margin product that you want to make 500 ,000 a year. Awesome. Great. Sell 100 people at 5K. Yeah. And it'll be recurring. Awesome. Amazing. Awesome. All right. This was great. All right. We'll talk soon. Block and propose your highlight. And thanks for being a sport about the audio. You were great. All right. Thank you for the sandwich. Oh, no, you're good. But good observation. All right, thanks, Justin. Appreciate you. All right. So let's rock and roll. I'm going to have this sandwich, and I will stay on as long as it takes me to eat this sandwich.
4:28If you guys can pause on any of these questions, I will try and answer some of them. So I'll give you some secrets of my sandwich habits. I eat a lot of sandwiches. So I eat sandwiches for lunch pretty much every day. I alternate where I get them from. And so, yeah, that's how I do that. So this is, each one of these slices is typically one ounce of meat. And so if you get three slices, you usually have three ounces per. And so this is six ounces because it's six slices. And so I pre-tear all of my extra meat because anybody who's had a lot of sandwiches knows that if you try and load the sandwich up, it becomes this open thing and the ratios get all off.
5:05And so what I do is I pre-tear these to like my bite size. And so then I take my sandwich at the appropriate ratios. Now, we're going to need the most added meat. It's going to be the front and the back. And so I will take my front guy, get a dip, so I'm not being a pig here. Just get a little dip on the front, so I get a little sauce, because I have no sauce on the sandwich, so I don't trust somebody else to just put tablespoons and tablespoons of mayo on. And then I basically front load it. Hard to beat. Hard to beat. Alright. Maybe it'll go question, bite, bite, question. Maybe I'll go three bites.
5:42Bite, bite, bite question. Oh, I'm so hungry. Okay. Just pause it somewhere. Okay. Home health agency, pre-revenue. Home health agency, I don't even know what that is. Opening in a month. Okay. What are some advice in this industry when we rely on insurance for payment? Yeah, yeah, or do we have to rely on our own amount? Well, dude, you're pre-revenue. You don't even make money yet. So, like, you can be cash or you can be insurance. I typically don't like someone else controlling my pricing. The advantage of being in-network is that they should be able to send you lots of customers. That's the main benefit of being in-network.
6:19I need to know more about home health in terms of what that actually is. So I'm actually kind of confused. There's a lot of home health services. Alex Lawyer strategies are used in new service businesses, but as a doctor, urologist, just starting out, and they're already famous urologists in my city, how can I build my practice using models? Dude, it's gonna be in marketing, man. You just gotta advertise. So you have to make content around your stuff. And one of the advantages that you will have compared to the more established guys is that you should, should, be able to run higher margins because you're not doing, you don't have nearly the overhead that they'll have.
6:56So you're gonna beat them on being able to be higher margin per service, and that their people or patients are gonna have higher access to you, all right? Those can be the primary things. Something worth considering, by the way, I think concierge doctors tend to do very well. I don't know if you're going to do surgeries or what, but I think you selling people, because you're just getting into it, and you might as well start where you're going to end. Most of the physicians you practice for 20, 25 years realize that a concierge model that doesn't rely on insurance is a far more profitable and a way better way to live.
7:26and so they just convert from having like you know 25 ,000 customers to just getting 500 customers who pay them like a thousand a year and they make 500 ,000 a year super chill they have their cell phone number and just like makes life really easy um and they just become general practitioners for those you know 500 or so customers so something worth considering there um in terms of strategies but by and large you're going to have to advertise via content today um that may change but right now it's going to be content because you're not going to be able to outspend than the other guys on the ad side.
7:57And you should be able to run decent margins. And maybe having a couple relationships with maybe like some hospitals, or other practices that might get urology type stuff. Maybe just some general practitioners that they'll refer you to business because they'll feel bad for you. So with that question, we will now have a couple bites. So if you guys are eating lunch with me, then cheers. We can have a bite together. yeah I don't know about you guys but I'm starving you get to quote see how I'm quote off camera and so you're like I wonder how he's like normally it's like this is it this is how I am alright I said three bites okay trying to stop between being a loan broker earning 1 % recruiter brokers earn 0.5 % of little amount on their loans I mean for sure I would go recruiting brokers so you're telling me I can get half as much money on unlimited people versus 1 % for myself.
8:50Each one of those become a consistent node of revenue that continues to pay you over time. So this is a leverage question. You literally just get paid on every single person. Basically, as soon as you have two producers that do well, you would make what you were making before. Like, to me, that's a no-brainer. Best way to scale a wedding photography business. So, everyone, you have basically four fundamental ways you're going to advertise, core four. You've got outreach. you've got so outreach to get customers number one you've got paid ads number two number three you've got content and number four you can do outreach to affiliates so if I own a wedding photography business then I'm going to be curious as to like what percentage of people are running wedding photography businesses that are doing this off of like how many people are coming off of ads how many people are coming off referrals I would bet that for a wedding photography business like it's a one time purchase that you make you probably ask other people who are locally or area who they used.
9:46So I would be more likely to probably recruit wedding planners. So I would probably go outbound wedding planner, offer to do photography for whatever price they can sell it for and tell them they can keep 100 % of it for like one or two customers so that they have an incentive to push me and they get to keep 100 % of the money. And then I prove to them that I'm good. And then we figure out some sort of deal and I would just repeat that over and over again. And so each of those wedding planners and helpers would then become my nodes of distribution that would then feed me customers. That is how I would probably do it.
10:24All right, I'm owed another bite. Little dippy-dippy, little dippy-dippy. Rotund question. So wisdom path, as an autistic, how to translate feedback into defined action that leads to improvement at business? Honestly, man, just read the books. like I feel like I write as an autist seriously I just like I just break everything down into behaviors and so I think that's the whole point and so I also just wouldn't let like any labels limit you like some of the most successful people in the world are autistic so like I just wouldn't like let that be a handicap a lot of super successful entrepreneurs are quote ADD it's just like I would say it's more of a trait rather than a handicap just something like worth, at least that's how I see it.
11:15Global Hangout and Eating. What lead magnet would you say for a craft subscription box business? Hmm, good question. What lead magnet for a craft subscription box business? Hmm. Will it probably be, I feel like that's more of an e-commerce play. I don't even know if I'd have a lead magnet. I would think that it'd be more like, I'm gonna make content using the stuff in my boxes and then solicit people to go buy the next box. And then I'd probably go like first box, Our first three boxes are like half off or something. And then after that, after they've had three boxes, let the price bump. That's a lot of you.
11:50Okay. All right, Micah. I have$150 ,000 marketing budget a month. Okay. 50 % budget is what works. 20 % iteration. Cool. Love that. Okay. My director said 100 new creators a week. Love it. So how do you run that many if they don't exit the learning phase? They should. I mean,$150 ,000, you're doing$3 ,000 a day. I mean, as soon as you do start to have winners, like once you get a certain amount of spend, they should get out of learning. Absolute worst case scenario, cut the creatives down to 25 or 50 and then run it that way. But it doesn't make sense to me that it wouldn't exit learning. I have a client acquisition and retention agency for residential cleaning.
12:32My price point is$1 ,500 a month. Recently sold the whole system for 5K through school. Sale wasn't smooth. So I don't know if I have product market fit. I mean, if you've only done one, like you probably don't know anything. You probably have to like learn how to sell. You said it's like you save an acquisition retention, which sounds like marketing and some sort of information that you're selling. And you sold the whole system, but there was no recurring unless you're doing 5K annual, which makes not a lot of sense given it was a service for residential cleaning. So with a business like yours, what I'd rather do is have like a big head long tail model.
13:01So it's like maybe it's like$5 ,000 up front and then it's like$1 ,500 a month. 5K up front,$1 ,500 a month after that. And then in terms of the sale being smooth, I don't think it's product market fit, dude. like residential cleaners want customers they want to keep customers you don't need to test product market you just don't you know you got to learn how to sell that's all that is and it's also like what are you judging this on like one conversation or like a hundred like i would just like erase that from your mind okay the maker's layer hey alex i'm building a branded medical product with an app okay how do i know if the product truly works when to double down versus pivot.
13:39I mean, shouldn't you try the medical product out? Have people use it? What you should be following is Y Combinator has just really amazing stuff for if you're getting in the product direction or app direction, excuse me. And I would really strongly be considering, like I don't dissuade you because I want everyone to start doing things on their own, but like, I won't even get into that. I'll just say this. Try and find 100 people who love the product and keep making it until those 100 people are obsessed. Don't worry about anything else. All right, I'm Odebite. It's bite time. Peanut butter bite time.
14:10You know how it is, Luke. So we can all thank my Gen Z, Gen Z Luke the Duke, for being like, hey, live streaming is cool. You should try it. And so here we are. Also, the first time we did one of these was on Sean Purry's podcast. He was like, we're calling our Hermosi hotline. And so we called people up and people seemed to really like it. And so that is why we're doing this. I'm so hungry. Okay. I'm a video game coach making four to five thousand a month, 57 thousand subs on YouTube, I charge$30 a month, and get 50, 60 new students with group coaching. But I turn the same number. Okay, yeah.
14:48Realistically, you'll likely want to sell, like, here's the thing. Education alone is not a recurring product. Community is a recurring product. Services are recurring products. And so we want to make sure that we're matching how we're billing to how we deliver value. And so it's far more likely that you deliver value up front, right, to people. And so I would suggest probably raising the price or doing some sort of annual thing so that you can appropriately value the information or the education and then have a much smaller backend for the access to the community and maybe other services or calls or whatever else that you do.
15:26I think it's one of the biggest mistakes that people make in the education slash services world is that they think that because someone would say yes today when they don't know how to do something that three months from now when they now know how to do it that they still want to pay that so we have to break apart our product offering into what are things that are consumable and what are things that are one time and so the one-time things typically have significantly more value and then you have the consumable elements that are typically less value but they recur month over month over month and so for example i am a reoccurring customer of the sandwich shop because it is consumable i eat it and i still need another one tomorrow Whereas if I learn how to make sandwiches for myself, then the skill of making the sandwich will no longer be required, but then I'll need a subscription to bread and meat and lettuce and whatever.
16:08And so you wanna break apart your product into like community is something that people consume on a regular basis, calls might be something that they consume, but those in and of themselves might not be inherently valuable, right? I mean, depending on how good you are. But education system can be valuable, right? And so all these kind of depend, but this is something that's valuable one time today when I don't know how to do something until I do know how to do it. Once I know how to do it, this is worth nothing. And so what happens is people say, okay, well, this thing's worth five, so I'm gonna bill$200 a month for a year.
16:37It doesn't work that way. Bill what they want, what they need up front, and then when they have different needs, which might be lower, you then bill appropriately to that. Okay. One, Alex, tell me something. See, you gotta ask questions, man. Questions is much nicer. It's much more polite. I wouldn't come up to you in the street and just start shouting at you. All right, I'm gonna have another bite. So hungry. All right, 90 strong. I'm a brand ghostwriter for executives on LinkedIn. Despite posting daily, my reach is stuck at 200 views per post. How can I break through this plateau? So you're a brand ghostwriter for executives on LinkedIn.
17:18It is a little bit ironic that this is what you specialize in. I just wanna say that, I'm gonna call it out. Okay, I'm guessing you're probably just doing a lot of GPT stuff, and if you are, it probably sounds like everyone else's GPT stuff that's on LinkedIn, you want to tell narratives and stories. Like, what are the things that our AI cannot do? AI cannot live in reality. And so, like, the reason I am using real businesses and I talk about my own stories, those are things that no one else can copy. All right, if I say, here's the six steps to XYZ, 100 people will say, these are the six steps to XYZ.
17:50But the examples that I use are things that no one else can copy, right? The proof is something that no one else can copy. And so if you're a brand ghostwriter for executives on LinkedIn, I'm assuming that you're trying to get more customers for yourself. And so you're going to want to make the type of content that executives on LinkedIn might consume. This is where stories and examples are super valuable. Now, my guess here is that you don't have enough customers to give stories from. So this is why I suggest to people to take on people for free or at massive discounts so that you can build up your track record and have stories to tell.
18:18And I think that will probably make your content more valuable or more interesting. All right, starting a beauty brand, selling North America, do you suggest I focus on B2C through micro sellers and affiliates or focus on B2B? Unless you have experience with B2B, I would probably start B2C. All right, starting my marketing business, zero experience. Using your books to learn. Thank you. You're welcome. How can I get more experience to sell my services to big companies? Everyone, start for free. And you also have to earn your way to bigger customers. And so this is why it's normal for people to consistently go on market because they realize that the work it takes to do to serve bigger clients Is about the same but the thing is is that to get the trust of bigger clients It takes more experience and more know-how so saying like I have zero experience You know, I'm gonna read your books and I'm gonna start taking Amazon down as a client is super unlikely And so you're gonna want to start with smaller businesses and work your way up And if you don't have any experience, this is why I advocate for starting for free Like you want to get proof before you get anything else like it will take you so much longer To get your first 10 paying customers if you try and get your first 10 customers to be paying You want 10 free customers?
19:28Leverage the testimonials, learnings, and examples from this 10 Because the people who then buy from you don't know that those people are for free Then you could give this next 10 Using the first 10. This is leverage To start an automation business for finance departments of companies of 20 to 200 people What kind of LinkedIn content should I make? just talk about what you know. So talk, I mean, if you're making these kind of automations for finance departments, like talk about one at a time, the automations that you do and what happens as a result. Like there's probably 150 repeated tasks that finance departments do.
20:01So I would probably like, first off, make myself a list of every single micro task that somebody in a finance department would do. And then one by one, that would probably be my content schedule. And I would say, I'm going to make 150 pieces of content. Each one is going to explain how to automate each one of these specific portions. People who will read that and watch that will be the types of people who will buy your stuff. Don't be afraid of giving me the secrets. No one in finance is going to want to learn your tech stuff. They just want to know that it works. Especially if you can show a mini five-second or ten-second thing of a process running in the background or how it's happening automatically that's showing the result.
20:36I think that will be super valuable. Okay. I think this may be my last one, and then I'm actually going to eat lunch because I'm very hungry. um gas here 34 000 a month around 3500 in ad spend 20 net dental products number three on amazon when scaling spend it destroys margins with little gain number one competitors 250 000 a month any advice i'm guessing you're running your ad spend on amazon that's my guess because that sounds very amazon-y which is like they pretty much know exactly how much you make and then they just charge you the amount that your profit would be so you just pay them more so i mean to scale you're going to probably i mean you want to max out your existing channel but if you have no other way of making your product more valuable then i'd probably start looking at new channels like amazon is just a channel you know be like there's really nothing it's just a channel can you get micro influencers to do it can you get other dentists to do it can you do b2b on wholesaling like there's so many different angles that you could take to advertise a product they're spending 250 000 a month i don't know how so i would try and figure out how they're spending 250 000 a month do they have better reviews than you and that's what allows their page to convert better do they have a back end that when customers buy the first thing to buy other things like I just don't know and maybe 250 ,000 probably making 250 month and it might just be that they have a better product being real and so Amazon is very like winner-stake-all-market for the best products and so like I don't know what the number 10 business book does but like the number one business book makes a hell of a lot of money and so if the number one time is like imagine let me give a different example so like let's say that number 10 business book wrote this question was like hey I'm doing 5 ,000 a month for my book, the number one person is doing$250 ,000 a month.
22:15How do I get it bigger? It's like, realistically, it's like, you've got to have a better book. Like, that's the real. You've got to have a better book. Now, of course, you can market in more ways, but if you're like, how do I get bigger on Amazon? It's going to be down to the product. I mean, they built their whole site to maximize quality of product relative to price, of course. Okay. How many hours would to go? How do we do? Three hours. Holy cow. Time flies when you're having fun. You guys rock. If you guys like this, I'm going to keep the stream up for 30 more seconds. If you guys like this, please let me know if you like this format.
22:47If you do, I'll keep doing it. If you don't, I like it, so I'll probably keep doing it. Especially if you're a business owner. I made this stuff for you guys. I love talking business. I hate making YouTube videos. And so I'll probably do more of this because this is just way more fun. And what do you guys think about having a regular like show. Like, what do you think? Like a, like a once a week or like a twice a week kind of live stream. Like I kind of like I started today, like maybe 30 ish minutes on like a specific type of, you know, training or something like that around anything that's, you know, technical and then transition into kind of Q and A's with y 'all.
23:22Okay. Rock and roll. You guys rock. So appreciate you guys. I hope you guys all have amazing sandwiches for lunch, no matter where you are the best sandwiches. I wish that I wish everyone amazing sandwiches. With that rock and roll appreciate you and I'll see you guys next time.
From the publisher
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.
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