In short
Podcast Summary: Your Best Leverage Is Knowing Your Customer | Ep 958
Podcast Overview Title: The Game with Alex Hormozi Host: Alex Hormozi, an entrepreneur and content creator Episode Description: Alex discusses strategies for scaling businesses by understanding customer needs, sharing insights from his wealth-building journey and lessons learned.
Key Concepts Discussed
Customer Understanding
- Importance of Customer Knowledge:
- Knowing your customer is essential for leveraging business strategies effectively.
- It aids in tailoring messaging, offers, and channels to meet customer needs.
Business Growth Strategies
- Ad Spend vs. Revenue:
- Example of a medical clinic with a steady revenue but a lack of leads due to zero ad spend.
- Conversion Rates:
- The clinic has a 65% conversion rate; thus, the focus should be on increasing the volume of qualified leads.
Content Creation and Marketing
- YouTube as a Lead Source:
- The discussed medical clinic generates leads mainly through YouTube and word-of-mouth but seeks to optimize lead quality.
- Call-to-Actions (CTAs):
- The importance of integrating multiple CTAs in video content to facilitate lead generation.
Experimentation and Testing
- Content Adjustment:
- When targeting different audiences (e.g., higher-ticket clients), maintain existing successful content while experimenting with new topics.
- Monitoring Performance:
- Utilize tools to analyze content engagement and adjust strategies accordingly.
Key Takeaways
- Focused Growth:
- Rather than trying to create more content, it's more beneficial to enhance the quality of the existing content.
- Data-Driven Decisions:
- Understanding the customer segments can lead to a more efficient marketing strategy and improved customer retention.
Business Examples
- Medical Clinic Case:
- Offers stem cell treatments but needs more qualified leads. Recommendations include optimizing content packaging and focusing on proven video formats that work.
- Apparel Business Case:
- A custom apparel business focused on colleges but sees potential in construction and summer camp sectors for higher lifetime value customers.
Conclusions
- Risk Management in Testing:
- It's vital to test new strategies without jeopardizing existing successful models.
- Market Segmentation:
- Identifying and understanding different customer segments is critical for scaling a business effectively.
Final Thoughts
- Alex emphasizes the necessity of knowing your customer as the foundation for any successful business strategy. The discussions highlight how targeted marketing, content optimization, and careful experimentation can lead to significant growth and better customer retention.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:01You knowing who your customer is is going to be data that you absolutely have to have no matter what. and so why would we delay something that's going to give us so much leverage on our messaging our offer our channels like like picking the customer is the first and most important thing that you can do in business and then your offer comes from the customer next caller is am okay so you're on her mosey hotline let's rock and roll so you got two hundred thousand dollars per month in revenue yes all right ad spend zero industry is medical Men's sexual function. Ooh, this might be spicy indeed. Men's sexual function, okay?
0:42And then your offer is lifestyle, stem cells. Okay, so you're doing like, yeah, you're doing full like injections and all sorts of stuff. Okay, cool. And then we've got constraint is needs more qualified leads. Okay, are you a doctor? Yes, I'm a medical doctor and we have a medical clinic that focuses mainly on sexual restoration. And yeah, we do stem cells and also shockwave therapy and multiple medical treatment along with hormone replacement therapy and peptide therapy. Dope. Okay. So is this brick and mortar, I'm guessing? Yeah. Okay, got it. Where are you out of? Virginia. It's right outside of D.C.
1:18Fredericksburg? Okay, cool. So, okay, so talk to me. So what's the issue? You want more leads? Yeah. So we have, all my leads come from my YouTube channel and also word of mouth. Cool. And we have 150 ,000 subscribers on YouTube channel, and we have an application funnel through there. But we're getting leads, and our team converts at 65%, but we're not getting the quantity of qualified leads that can afford our services ranging from$15 ,000 to$25 ,000. Because they get results within five days. We have a great offer. we're doing everything we do. We do everything in one day The nice thing is they can tell very clearly whether it works or not.
2:04Yeah, exactly. Do you do before and after pictures? We want to get more qualified. Say that again? So do you do before and after pictures? I'm joking. It's kind of hard to do before and after pictures for sexual function. I'm kidding. Okay, I'm kidding. But we have testimonials. Yeah, I'm sure. Man, look at that thing. Just triumphant. Okay, got it. So you need to get more leads. YouTube's the primary channel. and people who are coming in who are, do people fly to you? Yes. We have people coming in actually international. We're having somebody from Hong Kong. What percentage? Somebody from the UK.
2:38What percentage are local versus international? Oh, I mean US, it's probably like 90%. Oh, no. If you're saying US, I'm going to say most people that are traveling to you. I mean, most people are traveling to you. Yeah, I would say probably that would be 70%. Done. Good enough for me. Okay, got it. So how many pieces of YouTube content are you putting out per week? I only do two long form videos. Yeah. And then my team cut off the long form video into short. Okay. Which we post daily. Yeah. That's it. Got it. Do you have the five CTAs that I mentioned earlier of like those five places that you can do calls to action?
3:16Because that's like an immediate thing you can do that can just generate more leads. So one third of the way through videos. Yeah, we've been doing that. Okay. Yeah, we've been doing that. Okay, got it. So, but you're doing all five? Yeah. As of yesterday. Oh, as of yesterday. We were doing four, but now we're doing five. Okay, got it. There we go. Hey, I'll take it. I'll take it. A little 20 % improvement or 25%. Okay. So, I mean, you kind of have, you're in a, you basically have two paths, right? So path one is how can we, like, I don't think you necessarily need to make more content like you could, but I would rather you, like, how much time do you spend prepping the packaging and the thumbnails and the headlines for the content that you make?
3:55oh i don't do that my video editor does that and i think he probably spent maybe uh like eight to maybe eight to 16 hours because he does he does uh do two a week so i would just say maybe two days well on the prep or on the post um prep and post so i produce like four uh at a time and he does but he just publishes like, you know. Yeah, so every other week you do four videos. Yeah. Got it. Okay, so I'll tell you this. Like you're a more experienced YouTuber. It's likely that the biggest improvements that you're going to get are on better rather than more for where you're currently at. And it's going to come down to like, I mean, some of the tools I said yesterday, like oneof10.com is a good tool for looking at packaging and saying like, how can we look at other outlier, similar outlier packaging for videos that are either in the space or adjacent to it?
4:52And then how can we match our thumbnail headline and introduction? Do you guys script out your introductions? Yeah. You are scripting your introductions? Yeah. Yes? Yeah, I actually use like AI to help me with the hooks and the intro, but most of it is really my content that I put out. The one other thing about our channel is that it's grown because I was talking generalized like ED and I give everything away. So now I really, the last three videos, I've been making more for entrepreneurs and executives because I wanted to target more of high ticket clients. And our views like absolutely plummeted down to like hundreds instead of thousands.
5:34So that was one of the things I wanted to ask you. Is that something we should be worried about and which kind of target the message more for high ticket clientele? So I'll tell you how I would make an adjustment or a test like this. So I never want to threaten my core business. And so if I have two videos of a certain style and packaging that are working, I don't want to break that because like all of a sudden your revenue could cut in half and that would be not fun, right? So I would prefer you keep your two videos a week that are your kind of standard, wider, etc. thing. And then do an additional video that's going to be the new thing.
6:10Because then that way you can guarantee that you're going to make more. And that way you can test it and not feel like you're risking the whole business to make this test. Because it's the primary way of getting leads for you. And so I would really not want to risk the entirety of my business for a test. That's a big test. Right. I love that. I can definitely do that because I was thinking about doing more, but you said do better. I do think that you can do better, but I think that if you're going to run this test on trying to attract higher level customers, I think that I would just add that in addition to the two videos you're doing.
6:43So then they'll bump you to three and you're going to probably get benefits from both. More volume. And I still think, and maybe your video editor can watch the replay of this, but I would strongly recommend scripting out both verbally, and this is the part that people miss, visually. because you have a very physical profession. Obviously, like you can't show certain things on your YouTube channel, but like you in a smock or not smock, the white lab coat, right? You got the coat and you've got some tools and some machines and you've got some of those props that look like body parts behind you.
7:13I think all of those things kind of set the frame and proof promise plan. I don't know if you are using that as the setup for the introduction, but proof promise plan. And if you want, you can introduce pain in there as well as kind of our four-step way that we introduce all videos. And so I'd make sure that I have a sentence for each of those P's. And if you have a picture, which kind of gives you a visual roadmap of what they're going to get, I think that that will also likely further aid in retention. So those are kind of like the quote, better things. And you can do that for all three of the videos you're going to make.
7:41But number one is you're going to go from two to three. The third one's going to be experimental. You're going to tighten up and script the introductions. And the packages should be picked from outliers rather than just like something you find interesting. Like we already know that this packaging, the way that this image and the headline work are likely going to convert. Yeah, I love that. That's really good. What do you think about advertising on private jets and so forth? I would advise to do that to attract the clientele that we want. I mean, you can try it. Again, I would just put that in my experimental bucket.
8:13Okay. Yeah, I mean, if you fly private as is, then yeah, just on your next flight, just record. Okay. Yeah, no, I love that. So make more content, but make better content. Yeah, and add the third one. We have a funnel. Can I ask you one more question about the funnel? Now, the funnel that we had, I was listening to you talking to another lady, and our funnel is actually an application funnel through a book, a call with our sales team. But if we are looking at more, attracting more premium buyers, should we still continue doing that funnel, or should we open up more on the higher part of the funnel?
8:49I think you should drive more into, like, just put more in. This is why we're going to do it. Like, I don't think you should, like you're converting 65 % of your leads. Your conversion process is not the constraint of this. So maybe there's things you can improve, but that's not where my focus would go. My focus would 100 % be on making more and better content on YouTube. I do think that like, I would say like, do this experiment, improve the packaging, the hooks upfront. The next thing would be running ads. But I just feel like the nature of this business is so like trust driven that I think organic, I mean, you've already gotten the success you have because I think you started with the right strategy.
9:22I really just want to see like how do you get to a million views sorry a million subscribers on your channel like that would be like my mission how do we get how many views a month you're getting yeah how many views well it depends if we put out a pretty good one it's probably about 10 ,000 that's our usual depending on the video but the last three I talk about executive and the intersection with sexual health we got like hundreds yeah I think that you have a ton of room if you're getting 10 000 per video i think you have a ton of room for improvement like especially based on the nature of what you have like like you like you could for sure be at 100 000 250 000 per video for sure no question well thank you yeah we have about 10 videos that are almost a million yeah right now so um yeah so we may lean in more on those topics okay rock and roll love it yeah just repeat your repeat your winners all right thank you thank you all right talk soon Appreciate it.
10:19Yep. Bye-bye. Okay. Okay. So my K16, I do AI automation, helping business save time, et cetera. I currently get leads through Facebook, Instagram, and email outreach. Advice on scale, volume only. Thanks. Yeah, dude, you're doing too much. You're doing like pick one of those channels to start out with and just do more on that one channel. So I think you're probably spread too thin if you're like trying to sell, trying to market, trying to deliver to customers, and you're also on three different channels. I would say do more, but on one of those, you can get better. Cool. Sweet. Rock and roll. what acquisition system would you, if you would sell ClickUp project management systems for marketing agencies, currently doing 15 ,000 a month.
10:55I'm guessing you have a pricing issue because someone who's going to be implementing a CRM is likely already doing, like if they have so much work, they have to have like a project management system. You probably need to be charging way more. And so either you're going after the wrong customers, but it doesn't make sense because if you're actually implementing the stuff into their business, then like they're probably bigger customers. So I think you're probably mispriced, number one. I would imagine Upwork is also probably not the best place to find customers because it's like people who are like absolutely the cheapest.
11:19So I think you're, I'll bet you that your mindset is super skewed to like Upwork leads who are like cheap as hell. I would be doubling down on cold email and be looking at like$6 ,000 plus, you know, per month retainers and probably selling projects that are in like the, we did one implementation like this. Well, how much did ours cost? Didn't we implement some sort of project management interest system inside of media? 40, so ours was 40, so to give you an idea. So that was just for one project, and they had more than one customer. All right, so you probably are just wildly undercharging, and I think cold email would be the best way to double down on it.
11:55Hopefully that helps Max. All right, McKinsey, you are on our Mosey Hotline. Okay, monthly revenue's$100 ,000. Rock and roll, good. You got cold outreach, got it. You're doing your custom apparel, okay. Custom apparel. Interesting. Offer is apparel for colleges and college organizations. So like fraternities and stuff? Yep. All right. All right. Colleges. Okay. And then the constraint is cold outbound works economically, but too many unqualified leads. Okay. So does that mean that we're, how are you getting your leads right now? Just scraping. So basically we're just trying to find contacts for these organizations, primarily through like Instagram.
12:37And then we just reach out to all of them cold. Okay. What's the model? As far as like, how do we make our money? So basically, we handle the design side for all the apparel, and then we outsource the manufacturing. And so we're just kind of active as a middleman and mark that up. And so on all of our orders, we average about 35 % gross margin. Yeah. So is that$100 ,000 a month, your slice or is that? Top line. Top line. Okay, got it. So you got 35-ish of gross margin left over? Yeah. Or 100? Okay. And so what's happening when we reach out to these different organizations is basically it's very hard to segment between who we think is going to end up being a big customer with like a high lifetime value.
13:18We have some customers who are going to spend, you know,$2 ,000 a year with us versus others that are going to spend$1 ,500 a year. And it's just really hard for us to identify like what are the markers that make a customer in which group, you know? Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. And is there a reason that, I mean, you focus on colleges just because they were easy to reach out to decision makers? Yeah. So that was going to be the second part. Basically, what I found so far is we're reaching out to colleges. We've got the process really dialed in. So we have a pretty good conversion rate. It's easy for us to acquire customers.
13:54But what I actually noticed is that's what we focus our opt-out on. But the AOV for the colleges is maybe like$1 ,200,$1 ,500. We have other customer segments that are spending way more per order and per year. So let's talk about those segments. We just haven't really figured out the acquisition as much. Okay, so what are those segments? Construction is a big one and also summer camp. But the thing with those, I kind of run into the same issue because, you know, I might reach out to two construction companies. One of them, they don't order like any apparel and then another one orders like, you know,$50 ,000 a year.
14:26So I'm still just trying to figure out how to know. I just want to reframe it a little bit for you. So if you know that like, okay, well, construction seems like on average, they're worth like 25 times more or something like that. Does that sound close to right? Yeah. Okay. So if you have some like duds and some good ones, but they're worth 25 times more, then I'd rather just do the duds and good ones play with in general people that are worth 25 times more. Yeah. Because I mean, I'm running into the same issue either way. So it's just basically targeting higher value customers. I'll say it differently.
14:56Like this is a feature, not a bug. Like this is just part of what you have to do with outreach. and like list segmentation and list enrichment is like part of what makes outreach effective. Yeah. So do you think like basically on the last live stream, you know, I kind of went through the five ends and I realized it is data that's holding us back from being able to scale. So I've already started, you know, having my dev like build out different stuff to help us track this data better. And I'm kind of wondering, like, should I be focusing a ton of my time on trying to figure out and identify the segments more specifically?
15:31What makes this construction company spend more money or should I be focusing on volume? No. Get the data right. If you take a longer perspective on the business, you knowing who your customer is, is going to be data that you absolutely have to have no matter what. Why would we delay something that's going to give us so much leverage on our messaging, our offer, our channels? Picking the customer is the first and most important thing that you can do in a business. And then your offer comes from the customer. Like the one regret that I have in the offers book is that I would have added in your first customer, which is one, I think the first chapter in lost chapters, I would have added that as the first chapter of the offers book.
16:11Because so many people just like, you have to start with the customer. And then from the customer, we reverse engineer the offer. Yeah. And that's like one of the reasons why we target like fraternity and sororities is because on a per unit basis, like they spend more per shirt, but that, you know, 50 shirts at a time versus 5 ,000. Yeah. So we just have to look at absolute profit per order. And then I would just like, that's, that should be like North Star. So what is it? So if we have, you know, 50 shirts with, you know, 50 % margins versus 5 ,000 shirts with 20 % margins, we'd still rather have 5 ,000 shirts because you're a middleman anyways.
16:46Yeah. It doesn't take any more work. Right. So like, right. So like, let's go sell the bigger people and expect that we're going to have some that are smaller. But if we're shooting for 5000 orders, your small ones all of a sudden are going to be 500 orders instead of 50. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. And I, you know, honestly, like, even though we don't have the data yet, that's kind of after the last couple of calls, like, I realized that is the direction we need to go in. and I'm trying to figure out how we should make that transition. Because, you know, it's like you always say like more than better than different.
17:17And I feel like I could be doing more and better, but I'm choosing to do different because it's just a better model. Yeah. Well, I mean, you're reaching out to me. So, I mean, I make these rules. I can break them. So you're in an instance where like, unless you had a way that it was like, I'll say it differently. Like you could for sure double outreach and the business would probably double. And it's just like, I think there's just so much more meat in these other industries. Because I think you'll, I don't want to say you'll cap this out. Because you could for sure become like, oh, maybe I'll think about it like this.
17:47These are the conditions under which I would stick with what you're currently doing. I would stick with what you're currently doing if you knew that those college customers would become lifetime customers. If you knew that every single one of those college organizations would just always order$1 ,500 a year worth of gross profit. and you just knew that you were keeping 80 to 90 % per year, then this business would just continue to stack. And then over time, you build this kind of like monopoly within the colleges of like the default t-shirt guy, right? That would be the condition under which I would continue to pursue the colleges.
18:19And maybe you could just say like, okay, well, how do we retain revenue better? How do we get these people to reorder? Can we reach out to them more regularly so that they're buying four times a year instead of two, et cetera, et cetera? Like that would be that path. But you were - I would say that we're kind of in that situation. Okay. I mean, we've been doing this for a few years now. We don't have like really any turn. Like our turn level is like extremely low. And we're very proactive, like you said, trying to get people to order more. Like we're trying to bring up the order frequency, bring up the AOB.
18:45But at the end of the day, it's like I could probably just leave this running, like leave my operator just continuing that side of the business. And then maybe shift my time towards focusing on these other targets. Building up that acquisition system. I hear you. I would do the other thing that's bigger. I'll be honest. I would do that. And that's normally not the advice that I would give because like the for sure bet, like if I had to say, how do I guarantee that you go from 100K a month to 250K a month? I would say, dude, just triple what you're currently doing. That would be for sure my bet because you're keeping the customers, you have gross profit that's there and it'll just continue to stack.
19:19That would be my, like if we had to bet. But if you're like, I want to get to 20 million a year or something like that, I don't know, what are your goals? I should have asked that earlier. What are your goals? That's my goal. I'm trying to get to like 10, 20. Yeah, then I think you just want to get paid more per. And it's the same number. It's the same level. You got it a little bigger, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you could do more, but then we'd be asking the question, okay, how do we go from your current outreach level volume to like, how do we truly, and I mean this truly, like how do we actually do 10 to 50 times the outreach?
19:49Like you could do that, and that would be still probably less risk. It's not feasible with this target market. Okay. Well, then if that's that, then if we go metrics and then market, which is the next M, right, than I would rather go construction that's bigger whales if that's the market that you feel better with. I don't normally say that, but I think that it's probably what makes sense. And here's the great part. If you do it and you just fall flat on your face and you find out something that actually makes construction suck, you can always just go back to the college and then say, okay, well, my for sure path of growing this business is I will 10x my outreach.
20:21That is your for sure path. You can always go back and do that. But if you have an opportunity where you can get, Literally, you're talking about 50 short orders versus 5 ,000. It's 100x the leverage. Then I'm like, I really want to look at something like that. Yeah, that makes sense. And I guess I just need to treat it as a test. I don't need to shut down my business and start doing construction. No, God no. Start building out another channel. Yeah, I don't normally say this. But when I see 100x difference and you're at the size you're at, I'd rather you look there. Yeah, yeah, bro. That's what I'm thinking.
20:54I've been thinking the same thing you're saying. but I'm like, this goes against all the advice. I know. I mean, that's why you called. That's why we're here. Cool. All right. Yeah. Sweet. Yeah. That's what I'm going to do then. Just don't burn down the existing business. Have your operator still run it. Make sure it's still good. The things that you want to make sure that you like, what are the things you want to validate for the new market is you want to make sure as fast as possible that they reorder. As long as you have that, then you're going to have revenue retention. You're good to go. Yeah.
21:15That makes sense. I mean, okay. Let me ask you this. This is when I view this business, business like the reason that we're able to penetrate the college market so well is because you know we target all of our marketing around that like if you go to our website that that's the avatar we're trying to serve yeah i've considered basically building out maybe have like different websites for different niches so like i just replicate everything we did for college but into construction and kind of serve a whole nother avatar i don't know if that makes sense but like the customer journey around them. And I just, I don't know if that's maybe like not the smartest way to scale is doing like more.
21:54No, I don't want you to do like many different verticals. I definitely, no, no. I want you to commit to one of these things. And so we're like, this is a potential 100X in terms of leverage for this type of avatar, which is the only, like if you were like, there were three times as much, I'd be like, screw it, dude. Just do more of the college thing. When you said 50 ,000 in order versus 1 ,500, like that is a very big difference. and it's the same level of work for you. So at that point, that's why I'm like, I'm like, it is only because of the unique characteristics of that thing. The only other thing that we'd want to make sure is that you have revenue retention there.
22:24Once you have that, there's more than enough construction firms for you to get to 20 million a year. No question. Yeah, 100%. Okay? Yeah, that makes sense. All right. Okay. Rock and roll. But don't spread it out. Like focus my own. Yes. Yeah, I don't want you to have like 100 verticals. That's not the point here. Like you new colleges, like every one of these ones is gonna have different nuances, different acquisition things, different sales. You have to learn all that stuff again. But I'm only signing off on this because of the crazy difference in value and the virtually no difference in operational effort.
22:52So it's like you don't have to relearn how to be a middleman for shirt ordering. It's the same thing. We're just targeting a different person. And then we only have to figure out one thing, which is how to acquire that customer versus the other. And once we have that, the rest of the business works the same. We're going to make 20, 30, 40 times more. That's why I'm saying I think it makes sense. Yeah, that's exactly right. That is the only difference. All right, cool, man. That's perfect. Got your game plan. All right, rock and roll. Appreciate you, man.
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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