EPISODE

Billy of the Week: Alex Hormozi

Jan 31, 2022·12:00·Sam & Shaan·Listen·AppleSpotify
0:006:0012:00
9 moments · 32 paragraphs · synced to the second
SHAAN

All right, I have to tell you about something interesting. Ben, cue the music.

SAM

Million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool?

SHAAN

A billion dollars. All right, Billy of the Week. This person's not a Billy, but they're incredibly fascinating to me. So I've been getting just targeted on YouTube like crazy, not from ads, but for like Things you also should watch because my first million. There's this guy named Alex Hormazy. Have you seen this person?

SAM

Yes, dude. This guy's all over my TikTok feed. I see this buff motherfucker in every TikTok. Every other swipe is this guy. So who is this guy? What's his story?

SHAAN

I will tell you. He looks like an '80s cop had a baby with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

SAM

Like, he's like mustache.

SHAAN

Great mustache and just huge, jacked. Like, he looks like a good-looking dude and very fascinating look. He like, right when you see him, he stands out. Ben's pulling up a picture of him. Yeah. I mean, he's yoked and I've been getting these YouTube videos from him everywhere. Like, learn from me, a guy who has a business that's doing nearly $100 million a year in revenue. And I'm like, what? This guy looks like he's 30 years old. And I think he's 31. So let me tell you about this guy and let me preface this by saying, I think this guy's legit, but it's so, it's almost too good to be true. And so I'm like, I wonder what the truth is. Right. So, and all right, so his name's Alex. So basically he started out when he was like 22, 23, he opened up a gym. He scaled that gym to 3 gyms, still wasn't that good of a business. Met some folks at ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels is a little bit multi-level marketing-y. Incredibly, it's an incredibly dirty—

SAM

Internet marketing. I wouldn't say multi-level.

SHAAN

It probably a trap, but it's, it's, it's, it's the cousin of it. You know, they all go to the same family reunion.

SAM

Thanksgiving together.

SHAAN

Yeah, they're all, they're all, they all go to the same Mormon church up in Utah. I would guarantee you that. They, let's just say they all know how to run a call center. And so anyway, he like learns about that guy, learns about copywriting, and then he meets one of the guys at at the company and he says, wait a minute, you're opening gyms? That's a horrible idea. Don't open gyms. He goes, are your gyms good? He goes, yeah, they're really successful. But like the best gym isn't that successful. And they said to him, dude, teach people how to open up a gym. So he creates this thing called Gym Launch. And Gym Launch is basically like a course that costs around $20K. I saw somewhere that it was $16K. Then I heard somewhere else that it was $20K. So let's just say $16,000 to $20,000. And it's, uh, like a course, but they like hold your hand and you meet with them like a mastermind. It's a course that teaches gym owners how to improve their gym. And well, on top of that, according to the website, it's financial freedom. Okay. Sorry. It's financial, financial freedom. And he's running these great ads and he's got really good copywriting and he's getting these people to, um, he, he's getting his people to, uh, improve their gym, whatever.

SAM

Hold on, Ben, Ben, can you go up to that founder section on the website? What does that say? We slept on the floor. What does that say? I want to read this.

SHAAN

That's what he says. This story is he was like, I was living in the gym because I didn't have any money.

SAM

Gotcha. Okay. Gotcha. So, you know, I was a former gym owner who slept on the floor of his gym when it, when it was full. I couldn't acquire, serve, and retain enough customers. Over the next 3 years, I became a sponge, or he became a sponge. He experimented, blah, blah, blah, became great. Now he has Gym Launch. Okay, go ahead.

SHAAN

Okay. And then from Gym Launch, he launched another company called Prestige Labs. So once he gets these gym owners coming to him, he says, hey, like buy these supplements too. Like you should sell supplements at your, at your gym. We did all the work and we know which ones sell best and we're making them. You can just go ahead and buy it from us. Then he starts this third company that says, all right, what? Oh yeah.

SAM

Smart. Two smart moves.

SHAAN

Yeah. Then he starts a third company and says, okay, you've got a gym. One of the things that I told you was that you need more leads. I'm gonna create a lead company, which I don't entirely understand what that means, but it's kind of like a marketing company and somehow they send, they maybe they set up your Yelp and set up your Google AdSense, things like that.

SHAAN

And so collectively, these businesses, these 3 things that I said, are doing in the world of, according to his videos and my research, $70 to $80 million a year. In fact, he just sold, uh, one of the businesses, the gym launch and supplement business combined. He He sold 66% of it for $46 million. And in one of his talks, he says, "Over the last 5 years, both through the sale of the company as well as dividends, I've paid myself $72 million." And I thought, "That is nuts. That is crazy. That is crazy volume." And this kind of blew my mind.

SAM

But there's another business. So his wife has a business, right? Or him and his wife, they have another business like acquisitions or something.

SHAAN

I don't know, man. This is one of those guys that's just prolific. He's got a book on Amazon. He's done all this. Bartlett, who were you talking about? He just like has his hands in so much shit. I don't know how—

SAM

they have something called acquisition.com. I was looking at this the other day because I saw a video on TikTok and I was like, what's up with this? Is this real? I was literally like, it's so funny you, you did the research on this. 'Cause I had jotted this down as like, dig in, find out. And so what acquisition.com is basically like, uh, it says, do you wanna scale your business? Um, you know, I will 3x the business, uh, I'll 3x the profits. Of 100 businesses that are doing between $1 and $10 million EBITDA per year that are service-based businesses over the next 5 years. If you want help scaling your company without giving up a majority interest, click the purple button below. And then yeah, it basically says the same kind of story that you were saying before. And it's like, how do you want to, you want to learn from us? Here's my course, here's my book, here's my podcast, here's my, here's my like, You know, my link to join my accelerator or whatever.

SHAAN

But this, I, I don't know if he's selling a course on acquisition.com or if he's just trying to get leads on small businesses he could buy because he bought one business and that's a photography business. And I listed the name of it. It's called like a something fair. Um, I'll find it, but oh, here it is. Scroll down to the bottom.

SAM

Enchanted Fairies.

SHAAN

Fairies. Yeah. Enchanted Fairs. F-A-I-R-I-E-S. Sorry. Enchanted Fairies. Uh, it's like a photography business he bought. Is that crazy though? I mean, so this is like a pretty wild, uh, enterprise.

SAM

Yeah. And he, um, he actually has some pretty good stuff. Like I sent, I, cause I send to my team, like I send like, I don't know, 20 TikToks out a day, but to 3 people it's like, this is the per— okay. So like I have my friend who I'm like, I can send offensive, funny things. And actually you're in this bucket too, where you're one of the few people that like I can send something that's like cancel-worthy if you think this is funny, I can send it to you and I can send it to my brother-in-law. And that's what I do. I send it to both of those people. Like, I'll tell you what, this is bad, but it was like, there's this Twitter account I follow that's like a meme account, got like 200,000 followers. And he tweeted out, he goes, men's mental health is not important. Follow-up tweet, he goes, just get more bitches. That was his tweet. And I'm like, I know I shouldn't, it's like a fart joke. It's like, I shouldn't think this is funny. But it cracked me up because it's so anti my Silicon Valley timeline, which is just like so super progressive. Everything matters. Everything is justice for everybody. Like, it's nice to just hear like where I'm from in Houston. Like I went to like a pretty like ghetto school growing up and like the sense of humor that is like from that, it just like hits home for me.

SHAAN

Just potty jokes.

SAM

Yeah. Just like, you know, it's just like, it's like you don't bring You don't bring your pronouns to the hood type of thing. And so there's this like hood humor that I just find really funny anyway. So, so you and this guy, that's like my inappropriate jokes. And there's like, you know, I'll send my wife or my sister just like kind of like, oh, that's funny kid stuff, mom stuff, whatever. And then there's like little business or marketing hack tactics that like I think are actually pretty interesting. So this guy, Alex, to me, uh, one of the reasons I suspected he's legit is because his advice is actually pretty legit. Yeah. And he's not just saying general, like motivational quotes. So for example, he was saying something like, he's like a little sales thing that helps. And these are TikToks, right? Those are 10 seconds. You don't have to like invest much in it. It's like, he's like little sales trick that kind of helps me getting somebody to say yes is hard. It's like a commitment. So if I'm like, so would you like to sign up? It's like, ah, let me think about it. Let me get back to you. That's like, like what you'll get frequently. He's like, I'll ask a no commitment. So I'll say, you know, um, if we're able to work out the details, would you be opposed to actually signing up with us? And they're like, no, I'm not opposed to that. Uh, like, no, I'm not against it. And actually, this is something that when I heard it, I was like, oh, actually I've kind of like accidentally done this a couple times. And you know, that's a good point. There's something there in the psychology. Cool. Noted. And like, I'll pick up these little things from him and like 5 other people that are like, you know, in this copywriting sales persuasion world that I just think those are interesting to me. So I actually think this guy's, uh, legit for that reason, even though like people look down on like lead gen, they look down on course businesses. Like there's a stigma around course businesses, which is like, oh, you probably couldn't do it. That's why you're selling courses.

SHAAN

Let me change. Let me clarify how I feel. I think he's legit and he seems like a decent guy and he for sure seems like a smart guy. I don't know him that— I don't know him well, but he seems like a really nice guy, but He's in a shady industry, not a shady industry. He's in an industry with a lot of shady people. Not that he's shady, but supplements and like selling this type of stuff.

SAM

Supplements, courses.

SHAAN

Yeah. Yeah. And not, of course he, I don't know if he's shady. I'm just saying there are shady people and also it's a $20,000 course. And I frankly don't think I've got the chutzpah to sell that to someone on the phone. Yeah. Uh, like it's, that's really bold. And frankly, I find that to be challenging. So I wouldn't say that I think he's shady. I'm just saying that, like, that world has a lot of players who are.

SAM

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm with you. Yeah, I don't think you said anything negative. I think we were actually quite complimentary towards him. But, um, okay, I like that.