485. Part 1 - The Process Of Building An Empire Ft. Alex Hormozi

What is up guys it's Andy Priscilla and this is the show for the realest say goodbye to the lies. The thickness and delusions of modern society and welcome to motherfucking reality guys. Today we have a full-length episode and it is extra girthy, extra girthy. But before I tell you who my amazing guest is who I've been looking forward to having on the show for a very long time is at this your first time listening there's a little house keeping you need to understand about how we do things here. We're not just a conversation podcast we're going to hear that today but we have many different formats within the format and one of them is full length like you're going to get today but then there's also Q&A F and that's a question to answer format and you asked the questions we answered on the show and you could submit those questions a couple different ways. The first way is you guys email those questions and ask Andy at Andy for Stella.com. And the second way is now that we're on YouTube I know most of you guys have been used to listening to us on the audio platforms but we are on YouTube now with the entire episode. So if you go on YouTube and you go to the Q&A F episodes you can drop your questions in the comment section and we'll pick some from there as well. Other types of shows that we do we do this one called CTI that stands for Cruz the Internet. That is where we talk about society culture what's going on in the world. We talk about you know we pull up three headlines we talk about what may be true what may not be true we speculate we tell some jokes usually they're inappropriate and if you don't have a sense of humor you won't like to fucking show so don't listen to that one. The reason we talk about culture and society on entrepreneurial shows because you have to understand your environment to be effective inside the environment. So if we don't talk about these things and these tyrants run away with our freedom we won't be able to make money and be ballers as simple as that all right. Other times you tune in we have real talk real talk is five to twenty minutes of me just giving you some real talk most of the clips you see of me on the internet where I look sound like an angry fucking weirdo and I'm like screaming and shit that comes from real talk. I'm not like that all the time just most of the time. And then we have a fee for the show okay and the fee is not monetary and I ask you to buy things one of the things you'll notice about this shows unlike other shows is that I don't run ads on the show okay I don't take money from other companies to talk about their shit that I don't use I don't need their money because I am independently wealthy because of the lessons that teach you on the show so in exchange for the lessons that teach you on the show that have made me independently wealthy that I don't have to take advertisements all I do is ask that you share the show when we do a good job so it's value exchange if I do good tell people if we do good tell people if we don't do good please don't tell anybody but guys that's that's how the show works so without further delay I've been telling you guys we had a big guest coming on the show and this is one of my favorite guests that we've had on the show we haven't even done the show yet but this is a guy that I become friendly with and we become friends over I don't know what the last year or so very very very brilliant man somebody who's been very successful in business and life and somebody that I'm excited to have a conversation with please welcome to the show Mr. Alex Hermosi thank you so much for the interview yeah and it's great to see you dude I'm pumped to be here yeah hopefully I can live up to the intro that's always the goal look dude all you got to do is be you that's it you know out of all the people and this is real shit like all the people that I have watched on the internet over the last decade or so there's only a few of them that I'm really like okay this guy really really does understand how to build a business you know there's a lot of coaches there's a lot of pseudo you know knowledge out there there's there's a lot of hooksters there's a lot of people who you know are great coaches not great operators but do you know when I watch your content there's a few other guys out there and some of them really don't have a big of followings it's very apparent that you know you're very very very intelligent when it comes to business and and dude I'm just excited to have a conversation about it so I'm stoked yeah so we're gonna talk about dude let's start with your story dude like how did you like how because I you and I we've talked about all kinds of different things via tax you know we talk about chat gtp talk about gpt we talk about a you know different things going on in business but you know I've never really got to sit down and talk to you about your story so this is a perfect time talk about it it was wild yeah it's been it's been well I'll give the quick the TLDR I was a gym owner in Southern California so I had a consulting job I did defense contracting space cyber intelligence through a 700 booz Allen hated that job actually hated it so much that I ended up quitting and driving across the country not telling anyone until it's halfway there because my dad was gonna talk me out of it and be like hey you don't need to you know like let's just follow the path we yeah and he was doing it because he just want to look out for my best but I didn't want to do that and so I showed up in California with no plan showed up at a gym owners gym and was like hey man can you teach me like I don't know like why are you here I got shit yeah yeah slept at his place I'll wear you at this time post twenty two okay yes I I graduated a year early from a school in Tennessee and then that that way I kind of got a jumpstart my career saved my extra you know money and then I had about fifty thousand dollars saved up when I was twenty two to start a business and I want to start a gym and so those because I was in the fitness and I hated everything else and so that was like I guess I'll just do this from there I spent twelve weeks with that guy he started work at four a.m. and work until four p.m. four to four with his shift and so I did that and then I also stay at the gym after that learned a little bit of the ropes started Jim and Huntington Beach didn't have enough money for both slept on the floor there because you know it only paid one rent I get it yeah very similar how I started you very soon and it was by chance I went to a weekend workshop two weeks before I started the gym there's a sky who's teaching something called Facebook ads twenty thirteen so I was like I mean like stroke of luck crazy you know coincidence and I was able to run Facebook ads to get like my first twenty five members in the gym and we're able to grow by five thousand a month every month for the first you know seven or eight months and at that point I'd you know started bringing people in and getting a manager and all that stuff and then it pretty much started working out open a new location every six months after that until I had a five locations at that point I met Layla and I got asked to speak at this event and like I was not in that world you know what I mean I was like I'm a gym owner he's like no I want you to talk about how you're marketing for like brick and mortar and I was like all right man dude so I went up there and I was like this is what I do this is how so I was able to open all my gyms at full capacity on the first day that was kind of like the unique thing so what I would do is I would sign the lease put the deposit down and then I'd start running ads immediately and it would take me 30 days to open the gym and so like I would spend uh three hundred bucks a day ish and we were getting like thirty to one back on our ads that's we were making a hundred grand in our first month and so like you know as the cash is coming in I'm like fine flooring and then I'm like painting the walls and like getting the equipment and like I had this whole order because I knew that like by the time the equipment got there like I had to have the paint like you know that kind of stuff and so we'd open at full capacity only using the cash that I got hold on that's those stories are the fucking ones of people love like you we got plenty of time yeah we got plenty of time just because I talk fast in the intro like like dude I love that so you so you pre so the memberships yeah and then use the money to actually build the gym out so what I would do is we would do these challenges we do these six week way lost challenges um and the whole stick was that it was free if they lost the weight and so people would like basically bet on themselves they've been five hundred six hundred bucks that they would hit I think I had I think was 10% body I changed the challenge but it was like 10% of your body weight so if you're 200 you lose 20 pounds etc and they had six weeks to do and we you know if they work out as many times they wanted we give meal plans grocery list for preparation instructions eating out guides all that kind of stuff and so every week I'd sign up you know 25 30 40 people and this is all one-on-one consultation so like I would do 20 to 25 consults a day every day and I did that for years even when I had my own gyms like I still sold better because I just had more reps than the other guys yeah so my guys would like set appointments for me at so I'd like every day I'd go they had set like three days where the appointment so it's just like stacks xxxxx and so you just get you know just get the reps in and that was I was prefer that's like my rocky cutscene like yeah I knew where I was and I was just hitting the meat in the basement and just just getting those repetitions in and um so anyways I put the just have five thousand dollars put down for the for the lease and just enough money to start the ads and for us we'd get ads we get leads for like five bucks and we'd sell one out of four leads into a six hundred dollar thing so it's like it would cost me 20 25 bucks to get a customer and I'd make six hundred dollars up front yeah and then two days later I'd sell them supplements you know two hundred three hundred dollars of the supplements to go with the program they just bought and then the stick was three three weeks in of their six weeks I'd be like hey Dorothy you know let's be honest you have more than 20 pounds to what's your plan after this you know things over she's like well you know what's the ultimate goal she's like I just want to get to my high school way I was like okay so you just so work with you know that in the next 21 days we're not going to do that right and she's like no I understand that I was like okay so but long terms the goal she'd say yes and I was like all right then you won the challenge and she was like what do you mean I was like because you realize it's not about six weeks and so I was like so this is what I want to do for you you have the six hundred bucks I was like I want a credit towards the goal that you really have which is the high school weight I was like I'm just gonna put towards the year in that way like you win today you're in you're one of us here's the t-shirt you know like you're part of the family yeah um and so I just set my membership at 50 bucks higher than it was supposed then I I usually ended up selling it for uh so it was like two 50 a month got dropped down to 200 a month because I take the six hundred divided by 12 and so that credit of 50 bucks a month often just like that we were able to go 600 you know 250 and sobs and then I'd be able to get the membership on the first month compare that to the business model where someone's going like three month up front and then converts one out of three into a $99 a month membership yeah my ability to convert cash so much faster uh was front loaded so I could outspend everybody in my market which is also I could launch them all for no money out of pocket because every day I'd spend a hundred I get two thousand back and so that cash is what allowed me to open so quickly without having capital of my own as a young guy and that's how I was able to scale that's awesome dude how how did you think of that like how like what it's a want so I'll tell you the story so that gym owner that I that I uh went out to right so I googled like successful I mean you know because whatever was 10 11 12 years ago Google like successful gym owner and this guy had this like crappy HTML site and it said seven figure Sam all right and I was like cool seven figure Sam I'm gonna go talk to this guy and so I get to uh California and he's got like a a little group of gym owners that like all just share their you know share their stuff it's just gym owners and I didn't have a gym at the time and I was like is it easy okay for me to be here um he was like yeah sure and so that way actually got to learn all the stuff that they had done long before I started my first gym so it's like oh don't go too small because of this oh don't go too big because of the brand like hey keep it under this per square for like all these things that like I would have no idea like I would have known that and so um one guy was there and was like hey I got this uh this promotion that's he was in Wilmington so like south it like um it was like I've got this promotion that's like doing really well and so he was doing this like eight weeks thing and what happened is some rich guy some rich entrepreneur apparently was like I won't pay for it because like but if I hit my goal you give me my money back and you can use my testimonial and I'll like promote the shit out of you and he's like and things is like he did that and like all these other people like yeah I want that thing and so he was doing an eight week thing and so Sam started doing it at his place for his personal training side and I was like a princessing under Sam um and the thing is like I just saw like the ratio of how many we could sell versus how many trainers would he was like this doesn't like make sense and I was like what if we put it in the bootcamp because then we could just put as many people as we want in there uh to get people going he's like you think people pay 500 bucks I was like they care about the weight they don't care about like what the the experience was um and so uh I ran an ad with that um first was technically for Sam spot I ran the ad before we even knew that Facebook ads even worked so the first ad I ran for Sam uh and I think I can't remember what we spent but we made money on it uh and uh it was like holy shit this works and so I sold the first 10 or 12 people or whatever at his gym and then that's what I when I went to go plant my honey to beach spot that's awesome but it was like an iterative like heated the first guy did eight weeks and it was like it was all about the testimonial thing uh Sam cut it to six weeks and it was all about personal training and then I added in like a nutrition template thing so I template it so it was like faster to move through people and made it one to many rather than one on one and that was kind of like the and added Facebook ads to it so like that's what when those when those came together is when it just like blew up that's awesome man dude you said something in there that really caught my attention is something that we talk about on the show a lot especially on the Q&A the Q&A F episodes a lot of these young dudes uh young girls too they want to learn how to get good at selling and they want to learn how to how to sell and you said the answer in there reps reps and uh I just wanted to point that out like you know you guys asked that all the time like how do I learn to become an effective salesperson which by the way is the most effective skill that you could ever have you could ever possess ever ever ever if you can if you can learn how to how to sell and you can learn how to manage people there's always going to be a demand for your skill set and what Alex said in there with his reps I'm assuming that's this is where you really weren't like you said hitting we you know pounding the meat yeah you know I'm saying I don't like it got a girthy meat pounding going on yeah I checked the CRM like because I still had access to it right when I I sold my gyms three or four years later um I had four thousand like confirmed kills um so like closes not consults and like that just that's a lot of sales yeah uh a lot of conversations face to face every single one of them one-on-one just like I tell the people I'm like dude get get yourself in a good retail job get yourself in a retail job where you can like people that I don't want to work retail well fuck you're an idiot them dude because like you can learn you what you're learning in a retail operation is so much more valuable than what you're actually getting paid most of the time they're working for you like the your employer like especially if you're new or their your employer is working for you and also happens to be paying you because like most people come in with basically no skills and so then like on the job that person that gives you an education and pays you to learn which is why like nowadays it makes almost so much more sense to just skip straight to just the on the job education whatever industry would have been because you'll learn about the industry at a broad spectrum but then you also learn more tactical sales but to your point about like selling being the most valuable skill if you just like bullet down to first principles of okay if I want to do something you can either learn how to do everything or you can convince somebody else to do that thing for you who's awesome and if you can convince somebody else to do every other thing that is required to do in the business then like you can have an amazing business and only know how to do one thing which is get other people to do stuff that's right leadership and sales if you like okay well what's leadership well it's being able to influence other people to do the thing you want them to do sales is pretty much the same thing yeah one's more transactional like depending on the type you know type of sale but yes I 100% agree in every way I do what I found two man is it like if you truly want to be an effective leader and salesperson the best thing that you can do to get these people to do what it is that you need them to do as the manager or the CEO or the operator is to make them understand how it's in their best interest to do those things and a lot of people don't operate their business that way I found that out after coaching an RTA group for so long with the ed you know I found and you know the point of the group is that people need to learn things right I'm not knocking anybody but a lot of people don't understand that like your mission your purpose your your values of your company really come from you showing the people that work for you how their lives are going to benefit by actually listening to what it is that you asked them to do and a lot of people bail out on that dude they come in they want to run a business they want to put their feet up on the on the they want to go to the lake on Thursday and come back on Tuesday and they want they think that they're running a company you guys ain't running shit now you're running yourself out of business and I don't know man it's just interesting the whole dynamic of small business is super interesting to me dude it's where I really it's what I really like like running bigger companies is and like it's it's fun I love coming here I love being around everybody here I love I love what we do I love what we do for the people that that are customers are companies I love all that but man there's something about that like that the beginning like where you're really hustling and you're really learning and like I do miss that a lot of times that is exactly the I mean that what you just expressed is the the reason that we decided to go with acquisition.com which we can get to later but yeah because we can pick companies up right at that like you know one to 10 million in profit size and like they're still figuring out some of that stuff and so like there's a you know there's a chain of teeth wetting studios that we're looking at and like in the diligence process like man I was like your physical product sales were low and they're like yeah we're still struggling with that it's like I fucking promise that I know I'll figure out how to get everybody to leave with a kit like I promise and like when I was figuring out so we have a chain of 38 I think photography studios is our first personal investment the layland I made outside of like the normal real estate and stocks and stuff and now when we spent like six months trying to figure it out a way to just like re-engineer the sales process and ended up just massively increasing the ticket size and the take rates at the same time but anyways all of that comes from like a thousand tiny conversations that you notice someone pause they're like I said that they didn't hear it the right way how can I rephrase this or is it wait if I put this first is that influence how they see the rest of the conversation you can't do that without the reps no and dude it has to be like this it cannot be through a text or through through I mean now it probably can be but when you're learning you know for for you guys who are trying to learn these skill sets dude the acuity that you have to have and to read someone can only come from that scenario there's no there's no coach that can teach you that door knocking cold calling and or retail where you yeah you have 20 30 people a day walking at least yeah and when you do that it's like that's the it's the tiny little pauses where someone says something and you have to like if you have to if you have to be reminded you don't know it well so like it's a sales guy like if you have to think about what you're going to say next it's kind of like wrestlers when they're on the mat like you sure don't you know what you're going to be shooting to count or something yeah that's someone else is like you're not like okay they just pulled my wrist so now and it's like you're fucked already yeah you like yeah yeah you wrestle I did in the school yeah yeah not that great but I did yeah oh it's cool wrestling's a wrestling's an oh it has been an awesome awesome life teacher for me yeah awesome talk about reps yeah like okay yeah do a single like take down and do it a hundred times every day walk out walk just just walk out to a match where everybody's watching you and it's just you and one other person and there's no hiding whatsoever of any sort like it's a totally different kind of thing but that's a whole another conversation yeah but dude so when we're talking about um so you got the gyms open yeah and because I do want to talk about where you are now and what you do because secretly that's what I would do so I uh I'm to the point now where I'm just like dude I I love the creative process I love the lay of the land I love showing people um you know like like like that your dental teeth writing thing yeah right like I love like I'm like you guys are missing it here yeah I love being able to show those kind of things and and that's but I don't want to do them yeah I don't say I don't want to do them anymore I'm just doing 24 years yeah um I might do it for 25 just say 25 but it's it's cool what you're doing so so where'd you go so you got the gyms going yeah now what happens so got the gyms going I spoke at that conference right and I talk about this hey this is what I'm doing I showed everything like I didn't I was just like that's my ad that's my landing page was like here's my phone script here's like I just showed I didn't know how presentations worked that's really like it sounds ridiculous I got off the stage and to this day even with all the media impress I have never been more bombarded my life like there was like a three rows deep circle around me and like for the next two days I think like guys were like peanut the urinal next to me like hey man like the whole thing for context I got 150 business cards just from like the stage to the bathroom like it was insane and I got back and I was like man and they were like what can I buy from you I was like nothing I was like I own five gyms I was like they're like how do I do it I was like that that thing that's how I do it and so what happened is it's our go no I'm just saying like I'm sitting here and I'm just like reflecting on all of the shit you're telling me and how parallel it is to my story dude it's like so parallel like it's so parallel that's how I got into speaking too that was the exact same thing that happened to me I got asked to talk about our retail success because we had supplement super stores which we still have and I got asked to come talk about it and show how we were how we were able to grow it and it's the fucking exact same story supplements fitness I lived in the back of that first store bro like it's just crazy hearing it I just want it's cool it's probably already see the world a similar way yeah definitely well that's funny because you guys don't know so Alex and I we know each other but like we've never actually met in person we text and we talk about things that are important that are going on like hey what do you think of this or that like when something's truly big that's happening like when chat GPT came out we him and I were talking because I wanted to get your take on it because like it was so so huge to think about so when these big huge things I like to get Alex's brain on it because Alex has a nice brain but it's a girthy so you know smart people do that with people that are smart you know and so but we haven't got to sit down and talk about the actual story but what was funny was this was probably just like what in November or whatever when it started in December and he we started talking I was like dude you sold supplements to you he's like yeah I'm like I could tell because it was so like the thinking like we were talking we were talking about this before the show actually aired like how you have to think about product that you're going to sell to someone that they don't actually want but need is it completely different mind process than selling it something that they want like bro if I was selling shit that people want like I would be worth a hundred billion talking about like but I sell people I all the shit I sell is shit that people they need not one yeah and it's just a totally different game anyway I didn't want to interrupt your story I'm sitting here thinking there's a lot of parallels there this is the same story how how old are you 33 okay dude we're take I'm 10 years older in you that's awesome yeah maybe I'll be here in 10 years now you you're fucking doing it anyway sorry so uh so this guy reaches his arm through and he's like here's my credit card he said run it for $5,000 tell me what I get later and I was like what like like what I didn't like I don't I don't I don't do anything I'm a gentleman right anyways mind you I'm not that rich and so like you know every every all the money I had would open new locations etc etc and so I get back home I put all the business cards into an excel sheet and I started hitting people back up because that's you know I was like hey thanks again you know whatever and so this guy the guy's credit card I was like I called him up I was like do you really want me to run this for five grand and I was like because I will and he was like yeah run it and I was like okay so I swiped it and I'm still in the phone of them it goes through he's like all right what do I get now it's like I don't know yet I was like but I promise I'll make you more than five grand yeah that was what I said yeah and so he's like well you know what I've got a gym opening up in DC uh why don't you fly out and just do your launch thing and I was like okay I'll do that and I was like how about this I'll spend all the money on the launch and I'll get to keep all the upfront sales but then you get all the customers as us all for free so like after the six weeks is over you convert it and I'll show you how to convert them and I'll give you all my plans and all the stuffings which are love on it right it's free customers for yeah and so um as soon as I knew I was fine out there I was like okay well if I'm gonna be there let me see what else is is going on and so this is like unfortunate but my mom got really sick at the same time and she was in Baltimore so like they're right next to each other and so I was like shit so I actually had to go there early and while I was there I only had a couple hours a day of visiting hours um and so I was like losing my mind just like trying to stay busy I was like nothing to do and so I uh reached out to a friend some from Baltimore and he was like hey my buddy he's got a gym and he's sucking wind so I give the guy the same pitch I was like hey man I got nothing to do all day besides my visiting hours was like can I just work your front desk and like sell shit and he was like sure and so uh in like 14 days or something I think I made like 60 grand and I was like man I don't have to do any of the employees I was like this is such bad I was like I'm all about this and then I did the the lunch and DC and then he referred me his like father and law who had a gym or something like that so I went to that gym and I did the same thing and um I flew back and I had this big stack of contracts and this is just when I met Layla like we'd met like within 30 days of this period and uh this is like how I convinced her to quit her job uh so I stack because I can first date I proposed a Layla but I proposed that she quit her job and joined me not like yeah yeah yeah but I didn't post it on her first day my man man you move it came in hot and so every single time we see I was like you quit yet and she was like no I just fucking met you no I'm not quitting my job and so finally she picks me up from the airport and and she was like you're taking me on a date it's been like we've hung out like 30 times and you've not taken me on a day I was like yes I did promise that and we will go on a date but can you do me one thing first I was like I got these contracts I haven't processed any of them because I'm a sales guy and like I don't do details but like I have all the credit cards and I'll show you how to do it and she's like fine so the zillion but you know two phone books of contracts later she like rent she's like I was like 125,000 dollars I was like no right and she's like is that legal I'm still some dude from the internet she met at a frozen yogurt you know like whatever and I was like yeah it's legal and she was like all right I'm in and that was it that's like Wolf Wall Street yeah I was 20 I think I was 26 yeah it's crazy and that was from like a month of sales sounds like and that was just like right in my past like this is I like this this is way better so I told her I was like I want to do this like and all started because that guy who's like run five grand tell me what I get yeah yeah I was like dude this make way more money they forced you into it you did yeah and so um anyways I was like all right it was crazy it was nuts and so I was like all right well I'm gonna go see if I can get other gyms I still had all those numbers from the business the business events I start calling these people up and whatever and so I start booking out like launches and she's like all right so she flies with me so mind you now we're living together it's like 30 days she's living with me in a motel room and I'm teaching how to like close this stuff but she was to be fair Layla was number one salesman in in triangle square which is the most popular 24th fitness in California so she was the number one salesman at the most like at the most trafficked gym like she could close she got skills oh yeah yeah and that's why I pitched her on the first day when she told me that I was like if you can sell I was like we can make a shit lot of money yeah that's the first day um and so anyways we start flying out and doing these launches right and so she gets all of her friends to quit her quit their job and uh this is where the story goes well so I was like okay I don't want to split my attention I've got these five gyms and um so I sold those gyms and that first guy did the five thousand all our thing was like hey man um I think you're leaving a lot of money on the table because you're like literally launching these gyms and you have no equity in these businesses he's like I'm a really good operator it's like I'll come behind you and I'll just like staff them up so you just you fill them I'll staff them and you just do the next one he's like we can open like two gyms a month and mind you because we didn't have to donate like real capital down because we could we could front it or whatever and I was like all right cool let's do it and Leila was like I thought we were doing I was like oh yeah James a plant even though you quit your job all good right Leila's top yeah oh it's so so I do this we go to this I sign this lease he's like hey I've got bad financials so like you're gonna have to personally guarantee it I was like sure no problem he's like getting the build out you know you'll put your front that wasn't a red flag of you at that time yeah well I'll tell you yeah yeah and so uh he already know where it's going well I've had a couple of those yeah so I took the cash put all of it into that now the new account because I that's what I thought you did I sold them and it's like oh yeah well he's he's my partner in this yeah it makes sense right I already know yeah and so uh I sell my ass off at this next launch because I'm like stoked I got rid of the five gyms that I I felt like free like I had backpack you know like me and me and my voice and just like go collecting credit cards so 376 people in six weeks which is a lot like 600 pop right and so there's cash from my sale and the cash from this to like launch this gym week up one morning all the cash is going outside off I was like what what happened here and he was like I took my half and I was like what hmm he was like I know you've been skimming I was like I put them up skim for myself like what and so I was like so I've never been accused of stealing ever my life so I was like I don't even know how to handle this so I just called him into when he's like print out the bank statements and just go line by line with him I was like that sounds reasonable I'll do that yeah so print out the bank statements and I like literally did the whole thing went one and I drove where he was and as soon as I sat down with the thing he just took he was like I don't need to see he's pushed it off the table and I was like oh you don't actually think I stole like as soon as he didn't want to look at the numbers that was like my I'm taking I'm taking the shit and it's taken yeah yeah and so he um he had wired the money to his girlfriend who lived in Sweden it was it was it was gone into oblivion and he had been indicted for fraud two years before that um shocking here's where the here's where the the silly Alex park comes in I already knew that when I started and he was like it was just a big misunderstanding and I was like I believe you bro that's what a good hard does dude I've been burned like that same shit I would want a second I was like you're not gonna ruin for life you made you know like it was a misunderstanding like it was a technicality but you know what how how much old was this guy the new 40s yeah I was 26 right yeah dude I've been burned so many fucking times by that same mentality that same thing it's it's but good heart syndrome well no dude it's the second chance thing because like dude what it is is like you you know like at least for me like I know that I'm not a perfect person and I know that I've done a lot of things in my life where I had just a certain thing gone in different way I would have ended up completely fucking different so when I see people who have like made a mistake or they you know serve jail time or whatever it is and they're out and they're doing their thing I don't really hold it against those people because I say okay well they probably learned a lesson because I would have learned my lesson yeah and then when ends up happening is they gonna learn the lesson yeah the scorpion in the frog yeah now you gotta learn the lesson yeah and that's like the I never I never like you never really dawn on me that whole saying like when money meets experience experience gets the money the money gets the experience um but like that's a good one yeah yeah I heard that and I was like that's what that was that's exactly what that was and so now I've got this gym that has payroll trainers lease and there's no cash and I had just sold my gyms I was like wait I don't want to operate these gyms and he's like well you got to manage that one now I was like dude I didn't go from five plus one whatever you want to call this one to to go back to work in the like I felt like I had like stuff I want to do these launches whatever and so that's crazy because dude how did that guy knock out and greedy and how much fucking money he could have made you know what I'm saying like dude and so what ended up happening is um I basically whatever savings I didn't put into every like the vast majority of what I had I put into there but I couldn't sell anymore which is the only thing that I'd ever known how to do really really well and so I was like I felt like neutered like I had like handcuffs I was like I can't fight back because if I sell more I have to keep this gym open and I don't want to keep this gym and so I drained my savings every week with payroll and rent and overhead because I couldn't bring new cash in and all the things were prepayments so there was no new cash flow at all because that's how the you know that's not a way of cycle right and so it went down and in six weeks and I had to you know tell everybody like hey what I'm actually closing they're like you just launched this gym what are you talking like it was horrible and like I just like Layla I just gave her my checkbook and I was like you have to write the checks like I can't like it just it just crushed me you know what I mean and so basically drained me down to I think I had 20 20 ish thousand dollars left so money like I had five six gyms I could I could crank cash if I needed to like all the way down to 20 something thousand I was like and nothing coming in no and I just gave it up four years in my life building the gyms and I had nothing to show for it yeah like I had nothing for it after all that you know effort sleeping on the floor I was like for another right yeah and so she was like for for nothing except all the skills that's right and so we're now this is this is what's going on there's this launch that I got a guy in cnda go to do and a guy who had seen me speak at that conference or whatever hit me I'd be like dude do you have any sales work and I knew he was a pretty good sales guy and I was like I got this gym in cnda go he's like that's right down the street for me and this is like a national like you know what this might actually help me out because I can like build all the shit I need to be building you go do that thing so this is going to be my get out of jail free card we launched the gym guy crushes it there's a hundred and some thousand in sales and yeah and now I'm sleeping at Layla's parents house yeah this is when she's her parents do yeah so from the internet he's the guy put everything in move and live in motels with dad he's a winner oh man this is my first yeah oh man it's so it's December now right and December of 16 and so he crushes this launch but I'm like looking at my bank account it's like where's the fucking deposit like two days were my day two days was always the big one cuz I got all the weekend and then it would all it would all settle I was like where is this deposit it's like Wednesday Thursday Friday so so I call and fries like hey what's going on they're like oh we're doing a standard review of your account and I was like I've been with you guys five years like I've never had a standard view anyways they're like just call you know it should be fine next week it's now going into Christmas Eve all right so it's Christmas Eve now and I'd call it a couple of times they just give me the runaround and I got on and I was like I am not getting off the phone until you give me the money like I need the money to pay the sales guy to run my business and this is the point where Layla had told all of her friends to quit their job so I have 23,000 dollars left I owe the sales guy 22,000 dollars in commission he needed because he had a sob story new baby blah blah whatever and I hadn't gotten the money from the sales yet and so I didn't want to give myself a chance to think about it and so I wired him 22 so I had a thousand dollars left this is the 24th Christmas Eve her dad's like he seems a little stressed supposed to be a joyous event oh yeah so two days later the 26th of December is was basically when gyms kick off the New Year's sale stuff like the day after you just start because it's this dead week where everyone's got time and they feel fat it's like brush sales it doesn't start January because everybody's gonna do it yeah so they're willing to pay for it now yeah exactly yeah yeah I'll pay today I'll start in January what exactly and so the campaigns we're going to kick off with her six friends being the six sales guys because like big ambition Alex was like oh we're going to go from doing one to doing six make sense let's do that is the first real thing we do it was 3,300 a day in hotels airfare car rental ad spend etc before commissions I had a thousand dollars left and I was starting 48 hours later because I was expecting to get the money that I never got I also by the way never got that one still to this day never got the money but what causes policy something they said they're gonna hold on to it for six months because it was a regular so I was basically running my national launch thing through my local gym so like I'm processing stuff in Canada for a gym out of likes they were right to do it I didn't know any I just thought I was like yeah you process money through the POS so like I'm running memberships at my gym that has more memberships than like any other gym but no one's actually there anyways um and so we do these we start these launches and we start getting like 60 80 contracts a day I have no way to process money so I'm spending 3,300 a day and I can't make money I'm just getting all these credit cards all these contracts and I have nothing that I can do so all the way so let's just like the 26th of December all the way to January 29th I don't have a processor because at this point if you get kicked off a processor it's like it's like uh going to jail I remember that it's like a yeah it was a big you get a big black mark I'm hard to get another one yeah because there used to only be a few a few processors yeah yeah yeah this is part of the year and so and they had all the power there wasn't any yeah yeah and they were they didn't carry either no yeah and I was a like fuck you what you doing yeah yeah this is other right and so um yeah but when you get big it's different fucking tuned you know now they come in here and suck dicks to get our fucking business can do that's fine I don't think I don't fucking remember assholes you're saying because I've had to deal with the same shit it was horrible and so it's it's one of these crazy things that as a business you forget about but like if you cannot process money you fuck like there's nothing you can do and so anyways I talked to everybody I knew and it got a porn casino high risk whatever guy to take my take my money right so they were gonna get like 8% processing fee and then they had a 10% reserve on top of that so like 18% of my sales went straight 10 was held in escrow and then gets deposited six months later on a rolling basis and then 8% just goes to them for the risk thinker I was like whatever I need the money so 29th I process and he's like oh by the way you only have a 50,000 on limit I'm like dude I need so much more than that he's like tough I run 50s like oh but by the way it's per month so like February 1st he's like you can run another 50 so I ran 50 on January 29th 50 on February 1st and that was the 100 for the $3,300 a day that I owed and I like my credit card was at zero still was broke but I was at zero and then got two three more processors got them going and then all of a sudden we're at like we did like one seven year 180 that next month and I made like 30,000 dollars in profit and I like looked at how it's like I think we got out yeah next month comes taps me on the shoulder one morning and I was like what's up she was like there's a problem I was like what do you mean there's a problem she turns her laptop towards me and there's this like waterfall of negative transactions she just keeps scrolling as she's talking to me and I was like holy shit and each one of these is like as big as my rent because 500 600 bucks was like my rent and there's just hundreds of them and I was like I just felt like my stomach dropped and she was like what is this she was she was like oh one of the gym owners told all their members that we filled up at that gym to refund and sign up through him for half what we charged because we had the processing risk which was part of the issue with the first thing and so so charging you back yeah at this point and so this is all my new high risk yeah yeah I'm like fuck um and so you're just starting to get some rapport with this fucking yeah right and so another guy he that guy tells another guy or something so two gyms do this 150,000 in refunds that I didn't have because I just now because you know the one guy fucking calls other guys and says hey this is what we're doing and so because we would sell and we leave and we go to the next gym but they had all the customers and they built the relationship which is a flow on the model you know me and like I didn't get it yet mind you there were other gyms that were totally cool really appreciative awesome hardworking people like absolutely we did 30 something launches only two of them had that happen but like they're big deal we're big yeah they were all my profit and so I'm like how the fuck am I gonna kind of come up with 150 grand in profit not revenue in the next 30 days and so Layla being the smart woman that she is took all for personal training clients and brought them online when she came with me to do this flag around the country thing and she's making like three or four thousand a month and I was like wait tell me more about that thing you do and she was like it's all margin yeah I don't work that hard on it I was like okay you're the business now I'm gonna market and sell it I'll bring the sales guys in and we're gonna push your thing so in like two days I write a set a whole sales letter we white label everything to queen transformation and we start running ads and she starts closing a thousand bucks a day all profit I was like okay if we get eight in we could do eight thousand a day minus ad spend that's you know like I'll be at 150 ish in profit like we could do this and so we start doing that so I'm gonna call all the guys that all the gyms that were supposed to watch the next month so we had I think eight gyms that were supposed to watch the next the next you know the next month and I get on the phone with the first guy I was like hey I'm getting out of the business I'm celebrating you know straight to consumer like new chapter sorry and they didn't really pay me anything because I made my money on the on the sales right and he was like dude I just refinance my house like you did this for a buddy of mine I know you can do it like I need your help whole thing and um finally I was like dude I'm not fine out there uh he's like fine okay can you just show me what you did at his place so I can do it here um and I was like all right fine he's like well how much and I remember just knowing he was broke and so I just picked a really high number the highest number I could think of just so we just say no and I can just like move out of my life because the other thing was working so I was like six thousand dollars which I know that sounds ridiculous now but I was like yeah I get it who would pay six thousand dollars to them right yeah and he was like six k and I was like yeah six thousand dollars us yeah and he was like oh done I just remember like you just know you made a shitty ass deal bro and I was like but I still I still give you just what I'm thinking about it now because I was like oh shit six thousand and I was like oh what hard do you want because like yeah it's like if you have to think about it you don't know all enough like I was already asking for the credit card but like my head was like what just happened yeah and so then I was like shit I got seven more guys to pass like all the next guy and I was like well now I got to make this damn thing right then I just promised this guy same conversation how much I was like eight grand and he was like done and I was like next call same thing ten grand done next thing next call same thing just to teach them how to do yeah I was gonna license it my whole thing so I was like you'll use my ad so like we don't have to test it like it's a video of me works doing yeah like every like the whole thing and I had already built 80% of it because there's my internal training like how I train my sales like all the sales training was done all the nutrition all the stuff was done the only thing that wasn't to them was how I ran the ads in the landing pages that was the only thing that was like missing that I had to build so anyways in one day I did sixty thousand dollars and like cash collected selling air and Layla had been on the phone all day closing because she's still closing the weight loss thing like she's trying to like give us food yeah yeah and she comes in and I was like hey babe um was that a sale she was like yeah I was like um I I think we might have had a change in direction and she's like what do you talk like and mind you think about how what she's been through this is you already know we're here here here yeah she's like she's like that's again I was like I think we're still in the gym business it's like I think I was just doing it and she was like what do you mean and I like told her and she was like well is this what we're gonna do now and I was like yes so I was like it made a lot more money than the other thing and I was like I think we could cover all the refunds with this and she was like well how are you gonna get gyms I was like well I've 30 something just we already did the turn around I'll call those guys up they know it works and so that's what I did and so I called all those guys up and uh sold almost all of them into the thing we did like 300 thousand like in profit uh I think it was 215 I remember those 215 that next month and I covered all the all the chargebacks all the refunds everything and um what happened now is that all those gyms that I did the turn around thing with they ran the play and the average amount of cash they collected new cash in the first 30 days of use in the system was 30 thousand dollars so that's average that was the average yeah so for context you're listening the average microgemoner like so that crossfit guy down the street he's probably broke that you know where that bootcamp owner like I'm telling you right now he's yeah yeah the average owner takes home 36 thousand dollars a year netting home and they work 80 hours a week plus you know I mean like it's less than minimum it's yeah any of so for them this was life changing money right and that was the next month they could do the play again you could relaunch your gym the problem that they started running to is they're like dude my gyms full I want to summon people my gyms full and I was like that's why I started to launch and go models I had I was I had more ability I had more firepower to sell in market than I had a square footage to sell into and so um from there and because it's the tightening community for microgemoners and then the word of math just took off like wildfire we did 300 480 780 a million one two one five uh one eight two two three two five that was that was per month the next like each month like I can still remember it and we finished that year that like it which was really just the half of the year because when it was like January I'm still doing the launches thing that got off fucked up so like June issue is when that we switched the licensing so we finished that year 6.8 with 3 million profit and the next full calendar year we did after that was 26 million top 517 million EBITDA yeah and it was just like I you know what's crazy you know what you know what you know what I hear when I hear this and that because obviously I'm thinking like as you speak I'm think like dude you talking about like the credit card processing like we've had those issues the same all that shit but dude the main theme I think that people need to pull from what you just said for you guys that are out there and and you tell me what you think but I know this my best shit comes when I my back is against the fucking wall bro like like the ability to somehow my brain I'm sure yours must work the same way when shit is really fucking bad that's where the brilliance comes out and uh you know sometimes it takes that pressure man sometimes it takes that real pressure to really think and and also push us into the positions that we're meant to be in you know I that's an incredible story I mean one thing that I got a lot of you just you just kept showing up like you just don't fucking stop you just don't know yeah when you got to pay back 150 fucking grand like what do you do you got to show the fuck I figured out yeah otherwise like at that level that that ruin your life that ruin your whole life I'm even thinking of it from a standpoint like I have to keep reminding myself while you're talking I'm like he was fucking 26 yeah 26 he's 26 like and thinking like you know the day and age that we're in right now in society I can't think of another 26 year old that would fucking be able to do it I can't think of a 36 year old that what you know what I'm saying like I'm like listen I can't separate step mentality from just not fucking quitting what what what is the separated I have two cents on it yeah what just for the record I do think that there are some savages out there yeah I agree yeah you just don't you don't really recognize look dude nobody knew who Alex Hermosi was when he was doing Alex Hermosi building Alex Hermosi nobody fucking knew nobody knew Andy for seller was when he was learning the shit like nobody fucking knew there's plenty of people out there right now that are fucking especially with the technology that we have that are 19 20 21 22 23 years old that are fucking savage motherfuckers and they're dude this is why it goes so hard on the technology I'm like dude do not get yourself funnel into a one trick pony where you know because what you've done well and this is this is a very this you're the example of what I try to tell these young these young bucks is like look dude you yes you know Facebook ads yes you know ecom yes you know that's a tool that's not the brand yeah and if you can like what Alex has done is leveraged his one tool and to many skill sets into branding that now he's doing and we're gonna get to that now do an amazing shit with but dude I love here in this I fucking love it because it's very very parallel very parallel man I think a lot of times the because it depends who you talk to but sometimes people talk about how like the hard times build you I'm not sure if I totally agree I think a lot of times the hard times reveal you like I think a lot of people have that savage that's inside and they just haven't had the environment to to pull it out to pull it out and then give themselves evidence that it's there yeah but like to your point we were saying earlier like I knew just on like whatever whatever the level that is it like I didn't know when I would be successful but I did know that I wasn't going to stop and like I feel like that I don't know that if that comes off the way there's a way I understand what you mean yeah I just knew I was like I was like I I just know that I won't stop like that I can commit to I was like I just won't stop when I was growing up dude like when when you were growing up like as a kid were you ambitious around like making money and stuff like entrepreneurial minded no really really but what I did want to do is make my dad proud yeah and so that was my you know driving force and then you know I won't I won't get into the the the nitty-gritty but basically like I think you either have to have a really big carrot which everyone talks about like finding your passion whatever and like I actually am pretty against it and I'll make my point a second but like I think that most people who are like in the beginning of the game like you don't have a passion yet most of you like most people are like man I just love this one thing but everybody has shit loads of pain like that like a lot of people I can't find passion like can you find pain they're like yep I got a lot to that I got anger I got chewing on pain whatever it is I'm like cool well the first rule of entrepreneurship is use what you got and so like if that's what you got then burn that yeah like you don't need to necessarily find this passion like this beautiful carrot because that to me that's not what got me going that's not got me going it was the mission of Jim won't don't be broke Alex that was the mission of Jim like you're like what was the big fish I was like I had no vision it was like don't fucking lose all my money like that was the whole vision yeah and so all that all that to say like for me I think it was like a way from fear which is like I I was I knew like in my bones that I would rather die than go back home of like bail and then have to like basically do it and your option mentality yeah my options my dad I just I knew that like it was the hardest thing for me to leave home because like my dad a lot of influence and I say this is not a bad way like you just wondered what was best for me it's a strong evolution father I had no siblings basically no mom so it's just me and him and so like imagine all of the authority power that you have in your life and all the love that you have for your siblings which is just with one person so like his opinion mattered a lot to me and he did not want me to do this and so like I defied him to go do this Jim thing and I was afraid which is why I left and didn't tell him until I was already physically gone which obviously he wasn't happy about and like that kind of put a little bit of a rift in our relationship for a long time but like I just was like I won't I just like I don't want to prove him right I was like I'm not gonna let him be right about this like I will just keep fucking going and I almost was happy if we didn't talk because I was like it just gives me more time to keep doing like I didn't want to update him because I was fucking sucking yeah yeah yeah yeah we was doing money bro I agree with you dude like I think there's I think and this is you know I caught a lot of heat about this for a long time till people figured out who I was but like you know when I started making content like they got recognized back in like 2015 everybody thought it was fucking insane because I would talk about like the dark side right like dude like listen I'm gonna shove it down your fucking throat like that's what the fuck I'm gonna do I'm gonna fucking do that forever like and I still I'm still that way like I just don't talk about it that way anymore like now when I see someone say oh you're not you're crazy like you're not gonna build the next Nike you're in my fucker just sit there and watch like you've been watching for the last 20 fucking years give me another 20 and we'll see where the fuck I am you know what I'm saying like I have no problem with that and I feel like the use what you got is what's got me here you know now I do feel like when you get to a point of where you have to you have to manage many humans hundreds of humans thousands of humans there has to be a there has to be a mission and a purpose to motivate and and propel people in that direction like if I walked into my my meeting and I said well fuck we're gonna fucking crush everybody like that was it like everybody's like yeah but like who like yeah and I do feel like there's a I feel like you know there's a point to where that transitions right but but dude I totally agree and I agree with the with your perspective on the on the revealing too I think there's a little of both there yeah I think the hard times definitely like dude that whole time right that did build you right bro because like look at all the reps and all the skills you learned right they just carried through yeah and I bet you know you probably learned more during that time than probably any other time I know for me that was true you know I learned more the first 12 or 13 years I was in business where I really got my ass beat then I've learned in the last yeah you know 12 or 13 but I do think that's true dude I do think a lot of people don't put themselves in a position to ever truly know what they're actually capable of yeah they quit too early well or they're just too too afraid of the discomfort you know like like I think people tend to look at risk the wrong way like a lot of people say well what's going to happen if I do this and I think the question really is what's going to happen if I don't do this I've always thought that way that's how I always think like if I get a big idea in my head that I think needs to happen and it scares me my question is never like what am I going to lose if I go after it it's what's going to happen to me if I don't do it it's always been that way but I think there's wait I think you look at it both ways yeah you know that entire story is so it's just so relatable to what I've been through to be where we are it's just it's fucking cool to sit here and listen to it I want to do the guy so the the first the old digital when the fuck you did he like whatever happened to him nothing no he just he just continues to do what he did then yeah bro sometimes you you got to chalk those things up too dude like because like you got to just chalk like because I've been burned like that too yeah and you know real talk like I'm not going to say what I was going to say because like those people don't get away from me so but but you can't let it eat you up man can't let it fucking eat you up you got to look at it as what it learned yeah and when you when you when you fucking when you said I I forgot what you said exactly but you said something about him not are doing this in the past or something like I'm like oh here we go yeah you knew it of course yeah fuck it's brutal people are brutal dude yeah they don't give a fuck especially when there's large sums of money involved or perceive large some money you know and you can tell a lot about people too what they how they judge large sums of money like that guy's a fucking idiot because had he fucking had he stuck with Alex this guy would be worth a hundred fucking million dollars right now or more yeah you know I'm saying a way more so anyway so what happened after this and see that point you know I had a a mentor that I was just kind of like talking my life through it this point which was like in shambles um and he was like all you do is do right by everyone he's like and then he's like the only way you can walk out of this is by knowing that you don't have any strings in the back your mind of like something's gonna come back he's like you have to write every one of those refund checks you have to write you handle every charge back he's like pay every debtor or whatever you know like everybody you oh he's like he's like he's like because then you walk out clean it's like it's the only way you can you can you can get out of it and so I that's that's what we did during that that's when I you know gave Leila the checkbook and all that kind of stuff and then I had a a different mentor was actually my high school it was about 15 years old but it was always just like less than anything because I was like I'm sure like many of us like when you're a younger little angrier right yeah let's get really a pen up about some guys who I just thought were like douchebags to me and I was like man I can't wait to come back for our 10 year high school reunion I was like I'm gonna show them like blah blah blah and he's like no you're not yeah he's like if you go up to somebody at a 10 year high school reunion and you say like look what I've done motherfucker he's like they're gonna be like you've been thinking about me this whole time yeah he's like he's just just remember this he's like success is the only revenge that's right and like he's like and all you do he's like is you just become bigger than them he's like so that who they are in reference to you shrinks into a relevance yeah he's like so you don't he's like you don't crush them he's like you shrink them in comparison to you that's right and that was like that like whenever I had like these hard hard situations like with that you know with that gentleman like the goal was like I'll just be so big that he will become a relative yeah and so I that's at least how how I handle that well dude I I feel like it's funny that you bring this up I just had a couple buddies over at my house a couple nights ago um and DJ was there and we got to talking about this these are two dudes that are pretty successful guys and we started talking about I have a theory about this and this is my theory it goes along with like what your mentor said to you about doing the right thing I feel like that yes when you do the right thing I feel like you continue to win and you continue to grow but that doesn't mean that all the things that happen during that don't hurt and don't fucking like fuck with you and um but what I in my case in my in my life in my experience is that even when because dude like usually what's weird from in my experiences that it's been the people that I've done the most for or the extra things for that have come back to fuck me and um that really hurts like I really fucks you up dude because like when you're trying to do extra shit and you're trying to help people or you're trying to like you know give people a hand or break or fuck you know put people on a on a faster path um nearly a hundred percent of the time in my life it's come back in some sort of way to hurt me um whether it be you know they try to drag my name through the mud or some bullshit right it's never them it's it's fucking always you know everybody else which is the reason they're in the situation the need for help in the first place this is why I've started to recognize that saving people from themselves is not actually the ethical move the ethical move is to let them fucking learn their lesson so they don't repeat the lesson over and over and over and um but I do I do believe that when you treat people right and you do the right things that eventually you I'm not eventually I believe you consistently continue to win and those people do a shrink and they go away and you'll talk about them you know three or four years or five or ten years or whatever it is once in a while because they'll remind you of all the good shit that they actually taught you you know and that's something that a lot of you guys should really think about because a lot of people that are in business you know getting your getting taken advantage of when you have financial means is a real thing it's a real thing that happens and people target people like that and when you have a big heart like you do and I do it's easier to be taken advantage of because the the the pain that we have to feel to help them in a massive way is not very much my relative right like someone needs five grand five grand doesn't hurt me dude yeah and changes their life but those people quickly forget what the fuck you did for them and then they expect it and that seems to be the scenario in society these days and we were just talking about I was telling them about how we were just talking about this at the house the other night about like I'm like dude you know like for me where I'm at and this is real shit like this is I mean this I'm not really interested anymore and going through that process of like developing a like more of a circle like I think you and I were the ones talking like the six-month probation period right you know that you know and what Alex and I were talking about you tell him you how you do it we'll just like you you're like we'll see how things go yeah I mean that's basically like six months we were talking it's like dude as long as no one like violates the trust or like ask you for shit then they can like you could start to build a friendship yeah because dude a lot of people come along and you know they get I guess hot and heavy with friendship very quickly yeah and then you find out that there's a reason for it and it's not because they want to be your friend and unfortunately this is a reality of becoming a successful person but one of the things that I think you should understand because a lot of you guys you know you get that first person that takes advantage of you or that first person that does you wrong what when I think you should realize is is a you know you just heard Alex talk about how he got fucked over by multiple different people but those things forced him to learn all of these skills and in the process of going down this with good faith he was able to develop his sales skills he was able to develop personal skills he was able to develop his creative thinking skills and become much more successful because of it so whoever whatever it is you're dealing with out there remember there's a lesson in it and also remember that if you continue to do good and you continue to do do right I believe that those people win I like all the people I know that I'm friends with that are big winners financially they they are people who go above and beyond for people all the time and usually end up getting fucked over a lot but they continue to do it and I believe I don't know if it's like karma or the universe or what it is but somehow you keep being rewarded when you live like that even though it's painful yeah it's a painful way to live because it would be easier to say fuck everybody yeah I'm not giving you shit you know but dude I still even though I've been fucked over so many times I still give when I see opportunities to fucking help I've so many thoughts on this yeah it's like if you think about like people understand video games so it's like if you were to make if you're playing a video game and the the way to win the game was to be make the most successful character right you would have probably a really character driven human being in terms of like they be patient you know they'd be hard working like you think about all these traits that they would have right they'd probably be tough emotionally like etc all right cool that's the character and that's the person who's gonna be really successful we can all come probably agree on that okay how do you create someone who's patient how do you create someone who's tough how do you create someone who right so all of a sudden if we had to then engineer the game in order to boost those points we'd have to get them beat up a lot so that they could get tough we have to make them wait a long time so they could become patient it's right and so to the point that you made about like these people who become really successful have these traits and also share the fact that they've been through all this shit it's like well they got the trait from the shit and then the trait was the ultimate output of the experience and that trait then made them super successful that they didn't have earlier because like you know it's crazy if you really think about that and break down every time you do get fucked over you actually end up being the person that won yeah on a long enough time right yeah you end up like the person with the highest character wins on the longer time horizon but on game theory they've studied this in terms of givers givers mattress takers and they're familiar with that but basically a mattress somebody who's like tit for tat you do something for me I do something for you you've got takers who just always want to take from everybody and you've got givers right and so they like basically like adjusted how much giving versus taking like a bot hat in exchange and just played it out and the perfect amount of give to take is an eight out of 10 giving to take ratio so like if 10 out of 10 giving is like your social work you get walked all over like you never yeah you never draw the line the one at the one takers who just take for everybody they win really quickly and then they lose because they because they scrub everyone over they can't create any long term they don't get the compounding effect of doing business over and over and over again with people the and the mattress and takers together never get the opportunities that the givers get because the givers give first and so there's so many more doors that get open from an opportunity perspective by giving first yeah and so like a lot like in the tech world they talk about surface area of luck so like people are like like that guy got lucky you can actively increase the surface area the likelihood that you become lucky by giving to more people and then all of a sudden more doors are open because you knocked first yeah it's practical right it's really practical yeah it's a like yeah I love that you know and and it's an incredibly painful way to go through life dude because like I'd be I'd be real like at this point where I'm at like I was this where I was getting at it's like I'm not interested in going through the I'm like the new network of and then trying to figure out like who the fuck is who like who who's who's the giver who's the taker who's the piece of shit like I don't want to do that anymore like I'm not interested in and a lot of people get upset with me because I don't really let people around me they but dude you got to understand I've been doing this for 24 years this exact thing I've been getting my ass beat my motherfuckers that pretend to be my friend over and over and over again and I'm just over it like now I just don't let people in it's just what the fuck it is like if you're my friend now you're my fucking friend these dudes here these are my fucking friends you know I'm saying like a couple dudes from the internet that I you know you and I know who they are those are my friends outside of that it's my brother my dad it's my wife and that's fucking it that's fucking it man I logic has a famous clip where he was talking about how he stays out of trouble and he's like here's it is real simple I don't fuck with anybody I don't fuck with anybody and I mean it I don't fuck with anybody like throw that shit in the show it's a great clip I actually have it I'll send it to you Joe because I remember I watch it a lot and he's like I'm not playing I fucking stay at home I play with my dog I have my girl over and that's fucking it I don't fuck with anybody and I'm like do you feel like it's getting I don't say harder but you have to work harder to stay quote unquote normal as your no no because I don't fuck with nobody yeah I don't fuck with nobody like at all nobody so it's very simple I stay at my house and just me my homies my fiance my little puppy I just got and I don't fuck with nobody I don't go anywhere I don't go to parties I barely go outside like literally I really don't go outside that much just because I don't I don't fuck with nobody that's smart dude right there yeah it's a smart dude and uh anyway I love that whole that whole take you have on it because that really helps me that helps me to see that it is practical it's not just this emotional beating that I take over and over people give them as value win the most yeah it's just that they have to go through and like that's why there's those two theories kind of like coincide where it's like you've got the character traits that create the success but the math behind it is like you just increase the surface area of your luck by giving to more people yeah and in so doing let's say if you give to 10 and you get screwed by two you get let's say the the mattress is going to get five of those opportunities it's just that those extra three opportunities where you didn't get fucked that over years and years and years that's the thing that compounds and then just makes you unstoppable yeah absolutely but people are afraid of getting people are afraid of getting taken advantage of or the first time they do it they just quit yeah yeah yeah for sure the first time it happens it's it's a price it's it's the cost of addition yeah take it that's right dude it really is and also um a word of advice is that if you are one of these people that helps a lot of people um and then you happen to get your name drug through the mud for any reason uh don't expect them to stand up for you because they won't uh and I've I've yet the only theory that I've been able to come up with on this because it happens to me once in a while by once a year fucking once every two years somebody fucking drags my name through the fucking mud and all the fucking cockroaches come out but yeah none of the fucking people that I've actually done good shit say a mother fucking word about it and I figured out why the reason why is because they're embarrassed they needed the help in the first place and they don't want to expose themselves for having needed the help that you actually offered them which I think is fucked up I think that's fucked up I think if people do good shit for you and you see people fucking dragging that person's name you should fucking tell people what the fuck they did and be like you know you think whatever to fuck you want but this is what actually happened and that's just my two cents on that because it's fucking annoying but whatever dude anyway what's next I'm just saying like doing the right thing like when people are good to you tell people that they're good people when people aren't good to you you know fucking it is what it is don't do shit with them anymore but like the common decency and I think a lot of it has to do with the internet like everybody's protective of their brand now like my fuck most of y'all don't have a brand like you really don't you got a fuck couple thousand followers you think you got a personal brand nobody knows who the fuck you are and nobody cares who you are so like dude do the right thing and actually stick up for people or tell people the truth or this or that and the reality is those people continue to look out for you like it's it's very simple and most people will also forget like let's say somebody got came out of the woodwork and was like no man 80 helped me out when I really needed it yeah Andy will remember everyone else will forget about the instance anyways yeah but you get I get it's like the evening the score like I don't like to owe people shit yeah I don't either right I don't owe a motherfucker anything there's not a motherfucker listen to this fucking show there's not a motherfucker on this planet that cut me right now and say I owe them a shit a fucking anything you have the one guy said you uh he said you uh he lowered he gave you uh what like 60 grand or something until I remember that guy oh fuck yeah oh dude yeah I had a guy show up here who uh and by the way I felt bad for I did I felt bad for him too uh hey dumbasses uh realized that I'm not soliciting you for fucking Bitcoin or I don't even do I don't even do this shit there was been one real companies were real employees and we do real shit in real life like I will never solicit an investment from you you will never get a DM for me asking you to fucking go in on this deal I don't that's not what I do we had this got this poor guy dude he he dude it made me feel terrible yeah he shows up here one day dude and he's like yeah man like somebody pretend he knew that at this point like somebody scammed him and he's like somebody pretended to be you and took 80 grand for me bro it's all I fucking hat yeah and like I like it was the most it was the saddest most awkward shit that I'd ever been a part of because I'm like dude like do you really think like I'm and we're standing in this building and I'm like dude do you really think like look around here like do you think I'm asking people for fucking money dude like I'm not soliciting money dude and um he's like well it makes sense now but I just wanted to believe it so like for all of you guys to get those messages bro know that those people are full of shit cuz I don't even do that I don't even communicate with DMs outside of like five people so I mean it was sad dude and that goes double for anyone who's listening for my 100% because we're because we're we invest yeah so it's like even so we have hundreds of accounts that are like I've got a deal or like hey I'm doing this crypto trade or this for next thing and I'm like guys yeah like so we get we get it all the time so I'm not damning you just FYI yeah I mean either I'm not if you get six homoses or six andes that automatically follow you when you follow us like it's not us yeah it's not man it's sad dude it makes me it made me sad as fuck cuz I could this dude was like really fucked up over it like you could tell it was like his whole yeah it made me I still feel bad yeah it just makes me feel dude this is like this is my whole bias against Instagram and Facebook and the internet as much as I love the tools that we have both used and utilized the fucking dark side of it is just so shitty dude yeah I just so fucking predatory and and disgusting but that's a whole nother story we could talk about that fucking hey but um yeah man I like that so so how did you get how did you get into uh where you're at now yeah so um so after you know Jim Montana that you know started scaling up um then we started a supplement company prestige labs and the exchange that I had with you which I really do want to hit on even though your audience has probably heard it I want to tell how to get me yeah um prestige labs was our supplement company that we sold through that distribution base of Jim so at that point I think we I think at that point I think we had just like just under 2000 gyms that had licensed the stuff now it's like 5,000 plus but at that point we launched it in 2019 and then in 2020 we launched our software that basically just worked gyms for brick and mortar businesses and originally it was four gyms um but we realized that it actually worked for any any kind of service business like carousel on whatever any kind of foot traffic business yeah um and so that that's kind of the the two kind of spin-off businesses that we had from gym launch in 2021 we sold all three of those businesses so prestige labs and gym launch we sold together to American Pacific group which is privately firm out of San Francisco and then um so that for 46.2 million we still have two um 33% of the company um and then the software we didn't all stock deal with a much bigger strategic partner we had a better monetization system than them but they had a way bigger distribution base um and so they're fixing to sell it like you know three or four five years yeah so you sold 33 on that no I I have 33 that's one two thirds yeah yeah yeah that's good though yeah no I mean yeah your second payouts would be more than a first one yeah because they're putting a big tech plug they're building a CRM out and then they're gonna own the payment processing for all the gyms and that's gonna like yeah I fucking love it and that's their playbook and I was like you know what I'm I'm not that guy um maybe I am now but I wasn't then and so it was like cool run that run that play I want to do this thing and that's one uh in 2020 we started we did our first kind of like personal investment which was that photography studio I was a single location guy somehow made his way on my calendar don't do this um and yeah yeah and uh but like I could like you know you're like you can read a person real like I could tell how he was talking the way he was carrying himself like all the stuff I was like this is the nice guy yeah he's like so sorry I did this I did like he's like yeah blah blah it's like but I read your book I did everything that was in the book I took my photography studio from like 400 grand to 1.6 million a year like yeah see you're you're willing to give a little bit for guys like that right when he starts like and like I knew that he wasn't he wasn't pulling it out of that it's like I knew he did he it's I recognized his name he gave me a couple times of like yeah so much better and so anyways turns out he has this uh photography studio some chanted fairies um and I'll tell you the story because I think it's really in chain of fairies yeah all right let's get him a plug chain of fairies what's up he had a daughter who got told uh at school to shut up and she stopped talking for like months holy shit yeah and so what ended up happening was like they tried to you know all this different stuff trying to talk and do it and so what they did was they um set up these sets because they're photographers right of how like of a storyline where she is the hero of own story and she finds her voice that's like kind of like uh and so they made it to a picture book and read it to everyone she started talking again and so I was like wow that's really cool because like kids like everybody yeah stories are what influenced the way we see the world and so they had a visual but it was like not just any story it was a story with her pictures of her being the hero yeah and they don't have that third of their profit the charity every year towards kids like they're like good people yeah and so anyways you told me this whole thing and I was like yeah like um yeah I'm in like what you know how can I help right and so um we invested in the company and now we have 38 locations um that's the fucking you know 30 months later and um so yeah so so one location yeah and how many months 38 months 38 locations I think it's been 30 months it's June of 2020 so whatever that is until now that's amazing yeah um and so like that's well it was fucking hat what I said he's holding on to his hat I mean and it's been it's like seeing building that with them has been so cool and awesome and then we're like man uh let's do another one of those so we did we did two more deals that year um and both those went really really well yeah um to the same degree of growth as kind of that one dead and so that's why this is the topic I thought would be uh there's two different ways one I want to talk about the prestige lab saying because I learned a ton from you about all the things I did wrong and I think it'd be useful for the audience um but uh in terms of the reason we ended up selling was because I enjoyed that so much um and I you probably maybe you probably have more patients than I do because I I felt like I'd been in the gym industry for a decade it was like I'm just I don't want to be the gym guy now I get it I don't get the gym you know what keeps me here dude it's it's the it was the perspective switch it was what when I went from so like dude I it's happened for me in 2014 when I went from someone who was trying to become wealthy which at this point I was at at that time um to someone who was trying to help our own team and our own people like it became mission focused yeah that's where like dude I love coming here bro yeah like I love like do we have we have you know 10 12 people a week that walk through here that have lost 100 200 pounds changed our whole fucking life I don't know anywhere else where you can do that yeah yeah you know and you get to talk to these people and and dude I'm here with all these people who who care about that yeah you know it's just a cool environment to be yeah and I fucking love it and that's what keeps me in it but I do I do also thoroughly enjoy the small business phase of growth like going from one yeah too many I fucking love that yes the rocket right I miss that shit yeah because that's we I mean yeah this is a different game than 38S now like I mean yeah yeah over it's not terrible yeah right yeah yeah this is that we went we went through the small business we went through the medium business now we're learning the large business which is cool because I'm learning new I'm learning new things right I never ran a fucking company this big um but dude I'm telling you man like my sweet spot is right where you're talking about I fucking love that shit I love I love the helping people go from like like I got a buddy in mind Alex Spinozo who you may recognize him from the internet he's all over the internet he's got a good personal brand too um he started with us in Aritae uh you know 2018 or 19 that we started dude he sent me um he if we go to if we go to my house later on I'll show you but he sent me his million dollar that he made so like you know how most people will say oh that's cool yeah he sent me his million dollar yeah and the he made yeah and uh a note and I framed it I got it in my in my lounge in my garage which where I spent a lot of my time yeah and then uh he sent me uh he sent me a video message just the other day um is just so fucking cool dude like this he sent me a dollar a while ago this is a couple of years ago sent me a message the other day now this guy at this point in time like he's very conservative he's not like a guy it makes million bucks ago just spends it right but he you know he's a car guy is like I am and I know you're not but but uh I am and he sent me this video of this car that he built before that he built himself and he was talking about it and then he's like a dude and and then today I bought this and he bought a fucking brand new McLaren and like bro I was just like this is the fucking shit like this is this is the shit this is what I love doing and whether it's with you know changing their life with fitness or weight loss or whether it's economically with entrepreneurship that's the shit I love I love that shit um so I'm a little bit jealous about what you guys are doing yeah seeing I mean watching someone's perspective shift around the world I think whether it like you said you know weight loss even some people were like you know religious and they get people into that or economically like when you see like I think at the end of the day like the reason that I fell in love with Leo is that she saw the world the same way as me and I felt like that was really rare like I was like so you see that too right like this guy as a total and she's like yeah yeah yeah okay cool yeah you see that too okay oh yeah they're only doing that not because they like you they're trying to get this upside just yeah yeah I was like I just like I felt like this weight where I'm like I felt only yes exactly you're not the only one of things like that yeah that's a big that's a big thing I'm thankful for for the people that listen to my show because I know like like I know I'm not everybody's cup of tea I'm very aware like I'm very fucking aware you guys don't have to remind me I know I live my life this way the whole time I've been alive um but the people who consistently listen to the show and don't like like they don't think I'm crazy you know I'm saying I fucking love that's one of the things I'm most thankful for that's why I continue to do the show honestly because like some of the things aren't fun to talk about yeah you know coming on here every day and talking about what the fuck is going on with these crazy motherfuckers in the world yeah it wears you out yeah but uh finding people with that consistent world view bro and that perspective is fucking massive dude and to the audience I mean just to give you some um confirmation like if you if you think differently then you are immediate family or your friends or whatever your hometown is like one you probably don't want to be normal because if you take what normal means and put it across all aspects of life it means that you're gonna die 74 you're probably gonna be overweight you're gonna you know be divorced you're gonna not really achieve anything that you want like that's normal and so it makes sense that you would be the odd man out because most people live that life and so like that was something that gave me a lot of permission to like be me which was not normal in a lot of and that's okay because I mean like ordinary versus extra ordinary means that you are not and so like if any sharing stuff on here that are different beliefs about the world then it would make sense because like if he's in the point zero zero one percent of earning potential that it means that he sees reality differently than you and I think it's the same reason that people who are billionaires can lose it all and then get it right back and the reason that you can't is because you don't see reality clearly hence the name of the show you know I didn't even like not even connect but like yes that's it's about being a realist it's distortion yeah it's moving the emotion outside of the facts and making decisions based on the facts yeah and and I feel like that's a tool that has become less and less and less common with more and more and more internet and more and more and more you know propaganda in terms of making people believe that their feelings are what actually matter and how you should make decisions in reality that's not especially in business that's not going to get you very far it's going to get you broke yeah so I appreciate that by the way thank you for that I just like as that feeling of loneliness makes you normal in the right rooms yeah rather than the room that you're in that's exactly right like dude you get around people you know you know you know no it is like like like dude and that's that's something for a lot of you guys listening to like you may never have been in those rooms like ever but I'm telling you like when you when I go in a room none of the motherfuckers thing I'm crazy yeah real talk they might think I'm I talk too much but they don't think I'm crazy also the many losses that you're probably going through right now if you're in your rocky cut scene like if you remember that video game thing it's like well then you're just you're tinkering away you're chiseling away at the character traits that are going to make you successful and in those rooms that Andy's referencing like I don't know try to say this the right way but like game recognize game and I don't mean that an egotistical way but more so like how the other people in that room see the world the things that we're talking about giving earlier like all the guys who I know are the wealthies in the world will do will bend over backwards for you you know what I mean yeah it's completely the opposite of what the perception is yeah the perception is everybody that's rich is a piece of shit my perception of it now that might be true for people that inherit the money totally different could be yeah but my perception is people who have actually built their own wealth are usually these are the fucking nicest best people and that's the reason they became wealthy yeah they had to develop those ways of getting along with people over and over and over again because if you don't have leverage in the beginning which you don't you have to overcompensate by being a great person opening more doors by giving first and getting screwed yeah and if you think about it that way where it's like okay I have to give to lots of people for an extended period of time and I have to stomach the fact that I'm gonna get screwed like you're gonna get screwed you have to stomach it but if you realize that that's the necessary cost in order to develop the trait and open the doors that you don't get screwed then you just have to see that as the as the ticket right and I think that for me that was like a very big unlock for realizing that like when I got into those rooms I was like it's the ticket yeah getting your ass kicked and getting screwed over over and over and over again continuing to show up continuing to push through continuing to get creative and figure out the solution that is the price of admission to that higher level that you're trying to build it's not the abnormality it is the norm for that level that you're going for and while it may feel like it's abnormal because it is right and the normal human being kind of keeps themselves they're not overly generous they're not overly greedy they might give some to the church they might give five bucks to the homeless guy whatever that's not what we're talking about we're talking about when you have the means to make a difference and you continue to use your means to make a difference there's going to be 80% of those people that don't appreciate it along the way and that fucking sucks it really does suck and I'm not looking for a tinker tape parade or anything but just like I don't know don't pile on you know like don't make it fucking harder like I mean and and unfortunately but fortunately unfortunately and fortunately it fucking hurts but fortunately it teaches you a whole lot and I truly am bought into that mindset you know because DJ asked me you know we're together all the time and he you know he sees this a lot like he sees me do things yeah he knows all the secrets like he knows the things that I've done and then sees those people do those things that aren't good he's like why did fuck do you do that bro and I'm like well look at my life dude yeah like I'm doing something right so like I really don't want to fuck with the recipe like it's going well yeah well guys that was part one when you guys come back we're gonna finish up part two so stay tuned guys we'll be right back