https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpF4PaG0w6A&ab_channel=WealthyWayPodcast-RyanPineda


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on today's podcast i had alex and layla
hormozy on they are the owners of
acquisition.com portfolio of companies
doing over 100 million dollars a year in
revenue and we talked about how they go
about running their businesses um if you
don't know who they are they are social
media superstars and entrepreneurs alex
wrote a best-selling book on amazon's
got almost 5 000 reviews
they sold their company for almost 47
million dollars they're just doing a ton
of crazy stuff and in fact they are
literally the only people i watch on
social media because so much of what
they say is applicable to me whereas you
know most content you see is very
generic and you know i guess lower level
and so to hear the tactical things
they're doing in their businesses and
for their portfolio of companies is
really crazy and really interesting so i
think you're getting a ton of value out
of this episode now let's jump into it
welcome to the ryan pineda show
where our mission is to invest i only
expect to make money and things that i
understand innovative it's about
believing in the future and thinking
that the future will be better than the

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00:01:00.000 --> 00:02:00.000
past can inspire i am much more likely
to hit my goal just due to putting it
out there
you're now rocking with the best
what's going on everybody welcome to
another episode of the ryan pineda show
today i actually have our most requested
guest ever
alex is pointing at layla i have none
other than i'll just say the hormozys
what's up what's up thanks for having us
yeah it's good to see you yeah it's good
to see you guys um
you know you literally have been the
most requested guest and um it's funny
because i
don't really watch much content or
youtube and i came across alex's channel
when he first really started getting it
going i think around like 20 000 subs
and i was like dude this guy is super
smart like how does nobody like know
about him yet
and i was like i told a bunch of people
i was like go watch this guy's sales
training i've given it to my sales team
and everything
and you know sure enough started just
rolling and growing and then i found out

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00:02:00.000 --> 00:03:00.000
we shared um a similar guy with our tick
tocks and i was like oh dude like link
me up with this guy because it's great
and then you started producing content
too
and it was just like now i don't even
know six nine months later you guys have
exploded
yeah people find my stuff and then they
find layla stuff and then they stop
consuming my stuff
it's definitely different stages in the
journey in avatars yeah i would say
bigger companies in general probably
consume more of layla stuff uh because
i'd say like more of my stuff is
uh tends to be more promotional in
nature and like monetization pricing
strategy etc with probably some
elements of
viewpoints and perspectives that are
probably unique we were talking about
earlier but like layla's is so
like this is how you scale a company
and it's a lot of the stuff that people
don't know which is like how do you hire
how do you recruit how do you build
culture how do you incentivize how do
you build constructors how do you you
don't mean like all these other things
that are actually necessary to build a
company that people have no idea exist
and usually it's those bigger companies
that that are attracted to that type of
thing yeah when i watch alex's um i

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00:03:00.000 --> 00:04:00.000
think you talk very tactical and you
know everything's really great but you
also go a lot into philosophical things
right yeah
and whereas layla's like boom this is
how you do it
like what are you doing like this is
very much to the point here's how it
goes
yeah i think alex speaks a lot more to
entrepreneurs specifically i think his
content is like for someone who's an
up-and-coming entrepreneur or someone
who's aspiring to be an entrepreneur i
think like your content just like really
speaks to them mine is not that way and
that's because that's
not the nature of my role in the company
so i think i'm a lot more like the
ancillary roles around somebody like
alex yeah so for those people who don't
know you guys you want to give a quick
rundown of who you guys are
yeah uh so we are married we own
acquisition.com before that
six years ago we started a company
called gym launch which was where we
would fly around and do gym turn around
so kind of like gym rescue like bar
rescue we did that for a year and a half
we did 32 gym turnarounds in that period
of time and we realized it was a very

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difficult business to scale and so then
we flipped from doing an in-person
turnaround business to
licensing and that was when the business
really went from you know a few hundred
thousand dollars a month to a few
million dollars a month uh in a very
short period of time and so
um that business took off in
2018.
um
in 2019 we started our supplement
company prestige labs which sold through
that distribution base so we ended up
growing to over 4 500 locations that
licensed our materials for basically it
was a white label franchise that was
kind of the idea so how can we give
franchise level support but allow them
to keep their autonomy in their brand
for like a micro gym owner
and so
that was jim launch prestige labs was
the supplement company that was the
physical products arm behind that so
they could all stock their stuff and you
know we solved a lot of problems that
specifically gym owners were struggling
with which is what prestigious lodge was
was great for and give really really
competitive
affiliate commissions and so that was an
entirely affiliate-based company and
that company did really well
or still still does and then the third

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00:05:00.000 --> 00:06:00.000
company we started was allen which was a
software company
that solved the problem of working leads
and so most brick and mortar gym owners
get leads from marketing or running ads
whatever and they don't work the leads
and so it was like this huge issue for
acquisition for them and so we saw where
kind of chat was going we saw where
machine learning was going we figured we
could bridge that gap for them and we
ended up being able to double the amount
of leads that would show up on average
to a gym and then if we found out that
we actually used it on any brick and
mortar business and so that ended up
doing really well and so we exited all
three of those
last year so we exited the software
company in june of 2021 and then we
exited prestige labs and gym launch in
december of 2021 so we sold uh
two-thirds stake of gym launch and
prestige labs to apg which is a
private equity firm for 46.2 million and
then um and then we started doing
acquisition.com kind of at the same time
because that's what we kind of wanted to
do next so we started that
i think the first company we took on was

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in 2020 june of 2020 or may of 2020.
yeah you know it was let's take on one
or two which we know we could deliver
we could
do really well with without distracting
ourselves from the sale yeah but we
didn't want to actually full-on start
another company because our whole goal
was that we knew that we had split focus
you know we had started multiple
companies and we do really well with the
two of us on one company and so the goal
was to divest our majority interest in
those companies and then just full-on
focus on the new thing and there's so
many things that can happen when you
sell a company that we were like dude
we're not gonna full on start it until
we know that we've sold the other ones
yeah and i can attest to this because
i actually had your coo now ceo um reach
out to me it was pretty much like after
we had first talked maybe like what was
that six months ago or so
and um he was like hey you know i was a
baseball guy too you know i know you're
a baseball guy yeah kale
and i was like oh tight he's like yeah
you know i'm the ceo at gym launch and i

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was like oh dude i just talked to alex
for the first time like you know let's
link up and so we we got on a zoom um
and i had him get on a zoom with my ceo
for my education company i'm like how
are you guys getting customers at
gymlodge tell me how you're doing your
sales team and like he kind of explained
everything to us like he sat there for
an hour and like i was like wow there's
so many things we don't currently do
that
we can do so much better at
especially like on the outbound side
yeah that sounds great any outbound at
all oh that's super cool i didn't know
that you they linked up that's fine i
didn't know either he's a savage yeah
kill's a machine yeah he is a machine
well he's a baseball guy of course yeah
he's just like
you know it's funny because people like
oh you sold the company congratulations
you guys are amazing and i'm like dude
it was like we couldn't have done it
without maggie and kale yeah and so you
know because obviously anyone that's
buying if they want to see two founders
exit that have like the faces of the
company you have to have people who are
really strong to take their place and so
they're
great yeah why um what was the reason
for
selling two-thirds like why not sell the

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whole thing or keep the majority so we
believed that gym launch was i mean we
still do that jim lunch is going to be a
lot worth a lot more in the future than
it is today um and so we wanted to have
as much so the
i think if you if you zoom out the
question is what problem are we solving
and so for us the problem that we're
solving was not liquidity because you
know we've probably taken 45 million
dollars in distributions up to that
point from those two you know those
three companies up to that point so like
we had like we didn't need the money um
but it was much more we needed the
headspace and so we needed to not be
responsible for all of that stuff um and
that might have just been a story that
we're telling ourselves but at least we
because it was so inextricably linked
with
our faces leading into it i still kind
of had an identity that was attached to
it um and i probably could have done
like more
pondering and things like that to try
and work on it but like the shortcut was
we'll sell two thirds we'll still have a
big chunk of the business um
and we'll be able to do the thing that
we kind of wanted to do next which was
acquisition.com and if we if the if the
first two companies that we took on
weren't as successful

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as they have been i don't know if we
would have sold but the you know the
first two companies and uh well you know
all the companies don't run very well
but the first one first two that we've
had the longest have just really really
done well and so we're like all right
this is uh this is what we really want
to do and then you know we built
acquisition.com and so now that does
about 13 million a month between the
portfolio companies so explain to
everyone like what acquisition.com is
yeah so we work with internet businesses
typically i'd say the majority of our
businesses are e-learning and training
companies um as a whole it's probably 80
and then 20 are just i would say generic
service service-based businesses um and
that's at least the split that hasn't
been purposeful but that's been um what
it's been up to this point and uh you
know we know those spaces really well
and so minimum size is 3 million
i think the biggest company we have does
you know about 6 million a month and so
there's a big range there uh in terms of
size so you know on the small side it's
250 a month and it's on the high side
it's 200 000 a day
right
so it's a little bit different um but

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you know we just we've done that you
know 3 million to 30 million jump uh six
times now and so we just really know
what that looks like and so we look for
businesses that are right at that range
that have a good
uh leadership team that have really deep
expertise within
some sort of thing that they're teaching
because that's a big lever like how good
you are at the thing matters a lot now
we know the businessing around that to
really optimize and and scale it and
drive profitability and add acquisition
channels increase lifetime value
decrease turn all that kind of stuff
but um taking companies from 3 to 30
that are internet-based founder-led
businesses is kind of the bread and
butter and so that's what we do at
acquisition so
you know your target is to get a you
know business currently doing three
million maybe minimum minimum right
and you know obviously you get the
biggest return taking them from 3
million to 30 million plus right
so
selfishly i have a couple of companies
like that
in the um internet space so
what are the biggest bottlenecks you see
to go from three to thirty

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yeah yeah um
you know if i were uh
looking at i think to go from three to
thirty
first off as they're typically missing
they don't even have the completed first
layer of leadership and then in order to
get you need that in order to get to
usually 10 to 15 and then you're gonna
need that second layer of leadership in
order to get to 30. and so it's
typically building out you know to get
to 10 you usually need like one high
level executive
and then you need to fill out that like
manager level leadership team and then
in order to get to 30 you need to have
really both of those levels
so that's the first thing in terms of
people in terms of like the other pieces
of the business their product packaging
and pricing is usually not optimized at
all so typically we have to redo the
whole structure so all their offer
structure all the product all the
pricing all the packaging it's just not
optimized they don't typically they
don't they're under charging or they're
not charging for the right things they
don't know what's actually valuable to
the customer and so we help them figure
out what's the thing that's actually

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valuable to the customer and then who is
your freaking customer right because you
can say who it is but like who's
actually buying and who's actually like
in your facebook group or in your crm is
a different story um and then i would
say that the other two pieces to our
data so getting the data in place it's
really really tough to scale without
that and so getting them into a system
that
actually can that their team one wants
to use because it's one to get you on a
system but the second thing is you have
to get them on a system their team can
actually use easily and it has usually a
good interface
um so that's the third one and then i
would say that the last piece of that is
just scaling
the talent at the top which is the
culture which is the soft stuff that we
go over with them and honestly i think
helping that ceo and integrator
typically a duo that we work with um
just raise up in terms of their level of
leadership and the kind of culture that
they have because
i don't think that in the beginning they
realize how important it is and so we
reinforce that on day one from working
with them and so we really hammer home
like dialing what the culture is so that

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as we scale we don't lose that
right so it seems to me and i mean it
seems obvious just like talking about it
but like people like most people just
they don't have enough manpower yet
and
what do you see as like the biggest
needs for hiring like is it on the
marketing side is it on the sales side
depends wildly on the company yeah like
if you have a product driven
entrepreneur they probably have you know
really good product and innovation r d
things like that um maybe decent
customer success probably the tracking
is usually not in place and they usually
don't have a very clear customer journey
they're not you know measuring time to
value they're not you know actively
measuring nps or creating customer
health scores things like that that we
can have predictive metrics around how
we're going to drive you know lifetime
value
but they'll usually be better there than
they are on like the sales and marketing
front and so it's really just like where
do we feel like the constraint of the
system is and then just ruthlessly
prioritizing and attacking that and so
on the flip side if we have a very
promotion driven entrepreneur then it's
usually the back of the house that needs
to clean up and so you know for us
because we deal with the whole of the

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company um we attack at end end right
yeah it's funny i before this podcast i
had um this guy's name's kiala and
you know we're talking about internet
marketers right and most internet
marketers are great marketers great
promoters they suck at ops fulfillment
and then you know you get guys who are
really passionate about what they do and
they just don't want to talk about it
right we were talking about my you know
my buddy graham stefan who we partnered
with you know he's not the greatest
promoter you know but
great product right his product is his
content and what he's doing
so
i think it's cool to see that so
what would you say at least on the
marketing side right because you got
your book 100 million dollar offers
right which is all about marketing which
was a fantastic book for anyone who has
not read it yet go get it it's 99 cents
on amazon like you can't
you'd be dumb not to buy it right so
you know quick plug there but uh
you know in that marketing book
something that really hit home was all
these ways to market that i currently

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don't market right like
you know i learned to market on the
house whipping side by going direct to
seller right we would run tv commercials
direct mail cold call all that stuff but
when i went to the internet based
businesses i was like oh social media
this will carry me and it has to this
point
and then i've pretty much abandoned you
know affiliates
uh outbound anything like that
like what what do you see with all these
companies you guys evaluate and look at
as like
i guess the bread and butter with
internet
companies like further marketing
strategies
is there consistency or a
theme i would say i mean predominantly
most of them run
paid ads and have some sort of strong
organic or both that's i would say like
that's the majority of the companies
that that come to us not to say that
that's what we need them to do or what
we end up building with them but that's
that's where they're at usually when
they they meet with us
yeah i mean i would say that

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there's the companies we take on versus
the companies that inquire most the
companies that inquire have figured out
paid ads their product is usually not
honestly like to the point yet where
they figured out a really strong organic
stream we have some companies that we
take when we find those ones those are
usually some of the best because they
have a great product um but a lot of the
ones that inquire and are at that level
usually don't have the organic because
the product just isn't quite good enough
yet and so the granite ganec really
works against them
and then most of them just don't have
the operational
fortitude to do outbound and so they
might say like outbound like oh i run
ads and then they dm me and messenger
like that's not that's not out
and it takes you know eight months to
get outbound working so they tip it's
typically just something paid and it's
usually not on brand it's not aligned
with their culture you know there's a
lot of things it's not calling out the
right person so there's a lot of room
for
optimization yeah
we get a lot of gains just from just
filling in holes like the first year we
mostly just fill in holes and almost

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like by accident will triple the profit
of the company without even like really
putting the big stuff in place yet
yeah because it's interesting we like
you know we say between three and ten
because the thing is is that when you
take on a business and we have that are
bigger
it's very different it's fixing and
fixing yeah is taking something having
you're basically negative so it's like
when you take on someone between three
and ten they're at zero and you just
have to take them to ten when you take
on someone that's at 20 or 30 and
they're stuck you are starting from like
a negative eight and you're gonna take
them to negative four negative two zero
and so it's just it's a lot
easier to start fresh they've to give
more more words around it they have
incurred debt usually multiple types of
debt they've incurred cultural debt
they've incurred management debt they've
incurred technical debt in terms of
their their systems uh that they're
operating on and so we have to basically
pay down that debt before we can grow
again so like one of the companies we
had um we pretty much almost like
maintained for the first almost nine
months and then it tripled in the next
six months
and it was just like
orgstrucker move people around get these

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people out restructure this team fix the
compensation over here you know what i
mean just like all the all the stuff
that no one wants to talk about but like
that's what builds sellable businesses
that have true enterprise value right
if you're listening in this podcast then
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so when you guys are looking at
acquiring these companies are you only
looking for ones that people want to
sell
no

22
00:21:00.000 --> 00:22:00.000
go for it no we we align ourselves with
whatever the founder wants and so like
the way that we get you know make money
off of you know our investments we align
to make sure that whether they sell or
not that's one of the things that we
didn't why we're not like traditional
pes traditional pe is usually
incentivized to get someone to sell to a
specific buyer within a certain amount
of time against whatever the founder
wants usually they force them to and
they usually have like a drag along
right which means that they can force
them to sell we just never want to do
that because we're entrepreneur first
and so it's really aligning ourselves
with whatever that
that person wants which we make sure
that we figure out within the first two
weeks of working together
right right
so
what does a typical structure look like
right you know somebody comes in they're
like hey you know take a look at my
business and you guys do your due
diligence on it
like all right this looks interesting
you know you have a call
like
these deals being struck i've heard you
say in the past you know you only want
minority stakes right because you want
them to
you know lead the charge yeah so
is a lot of this just you guys buying

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into the company or you just giving you
equity for your expertise like how's all
that playing out it's a combination it
you know it's a case-by-case basis we
have some companies that we have put
cash in we have companies that we
haven't put cash in um the big thing is
like what problem are we solving and so
i'd say the vast majority of the
companies that we are working with are
internet-based companies they are
growing they are profitable they have
cash flow and so usually the founders
like
they wouldn't if we were to
appropriately value the company it's
usually not actually valuable because no
one would really buy it because the
founder could never actually step away
so it's really just them with a thousand
hands you know what i mean and so the
valuation would be really low and for
most of them they don't need the cash
they need the expertise and so for the
majority of the situations it ends up
just being cool we'll take a meaningful
enough stake that
that we care but not so much so that you
stop caring yeah yeah you know i mean so
it's really trying to strike that
balance and then um you know we have
incentives for us to try and like triple
the company within five years and that's
like our big you know goal that we drive
towards but because we're minority
partners um it's basically like
everything kicks in after we triple um

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and so that's kind of like what we drive
towards uh with those companies so we
get a percentage of cash flow and we
have you know some profits interests are
like equity-like um arrangements from
the company so that if they you know if
they choose to sell in that period of
time you know we're incentivized there
but because of the combination of cash
flow and um
profit interests which is just a fancy
word for equity-like stuff for anyone
who's listening um
we are we are balanced in our incentive
between holding and selling whereas if
we were like just equity then we would
be over indexed on just trying to sell
basically as fast as we can and get a
big multiple on it yeah but most the
founders that we're dealing with that
are approaching us are like i really
want to take this thing the next level
they're 100 motivated to do it um and
they just want more help to get there
faster make fewer mistakes got it
so
what do you guys think about
just the different options for
you know having this um
exit event you know it seems like you
know you guys obviously sold um
why not go public or something like that
for acquisition.com or for those
companies for say gym launch like why

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00:24:00.000 --> 00:25:00.000
why not take gym launch public when you
guys were doing it i think again it's
it's what problem you're solving for
taking it public would have again
would have been the one taking right
like and we just knew you know
for a lot of people they're building
something and it's the right foundation
to build more upon like i think you're
doing that right it's like you built the
one company that's now building other
companies right when we looked at gym
launch we said could this build what we
want to build within acquisition.com and
the answer was
not eloquently like it would actually be
complicated because everything was
geared towards fitness and so we could
build a fitness version of
acquisition.com within gym launch and we
could you know take companies public and
do all those things there but we were
like do we want to be
you know isolated to fitness and the
answer was no we already weren't
isolated to fitness in the companies
that we were working with we didn't want
to continue to go further into that
niche because we have other businesses
that we have expertise in and so we
didn't want to isolate ourselves to that
yeah and so ultimately it was like we
could take it public we could do all
these things
we just felt like we were going further
down a path that wasn't the path we want

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to go down right that makes sense so i
mean obviously while you guys were
building gym launch acquisition.com came
up as this idea and vision
so
like what gave you guys the motivation
to want to go about that route
well we had one guy who somehow like
found his way on my calendar is it's
kind of funny um and uh you know in the
first five seconds he was like okay i'm
really sorry i lied to get on your
calendar and normally i'd be like all
right that's not you know good um but
he's like i promise it'll be worth your
time like all right and so um he gave me
his pitch and he he had done he had
taken uh you know a brick-and-mortar
facility uh from you know a few hundred
thousand a year like 1.6 million a year
just using like all the free content
that we had put out just for the gym
space so he'd been like super following
stuff for a long time
and he'd been doing that for a few years
and uh he's like i really want to take
this thing and do what you did with jim
launch in my niche and
it just ended up working out so well um
with that particular founder and his
wife that
it was like i loved doing it so much and

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i really enjoyed being able to just like
solve so many problems ahead of time
that we had you know struggled to figure
out and so the line of growth on that
company is faster bigger more profitable
than jim launch was you know what i mean
and so i was like man let's do like and
that's where i think the the fire kind
of lit within both of us were like this
is what i really want to do
um and we you know we've been in fitness
for 10 years and so we just
we knew we could build a fitness
conglomerate um and just do m a and
start you know buying franchises and
buying chains of gyms and buying
marketing agencies and things like that
within that space buying fitness
coaching companies whatever um but it's
just
and that would have 100 been a great
path to wealth or more wealth it just
wasn't the path that we felt like doing
and you know i think i talk about this
from my world views a lot but like
you know the marginal utility of money
beyond a certain point you know
decreases and so
um
we wanted to do different things yeah no
that makes 100 sense
so
you know you guys plan to do
acquisition.com for a long time
is there any plans to sell it at one

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point or
no we um you know obviously any good
business could be sold at any point in
time is kind of the way we look at it
but right we set it from day one we
don't want to sell acquisition.com we
want it to be the foundation that we can
build other things upon
so what we're doing right now with it
you know like we're talking about the
types of businesses that we're taking on
right now that's for the first pod of
you know say
i don't know anywhere between 15 to 25
businesses and we'll cap it and then we
might say that we're going to open a pod
that's for sas or e-commerce or you know
what i'm saying and so there's variety
there there's different routes that we
can take in terms of maybe we decide to
buy companies outright one day i mean
there's a lot of different stuff we can
do and
it feels like it would be a shame to
then get rid of the machine that builds
the machine right which is really what
we wanted to build
so i could see us spinning up other
things under acquisition.com and selling
those off for sure i just don't think
that we want to sell acquisition.com
yeah so we don't want to sell the goose
we want to sell the eggs if we're ever
you know going to do the exit path but
no for us it's
you know there was there were a number
of assumptions that had to be true for
us to kind of hit what we wanted to do

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and so i was like we have to be more
popular in the future than we are today
we have to invest in businesses where
the marketplace is growing faster than
the s p 500
we have to believe that we can
meaningfully drive value to those
particular companies and we have to uh
do business with people that uh that we
think are exemplary and that's both
internal and external to the company so
if those four things are true then we
will be able to you know realize this
vision and so that's more or less been
kind of the assumptions that that
everything acquisition.com was built off
of yeah so i the way i look at it is
like you guys are creating kind of like
a blackstone where you're gonna have all
these companies that you guys own so do
you plan to maybe take acquisition.com
public to get the funding needed to buy
all these companies like down the road
did you scale or what's the plan for
that there's i mean we've we've uh we've
had plenty of discussions about it i
mean yeah i like there's there's things
that i do like about the going public
part which is just you know all of a
sudden your equity is is liquid and you
can you can issue shares and you can you
know have access to debt markets and
things like that which i think are cool
but there's also a lot of headaches

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associated with being public and so
uh i think we lean more towards just
keeping it private this whole time um
and if we want to do something we can in
the future but like because of the
audience size that we have you know if
you look at like we were talking about
graham stefan and grant cardone earlier
um
if we were to do something i'd rather
just raise funds from the audience and
allow them to participate in the in the
stuff that we do because i feel like
that would be like way cooler
yeah
something more what we would like to do
is like you know eventually with say not
maybe not the companies we have right
now but a specified pod we say we're
gonna grow this pod with the intention
that uh one day we can say all right we
have now five years of returns that we
can say this is our return for the last
five years and they're fantastic now i
feel like ethically i could take someone
else's money and say hey what if we
bought the other x percent of all these
companies in this pod which we've
already grown from day one so like
what's the likelihood that we're going
to continue to succeed with these
companies so it's like stacking the in
the deck you know the stacking the deck
in our favor so you know from a
diligence perspective it's not like okay

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00:30:00.000 --> 00:31:00.000
we've got this company it looks really
interesting we already know right it's
like we've been doing this for five
years we've already you know 5x the
profit of this business and we know what
the next you know 5x looks like and so
yeah so we might take this piece and
then the fun takes this piece and then
we still have majority now in the
company so we can you know drive the
direction even more yeah no i freaking i
love that idea that's super smart
so
let's talk about how you even get these
businesses to come to you so you know
social media has been something that's
drastically changed um you know the
world period and business owners as a
whole right like
it's like dude if you're not on social
media
you know it's like does anyone know
about your business right like that's
just what it seems like and
you both recently came on the scene like
you know going full force
what was the catalyst behind that
yeah so
i figured with this company you know in
contrast to some of the other companies
we've had in the past it had to be
something that was inbound and so like
true inbound like i would like i would

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00:31:00.000 --> 00:32:00.000
say paid ads is like in between you know
inbound and outbound um but like i
didn't want to build a company where
we're soliciting people saying hey we're
going to help you grow your business you
don't know who we are
um and by the way you know we're going
to you know buy in for a manure it's
just like you know there wouldn't be
trust there's just a lot of things that
would be missing so i figured that this
company would make the most sense to
build off of
an organic inbound you know following
and i didn't have one and so i was like
okay well you know looking at grant and
what he did with uh with his fund and
whatnot i was like all right well real
estate's not my game um but you know i
feel pretty confident that you know high
cash flow digital businesses are our
game and so
if if that's what we're going to do in
10 years
then uh
start today you know that was kind of
the thought process a year and a half
ago
yeah and honestly looking at like
because we both you know we're ideating
about this business
the how you bring in customers affects
the entire business and so
even like looking at the kind of talent
that you can acquire when you have like
a very volatile acquisition strategy
you're not going to acquire the same

33
00:32:00.000 --> 00:33:00.000
kind of talent you can if you have a
very stable
reliable acquisition strategy and so we
know that if we can build this moat
which maybe it takes a lot longer to
build that's okay
it's still worth building because of the
kind of business that we can build
underneath that yeah
and i agree like most of my customers
have been all organic inbound and so
like even when things aren't necessarily
going well like if you know they don't
get the service that they were hoping
for or something happens they're not
immediately like oh you know
bad review scams are like hey like i get
it you know they're much just more easy
going than somebody that you had to do a
hard sell on to buy your product
yeah and i think by the nature of what
we do you know it's
investing and partnering with people
it's not even like i mean we talk to the
founders of the company every day pretty
much all of them um and so i think it's
it's just a very different it sets the
relationship up for success this way
rather than if it were paid or outbound
i just don't think that we'd be set up
for success and i don't think we'd be
able to have as much influence in those

34
00:33:00.000 --> 00:34:00.000
companies as we do now and so i think it
would be disadvantageous for them and us
and it's a and because our relationship
is a minority's sake it's much more
based on trust and influence because
like we don't we don't have majority so
like we can't force someone to do
something and so we have to have people
who share our values and like trust us
and if we're like hey we really think
you should make this move and it might
seem scary but they're like all right i
trust these people i'm going to do it.
and that happens honestly all the time
yeah because of just all of the content
and value you've put out there it's like
yeah if you tell me to do this i already
believe you you don't need to sell me on
doing it yeah yeah trust is a um a
lubricant for doing business things
happen a lot faster yeah
there you go so
i mean obviously you guys are putting
out amazing content like
how much of your time do you think you
spend on the content side versus like
the me or the business
side it's different between both of us
so you can answer for yourself first
i would say um i mean the vast majority
of our time is on the business and the
businesses that we have in the portfolio

35
00:34:00.000 --> 00:35:00.000
um
we've been pretty good you know caleb's
here behind the camera um
we've been pretty good about capturing
uh way more of the stuff we've been
doing and so i think that's dramatically
cut down we were talking about this
earlier on the actual amount of like
direct to camera type stuff um but like
for me the youtube channel i make you
know two to three videos a week which
ends up being me usually like one day
every two weeks i'll just knock out you
know four to six videos and um beyond
that i use twitter a lot
and that's kind of like where i test my
short it's really just like stream of
consciousness
and then that
based on what people you know find
interesting there that's usually what
what seeds the short form video content
and uh we can i you know we knock those
out pretty quickly um because those are
i don't know those are easy for me to do
because i made ads for so long they have
similar like pace you know to like an
advertisement and so um we enjoy doing
that but besides that it's really just
we have the long-form videos with the
short form videos and we've got tweets
and that's um that's the majority of
what we do and you know tweets get

36
00:35:00.000 --> 00:36:00.000
repurposed as um as instagram posts as
well and
that's i mean that's the that's that's
it you know i mean that's that's
everything
sounds so simple what about you yeah i
mean same stuff but i think
i know what you know with
acquisition.com being new
it's not it would be irresponsible for
me to prioritize making content over
getting the infrastructure in place like
we're heavily investing in talent and
hiring and getting the you know
structure in place to scale and so that
because that's my role in the company
like i i actually realized today i was
like oh like i haven't made a
youtube video in like three weeks and so
and i told our youtube guys then
beginning he's like you're gonna do it
alex does he does three times a week and
i was like i'm done doing three things
i was like i'll do like maybe one week
and then he'll be like dude we don't
have one this week i'm like yeah i don't
care
because it's irresponsible you know what
i mean because yeah i'm just always
gonna be more internal facing and so
actually that's when you know when i
said i really do want to make the
content because i think it'll help the
companies and help
them be more well-rounded if they both
of our perspectives but i was like i
cannot do direct to camera it's not
scalable and so i was listening gary vee

37
00:36:00.000 --> 00:37:00.000
and he had this one line where he just
said dude i'm an operator he's like you
don't get it i spent 99 my time on my
businesses and i was like i'm an
operator and i was like i need someone
to capture rather than me creating and
that was when we really had the
conversations of like because i kind of
came to i was like dude i can't how are
you doing this seems like i don't think
i can either anymore so we were like
i've come to that conclusion too you
know yeah for the last two years i've
been
like all right i'm focused on building
this media business and
you know it is a business right so like
making this content and everything and
now i've come to the conclusion i'm like
yep you know what i'm just filming like
me doing business and that's the content
now that's just way easier like you
don't have to like dedicate time to go
film it's really live videos yeah and
it's realer you know people people like
i really wish i knew what like your day
looks like it's like well this is what
it looks like now yeah so we're putting
more and more of that kind of stuff out
there which is cool it's like either
you're telling them what you just did or
you're just doing it in front of a
camera so so what's your advice to these
founders like who want to get better at
organic right you were talking about how
most of them already got paid media
figured out and they're like oh we want

38
00:37:00.000 --> 00:38:00.000
to get organic and they're like that's
why they're coming to you because
they're like you know you guys you know
came out of nowhere and now your organic
is so strong what do you give them as
advice
yeah i would say first nobody comes to
us and says we want to do organic like
you guys and they actually all know
that's not typically a priority for
where they're at in business it's really
not for most of them um so that's the
first thing i'll say
and the second thing that i will say or
that she will say that i will say after
her um
is that a lot of things is sequence in
the business and so usually zero to
three million ish you know is product
market fit so the whole objective of
that phase in the business is just do
people want to buy what you are selling
right um and so it's like okay you have
made some sales and the mistake that
most people make is they think okay well
marketing got me here i should market
more and that's usually not the case
usually now it's like okay we've proven
product market fit but we are not
getting any referrals we're not getting
a lot of word of mouth and unless we
clean up all the back end and increase
customer lifetime value
put put all the infrastructure in place
so that we can get more ascensions build

39
00:38:00.000 --> 00:39:00.000
it back you know all the other things
that are required to really create an
exceptional customer experience
you become a only marketing company and
then it becomes very difficult to scale
past maybe 10-ish million because you
have so many people falling out the back
that you just like every month you have
to sell twice as many as you did the
month before just to stay the same and
so you know for us it's like okay
zero to three you got your product
market fit you know three to ten we have
to clean up the back end and usually
just by cleaning up the back and without
even increasing the uh sales velocity or
number of units sold per month we can
still triple the business just by
massively increasing how much each
customer is worth to us and how many
customers those customers bring to us
and then at that point now that we've
expanded ltv expanded gross profit
margins etc and the infrastructure to
scale
then we have these new metrics we can go
and attack new acquisition channels and
be inefficient at scale because we have
so much margin that we can work with
right
so
talking about churn
you know in a lot of e-learning
many people buy say a mastermind right
or something and

40
00:39:00.000 --> 00:40:00.000
they they go into it knowing that like
oh you know what i'll do it for a year
and then i'll try a different mastermind
after that right like typical
somebody's attitude if they want to go
learn something
how do you keep that from happening you
mean leave
yeah stop them from leaving
so it depends on because there's you
know levels there's you know courses
there's coaching programs there's
masterminds things like that um
we have to separate out the consumables
from the one-time purchase so like
education for example is a one-time
purchase and information decreases in
value precipitously over time the day
before you learn something it's much
more valuable than day after you learn
it right
and so that's where having information
only becomes very difficult from a
continuity perspective
the things that are consumable that
people can use month in without are
accountability they can use tech support
they can use a community so those are
all things that people can consume on a
consistent basis from a
from from increasing the stick you know
if we increase the quality of the
community overall and if we can up

41
00:40:00.000 --> 00:41:00.000
appropriately adjust the price to match
the value or be less than the value that
they're receiving over time so it's not
uncommon to see a year one price be
higher than a year two price because the
value diminishes once you have access to
the network and then the new value
that's being consistently delivered is
the new people who enter the network
and the new information that comes you
know that gets put into the programs and
the trainings and things like that and
so but that might be less than the
learning of the initial skill and so
it's really finding that sweet spot
where we can keep the customers and make
sure that we're pricing based on the
consumable not on the one time thing
yeah that's exactly what i figured out
what future flipper was you know at
first people would do it for a year
they'd be like okay i learned what i
wanted to learn and like that was good
but then we realized like man people
stay for the community like you said the
network the accountability you know the
camaraderie of just coming to an event
every quarter and they love it and you
know to make it even sweeter i did
exactly what you said was i i cut the
second year

42
00:41:00.000 --> 00:42:00.000
price in half
and i just said hey you know it's half
the price and
you know it'll be that price as long as
you want to stay and like our retention
skyrocketed just from doing all of those
things yeah yeah if you think about it
really like when people are
if you look at like anything customer
success they always put like basically
it's results and experience and so it's
just like understanding that most i
think in this space typically like
e-learning masterminds they have the
results there which like you're getting
the network you're getting the
information you're getting all this but
they actually forget about the
experience which is like did you set
expectations properly with the person of
what they're going to get even because
some people join for network for some
join for the education and then did you
onboard them well and then what's you
how often are you talking to them are
you proactive with your communication
and so a lot of people actually look at
jim launch and they say oh it's a
digital you know uh information business
i'm like dude we had a 40-person support
team you know because we were so focused
on the experience like every time
someone had a baby a wedding a birthday
a holiday like their first trip they
made a certain amount of money it's like
we're constantly pouring into them and i
think that's the intangible stuff that
people don't believe because they have

43
00:42:00.000 --> 00:43:00.000
relationships and so i think the
relationships and the feeling that you
give those people is
longer lasting than the education all in
all because people are loyal to a person
not necessarily to a thing right and one
of the points that layla made there i'll
just zoom in on real quick which is um
asking people why they're joining sounds
really simple and obvious but people are
solving different problems when they're
buying the same thing and so having a
personalized experience for how they're
going to consume the product in the
service at the onset giving kind of like
a unique roadmap is one of those things
that will dramatically enhance the value
that they're receiving from the program
because usually most people deliver way
more stuff than someone can consume and
so it's like okay how can i give you the
shortest path to getting the value that
you want the way you want to receive it
and so like that's a huge part and then
you know some of the other cool things
is using that network effect that you
have a for the network but also for
group purchasing power so if you let's
say let's say just for math sake let's
say your first year was twelve thousand
dollars in your second year six thousand
dollars if you have a group of 200
entrepreneurs or 500 entrepreneurs who

44
00:43:00.000 --> 00:44:00.000
are in this network we have a huge
amount of buying power and so there's
normally services and products and
things like that that everybody probably
frequents that may or may not be yours
you know that you own and so you can
bundle in the savings from the group
purchasing power to be in excess of the
absolute cost of the mastermind and then
it becomes a savings to be a part of the
association or whatever and so there's
like ways that you can stack the value
that makes it just
so irresistible and such a no-brainer
for people to stay that they're like
well yeah i mean it makes i'd feel
stupid to say no right and then that's
the idea
as the world starts to go more digital
you need to be aware which businesses
are going to thrive in the future one of
the obvious ones is e-commerce in fact
last year e-commerce sales did over 4
trillion dollars globally and it's
continuing to grow now if you're like
most people you probably don't have time
to learn a whole new industry and start
a new business but there is another way
you can partner with us at lunar ecom we
have over 300 e-commerce stores that we
have created and managed for our clients

45
00:44:00.000 --> 00:45:00.000
and the best part is it's completely
passive on their end the business model
is very simple you cover the cost of
creating and running the store we handle
everything else we pick the products we
handle fulfillment returns and customer
satisfaction after all that we split
profits at the end of the month this
means that when you win we win if you
want to learn more about how it works
you can watch our case study at
lunarecom.com i believe that the
e-commerce space is going to continue to
explode as the world goes digital so
make sure you're with the right partner
who's going to be ahead of those trends
so go schedule a call with my team today
at lunarecom.com
if you want to learn about how we can
start taking your passive income to the
moon
most people want to get rich at all
costs they make sacrifices with their
family their health and their faith all
in the pursuit of money without even
realizing it but what if i told you it
doesn't have to be that way what if you
could grow your wealth in all areas of
life well it's possible and that's why i

46
00:45:00.000 --> 00:46:00.000
created the wealthy way it's a community
of people striving to grow together in
all areas and we have multiple tools for
you to use that are completely free you
can get access to the wealthy way
planner where you can set goals and hold
yourself accountable on a daily basis we
also have our wealthbuilder academy
which is over four hours of content
teaching you how to manage your time
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biggest secrets i've used to grow my
life not only in my net worth but in all
aspects lastly we have our discord
community where thousands of wealth
builders are all over the world
encouraging one another and growing
together and once again all of this is
completely free there are no upsells
there are no hidden catches for me this
is a passion project and i want to build
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you want to start living the wealthy way
today go to wealthyway.com
there you can get all the free resources
like the course planner and discord
community so go to wealthyway.com yeah
so speaking of you know you referenced
your book
subtitle there you know offers what

47
00:46:00.000 --> 00:47:00.000
what's the subtitle offers how to make
offers yeah how to make authors so good
people feel stupid saying no yeah so you
know we talked about the book earlier
and just like all the different ways to
market and i know you're coming out with
a whole series of books and
everything else and the next one's about
um generating is the leads
and
you know you've talked about how it's
it's taking a while with all the
revisions and everything else and
it's been a beast it's been a headache
and i remember i actually asked you man
this was maybe like four or five i go
hey you know how are you publishing them
and you're like just on amazon kindle i
was like really i was like who's writing
them he's like i am i was like what
about her you're like i'm just doing it
i'm like holy crap dude to do all of
that
like i wrote i wrote my one book right
over there and that was like four years
ago i was like i don't think i could
ever do that again that was so difficult
to like write it on my own
yeah yeah it's tough
but alice didn't write his first book
even thinking he was going to publish it
like i don't think people realize that

48
00:47:00.000 --> 00:48:00.000
like he was literally writing and he's
like i don't know if i'm going to do
anything with this like i just don't i
think i'm just writing it for myself
he's like we could actually use it with
the companies it'll be like a manual
that's exactly what he was interested in
today and so
then fine it was like one day he woke up
in the morning and he had said like oh
if if i'm gonna pull i'll do it you know
if i'm gonna publish it maybe i'll do it
in like a few months
and then i kept telling him i was like
well if the thing is good enough which
i've read it like probably six times by
this point i'm like it is fantastic like
it's going to blow up like you don't
need to do anything and he was like and
then one day you woke up and you were
like i put it on i put it on instagram
and it's
amazon instagram he was like yeah i was
like what the i was like i don't
even know where to log in to like you
know make sure the shit's going well and
stuff and so there's a little bit of
 show but it you know he made one
post
and
no marketing no other posts about it
nothing just it just literally went
viral off word of mouth i mean it was
insane people don't believe us they're
like you had to pump something i'm like
he didn't pump but people just
aren't used to actually like the how

49
00:48:00.000 --> 00:49:00.000
much time he puts into writing
like i am not somebody that gets
bothered by how much somebody works but
like when he gets in the writing mode
where it's like weeks on weeks of like
right i'm like hello are you hungry are
you thirsty like are you are you
shriveling raisin in there you know he's
in this closet yeah go in your closet
and just yeah turn off the light he's so
dedicated to it and it's because he
genuinely loves writing yeah
and i
like the books like books are very
special to me because like i've learned
a lot from you know reading and um like
if you think about like when people die
the only thing that's left is like books
like the only thing that has like stayed
for two thousand five thousand years is
like written word and so i think there's
something magical about that and so
um that's what i you know i spend a lot
of time trying to make it really really
good and i think there's a big
difference between like publishing a
book and publishing a great book and
there's just a mountain more of work
with like you know i mean like there's
probably 20 of the work is publishing a
book compared to
you know publishing a book that
the product the value that people get is
so far in excess of what they pay that
they tell their friends about it and so
like if you can if you can achieve that
ratio then then the product takes off

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and then it continues like it becomes
its own marketing yeah and so that was
that was the goal for the book and you
know when i told layla that i was like i
don't know if i want to promote it
because either it's good enough that it
will promote itself right why would i
promote it because if people aren't
telling their friends that it's good
then why would i want anyone else to
read it right 100
and i think the thing you did that was
genius was you made it a dollar like
you know like the virality of that you
haven't seen
many people do that right because like
they spent so much time and money to get
a book out there and to do the launch
and you know if they paid a ghostwriter
and all this stuff and it's like to sell
it for that
you know it's like well what do i have
to lose like i might as well read it and
then like it just
it's kind of like it made me realize too
that a book is pretty much just like
content and you know we make content for
free we we don't charge people to watch
our youtube videos and stuff and i was
like yeah that makes it like why not try
it as a book and so watching what you
did with that and obviously even if it

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was a dollar and it sucked nobody would
watch it or nobody would share it right
so it was just like
you got nothing to lose by buying this
and just reading it other than your time
and um
dude it's just it's crazy like how viral
it's going because i read it when it
maybe had a couple hundred reviews and
then i was looking at it before i was
like this thing's got like 5 000 reviews
now what's going on here yeah it's crazy
yeah it's been pretty cool i'm very
excited about it yeah it comes up on one
year in
july yeah so you know hopefully we can
get fifty five hundred maybe six
thousand the first year which would be
crazy because there's anything about
like you know what does it look like you
know 20 years from now are there gonna
be like 120 000 reviews right which
would be pretty cool uh so but like you
know to your point about the pricing
thing it's
like i priced it there because like what
was the objective of the book the
objective of the book is that it gets
shared and that many people consume it
the objective is not like for me to make
an extra you know twenty thousand
dollars a month two bucks a book yeah
like i just you know and amazon takes 66
of the of the 99 like it really like
yeah
in the book yeah we we said we want to

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be able to basically
you know anything we put out there
that's education or information we just
like decided like our brand like it's
just what we want all of it to be for
free so we don't want to make people pay
for anything we don't want to ever sell
anything
it's just not that's not how we want to
make our money yeah we i mean we just
make our money doing the stuff you know
what i mean and so we wanted to just
teach as many like the business model
was simple it's just okay
we really do do this stuff and why don't
we just help as many people as humanly
possible knowing that 99.9 will never
work with us and never give us a dollar
and that's fine and then of the people
who are super executors because they can
take the stuff without hand holding and
get themselves to 3 million 5 million
you know 8 million 10 million a year and
then they're like dude i used all the
stuff i got past this level
now like i trust you because i used your
stuff and it worked so now i know the
next thing's gonna work and then it just
makes it for such a better process of
finding alignment getting the right
partners and so it's just big picture i
don't want to sell more like 10 000
things you know i want to i want to just
find partners that were in it for 10

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years and build something really cool do
you ever see yourself starting i know
you're not going to charge for education
but do you ever see yourself starting
like a mastermind for high-level
entrepreneurs no
no
that was actually i'm sorry no i mean i
feel strongly against that yeah but even
if you didn't charge like just
i don't know as a networking type deal i
think we thought about doing like an
event yeah you know like a mosey nation
event or doing a community on like
discord or something like that so like
we're trying to think of different ways
did he tell you to do discord yeah yeah
yeah yeah and putting it together as we
speak i uh i have two discords right now
okay oh yeah so they have about 15 000
in them all right and uh
discord is interesting because it's like
24 7. yeah and it's just like non-stop
people are just always talking always
coming it's it's different than a
facebook group where it's like you gotta
make a post and somebody might comment
somebody might it's like a 24 7 chat
room yeah yeah that's crazy i mean
yeah i could see us doing something like
that um it's just what's the objective

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you know i mean like for us the
objective is to i mean the mission of
the company is to document and share the
best practices of building world-class
companies and so we do that by building
world-class companies and documenting it
and then we share it and the key point
of sharing is like we share it so that
everybody can have it and i just
in my bones believe that the only thing
that makes the world better is
entrepreneurial businesses and so the
more business owners we can equip with
the skills and lessons that you know
were very difficult and painful for us
to learn then the more good businesses
will be out there and even if none of
them ever work with us like we'll die
and it won't matter and it's okay and
we're happy to just help people out and
that's we're good with that 100 so how
is it
you know working together i mean you
guys seem like you're just yin and yang
like you know it just works so well just
watching it from here
does work well it does work pretty well
honestly yeah i mean
it's a tough one because we met and we
started working together so quickly and
it's not for
i would say like 99.9 of couples and i

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think also
a lot of couples aren't going to work as
well together as we do because i think
that we just naturally
you know like i've always been kind of
in this position with anyone that i've
worked with like the integrator to a
visionary um and alex is naturally a
visionary and so i think
we met and we both had we had
complimentary skill sets and it was the
right timing and we started doing it
from day one and we're both really
coachable and we both take ownership
over our and don't blame each other
and so
i think just who we were we're lucky
that we found each other and it worked
so well um
but working together is great we love it
do you guys ever like
how do you split like between business
and your relationship or is it all just
flowing together all the time
it flows together i mean i would i mean
there are there are moments where you're
like hey husband hat or hey wife hat you
know like
and you need to like clearly delineate
but most of the times like the things
that we enjoy talking about

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are the things that we're building
together you know what i mean so in a
lot of ways we're talking earlier like
the businesses that we build are a lot
like our kids they're the things that
we're bringing into this world and we're
raising them and you know fostering them
and whatnot and so like that's that's
what we enjoy and we've always kind of
decried the black and white
you know you have to have one date night
you cannot talk about business you have
to you should you must blah blah um
i think you can do whatever you want and
this is like this is the life that we
like and this is the marriage that we do
marriage the way we in the way we
envision marriage and it works within
our dynamic
and that's all we know and so you know
for people who have similar mission
values and you know lifestyles then i
think those are the three things that
for us have to be in alignment for any
kind of long-term partnership it's like
you got to want to do the same epic
thing you have to want to get there the
same way and then the lifestyle is like
how you do it in the meantime
yeah and i think you know what people
i'll say this which is what people see
in terms of like us in the business
setting and working together and doing
all that like
we actually do i have always
intentionally like tried not to because

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i actually it was a pattern when we had
gym launch which is i don't want to show
like husband and wife alex and layla in
front of our team because i don't want
them to that to detract or distract from
business and so like how we are in
private when we're not in front of other
people is very different than how we are
in front of people too and that like so
we're super playful okay super funny
playful tons of humor we drove around a
lot light-hearted you know very
touchy you know like that's one thing
that like i actually when we had the
company i was like oh like i just
because you go just touch your spouse
but in front of the team to like be
hugging and doing all that while you're
leading it quarterly yeah like that's a
little weird
i try
we we've kind of trained ourselves not
to do that front of other people and if
anything he's like no like unified front
it's just like i mean she's like i would
imagine it's just like parenting right i
mean i don't have kids but i would
imagine it's just like parenting unified
front like we don't disagree publicly if
there's ever anything like if there is
anything we're like hey after the
meeting
yeah like i thought we were not doing
that
yeah where did that come from
oh i thought you were talking about this

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00:57:00.000 --> 00:58:00.000
like ooh my bad i'll let them know in
slack no big deal you know what i mean
yeah just being sensitive to other
people in the room you know i think
especially like so many people are
hesitant to work for a husband and wife
duo because they're worried like about
the stability of the relationship and
how you disagree and how you solve
arguments all that stuff and the last
thing we ever want to do is bring any
any sort of personal element in like in
front of our team besides i would say
our intermediate team which is like you
know caleb who does video he's going to
see us together like in our own element
and same with our eas but besides that
nobody really sees got it got it so with
all these businesses you're buying
how do you factor in like the economy
because i've heard you talk about this
on on your videos talking about like the
vehicle at which you know you're in
right like if you're you got a ship
that's got a lot of wind behind it it's
way easier to go with that right and so
we see the economy doing
whatever it's going to do how do you
guys navigate this
so i will take this um
so one is what's the marketplace we're
going after so the marketplace that
we're going after is e-learning which as
a category is is set to two and a half x

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over the next five years now compared to
like any anything else that's great
growth so from uh like the wind behind
the sales perspective we've got that
um and you know i think a big part of
that is because uh formal education is
being disrupted i think because a lot of
people are looking or seeking out
alternative education sources to make
money right because
and this is not me decrying or saying
college is bad it's just that a lot of
people can't afford to spend four years
and a hundred thousand dollars and not
make money for that period of time to
then make the same amount of money that
they could just
not doing that experience and so like
the opportunity cost is massive and so
if we could
and so i'll say it differently is that
the demand for income producing skills
has not gone away the supply of formal
the formal supply of it has and so they
are seeking out alternatives and so that
is why that market is growing so number
one is that number two is that in a you
know bad uh economy future especially an
inflationary environment businesses that
have uh low capital expenses and uh high
cash flow um tend to be businesses that

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fare better because there's easier
pricing power and because you don't have
to you know put capital back into the
business to expand it
it's easier to those businesses are more
flexible and so the types of businesses
that we work with are by nature low
capital expense businesses high cash
flow and um and so for those reasons we
feel really well equipped for you know
an inflationary period that might come
in the future um you know everybody you
know
everybody has a plan until you get in
the face but uh we feel as far as as far
as we can see we feel pretty good
because
things have to go on and so it's like
okay well if we can mitigate these risks
at least then we can trudge forward and
deal with things as they come
yeah i mean it it comes down to their
very flexible businesses and so if you
have a flexible infrastructure and you
have a flexible model and these aren't
businesses with huge capital
expenditures and giant buildings and
real estate all over the freaking world
it's not going to be that hard to pivot
and honestly like during covid we had to
pivot all three of our businesses
was it easy no it was a pain in the ass

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but did we do it yes and it was
something that made the companies better
off and so we factor that in when we're
looking at the entrepreneur and are they
the kind of person that could you know
do well in economic downturn and then
the company as well and most people in
an economic downturn like the demand
again for income producing skills does
not go away right the demand for you
know other things that are like nice
things uh might decrease but like when
there is no money the demand for money
is just as high if not higher and so i
don't and many of the businesses that we
have teach kind of niched income
producing skills so it might be you know
how to fix a hair salon how to be a
plumber how to whatever um and so those
are those are i think always going to be
in demand yeah second to that is we do
try to pick people that we believe are
market leaders or could be market
leaders yeah that's a big one so we're
not looking at people that are
distressed or that we don't think have
the potential to take over their
specific niche and so typically in an
economic downturn the market leader
survives and so we we felt confident
that those people could do that
right

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01:01:00.000 --> 01:02:00.000
when you guys look at these different
businesses you know
you're talking about market leaders and
um you know as far as in the space and
generating revenue and everything
but you know like a lot of businesses
probably like jim launch early on are
very dependent on
you know the founder right they're the
face they're driving all the traffic
even today in many of my businesses like
dude if ryan stops making content you
know where the lead's coming from right
yeah um
what do you guys do to address that if
any you mean so that we could like
potentially exit them in the future kind
of thing yeah
it's always honestly with all of them
that is part of the plan yeah so yeah
that's something that takes
i want to say if you're starting you're
like i want to sell my business and i
want it to be like rock solid maybe it's
18 to 24 months
um
i would say if you want to do it right
and like really rock solid three years
so most of these companies our three
year to five year plan involves that so
it's how are we going to basically like
you know diversify our risk of the
founder you know because at some point
if they want to exit i think most of

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them want the freedom to choose right
like they don't necessarily want to exit
but they would like the freedom or the
opportunity to decide at that point in
time and so we're always setting them up
for that and so it's it's you know i
think that it's more complicated
when you are the founder than when
you're somebody like myself looking at
it because i look at like you just have
to put other people you pro for every
alex i need like 10 people right and
that's all it is it's just the 10 people
that fill the skill set gaps and then
the 10 people that can you know
essentially act as characters to fill in
for one face right so can 10 people
fill the gap of one alex yes is there
more operational complexity yes but it's
a more sturdy business and so often
times like a personality brand it's
basically diversifying and adding going
from like one personality to like you
know you to disneyland it's not just
mickey mouse it's all the characters
you've got yeah alice in wonderland and
snow white and like all these people
it's like how do we create that within
each of the businesses
and so
you know a lot of those businesses they
have people that you know are niche
experts teaching their you know
customers because they're coaching

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01:03:00.000 --> 01:04:00.000
businesses and those people typically
you know you kind of make subject matter
experts that can take over a different
subject matter um and then the other one
is taking you know their leadership team
and kind of like raising them up to be
more forward-facing kind of taking the
internal and making it external so
there's a few different ways you can do
it but it's just a process and if you if
you do it over time it's honestly not
that hard yeah you you pretty much
described what i've been thinking
because like i don't want to sell but
you know i'd like the to have the option
one day right
and so we started thinking about this at
like the one i'm most prevalent at which
is the real estate education business
right and so i said you know what we're
really good at making content why don't
we just produce it for
other people in the community right and
so we took like our best students who i
thought were great on camera we took our
coaches
everyone else and so we created a whole
separate youtube channel instagram
everything else and they're growing
really quick just because our
post-production team makes them the
exact same like it's just send us the
videos and we'll
make the thumbnails and everything else
that we know works and so

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that's actually helped out a lot and
like we're launching a new podcast i am
not the host you know and just trying to
diversify i think the more that you
edify those people so it's like the more
that one you associate with them like
you're seen with them before they're on
their own and then you edify them when
they are on their own and you
consistently do that over and over and
over again and just like as an added
point because this is the subject of the
next book um lots to say on this um but
like
typically if it's a founder face you
know face forward thing then it's gonna
be through paid ads organic for the most
part right and there are so many other
ways to get customers and so it's like
okay well how do we get an affiliate
channel set up how do we get a referral
you know a really strong referral
program in place how do we get a big
manual outbound team set up uh how do we
um how do we do huge blasts uh you know
to different lists that we can that we
can hit and so there's there's these
different things that we can set up and
we can do that
and by building an employee team we can
build customer teams we can build
affiliate networks
all of those things we can do that are
not founder-facing at all and i can tell

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you that when we when we when gym launch
uh the sales past 50 of total sales came
from the outbound team
i can't explain the amount of like peace
of mind to just know that every day
we're doing 5 000 dials and that's going
to turn into 100 100 or whatever you
know what i mean and so we just know
that if i die tomorrow all these people
have jobs all these families are secure
mortgages are paid like everything's
gonna be okay
and that like and that's why
you know a private equity or whatever
feels comfortable coming in to purchase
a business like that because they're
like oh they're not only diversified
across um channels but they're
diversified across methods of
acquisition right it's not just social
media right exactly that's just like one
right like we could cold call we could
cold email we could call dm like there's
so many different ways that we could do
this we could build we could do paid ads
to get affiliates and then build a
thousand person affiliate like so
prestige labs was 100 affiliates it was
all affiliates yeah 3 000 affiliates um
allen was 100 affiliates we actually had
super affiliates we had a two level
affiliate set up um in in allen because

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for the same reason i was like i don't
want to be the face of this and so
there's so many ways you can do it and
even like even in the paid ads you can
put the mascots but you can also put
your customers more right have the have
the customers and the results and the
experiences and the workshops and things
like that be far more prevalent because
the end of the day like they don't
really care about us they care about
what they see in us they care about what
they relate to and so if we can if we
can draw that line or just kind of like
lean into that more we can kind of like
step off camera and it's like oh wow
this person is just like me and this
business helped that person succeed
whatever yeah no i love that so you
mentioned that if you're going to
replace the founder it might take 10
people to replace alex right
what are you guys doing to recruit top
tier talent
for ourselves
in general for you and you know helping
the founders you know hire better
um i think that you know we're at a
point now where it's actually we're
attracting a lot of top talent which is
something that i haven't had for the
last six years
unfair it's honestly it's really like an
unfair advantage it's not and that's

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what i've experienced too
yeah
i tell people i'm just like i make a
post and we get so many like hot
applicants and it's great but like
that's not the reality for most people
yeah so for most people i mean like when
we had gym launch like to get top level
top tier talent is an investment you
know i think that there's two ways that
you can get it which is one you can go
through your network and you can try and
literally like pull whatever favor you
can to get your first
top level person and if you can get one
that edifies you to every other person
that you're ever going to talk to that
it's not a crazy idea to do in your
company right so like for gym launch
like we got our cfo
um
and
i'll go with the second way which is
using a recruiter or paying somebody to
go recruit if you don't have that
in-house because the thing is a lot of
people don't have recruiters in-house
they also don't have the time to
dedicate to really finding the right
kind of person so i mean we forked out a
lot of money on a couple positions and
i'm glad because once you have
one or two people that are top tier
talent that you did pay a lot of money
for it then those people have networks

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and then those people also edify you so
you start to look more legit so try to
legitimize your company and so then you
do attract talent more naturally whereas
in the beginning you just don't have
that advantage so you don't have
anything to leverage besides your money
and so it's you know either your time
you can try and dm and you know on
linkedin and crap yourself i guess as a
founder which i mean i've done it um or
you could pay a recruiter to do it for
you to find that talent um i really just
think like we basically gotten in i'll
tell you how we found our cfo we got an
in with one of our friends who said i
can get you with this recruiting company
but they typically only take companies
above 100 million at that point we
weren't there and he was like but i'll
tell them like how fast you're growing
and all this stuff and so because of
that we got to use them and because
their name their brand of recruiting
right so when they reached out to
somebody they're like oh they're
like they were literally number one in
the nation so they're like i'm gonna
answer to them because they're the
number one firm and so i think you have
to associate with somebody else's brand
if you don't have a strong enough one
and so for our companies like
acquisition when we're trying to fill

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01:09:00.000 --> 01:10:00.000
roles for them you know like we do
leverage ours to find people for them
because we have so much inbound like hey
do you have do you need an operator for
a company a sales manager so we can just
yeah throw that back into that it's a
big competitor you know that's a big
thing that we can help with the
portfolio companies because also like to
her point about like the legitimacy if
they're like oh your portfolio is doing
you know 150 million a year they're like
okay but yeah i feel much better that
you guys are all on board on this and
you guys are an investment firm that's
really like see something here too so
then they feel way more at ease and so
we will you know we'll screen and vet
some of the final candidates especially
like leadership and up and so like we
can attract them we can vet them and
then we can place them and then it also
gives us from an operating perspective
we get multiple lines inside of the
business so we know what's going on
because it's you know sometimes the
founder doesn't communicate all the time
because they're busy whatever and so we
have other people who are in the in the
company
that know and like and trust us too and
so it gives us so much more intel to how
the business is doing so we can keep a
much better pulse on what we can do to
help them so so you're telling me
acquisition.com is a recruiting company
now that's

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01:10:00.000 --> 01:11:00.000
i mean i mean that's actually yeah
yeah um because when we were deciding
what we wanted to build you know alex
was saying this is what i want and i was
saying this is what i want and then we
kind of put something together it's
always like a mesh of the two um and so
like what i really love doing is finding
talent for people like i love doing it
for my own teams and so i was like i i
think i'm good at it and i think i'm
really good at helping people with it
and so that's why we decided like the
most hands-on piece that we are with the
businesses is recruiting so it's
recruiting their leadership and that was
the number one thing you said from the
beginning you were like people yeah
that's what they all need yeah and it
makes sense like that's the thing you're
helping probably the most with it's the
it's the phase of growth that they're in
so part of it might just be that that
tends to be the problem that most of
them are at and so we have morphed
ourselves into becoming like the best
solution for that thing i don't know if
it's the chicken or the egg but just the
more high quality people we place into
enterprises where there's a deficit the
faster the growth is and so we just like
everyone's one higher away from the
business of their dreams yeah no i 100
agree and i mean for acquisition.com it
gives you guys

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01:11:00.000 --> 01:12:00.000
so much of a competitive advantage not
only just like yeah we're going to
potentially give you money you're
obviously going to get our expertise but
by the way you're getting our network
too yeah it's like shark tank 100 yeah
that's super cool
well i really do i can talk all day to
you guys because there's just so much
you know you guys have going on and your
knowledge and everything but you know i
appreciate you guys coming on the show
it's been a lot of fun and uh i know the
audience got a lot of value out of it so
yeah i mean we appreciate you having us
on you know every 15 minute drive yeah
that's true no and i appreciate the
questions because it was uh you know we
don't get to talk about like
as much higher level business stuff or
what we do every day that often um yeah
never uh so uh this was actually really
fun for us because we almost exclusively
we talk about this stuff every day this
is all we talk about but nobody asks us
about it yeah i have no one to talk to
about it yeah
they were all just selfish questions
that i've been wondering
it was good we like talking about so
yeah
well cool um guys if you like this
episode definitely go check them out on

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01:12:00.000 --> 01:13:00.000
social media we'll link to all their
links below if you've got a business
that's got 3 million or more in revenue
go hit up acquisition.com to help you
out as obviously and uh you know if you
like this podcast leave a five star
review share with a friend catch you on
the next one peace thanks for watching
the ryan pineda show if you want to work
with me head over to ryanpineda.com
you can find my courses coaching
programs and upcoming events we also
have free resources you can download so
head over to ryanpineda.com

