Leila Hormozi: From Minimum Wage Employee to $100M Net Worth By 29

Leila Hormozi

What I really thought about was when does it end you know like at 8 arrests at 10 arrests at £300 at £350 I just really thought about that and I was like what does my life look like in 3 years in 4 years in 5 years if I keep doing this and that terrified me enough to immediately change literally everything

Shaan Puri

okay leila welcome to the show it's exciting to see you here we've had alex on a couple of times and I don't know you guys are pretty kick ass we've we've been we you you're like one of the few business like power couple celebrity couples that are out there in the public did you ever think you would be doing that like did you ever think oh I'll be the kind of like guru influencer y person who's gonna be out there giving advice or giving frameworks or trying to be helpful to people is that something you something you saw yourself doing

Leila Hormozi

not in the beginning because I think I just really enjoyed running the company and then I think once I realized that after a certain. The impact I wanted to have I would it would be required that I learned that skill and that it would be something that would be transferable to what I did day to day as well then that was when I was like okay I think this is important for me to learn because what I realized is I can be as good as I am at running a business but if I'm not as good at running it as I am talking about it then it doesn't really matter if I can't communicate my abilities then that in itself is a limiter for me teaching my team and transferring that scale to somebody else whether it be an audience my team a friend whatever it might be

Shaan Puri

I feel like when I hear you talk it's like okay you've you've really got a a super strong sense of how you like to operate it's like you got it together in a system that works for you and that comes through experience it comes through trial and error but let's rewind before you had all that and let you tell your story a little bit because there's gonna be people who are listening to this they don't know your full story I don't know your full story to be honest I love this one tweet that I came out of the research you said you can't skip the struggle if you want the story so I wanna use that you can't skip the struggle if you want the story so in telling your story let's start with the struggle can you start where you didn't have it altogether you weren't this sort of business terminator you you were struggling you were trying to figure it out can you start there

Leila Hormozi

yeah I would say that you know ever since I was like a teenager I always wanted to get into entrepreneurship mostly because I had my father he was a tenured professor you know he did everything by the book and he honestly was miserable and so I really just felt like that wasn't the way to go I just didn't know what the way was and I got lost along the way so much so that like you know when I was 19 I had been arrested 6 times I was drinking doing drugs I was £230 like my life was going nowhere I was flunking out of college and that was when I really when I turned my life around just learning how to live my life in accordance with my goals and values rather than my feelings and that was really what taught me a lot of discipline I ended up losing almost a £100 I moved across the country by myself from michigan to california and I went to go go to california because I want to pursue a career in fitness because then I had to finish school for exercise science useless but nonetheless I had to finish school for it

Shaan Puri

so you just said you just said a thing that that again a movie would have been like 60 minutes and you did it in like 60 seconds so I wanna zoom in so you were like I'm £230 I'm drinking I don't know what I wanna do with my life I'm basically single broke and out of shape right that's kinda like the start and then you were like so then I decided I'm gonna start living life in terms of my goals and then I did I lost a £100 and like alright hold on I've been there before I know that there's something that happens in between those right if it was so easy to just live in accordance with my goals I probably would have been doing it earlier yeah there must have been some wake up call some sort of moment some sort of a tough conversation with yourself where you decided to to start making a shift what was that moment

Leila Hormozi

there was 2 moments the first one which was like okay I want to stop being a fat ass is I was at a party or I went to a party it was my friend's birthday party and it was college right and so then she's like I'm gonna invite these people which had been our friends in high school and I was like oh gosh that's embarrassing because like I'm pretty overweight now and so it's like I hope nobody says anything but nobody's gonna say anything because that's really rude right and so there's we have this party everyone's drinking and I'm walking past a a couple of guys I went to high school with and and going to the bathroom and I hear a guy and he's like what a shame

Shaan Puri

and

Leila Hormozi

I was like I was like what and he was really drunk and I was like what's a shame and he was like man he's like you know it really sucks because like you know you were really pretty but you're just really fat now

Sam Parr

oh

Leila Hormozi

and I remember in that no but here's the thing in that

Shaan Puri

moment name yeah

Leila Hormozi

yes in that moment I was like but my my internal voice actually was like he's right and I was like I hate that that what he said is true and so it was in that moment that I was like I don't want somebody to be able to say that about me anymore and avoiding the situation avoiding real life is not it's not cutting in so I remember I went home and I like you know like wrote this facebook post in pure rage it was like you won't see me anymore I'm going dark and like expect not to hear from me and I really was just like I can't keep overeating I can't keep not taking care of myself I had stopped working out basically stopped working out started eating like shit and drank all the time and if you do all those things at once like you just continue to gain weight and that was really the moment that did it for me because I just the fact that my response was I agree with him it wasn't like I'm mad at him I'm anything I was like no he told the truth and I think that if you don't want people to say bad stuff about you then change I'd rather just change the situation than try and avoid people

Shaan Puri

yeah you you type up the facebook message you say I'm going dark did you have a plan or you just had the fuel at that time

Leila Hormozi

I just had the fuel I mean and the funny thing is I remember my plan was this just eat half of what you're eating yeah yeah yeah

Sam Parr

is that the worst plan

Leila Hormozi

it it really wasn't and so like I actually would just take what I was eating and I would just eat half and and that worked for me and it it I lost about £60 that way and so you know the other 40 then I got into macros and lifting and all that stuff and that's really when like that took me on like where I've probably been since then the second moment was the 6th time that I was arrested so I had been out at college you know drinking blacked out I wake up I am in my my bedroom at my parents' house so like my childhood bedroom and I was like oh my god I don't know what happened and I rolled over and I was in bed like pounding headache feel like shit and there's a a ticket for my rest on the bedside and I was like fuck k so they took me back to my parents' house I don't remember a thing and then I'm like I need to go downstairs to exit the house and so I was I just remember I grabbed the ticket and I put on clothes and I walked down the stairs and I see my dad sitting on the couch with my stepmom and I was like okay like I'm ready he's just he's gonna just rip into me and I sat down and I was just expecting him to just eviscerate my character and instead of eviscerating my character I remember he looked at me and he was like listen I'm not gonna try and control you or tell you what to do or tell you that you'd change your life I just wanna tell you I'm just I'm really worried because if you keep doing this I think you're just gonna end up killing yourself and it was weird but in that moment when he said that it was like I think when you're young you feel invincible right like you drink you feel like nothing will happen you drink and drive you feel like nothing will happen you do drugs you feel like nothing would happen and it was like in that moment I recognized that he was right and that I'm no different from all these other people who have gone down this path I could actually end up really hurting myself and I think the second to that was I felt so terrible that I made someone who loves me so much and has invested so much and only made my life better feel so shitty by who I was being and so you know I left and I was like I can't keep doing any of this you know like yeah being fat and working on all that but like I can't keep drinking like this I can't keep doing drugs drugs

Shaan Puri

like this

Leila Hormozi

this is not the life I want and I remember like what I really thought about was when does it end you know like at 8 arrests at 10 arrests at £300 at £350 you know what kind of drugs do you stop at and so I just really thought about that and I was like what does my life look like in 3 years in 4 years in 5 years if I keep doing this and that terrified me enough to immediately change literally everything and this is a process again that I just still haven't figured out how to quite explain but it's like the moment in that moment the fear of remaining the same was so much greater than any fear I had of change that I changed the next day like I threw out all my alcohol I decided I was moving out of the house I was in I lived with 6 people I said I'm not drinking I'm not doing drugs I'm gonna work out I'm gonna eat healthy medias 2nd job so I got a second job so I'm going to school I've got 2 jobs because I was like

Sam Parr

I can't I need to fill my

Shaan Puri

time with something

Leila Hormozi

you know I joined a gym and I started you know in my spare time reading watching youtube videos that were you know self development whatever I just said I can't be that person anymore and it was like I was so fed up with everything and in that moment the pain was so high that it made it fairly easy to change immediately because I understood finally that I was so uncomfortable as is and it's like I could remain uncomfortable in the situation I was in or I could be uncomfortable changing only one of those is productive right and only one of those is turned my life into something that I'm actually proud of and so those were the two moments that really caused me to change my life

Sam Parr

alright so when I ran my company the hustle I think we had something like 2,000,000 subscribers and we made money through advertising and we didn't actually make that much money per person reading the newsletter because advertising in general is kind of a crappy business model and so I remember sitting down and I'm like what are all the different ways that I can make money off the hustle that aren't advertising and so to make sure that you don't make this mistake sean me and the hubspot team we went and looked at a bunch of different ways to monetize your business and we put it all together in a really cool document where we lay it all out along with our research and we call it very appropriately we called it the business monetization playbook go to the description of this episode and you're gonna see a link to that business monetization playbook it's completely free you just click the link and you can see it back to the episode

Shaan Puri

so have you ever heard of the dickens method mm-mm it's basically exactly what you just described if if you ever go to like a tony robbins event like his his big yeah kind of events yeah on one of the days he does this and it's basically the dickens method is a it's a technique where you sort of vividly imagine you you time travel to the future you're like okay let's play it forward a year let's play it forward 5 years I'm still doing it I'm keep doing it I do more of it in fact because I am increasing whatever the bad habit whatever the decisions whatever the whatever the thing I'm doing is and you play it forward and then how does that affect you how does that affect the people that you love and he sort of gets you to sort of go there and yeah you know like when I did it when I went to this event it was like you know I wasn't really going through much at the time so it was I was like I don't know what this exercise is for but around me there was literally people like screaming it was honestly a very uncomfortable moment but people were really feeling something in that moment where if you play it forward if you vividly imagine what the future looks like 5 years later 10 years later 15 years later and how that affects all the people around you it creates this like emotional charge where it gives you again the pain of not changing increases over the pain of change and just like you described

Sam Parr

yeah which by the way I've talked about that in this pod I I had the I had a similar run rate I had about 3 arrests in 3 months really yeah I I also weighed £230 and I was a a a disgusting person and yeah love love booze and and substances and so I had a had a a similar issue of like after one arrest you're like what the fuck man what the fuck yeah I I didn't live with my parents at the time but I did I lived with my dog I had like this dog and I like he shit all over them himself one day because he got arrested and I was in jail for 24 hours and I was like oh my god I'm letting him down it was like it's so funny it was like in a very similar everything changed at that moment so you and I we are the same

Leila Hormozi

we had no idea

Sam Parr

yeah we're similar and then what age were you when you moved to california what age were you when you met alex

Leila Hormozi

yeah I was 20 almost 23 when I met him

Shaan Puri

wait wait describe the first date

Sam Parr

well they're they're buds first right weren't you guys buddies first

Leila Hormozi

we we were buddies but we were dating I don't know how to describe this

Shaan Puri

there's a term for that

Sam Parr

yeah no

Leila Hormozi

but not not actually

Shaan Puri

let me

Leila Hormozi

I'll put it like this so like yeah that's not what I mean we met on bumble and we went on our first date he asked me to go to froyo he was like listen it's low commitment so if we're weird we can leave and I was like I mean good because I've been on some bad fucking dates lately man and so we meet at froyo he comes up he's not very friendly I just remember the first thing he was like not smiling and I was like what's wrong with this guy we get in line and he's still not smiling and I'm like I'm like cracking a joke or 2 and I'm like this guy's tough come to find out later the reason he wasn't smiling is because I have a full back piece like my whole back is tattooed angel wings which is traumatic and embarrassing but it's because I got it when I was 18 and high and drunk and so he saw that and was like oh man one of these girls and so apparently he was judging me the entire time for that that tattoo

Sam Parr

you and max holloway yeah don't judge a book

Shaan Puri

by its cover don't judge a girl by her back alright that's that's that's lesson

Leila Hormozi

too painful to get undone at this. And so you know we ended up staying down for froyo and honestly you know once he had a few bites and I think got blood sugar in his system because if you know alex you know his blood sugar is attached to how much food he's eating and so I think once he ate he was like hi and I was like oh okay you're a nice person let's go and we actually just started talking about business really picture this right like I had moved out there I was only focused on my career I didn't have friends I didn't have a boyfriend I had gone on dates but I did not find anybody I'd like so it was really just me and my work and I was trying to figure out like what do I need to do next because I was doing online and in person training and then I met him and he actually had the same story so he had moved out from baltimore maryland to pursue fitness opened up a few gyms and was trying to figure out what he was gonna do next as his next step didn't really have a lot of friends and obviously didn't have a a girlfriend and so we didn't really have anything else to talk about and so we ended up actually like eating froyo and then we went on like a 4 hour walk and we talked about work the entire time and I remember leaving the date because you know it's froyo so it was like 3 pm he had a dinner at like 7 and so he actually asked me he's like will you come to the grocery store and get stuff for this dinner barbecue thing I have and I was like sure and we just talking the whole time still about business and once we got done I got in my car and I was like that's the weirdest date I've ever been on like it wasn't even like a date we didn't talk about anything romantic at all we just literally talked about work but like all I know is I wanna keep talking to that guy and I went back and I told my roommate I was like I'm just so interested like he's the first person I feel like I've had an intellectual conversation with since I've moved here you know because most of the time when I'd go out on dates with people it's like they had zero ambition they had no idea what they wanna do with their lives and it was california so that's like a little bit more of the culture they also just didn't really like the fact that I was as ambitious and working as much as I was and so to meet somebody who actually saw that as a pro had the same things in common and wanted to talk about them it was like the most enjoyable date I'd been on and then I think he called me the next day and was like hey do you wanna like work together and I was like sure sounds fun so I went over to his house and I like brought all my stuff my laptop and everything we start working and that just like slowly kept happening over time and you know maybe yeah

Shaan Puri

yeah and then one meeting we we just yeah I had a board meeting

Leila Hormozi

for sure we kissed in a meeting so no I mean it was just like we had shared interest you know I didn't know when I met him that he was also persian so then I found out oh we're both our both of our fathers are from iran we had that in common you know we had both moved out there on our own we just had a lot in common that I was just not expecting and because of that it just felt like for the first time in so long I had somebody who saw reality the same way I did and who didn't wanna make me into somebody I wasn't you know like I've always every I can't even tell you how many times I've gone on dates with guys and they're like you seem really great but you're kinda weird or like you're like a little obsessive and I was like yeah I know but that's I don't really wanna change that about myself or they didn't like that I worked as much as I did and I like working so I'm like I don't wanna apologize for that and he was the first person I met that saw all those things as pros that everyone else had seen as cons and not only that but you know I think I saw the same in him with a lot of things that people have complained about and so you know about a month in he's like I feel like you should not start this online thing or do this in person I was basically like do I open up my own gym or do I partner with this woman who wanted me to be her business partner online she already had a successful business and so you know 4 weeks in I said screw it like there's nothing to lose to go do this with him to start this business because I'm 23 like if shit doesn't work I'll just go back to what I was doing but I will regret if I don't take this chance to see if it could work

Sam Parr

and the thing that you're just talking about that's his gym launch

Leila Hormozi

gym launch yeah and the first you know year and a half was literally just like he'd be at a gym I'd be at a gym different locations different states and we'd be filling them up and then we'd call each other every night and be like here's what I'm doing here's what you're doing like just like best practices and that was like the 1st year of dating which was like I we're living out of extended stays we're in different states we're trying to launch these gyms you know I'm 23 walking into some dude's gym being like I'm a fill up your gym they're like what is going on right and so you know the 1st year of our relationship was just like the eating shit phase of business but doing it together

Shaan Puri

oh what do you mean by the eating shit phase of business

Leila Hormozi

you know it's just like when you start anything when you have no skills you're trying to accumulate all the skills at once you don't know what you're doing you have no clarity and so you're just like throwing shit at a wall you're probably like not taking care of yourself the best you can because you're so focused on just trying to make this thing work because you're kind of just like in survival mode because you know at that. We have like no money as well right we've like pretty much burned through all the money then his business partner gets access to the bank account where we've been putting all the money from these gyms steals the money I mean it was just like thing after thing

Sam Parr

weren't you guys like living at your parents' home as well

Leila Hormozi

so we've lived a cute few different places but then at one. We moved back to my parents' house for 2 months at another. We actually lived with one of the clients of one of the gyms which was actually more fun

Shaan Puri

your dad's like you know I thought I was disappointed before but now actually somehow this is worse yeah so yeah so you guys I wanted to ask you this so you've gym launch has a story like he alex has come on the pod he's told the story about like how it you know went from like figuring it out to the business partner stealing the money and then he's it scales if you wanna listen to that there's an episode we did with him yeah but what's the like I've seen this now a couple times where sometimes you just get a business to work and you just crack a nut and it scales in a way that sort of breaks your brain and you may never you may never even see that again so I think you guys did something like a year year 1 or year 2 it went from like 0 to like something like in the range of 15,000,000 by year 2 something like 24,000,000 I don't know if that's run rate or realized revenue but realized revenue realized revenue that's an insane curve what's the summary of why that worked like that because that's not normal could I go do that same business today so for example if you started from scratch today if somebody if the next alex and leila were out there and they wanted to do gym launch today could they go and do the same model meaning is that problem still exist is the model still great where you're getting upfront cash from these gyms for doing that you know kind of this quick turnaround service or is it saturated now and there's too much competition maybe the ad rates have changed right there's always these moments in time where businesses can succeed and then 10 years later you couldn't start that same business if there's a new version of that business that those same people could go start could somebody as talented as you guys start gym launch again today and have the same level of success in your opinion

Leila Hormozi

no and why is that because the market has completely changed I mean think about covid that completely changed the nature of fitness ozempic has changed fitness I think that the future of fitness looks completely different than boutique gyms I think that you know I mean I know what they're doing in the background in the labs which is like people are gonna be able to soon take a pill and they're gonna be able to control their appetite why do you wanna go to the gym every day if you could just be skinny lots of girls don't give a shit

Shaan Puri

so what does the future fitness look like

Leila Hormozi

well I mean lifting weights is a great long term way to sustain your body weight and to prevent you from getting fat but short term intervention food is always ideal right and that's gonna have more of an effect on the short term like long term muscle mass short term food and so I think that what you're gonna see is a lot more people just continuing to lean into what they always have as humans do which is the short term things that work which is eat less which you can do with a pill and they happen to have pills that are gonna come out that are you know I think a lot of people are probably deter away from like ozempic and stuff because it's a shot and it's like okay well the moment that they have a pill that can say I'm gonna have I only need to have 25% of my normal appetite today well then think about the cost of the gym especially for females it's like you have to get up you've had to put on your outfit maybe some mascara you've got to look okay you have to drive there you have to go there you have to do things that feel hard and then you have to leave or I could just take a pill and not be hungry and not eat so I don't have to work out to worry about food so I think that all those things have changed just a lot of companies in the fitness and health space in general I can say that because we have other companies in the portfolio that are in that space and I also talk to a ton that are it has definitely changed the nature of that landscape

Sam Parr

you guys you know alex did something kind of interesting I think he said that like you bought him like a $50,000 consult with like grant cardone or something like that like right before the sale of jib launch where he published that which was like pretty wild where he was like here's how much cash we have we're thinking about selling and then I think there was even like a part 2 and a part 3 after the sale and so it was pretty cool to see that that was all public what did you guys and what 3 parts what did you do with the money once you sold like did you have a plan on where to invest it or did you just let let it sit there the second thing is did you have like a 10 20 year plan on where you wanted to go or is it like I don't know what we're gonna do let's figure it out and then we'll answer those 2 first

Leila Hormozi

yeah yeah the idea with the money was we can put it you know in stocks in the short term we had some real estate deals we have one person we do real estate with specifically that we put some of the money in and then the rest of it was for acquisition.com so it's like how do we get our first few deals we're gonna use this as like the nest egg to invest in those deals part 2 to that is we knew we wanted a headquarters and so you know the headquarters was obviously I mean it's almost 40,000 square feet it's quite expensive so that was a big investment as well so most of the money has gone into the first few deals + the headquarters the rest of the money we put in real estate deals that you know have done really well for us so and then I would say remainder you know stocks we have an oh shit fund and things like that too but you know most of the times we wanna be investing in how are we gonna use the money to grow acquisition.com faster that's really what we think about with the cast

Sam Parr

did you have the idea of that before you even sold gym launch

Leila Hormozi

the day after we sold we started acquisition.com

Sam Parr

that's crazy

Shaan Puri

yep and what was the genesis of that idea I'm sure many conversations but like do you remember kind of what the what would you call the origin

Leila Hormozi

really it actually started with what am I best in the world at what is alex best in the world at right that's one piece the second piece to that is what is the ideal day to day for alex to sustain so that he knows that he's not gonna wanna quit because the work he's doing with the people he's doing it he doesn't like same for layla right so it's like do things you like with people you like that's how you sustain performance in my opinion so then what does that look like for each of us and then what is a business that where there's room in the market that we can capitalize on both of our skills when we build and so you know alex is you know he's constantly thinking of ideas he's he's like well what about this what about I'm like no no no no

Sam Parr

what were what were some of those ideas

Leila Hormozi

well I mean there was like we could go direct to consumer for example you know we thought about you know the fact that he's so good at generating demand and I can build a big team that's really like well positioned for a direct to consumer business whether it be in beverages whether it be in food or whether it be in you know some kind of like commerce that was an idea another idea that we had was essentially like an actual like health business so like building a platform for you know people who wanted to lose weight or get in shape using some kind of technology integrating an ai and then everything we know about how to actually help people you know lose weight but then we saw you know ozempic coming down I'm really fucked up and so those were 2 like strong front runners I would say and they were things that I could get passionate about but then acquisition.com was the one that I just kept coming back to because I was like you know the reason that I wanted to sell gym launch was I just asked myself do I wanna be in the fitness industry for the next 10 years and the answer was no I was like I'm and I understand that I would probably get better returns on my time staying in the fitness industry because I know it so well right we're already a market leader we know everything we've come up in this I've been doing it since I was however whatever age it's been over a decade now so has he we have a a competitive advantage here but I was like I don't wanna be in here this the rest of my life and the reasons for it to be honest with you are just like the networking into the fitness industry felt less appealing to me than the networking in private equity for example and the people that I would be competing with and I think that who you compete with or who you compare yourself to right is like that sets the tone for who you wish to become in many ways like if I get in the room with whatever you can just say jeff bezos or elon musk or whatever and I have a company that I aspire to have like theirs like I'm gonna compare myself to them versus when I met some of the people had some of the biggest fitness businesses they were not though I could compare myself to them and yes they had done better by many measures they were not necessarily people I aspire to be like and so I just wanted to be in a different industry to get around different people and to acquire different skills that I didn't think I was gonna get staying there and so when we looked at acquisition.com I was really like what kind of person do I wanna be and then what kind of business will allow me to become that person and then what kind of people do I need to have on my team to build that type of business and so I think a lot of it actually like circles back you know alex you're talking about this last night to like who do I wanna be and the business is just a vehicle for personal growth in many ways and so for both of us I think that we are better entrepreneurs and better people for building acquisition.com and I think that some people choose businesses that make them worse not better and this one is definitely one that I think helps maximize our skills but also gets us to be better people you know alex has shared publicly many times like he was like when we first started acquisition.com he kept saying like I really wanna be more patient and you must be patient for this business to work and so because he wants the business to work more than anything right then he will learn to be more patient by as a as a byproduct of that and for me in order for acquisition.com to work and not just work work but like really fucking work like win and be number 1 I have to learn how to make content and be public facing and be a better communicator overall and so it's not that every day I wake up excited to do that but it's that I want to win and I know that in order to win I have to learn these skills and so it forces me to learn those things in order to achieve my goals

Sam Parr

that's pretty badass I yeah that makes a ton of sense

Shaan Puri

everything you said makes makes makes sense and is very aligned with how I I view life I I I always say it's it's a vehicle it's a it's a means to to have the type of life you want and become the type of person you want and then you then you just think okay if this is a vehicle who's getting in the who who do I want on this road trip with me and that's your co founders your partners your investors who are the people I want in this car ride because we might get lost somewhere along the way and I've really gotta think that through and I think it's very important to have that mindset because I think people think the vehicle is the end itself and obviously it's not you see that because people do one vehicle and then they then they need the next they need the next and why do you keep why does jeff bezos need to go do his rocket company and why does he need to buy the washington post why do they need to do these things because that business the business itself was was just a it's like a piece of workout equipment it's like going in and you see the bench press it's there to for me to get the workout for me to get the gains it's there to provide some resistance for me to get what I want out of life yeah I have a question for you about acquisition.com so you guys you said you you've seen I don't know a 1,000 businesses I was talking to you before we started recording about businesses that surprise you because they're just kinda kickass maybe it's a business that you had maybe a category you hadn't heard of or just a business that people would overlook or maybe would underrate but and you don't have to name the names of these businesses but I'd love for you to describe a kickass business that you've seen somewhere along the way at acquisition com whether it's one you guys bought or not

Leila Hormozi

yeah I will say this more businesses suck than you would think so what I learned in starting at no seriously in starting acquisition.com was just the amount of bad businesses there are

Sam Parr

what's the profile of bad and good or like what's like what's the threshold

Leila Hormozi

I I think product market fit is not it's exists on a scale it's not yes or no but like poor like weak product market fit weak founders low margin low potential

Sam Parr

you say weak with so much disgust I love it

Shaan Puri

yeah I just need that clip I did that's my alarm clock when I wake up say we go

Leila Hormozi

I because it's like I'm like let me fucking help you but like I can't if you're just fucking weak so it frustrates me because I'm like tough love but like this isn't gonna work and so I would say like that has actually been more surprising than the good businesses that I've seen is just the amount of businesses that I'm like wow it's it's shocking it's still here you know or it's like wow I can't believe this person actually started this thing and so there's been a lot more of that I would say in terms of businesses that are really cool and you know I think have inspired me in in different ways it's people that are actually able to take something traditional and make it and innovate it you know it's like I always find those businesses really interesting like you know it could be anything like publishing books and turning that into you know what instead of publishing books the way that we have been instead let's learn how to use ai to publish books and make the entire process automated that's a really cool business that I've seen play out I think that looking at school which people know that we publicly associate with like that business I have a lot of admiration for because of if you look at it by all like by all stats and metrics of that business it is mind blowing and that they've been able to take this element of community that people only really feel in person and bring it online to such a degree that now people also are doing it offline and on like it's just it's been really cool to see the network effect through that business and then I would say like more traditional businesses like bakeries and how like traditional bakeries that make you know cookies or whatever have integrated tools like ai and technology to learn like okay what type of cookie profile is this person going to want to order and like just ways that people can integrate that kind of stuff like technology into like traditional businesses

Shaan Puri

do bake bakeries that use ai is that was that a thing do we do does that does that make it better really

Leila Hormozi

I think that is all perception like I think value for customer in many ways it is perceived right and so it's like if you feel like this cookie is custom to you because of this technology that they have and they're able to like make it right there for you then I think yeah people will pay a lot more money for it that's for sure I mean I would but clearly because it works for them so I think those have been some of the cool businesses

Shaan Puri

what about this workshop stuff so you guys start I started seeing ads for these workshops and I think you guys have probably done like just doing some napkin math like something like $10,000,000 of workshop revenue which is it was a little bit surprising to me because I was like why are they doing this there's like a lot of time for

Sam Parr

the the the math thing supposedly or you maybe said this I think 1800 people have gone through an acquisition.com workshop and I think on your website it's $5,000

Shaan Puri

to to go way I know a couple of people who have gone and they said it was great so that yeah I'm not saying it in a bad way well I guess what I'm saying is I was surprised you guys are doing it I was like oh no this is actually great you know alignment right they like to teach its deal flow at a like a proprietary level and then you know it's a win win other people should get some value out of this they come in they get to focus on their business what I wanted to ask you about is what's the number one recurring problem you see because now you've seen 1800 founders come in and they're they paid a bunch of money to come to the workshop because they got a problem what's the common problem you see and what's the solve that that you that you think would help most of these businesses

Leila Hormozi

the number one problem that I see is not technical and it's not even a practical problem but more of an emotional problem which is I think founders lie on 1 of 2 spectrums which is either they're incredibly impatient and because of that they never wait long enough to see if any kind of strategy will work they just change it and so it it doesn't even they don't even give it a shot to see if it'll play out because they changed too soon and on the other side you have founders that are too tolerant and they basically just want to be liked at all costs and they don't make good decisions for their business because of that so I actually don't think that any of the problems that I see are technical problems

Sam Parr

is there a way to put like is there a way to put like a benchmark like for example are you talking about like you know you should for a lot of people they should be waiting a year to get to get results or you know or they react in weeks when they should be reacting in quarters is there a

Leila Hormozi

yeah I think a lot of people think that waiting a quarter is a long time and that's probably the issue they think oh well I waited 3 months so I'm like try waiting 18 you know I have things I'm doing in acquisition.com that you might ask about the workshops I'm like alright well if you see what was gonna come out in the next 4 months which I've been working on for the last 12 months you'll see why it all makes sense right but a lot of people I think 1 don't have the ability to wait that long and 2 don't even know how to build something that takes that long

Sam Parr

your husband seems like a guy who is stereotypical of a person who does not have patience you know you said that he he he said I want to be more patient so I assume that means he didn't have patience has he been able to like go with the flow of like look we're gonna we're we're planning 18 36 months out and that's what we're working on so you're not gonna see because I know when I am working at something I'm like why won't I see results immediately we're investing all this money and all this time and we don't have fucking results why aren't you out launching an mvp you're talking to potential customers don't tell me about it you know what I mean like that's like how I feel and I think that's that's why I understand probably how he feels

Leila Hormozi

yeah I think something I've gotten a lot better at is showing him progress so because I this is what I've realized which is just patience is just figuring out what to do in the meantime the reason I can be more patient is because I'm fucking busy doing all the shit to make the thing happen right but if you're not the one in there having the meetings hiring the people recruiting the stuff putting the tech in place then it feels like it takes a long time and so because he sits more on the like demand gen side and doesn't have the whole team rolling into him he doesn't get that reinforcement on a daily basis of seeing that progress and so I look at myself as like my job is to tell him all of all those things that are happening to show him look at all the shit that we're doing and where it's gonna end up and how close we are and it might actually happen faster than we thought and so I think that a lot of the times people feel impatient because one they're not seeing progress because maybe they're removed from what's actually occurring I think that the second thing is you know I always look at it as for him and for anybody if he's not you know in the day to day operating making the plan happen then he's working on something for the future you know he's writing books he's making content he's you know oftentimes when we have really big problems in the business maybe we'll have 2 or 3 at the same time it'll be like okay you know I know that these teams don't report to you but I'm over here solving this problem how about you solve this problem and then you know we're gonna communicate about these things and so it's like I also think he can do special projects that's something that like you do in the meantime you know I think from a traditional standpoint I think what's really good about him in many ways is that he's impatient with things and so because of that I'll I'll say this okay I think it's good to be patient it's also good to be impatient with things it just like which one and so I think what I love about his impatience at times is that he's able to isolate it to the way that people do things why does it take this long to do a video why does it take this long to talk to a customer why does it take this long to build a department and he questions things that other people just accept as fact because somebody else and some book said that's how you do business and I love that he questions those things and is impatient about how inefficient things in business can be I think that's fantastic

Shaan Puri

naval naval has the best quote on this he said impatient with actions patience with results so impatient on the inputs patient with the outputs is the the sort of unstoppable formula

Leila Hormozi

a 100% it's an advantage because I am patient with results I can also be too patient sometimes with the action and so I have learned from him I think we do a good job learning from each other I think that he's learned from my patience with results I've learned from his impatience with inputs or actions and that's benefited the business a lot

Shaan Puri

we gotta ask you we used to say we have 7 female listeners and I think as the podcast has grown there's now tens out there and I'm sure you get a lot of women who you look up to you who ask you for advice so this is the you know here's the mic and if there's a female entrepreneur watching this what's your message to her

Leila Hormozi

you might think that because you're female things are less fair or that people will treat you differently or that business is harder and there are things that you're gonna have to overcome and while all those things might be true in certain circumstances and certain times and that some are irrefutably true the question to ask yourself is is this useful you know a lot of people come to me and they say isn't it hard to do business because like you know you're a woman and you're married to alex like do people take you seriously I'm like I don't know is that a useful thought if it's not then why the fuck would I focus on it and so I just completely abolish any of this like female entrepreneur what's it like stuff and I've made one video about it because I wanted people to understand yes there are differences there are also advantages so like you can either focus on what sucks and what's worse or you can just focus on you know maximizing your strengths and taking advantage of the advantages and also just choosing to focus on shit that's useful you know what I mean like we can all.

Leila Hormozi

To reasons as to why people treat us differently we can also just like be better I'll tell you this which is like a a joke between me and alex is like so many people have tried to break us up and like the key line is always like leila you know he's he's suppressing you because he's you know alex I always just like have this internal dialogue which is like and that is why you will not win because you see people that are powerful as having an ability to suppress you when I look at people who are powerful as what can I learn from them to be better so that when I'm in a room people would not say that about me they would not say oh you're being suppressed like what do I have to learn to be a person who is more powerful and I think that a lot of women throw around these terms and do these things but it's like you can either look at it as as a disadvantage or or something to be an advantage to you you know I think that I've had to probably accumulate more skills that some men would not have to because I've had to learn to be better at things to be taken seriously in certain ways right or I've had to you know accumulate emotional skills that I wouldn't have to otherwise I think those are all pros and like if I have more challenge I also get the opportunity to acquire more skills so I just don't look at it like a bad thing and I look at it if anything like a good thing and I any thoughts that arise that are not useful I do not focus on ever

Sam Parr

you're the shit perfect answer you're you're you're you're fantastic you know you guys are what an interesting couple you know typically like like my wife and I are are are fairly different in in a lot of different ways but you guys are both very similar in your intensity but also in your way to like come up with like interesting ideas and interesting theories as to why the world is the way it is and how you're gonna react to that most relationships I don't think are like that and so it's so it's so funny you guys are both like highly intense in in great ways it's just so fascinating

Shaan Puri

my my best I'm gonna

Leila Hormozi

make that my new profile highly intense

Shaan Puri

yeah well linkedin endorsed you on that

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

my best compliment to you is to you guys is I think what's really admirable about your relationship is that I think you both have a very high desire to self improve and it takes you back to like one of my favorite quotes about relationships is you know I'll take care of me for you and you take care of you for me whereas I think most people approach relationships as the opposite you're supposed to take care of me and I'm supposed to take care of you and you're never doing enough for me and I'm never doing enough for you and I think it is really great you guys are an a + example of 2 people who say I'm gonna self improve in all the ways that I can and that's what makes me a great partner for you

Leila Hormozi

yeah and I think honestly I just wish for everyone that listens to this to take that to their business relationships and to their personal relationships because I think it applies to both

Shaan Puri

alright well thanks for coming on I appreciate you

Leila Hormozi

thank you guys

Sam Parr

that's the episode