This episode of YAP is sponsored in part by industrious Kajabi. Indeed, LinkedIn and Yahoo finance. Industrious is the leading workplace provider for companies of all sizes and stages. Use codeprofiting to redeem a free week of coworking@industriousoffice.com. dot Kajabi gives you control of your content, brand and income. Get a free 30 day trial to start your course@kajabi.com. profiting attract, interview and hire all in one place with indeed get a $75 sponsored job credit@indeed.com. profiting reach top level decision makers by advertising on LinkedIn. Go to LinkedIn.com Yap for $100 credit on your next campaign. Yahoo Finance is the number one financial destination for comprehensive financial news and analysis, visit the brand behind every great investor Yahoo Finance.com as always, you can find all of our amazing deals in the show. Notes what's up Yap fam? Today we are replaying one of my most iconic episodes, and that is without Alex Hermosi. Alex Hermosi is one of the most well known entrepreneurs and he's a sales and marketing expert. He started his entrepreneurial journey running brick and mortar gyms and after taking some good advice from Russell Brunson, who by the way, is now in my Yap media podcast network, he ended up selling those gyms and eventually licensed his business model to start the company, Gym launch.

So he was able to scale what he did with his own gym with gym launch. And then he helped 4000 plus locations in four years do the same thing. During the same period, Alex and his wife Layla Hermozy, bootstrapped and grew three other companies to $120 million in sales across four different industries. And in 2020, they launched acquisition.com to help promising Internet companies scale and grow their portfolio to over $100 million per year. Talk about couple goals. Alex also wrote one of my favorite business books of all time, $100 million offers. I find myself time and time going back to that book. It is a classic business book and we cover a lot of the concepts found in that book in part two. But today we are replaying part one as our yap classic. We're going to go deep into Alex's super inspiring rags to riches story. There's so many lessons to learn just from his story. And then next Friday we're going to get really tactical with sales and marketing strategy. So mark your calendars for part two next week. If you guys can't wait for part two, we're going to put episode 199 in the show.

Notes I'll also link out to my episode with Layla Hermozy. So if you guys want to binge the Hermosis in yap this weekend, go for it. Right now, let's get into part one. Young and profiters, I give you Alex Hermosi.

Tell us about what your parents were like. I know you haven't really talked much about your mom in terms of your upbringing. And what was young Alex from Oseley growing up before you went off to college?

I mean, I was a pretty quiet kid. I think for the most part, it was just me and my dad. For the most part, growing up, I didn't see my mother very much, and so that's probably why I don't mention her as much. That being said, I had a middle eastern father. He was like, I got out of Iran because of school, and so do well in school, and you too will succeed. That's kind of the path. There wasn't really, like, an option of not trying hard at school. Like, it just. It just wasn't a door. You know what I mean? Like, I think there's some things in America that are a little bit different. I genuinely believe that everybody can get straight A's now. I think the amount of effort that would be required for everyone is different, but I think given the time constraints that people have to apply themselves to school, anyone could do it. That's just Alex's perspective on the world. I don't think it would be easy for everyone, but I think everyone could do it. And I think most people, or oftentimes, there's different things that are reinforced in their household.

Like, there's some people who are straight A's at football, and so that's the thing that their parents reinforce and reward, because maybe that dad thought that he relives his football days through his son or whatever, and so that's what gets reinforced. And they spend 3 hours a day practicing and 30 minutes a day on all of the homework for all the stuff. So, anyways, me growing up was mostly quiet. I think as I got into high school, I came into myself a little bit more. I was a little bit of an angrier guy. I was more of a. I would say I was more of a lone wolf during that period. I mean, I had groups of friends and whatnot, but I wouldn't say that I was particularly close with, you know, like, deep. I'm still in touch with one guy, but that's kind of the extent of it. From there, I went to Vanderbilt because I did decently well at school. So I was able to get in. I think I needed to get out of the house for me to kind of just be me more, because there's a lot of, I'm sure, from.

And this isn't just a middle eastern thing, a lot of asian parents. It's just probably just more foreign parents. It's just a little bit more pressure, I think, than is common in the american standard to conform a certain way. And I definitely conformed. I definitely followed the path. It was only when I was very, very sad after I had graduated college, and I did it in three years, and I did all the stuff, you know what I mean? I was president of fraternity, vice president, powerlifting team. I did all that. And then when I got out and had my two years of consulting, it was a very miserable time for me. It had nothing to do with the people or anything like that. It was me. I was like, this is it. This is all there is. Like, there's just more of this for the rest of my life. And that was incredibly depressing to me. And so that was when I had to kind of challenge the original paradigm, which is maybe the plan that was laid out for me was not my plan, but someone else's plan. I'm making progress towards a goal that I do not want in terms of my dad's viewpoint of me and my success, which is, at the time, all that I cared about.

And so for me, it was really just not wanting to be alive, which became my kind of thing that got me to change, which I was like, if I wake up every day hoping that I don't wake up, then either I can just live the rest of my life like this, or I can just die to somebody else. I was like, because right now I'm dead. To me, that was kind of the internal dialog was, I have to die to my father in order to live for me. And so that was 2012, 2013. I drove across the country. I called my dad to tell him that I had left halfway, halfway there, because otherwise I knew he would talk me out of it. I mean, very transparently, like, my dad had enough influence over me at the time that I literally had to physically separate myself in order to not be convinced, because I knew that if I had not done that, he would have convinced me to stay, because I had tried multiple times before that to be like, I'm not going to do this. I hate this. I don't want to do it.

He would always be like, when I was a resident, we didn't sleep. To be fair, there's probably a certain degree. That's true. He's like, just got to get through this and you'll get to the other side. I think there's an element of that that's true. And maybe I was too soft. Who knows? I don't know. I really was very, very sad. And so just the idea of being free was very liberating for me. Then I went to start my own business and was shocked by just how hard it was for me. Sleeping on the floor at my first gym. I remember having these. The story of the come up, and everybody loves the idea of, like, yeah, you slept on the floor. Like, it was not glorious. It was very lonesome. I didn't know anyone because I was in California. I'm from Baltimore, so I knew no one. And I was sleeping underneath of a warehouse where homeless people would be on top, like, breaking bottles at all hours of the night.

You've missed a whole big part of your story, so let's back up. You ended up becoming an apprentice for some guy in California, so you ended up driving. Where were you from? Maryland to California. Like, you said, you called your dad halfway and you decided you were gonna basically work for free for this guy. 04:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. or whatever it was. And you followed this guy around a gym, and you tried to learn as much as you can because you were obsessed, right, with fitness and gyms. And so you wanted to break out and learn from somebody else who had already done it. So tell us about that period of your life.

So I emailed 40 gym owners because I knew from the consulting world, which is what I had graduated into, that the best way to learn is to seek out experts. And so they have already consolidated the information because there's no lack of information in the world. Like, the issue is sifting through it at this point. And so finding people who've already pre sifted it is more efficient. So I emailed 40 guys. He was the only one who got back to me. He had a seven figure gym. His name was seven figure Sam. And so anyways, I just showed up at his doorstep a few days later. He was very surprised by that. He had a mastermind, which I joined even though I didn't have a gym. It was for gym owners. And he said, yeah, if you join, then you'll start the gym the right way. And I was like, okay. But then I didn't have a gym. So he said, you want to work for me? So he ended up paying me as an employee, even though I paid him for a mastermind, it was very weird setup. But anyways, I worked for him at the gym and he said I could be his apprentice because he didn't really have a program for me.

So I just hung out with him all day. He got to the gym at four and he would leave at four. So he worked four to four. I would usually stay an extra couple hours until six because I didn't know anybody. I would just hang out at the gym because at least there was people there that I knew. Now, I worked there for twelve weeks. It was kind of a crash course. I mean, imagine spending 12 hours a day with somebody who was a decent business owner at the time. He had a seven figure business. And so there's just so much that I learned so quickly. It's more like constructs. I didn't know things existed. It wasn't like I learned tactics. I just didn't even know email marketing was a thing. I didn't know affiliate marketing was a thing. I didn't know what a landing page was. I didn't know what ads were. I didn't know sales as a term existed. I didn't get it. I remember the first time somebody walked in, he's like, oh, go sign this girl up. She walked in, so I. No training, no script, no nothing. He just said, go sign this girl up.

And I came from a management consulting background making slide deck, so I had no idea what I was doing. The girl came in and I was like, yeah, so, yeah, the gym's 129 a month, or whatever it is you want to sign up. And she was like, yeah, I have to, I just have to. I don't have my credit card with me, I just have to go get it. I was like, okay. And then I walked out two minutes later and I was like, yeah, she's going to sign up. He's like, you closed her in two minutes. And I was like, yeah, I guess. He's like, you got the card? And I was like, no, but she said she'll be back. She said she's just going to go get a credit card. He's like, ah. Like, it was like a bunch of guys around, they all cracked up because I had no idea how it worked. And so he's like, dude, if you don't get the card, you didn't close. Anyways, I went to a workshop for a weekend. It was like $3,000, which was a tremendous amount of money for me at the time.

They promised that you'd make $10,000 by the end of the weekend. I did not make $10,000 by the end of the weekend, but they taught Facebook marketing, and this is 2013. I came back to Sam and I was like, hey, we should try this stuff. I think it's going to work. He said, I tried that. It doesn't work. I was like, just give me a grand and I'll test it. He said, I'll split the profit with you after I make my money back. I ran the ads the way I had learned at the workshop, made $6,000, and true to his word, he gave me $2,500. And that was kind of like the beginning of my taste into marketing. And during that period of time, I was looking for my own location. That was, like, far enough away from his thing that I wasn't going to compete, you know what I mean? But close enough that I could still be there. So I went to Huntington beach and found an old warehouse on Gothard and Talbert, and that's where I started my first gym.

That's so cool. What a great story. And so I want to talk about giving up something good to go after something better. I feel like this is such a big lesson. I can relate, because when I started my company, everybody was against me. I had a great corporate job. I was running a marketing department at Disney Streaming Services. Everyone was against me. My boyfriend of ten years, who I thought I was going to marry, was so upset with me, I had to break up with him to start my business, and I moved out. And that's when everything took off for me because I felt like somebody was stepping on my neck and I finally was released from it. I'd love to talk about why it's okay to leave something good to go after something better and what you learned from that.

This is a really, really deep topic that I like a lot, and I don't think I've talked as much about it as I really like to. I think the hardest decisions in life are giving up good for great. And I think oftentimes what makes it hard is that your good is someone else's great who's casting their projection onto you and saying, why would you give up great? And so it's really just about expectations and standards that we set for ourselves and not buying into people's dreams about you that are smaller than your dreams for you. And so I think it's really just continually trading up dreams as you realize what you can do. Because my dreams now are significantly bigger than they were ten years ago, and it's the scariest thing to do is to trade what you have now. It's basically trading the one in the hand for the two in the bush. So it's going counter the traditional common sense that people espouse. And most people are security driven. Most people don't achieve big shit. It makes sense that everybody around you will tell you not to do it because for most of them, it wouldn't make sense.

And many times you will fail. They will be right most of the time. But the thing is, you only need to be right once. And that's the piece that I feel like is missed, is that they will see someone try something on their own and then fail, and then say, see? And then they will confirm their bias rather than thinking like, well, if I do this 100 times, I only need one time to be successful, to be set up for the rest of my life. The biggest cost is time against expectations that we have for ourselves, or rather that we adopt from other people. And so this is for the listeners. If you could fail for ten straight years and then on your 11th year make a $2 million a year business, you are further along than the person who made $100,000 a year that entire period of time. It's just people measure outcomes on too short of an interval. And that's why they don't get what they want, the goals that they have. Because they measure with such a small interval, they can't see success anyways. It's like you can't make a billion dollars in a year.

It's just not going to happen. I don't think there's anybody who's made it from zero to a billion in a year. I could maybe nowadays, who knows? But, like, it's. But if you extend it on ten, anyone can do it.

And also, people don't understand your experience, what you've done for yourself, you know, what failures you've had in the past, how you've learned. And sometimes these big hard jumps actually have the most rewards. So let's go down a little tangent. I think this is a great place to talk about nihilism. So you are a nihilist, and at this point in your time and your journey, we'll get back to your journey. You weren't one, but you are now. And you don't let other people, people's beliefs really impact the way that you move. And so I'd love to understand what nihilism is because for me, it was sort of a new, like, not many people talk about it. And what is it that you like about being a nihilist? And how does this philosophy enable you to take on your dreams without worrying about what other people think?

Yeah, I'm glad you asked. Mostly because, like, I don't really like the label of nihilism in general. I think it's just I got on an interview and someone said that and I was like, sure, but like, nihil, I think it's Greek or Latin, comes from nil, which means nothing. But it really just means that you don't believe that something has inherent meaning. And so for me, that's incredibly liberating because it means that we are devoid of circumstance. Nihilism, people ascribe meaning to that word, which is, by and large negative. I reject the term. I just inherently believe that things don't have inherent meaning and that we choose the meaning things have. It does not mean that I live a meaningless life. It means that I choose the meaning that I want to ascribe to things. So I don't inherit the meaning that my father gave to having a job. I choose to ascribe my own meaning to that. And so all that happens from a behavioral standpoint is that we're changing the meaning of circumstances. And so it gives us a lot of liberty to live life as we see fit. And a lot of that comes, at least for me, big picture, because, like, I have the belief that when I die, people will come to my funeral, people will argue over my belongings, over who gets what.

People will think that some people shouldered more of the responsibility of dealing with my funeral and my death than other people. Some people will not be able to make it because something came up. And two months, three months, two years after I die, I will never be mentioned again. And so if people are not going to even care to show up to my funeral, why would I let them have any say over my life?

Yeah.

For me, a lot of it was unlearning projected judgments that I believed people had over the actions that I was taking when they weren't even thinking about me at all. Nor do they really care. Like, you get a hater comment, it ruins some person's day, but, like, they don't really care about you. Like, they don't care. And even the very few people who really care who might actually speak at your funeral, like, how many people are actually going to speak at your funeral? Probably not many. Even then those people are going to go home, they're going to look at their to do list, and they're going to move on. And so it's like, you have this whole life and the whole time we're catering it to a lot of beliefs that other people have about us. And we don't take actions and we put things off for years, decades, because of judgment that isn't real. It's made up. And it's just hard to unlearn that. Believing that things don't have inherent meaning and then that we have the choice to ascribe whatever meaning we want to things has been very liberating for me in terms of how I can approach business timelines that I can ascribe to success, how I see marriage.

Like, you know, all of these things.

It's so interesting to me because we talk about death a lot on this podcast because a lot of business people bring it up. I had Robert Greene on the show and he talks about the law of death denial. And that's all about people avoid the thought of death because it scares them. But really, when you think about your death, it can help motivate you to accomplish your dreams. And you're giving us a whole other perspective, like thinking about your death, to realize that nothing is that big of a deal. And who cares what other people think? You should just do your own thing and do what you want in the moment. All this stress, all these problems that we have, they don't matter.

No. I mean, there's a poem, I always forget the name of it, but it's like a, it's of an egyptian king or something like that. And there's this head that's buried, it's sort of worn with time, 5000 years old, you can imagine the nose is off, you can barely recognize it. And there's an inscription on the side that says, here lies so and so who, I'm loosely paraphrasing, who ruled everything that the eye could see. I obviously don't know the name of the thing. And so like, here's somebody who was king of the world or the known world at the time, and we not even 100,000 years later, but a few thousand years later, don't even know who they were. I talk to entrepreneurs a lot too, and they're like, I want to leave a legacy. But like when you zoom in on that, it's like for what? Kids get ruined when you give them too much stuff. So that's kind of out the door if you want to go like extended time horizon. The earth is going to disappear when the sun gets too big. And so like everything that we're doing is just a stimulus for us to stay busy while all of our material needs are completely taken care of.

I see it as liberating. Many people see that as dark. But, like, I think a lot of times it's just because people don't want to confront that. The sun will get big enough and eventually evaporate. All the oceans in the earth, there will be no water here. That's what's going to happen. That we could be a multi planetary species. Elon can kill it. Who knows? You know what I mean?

Yeah. And I'm glad you went over that because that was a huge interview that millions of people listened to. So I'm glad that you cleared that up. That's great.

Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors, young and profiters. They may call me the podcast princess, but I'm also the LinkedIn queen. I've been a LinkedIn influencer for six years now, and I teach one of the most popular courses about LinkedIn. And I love to teach sales on LinkedIn because when it comes to b two b sales, LinkedIn has got that on lock. LinkedIn is where all the decision makers are hanging out. There are 180 million senior level decision makers on LinkedIn and 10 million c suite decision makers. These people are on LinkedIn and they're in the mode to buy. They're using LinkedIn for their buying journey, to research vendors or sales reps that they might work with to look up how to solve their problems, to learn from industry thought leaders. They are in the mode to buy, whereas on other platforms, they're in the mode to be entertained. You want to get them in the right mindset. You want to cut through the noise with LinkedIn ads. In fact, 79% of b two b marketers rate LinkedIn as their top channel for paid media. And LinkedIn has the best targeting because they've got all these different inputs.

People are putting their resume basically up on there. And so there's so many keywords that they can use to target the right decision makers so they can hear about how you solve their problems. And I've got a special gift for all you young and profiters who want to try LinkedIn ads. You can get $100 credit. LinkedIn was super generous. If you want to make b two b marketing everything it can be and get a on your next campaign, go to LinkedIn.com yap. Yap. Again, if you want to claim your credit, go to LinkedIn.com yap. Terms and conditions apply. Young and profiters, we are all making money. But is your money hustling for you? Meaning are you investing? Putting your savings in the bank is just doing you a total disservice. You got to beat inflation. I've been investing heavily for years. I've got an e trade account. I've got a Robinhood account. And it used to be such a pain to manage all of my accounts. I'd hop from platform to platform. I'd always forget my fidelity password and then I have to reset my password. I knew that needed to change because I need to keep track of all my stuff.

Everything got better once I started using Yahoo Finance, the sponsor of today's episode. You can securely link up all of your investment accounts in Yahoo Finance for one unified view of your wealth. They've got stock analyst ratings, they have independent research. I can customize charts and choose what metrics I want to display for all my stocks so I can make the best decisions. I can even dig into financial statements and balance sheets of the companies that I'm curious about. Whether you're a seasoned investor or looking for that extra guidance, Yahoo Finance gives you all the tools and data you need in one place. For comprehensive financial news and analysis, visit the brand behind every great investor. Yahoo Finance.com comma. The number one financial destination. Yahoo Finance.com. that's Yahoo Finance.com dot Yap fam. We launched Yap media four and a half years ago. And that was right when Covid was happening. I love having the freedom of working wherever I want. But to be honest, I've been getting burnt out from the whole working from home thing. I am sick of it. And although I'm on call to call, I talk to people every day. There's something about face to face interaction.

I want to feel everyone's vibes. I want to feel the energy of the room. And I knew that something had to change. If I wanted to be my most productive self, I needed to be able to go somewhere to work with other like minded people. So I was on a mission to find the best coworking space for me, and I found industrious. Industrious delivers coworking spaces and flexible office solutions. And they've got everything you would need, from private offices and suites to co working, dedicated desks and on demand meeting rooms. Industrious has locations all over the world. The US, UK, Australia, you name it. And my favorite thing about industrious is the community. They have a really friendly staff, first of all. And second of all, all the people that I bump into at industrious and mingle with seem to be rock stars. They're all entrepreneurs like me, startup founders, solopreneurs who are crushing it. They're smart, they're stylish, and it's just the right kind of energy that you want in a work environment. And as an adult, it's so hard to find like minded people and to find your community. If you're an entrepreneur or solopreneur or freelancer and you've been working from home these past few years and you feel like you're in a Rutger, maybe it's time to start co working at industrious.

Industrious actually found out that I have a popular podcast and they gave me a nice gift from my listeners. A free week of co working to try industrious yourself. If you want to give industrious a try, visit industriousoffice.com comma. Click Join now and use code profiting to redeem a free week of co working when you take a tour. Again, that's industriousoffice.com. click Join now and use code profiting to redeem a free week of co working when you take a tour, that's industriousoffice.com and use code profiting for a free week of co working. And who knows, maybe we'll bump into each other.

Okay, so let's get back to your come up story. Let's talk about when you first started opening up gyms. What was that like for you? Like just talk about, you know, your first experience opening up brick and mortar gyms.

Well, my first gym, I was sleeping on the floor. Very fortunately, I was supposed to open it with a partner, not Sam. Sam was going to be a minority partner as an advisor kind of thing. And he set me up with another guy who was in the area and said, this guy is in the mastermind. You guys should just merge your gym. He has a tiny gym. You want to have a bigger gym, you could start with his clients, you could split it, whatever. Which is, by the way, not a good way to start a partnership. But I said, sure, I don't know anything. You're my advisor. I'll do that. The night before the lease was supposed to get signed and we're going to put the deposit down, he couldn't come up with the money. And so I actually had to take on the whole thing, which I wasn't really financially prepared to do. So I ended up going from thinking I was going to have like 25 or $30,000 saved up to having five. When I opened a gym with no customers in a place I didn't know, and at least that was $5,000 a month.

So I had one month of basically savings for this business before I would not have money. But the gift that that partner gave was that he was the one who told me to go to that workshop. He said, we should do this marketing workshop. And by chance, the thing that that guy taught in 2013 was Facebook ads. Like, I have been extremely lucky many times in my life, and this is one of them. It's crazy because something as small as that, if I hadn't gone to that workshop, the recommendation that my advisor had given was that I should just run groupons to get customers because that's what he was doing for his gym. And it was working. But in Huntington beach, there was ten times the gym density compared to where he was. And so every gym, there was literally three gyms on the same block as me. And so when I ran a group on, nothing happened. If I had not gone to that workshop, I might not even be in business. Like, I might have just gone back to corporate world and had to, like, come back with my tail between my legs.

Cause I would have failed. So I'll go on this quick, change it. Like, my plan b was that I would strip and drive Uber if I couldn't make it, because I figured I could make probably 250,000 a year doing that if I needed to, and then I could start again. Because once I was out, I was like, this is what I want to do. I knew, even though it was hard, I liked the freedom. I knew that I enjoyed that. So anyways, did the workshop. I learned about Facebook marketing. That was what allowed me to sell my 1st, 27 customers, which paid my first month's rent. The next month, I paid more, and we added $5,000 a month in revenue to the business. For the first, I think, seven, eight, nine months. Somewhere in there, I didn't know employees were a thing. So for me, I thought like a business was, you pay the rent, everything else is yours. And that's pretty much how I ran it when we were starting out. But quickly, I was like, I cannot, I was not sleeping much, and I was doing the billing and I was working the leads, and I taught all eight of the sessions every day.

And it was just very, very hard for me. I was very tired. And so then I found out that you could hire people to do some stuff, but I still slept at the gym, so they would still get in there 04:00 in the morning anyway, so it didn't find me a lot of sleep back. But at least I didn't have to teach all the sessions. But yeah, from there, by month nine or ten, I was able to get a manager in, and I had a fully outfitted facility. And then from there, we were able to opened the next location at month 15. And then I opened a new location every six months after that. And the big claim to fame was that once I got better and better at marketing and sales, I was able to open each location at full capacity on the first day. And that's what ended up springboarding into the next thing.

That's awesome. How much did you scale that up? You had six of them or something?

Yeah, I had six locations. I opened a new location every six months. And so year three, I had six. That was roughly where I was. And I think, honestly, I never added up the top line between all of them. I know my biggest one did 600. So it wasnt like a huge business in terms of, I mean, each, like, my biggest location did 600. And so anyways, I got to this weird point where I wasnt needed. So ID managers at each location they could all sell. The locations were working. I was making okay money. I had a nice little condo that looked fancy, so I felt like, felt cool. And so anyways, I went to go to another marketing conference. It was trafficking conversion years ago, and a guy named Russell got up there and was selling people on Internet marketing. And I was like, man, this is really interesting stuff. But he wasn't allowed to pitch. So he did his whole pitch webinar and then just didn't close. It was very weird. I was very sold to this opportunity, but there was no call to action. What happened? Nothing. I just kept living my life.

But I was like, that was really cool. A year later, I'm up at night, nothing to do. I was like, you know what I wonder with that guy? Maybe I should do some of that stuff. I just google his name. The first page that comes up is his application to be in his mastermind. This is again six seven. I mean, a while ago I applied, they called me up, I paid the money, and they were like, oh, yeah, there's tons of gym owners here and lots of people go to. I was the only brick and mortar business owner in the room. But anyways, I went up there and I was like, here's how I open my gyms. Profitable day one. I don't have to put any money down. I pre sell them to pay for them. I had this whole strategy, and after I broke down, everyone was silent. And he was like, you shouldn't be running gyms, man. And I was like, I had this whole plan to be America's gym. Like, United Fitness was the, was the brand. And no, he was just like, you have a level ten skillset and a level two opportunity.

And this was Russell Brunson clickfunnels. Right? Just to the listeners.

Yeah, this is years ago. This was before he was Russell Brunson clickfunnels of the, of the lord that he is now. I think clickfunnels is maybe doing like a million bucks a month then. Like, I mean, it was, you know, it was, I think, year two. You're 18 months into clickfunnels, very, very young. It's one of the reasons he said that. But I'm a big believer if someone's further, because he was much further ahead than me when I was in the mastermind. And he said that, and I was like, well, if I paid for advice, I'm not going to listen to it. I might as well just burn my money. And so I took the advice. And so he said, you should start teaching people how to do what you do. And so I took that not quite as literally as you probably meant it. So I started doing gym turnarounds. So I started flying out and launch other people's gyms. Did that for almost two years. Did 33 turnarounds. We'd filled the gym up 30 days. That was the offer. It was free to them. I would just keep all the upfront sales. I make about 100 grand every 20 days doing that just on my own, no employees.

I was like, this is chill. I like this better than just running the gym. So I got really good at the marketing sales. And I would say that me running all my gyms, I got very good at sales. But where it really got went from, like, I just got so many reps in during that, during that period of time. I mean, I was taking 20 plus one to one consults a day, every day. And, like, when you have that kind of level of transactional sales over and over and over again, like, you just, there's a depth of knowledge that you learn. You learn when to pause, you learn when to shift, how to say certain things, how to, like, just how to shift tone. Like, there's just lots of things that you intuitively learn just from that many repetitions. I got pretty good at it, and then I got pretty good at teaching it because I had, I'd have a team of guys who could start doing it because we started doing, like, 23456 gyms a month that we'd start doing these, these turnarounds for logistically got really difficult, flying people out. Guys said their wives were threatening to divorce them because they weren't home and all that kind of stuff.

And so I need to have a different model. There's like many terrible instances during this period of time. I lost my money, I had a partner, stole everything. Had to start from scratch again. I could keep going into it.

Yeah. Let's pause here because I do want to talk to you about the sales experience that you got. So would you say that you learned most of it on the job or were there certain books that you were reading and what were you really into at that time period? Because I think sales is one of the most important skills that any young professional can have.

Agreed. Yeah. The ability to persuade, and I would just say persuade in general, because marketing and sales, like marketing is really just sales done at scale.

Yeah, marketing and sales. Yeah.

No, I wasn't really consuming anything. It was all done. Just the first time I bought a sales training program was after. It was when I had a team of sales guys. And I was like, you know what? This would probably be a good idea to add it in, but at that point, I'd already done like 4000 closes. So, like, I was, again, a lot of this stuff. I didn't know the terms for it. I just knew I needed to get somebody to give me money, you know what I mean? And so that was like, this is how I have the conversation that gets the most people to say yes. That's how I started it.

That's so interesting. Well, part two of this, we're really going to get into some of those sales and marketing strategies. So this was around the time you met Layla, right?

Yeah, this it was, I think within one month of me joining Russell's thing was when I met Layla.

You have some unconventional views on marriage, and I have a few questions. First of all, let's talk about why your life partner is so important to your ultimate success.

I mean, I think that people either are contributing to your goal or they're taking away from it. I think a lot of people compromise on their partners because they're convenient, rather than thinking, like, is this person going to make it more likely that I achieve my outcome that I want? And so for me, Layla was the first. To be fair, I hadn't dated that many people because we were pretty young when we met, but she really, really not only wanted to encourage the dreams, but participate. And so I think a lot of times entrepreneurs will make compromises on. Okay, well, I'll do this, but then I'll do your thing this weekend or whatever it is. And so the nice thing with Layla is that she never really tried to change me. And because I probably wasn't that changeable, I would have just resented someone more for making me do things I didn't want to do or asking me to do things I didn't want to do. And so it was really just a new construct. I had just gotten out of a, like, a basically on and off relationship that was a five year engagement that we ended up calling off, and I had no desire to get into anything.

I was like, I'm going to do me, and you can, like, roll with if you want. And so, like, our entire first few months of dating was just, I'm going to work all day. You can work next to me. That was what we did from the day we met. Like, the next day, I called her up. I was like, I'm working all day, if you want to come after your shift. And so she just worked with me, and that's what we did. And this really hasn't changed. Like, we went from, like, first date until today with very little changing in our relationship. It was just, it was very easy. And so that's been even running a business together. Like, I think because we had such low expectations getting into the relationship, it made candid conversations much easier. I was like, hey, I think it was, you know, six months in, I was like, you're a little cold. For this to work, I need you to be less cold. And then she was like, okay. And that was it. Like, literally never again. Like, Layla's one of the most fast changing people I've ever actually not one of.

She's the fastest changing behavior person I've ever met. My child. It's almost freaky if I'm like, she used to say, you know when someone laughs and they're like, you're stupid, you know, like, you know how girls will say that? She said that to me once, like, early on, and I was like, I don't like when you say that. I was like, I just don't like being called stupid, even if it's a joke. And she was like, oh, okay. Never did it again. If you define learning as same condition new behavior, like, if you haven't changed your behavior with the same condition, you have not learned. And intelligence is speed of learning, which is speed of behavior change. So in that way, Layla is incredibly intelligent. Like, her ability to change behavior is insane. And so that's also why I think she's been such an adaptable Coo, or rather CEO. Now she's really CEO of acquisition.com dot. I just. I make the content and write the books, but, like, she's really the one running everything. I think you gotta. There's so many ways to have marriages. This is what worked for me, and I am weird.

If we're defining weird as not standard, like, different from the average, like, I am not the average. And so my marriage is atypical. And so this is just what has worked for us, is that I like working all the time, and I wanted someone who would work all the time with me because if I didn't, then I wouldn't see them, and then we would drift apart because I'm getting way different stimuli from my life than they are inherently. We're going to adapt to the things that are. That we're exposed to all day, and eventually we're going to look at each other, be like, oh, we don't know each other. And some people, that's exciting to me. You might as well be a stranger. And I can just keep doing my own thing. So probably contrary, but that's just how I see it now.

It's very interesting stuff, and I'm sure because she was so smart and, you know, had her own thing and very career driven, you obviously respected her a lot. So how did that respect factor play into you being attracted to her and wanting her to be your wife?

Yeah. So two separate things. So from a respect standpoint, she was the first girl that I respected professionally. And so that was new for me. And I think it was probably one of the keys of our relationship is that it was based on respect rather than chemistry. The second part was kind of like what you alluded to with the attraction part. I wasn't, like, super. I mean, I was attracted. Like, she's pretty obviously, et cetera. Like, there was that, but I didn't have, like, a romantic. I wasn't like, oh, my God, I'm getting slept on my feet. And neither was she. So we honestly were just, like, buddies. Like, we liked the same stuff. And so we just did stuff together all the time because we enjoyed doing it together more than alone. And then it got to the point where it was where our employees at Jim launch started saying, hey, what happens if you guys break up? Because we weren't married and the business was scaling like crazy. And I said, you know, we should probably deal with their concerns and get married. And my proposal to her was, hey, what do you think about getting married?

And she said, that sounds fine. And I said, okay, then I'll get you a ring. And so we went together to the store. Literally, after I said that, we got the ring, 45 minutes later back home, said, I guess we should call a church. Called the church. Six days later, we were married. And then we didn't take off the day of our marriage, and we didn't take off the next day. We just showed up the next day at work, and we're like, hey, guys, we're married. So all of your concerns about the stability of the business are gone now. You can keep working, and everything's fine. And it was like, that was it. You know what I mean? And since then, we haven't. We didn't do a wedding. We didn't do a honeymoon. Again, what worked for me? I'm just saying, like, that worked for me. My vibe.

Yeah. And so you guys are obviously a power couple that a lot of people are looking up to. And I learned from you that people who have businesses together that are married only have a 10% divorce rate, which I think is pretty incredible. So, what would you say are the pros and cons of marrying your business partner? And the other question I have is.

Do you feel like Layla fills in.

Your weaknesses, or do you feel like you guys are more similar and kind of just help each other accomplish the same goals?

This is really interesting. Even the way that you phrased the question I thought was, cool. I recommend marrying your business partner. I don't recommend trying to make your wife your business partner, or rather, your spouse your business partner. So we already were business partners, and then I married her, and it worked. And people ask me, what happens if you got divorced? We'd probably still run the business together because I never want, and neither of us would want this for the other person to get a free ride, you know what I mean? Like, she doesn't get special treatment because she's my wife. She is CEO of the companies that we have together because she's the best CEO. She's amazing. You look at the tracker. She's amazing. She fucking knows how to run businesses. That's why she's CEO. You know what I mean? I have so many entrepreneurs who are like, how do I get my wife to want? Like, dude, you're trying to change somebody. They don't like it, that's it. That's fine. But don't try and make her who's not Layla into your version of Layla. She has to be her. And I think to a great degree, a lot of.

And this is again, this is countercultural. But, like, I do think people pick wrong. I think people use the wrong assessment to judge whether or not they're going to have a good long term relationship. When I say good, I would say that's going to be minimum strife, maximum achievement of your personal goals for both people. And I think people think about marriage differently. And so for me, marriage was, is this somebody, again, that's going to support my long term goals and am I going to support her long term goals? And for us, our long term goals were aligned, which, honestly was rare and weird. I didn't actually expect to see anybody who want to do the same thing as me and work as much as I do, but I did. I'm very happy and very lucky that we found that. I just think the reverse. You get in trouble.

Yeah. And would you say that she has strengths where you're weak?

Complementary skill set, shared values. So I think, was it mission values, lifestyle? So these three have to be the same, and then you want complementary. So different. So it's like we want to go the same place, we want to get there the same way, and we want to have the same stuff happen in between, right? So mission values is how we're going to behave. Lifestyle is what we do in between, right. Like we like, all like, or you can say interests if you like that those have to be aligned, in my opinion, for it to just be maximally fun. The complimentary skill sets is if she did the exact same thing as me, one of us wouldn't be necessary. And we've also gravitated that way because when she came in, she was top salesman. So she came in, she was top salesman at 24, at one of the top locations in the country. So she's a savage at closing, but the requirements of the business required. I was like, well, I'm going to still sell because that's what I'm good at. And I was older, and it was my, when it started, it was my business, so I called the shots.

But so she just, again, so adaptable, like, Layla can learn and change her behavior like that. And so she was like, I'm going to be an operator. And so then she just went all in. She, the books, the courses, the podcast, the masterminds, the workshop. She just, all the stuff she consumed was different than stuff I consumed, which is cool, because then we got to talk about different stuff. And, like, at the end of our days today, like every day we download, it's like, what were your meetings? We just go through each other's calendars oh, how is that meeting? How is that meeting? How is that meeting? And so we download at the end of the day, we do a walk for an hour every day. That's our download. And so yin and yang, I think it has to make sense like that, otherwise one of you isn't. I've seen the entrepreneur, assistant, wife or husband. It's tough. It's tough. I think you have to have equal power, and that's rare. It's rare. Cause it's usually uncommon for both people to be like, equally yoked. You want them want both people treading the same way.

And it's hard to find that. If you want to do rare shit.

Talk to us about that. How did you meet her?

Bumble. So I swiped right, swipe right, literally, and swipe right. In terms of right and left, I swiped right, swiped correct. She was an iranian girl and was into fitness, and when I met her on our first date, she really wanted to talk about business all the time. And I'm like, well, this is great. I don't have to like, pretend to like what you like. So this is so much more efficient for me. And so we talked for like 4 hours only about business, and I was like, this is great. And then she was telling me what her dreams and aspirations were, and she had big dreams, and she wanted to open a gym someday. At the time, I think I had five, I had five or six, I can't remember. And I was like, let me just leapfrog you. I already know what you're about to try and do. I know all the failures I already have, the ones that I have. I'm starting this new thing. You should do it with me. She didn't really believe me yet because I hadn't even started it yet. So it was just kind of like an idea right on her.

And she had built up her own personal training business, like a roster of clients, and so she had her own thing going. But I was like, well, I'm going to do this. And so I went and I launched three gyms, came back, I processed like 100 grand in front of her. And she was like, what the hell is this? And she, I mean, she ended up processing it with me, but she was like, is this legal? And I was like, yes. She was like, okay, I'm it. So she ended up quitting and joining me there because she knew it's like, there's product market fit, there's viable, people wanted this, and I was good at it. And so that's when we started flying around doing the launches together. Now, my gyms kept running, but it was very clear that as I left, they weren't doing as well without me being there. There's just all the intangibles. And so I ended up selling those and just going all in on the launch thing, put all my money from the sale. I mean, I've told this story before, but I'll tell it to your audience quickly. I had all the sale of my gyms went all in on gym launch.

Started launching gyms. Doing well with that. One of the gym owners I launched with was like, dude, you should be owning all these gyms. Like, you're literally filling them up and you're leaving all this money on the table, which, by the way, most dangerous term in business is leaving money on the table. It's okay to leave money on the table because you will fuck up the big money that's in front of you by trying to chase little money that's still on little tables. Anyhow, he had bad credit, so I signed the lease. I fronted all the money for the locations. We were going to split them 50 50. Of course. That's a terrible deal for me. I'll do all the work, run all the money, and then we'll split it. But I didn't know anything. So anyways, he was supposed to come in after I launched the first gym with him that was number six and crushed the launch. And then he was like, hey, man, I'm going to keep running mine. You got that one? I was like, whoa, I'm doing launches now. That's not my business. You were going to come behind me.

We're going to launch, open two, three, four gyms a month and own them all. Then it rapidly spiraled down from there. Then he thought, he accused me of stealing. Then he took all the money out of the account. I went to go line for line with him, be like, I havent taken any money out of the account. It costs money to open a gym. And when he didnt want to look at the financials, thats when I knew that was just a line. That was just a strategy. I basically lost everything. I lost all the money that I had had from my own gyms and lost all the money from that gym. But the thing is, I still had a gym. There was no money to run the gym and I didnt really have any money. I just had whatever was in my checking, which every month, basically I couldnt sell anymore because I didnt want to keep the gym open because he wasnt going to run it. So my savings just got drained. If you have payroll, rent, everything, and you cant make new sales in a new gym, that doesnt have recurring revenue, really, really tough.

And so I got drained almost, of everything. And then I started doing launches again. Sent Layla out. She did a launch on her own. First solo launch, crushed it still has the record to this day. Did 240 sales in 28 days, made me 100 grand. And that basically helped me pay off all of these debts of refunds that I had to do for people who bought a year and all this stuff upfront. I just refunded everybody their money, which just came out of all the money that I had. The one thing, I had a coach at the time, and he was like, just do right by everyone and you'll be able to get out of this. And so it was really good advice. And so I did right by everybody. Like, no employee was unpaid. Every client who wanted a refund got a refund, and I was able to just, like, walk away unscathed. And so I was at ground zero again. We did another launch. So the first hundred grand went to cover all the refunds and stuff. We did another launch to kind of, like, recapitalize ourselves. Like, okay, we can go make another 100 grand, because I was kind of like, we make 100 grand on every launch.

And so we went to go do a launch. A guy said he had a baby on the way. He was just happened to be in the neighborhood of the gym that we were going to launch, of all places in the entire nation. A guy reached out to me, he crushed it. All of a sudden, were not getting the deposits, even though im processing all this money, and im like, where the hell is the money? Call the processor up. Standard annual thing. Youll be getting your money soon. Called again two days later, same thing, and then finally, it had been ten days since I'd had a deposit. Imagine anybody who had no stripe, like, not getting deposits, but still processing money. I was like, dude, I need this money. What's going on? And so I called Christmas Eve, and I said, I'm not getting off the phone until you send me my money. And turns out they can keep your money. And I had no leverage, and they said, you will get off the phone because we're not sending you the money, and we're going to hold it for six months because of regular activity, because what I was doing was processing money from all over the nation through what used to be my brick and mortar Jims processor.

I didnt know how it worked, so I was running credit cards from Virginia through my Southern California local gym processing account. Theyre like, what is going on here? So it seemed irregular. So they held all the money. But my sales guy, the guy who had done it, I owed him like $22,000 in commissions, and I had $23,000 left after all the refunds and everything that I had done. And then that got me to my last thousand dollars. And so that was my rock bottom moment. I screenshotted it. After everything, four years or five years or whatever it was, I was like, wow, I have literally nothing to show for it. That's tough.

And was this around the time where you got your DUI and got into a car accident?

So my mother went to the hospital for tough stuff. I gotten a head on DUI, 60 miles an hour on a highway. Walked away, crazy. Nothing. Walked away. Walked out of the car, the car's crushed. And then I lost all my money from my partner. And so that was all 90 days.

We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors, young and profiters. Are you dreaming about starting a course? Do you want to go from one to one to one to many and scale yourself? If you're thinking about starting a course, then you need to hear about Kajabi. Kajabi is the OG, of course platforms. I've got creators in my network, like Jenna Kutcher and Amy Porterfield, who have been using Kajabi for over a decade. These ladies know what they're doing. They are literally the course queens. And so I took a page from their playbook, and I started using kajabi. I've been playing around with it because I'm launching a podcast course next month, and I need a lot of features that only a course platform would have, like Kajabi, and they've thought of it all. No matter your niche, Kajabi makes it easy to turn your skills, passions, and experiences into enriching online courses, exclusive membership sites, subscription podcasts, thriving communities, personalized coaching, and so much more. One of the smartest things that I did when I launched my course is I focused on the content. I lasered in on that I made sure people were getting the best investment they could, that I wouldn't get any refunds, that people would tell their friends, and my course would be successful by word of mouth.

And I did that by focusing on my content, what I was good at, and not all the tech. Leave the tech stuff for your course to Kajabi. They are experts in that area, and they've thought of everything that you would ever need for your course. So if you want to start your course, now is your chance. As you guys may know, I always ask my sponsors for a free trial for any software that we talk about on the show, and Kajabi was super generous. They gave us a free 30 day trial that you can get@kajabi.com. profiting right now, Kajabi is offering a free 30 day trial to start your business. If you go to kajabi.com profiting. That's Kajabi.com profiting. Go to kajabi.com profiting and join the creators and entrepreneurs who have made over $7 billion. Young and profiters. As you may know, I launched my LinkedIn secrets masterclass a little bit over a year ago. It was my first course, and so far I've generated well over $500,000. And the best part is I didn't have to figure out how to set up my mastermind subscriptions, how to do abandoned cart targeting and all of that tech geeky stuff.

I just left that all to Shopify. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. And if you're in that, I need to sell more with less stage. Shopify Magic is your AI super powered sidekick, ready to whip up captivating content that converts. And it doesn't matter if you're selling digital products or vegan cosmetics, Shopify helps you sell anything anywhere, from their all in one ecommerce platform to their in person POS system. Stop those online window shoppers in their tracks and turn them into loyal customers. With the Internet's best converting checkout, I'm talking 36% better on average compared to the other options out there. It's no wonder Shopify powers 10% of all ecommerce in the US, including huge global brands like Allbirds and Thrive cosmetics. It took me a day to set up my Shopify store. I set up chat, took two minutes and I was done. One month. From thinking of the idea to implementation a year later, I've made half a million dollars on the idea. That's what it takes in 2024. Just a good idea. And then utilizing a platform like Shopify that can help you make it a reality, there is no excuse.

These days, if you've got a good business idea and you think you'll be a good entrepreneur, you don't have to wait any longer. You don't have to be super techie, and you never have to worry about figuring it out on your own. Shopify's award winning help is there to support your success every step of the way. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period@shopify.com. profiting that's all lowercase. Go to shopify.com profiting now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com profiting young and profiters Yap media is growing so fast. I have ten open roles just this month. In the past, it would take me so long to find hires. I have to go on all these different job sites. I have to create my own skills assessment. That's why I let indeed do a lot of this heavy lifting for me, indeed is the powerful hiring platform where I can attract, interview and hire all in one place. Indeed has things like skills assessments where when we have specific roles, we can find an assessment that matches that role and we can make sure they have the skills that we need.

Then I can focus on culture fit. I can make sure they're scrappy enough and are are obsessed with excellence and do all the things that we need to do for them to fit in at yap and indeed streamlines. Hiring with powerful tools like instantmatch and instant match basically matches you with candidates. As soon as you put up a job post with people who are qualified right away, it's instant. And the best part is it gets better as you use it. So now when I use indeed, especially when I'm hiring for similar roles, I get people right away where they know that I'm going to like the candidates because they can see what my preferences were in the past. It gets better as you use it. According to us indeed data, the moment indeed sponsors a job. Over 80% of employers get candidates whose resumes are a perfect match for the position. It's like waving a magic wand that gets better as you use it. So I love using indeed. We've found a lot of our a players on there. Join more than 3 million businesses worldwide who count on indeed to hire their next superstar like we do at Yap Media.

Start hiring now with a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post@indeed.com. profiting offer is good for a limited time. Claim your $75 sponsored job credit@indeed.com. profiting again, that's indeed.com profiting and support the show by saying you heard about it on young and profiting podcast. Again, it's indeed.com profiting to get your dollar 75 credit terms and conditions apply. Need to hire you need indeed.

What I found was really interesting when I was researching your story. You didn't mention it, but you also had, like, a dental and chiropractic agency, I think, at the time. And you were, like, running these gyms. You were doing your gym launch business, and you hired an attention coach. So what did this attention coach teach you about having to focus and make decisions?

Well, like, the one output of the entire time that I had with him was just untangling loose attention. It's like I was just spread so thin. So I had all these things that you just alluded to. I had a chiropractor agency that. I had a couple clients. I had a dental agency that had one client. I had my five gyms from home. I had the new gym, and then we had gym launches that were going on, basically paying for all of my stupid mess ups during this period of time. And he's like, you have no power. You are so spread thin that you can't accomplish anything. And so what it was was that I was not confronting many hard conversations, so I would do any. I would start another business. I would avoid. It was all avoidance. So I didn't want to have hard conversation with partners. I had partners at all these things, and for most of them, I was the, I don't want to say the breadwinner, but I was the one who was bringing it in. So I ended up just partnering with people because I felt insecure about doing things on my own.

This is where partnerships have to be long term. Like, even if this is a side note, like, if you have the opportunity to get 50% of a business that you know you're not going to contribute 50% to, don't take it, because two years from now, they will resent you and it will not work. So there's no point in getting the short money because it's going to blow up in your face and really ugly. And so I learned that on the opposite side, being on the receiving end of that, and I was like, I will not do this to anyone. And so anyhow, every day he would ask me the same question, which is, what is your attention on? And so, piece by piece, it was just every day we would just start peeling back all the things and just removing things from my life until there was basically nothing left but one thing. Layla and I went on, like, a six week breakup. Basically, she went to go launch a gym, and I was like, I just don't have head space for this. Fundamentally, we talked every day, but, like. But, like, from attention standpoint, I was like, I can't deal with anything.

I had too much on my plate, and so I broke everything down to nothing, and then just rebuilt with the few things that mattered. And I think that since then, that has, despite my proclivity for wanting to do more things, it has been the hardest. One character trait I have is being able to focus, by far.

Yeah. So let's get back to gym launch. You start this company, you basically start licensing your business model. So talk to us about how, why is that such a scalable opportunity for the new entrepreneurs out there? Like, why is it better to take something and teach people how to do it, rather than trying to do it one by one?

So just big picture. I dont think its necessarily better. I think that it has faster scale. For example, we have a handful of companies in our portfolio that are brick and mortar. So I had a company recently that was an agency for photography studios, and they had a very good model for growing photography studios. And he was like, hey, I want to do what you did with gym launch. But there were a couple of key differences in the business in terms of how much it cost to start up. The nature of the surface itself is one time versus recurring, et cetera, et cetera. It made more sense for us to actually own all of them and then compound by adding more locations every month. So we open like four locations a month right now. And so if I knew then what I know now, real, real acquisition.com might not even exist. I might have 200 gyms. But the thing is that my operational skill set at that point wouldn't have been able to scale that business. It is easier to scale something that has more leverage. So media has leverage, software has leverage, capital has leverage.

Like one person can raise a billion dollars, one person can write code, and a billion people can use it. One person can make a video like this, and a million people can listen to it. There's leverage there. Limited input, unlimited output with labor or services, you have to be able to operate people. And so I didn't have that skillset. I think that now we have a team, et cetera, we could do something like that. But then I didn't have it. And so given the skill set I had at the time, me switching from brick and mortar operations to licensing it, and basically taking a fraction of the revenue, I was able to make other people, I was able to scale that much faster. I could help 4000 gyms make an extra 100 grand a year in profit and then take a percentage of that profit. So realistically, I would be able to take probably 25% to 30% of the added profit to the facility through my licensing. They would win, I would win. And thats the nature of capitalism. That was the tradeoff. Now, a licensing business, or any business, has value insofar as the future revenue is stable and predictable.

So the reason that I like brick and mortar a lot of times for scaling is that if you count the locations almost like customers, if you think about it like that, theyre not going anywhere. And so its like every time you open a location, its like you can bank on the fact that theyre going to just deliver $150,000, $200,000, $400,000 a year in income to the main business, and then we just reallocate capital and keep doing it, which is why its such a nice, nice and scalable business. Thats why franchising versus licensing, franchising, those contracts are more ironclad. Youre in for ten years. Theres a lot of law that protects the franchisor to make sure that they can collect on that for ten years. Licensing, its much less. So anyways, not to go into a big tangent here, but the main point is me switching from brick and mortar to licensing made up for the fact that I was not as good at operating it, because my constraint was my operational ability, not my marketing and sales. And the product that I was selling was marketing and sales. I was really good at marketing and sales, and then the thing I sold was marketing and sales.

And so, like, I was better at teaching marketing and sales than I was at, like, weight loss experiences. So if you just think of quality of the product, like the marketplace valued, making $100,000 a year in extra profit, far more than Susie values, six weeks of group training, and losing 20 pounds, far more. And so I was able to switch my vehicle that I was, that I was selling. And that was a big part of why I was able to make a lot more money.

Talk to us about how you started acquisition.com.

Dot oh, yeah.

So, I mean, acquisition.com started in 2021. The first company we took on was 2020. So June of 2020, I think, was the first company we took on, which is that photography business. We also took on a personal training certification business, and we took on a publishing business in 2020. Those three businesses, between the three of them, added over 100 million a year to those businesses in total. We thought, hmm, we should do more of this. And so once we had that as like, okay, we have a workable model here where we can just take all the knowledge we have of scaling our companies. And the reason 2021 was so, was boring and difficult for me, was because I had to sell. I sold three companies. So for anybody who's ever sold, like, going through a big sales process is a year, and you usually don't change much in the business. You don't want to do anything crazy. And so there was just not a lot for me to do, so I just had to sit there and, mind you, they made money, which then gets into the whole meaninglessness thing. But I just had to sit and wait.

And so acquisition.com and these companies that I was working with on the side took my focus. And to the point that we were making earlier about focus, I know myself well enough to know that I have to do one thing. And so I needed to exit these companies so that I could focus full time on acquisition. But I wanted to just have, like, a quick test in the water that it worked. And so once it did, then we sold. December 24 of 2021 is the day that the last deal closed and the 25th. So Christmas day, we were working on acquisition.com dot. I started making content in 2021 because, again, I had extra time. And so I was just making stuff, and people seemed to like it. And then everything really took off in 2022 when we brought in a team and editors and all that kind of stuff. And, yeah, now we have 16 companies in the portfolio, and we take minority, minority interest in businesses. The average company we have right now does about 17 million a year with margins above 35% as a portfolio average. And so, yeah, so our goal is just to get as many of them as we can over 100.

And then it's really the founders, because we're minority partners, you know, we're 20% to 30% equity holders in those businesses.