Things I Would Tell My Younger Self About Business | Re-Air Ep 118
40:28 Share

I doubt somebody's gonna continue mentoring somebody if they're not actually acting on the advice they get. There's nothing that I hate more than when someone asks for my advice only to not take it. How do you create an unshakable business? I crossed $100 million in net worth by the age of 28. Now I'm growing acquisition.com into a billion dollar portfolio. In this podcast, I share the lessons I've learned in scaling big businesses and helping our portfolio companies do the same. Buckle up and let's build.

Here are some things I would tell my younger self if I were starting a business. Instead of trying to figure out how do I get over the fear of starting something new, I would ask myself, how do I feel the fear and do it anyways? When I was younger, I was constantly thinking I was trying to get rid of a feeling before I would take an action. And so I spent all this time trying to figure out like, how do I not get scared? How do I do this? Like all these people that are successful and they have these businesses, like they must not be scared. They figured out how to get rid of the fear.

And it wasn't until my back was against a wall where I felt terrified, but I felt also like I had no choice but to act, that I realized that you don't act without fear. You carry it with you and do it anyways. And I remember looking up the definition of courage, and I realized that courage cannot exist without fear.

And so you don't even give yourself a chance to be courageous until fear is present. And that was when I realized that I don't wish for fear to go away, but I instead wish for courage to be present.

And then when I realized that I needed to build the muscle of courage, that is when I realized like, I don't need to waste all this time trying to get rid of the fears, trying to get rid of the anxieties, trying to get rid of all these thoughts and feelings that I have about failing. I just need to build the muscle of courage, which is accepting those thoughts and feelings and doing it anyways.

I remember when I first started selling at 24 Hour Fitness and the first woman I approached, I went up to her and she was on the elliptical and I was going to go up and offer a free personal training session. And it was like the first time I ever did it, the worst reaction anyone's ever gotten, which she just turned over to me and she was like off. And I remember just feeling terrible and terrified and frustrated.

That first week, I remember having to go into the bathroom and just crying because I just felt so awful. But I also didn't want anyone to know I felt awful. I was hiding it, you know, because I wanted it. I had moved out to California on my own. I'd gotten this job. I didn't have enough money and I knew I needed to make it work.

And I just remember feeling so hopeless in the beginning because I wasn't good at doing the thing and I also didn't know what it was gonna take for me to do the thing. And I think before you make your first sale, it feels impossible to make money. It felt like I don't know how to make money. And after you make your first sale, you realize that you have the ability to make money. And that in itself is like the best feeling that one could have.

When you're ethically making money, at least.

But I remember before, like all the time leading up to it, like crying in the bathroom, you know, calling my parents. I was like, I don't know if I should have done this. Like maybe I'm, I don't have what it takes, you know. But I used that energy and I said, I've just got to put all of this negative energy into learning and into growing. And so I bought like three books on sales and I was like, you know what? I've never wanted to learn how to sell, but if I don't learn how to sell right now, I will never achieve the goals I have in life. And so I remember reading these books,

And every night I would get back, I'd be exhausted, but I would make myself read an hour and then I would go to work the next day and apply whatever I was learning. And it was doing that for a long enough period of time that finally I was able to break through and I remember making my first sale. And one of the biggest things I realized was that like no tactic, no script, nothing of that can have the impact that the frame has on the sale.

And I didn't even know at that time what a frame was, but I understand what it is now. And I'll tell you what the frame was. The frame was, I lost 100 pounds. I moved my ass out to California because I wanted to help other people do the same. Do you want me to help you? That was the frame that I brought to the sale. It wasn't, oh, here's my discount. Oh, here's this program. Here's what I'm going to do for you. It was like, I did this. The reason I'm here is because I want to help you do it too. Do you want me to help you? This is what I do. Do you want me to do it for you? And

It was truly because that was my thought at that point in time. Like I was like, after reading all this stuff on sales, I was like, I don't need a tactic. Like I have what everybody wants, which is conviction. I truly want to help the people that are sitting across the table from me. I'm truly not doing this for the money. I truly know that they're not going to take it seriously if they don't pay me money. And so it's like, okay, I used to be this person on the other side of the table. I empathize with that and I understand it.

And so what I gained from that experience is realizing that the frame has more power than any word, any tactic, any small learning that you can have in sales can have. Because at the end of the day, I think people can feel your emotion when you're talking to them during a sales process and they can tell where it's coming from. And I think what I've realized that's been a huge strength for me from that day forward in business has just been authenticity.

Like, I'm just going to tell it to people how it is. I'm going to be honest about who I am, what my intentions are, what I want to do. Of course, I want to make money, but I also want to help you. And I think once I got up to a point where I had a full roster of clients, I was truly busy. I was just maintaining how many people I had. I felt a lot better, but I also didn't realize that people move, people fall off programs. Like there's a lot of people that would come on and once they hit their goal, you know, they would say like, hey, I'm just going to maintain on my own.

And so I had to learn over the first couple of years, like what a normal cycle of clients looks like. Like you've always got like your bread and butter, like they're there for you. They're not even there for their goal anymore. But then you've got people who like once they hit their goal, they're like, all right, I'm good, which I get, you know, I don't expect everyone's going to pay top dollar for personal training all the time, but it was an expectation I didn't really understand. So, you know, I remember one of my expectations was like, oh, once I have these people, like I don't need to worry about getting more people.

But what I realized, you always want to be looking for new clients because people naturally, if you really help them, are going to go off on their own and do it. Because that was what I really tried to do is I wanted to teach them what to do, not just like give it to them so they could go off on their own and they could actually like be empowered and make decisions on their own. So I would say if I was talking to somebody today or talking to my younger self, I would say,

don't expect that what is today is tomorrow. Clients come and go. Business comes and goes. There's seasons. There's holidays. There's always things that are unexpected. And business is not linear. It is very irregular. And I think that it was good for me to start off the way I did because I learned that irregularity. You know, fitness has a ton of irregularity. Most money in fitness is made in Q1 and the rest of the year is much worse than Q1. And so for me, I started in the worst quarter of the year. I think it was...

I want to say it was June or May or June that I started selling, which is like the worst months in fitness. They're some of the driest months, but everything got much better towards winter. And I remember having like an amazing Q1, but then I was like, why are people falling off when summer comes? And

I would just say like, when you first start off, you don't know the trends, the irregularities, what's normal, what's not normal. And so you just have to expect that things are going to fluctuate a ton. So there's this quote I heard, which is that fear is a mile wide and an inch deep. And it really resonated with me because when we first started Gym Launch, which was technically my first company, I'll say it wasn't technically, but in my opinion, it was my first company.

There were so many things that I was so scared of. I was so scared of feeling like I wasn't doing enough for my team. I was so scared of not over-delivering for clients. I was so scared of, am I legally or not legally compliant? I was so scared of not understanding how a department worked and feeling like I was not good enough to lead people who were smarter than me. I mean, there were so many things I was so scared of. And what I realized is that every time I actually confronted a fear,

it was just so much less than I expected. And I actually realized that all this time you spend avoiding something, it would be so much like it's a shortcut if you're willing to lean into it. Because one, the fear dissipates. And then two is you get to the other side and you get to move on. And in the first year of business, I was just petrified of doing something wrong. And I think

I was pretty scared for the most of my first five years in business of messing up, of not being perfect, of doing something wrong, of me making a mistake that would cost the business the business. And hearing that quote, I remember thinking like, wow, that really resonates with me because I always am expecting it to be so much worse than it is. And it's just almost never as bad as we think it is. And the only thing that is as bad as we think they are are just the things we don't expect to happen. I think that I've always been pretty hard on myself.

And I think that that's good in a lot of ways. It keeps me moving forward. I'm always trying to improve. I'm always trying to be better. But it also, I would say, is like for a while was my Achilles heel. Like I literally thought I was just...

not good at anything. You know, like I would say like, I won a bikini competition. I still thought I was like not in shape. And that is probably equivalent to how I felt about business, which is like, you know, build a business that's doing 25 million in profit one year and like still think you should suck at business. And I think there's a lot of advantages to that. But what I realized was it became

a blocker for me when it came to leading a team because people also want somebody who has a sense of certainty, direction, feels confident in themselves. And I remember there was this exercise that a friend told me he was doing. I said, what is it? He's like, well, my coach told me to go to all my friends and ask them, what's the one thing that I'm doing that's holding me back from being the best version of myself?

I was like, oh, that's interesting. And so I gave him an answer. And I said, why don't you tell me? And I ended up asking about eight people. And every single person said the same thing. And I remember feeling embarrassed because, wow, that must be very obvious. And then also realizing that my humility was actually like massive insecurity. And the feedback that everyone had given me was, you don't know how good you are to a degree that it hurts you.

like you act like you are not good at things and you don't take on challenges that you are capable of because you don't have an accurate representation of your skill set in your mind. And when eight people tell me that, that was when I was like, yeah, I mean, there's being humble and having humility and then there's just being insecure. And I didn't want to take my humility so far that I was an insecure leader.

And I thought to myself, would I want to be led by somebody like that? You know, would I want to work for somebody like that? And I think to the latter, many would rather work for someone like that than like a complete. But I think that there's a nice middle. And so that was when I really started working on changing my behavior so I could show up like somebody who,

knows that they're good at stuff rather than just pretending or just thinking you suck at everything. I think that because I wouldn't recognize my own capability, there were a lot of times I deferred to other people for decisions. So I would defer to my team. I would defer to, I mean, really, I would try and gather information from every single person and then also get consensus for decision. And if that didn't work, then maybe I would be like, Alex, just tell me what do you think we should do?

Because I was worried that I wouldn't have the right answer. And then if I did make a decision, I think there's somewhat of it too. That's like the consequences of your decision when you're leading a lot of people are scary because, you know, their livelihoods in your hands and you're making decisions that affect their everyday and their security. And so I think looking back, I would have been way more decisive if I had decided

known that that was like a deficit. I don't even know if I had evidence. I lived most of my life as being like pretty insecure and anxious. And so I just decided to act differently. And I did things that made me feel very uncomfortable. And examples of those things, taking credit, really hard for me, but really hard to also lead a lot of people if you have no credit. So if you take none,

Why would people work for you, right? I've always been totally good giving away the credit, but sometimes it's to a point where it's like a detriment for leaders. And I saw that in myself. So I started being okay taking credit. I started advocating for myself more on meetings, in decision-making, and I started making decisions, even though I felt wildly uncomfortable, that other people didn't like, but I saw it pan out. And I think I continue to realize over time that

My job is to gather everybody's insights, opinions, and make sure everyone is heard. But it's not to agree with everybody and make a decision that's going to make everybody happy because that's impossible. And that puts a lot of drag on a business. So...

I just acted differently. And I think what I've always noticed is that like, if you change how you're acting, eventually your mind will catch up and it will stop having those thoughts that provoke the anxiety and the fear. I think we waste a lot of time trying to change our minds when changing your behavior is much easier. Here's the thing is like, I think a lot of people get into business for the wrong reasons. And...

I see it because a lot of people I see in business, but they don't want to be the one that makes the calls. They don't want to make the decisions. They don't want to have to guess what to do next. And they want someone else to tell them what to do. It's like, well, if you want to do that, then you should have a job. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's fantastic. There's so many happy people who have jobs, probably happier than people who have businesses. But it's like, I think having a business gets romanticized and people don't understand that

There's nobody holding you accountable. There's nobody to tell you what to do. There's nobody that holds all the answers and you're never going to have a sense of complete certainty of any decision you make. And it's operating in complete ambiguity at all points in time. And also knowing that you're going to piss half the people off half the time. It sucks a lot of the time. And you just have to... So I think when people go into it, it's like if you like to be told what to do and you like a lot of certainty, you like a lot of reinsurance, I would say like, then why are you starting a business? You're not going to get that there. And...

I think early on, what I realized was no one person has the answers. You know, I think I sought out to have a lot of specialists that would help me, you know, a specialist that I can consult with for finance, for legal, for customer success, for sales, for marketing, for leadership. But I realized quickly that

Lots of people pretend like they're experts in all areas, but tend to only be really world-class at a couple things. And so I would rather consult with somebody on the one thing they're world-class with and then consult with somebody else who's world-class on the other thing than try to get everything from one person. I think it's probably not fair to them. It's not fair to you. And

I think a lot of people when they're starting off in business and when I was, like I just looked for like one person to give me all the answers. And I realized very quickly that taking all the answers from one person who didn't have expertise in all the areas they were providing answers to was much more dangerous than getting none at all. It's kind of the hairstylist syndrome.

where, you know, you get a mentor that's supposed to help you in business. And then suddenly you start asking like, what do you eat? How do you work out? What do you do about this? How do you do this with your marriage? And it's like, how do you know that they're good at any of that? But because they're good at doing your hair, you assume, and they're within proximity to you, so it's convenient. You know, I think we have to be really careful of who we seek instructions from. I use a lot of books and like self-guided courses when I was first getting into business because most of the people who I really wanted to be mentored by, like,

I have no idea why they would want to mentor me. You know, I was just like some 23-year-old girl who like started a company that, you know, the first year they did like 7 million. But like, what evidence is there to support that I'm like the next anything? And I think that the best mentors often pick the people that they mentor. The mentorees do not pick their mentors. And I've realized that to be true time and time again. And I actually myself am that way, which is like, I will choose the people that I will mentor. They will not choose me. And so I think that

And assuming that you're special and that you're different and they should give you a shot, it's very entitled mentality. And I don't think I ever had that mentality. I think I just realized, I think I defaulted the opposite, which was like, why would they give me the time of day? And like, there's nothing I can do for this person. So yeah.

But I think a lot of people waste a lot of time trying to find a mentor rather than being resourceful, reading books, studying courses, gaining skills. And it's like all that time that you go wishing for a mentor, you could have just been bettering your skill set. There's probably a million things you're bad at if you're just starting business. Like pick one to start with. I think it's pretty simple and people overcomplicate it. What are you stuck with right now in business? Where are you stuck? What's not working?

Go study that. And the thing is, people overcomplicate everything. It's like, okay, what are you bad at? All right, why don't we start studying that? You know what I mean? And I think that oftentimes the only reason is because in the beginning, a lot of people are bad at a lot of things. And so I would say, what thing are you bad at that if you got good at would provide you with the highest return?

So a lot of people are like, what book do I start with? I'm like, if they wrote a book on sales, they know more than you. So like anywhere is better than nowhere. It's like trying to decipher like which information is the right one. It's like when you're sucking so bad that you can't even decipher it, then it's like anything is better than nothing. I think a lot of it comes down to proximity and luck. It's not like a mentor is going out and like seeking the internet, looking for like the next predecessor or whatever. I'm like, Jesus, they're just like, if you happen to stumble in their area and they are

they find you interesting and like you have a lot of potential, you respond to their advice, they're probably like, yeah, I'm going to invest in this person.

You know, it's like I think of anyone that I've mentored and it's been proximity. They've somehow found their way towards me. I have liked them. They have asked me for something. And then when I've given them advice, they go do it right away. And I like that. So then I give them more advice and then they go do more of it. They see positive result. They ask me and it just continues. And so a lot less of it is like so methodical. You know, some people are that way. But like most people, it just ends up being like, who did they randomly get introduced to or get proximity to that they took interest in?

I doubt somebody is going to continue mentoring somebody if they're not actually acting on the advice they get. Like there's nothing that I hate more than when someone asks for my advice only to not take it. Hey guys, a quick break to tell you that if you'd like to see more content from me that isn't just listening to my voice, you can go on and check out my YouTube channel as well. Just search Layla Hormozy and you'll see me in my face. Thanks again for listening and let's get back to the show.

One thing that was really impactful for me was there's this quote, and I've heard it so many times, which is like, the goal is to be respected, not liked. And that's in referring to your team. And I used to be like, yeah, that makes a ton of sense.

And then I realized that I think a lot of people misuse the quote. And it's actually abused heavily in terms of a lot of people, what they really mean is like, you need to be feared, not liked. And I think that the term respect, I think of left alone, as in your team respects you enough to like, let you be, let you have your space, you know, not constantly be on you, bugging you, all these things. But if you want your team to only do what you say,

never have a thought of their own, hide when you come in the room. I think a lot of people prefer

They use that quote because they actually just want people who do exactly what they say and are scared of what will happen if they don't. And a lot of people, I think, that get into business do like that. You know, I think that they like having the authority, like having people who just do what they say and are nervous about getting anything wrong. I think it's important to be respected and liked. I think that respect is a standard. Like, we should respect everybody on the team. You know, I should also respect people who work for me. But I also think...

If you want to access discretionary effort from people, then it would make sense that they would not provide that unless they also like you. And I think, you know, you can have the best idea in the world, but if you're a complete to the people that work for you, why would they give you any shower time?

And it just seems simple, but it's like people do more of what they like and less of what they don't like. They also spend more time with people they like and less time with people they don't like. If you're their boss and they don't like you, they will try to spend less time with you, which means spending less time working.

So I don't really see how having people that don't like you equates to getting better performance from your team. I think I did a fairly good job with my communication to my team as I got really big, because I think going from like 30 to 70 to 100 people, when we had 100 some people at the team,

I really was rigorous with my communication. You know, I would spend every night, Sunday night, two hours working on what I called like the weekly newsletter, which was like the newsletter from me. And I would get something from every leader, get something from departments, put in there like what's top of mind for me, add in some resources for people, whether it's podcasts, books I'm reading, whatever.

Because I wanted people to feel like they still personally knew me. What did I do this weekend? You know, what was top of mind for me? What was I working on in the company? But I also wanted them to have concrete updates of what was happening across the entire company, not just what the department that they're working on. And so I think I realized that

The things that we do that we say aren't scalable, it's just a cop-out. Everything we do can be scaled to some degree. And so think about the personal conversations you have. What knowledge is exchanged when people have those personal conversations? Okay, well, how can I share that knowledge on a group level? Does it feel the same? No. But will they feel like they know you better? Yes. And so I think that there's always creative ways to scale communication. It's just that often...

We say that it's not possible and so that prevents us from even having a bad idea, let alone a good one. And so I think I did a good job of scaling the communication. What I probably dropped the ball on for the first couple years was scaling the knowledge that I had to my leaders. I probably hired too many people in the beginning that had too little experience and I just truly didn't have the time to pour into all of them that they needed.

And that was on me because I should have recognized that I needed people with a little more experience because I didn't have the time to do my job and also train all of them to the degree they needed it. Because I think they all would have been trainable, but all 10 of them with just me, it wasn't really feasible. So I think that was probably the biggest constraint I had. And so I think if I were like looking back on my younger self, I would say like, there's nothing wrong with recruiting more help.

Like there's nothing wrong with saying you need help, with admitting you need help, with hiring people that can help you more. But I think you have to admit it to yourself before you admit it to them. And I think I would also say like business is hard enough on its own. You don't need to make it harder on yourself. It's going to be hard no matter what. You know, just saying like I've got to train them all up. I've got to, you know, build people up from the ground up because that's the right way. It's like, well...

Yeah, some people for sure. But if you do that with everybody, like you're going to end up failing them. So it's like, I think I did everything on hard mode for a while. And I think part of me thought that business had to be insanely hard and punishing. And it took a while to realize that was just like not the case. And I also had to undo a lot of the things that I was doing that led me there.

I've come to learn that it doesn't have to be that case at all. You know, you don't, like I said, it's just like business is hard enough on its own. You just don't need to make it harder on yourself. I had a lot of people on the team who are a decent amount of leaders that I realized needed a lot more development and the business did not have time for me to put that time into their development. Meaning like the business would not continue to perform and grow for the betterment of the whole team if I kept these people there. And I also thought to myself,

Even if they improve to the degree that they can do this job, like knowing what I know now and what the business has become because it changed very quickly, are they still the right person for the job? And then I realized the answer was no. Okay, well, how is it benefiting their life for me to keep them here? Because I really thought about it because I always felt like, oh God, I don't want to let them go because they work so hard and all that stuff. But I was like, but I also know that there's not a future for them.

So it's kind of like staying in a relationship with somebody when you know you're going to eventually break up with them and you're just delaying them from being happy. And that was when I had the reframe and I was like, man,

It feels very selfish because it's like me protecting myself from the short-term discomfort of letting them go and knowing they're going to be pissed at me no matter what. Like, even if they like me, even if it's a mature, like, they're still not going to be like, oh, he's my best friend. Like, they're still going to be upset. But then I got to see those people go on to have way better careers elsewhere because they were a better fit for those companies and their skill set was better fit. And I didn't have the time or the expertise to train a lot of them on what they need to be trained on. And so I think at the end of the day,

It's my fault whether they're a fit, not a fit. They have the skill, don't have the skill. Like I'm the one making the decision. And I have to take ownership over what is the best outcome, even if it means like, you know what, they're not going to like me for this. What was interesting about that moment for me was that it was when I finally realized I wasn't invincible anymore.

to the normal mistakes people in business made. Because I think the success the business had was so fast and so abnormal, I assumed that I was doing things also in a way that like, wow, I probably will also get to avoid a lot of the common pitfalls that people experience when they get into business. And I realized that was not the case. I actually just delayed the pitfalls and then got to deal with them all at once later. And so that was when I realized like, I like to say like,

I think you're not really an entrepreneur until you get slapped in the face. You make a huge mistake. You really hurt the business. Like everyone that I know that's a great entrepreneur has had like, they've at least had their one giant slap in the face and then they've gotten through it. And I think that was my first one. It's just like, and it shows you that you're not invincible and that you're not the smartest person in the room. Because I think a lot of people when they're young, especially, and things are unusually successful, you think,

Your doesn't stink. You know, you're like, oh, I know better than all these other people that have been giving me advice and they're all wrong and I will be the exception. And I see it in a lot of people who gain a lot of really early success young in their career and it just ends up biting you in the ass later on. I would say that if somebody's early in their career and they're experiencing a lot of success, there's probably a lot of things that they know they need to get to or they've been avoiding because their success has overcompensated for some of the areas of deficiency in the business. What I would say is

like rip them out from under the rug right now and work on them. Because the moment that your, what I would say is probably like success arbitrage dissipates, those things will be why your business goes down. Like they will be the reason that the business fails or starts to decline. And so like,

They say nothing fails like success because usually there's the success is caused by one or two things that are unusual, right? So it's like this huge distraction. But then there's all these things over here that are up and they're not right. And they are deficiencies of the business. And so, but people have so much success, it overcompensates for all the deficiencies. So you can get by.

But once this starts to naturally, like everything does come down because everything that goes up comes down, these things become exposed and they start to heighten and the importance of fixing them starts to increase. And so my advice would be that if you are experiencing a lot of success right now, do not treat these deficiencies like they are small problems. Treat them like they are about to become big and attack them in that manner and shore them up. And then you will be set once this starts to decline because you'll have a solid base.

I would say it's everything that's not your success arbitrage. And

most people know that there's one reason why they're really successful. You know, for example, there's some business, I've seen so many different businesses with different reasons. Like they nailed like this vendor contract and the vendor company blew up. And so then they have all this business coming from the vendor. Like their company doesn't even that good, but they just got this great partnership, right? Or, you know, they have this insane marketer that had this list from the prior company he was at. And because of it, he's able to build this crazy campaign. And they have this audience that's insanely targeted. And so because of that, they get like a dollar leads.

Right? And so the cost of acquisition for their product is 50 bucks and they make 3000. Well, what happens when the list runs out? What happens when the vendor doesn't want to be your partner? I think it's just bringing yourself to a level of awareness to understand like, why does my business even work? And then, okay, well, that's why my business works. What are all the things that aren't making it work? And that's probably everything people are avoiding. Like most of the time, people are so fixated on the thing that's driving success that they ignore every other area of the business.

And so I would say it often is the more boring areas, but it doesn't always have to be. I've seen it be all different reasons why people are successful. It's just everything that is not directly causing the overcompensation in the business. Like a lot of people...

have very high ability in sales and marketing. And so they can get customers for dirt cheap. But of course, they have no recurring revenue. They have no financial metrics. They have no compliance. It's like those people, FTC catches them, churn, word of mouth gets so high, eventually people aren't buying. Their employees quit because they think this is scammy. I mean, like there's so many things and they just end up burning their wheels. They'll make money, but they're never gonna be a real business. And so I think a lot of people

have that. There's just so much luck in business. It's insane. And some people can get lucky to a degree that is unfathomable. I mean, if I told you right now, I had dinner with a business not that long ago, and they were lucky enough, and they're doing 400 million in revenue,

And it is truly luck. And it is a complete disaster. When we started Gym Launch, like the reason it worked was like a combination of luck. It's like Alex and Layla both had fitness industry background experience, like a combined together, I think like 14 years. They meet each other. They have complementary skill sets. Then Alex cracks Facebook ads for gyms before really anybody else does to the degree he did, where he's able to acquire leads for gyms

for like 50 cents and then able to sell them on something that's $500. I mean, think about that ROI. And then Alex and Layla are able to figure out how to acquire gym owners to sell this system to for $20 a lead. And then they charge them anywhere from 16 to $50,000. I mean, the amount of margin that you have there, there's so many mistakes that a business can stomach when it's got that much cash. And so...

You know, that was why it worked so well in the beginning. And the thing that I also think we got lucky with, though, is that we knew that that was a huge reason why the business was successful. And we both were like, we got to actually build a business. Like, that was like literally, we would tell each other, we'd be like, we need to turn this into a real business. Like, because we knew, we knew it was arbitrage. We see all these other people that were like, this is arbitrage.

We were like, all we did was study pricing, packaging, customer churn, build IT infrastructure, how to do P&Ls, how to do... We were so ruthless in understanding holistically how to run a business. I think that's why it's still market leader today is because then we put all that in place because we knew. And eventually, you know what happened? Now, how much money does it cost for a general owner to get a customer? $50 to $75. $50 to $75. And they can't sell them on $500 anymore. That's too high for the market's taste because of the economy. Now, it's like they sell them for like $300.

That's an insane difference. How much money does it cost to acquire a gym owner? I think when I left and we sold Gym Launch, in the beginning it was like 20 or 30 bucks. I think now it's probably around two to $4,000. So it's like, if we hadn't fixed all those other areas of the business,

It wouldn't even exist today because people assume that like everything's always going to get better. And I'm like, oh, a lot of stuff just gets worse. And you have to get better in the other areas of your business. Otherwise, you're never going to compensate for this other piece. And I would also say that making money is not the same as having a business. You can make money selling drugs.

You can make money being an industry chick. Like, I mean, you can make money a lot of ways. It doesn't mean you have a business. It's interesting because when I was younger, I built the business from the bottom up. Like I hired customer success reps before a customer success manager. I hired salespeople before a sales manager. And I don't know if I would have done it differently because I learned the pros and cons of doing it that way. But I do it differently now.

If the business can stomach it financially, I think it makes a lot easier in the long term to hire the leader first. I also think that the reason that's hard in the beginning when you're inexperienced is you're also not good at hiring leaders. So it's really easy to hire somebody who sucks.

So, I mean, there's pros and cons of both. It's like if you have the money and the skill of hiring leaders, it makes sense to hire them first. And I have both of those things. If you don't have the money and you don't have the skill, maybe it doesn't make sense. Because if you have a great sales system going and then you hire a leader who sucks and the business doesn't have enough margin, that's it. You're done. And so...

I think it's conditional. It depends on the circumstance. But I think people should work within those frameworks to figure out what's going to work for them. I think the ability to hire good leaders is to...

I think a lot of it comes down to pattern recognition, to be honest. Because like, why do I have like a pretty good hit rate for hiring good leaders now? Well, I wasn't good in the beginning. You know, I had a lot of mishires. And over time, I've gotten way better. But it's just pattern recognition. You know, it's like hiring tens and tens of people. How many times have I hired a sales director or a sales manager or a COO? And especially now that we have portfolio companies, how many times have I hired these roles? So many times. I've done so many interviews and so many

seeing if the people work out or not. And so I think a lot of it takes time. It's pattern recognition. I think a smart thing I did in the beginning was I would recruit in people when I didn't know what good looked like for a role who did know what good looked like, you know, and I would pay people, incentivize them, do them a favor back, whatever it took to have somebody else help me interview for that role I didn't understand. So I think it's pretty nuanced, you know, like nothing is ever black and white in business and it all has to do with like your specific business circumstances and strengths. And

I think hiring is very important because of the way that I build the culture for the company. Some companies, everything is top-down, this is how you do it, here's the manual. And for those companies, I think hiring is less important. If you're building a company where you really want it to be of a certain culture, where for mine, for example, I want people to feel autonomous, as autonomous as possible within a business. It's like even I don't feel complete autonomy at times, geez.

then I think hiring is incredibly important. And so I think oftentimes in smaller businesses, it's more important than bigger businesses. Because a lot of bigger businesses, the person is less important than the process. But in a smaller business where you don't have process and the person is building the process, then the person is more important. I think that a lot of the times people seek to have a business because they want freedom. But, you know, then they, you know, they quit. They're like, I don't want a boss. But it's like, well, now you've got customers. And

essentially to me because I think to myself like if you really want freedom then just like become an affiliate marketer or something you know what I mean like build a business that is very little fulfillment you know maybe you're just marketing for another company like that's what I would do if I really wanted freedom because the thing is if you build a business you have people whose livelihood you are responsible for and also who people who are paying you money who are expecting a certain outcome and that is responsibility and when you have more responsibility it's like

Like with great freedom comes great responsibility, you know? And so then it's like, okay, well now do you really feel free? Because like, yes, you could go off and vacation for these four days randomly, spontaneously, but oh, you know, what's going to happen? I've got that big project for that client. And you know what? I've got my team coming to the office for that office party. Like not saying you can't do it. Is it going to benefit you? And so, you know, I think it's kind of,

Maybe not everybody feels that way because some people are not as cognizant of how others are impacted by what they do in the business, but I certainly feel that way. And I probably have a different motivation, which is impact rather than freedom. I definitely feel free to a degree, but also feel very much like I have things I am responsible for that prevent me from doing anything I want at any time.

And I think you just need to know what your goals are. And if you're leaving your job because you want complete freedom, then why are you taking on customers that are incredibly demanding that you're promising a lot to? And I've had it happen many times for me. You know, I worked with somebody and I remember they took us on as a client to do a project for us. And it was a huge project that had very large financial implications for our business. And then

They wanted to take the weekend off when we launched the project. And I said, that doesn't work for me. I really need you to work this weekend. Like, I don't understand. And they were like, listen, I didn't quit my job to work weekends. And I was like, seems really backwards to me. I would take a job if I wanted to not work weekends, you know? So,

I think a lot of times it's this illusion. And if you really want to truly be free and be able to do whatever you want, whenever you want, maybe don't start a business. There's other options of how to make money and make an income without having one. I think that the way that you know that you're on the right track with making an impact is

is through the feedback loops that you create in the business. One of them is financial. Yes, that's a measure, but you can make money and not be getting client results. So it's like, okay,

let's make money. Let's also measure client results. Okay, well, you can be making money and getting client results, but what if your employees had their lives? All right, let's see if we're making money, see what the client results are, and see what the NPS score of the team is. And so I think that the way that you measure the impact is look at all the parties involved and put in place, I would say, like metrics to measure, is this number going in the direction we want?

And that's how I measure it. You know, it's just like usually at most two metrics per, I would say, department or function. It's like, are they going in the direction I want or not? And that tells me if we're having the impact we want to have. And not everything's always going to go in the right direction all the time.

But generally over like the span of a year, is it all trending in the right direction? Week over week, months over months, even sometimes quarters aren't going to be always going the right way. But it's like over a long enough time horizon, are things trending how you want them to trend? And if they're not,

let's revisit the plan we have. And so that's how I measure the impact we're having. I think there's a lot of it that's also qualitative. Like what are people saying to you? What's the general feeling you have when you speak to a customer? What's the feeling you have when you talk to somebody that works for you? You know, do you feel like they have, you're a positive association for them or a negative one? And if you own the business, that's fairly obvious. So what I would say to younger Layla is that if you're thinking of starting a business and you're feeling afraid,

Just remember that courage is only possible in the presence of fear, not in the absence of it.