At the beginning of January, I flew 11,465+ kilometers (7000+ miles) from Queensland to Las Vegas, for Alex & Leila Hormozi’s first ever Scaling workshop at Acquisition.com.
I was fortunate enough that one of my good friends, Sean, was one of the top 10 affiliates for Alex’s recent $100M Leads book launch – which landed him an invite to the event (and a +1). I can safely say it was more than worth the 16 hour flight.
To preface, in the world of online marketing nowadays, it can be really hard to filter out the noise with a lot of regurgitated information, from people with next to no qualifications.
That being said, the experience that the team at Acqusition.com has is unquestionable – from former Vanguard investment strategist, Wharton MBA Graduate, CFO involved in over 100 business sale transactions, and even Gary Vaynerchuk’s former head of content comprise just a part of their magnificent team.
And of course… The $100M couple, Alex & Leila.
There was so much I learned from all of them, and in true “Hormozi” fashion, I’m sharing it with you. Here are the 5 biggest takeaways with practical insights that can help explode your business in 2024:
Know Your Numbers
Now I know what you’re thinking… “Knowing your numbers” is something that everyone says nowadays. … However, how many people actually understand it, let alone practice it? Hell, it’s often extremely vague. Like what numbers are we supposed to know? I know personally, that I track over 100 points of data in our business. But I often think, which of these numbers actually matter?
Alex & his team made it crystal clear. Whether they’re looking at investing in a business, or trying to grow their current one’s, there are 4 main numbers they look at to achieve growth.
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
- Lifetime Value (LTV)
- Front End Cash Collected (cash collected ÷ new customers.)
- Free Cash Flow
The reason they track these particular numbers is because they more often than not reveal a constraint within the business. In fact, within these numbers are 2 key ratios they look at.
- LTV: CAC – this needs to be greater than 3 to achieve profitable growth.
- FECC : CAC – this needs to be greater than 2, otherwise you’re not collecting enough cash to re-invest back into marketing .
After understanding this, I went back and had a look back through all our numbers, which identified a couple of key constraints within the business, which brings me to my next point…
Constraints, Constraints, Constraints
“It is better to solve the right problem approximately, than the wrong problem precisely” – Alex Hormozi.
In Alex’s presentation on Day 1, he said something that made a lot of the audience have a harsh, harsh reality check. “How many of you here work every day, for 8 hours per day, and your business isn’t growing?”. A lot of us raised our hands. “Then you’re working on the wrong sh*t”, Alex said.
Hurts a bit right…
Anyway… Alex continued to explain how Acquisition.com spend a disproportionate amount of time finding the constraints within the business, and then fixing them.
This is in accordance with the Theory of Constraints, which explains the phenomenon of how a business will only grow to the level of its constraints.
They explained that constraints often fall in 3 buckets:
- What (strategy)
- Who (talent)
- How (tactics)
Once you find the constraints within the business, that brings me to the next point…
There Are No Silver Bullets
Everybody nowadays wants the silver bullet, quick-fix solution to their problems. Living in the fast-paced, dopamine-rich world we live in now, we often fantasize about this reality that there is just “one thing” that we’re missing.
“There are no silver bullets, only hundreds of golden BB’s”, Hormozi said.
What this means is that when you find the constraint, there are often dozens, sometimes hundreds of things you need to do in order to fix it. To illustrate, below is an example from the event.
When the sales team is underperforming with a close rate of less than 20% they will: test & revise sales scripts, watch recorded calls to find patterns of common objections & prehandle those, increase frequency of team meetings & 1:1’s, improve sales process, improve their offer, improve their show rates, and many more..
The lesson here is that when you find a constraint within the business, it’s going to take several Golden BB’s to fix it, not a silver bullet.
Why You Can’t Attract A-Players To Your Organisation
Leila Hormozi, CEO of Acqusition.com, explained the pattern of people throughout her entire business career.
“I went back through all the financials over the past 5 years. The one thing that made the biggest difference at either the lowest lows and the highest highs was the who. When we grew, when we stagnated, when we declined, it was all people”, Leila explained.
It’s no doubt that Leila’s speciality in business is the WHO, and she gave some incredible insight into her “Attract, Interview, Select” process.
The best employees in the world want to make a difference, not just want to get a high pay packet. Which makes sense as to why 60% of the top “who’s” out there are interested mostly in a company’s mission, vision, and values.
Leila also clearly illustrated how so many (even large & respected) organisations get it wrong when it comes to basic parts of the hiring process such as the title or job description.
“First you have to find out what the who calls themselves” – Leila explains.
Then you have to give them compelling reasons to come and work for you, which could include things like: growing industry, employee benefits, pet friendly, hybrid / remote, skill development, interaction with CEO / founder, etc.
What I found very interesting, is that when Leila gets to an interview with a potential candidate, the first question she asks them almost immediately disqualify’s a large number of them. “What was what was so compelling to get you to sit here on a call with me today?”. Easy to see how you could write a few people off after that…
Once they’d answered however, she then would explain.
Our mission is…
Our values are…
Our vision is to…
And here’s how this role fits in to the vision.
Then when it comes to selecting, Leila looks for the 4 way fit.
- Expectations: Do their expectations match my job requirements?
- Skill: Are their core strengths the core strengths needed to do the job well?
- Potential: Does their career vision fit within the vision I have for this role in our company?
- Organisation: Do they share the same values as the company?
This is all just scratching the surface on what she taught, but it certainly made me think a lot about mythiring process and how I will change it moving forward.
To conclude this point, this is Leila’s summary of everything just outlined: “The basic sh*t of getting the right people will make you more money in the long run than any strategy or tactic will.”
Painkillers vs Vitamins
On the roundtables on day 2 of the event, I asked a question, and got an answer that depicted things clearer than I’d ever had it articulated before.
And that was that pretty much every business on earth falls into one of these two categories: painkillers & vitamins (and no, this has nothing to do with the pharmaceutical industry).
What this essentially means, is that the former business solves a massive pain for someone, and the latter is moreso a “nice-to-have”.
For example, lead generation agency (solves pain of no customers), cybersecurity (solves pain of threat of being hacked), sales training (solves pain of not being able sell your product or service).
Then there are “vitamin” businesses, for example: blog writing services, social media content, SEO, Public Relations.
Now while these can be a “pain” for business owners, they more than likely won’t be the reason why a business has to close its doors.
The big takeaway here, is you’re a “vitamin” business, you have to find a way to become so ingrained into your customers habits that they keep taking you forever, and continue to find problems that you can solve for your customers.
Final Thoughts
It’s safe to say that the things I learned at the Acquisition.com Scaling Workshop were more than worth the 16 hour flight. I hope these takeaways serve you well and help you grow your business in 2024 and beyond.
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