Helping 6 Business Owners Scale in 33 Minutes
In a Nutshell
Alex Hormozi shares tactical scaling advice for six brick-and-mortar owners aiming from $1-11M to $5-100M, emphasizing trade-offs like sacrificing short-term profits for elite talent hires, separating inbound/outbound sales teams (promote top "savages" to inbound), and building redundancy via price hikes and guarantees to fund dream teams. Key takeaways: conduct time studies to delegate low-value tasks, pick one best sales channel based on team strengths and double down (e.g., networking for junk removal), focus on "who" over "how" by paying premiums for proven leaders, and burn underperformers or businesses for higher-ROI opportunities like recurring revenue models. Free 10-stage roadmap at acquisition.com/roadmap breaks scaling into 8 functions from $0 to $100M+.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
I've been in business for 14 years. Recently did a $106 million book launch in a weekend. Portfolio of companies at acquisition.com is over $250 million in aggregate revenue, including brick-and-mortar chains. Answering questions on scaling brick-and-mortar HVAC business with tactical solutions.
Thomas sells roofing and exterior remodeling, closing near $6 million this year, aims for $100 million. Constraints: comfort, distractions, fear of losing family time, work-life balance. Other businesses: junk removal, real estate. Works 2-3 hours/week, business runs fine.
Regrets come when we imagine the upside that we don't have without taking into account the cost that we didn't suffer.
Trade-offs are preferences, not right or wrong. Wanting both less work and more growth leads to dissatisfaction. Either want less or trade more. Path to $100M without increasing work exists by paying for talent, taking short-term profitability hit. Need character and big vision to attract followers.
Graduating to the who game: levels of talent from $50K/year (huge upgrade from minimum wage), to six-figure, $250K, $500K, $1M+, multi-million. Best talent always in the future.
If you change nothing, nothing will change.
Value profit or family time least in short term. Long-term, can't make up family time but can make up profit. Give up short-term profit to hire high-level talent for growth. Hold the line on fear. Real estate ok if passive (e.g., REITs, funds); keep separate from business to avoid distractions. ADHD collecting gold/silver, houses distracting only if consuming time.
The cost of the big thing is all the new stuff you have to give up that you don't get to pursue.
Only 30-40 productive years left, 4-5 big seasons. Keep passive investments passive; active income yields better returns than tweaking passive for 5% more.
Cory does $1.6M revenue, keeps $650K. Constraint: himself plus hiring quality candidates. Handles volume with full crew but jumps in van if one missing. Needs more people.
Multi-step: enough business, so bump price for cash flow to hire redundancy (2-3 backups per role). Improve offer: faster, more reliable, easier, with guarantees (e.g., on time, on budget, or return all profit). Raise prices 20-40%; no downside if guarantee unmet. Competitors lack confidence for such guarantees.
I care more about what people do than what they say.
Customers always want cheaper/faster/guaranteed. Chases 6-7 heating/cooling companies for electrical work (flat rate sheet), efficient but they complain on price; they've bought for 6 years. Build to 60 clients via outreach: quote jobs to keep existing honest, gain leverage. Currently no marketing; dependent on whales. Tweak price to hire manpower, then more whales.
Free 10-stage roadmap from zero to $100M+ across software, products, services, brick-and-mortar. Breaks down by 8 business functions: constraints, symptoms, steps to graduate. acquisition.com/roadmap.
Tanner Jarrett at $1.5M, denting $700K net. Concern: build dream team of technicians, sales guys. Techs break at scale. Makes $180-200K to $300K/year per tech after costs. Local to Bozeman. Gave up recruiting lately.
Management diamond: don't know need/how/when, or blocker/motivation. Blocker: chooses to be involved in every aspect due to high-end clients (Yellowstone Club, Spanish Peaks; Matt Damon, Jennifer Garner, Mark Zuckerberg). Keyman risk: kills business or unbuyable.
Step 1: time study - Excel/phone, log every 15 min for week, rank activities by revenue value/unique. Bottom half fits existing/hireable roles. Premium customers = premium margins for premium people. Lower tolerance for mediocrity.
Spend $50K to get good tech (recruiting firm or national ads + generous relocation: $25K signing + $25K over 6 months). W2 employees if controlling schedule/work (not 1099). Getting tech easy with money; delegate third/half tasks to free time. Half time back = double business.
Trenton roofing, $3M this year to $10M. Constraint: 8 years 100% door-to-door (storm/insurance-funded residential), now shifting to retail (in-market residential leads). Door-to-door easier; purchased leads felt sacrilegious initially.
Tried stacking sales guys' calendars on leads: more buy-in but door-knocking dropped. CAC $7,500 for $6,500 average customer profit - unsustainable. Agencies used AI/GoHighLevel; building in-house. Needs marketing leader to focus on training.
Rule: outbound (door-to-door) and inbound (purchased leads) are separate teams. Inbound is graduation for savages/great salespeople who rip out souls daily.
Only top salespeople who prove themselves get fed expensive inbound leads, as these leads require hard work and cannot be wasted on underperformers. Keep teams separate: outbound (door knocking, street sales) and inbound. Since current team commissions have dropped from selling nothing, announce the mistake of mixing inbound and outbound. Send everyone back to outbound sales. Promote the absolute savages to inbound, where fewer people are needed. Inbound is the career path pinnacle (Christmas tree analogy), allowing 5 sales a day with qualified, pre-VSL leads versus limited door knocking.
Commissions differ: inbound has higher volume but lower per-sale rate to cover lead costs; it's more reliable (close 2 on bad day, 7 on good day) than outbound's high stress (possible 0 closes). Salespeople with families prefer reliability, even at same total pay, without sun exposure. Hire for inbound or promote one proven team member; funnel all leads to that person for faster iteration. Limit new hires to avoid errors (brick analogy: more newbies increase failure risk). With one proven closer, iterate on offer, lead source, and lead-to-call process.
Hiring for Marketing Leadership
Outbound team handles streets. Inbound: one top person. Hire a skilled marketer (pay more than expected) to manage, as sales and marketing are the business core—keep them in-house. Offer sales process help if needed.
Art sells junk removal and demolition to commercial property managers; $1M/year, targeting $10M. Unsure which sales channel to focus on and how much time/energy/volume to invest before deciding to commit or switch.
Currently mostly referrals (can't scale by just doing good work). Tried email cold outreach, LinkedIn outreach, social media DMs/chats (manual now, building flow), and BNI networking. Stick to one channel and do more. Reject premise that one inherently works—make any work. All channels (social, LinkedIn, cold outreach) are repeatable; examples exist in junk removal market.
Pick based on highest overlap with existing team skills: double down on social if skilled there, outbound/email if better at that. Networking is strongest (in-person best). Scale it: spend 4 hours/day finding local community events (20-50 people) with avatar matches. Currently do a few/week, get customers that compound via follow-up one-on-ones. Scale to several/day for 1-3x growth, profitable cash flow to fund learning another channel.
Adrian: commercial construction $11M this year ($10M last), 18% profit. Read Built to Sell; construction hard to sell (valued on assets/backlog). Added public works, heavy equipment for multi-year contracts. Started elevator company for recurring revenue: $3M in first 12 months, 30% profit (a racket).
Construction makes double revenue but cash flow sucks, money stays in business. Elevator more sellable, grew faster. Splitting time now; goal sell in 5-10 years (prefer 5). Reasonable advice: hire 2-3 leaders for construction ($800K profit needed) to run without him.
Alex's unreasonable advice (what he did): burn things down. Fire-sold 6 gyms in 90 days (got 6x one gym's value), hit $1M/month in 6 months on next venture. Exit construction now (less than worth) despite sunk costs—focus fully on elevator (orders of magnitude better: niched, ins, recurring, legal racket). Full attention could turn $3M (split) to $8M. Opportunity cost thinking: perfect construction exit ($5M est. on assets/AR) equals one quarter building $1M recurring elevator revenue. Ignore critics (wife, dad); skills gained were the real asset. None wealthier than Alex advised against it.
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