Helping Strangers Build A $1,000,000+ Business [LIVE]
In a Nutshell
Alex Hormozi fields live calls from $1M+ founders facing crises: Paul liquidates cannabis seed inventory via urgency-driven "going out of business" sales (BOGO offers, countdown timers) to hit $2.5M goal before shutdown, leveraging fiance's real estate status for tax savings; Abeer ramps ecom accounting agency to irrelevance by boosting affiliate commissions to $10k+ upfront with pre-written sequences; Jake fixes agency sales via daily role-play training (digging pain with "tell me more/examples") and pricing hikes to $15k/month. Solar lead-gen owner recovers by hiring proven reps, replicating working offers, and winning on speed/service over behemoths. Core takeaways: Crises fuel marketing (scarcity sells), prioritize affiliates/outbound over ads, train sales via high-volume role-play, always have an edge (e.g., personal attention), and bootstrap ruthlessly (5-9am/PM shifts) while acquiring skills through volume feedback loops.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Greetings and salutations. Happy Thursday. Happy day after hump day. Happy camel day. The second hump of the week. Hope you and your bloodlines are fruitful and multiplying and all of your wildest dreams are coming true. If they're not, we'll see what we can do about that today.
Today's episode of Hormosi Hotline with an interesting cast of characters. This will be cold. What's up in the chat.
Paul's business sells cannabis seeds to adventures and home growers. Making around $200,000 per month. Goal: $2.5 million in bank account by November. Stopped by government shutting down business, making shipping seeds illegal. Incredibly stressed, won't be able to pay bills, wants to start family, retire fiance, needs money for next business.
Alex: Sorry you're going through it. How much cash now? Paul: $500,000. Need another $2 million after taxes. Selling business hard due to issues. $200k/month at 70% profit. 8 months x $200k = $1.6 million x 70% = little over $1 million profit before taxes.
What's magic about $2.5 million vs $1 million after taxes? Paul: Less stress, enough to invest for passive income to live. Thinking 4-5% yield for $100k/year passively. Fiance is travel and surge technician, both older, want to start family soon, don't want her pregnant and worried.
Difficulty is time constraint. 8 more months to sell seeds before illegal. Open to selling other products to base. To cash out: Two things.
- Look at fiance's hours for real estate professional status (750 hours/year), especially early in year. Assuming she makes less than you.
- Run going out of business sale hardcore for 8 months. Double/triple sales with legitimate urgency: US government shutting down shipping. Everything must go. Pure direct response to liquidate.
Selling via ecom, majority organic referral and SEO. Restricted niche, hard to advertise.
Reframe: 70% margins due to risk, difficulties exiting, regulatory risk - cost/benefit of business.
Let everyone know: banner on site, emails to list, distributors. Have 2.5 million seeds, enough supply.
Run egregious direct response offers: buy 6 get 6, buy 2 get 4, buy 3 get 6. Current offer: 50 seeds for $175, 163 seeds for $210 (420 promotion?). Markups great with 70% margins.
Sell out inventory, countdown timer to legality end. Every month different promotion from out-of-the-money models book (ACQI can help): BOGO flavors. Include accessories.
If double top line, get close to $2M goal, keep post-tax via fiance's real estate professional status. Put into building/REIT/multifamily. Depreciation against active income if file jointly. Marry ASAP if planning to. Saves 37% on $2M = $740k net worth add, at 5% = extra $40k/year forever.
Crisis is best for marketer: legitimate reason why. Lean into countdown timers, scarcity, urgency. Run hard 8 months, set up for next thing.
The best thing in the world for a marketer is a crisis. Nothing sells like crisis because you have a legitimate reason why. Why are we running this offer? Because it's about to be illegal.
He's talking about washing drug money with real estate - this is legal. Thoughts on skilled trade vs door-to-door sales: Both fine. Door-to-door not disrupted by AI as much/long as other sales. Both disrupted same time, trades maybe first. People more comfortable slamming door on robot (no social pressure, what door-to-door built on).
Abeer owns business providing accounting/CFO services to e-com brands, $6M/year. Goal: Make competition irrelevant, grow as much as possible. Stopping: No sufficiently effective lead gen channel to ramp growth.
Attended L3 workshop, implemented front-end offer + affiliate program. Growing a lot, thanks. Affiliate solid, no-brainer, but difficulty getting first referrals (initial friction). Working but not as much as wanted. Wants another short-term ROI channel faster than affiliates (which build low-cost unstoppable funnel over time).
Alex: On affiliates, launch harder. Affiliates get $2k on close. Customer LTV: 50-60k up to six figures, almost no churn. Gross profits 55-60%. On $60k LTV, make $36k gross profit. Undercompensating - willing to give 6-8-10k/deal.
Dangle $10k for webinar + emails to audience: first 10 guaranteed, then $2k. Or front $10k to start. Offer $2k, but $3k for life if act in 30 days (urgency).
Don't abandon affiliates, tweak - six inches from gold. Motivation not purely financial: activation friction, social capital of referral. Position as white-labeled, their offer, value to client.
Raise commission: ongoing 10-15% more likely than one-time. If 10% price boost, hand to affiliate. Position: Make it free to their client (show savings count toward your service).
People don't refer for one-time spiff, but ongoing yes. Offer enough money to motivate. Two plans: $2k/$3k or $3k/$10k, big one if act now (first 30 days most success).
Value equation: Risk, speed, ease.
- Ease: Pre-written emails/texts/sequences custom for their brand. Plug into their CRM, send team.
- Risk: Testimonials, ongoing payments.
- Speed: Urgency framing.
Fastest channel: Get more testimonials via other channel for social proof, speed affiliate.
Ad funnel ok, but recommended affiliates as highest likelihood first (not in skillset then). Redline affiliates to 10-12M+. Ad funnel future.
Ad funnel content-driven (authority play). Logos of brands, tactical hooks generic CPA misses. Post shitload content on client work, size, savings, tactics. Hook ManyChat to organic for inbound leads (optin -> VSL close). Turn top content into ads to same funnel.
Affiliates mostly warm (agencies/network). Cold harder. Instead advertise to B2B agencies: lead magnet, phone close on pure money-making offer.
Example: Agency 30 clients, webinar, half take: $6k upfront x15 = $90k first month. Hell of a testimonial for more affiliates. Pain points: LTV/churn. Offer: Onboard customer, get paid even if they leave.
Taking calls from Vantage, new group opened March 1st to public after 6 months. For $1M+ founders. Link available, submit questions there.
More enjoyable than director-to-camera: real business.
At what point in business journey ready to date/find partner? Separate things. If ambitious, work ass off (guy asking), women attracted - care less about resources, more ability to acquire (especially younger). Not saying don't care about resources, but ability matters more.
Jake: You made me a lot of money, more than I ever thought. Thank you for everything.
Marketing agency owner in Spain runs B2B SaaS and professional services agency, did $1.2M trailing 12 months, wants to hit $10M. Bottleneck is keyman risk in sales and ascension. Core offer: 16 weeks guaranteed 20 qualified calls, closes at 34%. Hired US closer who closes 0%. Owner has full calendar, closer has half. Back-end ascension: 10-15% of pilots ascend to long-term bolt-on, nobody buying it. Dramatically outperform promise: average 59.8 calls over 16 weeks. Owner hops in on ascension opportunities, CS leader handles most, process not refined.
Sales Training Fixes
Have sales handbook. Closer is script adherent but accepts surface-level answers, not digging with 'tell me more about that' or 'can you give me an example?' Alternate these questions to dig for pain until getting something meaty, better than asking 'why.' Role play daily, but need better method: train one section per day.
- Monday: Intro only – open call, set frame, role play 10x.
- Tuesday: Discovery – practice 'tell me more,' 'example,' build pain stack, recap problems, get agreement: 'Sounds like you have ads issue and funnel issue, right?'
- Wednesday: Pitch – 60-90 seconds: 3 things (X, Y, Z) with proof examples.
- Thursday: Close – objection handling.
- Friday: Weakest area (likely discovery).
Stop role play in real time when he messes up, correct immediately, do right way 3x to lock in. Give visual feedback: thumbs up/nod when right. Don't let him just recite script and give end feedback – doesn't work. Multi-threading with director of marketing, longer sales cycles.
Owner role plays with real leads from marketing form, starts with script, seems perfect, but closer is experienced salesperson, first time remote. Identify differences: don't sell like founder (authoritative, consultative, impressing with expertise). Script should not require expert seller. Focus discovery: dig pain, offer no solution.
Offer and Pricing Advice
Offer: 16 weeks, 20 qualified calls (ACV >$30K, revenue >$500K), split pay $8K+$8K or prepay $13.4K. VSL and thank you video strong, 300 calls/month, 200 live. Underpriced – sounds small time, not believable for $30K/customer clients signing $500K-800K deals. Raise to $15K/month, irrelevant if truly high-ticket. Take ascension calls yourself for now, put VSL there, don't use CS for sales.
'You're charging $13,000 for somebody who has a $30,000 per customer... it's a rounding error. They just don't believe you can do it because you're too cheap.'
ACQ Vantage: community for those who donated 1,000 books at launch, closed 6 months, reopened March 1 for million-dollar+ founders. school.com/backpack: all 3 hardbacks + School trial ($16, then $N/month, US domestic + shipping).
Alec: $560K rev last year, lost 90% leads (70% lead gen companies that went out of business, 20% door-to-door down to 15 reps, 10% referrals). Sells Google PPC for solar/battery storage to >$150K income. Tried Google PPC 10 days: $718 spend, 0 leads, 2K impressions, 115 clicks. Leads from companies were good. Competing behemoth Good Faith Energy ($30M, #1 Texas solar, Tesla Powerwall focus) suggested Google PPC with content.
Lead Gen Recovery Steps
Reach out to everyone at old lead gen company, offer job to account runner – they got working leads, never let go of what works. New company slow uptick. If can't hire, commit to buying leads: 'Small business owners together, more good leads I get, more I buy from you.' Avoid 'free solar' narrative – attracts unqualified BSers (R&D credits expired?). Replicate behemoth before iterating: copy what works, new always sucks.
Advantages and Strategy
Same product/certifications. Advantages: install under 60 days (speed), better communication/service (founder cell phone access vs. behemoth account rep #7), not price. Replicate working lead gen offer, win on speed/service. Use Instagram (15K followers), TikTok (200), Google reviews (65) long-term for door-to-door sales reps (higher leverage: 1 rep = $1M/year vs. household leads). Avg ticket $40-70K gross profit before costs, net ~$10K/sale.
Don't touch shutting down door-to-door yet. Post-install: manager/crew director does walkthrough survey, thank you gift from crew ($50, 'awesome homeowner'), ask review spiff for installers naming them to help families.
'Every player on the field always has an advantage.'
'You're not actually competing against the behemoth. You're competing against account rep number seven.'
Contact page on their website based on their thousand reviews. Get your reviews up. You always have the best position: you're not the behemoth, house number 278. With me, you get all my attention. Something breaks, call me. Every single review makes a huge difference in my life and family's life. I'm going to take care of you.
Actionable steps:
- Hire that person or go in with them, get all their volume.
- Replicate the offer.
- Win on speed and service. Go to the site post install.
Don't compete on price.
It's easy to Monday morning quarterback, like 'just make the food better.' But running a business involves inventory going bad, choosing between organic and regular chicken, staff drama, rent, payroll, marketing, leads. Best entrepreneurs are allocators of resources: they get more for what they put in by curating opportunities and prioritizing them. Most people can't do either; some do one; rare to do both.
Level one strategy: from six things, pick the most important. Best entrepreneurs see option door number three that's a 10x. Strategy is curation and prioritization of opportunities with limited resources.
Volume. Every phenomenal marketer started with high volume sales: cold calling, door-to-door, car wash selling 200 cars a day. Get as many feedback loops as possible. Fitness sales great because unlimited people trying to lose weight; take 100 calls. Don't worry about earning, worry about learning; maximize volume in shortest time.
5-to-9 special: 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., plus Saturday, Sunday (eight hours on opposite ends). If still can't make bills, cut expenses, give up ego for dreams. Speaker sold $180k condo at 22-23 overlooking city, drove across country, worked minimum wage at gym, lived in spare bedroom. If not willing, you don't want it enough—like wanting a six-pack but eating cookies.
Run Google Ads. Easy to generate leads, but low quality since everyone is a photographer. Need higher friction sales at 2k+ price point. Make lots of content; when it performs, run as ad. If small traffic, bring to live call; more traffic, webinar (present then solicit 1-on-1 call). Content world merged with ads.
Start for free. Saying 'I'm a good marketer but can't get customers' imbues lack of proof. Win on service: give cell phone, owner does everything. Aligned incentive: need testimonials. Clients front ad money, so kiss more toads—do five 1-on-1 calls free, then continue free or for X dollars. Lead with free.
If good, they'll pay because you make them money. If not, you're not good. Testimonial from free client sells to paying ones without free anchor.
'Why are you here? If satisfied, you wouldn't be.' Probe issue, back in sale. Story: gym lady says she has personal trainer; 'You're not happy or you wouldn't be here. You want to lose weight but haven't—save money switching to semi-private.'
Not against search fund or seller financing. Seek high revenue retention: word-of-mouth growth, not marketer-run (you buy goodwill). Avoid if you can't market. Examples: fire inspection, pool cleaning, lawn care—low churn, stable to learn.
Ignore 10k; use to learn skill for 100-200k active income. No 1000% returns intelligently; best is skill acquisition.
Work at small or family-owned business for broad taste. Or company with phenomenal training program.
You need to close; sale begins at moment of interest. Before call, show VSL (video sales letter) framing you and conversation, setting expectation to decide on call (one-call close) or VSL-call-VSL-close (two-call). First call: ensure fit, interview them. Second: proof/credibility then sell.
Cold call, cold email. High volume outbound does email and call.
Use AI in your language teaching; make it your business, take others' lunch.
Small semi-private model most profitable (e.g., Alloy by Rick Mayo: 1-on-6, two trainers + manager mornings/afternoons, manager profit share). 100 people at $400/month ($100/week, 3 sessions). Target: older people for longevity, they have dollars.
Three-month grand opening: two-week free trial to $100/week for two weeks personal training. Pre-sell 150 expecting 100 retained. Speed-to-lead, call/close card over phone: 15-20% close (15% with Meta lead quality drop). $50/lead, reverse engineer math. Open full profitably with three-person staff. More aggressive if no capital.
Favorite gym visitor: Coupe (Coupe Garage reviews). Happy with life. Peace and blessings.
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