10x Your Profit. 10x Your Prices. 10x Your Business. [Here’s how]

Summary

• People pay more when they associate your brand with something valuable. This can lead to a 100x differential in return on investment.
• Over the last 40 months, I grew from 0 to 8 million subscribers and built a portfolio generating over $250 million a year by following six steps in brand building.
• Step 1: Understand branding. Branding is about creating associations between your business and positive things that people already know and like.
• Step 2: Understand why branding matters. Branding lets you get more customers at a lower cost, and they buy more frequently and at higher prices.
• Step 3: Identify your target audience. Choose a growing audience with money to spend, that is easy to find, and has a problem you can solve.
• Step 4: Find out what your target audience likes. This helps you create content and solutions that appeal to them directly.
• Step 5: Advertise your solutions. Associate yourself with the solutions to your audience’s problems through various forms of content and advertising.
• Step 6: Keep your promises. Deliver on what you say your product or service will do, ensuring your customers have a positive experience.
• Brand building is like gardening—consistent effort is required to maintain order and remove anything that doesn't fit the brand.
• Making positive associations repeatedly is like reinforcing memory pathways, eventually making your brand synonymous with those positive attributes.
• Brand success is built over time by consistently delivering quality and value, which turns customers into advocates for your brand.

Video

How To Take Action

Here's the game plan:

Step 1: Understand Branding
A good way of doing this is to create clear associations between your business and things people already like. For example, if you run a gym, link it to feelings of health and fitness. This helps people see your brand positively.

Step 2: Know Why Branding Matters
Branding helps you get more customers who are willing to pay more and buy frequently. Always remember, strong brands print money because people trust them and feel connected.

Step 3: Identify Your Target Audience
Focus on a group that's growing, has money, is easy to find, and needs what you offer. Let’s say you’re an accountant; targeting health clinics that are booming due to the aging population can be a smart move. It’s specific, growing, and easy to locate.

Step 4: Find Out What Your Target Audience Likes
Knowing what they want helps you create content they love. For instance, if you’re focusing on health clinics, understand they want to increase profits, get more clients, and retain staff. Your content should provide solutions to these needs.

Step 5: Advertise Your Solutions
Make sure to associate yourself with what they like. Start small with social media posts, blogs, or videos addressing their problems. Provide tips on profit growth, client acquisition, or efficient clinic management. Consistently show up with useful information.

Step 6: Keep Your Promises
Deliver on what you promise. If you say you’ll help clinics grow profits, make sure your accounting services do just that. This will turn your clients into brand advocates, sharing their positive experiences with others.

Finally, remember that brand building takes time and consistency. It’s like gardening. Keep planting, nurturing, and pulling out the weeds. Be deliberate about what you associate with your brand and keep delivering top-notch value. This will pay off massively over time.

Quotes by Alex Hormozi> #### "Customers convert on ads 10 times higher than they normally do"

– Alex Hormozi

"Branding is the association between two things"

– Alex Hormozi

"CAC is how much it costs you to make money"

– Alex Hormozi

"Advertising is letting people know The Branding is what you let them know"

– Alex Hormozi

"The branding reinforces itself"

– Alex Hormozi

Full Transcript

you can get people to pay you 10 times more than they pay somebody else you can get customers to convert on ads 10 times higher than they normally do which means it cost you a tenth to get 10 times more that's a 100x differential and that is how massive Brands print money over time and so I want to give you the six steps to building a personal brand or business brand that you can follow and over the last 40 months I went from zero to 8 million subscribers across all channels we built our portfolio from just starting out to doing over $250 million a year by understanding this thing that took me way too long so let's get into it the first two steps are conceptual the bottom four steps will be tactical and the nice thing is that I'll give you a framework and a few stories to kind of like work through so you remember it um and I think this is going to make a lot of you a lot of money and will finally bring to reality what so many people have struggled to do it's like I get that Nike is this big brand and if they just put the swoosh on a t-shirt they can sell for 20 times more wow that's really valuable yeah but how they do that right how did Apple go from just some you know just a mediocre company to becoming the Titan that it is and so if anything even the Apple example should give you a little bit of hope that even if you are not premium today or you're just kind of figuring it out today you can absolutely become a a a juggernaut in whatever industry in okay so there's six steps we're going to go over and I'm gonna walk you through each of them right now all right so step number one step number two three 4 five and six all right all right so the first one is just what is branding overall all right so let's talk about that real quick so branding is this big fancy word but all it means is the association between two things all right all we do is we pair so pairing is the active verb that you do as an entrepreneur to build a brand to build an association between two things now ideally the thing that we pair our thing someone the thing that people don't know about with the thing they do know about is that the thing they do know about is good right something that they like and so step three we'll get into we just going be about talk about the right customer but for now you have to understand what it is that we're going to be doing to begin with which is repairing the thing they don't know our business and or us our personal brand with the thing they do know and like which is the good thing now if we do this over and over and over again eventually you can remove the other thing and the association the likingness kind of rubs off on you all right now let me show you how powerful this is if I got up on stage right and next to me is all the Republican candidates that would make that would shift your perspective of me a lot because there'd be a lot of associations strongly held associations either positive or negative with that group of guys or gals now on the other hand if I stood same guy stood up on stage same me same message with all of the democratic party it would give a very different perspective on who I am now let's do door number three I stand up on stage with all porn stars there very different Association and so the idea is a lot and the thing is is that this Association these pairings are happening every day all the time in your business but most of the time they're being done haphazardly and so building a brand is a lot like making a garden inside in in the front of your house right there's a lot of weeds that want to grow there it's natural for there to be disorder for there to be chaos and so a chaotic brand is basically a meaningless brand because it has so many things that are not associated that Mak sense that it means nothing to nobody right and so what you have to do is you have to prune the tree you have to pull the Wheats from the garden you have to control what associations what flowers you want to be there and to proliferate CU imagine a a Garden of Flowers where it's all roses all red roses it'd be a very strong association with that one type of flower and versus somebody else is where like if there's one or two roses but then there's also some yellow flowers and some daffodils and some sunflowers it's really tough to say well what's that what's that Garden about I don't know and so that's what most people's branding looks like and so number one is understanding what is branding and building a brand overall it's just an association that we build that over time once it's strong enough if I appeared a hundred times in a row with porn stars eventually you would just assume I'm in the porn industry and I could remove the porn stars and I would still remain and people would make that Association that would be part of my brand all right so that's number one is what is brand if we're going to build it we got to know what it is the second is why should you bother all right and this is important so fundamentally if we think about what makes money in a business you've got the the fundamental Arbitrage of business is how much it costs you to make money all right so what that means is CAC the cost you require a customer against LTV lifetime lifetime value which is how much you make over the lifetime of that customer in terms of gross profit from each customer all right and so let's say if I spend a dollar to get a customer and that customer is going to make me $10 of gross profit then I have a 10 to1 LTV to CAC ratio and this is the fundamental economic unit that exists in every single business like if you boil every business down to this one fundamental thing it's how much does it cost you to make more money that's fundamentally even what investing in big businesses drives down to the fundamental economic exchange that occurs within the business how much does it cost you to make money now the reason branding is so important and why you look at the most valuable companies in the world or said differently the most valuable brands in the world what do they have they have customers who it costs them less to get them number one people are willing to pay more higher lifetime value and they don't buy from anyone else which means they buy over and over and over again and so if brand can allow you to convert a higher percentage of your audience get those people to buy more times from you get them to not buy from anyone else and get them to do that at a higher price than the commoditized price of the marketplace those are some very powerful things for a business arguably the most important things that can't happen in business and having a brand or a strong brand strong positive associations with your ideal audience is one of the fastest and most power not fastest excuse me the most powerful ways to accomplish that and so if I told you you could do that well why would you not if it's the most valuable thing you can do in a business from a dollars and cents perspective now the thing is is that building a system associations teaching people what you are and what you're not takes time but once you do accomplish that teaching which is fundamentally what branding is you're teaching someone a pairing same thing like you teach a kid that don't touch the stove it's hot this you're trying to associate the thing you don't want them to do with something that they don't want to have happen works the same way we're just doing it in reverse okay so number one what is brand it's the association of between two things we do it over and over again to make sure that it's only the stuff that we want and then people say oh this guy is the business guy which is for me now why does it matter we get more customers they buy more times higher conversion percentages lower CAC at higher prices and they buy again and again and again great so I understand why I want to do this now let's actually start branding so this is s it come down to who okay so whenever I have this conversation with with a business owner or somebody who's a personal brand and to be clear here I could say hey six steps to build a personal brand I could also say six steps to build a business brand believe it or not it's the same same six steps it all depends on who you're trying to sell and so if you're building your own brand if you're trying to sell a certain Avatar then it's going to come depend to that so I'm going to use a very boring business so let's say I'm an accountant okay I'm a CPA and I have an accounting firm all right now if I want to Brand my accounting firm I'm going to start with who do I want to attract right who do I want to attract and so these are the qualifications that I think through when I'm thinking about my who now I have a whole chapter in this book $100 mil offers that talks about this but I'm going to give you the the the crash course so number one is I want the audience to be growing right because if I have to pick between an audience that's shrinking and getting smaller one that's maintaining one that's growing well shoot I'd rather go after one that's bigger because even if I stay the same size I'm still going to grow because the Market's growing right so number one I'd want them to be growing number two this is sound obvious again is I want to make sure they can afford my stuff right I want people who are making money because if I want to charge a lot of money they got to have the money so I can charge it right again if I could go after poor people medium people rich people well I'd rather go after people who are rich and can afford it so that's the second qualification that I have that I look for for my who remember I'm an accounting firm I've got this skill set but I need a zero in a little bit I don't want to be a generalist I want to I want to serve a specific Marketplace so I can charge a premium and it makes it more operationally sound for me because I have to do the same thing over and over again rather than come up with custom Solutions over for every different customer who walks in the door all right the third thing that I want is hey I want people are very easy to Target because if I if I can't find my customers right like I got people who are really easy to find and really hard to find well hell I'd rather have the one that's really easy to find right and so we're thinking about this in terms of Basics but like this is this is real stuff right it's like I want them to be growing duh I want them to have the money duh I want them to be easy to find and finally I want people who are in pain I want people who actually want what I have to sell if they are let's say I'm going after a Marketplace and everyone's all wied up right not necessarily a bad thing because it means that there is demand there as a side but if if no one wants the service you have tough to sell and so these are the four basic things growing they can afford it I'm easy to find and they're in pain okay fantastic so let's walk through this if I'm if I'm an accounting firm so if I'm an accounting firm I want something that's growing so I think um Health Trends let's do this together live I think Health Trends and aging um Boomers like this is a big a big Market they have they have a lot of money uh in terms of easy to find okay so what's a business that's that's hopping on this trend so that would be like Med Spas semaglutide clinics um cool so let's start with that let's just say like Med spas and clinics that are dealing with anti-aging for Boomers and obviously they're in pain from getting old because who isn't in pain from being old and doesn't want to be old uh so great so this checks all the boxes all right so we found our who so that is Step number three that meets all four of our qualifications great so now let's talk about step number four which is now we have to figure out what they like now remember we're an accounting firm and we're trying to find Med spas and and anti-aging clinics to to do their accounting for them okay so what do med Spas so we're going to say Med Spas here Med people right what do they like what do those business owners like well they probably like making more money number one they probably want to get more customers number two um they probably want to make more profits they probably want to build a sellable business those are all things that they find they probably want to have uh some help uh recruiting Talent so that they don't have to work as much inside the business uh they probably have some issue retaining talent because finding high quality uh like nurses and nurse practitioners ain't cheap and there's a lot of demand for them uh right now especially in the private market and so it's like okay so these are some of the things that they like and the these are some of the problems they're struggling with and so if I want to um build a positive brand with these people I have to find the things they like and the things they're struggling with so we just listed that out okay so now what we need to do is in step five we associate which you can say code for advertise advertise Oops There You Go advertise ourselves with the solution right we want to pair ourselves with the things that they like they like solution to their problems everybody wants to be in less pain and so that means that I'm going to probably start making content and picking off piece by piece here I'm going to say hey um here are some things that we see across our firm for The Med spas and anti-aging clinics that have helped Drive profits they actually can they can combine this stuff in their refrigerator and they pack it this way so they can actually fit more in and have more stuff more room for services great here's the second thing is what how people set up their lobbies this actually makes it more efficient so they can see more patience in less time so I'm going to start making content in terms of videos in terms of blogs in terms of written format cheat sheets and PDFs I'm going to start giving this stuff away I'm going to start associating myself with the things they want and the things they need so when I start doing this people are like wow I start to like this guy because he's making my life better now I keep making these associations me they don't know with things they do know and the problems they are suffering from that they like I keep making this Association over and over and over again right now what happens is is that we have as we build this brand we have to think about it from the perspective of the MedSpa owner okay now this is a this is a simplified version of what I talk about in the leads book in the core four in terms of advertising but I like this as a as an even easier way to think about it is that at the top level you've got you tell people and so me right now this is me telling you this is me advertising myself this is me making my stuff know known that's what we mean you tell them that's the first level it's also the least influential right like if you don't know who I am then you're you might believe me to some degree maybe the content that I have will speak more to you than who I am and that's why the quality of your stuff matters so much because every single time there's somebody who's brand new who doesn't know you they're going to make 100% of their judgment off of this first exchange and I always trying to keep that on the top of my mind that some of you guys here who are new have never heard my stuff before it's like I got to be good right I got have some good stuff and if you're struggling to figure out who you want to sell to I wrote a book $100 million offers that has several chapters dedicated to just helping you solve that problem and if you struggling with the association step which is figuring out how I actually advertise this thing how do I let people know about it that's what my second book $100 million leads uh help solve and if you're absolutely broke then you can go to my podcast they're free uh episode 579 is where they start you can check them out there if you like watching instead you can go to my site ac.com um and I have video courses on this they're free you don't even have to opt in for them um and if you like the physical copy you can go check them out on Amazon we've sold over a million copies of these books they' have over 25,000 five stars um so give him a gander you probably won't be disappointed let's get back to it so think about it like a movie just to give a simple example the movie company tells you that their movie is great so they make a movie trailer all right so you watch the movie trailer do you immediately go see a movie when you see a great movie trailer probably not sometimes you're like well that looked interesting that looked good so what do you do next number two is you your friends tell you you say hey that new Godzilla trailer you see that looks pretty cool and your friends say dude I went to go see it it sucked and you're like oh yes just like that that movie doesn't get my business right now the last time I saw a movie that really took over from word of mouth was Maverick which was the Top Gun movie I don't know if you guys saw that when it came out I feel like I got 10 different people who were like dude it's the best movie I've seen in two years right and I was like wow wrong now I saw the I saw the the trailer and I was like this looks cool but when 10 people told me to go see it I was like all right I'm going to go see it right and so this one far more powerful what people say what others say I should just say others sorry make this easier for you what other people say what other people say to them matters way more than what you tell them now the third level here is what they experience themselves right so you make your promises what they experience themselves so at the top level you've got a movie trailer The level underneath of that the people are like hey this is good this was bad this was mediocre the level underneath of that is that I go see the movie and I make my own decision for myself now the a movie is a great microcosm example of what a brand is in a very short thing it's only one product the movie you go see it or you do and then they generate cash it's actually not really a business it's fundamentally one chunk of media that has a ton of marketing behind it and then that's it and then they try and make another movie right now for us as business owners we're not in the movie business we're in the we want them to buy again and again and again business so what we do is that when we make our promises what we tell them we have to deliver on the promise so that when they see our movie they go to our restaurant they use my accounting services people are like wow this guy really is good right and so when that occurs this completes the loop because they get this amazing experience they believe me the next time I make a claim and they become the people who tell other people hey these guys really are good and this creates What I Call The Virtuous cycle of branding is that you make a promise you keep that promise and then people tell other people that you kept that promise and then other people try your thing and then you keep your promise to them and then around and around it goes and it just takes time to get this second level where other people talk on your behalf which matters far more than what you say because anybody can get somebody to buy one thing one time but it takes a business who can keep their promises as exceptional who can get them to buy again and again and again so if we're going through the steps in branding first off you understand branding is making associations between things they don't know and things they do know which is hopefully something they like so they make that rubbing that likingness rubs off on you you do it because it helps you get more customers for Less convert a higher percentage at higher prices and get them to buy again and starve out your competition the who is when you start this process you think who am I trying to be the ideal uh who am I trying to provide likingness to and so if I were trying to go to Med Spa owners it might be very different in terms of the type of content that I'd be making if I'm an accounting firm than if I was going to homeowners right if I want residential homeowners to be my target market uh or just normal uh W2 employees we I'd be making entirely different content and associating with very different things for that audience right now I'm still an accounting accountant as a business but who I'm trying to make the positive association with has a very different feel to it right I could even decide I only want Republicans it's not a protected class by the way you can say you only want Democrats the only Republicans not protected on either side political parties is not a protected class and so I could say I'm only going to make content that appeals to this demographic and I know that I'm going to ward off all the people on the other side of the aisle figuratively now you might also ward off any who doesn't want political stuff in their accounting right which is a third bucket the point is is that you get the who which in our example was Med Spa because it satisfied the four things they're growing they're in pain they have the money to spend and they're easy to find cool so we have the med Spas now what do they like they like getting more customers they like making more profit they like making their lives easier they like saving money they like making their company sellable okay so I'm going to start making cons around all of those topics and if I succeed at teaching that stuff then they're going to make that positive association with me and they're going to like me I'm keep keeping a micro promise within my content which increased the likelihood that they think that I'll keep my macro promise that I can help them as an accounting firm drive more profits make better decisions with the business and then ultimately when they want to come to transition or sell the business I might be the one who can my financials will help them make that transaction and and Steward it over to a new owner now the fifth step was associate or advertis now I just talked about there's three levels there what you do which is the core for so you either make content you reach out to people you don't know reach out to people you do know or you run ads there's the four ways that you can do it right so you make the associations through the advertising so I want to be clear here advertising is letting people know The Branding is what you let them know so people get this big this whole thing mixed up they're like advertising branding what's the difference advertising is the process of making known branding is what you make known it's the content of the advertising it's what associations occur while you are making things known right and so you can have exceptional advertising and terrible happened at the same time the Budweiser campaign was exceptional advertising they let the whole world know they were making association with Dylan M the the transperson now for Their audience for their who that was a bad Association and so it was bad branding but it was good advertising and we have to make sure that we can break those things apart and to be clear for a different who that pairing with Dylan mvan might have been really good for a different company that had a different who and so if you had a a a business that served people who were super super uh left and very uh Progressive in terms of all that stuff then that would be a pairing that might drive sales and it'd be both good advertising and good branding in that subset of audience but for Bud Lights or Budweiser's core audience that was an association they did not like and did not want and so it drove down sales it was bad it was a bad thing that's why we have to know what do they like so that we can pair with that as hard as we can and we advertised the hell out of it so as many people as humanly possible can find out about that pairing and then finally this is the last step of branding which is the most important step the most important step is keeping your promises okay which it comes down comes down to product meaning that the thing that you said what you said it would do does it the way you said it would do it by the time you said it would get done which very easy to say very hard to do but fundamentally the biggest businesses in the world like the reason apple is Apple is because the products are exceptional now they've had now I'm going to talk about the last you know 20 years has been now obviously at different times and they're they're trying to figure out what their next big Jesus product is going to be now but fundamentally they have the brand they have because they have made the association with elegant simple easy to useed design that makes technology accessible for everyone that's fundamentally what they've done right that is what they stand for and in the beginning it was a being not a suit but the thing is at this point the vast majority of people associate with not that and so they actually bet on what would eventually become the majority of people and so they fulfilled their promise because their products are elegant they are easy to use they are Sleek right they have all of those elements and once people do buy from them what happens and I'll tell you the story to what it feels like so the first time I ever had the experience of good brand good reputation I had positive associations with an audience I launched something called uh LNS which would became like the first beta version of what would become Allen uh my software company so I did this webinar to just my existing audience and a bunch of people weren't able to make it on because they're gym owners and they're you know they're business owners they're busy and but they knew that we were going to be doing the build outs for automated lead nurture for their gyms in order of the order getting received and so we had people calling in saying hey I missed the webinar I have no idea what Alex is selling but here's my credit card just bill me I'm in for whatever it is and so think about the power of that is that the only reason someone would behave that way is because they have a strong history of positive reinforcement with the brand is that every other promise that I had made up to this point for those people I had delivered on more than they had paid and so if someone just says listen I just here's the card I know I'm going to get my money's worth just charge me so I can get in line sooner that's that's where where you want to be and that's where all of these other kind of like you hear these like direct response marketing hacks and tricks and and whatevers they become irrelevant because you have the thing that matters most which is a strong positive Association that orients someone's Behavior towards you with a higher likelihood of purchasing more frequently exclusively from you at higher prices and this is why it's so important the problem is that it's hard because it takes time and you have to be deliberate with it there's a reason that I haven't taken a black pill or red pill podcast there's a reason I haven't done that believe me I get [ __ ] asked right I don't want the association there's tons of people in the porn world that reach out and say hey hop on our podcast we get so many views we get all this stuff sure and the thing is is that I personally you guys know My Views I'm nihilistic in general I don't think anything has inherent meaning so I don't care what anyone does in terms of how they choose to make their money or how they choose to make their income provided it's legal right now and it is legal but I also know that there's a big segment of my audience that does care and so I don't want to disenfranchise those people that trade isn't worth it for me and so I don't want to make that Association not that I have any issue with it it's just not a trade I'm willing to make and so whenever you make whenever you make an association you trade a certain percentage of your audience for ideally a greater percentage of the type of people you want right and so the Dylan mvan move to go back to that did strengthen Bud Light for a sub segment of the audience they had some people that might have actually started drinking Bud Light because they did that now they might have lost those people because they basically backed off on the position very quickly but for a moment they made a bet with the move and they got some segment to like them there was just more of them that hated it and so they lost overall and so you're go whenever you make any change when you make any new Association that's different than what you have done in the past you are going to lose some people and gain others the point of good branding is that the ones you gain are more of the who you want and the ones you lose are the people you don't want and so every day you're basically pruning this tree you're weeding the garden you're planting the right flowers and taking out the wrong ones and here's a here's an interesting point let's say we have this this this thing of roses and this is something I think that really drive home for a lot of you if you've got this row of flowers and that's your whole garden it's just just all red roses right and then a white rose pops up in the middle of the red roses there's nothing inherently wrong with a right Rose there's nothing inherently wrong about me talking about my relationship with Laya right but for my audience for my who it's business first and so like I I made this tiny mistake within our our you know our own business or learning whatever you want to call it was that there was a there was a period of 3 to six months where I started experimenting with some wider topics the thing is is that I I lose some audience who isn't married who are business owners but why would I not want to appeal to them I'm I'm business first and so I got this question and I I want to hit on it because I think it's really good is that I have said before that you are the niche right all the unique things about you create the thumbprint of your personal brand so how do you contrast that with saying hey you want to just do the stuff that your who or your audience likes so this is how I explain it is that let's think about this is a central pillar see this marker this is the central pillar of my brand which is business that is the central pillar of what I have now some people are going to be business in married some people are going to be business in Fitness some people are going to be business in philosophy some people are going to be business and uh marriage or whatever I whatever other ones I have you know dessert okay fine the thing is is that business always has to be first because that's the common thread of the whole Community if I make marriage first then I will lose everyone that's that's not marriage first and so you can sprinkle in your uniqueness of identity but around the core value proposition that you have for your who mind you this is if you have the desire to monetize a brand and do it for a specific Avatar and so if you have the accounting firm and you're making content about how to do your books and how to be more profitable and how to set up your lobby and how to generate customers all that stuff that you might do to help attract more metpa owners to you you might as a business owner of the accounting firm be married and that's fine but you're still going to make the accounting practice and helping metpa owners be the core because every one of them when we talk about what do they like all of them like that all of my audience likes business and so you keep the one thing that you know they all like that you have the strongest positive Affinity with with the most percentage of your audience the key core thing and so if you're going to go through this and you want to build your brand you know what it is you know why it's important you figure out who you're going to go after you're going to make sure it's growing easy to Target they got the money to spend and they got the problem to solve you figure out the things they like you associate yourself with those things through advertising so that's making content reaching out to people and running ads and appearing next to people and with things that they find positive in general for that audience you do that as much as you possibly can and that will allow you to get the purchase now once you have the purchase you either break the cycle of branding or you create a virtuous cycle of branding which means The Branding reinforces itself and you do that by keeping your promise with the product not over promising under promising overd delivering and doing exactly what you said you were going to do the way you said you were going to do it by the time you said you'd get it done if you do this over time a larger and larger audience will be customers of yours and tell other people to become customers of yours you will be the Godzilla movie you will be the Maverick movie where you say you're great but then 10 other people tell people that you're great and then everyone wants to buy and then they do see the movie they do go to your restaurant they do use your dry cleaning they do go to your gym they do try your agency Services they do sell a house with you they do work with you and then they become a larger part of that pool that compounds and says they are who they they are who they say they are