From Minimum Wage to 100 Million Net Worth By 29 My Story
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From Minimum Wage to $100 Million Net Worth By 29 (My Story)

ByAI Leila

Summary

  • I realized the importance of knowing what I didn't want in life at a young age, which set the stage for future decisions.
  • My experience getting arrested multiple times as a teenager taught me that without a clear vision of the future, present actions can lead to regrettable consequences.
  • Turning my life around involved cutting off negative influences and surrounding myself with people who supported my goals.
  • I engineered my environment to achieve my goals, focusing on self-improvement and aligning my habits with a healthier lifestyle.
  • Accepting a challenging internship taught me the value of hard work and set my expectations for life post-college.
  • After college, I prioritized learning over earning and sought a job that would teach me valuable skills, leading to rapid personal growth.
  • Working as a personal trainer under commission only heightened my sales skills and taught me the importance of being in an environment that aligns with my objectives.
  • I took calculated risks in my early 20s, which helped me learn and grow professionally, emphasizing the benefits of taking risks when you're young.
  • Starting Gym Launch with my now husband Alex Hormozi was a leap of faith, with the mindset that taking action is more important than having a perfectly laid-out plan.
  • Early failures in our business model at Gym Launch taught us the importance of aligning incentives for all parties involved.
  • By focusing on a product that delivers incredible value, word of mouth became our most powerful marketing tool.
  • Constantly innovating and investing in research and development kept us ahead of the market and ensured our product remained top-notch.
  • Understanding your capabilities and being selective about team members are key to scaling a successful business.
  • Rapid growth in a business can feel overwhelming, and it's essential to adapt swiftly while staying grounded.
  • Creating a culture where employees are rightly placed and succeed is critical for sustained growth, and when they are not, tough decisions must be made.
  • When diversifying into physical products with Prestige Labs, I learned the importance of focus and not splitting leadership attention across different ventures.
  • Selling Gym Launch was a complex process that required understanding the business's value and ensuring that selling wouldn't compromise the operation.
  • With acquisition.com, we aim to partner with businesses in a way that benefits all parties involved, providing growth strategies rather than just capital.
  • Tracking my net worth became significant as it reflected the impact I could make rather than personal wealth, and it was at 29 that my net worth reached $100 million.
  • The lesson of patience stands out as I work towards building acquisition.com into a billion-dollar business, ensuring that steady, well-considered actions will lead to long-term success.

Video

How To Take Action

A good way of starting your journey towards personal or business growth is by recognizing what you don't want. This clarity helps make better decisions. If you're surrounded by negative influences, cut them off. Instead, build a circle of people who share and support your goals. We often underestimate the impact of our environment on our progress.

To turn things around, create an environment that aligns with your goals. For example, if you aim to live healthily, fill your fridge with good food and find a workout routine you can stick to. Dedicate your free time to self-improvement, like reading books or watching videos by motivational speakers.

If you're looking to learn valuable skills, choose a job that challenges you, even if it pays less initially. Working hard in a challenging job or accepting an internship can teach you the value of perseverance and set the right expectations for your future.

When you're young, don't be afraid to take calculated risks. Starting a business with a partner or on your own is like taking a leap of faith. Remember, action is more important than a perfect plan. Learn from early failures and focus on making a product or service that brings incredible value to others. Word of mouth will become your best marketing tool.

Continuously innovate and invest in research and development to keep your offering top-notch. Choose team members wisely to scale your business successfully. When your business grows fast, it is crucial to adapt quickly but stay grounded.

Face tough decisions head-on when they are necessary for growth, even if they feel overwhelming. Sometimes, focusing on one venture rather than splitting your attention can be more beneficial. For instance, I learned not to dilute my efforts across multiple projects, ensuring each one gets the focus it needs to thrive.

Lastly, patience is key. Building something truly successful can take time. Rushed decisions often lead to mistakes that are hard to correct. Track your progress, like net worth, to see the tangible impact of your actions, but remember the true value lies in the impact you make, not the wealth itself.

Quotes by Leila Hormozi

"I think it's more about knowing what you're capable of and showing yourself you're capable of it because I know when [ __ ] hits the fan I can kick it into that gear if I need to"

  • Leila Hormozi

"I just need to focus on don't focus on making money because I want to make millions of dollars I'm not going to make at any of these jobs"

  • Leila Hormozi

"it's a little bit of a curse if you get like a really cushed job out of college because you're comfortable and therefore you don't push yourself"

  • Leila Hormozi

"I think you just need to [ __ ] get started like you just need to do something have no vision for all I care just take action"

  • Leila Hormozi

"It's okay to be nervous and scared and stressed it's [ __ ] hard and especially hard for people who really want to do well"

  • Leila Hormozi

Full Transcript

I reached a 100 million dollar net worth by the age of 29. I want to walk you through the whole journey with the goal that you can take the lesson and you can apply it to your own life and at the end what I want to do is break down the goal that I have neck and what I anticipate I need to do to get there so everything really began when I was 15 and I was living in Portage Michigan and I got my first job ever as a Subway Sandwich Artist you know the day-to-day was not glamorous those are the memories I have of Subway is basically uh smelling like ham having stained fingers getting talked to like I was five sole purpose of this job was just to have money and to get work experience so that I could get a job somewhere else to show that I at least have worked somewhere the biggest lesson that I got from that job was understanding what I didn't want I remember there was a day that I had off not expected to be in I didn't work that Friday I was at school [Music] yeah the boss called I guess somebody had like called off or called sick and they left a message on my house phone where my parents could hear it and I remember I came home and they were like you've got a message I'll just never forget it was like Layla you better get your [ __ ] ass in here because Cindy called off to work today we don't have [ __ ] backups and I was just like holy [ __ ] like this person left that on my home phone where like my whole family can listen to the voicemail and so I called back and I left a message letting her know that I quit so that was a great learning experience for me because I think at a very young age I realized like I will not work for somebody who treats me like [ __ ] when I was 18 like I didn't think about consequences that's right I got arrested six times not an exaggeration that is the factual number we're mostly drinking so like minor in possession I think that was pretty much the charges that they were to be really honest I don't think that I thought getting arrested was a big deal like I was just in a different mindset like I just didn't care I think it's because I didn't have an enticing vision of my future and therefore I didn't care what I did in the present and how it would affect the future for me [Music] foreign and then the sixth time that I was arrested they brought me to my parents house because I woke up there and I was like ah [ __ ] I know what this means I didn't have any memory of getting there woke up and there was like the arrest record right next to me on my bed of like my childhood room and I was like yeah kill me you know I was expecting I think my dad to like yell at me or be more angry or more punishing but instead I just remember he was like I just really think you're gonna end up killing yourself whoa in that moment was when I was like yeah I have to get my [ __ ] together thank you I was like okay I need to get back in shape and I need to hang out with different people I'm just gonna cut off everybody besides the people who I felt like were supportive of my goals also had their own goals that would be harmonious to mine that meant that I lost most of my friends honestly it made it a lot easier to stop drinking when I wasn't hanging out with people who drank all the time engineered my whole environment to make it easier to achieve my goals and harder to fall off track I started going to the gym again wiped out all the food that was bad if this is what's going to get me healthy then I'll do it I just filled my extra time instead of drinking and partying with all these other things constantly watching videos online only Robbins Jim Rohn like because I knew on some level if I was listening to people that were talking about those things then I would start to think those things so after I had taken some time to like get my [ __ ] together and I was on track it was my last year in college and I went there for exercise science you had to get an internship to do for six months I was like well what's the best and hardest one and I was like I want to go for that one so I flew out and I stayed on site I did the interviews and it was tough I figured I hadn't gotten it I just figured it was a cool experience to go apply and they called me and they were like you got the first spot they basically said you come out here for two quarters and you stay on site the resort I call it was basically like the one of the top five wellness retreats in the country you know I think that experience was what taught me what hard work feels like you know every day I would get up site around 5 a.m by the way you had to have your hair and makeup done every day they didn't care that we were teaching workout classes all day I was like are you wearing your eyeliner I would go there on site and I would be teaching classes throughout the day teach a spin class teach a boot camp teach aerobics and I'm personal train people in between those incredibly physically exhausting but I'm really glad that I experienced it because I think it set the tone for me of like this is what Life After College looks like people are showing up there every day working like this and this is what I have to expect afterwards I don't ever think that you do yourself a disservice by learning how to kick it into like high gear so I think it's more about knowing what you're capable of and showing yourself you're capable of it because I know when [ __ ] hits the fan I can kick it into that gear if I need to I know what I'm capable of and I've done it and I've proven it to myself [Music] the day I graduated I left I didn't care I just want to get the [ __ ] out of there [Music] I went to this job fair and I'll never forget this girl was like this is amazing I'm four years out of college you know I only work like 40 hours a week and I'm making 85 Grand a year and I was like wait you've been doing it for four years though she was like yeah and I was like oh no I remember thinking I was like I need to just look at this differently which is rather than trying to make the most amount of money from a job I need to pursue jobs or I'm gonna learn and so what I'll do is I'll drive out to California and I'll just literally walk and see what gyms are in walking distance I'm just going to get a job as a personal trainer and I just kept thinking like I just want to learn that's all I need to focus on don't focus on making money because I want to make millions of dollars I'm not going to make any of these jobs I had a lot of people that were my friends from college that they made a lot of money really quickly out of college but they weren't learning anything it's a little bit of a curse if you get like a really cushed job out of college because you're comfortable and therefore you don't push yourself I wasn't comfortable at all I was making jack [ __ ] at first it was commission only sales job at this gym you know you've got four weeks to prove that you can sell otherwise you're out and I was like oh my God and so that forced me to learn you know I look back at it now and what I did is I put myself in an environment that was conducive to my goals and so it helped me to put myself in an uncomfortable environment so I could grow faster and I think that's the best thing I did out of college after I had been in Fitness working in gyms I worked in a few different gyms I had for that whole time I just like didn't give [ __ ] about dating and then finally after about it you know a little over a year I was like all right this is dumb everyone's dating people it's like a whole thing and they're like why are you not dating people and I'm like I don't know and I remember my manager at the time he made such an argument for me dating he was like Layla do you go on dates it's going to get you better at sales he's like because it's the same thing it's a number change and so you just need to go on a ton of dates and just like you talk to a ton of prospects not all of them buy it's the same with dating I went on a date a week and I hated it it was not fun at all I had so many bad dates like I feel like I said like the precipice of giving up I was like oh I'm just gonna take a break like it's exhausting and I met Alex my now husband on Bumble I think I was intrigued because you know he was like immediately was like give me your phone number and I was like amazing yes here it is here's stranger take my phone number and then he was like I figured that we could just get our first date out of the way and talk on the phone and I was like oh I like this guy this is cool it's kind of like how I do calls with prospects yeah we had the phone call and I just appreciated his directness then we scheduled like our first date I actually wanted to cancel it I texted him I was like I'm sick I can't go and this [ __ ] calls me and he's like hey and I was like hey he's like you don't sound sick you're fine I'll see you tomorrow and I was just like what and so we went on a date I met him for Froyo the next day the most interesting date I had been on because I think I walked away not thinking like oh my god this is my future husband and this and that I was just like I just keep wanting to talk to him I remember feeling like for the first time in a long time I didn't feel like alone I remember thinking like after I was like I don't even care but like I'd really like to be friends with this guy was what kind of kicked off our relationship I think everyone has different sides to themselves he has a very intense side that I think he was fully immersed in that when I met him yeah I remember thinking he was Christian Bale um because I walked in and it was like this very well organized water yogurt egg whites Diet Coke now it's just like that's it like this is the house you know what I mean I was like this guy is so weird then we like he was touring me the house we walked into this hallway and it was just like animals in like Attack Mode like there was like a hippo and then there was like a lion and everything and then there was like a panther like on the prowl and I was like why do you have all these like aggressive animal pictures and he was like to remind me to always be the hunter not the hunted and I was like oh geez okay and I I don't think I was ready for it you know I think I just started laughing like I think I couldn't stop laughing and he was like what the [ __ ] you know I think he was like why are you laughing at me and I was like are you joking like are you for real or is this like the stage like it was I just couldn't take you know I'm not that serious so I was like what Alex had six gyms realized I was very good at Fitness sales I had established my career there he wanted to start this company called gym launch kept saying you should come do this with me I need to see if somebody else can do it at the same time I kept thinking like I could start my own gym because now I understand how it works to open a small freaking border he just would always say the same thing he's like you should do neither of those things because you'll make way more money and way more fun if you do this with me it didn't take long for me to keep because I think you know enough times of him talking about it and he was serious he was like come on like this is really work and I was like I would be good at this you know I think it didn't take long because I had always had the the mentality at that point in my life of taking risks because I was young you know at that point I was 23 and I just remember so many people always telling me they're like you're young take the risk yeah there was no vision for Jim long there was we're gonna make money and we're not going to work for other people you know what Alex talked about was we can launch gyms we can flea market sell and retain customers so if I've been able to do it at all my six gyms you understand all these fundamentals as well why can't we do it for other people's gyms and so basically we would go out to their gyms do the marketing and the sales and then they would keep the customers there wasn't a huge plan behind it and I think that's where a lot of people get really misconstrued in the beginning they think that they have to have this like giant giant Vision I think you just need to [ __ ] get started like you just need to do something have no vision for all I care just take action yeah in the early days of Jim launch nothing worked what we didn't realize was that I'm a 23 year old female that flies out to this like 40 year old established gym owners gym I market and sell and make 150 000 from his gym by myself at the age of 23. I then leave and leave you with all the customers now I gave you a percentage of the sales but I took most of this how do you feel not free what it was is they would be resentful of what we were doing we didn't incentivize them we incentivized ourselves and the customers but not the gym owner after some time we just realized that wasn't working I remember this lady called me she was like Manchester it up on chair and just told us all to charge back a refund with you and then we could sign up through him for half the fully payment and I was like oh no you know we had no formal agreements with these people we had nothing legitimate that happened with one gym and then another gym did it and that was enough that we had like negative 250 000 and then when that came in we were like oh [ __ ] profit's all gone how the hell are we gonna pay back 200 000 because what we would do is we would take that money and we would pour it into marketing for the next location and the flights in the hotel and the cars and so we were like this model is fundamentally broken and the only way to get out of this and to pay all this money back which we were like we have to do is to make even more by doing more launches and at that point we're like we can't do that I had been still servicing online clients and Alex was like [ __ ] it I should just be the back end you should be the front end let's make you like a weight loss business and you should be the face of it and then I'll just mark it and you sell them in and we'll just call it a day we started doing that Alex built out a funnel I built out the entire course and then we put it all together and then we started selling that was what we were are going to do he was like all right I'm going to call up all these gyms we have planned out I'm going to let them know that this isn't working and so he called the gym owners that we had lined up for the next few months and he was like listen we're canceling you didn't pay us anything we were going to do it for free and do a rupture anyways like it is what it is man like this model doesn't work for me so desperate the first guy was like you can't cancel on me dude he's like my gym will go under I remember Alex like being on the phone looking at me and I was like like we were in the industry so it's like we have a lot of empathy for people going through that we're like [ __ ] we don't want this guy be like [ __ ] and he's like how much do I have to pay you to just like show me what you're doing and Alex was like ah six thousand dollars and he's like but I literally am not involved I'll just like to give you the the trainings that we have for our team and the guy was like done so we called the next guy and I swear every conversation was the same one and by the end we had talked to eight gym owners and they all said I would pay you and by the end of that day we had made like 42 000 I remember I had also at the same time been selling people into this weight loss program and at the end of the day I'm like what the [ __ ] are we gonna do Alexis I think we just gotta sell the secret I remember he was like this is it he was like I'm gonna sell the secrets and we're just gonna get the [ __ ] out of this industry and I was like okay he's like we'll just sell it as many people as want it and they can just do this we don't have to fly out anywhere and then like we'll just be done and so in our minds this was not a business this was just like a finite until it's done and we've paid off the money and I don't think we could have anticipated what happened next [Music] which was like a flood it's like nothing I've ever experienced I mean people were dming me left and right on Facebook because what happened was these first group of gym owners we put them into the program we took all of our trainings and everything we put them into a horse we kicked it off and in the first two weeks one guy made 50 Grand another guy made 30 grand another guy made 38 000. I mean it was just like absurd they were making the same amount that Alex and I were we were like holy [ __ ] and so then they were telling all their friends and then it spread like Word of Mouth I've never seen before it was absurd that was how the business actually started like at the end of the day it works we have a product that we were able to design advertising for gyms in a way that they put a dollar in and they would get twenty dollars out that's what we had cracked we just so happened to crack it before anybody else did and that is luck so like our experience combined in the industry plus the timing plus the ability to crack the one thing that nobody else had that all and then the word of mouth was like absolutely insane we're such Advocates of word of mouth because if you have the right product you barely need to like Market it so like fix the product you know and then it'll mark it for itself the product is everything we spent most of our time on R D so when I say r d if we wanted to help improve something and stay on The Cutting Edge anytime we rolled anything out it was all based on information that we got from our customer base so so many times when business owners are like I don't know what to do about X Y and Z we would look at all of our client base and say who's getting the best return on their advertising and then we would take the top ten and we would bring them into a focus group and we would ask them a series of questions to identify what are the common traits between these gym owners between what they're doing their team their advertising their Market whatever it is so that we could duplicate it for others that's really what r d was so we spent like fifty thousand dollars a month on R D just testing stuff because we needed to stay ahead that's how we became the market leader was understanding it was all about the product it was all about the results that we delivered and it was all about maintaining that positioning by never getting comfortable but that's what always has kept us ahead you know we still to this day have somebody who's ahead of r d who's constantly focused on innovating the product who constantly is making sure that we're getting ahead and we're doing what's working the best right now and so we've always been to able to deliver results in that business there was one really clear piece that they said too they're like Alex don't go help Layla I remember a mentor saying that do not help Layla she can figure this out you trying to help her when neither of you know how to do this is only showing her that you don't think she can do it that was like one of the best things that we could have had because I see so many business owners now especially married and the husband doesn't realize that he's undermining the wife by oh really inserting himself to help her and I'm so glad that Alex has literally never done that to me he's only ever supported and encouraged me and said you can do this that was a key piece that I think is so underestimated one of the first things I do with companies is I help player by their roles it's incredibly important so year two of the business I think we did 27 million in revenue and like 17 million in profit there was no context as to how well we were doing I think what a lot of people assume is that when a business is going really well financially that it feels good but if you don't have experience you don't even have the lens of which to judge if it's going well when you're growing that fast it feels like jumping off a plane with no parachute and having to figure out how to pull the parachute on the way down while you're falling and so it's just constant urgency and also not knowing what the [ __ ] you're doing in a situation that's high stress like all of like the fun and like lightness that I had in my body just like left me for four years and I think I was just like a complete robot you know I was always scared I was going to make some mistake and lose all of our money you go from having no Stakes at all and no consequences to if you don't do well to having a huge amount of consequences and Stakes if you don't do well and to go from one to the other so quickly is a lot to adjust to fast growth companies typically the people that are there year one ninety percent of them are gone by year five and it's because you have say a staff accountant or a director of operations who can do the job while the company's at 5 million but then the director of operations for a five million dollar company versus a 100 million dollar company are completely different job so what it is is that everyone's job changes every like six months because the company changes so much I saw it happening in the company and I read about it and I was like oh I really hope that's not going to happen here and unfortunately it did and very quickly you know it was year three that I realized a lot of the people I put in leadership positions and were like they're not qualified for the job and I don't have the skills to teach them I wasn't even good at training people at this point in time so they all got fired you know it was the worst part of my career because I always have just been motivated by building a place where people want to work I took it so seriously I beat myself up over it and it didn't do anything you know I just felt like [ __ ] and I probably didn't show up as a good leader for my whole team now I look back at it and I'm like these are the decisions that you have to own as a company you will make mistakes you have to own those mistakes and beating yourself up absolutely doesn't serve you I actually in hindsight handled it as well as I think I would right now I don't think I could have handled it any better some things went wrong like I went to do a layoff and my director of Human Resources leaked it and then everyone freaked out in panic and then I had people quit that I wasn't even going to let go of people blew it out of proportion and we lost more people than we were anticipated and I had spent you know two months I had planned the whole thing so there was no group layoffs it was all one-on-one like I read everything about this and I was like if I'm gonna do it I'm going to do it as gently as possible you know I knew it was going to be really hard for them that I was going to do it in the best way possible to avoid it being like something that they have to carry with them forever that was a really big turning point for me because I realized there's a lot of times in business when we know we need to do something but there's so many things going on that we choose not to and it continues to build you know I learned that not everything is always going to go as planned and you have to plan for the unplanned and now I plan for those things because if I had planned for someone to leak it or do this or do that I would have been adaptable to this situation I think the biggest thing is that everything's really hard the person because of the unknown the moment that it's happened you can predict and then it is automatically less frightening it's okay to be nervous and scared and stressed it's [ __ ] hard and especially hard for people who really want to do well so while running gym lawn we kind of had a decision at one point which was how are we going to continue to grow this beyond the current product offering which at that point I think was doing 30 million a year and just one product we'll probably need a different product in here and the question that we had was do we go International or do we start a physical products line that can sell through the distribution base of the gyms and so we decided to do the physical products line simply because it seemed more familiar to us we did the physical products because one of the core things that we had done when Alex and I would launch gyms is we would sell people supplements and so we thought like how cool would it be if we could build a supplement line that Not only was like a very ethically sound line of supplements but also one that you can make a [ __ ] ton of money on as a gym owner and so we made one with like the highest quality of ingredients we had the gyms sell it through their locations and they would sell it to their customers that was the second business that we started when I was 26. I think it was a really good business that I learned a lot from because I got the experience with physical products got the experience technology got the experience with selling through Affiliates rather than directly to them the moment that we launched it it did like like 1.8 million the first month because we already had a customer base as much as we thought it was a part of gym launch it wasn't it's a completely separate business we often underestimate how much another product line going to distract us continuously felt like I had two children from that point on that were asking for my attention it was like Prestige needs this item all sees this this team needs you this team needs you though they were symbiotic in that we sold the supplements through the gym base it was a different business well the results were good but like the process sucked the reason for that was like I didn't understand this one fundamental thing if you split a team's attention neither thing can grow as quickly or as well and I think now I just completely understand I would have from day one built a mini leadership team for Prestige but instead I split my leadership team to be above all and I would have never done that again that was probably the biggest thing I learned from Prestige was the value of focus you know I feel like a lot of people have kids have like one that's not the favorite and Alan was that for me fundamentally I think that the reason it wasn't going to succeed was because Alex and I didn't agree on it it's the only thing that we've never agreed on and then we move forward anyways not agreeing so Alan is a software that works leads automatically it's basically an AI powered pool goal or output of Allen is that it gets the person in the door or it gets them to the appointment like it's not like a process driven it is at outcome driven so it maximizes everything to get the person to show up for an appointment we spend a lot of money on development I think like almost two million dollars on dev at that point and then I joined a software coaching program I learned everything we've done with Deb was wrong and I was like we're [ __ ] but I was so distracted having gym launch and Prestige still I was like how the hell am I going to do this too I groomed enough leaders in general Prestige that they were able to maintain a lot of that with me gone and then I put myself on Allen to basically build it up from the ground up though it was monetarily successful it had a lot of second order consequences in year two and three from being built so quickly with not the proper technology having to clean that up taught me that taking more time to build something is always a smarter way to go because fixing mistakes takes longer than just doing it right the first time it's still a business and it made it much better it's a great product and so that brought me a lot for acquisition.com because I said to myself if I want to build acquisition.com to a billion dollar business how long do I think reasonably it would take to build the base maybe five seven or eight years but if I build it right then like I can really build something that can go to a billion you know I think it's like we want to make money that's why a lot of people get into business they won't feel successful and they can't delay it and therefore they make decisions in the short term that sacrifice the long term and that was the biggest thing I got from Alan we sold it to a strategic buyer and then they spent God years cleaning it up and if we had just built it right the first time it probably would be much bigger than it is now and so I've taken that and applied it with acquisition and the bigger you want a business to be the bigger the foundation is which means the longer it takes to get there what we realized was that we didn't want to stay in the fitness industry not because I think it's bad but because when I look at other Industries applying our skill set to Industries with larger opportunities I felt like that made more sense like I felt like our skill set put on a different vehicle in a bigger opportunity would allow us to capitalize on our skills more than we were in our current when we first decided that we were to sell the business we had a CFO we had brought on that was something she'd done a lot before without her I don't even know who would have gotten the thing sold because people didn't understand what gen launch did and they also didn't understand how the two worked together and I think they also thought that Alex and I were like integral to the business whereas we had actually outsourced it at that time it was an interesting process it was a lot of first phone calls getting to know people a lot of bankers and PE flying in getting to know us talking to us and then you know covet hit and then the process changed a lot and we kind of took it off the market for a little bit everyone said they were like if you wait you can sell it for nine figures like at this point I think we had like 45 million cash and I'm like don't care it's like I just don't want to do this for another two years it's more like I don't want to wait to live the future out is that worth that much money to me we decided no we want to do this we know what we want to do next so we sold it for less than I think it was worth so we got 45 million in cash and then the rest we rolled over as a stock so we still own 35 of the business and so we now just sit on the board you know if anyone's watching this as a small business and you're still needed in your business like [ __ ] think twice before you try to sell it because I've seen that process put a lot of businesses under if you're needed to run the business I don't know how you do it it is such a distraction because it's an entirely new product of its own and it takes an immense amount of time and effort [Music] acquisition.com was partially sparked from we met with so many different bankers and PE firms you know they're doing this with our business and they don't even like know how to run a business they just know how to buy businesses we're like What if we could learn how to partner with businesses and know how to run them like how much could we help them and so we were like what if we could engineer model where we could do right by the customer the business and the employee and us and so that was really the vision for acquisition.com almost like an anti-p approach 2p like how can we make this a good thing for business owners rather than like you're getting exploited and taken advantage of you hear so many business owners who sell their business and then they're like yeah they've really run it into the ground yeah it's really like not the same I was like what if you could do it and then it could be better we felt like our skill sets and what we want to do on a daily basis talking with cool CEOs working with a team of very smart people that are specialized in helping build out each function of the business you know recruiting leadership for the key roles like doing all those things and what we're very good at and love doing and what if we could do it within a vehicle that traditionally you know is the opposite acquiring businesses in a way that it's not like we're going out and like fishing for them they're coming to us and saying I want to partner with acquisition.com so what acquisition.com does is we're a growth partner so essentially what we do is we buy into the business with brand work and money typically we lead with work because what we do is we come in and we deploy our you know team of experts on the functions of the business to help grow it most of the people that come to us honestly are successful so they don't like need a ton of capital versus I think a lot of traditional investors they lead with capital they try to do no work and tribe no brand nothing we're looking for people who want to grow the business they want to make an impact they want to be a market leader they want to make place where people love to work they have a passion for what they're doing and they want to capitalize on and we're trying to find those few stars from those applications that we would be proud to partner with people that are in it for more than the money because if that's the only reason that you're running this business we're not going to be good partners I want to associate with businesses who want to make an impact foreign tracking net worth from I think like year two of Jim launch when I was 29 was when we crossed 100 million in net worth I think a lot of people ask they're like do you have like your self-worth tied to money I'm like no not at all for me it's not more money to have like a luxurious lifestyle it's more money to make an impact for acquisition.com to be worth a billion it's actually not even as much as I thought we'd have to have like close to 50 million ebitda to be valued at that the path has become more clear as I've been educated more on what it actually looks like to be valued at that I think that the biggest thing that I need to do is just become a much more patient person the path to a billion with this vehicle it needs to go slow and then it goes very fast I feel like I get that but I feel like I need to become the kind of leader that can like really instill that amongst other people on the team so that nobody ever feels rushed rushed actions create mistakes so we have to be very careful about the decisions we do make because it takes a long time to see them out and a long time to correct a mistake but I feel like if I watch this video in like 15 years I'm gonna be like that was the right move I mean I think at some point if you're trying to change your life if your environment is working against you then it is incredibly difficult to make that change

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