the UNFILTERED truth about business

Summary

• I've sold three companies, my last for $46.2 million, and now run Acquisition.com with a portfolio surpassing $500 million in under three years.

• Pursuing goals at full speed can cost friendships and supporters. It's essential to continue as better companions await. Surround yourself with people who support your growth.

• Business isn't fair. While you can maintain fair play, don't expect the same from others. Stick to your values and don't let others' unfair practices change your behavior.

• Growth involves growing pains. Scaling a business quickly brings tough challenges. Accept that discomfort is part of both success and failure.

• Don't mistake luxuries like motivation, vision, and purpose for necessities. Start even if you lack them; responsibility will drive action and create motivation.

• "Impostor syndrome" is a misnomer. It's often inexperience or insecurity. Overcoming it requires practice and gaining experience, not labeling oneself.

• Success doesn't equate to happiness. Learn to manage negative feelings as they will persist even with success. Embrace and use stress to your advantage.

• Delegation isn't just handing off tasks; it includes reinforcing and rewarding those who complete them. This ensures that employees feel appreciated and motivated.

• Titles don’t make leaders; actions do. Promote those who naturally lead and are followed by others. Leadership is recognized by the team, not just assigned.

• Strategy involves saying no to most opportunities to focus on the most impactful ones. Avoid distractions that don’t align 100% with your long-term goals.

• When all options are exhausted, only then try something new. Ensure you've utilized all possible strategies before pivoting or expanding into new markets or products.

These lessons aim to save you from repeated mistakes and sleepless nights by better understanding and anticipating the challenges and sacrifices inherent in growing a business.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest implementing these strategies to help you grow your business or achieve personal growth without spending too much time or money.

Surround Yourself with Supportive People

Look at the people you spend the most time with. If they are not supportive of your goals, you might need to spend less time with them and find new relationships that encourage growth.

Stick to Your Values

In business, always play fair even if others don’t. Don't let others' bad behavior change how you act. This will help you build a strong and honest reputation.

Embrace Discomfort

Understand that growth comes with challenges. Whether you’re scaling your business or working on self-improvement, accept that discomfort is part of the process. When faced with challenges, remind yourself that you’re growing.

Take Responsibility

Don’t wait for motivation. Instead, take on responsibilities that push you to act. For example, if you want to get fit, commit to a workout plan instead of waiting to feel motivated.

Overcome Insecurity

If you feel like an impostor, focus on gaining experience. Practice until the task becomes second nature. Don’t label yourself with "impostor syndrome"; recognize it as inexperience and work through it.

Manage Negative Feelings

Success doesn’t mean you’ll always be happy. Learn to manage stress and anxiety to keep moving forward. When you feel bad, use it as motivation to tackle challenging tasks.

Effective Delegation

When you delegate tasks, follow up and give feedback. Thank your team members for their work. This will keep them motivated and ensure the tasks are done well.

Identify Natural Leaders

Promote those who naturally lead and are respected by the team. This will help ensure you have effective leaders in your business.

Focus on Impactful Opportunities

Be selective about the opportunities you pursue. Only say yes to things that align 100% with your long-term goals. Avoid distractions that divert your attention.

Exhaust All Options Before Pivoting

Before trying a new strategy, make sure you’ve fully utilized all current options. Often, the key to success is refining what you’re already doing.

By implementing these strategies, you'll be better prepared to handle the ups and downs of growing a business or working on personal growth.

Quotes by Leila Hormozi#### "Going 100 mph towards your goals will likely lose you many friends and many supporters do it anyways you will likely find better ones at your destination"

– Leila Hormozi

"Business is not fair you can play fair but do not expect others to follow suit"

– Leila Hormozi

"If you avoid losing you also avoid winning"

– Leila Hormozi

"You will lose people and it's okay to lose people you're making room for better people that's all"

– Leila Hormozi

"The reality is is that you have to give up the good opportunities today to have the great opportunities tomorrow"

– Leila Hormozi

Full Transcript

I've sold three companies my last company I sold for $ 46.2 million and now running my company acquisition. comom which has gone from zero to over 500 million in portfolio value in less than 3 years and today what I'm going to do is I'm going to condense a decade of brutal business truths into one video brutal business truth number one going 100 mph towards your goals will likely lose you many friends and many supporters do it anyways you will likely find better ones at your destination the reality is is that there's nothing wrong with people who aren't growing when you're growing but it is very hard to grow quickly when the people around you are stagnant it's better to have friends who expect you to grow than friends who wish you to remain as is for forever when I decided to move out to California to pursue my career in Fitness none of my friends were taking big risks like that at the time you know they were all planning to stay in my hometown work there build careers there it just wasn't the path for me what I realized was the life that I was building was one where pretty much all of my time was spent chasing this big dream as I was pursuing this path that was so different to all these people I was hanging out with even just talking to them about my dreams and about my goals was slowing me down all they did was tell me the reasons why my dreams and goals were not realistic me chasing my goals benefited them in no way because they weren't busy chasing their goals it made it harder for me to achieve my goals not easier when I was friend friends with them I let go of a lot of those friendships because I heard a lot of people ahead of me say you know you are who you hang out with and I was like well crap you know the people I'm hanging out with are not the people I want to be like I'm really grateful for that because though it was very lonely for a while and though there were times where I felt like I was never going to find quote better people along the way I did and now I am happier than ever I have more supporters than ever I have more good friends than ever and I feel really grateful for the people that are in my life because they make me want to be a better person it creates a life where you're not separating your goals that you have from your relationships that you have but they're all one and they all feed each other you will lose people and it's okay to lose people you're making room for better people that's all and I don't think there's anything wrong with that it also doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them it just means that there's opportunity cost in business in relationships in literally everything in life the second brutal business truth is that business is not fair you can play fair but do not expect others to follow suit I remember the first time that I realized which was you know gy launch essentially was a licensing model for gym and so we saw this whole in the market of like what if we could have a licensing model where they don't have to commit to a franchise but we give them all the systems they need to successfully grow their gym and so what ended up happening is that a lot of franchisors caught on and they were like oh I don't want people in my franchise signing up for gym launch because they realized that we were providing more value than them one franchisor reached out and he was like I would like to do a deal with you guys and I remember on the phone the first thing he said that was shocking to me was I don't want them to know how to Market because if they know how to market then they won't need me and I was like that's kind of up that's not fair to them like allow them to remain in ignorance so that you can sit here hold all the knowledge and all the power you know he followed up and said like is there room to do a deal and basically what he wanted us to do was release all of our licensing materials except for our marketing and only give him our marketing materials that he could have all the power I wrote him an email and I just said like it's not aligned with are my values like I value teaching people how to fish not fishing for them and so I don't think that this deal works as this way the next thing he did was he paid somebody to sign up with us to take all our materials record all our calls right find out everything we were teaching and then he built out the exact model that we were teaching but I realized like people are not always going to play fair I think that was something that's always been surprising for me because I tend to play fair and I tend if anything to give people the benefit of the doubt and see the best in people this has been a lesson that I've probably had to learn time and time again because I am so aligned with my values that it's hard to conceptualize not being people will not play fair but they win when them not playing Fair changes my behavior and so the key is that if you allow others unfairness to change your behavior to change your values and how you act you lose because you get burned twice you get burned in the situation and then you get burned again when you say no to the next situation to the next person to hiring the next employee people are going to you in business and the reality is is that just like if you get into a relationship and you have a girlfriend and maybe she cheats on you does that mean you should never be with a girl who has blonde hair or is nice or lives in the state of Iowa ever again when you are approached by this next same situation does that mean you should avoid it and that you should treat it as if something bad's going to happen cuz what happens when you treat that girl like you don't trust her because the last one cheated on you you start looking through her phone you start looking at her Instagram DMS you start seeing who she follows and likes she's like you don't trust me and then you perpetuate the situation that you wanted to avoid and so the same happens in business and what I've learned is like that will continue to happen no matter how many times I get bent over in business I will continue to put myself out there because the reality is is that if you avoid losing you also avoid winning you have to resist the urge to protect yourself from having it happen again and just accept the fact that it probably will but you're going to be okay and you're going to keep moving forward the third business truth is that growth requires Growing Pains if you don't have thick skin and a stomach for pain business might not be for you losing is painful yes but winning is also painful because in order to grow you have to experience the pain of growing pains and you can't have that unless you're winning this really resonated with me which was the first time that I scaled a company gym launch went from 7 million to 27 million in less than 2 years growing the business that fast was one of the most painful things I did it was tiring as why the amount of problems that come up when you scale a business quickly it's like your mind is rarely at peace right you have a lot of things you have to sacrifice now is that forever no but for some period of time and what I've seen is a lot of people actually can't capitalize on success because they don't lean into that they don't realize that there's no problem with everything that's happening the problem is how you think about it your relationship with discomfort right and the same can be said for a business that isn't doing well Co hit and I had gym launch and Prestige labs and Allen three businesses that relied on brick-and-mortar locations to function it was one of the hardest times I ever went through but I did not allow myself to go there because you know what I saw happening all around me was all of our customers who were business owners deciding and electing to go out of business most of them did not go out of business because of the restrictions put on their gyms most of them went out of business because they quit because they didn't know when the end was in sight and I kept saying I was like guys this is going to pass One day things will go back this is a season if you get through it you're going to be stronger than all the rest of the businesses out there this is is an opportunity to make your team stronger to make your relationship with your customer stronger and despite that a lot of people couldn't make it which is sad because honestly we pay in time and pain for the person we want to become hard times today are us footing the bill for the traits that we wish to have tomorrow and hard people don't come from Easy times and so everybody's out there saying I want to grow a huge business I want to scale fast I want to do this well one it's going to be painful it's going to be hard and two is you're going to eat at times because things are going to happen that are Beyond your control you can't control interest rates the government Co none of these things to think that it's going to be easy to become this amazing person that you want to be you're fooling yourself and so you have to get thick skin early on I would say one of the traits that I have honed in on the most in growing my business is just being tough what you have to do if you really want to be successful if you want to achieve your dreams is that you have to learn to reframe pain and uncertainty realize that it means you're getting closer to your goals not further away the next business lesson do not mistake a luxury for a requirement things that you do not need to get started motivation Vision purpose the reason I bring this up is a lot of people use not having motivation they use not having a Clear Vision and they use not having a clear purpose as an excuse for not getting started well when I started my first business I had no idea what I was doing I had no motivation I was exhausted I was worn out I felt all of the Terrible Things and I had no vision my vision was can I stop being broke like I would like to get out of all this pain I'm in my first business started out of not wanting to be in so much pain not wanting to be broke not because I had this insane vision for the future like oh let's create the apple of like no that was not it at all bro just get on the path and you'll figure out the rest on the way there that's the truth and I think a lot of people often mistake lack of responsibility for lack of motivation right when you seek out more responsibility you tend to feel more motivated an example of that if there's a single mom who has three kids to feed do you think it matters that she doesn't have motivation to get up and go to work to get a paycheck to feed them because she has immense responsibility and so I have never sought out motivation I seek out responsibility because I know that if I have enough responsibility I'll get the job done even now people are like how do you do everything you do like look how much responsibility I have I have a giant building that I have all these people working in I have all these people who have moved here just to work on my company I have millions of people that watch us on social media if I'm feeling a little unclear about the vision for a few weeks or a few months or a quarter that doesn't mean I stop running my company and and stop going towards some kind of goal I need to keep taking steps forward and I know I'm going to figure it out along the way you know it's like people say I just haven't started working out yet because I'm just not motivated I'm like me neither it's been 13 years of working out every day 5 days a week and I'm still waiting for that motivation to kick in cuz like most days when it's like time time to go to the gym I'm like really don't want to do that right now our brain makes up all these other things that we could do instead of the thing most of times when something that I am supposed to do comes up I don't feel like it I seemingly have more important things or I feel generally apathetic and don't give a and the thing is is that I just ignore what my brain is coming up with I'm like thoughts are just sentences in my mind I know that I've committed to working out this many days a week just because I have a thought doesn't mean I need to take it as a directive or a truth right it's just a thought and so a lot of people they have these thoughts that oh my gosh I'm not motivated therefore I can't do the thing no not true at all there's been people that have done more with less understand that a lot of the times the reason why your mind says you need this Clear Vision you need this crazy purpose and you need this all this motivation the motivation will come when you have more responsibility which you don't get unless you take steps forward instead of trying to always find this vision and this motivation to get myself to move forward instead I just ask myself what action is going going to take me closer to a future I desire and then I act in accordance with my values not with my feelings motivation is a myth you create all these things through your actions and so act in accordance with your values act in accordance with your commitments and these things will come but if you're using these as reasons not to get started you are fooling yourself the next business truth is that there is no such thing as impostor syndrome there is inexperience insecurity and sucking before you're good and these are to be expected when I was 24 years old and I was leading a team of 120 people I was insecure every day and today I feel insecure not because of what I don't know but because of knowing how much I don't know the insecurity has not gone away I've just realized that that's part of the process is that you're going to feel that way if you're constantly growing and you're constantly in new situations then you're constantly going to feel like gosh I don't know if I can do this maybe I feel impostor syndrome and so there's a few things that I would say to that which is one I felt like an impostor the first few times I made content but after making content a thousand times I don't feel that way so much anymore I felt like an impostor the first time I started a business and had never done it before but after the fifth time I didn't feel that way so much but even to this day with all the experience I have when I do something I've never done before I felt like an imposter because I've never done it before but I don't use those words because saying I feel like an impostor doesn't Empower me because they give me a direction I'm not experienced meaning I can go gain experience and so do it a thousand times and tell me if you feel like an impostor volume negates luck like you're going to feel that way until you've done it so many times it's second nature calling it an impostor syndrome it doesn't help you regardless of if that feels like the right thing to say or not syndrome indicates some kind of medical condition like there's nothing wrong with you for feeling like you're not yet good enough maybe it means that you to work on something anytime that I felt like an impostor it's either because I'm new with something or it's because I didn't practice enough I didn't do the Reps and what I've learned nowadays is that you know a lot of people look at certain things that we do and they call it luck they're like wow you're really lucky that you're so good at leading a company Leila well yes I spend 14 hours a day practicing that the next business truth is that no matter how much success you get you will not feel better you just get better at feeling bad people always say money doesn't make you happy and I remember when I was growing my first business I was like but I'll find that out for myself I finally realized that success does not equate to happiness success is Success people can be very unhappy and also be successful the first time I was growing my first business gym launch I remember I felt really terrible a lot of the time like I felt constant anxiety constantly like I wasn't good enough I felt like there was something wrong with me for having those feelings and so it made the first time I grew a business very difficult because though on paper it was very successful and all those things I just was incredibly uncomfortable the whole time and I was anxious about my anxiousness and stressed about my stressed and I kept thinking to myself like once I get this certain level of success I really hope all this pain goes away and it wasn't until I got to a certain level LEL of success I want to say my fifth year in business and I just had this moment I remember when I was sitting on my couch at the end of the day when I realized success does not solve any of my problems in life in fact success sits in a different category you can be successful and still have all these things and so what I realized is that I didn't need to focus on being more successful if I wanted to enjoy running my business I need to focus on accepting feeling bad making peace with the negative emotions that come when you're growing a business not even just making peace but embracing them inviting them in because of the growth that I knew that would come from them what I actually have gotten better at now that I'm in you know my 10th year in business is I still have all the same feelings I used to have but how I react to them is so different I used to feel bad and guilty if I felt bad and now I just embrace the season that comes I'm like guess we're stressed great you know what when I'm stressed I'll just do other things that are stressful for me too because if I'm stressed I might as well use it I don't feel like being stressed for the rest of my life so let me just try and pack on the stressful things it's like I almost look at it now as an advantage rather than a disadvantage when I feel bad because when you feel bad and then you do something else that you've been maybe avoiding when you feel bad it's like it changes nothing you already feel bad so I'm just saving myself time for feeling bad later and I think once I finally understood that and I understood that in every negative emotion is an opportunity for me as a leader and in my business I felt empowered on the days that I feel bad and I think I've gotten really good at feeling awful because I know that in every day that I don't feel amazing there's a lesson for somebody else there's something I can learn about myself and there's something that I can teach people on my team because they too have those days and a lot of them are going through what I went through when I was a leader for the first time which is just feeling stressed about all the negative feelings you're having when you are quote unquote gaining so much success and so just remember you're going to feel bad you're just going to get better at managing the feeling bad it's not going to go away but you will get better you'll get stronger and you'll get more resilient the next brutal business truth is that delegation is trading the time you spent doing the task for the time it takes to reinforce and reward it many forget this crucial step do not be one of them when I was building my first company I finally learned how to delegate and many of you might relate to this where it's like I held on to so many things for so long and my team would always say like hey I can help you with this hey you know we could do this etc etc and so finally I got to this point where I realized I have to delegate it was almost there was no choice right I realized I would be the bot neck in the business unless I didn't what ended up happening was that I realized I would delegate things to people and then I would not follow up I would not say anything I would forget that the task ever existed and so what I realized was that I watched my team slowly start to I would say like their morale started to decrease when you delegate something yes you delegate doing it but somebody has to reinforce and reward that person for getting it done and if you're their boss it's you and so what I've realized is that I have to delegate and reward it's not that I just give something to somebody and it goes on to The Ether I thank them I reward them I review their work and tell them what's great about it if you ask an employee to take something over for you to do a presentation for the team and then you say you go present the quarterly plan you watch them present it and then you say nothing what do they think if you don't reinforce and reward the behaviors that you delegate people make assumptions people either assume one that you're not paying attention or two that you don't like what they did and it took me years to learn this because though I don't lead out of fear what I realize is that being too far away and not being close enough to reward behaviors I delegated actually created just as much fear as somebody who yells at people it left room for assumptions and when people make assumptions especially people who have been in very punishing work environments they often assume the worst and what I realized was that the one thing that I could do that really nobody else in the company could do was reinforce and reward the things they were working on and it meant really more coming from me than anybody else so even if other people gave them feedback it meant more if I gave it I've come to realize too is it doesn't take much it's not like you need to put together this giant report talking about how amazing everything they wrote was you just got to give them a high five this is a key piece that I think a lot of people Miss in building a business because they assume I hire these people to do these jobs and then I have to think about it you are the chief reinforcement officer I look at it I'm like how many people have I rewarded today I'll give you an example of something I did earlier today I asked my team to fill out a survey asking for things that I could do better as a CEO in the business what happens if somebody writes a very thoughtful response and then never hears anything from me what do they assume they might assume I didn't like it they might assume I didn't read it so what do I do I bookmark all of the very thoughtful responses and what I did is I just sent a message to each person this morning I just said thank you for saying X Y and Z maybe I asked them further questions a couple of them I scheduled a meeting with I'm rewarding them for giving me information because what do I want more of I want more of that cuz I think that makes a great team and so remember if you want more of something reinforce and reward it but when you delegate something the job doesn't end there you become Chief reinforcement officer let people know what you think of the work that you've given them once they start taking it over the eighth business truth is that titles do not make leaders actions do look for those who already have followers in your company and mark them as Leaders or potential leaders a lot of people look at somebody in the company who has a lot of experience and they assume that person should be a leader but what I look for is not who I deem to be the leader but who does the team already treat as the leader because here's the thing you don't promote somebody and then they start acting like a leader it doesn't happen that way you see people who already are natural leaders who already are exhibiting the traits of leader and then you mark them as a leader you're just making official what is already happening and so a lot of the times people assume if I make this person a leader they will start acting like one think how long that's going to take versus somebody who already acts like a leader people already follow and now you're just making it official it's the same as you know there's people who have a mom and a dad but when you ask them who raised you they're like you know really it was my granddad why is he saying that because unofficially his grandfather was his actual parent and he was the actual person who he looked up to the same goes in business many people can have a title but that doesn't mean that they are a leader it just means they have a title when I was growing Jim launch like kale he was a salesperson and then he became a sales manager and then he became a coaching manager and then head of product coaching and then a general manager and then CEO and the reason that I always promoted kale was not necessarily his skill competency at every level cuz like were there people who better at selling yes but it was the fact that when I wasn't in the room who did people listen to people listen to kale why did they listen to him because he was already a leader and so putting him into those positions I knew he was set up to win he already had followers in the company and a lot of people and myself included have made this mistake I used to think that if I gave someone the title they would become a leader I had somebody who was an operations manager in one of my companies I promoted that person to VP of operations and when I promoted him it was tough because suddenly he had all this Authority but he had no respect and he had to give all these people Direction but they didn't want to follow him and what I realized was even though he had all the technical skill in the world he had not won the hearts of the people on the team and so I say this often but like I don't make you a leader the team does if you want to be a leader you win the team not just your boss because at the end of the day you can get the title and you can get the role but the people will vote you out the next business truth is that strategy is not saying yes strategy is saying no to 99.9% of opportunities so that you can say yes to the one thing that moves the needle the most long-term success does not happen without saying no to short-term distractions even if something doesn't take your time it takes your attention and so a lot of people see things that they say are going to help them Reach their goals but they're actually just distractions and so every time you do that it's opportunity cost of your mind share I learned this the hard way when we had gym launch because there was a point in time where we had the decision of expanding gym launch to be International versus starting a supplement company and like the right move would have been to expand internationally it was much more aligned with our vision but it felt boring in a way and what felt like the shiny cool thing was launching a supplement line and so what we did is we started a supplement company that we said oh that's part of this company well we ended up with two companies though both were successful as certain as I am alive right now that it would have been two to three times more successful if I had not started the supplement company it was a yes but it wasn't a hell yes in terms of being aligned with our strategy if it's not completely 100% aligned with the strategy that you have decided ahead of time it's a no will it make you a lot of money yes but is it going to make you a lot of money in 10 years or is it going to cost you money in 10 years is it going to take a lot of your time maybe not today but what about tomorrow the reality is is that you have to give up the good opportunities today to have the great opportunities tomorrow and so what I see is there's a lot of people out there in business and I know because I look and due diligence on their companies and they don't understand strategy or they don't have the discipline to say no to things that are so close to being right but they're they're not 100% right we fool ourselves because we want the opportunities and likely the opportunities that you're getting are better than any you've ever gotten in your lifetime because of what you've accomplished I've said no to million dooll speaking opportunities I've said no to million dooll TV contracts I've said no to so many things in the last 3 years that I once dreamed of as opportunities in my life and the reason for that is because they don't take me down the road as fast as possible to the one thing that I really want and so getting started started we have to say yes but to go keep going and to Compound on our efforts we have to learn how to say no the last business lesson when you cannot do anything any more any better you do something new but you better be damn sure when you've exhausted all your options you have to try something different because maybe the strategy or hypothesis that you had of how you would make this business work actually has been proven wrong but the reality is is that most of the time again it's just us fooling ourselves I'll give you an example so I was doing a Q&A with about 100 businesses the other day and one of the companies was doing 2 million a year out of Europe they had recently pivoted to split their company to be half European and half us because they thought they had saturated the European market that is an example of not being damn sure that you've exhausted your options on the other hand we had a company that came to us that was doing 17 million a year with one product and what did we do we suggested they add a backend so once you realize that you have exhausted all your options in business then it's time to consider that maybe your strategy is not correct maybe you need to try something different or new we had a company come to us and they were doing 17 million with one product they said you know hey we want to launch these two new products and we said let's wait until we get to 30 million with this one product and then let's revisit that company today has gotten to over $100 million with two products and in fact those two products are pretty much the same $100 million versus a small business that came to us and right before we invested in the company they decided they want to open up a completely new market I said why would you open up a new market they said well I think we've saturated the one we have said do you think you've saturated the one you have or do you think that you suck at marketing turns out they sucked at marketing and now the company is stuck with two teams for two different markets so what do we have to do to shut down one when people are faced with the business decision of how am I going to grow my business what you want to do first can I do anything more any better can I do better marketing can I do more marketing can I do better sales can I do more sales can I do better customer service can I do more customer service you want to exhaust all of those options before you say you know what I'm doing everything I'm executing at an 11 out of 10 and it's just not the right strategy and now I have to look at something new people underestimate how much juice there is to squeeze out of what they're currently doing most of the time because they're inexperienced they just haven't done it before right and so they don't believe it's possible but to protect yourself from that you have to ask yourself where are you not getting the compound returns because you're not putting the effort in I wanted to make this video for you guys because the reality is is that growing a business is very painful and there's laot of sacrifices that are made if you're somebody who's very Mission driven and have a greater why as to why you're doing this and so I think if I had known a lot of these things it would have saved me I would say a lot of sleepless nights a lot of years of feeling like I was making the wrong decisions just out of ignorance and so I hope this was helpful if it was let me know in the comments and see you guys in the next one