Alex Hormozi Scaling Workshop - Day 1 Overview

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] What's going on, guys? On today's episode of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast. This is the Friday focus. I am recording for you from out here in Las Vegas up here actually in my room at I think it was Resort World is the name of this hotel, which it's actually pretty cool. It's off the Strip, but it's a nice spot. But I am out here for the acquisition.com scaling workshop led by Alex Hermosy himself, who if you don't know who that is, I don't know. Like, go go look on Instagram. He's pretty much like the biggest sort of like business influencer that you can find right now pretty much anywhere. And he has a private equity company where he helps, I guess, people scale their their small businesses. And he gets his main lead flow from his for his private equity business by creating all of this value add content for people trying to grow businesses. Probably heard us talk about him on the show on a regular basis. He's kind of a pretty big influence of Dan and myself. But, yeah, I'm right here at the conference. And this is your first time of the show. My name is Mike DeHaan, and I left my engineering career 2018, kind of dicked around for a little bit, figured my life out for about a year and a half, worked in a gym, did some random stuff, started a real estate company that now does about 15 to 20 deals a month.

Mike DeHaan: [1:19] And I also have a education community called Scale. You can hear learn about it at clickandqueues.com/scale. We also have a marketing company and a lending business. I have a whole suite of, like, random businesses in the real estate space that I've started in the last five years, and I've scaled to a decent little size. So, anyways, I'm out here at this conference, and the goal of this scaling workshop, honestly, is not to necessarily learn how to scale my my real estate company anymore because that does a a pretty decent clip on its own. And, also, to a lot of the teachings of Alex and action.com aren't necessarily directly related to real estate, but there are a ton of, I say, business learnings that you can get from it. And so my goal for coming out here was to learn how to scale our scale community as well as our marketing company and our lending company, which are a little bit more traditional, a little bit better. And the funny thing is is, I guess, this is the opinion that I came in with. I actually learned there is a lot more that is applicable to real estate than I thought. But I sort of needed it to be served to me in a way that allowed me to reframe it how it made sense to me.

Mike DeHaan: [2:24] Or, yes, I sort of hear how they sort of explain stuff long form versus getting it from, you know, podcasts and YouTube videos and stuff that Alex put together himself. Because at this event, you know, it's at the acquisition.com office, which they have out here, which is actually the old UFC building. It's a pretty cool setup. It's funny. I'm I'm a big proponent of virtual work, but going and, like, seeing the setup they have is I'm like, yeah. I could actually see why you would want something like this because his entire staff is absolute a players. I mean, they have the ability and brand to recruit a players and shows. And the event was led by a lot of the leaders of his company, of acquisition.com. And throughout the entire day, it was like a twelve hour day. It's super long. So if I I kinda go all over the place, I apologize. I'm literally recording this at 09:00 at night in this hotel. Day one was all kind of about, I would say, like, the theory of business valuation, how to be a better CEO, how to figure out the constraints in your business, how to hire top talent. And then at the end, for about two hours, Alex came out and talked about kind of, like, how to increase the enterprise value of your company by basically improving all of the things that have been talked about earlier in the day. It was really, really good.

Mike DeHaan: [3:41] And then at the end of it, they did have an upsell. It's $5,000 coming to this event. They had an upsell for additional coaching and workshops, which I fell for immediately and trapped $15 on the spot to to come out for four more days worth of workshops we're doing in two sessions over the next year. You know, that's kind of the objective of the event, I would say a little bit, but also to you, they're very, very smart because what they have learned over the years that they've been in business have been that the companies that they have acquired, that they had provided previous sort of like knowledge and coaching stuff to, by the time they acquired them, they were significantly more successful. And so they're being really smart. So now instead of paying for their lead funnel, they're having their lead funnel pay them. They're going to be increasing their conversion as well as success rate by making it a very mutual value add. Because, you know, actually, $15, I didn't think twice about signing up for it. I think it'll be super, super beneficial for us. But, anyways, I kinda digressed. So day one, we really dove into kind of, like, the theory and the concepts of everything that they really believe in, what it takes to value and grow a business. And a lot of it was based around sort of, like, what it means to be a CEO and what a good CEO is. And, you know, if you're a small business, even if you're one person operator, you're still CEO. Right? You're still the owner of the business.

Mike DeHaan: [5:00] And most of the topics revolve around this concept that the very best CEOs aren't the ones who have, like, the most grit or the hardest workers or the best experience or best of delegation, but they are the ones that are able to strategically allocate resources the most effectively. Resources being time, money, and energy. K? And that most people are not good CEOs because they don't do that. They always try to work harder. They are naturally gravitating towards things that they are good at. You know, they don't know their numbers. They can't strategically make decisions. That's something that's super, super mind blowing to me about all this stuff is how many of their decisions that they make that are literally just based off of math and data. Like, they're one of the most, like, data driven sort of groups that I've ever been exposed to. I don't know if that's common for private equity, but for, like, this group, like, almost everything they do is, yeah. Well, this will increase your lifetime value of your customers or your deals by this much. And this other thing will reduce your customer acquisition costs. And so here's what this your enterprise value. And why would you not do that?

Mike DeHaan: [6:02] And they make it sound so freaking simple that you're always less suited to going, yeah, you're right. Why would I not do that? I guess I am an idiot. And then, you know, they thing that I appreciate is they always follow-up the theory with very applicable things based off of the story that you're telling them. And, you know, one of the things that I appreciated, you know, I say that, like, very literally the story that you're telling them because throughout this process and at the end of it, we had some great direct access to all of these people. K? And and like I said, these are very, very sharp people. You know, it's it's interesting sort of, like, going like, watching them all do their presentations because not only are all the individuals very, very bright, you can pick that up right away, they also speak very well. They have definitely had, like, some formal speaking training and presentation training. You can just tell by the way they carry themselves to their presentations. They're all also very, very young. I would happen to guess that probably all the people that spoke today, Alex and Sophia, not a single one is over 35. And what I mean, one of them, like the main sales guy, I would even guess he might be in his, like, late twenties. Super, super sharp. But throughout the entire course of the the day in the workshop, we got there for you to chat with all of them one on one, ask them specific questions, and they would always do such an amazing job of referencing back to the material that they had just covered.

Mike DeHaan: [7:17] And then they would ask you specifics about your business, and they would give you super direct actionable plan. And to be able to hear, like, a concept for a business that they have literally just heard about five seconds ago and be able to give you something that is legitimately very, very good is very, very impressive. Like, honestly, guess this may be how people feel when, you know, we have keys coming to other events. They come and they ask me about these real estate deals or these opportunities. We get a lot with our sales chain that we do for scale around how to analyze different negotiations, things like that. And I always have an answer right off the bat just because I've done hundreds of transactions and analyzed thousands and thousands of deals over the years. And for these guys, it's the same with businesses. So it doesn't really matter if it's a, you know, pressure house pressure washing business that I met one of those people today, or if it's a, like, life coaching business, or if it's a real estate business, or if it's a marketing business, or if it's a roofing business, or if it's a fencing business, or if it's a VA staffing company, literally, these are all people that I met today at the event. They can hear the problems that you're facing. They can determine it back to, you know, the different pillars they talk through throughout the event.

Mike DeHaan: [8:27] They can say like, have you thought about doing this way? Have you thought about trying this approach? And 99% of the time, I would say from what I heard, either talking to them directly or by just like sort of standing nearby and hearing a lot of conversations, they were right. And they provide some very, very good value that way. Yeah. So that was kind of the big focus of the morning was around how to be a better CEO, how to allocate resource and what all that look like. In the afternoon, they did a really big deep dive on hiring, which I thought was great. Honestly, will say a lot of the hiring stuff that they went over, especially at the beginning was very similar to what we do at KeysCon. So I actually feel is kind of proud of that because I feel like, hey, when at KeyesCon, we always do a big hiring segment. It's always a big thing that we touch on in scale. And the fact that they were repeating some of the same content, was I felt pretty good. I was like, we must be doing something right. And I will say I do feel like we have a good team for the most part, and we have had some good success hiring. And I think it's because we share a lot of the same values that they're hiring. Guy obviously has things that were most interesting or some of the ways that they viewed primarily how to deal with, like, unicorn employees or, like, key members of the team that are very, very hard to replace.

Mike DeHaan: [9:38] And one of my favorite concepts they discussed today was, you know, when there's a unicorn at the company, so they are like the key person, whether that's yourself or that's your top sales guy, whether that's your business partner, whether that's, I don't know, someone that like is in your back office that does everything for you. So many people try to, I would say, balance them out or replace them by getting another unicorn that kind of has, the same skill set. So that way, you know, they're gonna befriend unicorns. They're gonna work together. Thing is though, unicorns are territorial. That's not only how it works. And instead, what you're better off doing is bouncing out the unicorn with unicorn parts. And so the example that they gave was what they need. They needed a was a rhino, a horse, and fireflies for the glitter? Right? And so say that you have someone that's really good at, you know, say, like, sales, prospecting, and marketing, and they're kinda like a person that runs that entire side of your business. Instead, you find someone that's only good at sales, it's only good at prospecting, someone that's only good at marketing, and you bring all of them in, and you use them to not replace your unicorn because your unicorn can probably go and learn how to do something else in the business. But you balance out the fact that your business relies on them and reduces the risk of having this key person in your business that kind of, like, completely controls the business's destiny. Right? Because that was a that was a huge focus of the day is that the number one risk factor that they look at and that any private equity company looks at is the key man risk, which is is there a singular person or entity in that business that if they were to leave or die or have malicious intent just because they got sick of you, would that be a problem?

Mike DeHaan: [11:17] And if so, you should probably deal with that sort of ASAP. So that was one really good one on the hiring. Another concept I really liked around hiring, they had mentioned multiple times how this was a good saying was most companies have too many hands and not enough brains. And I feel like this is a trap that we have definitely fallen into before. And I know other people fall into as well, where you suddenly have a ton of people in your business that are doing stuff, but they all need to be managed, interacted, and they are not self starters at all. And your goal should be to have as many team members building your business, as well as working in your business, as opposed to just people working in your business. And if you have a ton of people that are just working in your business, then you're going to have a ton of bloat and a ton of work just managing everybody. And it can be avoided by learning how to hire correctly. And so that was just like a good little takeaway, something that I believe in and have definitely dealt with before. But I truly like the way they put that of the too many hands, not enough brains. Then I guess sort of the final takeaway that they used to start and cap off the entire event with was, as a CEO, even, you know, our business owner, even if you have no desire to exit your company or to to, like, sell. Right? You should still be focusing on increasing the enterprise value because it does nothing but make your business more effective. And, I mean, if you want, like, a job where work really hard and probably don't make that much money, I guess don't focus on it. But realistically, we don't want that.

Mike DeHaan: [12:47] Right? And so, ultimately, they basically said if if you're not increasing enterprise value by reducing your risk and increasing your opportunity, And ultimately, everything that you do as a business owner should be around reducing your customer acquisition cost and increasing your lifetime value. Or in real estate terms, basically, your cost per deal and increasing the lifetime value of your deals that you get. And so that means for, like, wholesales and flips, that's increasing your margin, building a better buyers list on the wholesale side, increasing your sales to get better deals. Like, those are things you could do there on the flipping side, increasing your labor, getting your realtor's license so you can reduce your fees, getting cheaper money. Those are all things that will increase your lifetime value on the flipping end. If it's buy and hold stuff, learning to create value for these deals, getting cheaper debt, learning to do, like, forced value ads, all those things will increase the lifetime value of those deals. And ultimately, like, honestly, all this stuff when it comes to real estate business, it kind of is applicable in two ways. One is the actual business piece of it. The other is with each individual property.

Mike DeHaan: [13:54] If you look at it, there's always some of these same little nuances put together. As the business owner, your entire folks should be around doing things that improve the lifetime value or the customer acquisition cost or cost per deal. And none of the rest of it should be on you. And if it is, then you should probably outsource it. Right? So that is kind of my main breakdown of day one. I'll do another one for you guys tomorrow after day two, which will release next week. So you can check that out. But there's some other stuff that they touched on that they asked us not to share because it's kind of like their IP. I don't know. Maybe I'll I'll I'll share it with of the people in scale. So you can go and click and keys.com/scale if you want to hear some more the more they call the friend or the NDA was a friend da. So they asked us not to share a handful of things because it's very important for them in their business. So I'm not going to do that right now. But enjoy scale, probably have them over there. Even if it's applicable, it's mostly applicable to, I would say, our business in general. But, yeah, overall, it's been a great experience. I did get the opportunity to talk to Alex directly today for about fifteen minutes, which is really cool for me. I'm a big fan of his and, you know, it was kind of like a weird thing talking to him because, like, I feel like I know him, and he has no idea who the hell I am. But if you have followed any of his content, it may be no surprise to you, but he is 100% the same in person as he appears to be on the Internet.

Mike DeHaan: [15:17] Internet, like literally nothing about him is different. His tone, his demeanor, the way that he talks, the speed at which he talks, and just as general, no bullshit attitude, which I really appreciate it. And, yeah, super nice guy. And he was he did really, he's really cool. He stood in the corner, and made sure to talk to every single person at the little end of end of the reception. And I guess Lilo was doing that too on the other side. I didn't know she was over there, but maybe I'll get you to talk to her tomorrow. So that would be cool as well. But, anyways, hopefully, that was interesting to you guys. If you guys have any questions or thoughts or you want any more clarification, anything that I talked about, or if thinking about going to one of these workshops yourself, I'd be curious to hear about it. Hit me up on Instagram at Mike underscore Invest. Shoot me a DM. And yeah, let me know if you like this. You thought it was interesting. And if you had anything else you wanted to know about the workshop, I'd be happy to change some messages with you and let you know my thoughts. Besides that, everybody, we appreciate you listening. And I'll talk to you guys next week.