Stewart Schuster:

Hey, everyone. Stewart here. This week's episode has a little bit of, let's just say, colorful language in it. Not much but I just wanted to let you know in case you're thinking about listening in a place where it might be otherwise inappropriate to listen out loud, whether it's work or the little ones are around or whatever the situation may be, don't be afraid to pause right here, throw on those headphones, and enjoy. Otherwise, let's get into it.

Leila Hormozi:

Your brain is always going to change and evolve. The question just is do you lose or gain more with every change? You're like, "I will gain more from this move than I will lose," because my audience, especially starting off, primarily, men who like business, if I share makeup tips, makeup anything, fashion, they're like, "Why are you sharing this?"

But then I think to myself, I'm like how many men in business, ultimately, are going to be Leila super fans? I see a future in which it's not that. I've just got to be more ballsy.

Chris Do:

How would you describe your personal brand in seven words or less? It doesn't have to be a complete sentence. I'm just curious how you see yourself and your personal brand.

Leila Hormozi:

It's interesting, because it's like a little weird, well-spoken for the most part, you could say masculine, powerful energy at times, authentic, quirky, business, simplicity.

Chris Do:

You mentioned weird a couple times, and now I'm dying, I have to open that door. What's the weird stuff?

Leila Hormozi:

Oh, I'll watch the vlog footage and I'm like, "What the fuck?" I have a lot of ... I'm very expressive, and I have a lot of mannerisms, on a daily basis, and so when I'm watching the vlog footage and I make weird voices, like constantly flexing my voice different, he knows, to play different characters. When I speak of my dad, I'm like, "I saw my dad the other day and he was like, "Sweetie, when I was talking to you," I do that all the time.

Chris Do:

Does your dad sound like that?

Leila Hormozi:

He's a little nasally, so he's like, "I just love you so much." I just do that all day, every day, and so when they do the vlog footage, not like a direct-to-camera or an interview like this, I see it and I'm like, "Oh my God. I am not ..."

If I were watching this, I told Alex, I was like, "How big is my viewer base?' I watch myself and I'm like a little fucking weird." I don't know. I get it from my family, both my father and my mother actually, very expressive. Huge facial expressions, large mannerisms, it's something that I've probably been self-conscious of when I was younger, but then as I got older, I've learned to like it about myself, because it makes me unique, but I do think it's quirky, because I would say it's a lot of women would probably not make such ugly faces.

I can make some hideous faces, and I do it all the time. Poor Alex experiences it on a daily basis, consistently. Sometimes I'm like, "How are you still married to me?" I think that's why.

Chris Do:

The reason why I said answer it from your point of view is because I wanted to ask you how would Alex describe you in seven words or less? As your brand.

Leila Hormozi:

He would definitely say weird. That's interesting. What's weird is like we're usually just so on the same page, I feel like it might be similar. He would probably be more complimentary than I would be about myself.

Chris Do:

What would he say?

Leila Hormozi:

I think he said something the other day, I don't even like saying it out loud, but intelligent, powerful, intelligent, beautiful. He would just be more complimentary of me I think.

Chris Do:

Are you comfortable taking compliments?

Leila Hormozi:

I take them because I feel like it's very punishing to not accept them from people but, no, I'm not comfortable.

Chris Do:

Yeah. I saw your reel where you talked about that of if you push it away, they're not going to give it to you anymore. Right?

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah. Yeah. Then you really are like, "Wait, oh shit." Then you have no evidence to support if something is real or not. Right?

Chris Do:

Yeah.

Leila Hormozi:

I think a lot of people, their boyfriend is like, "You're so beautiful," and she's like, "Shut the fuck up. I'm just fat and ugly," and he's like, "All right. I'm not going to say that again."

Then she starts to wonder, she's like, "Oh, maybe I am really fat and ugly," because what she wants him to say is, "No, you're not, honey. If you weren't, I wouldn't say that," but instead he's just like, "You're being a bitch, so I'm going to shut the fuck up."

Chris Do:

I find it strange about human nature. We're more likely to receive a criticism than we are to receive a compliment.

Leila Hormozi:

I think that we learn ... Most people learn more from that than they do from compliments. Winning, you don't nearly as much from winning as you do from losing. I think the same goes for criticism. It's like we learn a lot more from being critiqued than we do from being complimented.

From an evolutionary standpoint, I think it keeps you alive.

Chris Do:

Okay. I have a question for you. What is your book going to be called and what is it about?

Leila Hormozi:

I would love to write a book in 15 years, and I want the title to be Know Your Place. I want it to be about just building a business and how to build a business, but I want to fuck with everybody by making the title Know Your Place, so they think it's about being a woman.

That's it. I have talked about it with Alex a few times. It would be building a business from the ground up to over a billion dollars. That's the book I want to write.

Chris Do:

Is it a book designed for women?

Leila Hormozi:

No.

Chris Do:

Oh. Okay.

Leila Hormozi:

No. I just like the play on the title. That's it.

Chris Do:

Why 15 years? Why so long?

Leila Hormozi:

I don't have time right now.

Chris Do:

Okay. That's fair.

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah. Realistically, I've had a lot of people approach me wanting to ... Like publishers, they want to ghostwrite. I do not want to put anything out there that's written by a ghostwriter. I tried that with content for a little while, and it's nothing on ghostwriting in general. It works for some people, but, for me, it's like I've just realized I want more things to sound more like me, and if I wrote a book, especially my first book, I want it to be something that I write.

I want it to be when I've built something that's been a billion dollars.

Chris Do:

That's the marker then? When you do a billion? You're setting the marker at less than 15 years?

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah. It could be way less, but it's also like it has to ... The business has to be worth a billion and then also I have to decide I want to write the book, so I just assume in the next 15 years.

Chris Do:

Talking about financial goals, I don't know what the exact number is but I think there's a theory that it's like once you make, say, $35 million, from 35 to 100 to whatever, it doesn't matter, because we don't know how to spend that kind of money anyways, so for you guys to work towards that billion dollars, what is the drive besides playing the game and the game is fun to play, but is there something bigger than hitting that number?

Leila Hormozi:

Bigger? No. I think when me and Alex, there's probably days where we go around like, "Does it even matter to get to that?" And this and that. I'm like, "Well, I don't know what else I'm going to do until I die."

I would just like, really like to find out what it takes to do that, and I think it's just curiosity. It's like I really want to know what it takes, and I would love for that to be the story is that I was able to do that, because I'm also not going to do it in a way that's gross, I'm not going to do it in a way that doesn't benefit others.

I'm going to do it in a way that benefits everybody around me, that makes people better, that makes everyone that works for me better, the people that I interact with, our partners, everyone that watches our content, so I think, for me, it's thinking like, "I want to do it in a way that is so opposite of how most do," because I think most people do it by stepping on others, and making other people's lives worse, who interact with them, especially private equity. Like people who buy businesses, usually the businesses are shit after, and everyone that works there hates it, the people who sold it are like, "Fuck. At least, I got the money," and they just financially bloat the company with debt, and then just let it maintain until it dies one day.

I just like to do everything the opposite of that, and that is what sounds cool to me, and then the billion is just because then people will listen and realize that you don't have to do everything the traditional way.

There is a way to build a company in where it benefits everybody, and you can truly have a place where people love to work and love to partner with your company and, all around, it's a win for everybody.

That's what's cool to me is the process of doing it, and I think I don't ever want to preach how I do stuff until I have the credibility to get behind it, and I think right now, obviously, we have the $100 million offers and all that, it's like businesses that are of that size and below, but I would really love to set a standard for a much larger industry, that's in the billions, because those are people who have a lot of influence over the market, and that's really incentivizing to me.

Yeah. That's really the reason why I picked that number. Honestly, it's also like the next natural sequence from where we've been, so that makes sense to me. I'm sure after that, it's like, "All right. Now it's $10 billion, $20 billion," whatever. Or maybe I change my mind and want to live on an island and drink mojitos all day, I have no idea, but I don't think so.

Chris Do:

Fast-forward, you've hit that number. Is there anything you want to splurge on to buy that you can't already buy today? That you're like, "Okay, I did it. Now I'm going to spend this money in this really fun way." Anything like that? Gary Vaynerchuk talks about, "I want to make this money so I can buy the Jets." It's his thing, because he's obsessed since a child. Right?

I think I want to make my money, so I can go buy an art school and just convert it and make it not free but super cheap and affordable, so that's what I want to do. What would you spend your money on?

Leila Hormozi:

There's two things. There's one from a more charitable side, which is like we would love to be able to start a school. We're about making real business education available to everybody and I think the best place to do that is with younger populations.

I think both Alex and I have a soft spot for teenagers and people, they're not yet into college but they're in a high school, it's like would love to create a school where they can learn the real shit we're teaching. That's on the charitable side.

On the selfish side, I would like a mega yacht.

Chris Do:

How big is this mega yacht, you think?

Leila Hormozi:

A mega yacht is big enough that you can fit another yacht and a plane on it.

Chris Do:

I love that. Do you like the ocean?

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah. I do. I really like boats. I also feel like it's funny. People buy planes and they're like, "Wow. You have a plane." I'm like, "Oh my God. You can buy a plane for cheap." I can buy two planes tomorrow. But a mega yacht? You got to have some, "Fuck you" money to do that.

Chris Do:

I like that.

Leila Hormozi:

If I can have that and a school, I've made it.

Chris Do:

Beautiful. I read somewhere that you had invested I think in three companies and got them to $120 million ish in revenue. This blows my mind. This speaks about your chomps as a CO, as an operator. You know how to make businesses make more money.

I'm thinking like what is it that they don't know that you know? What is it that you get them to do that gets them to that next level? Can you distill down the top three things?

Leila Hormozi:

Well, I would say part of it is in who we pick. Picking founders who have an unfair advantage. I would say that the most successful founders already have one skill, not a ton of skills but they have one thing that they are not world-class at, but incredibly good at, and they can be world-class at.

You can see that potential in somebody, and you can feel it, and you can see it in the work, because usually it's the engine for the company is that one skill they have that's like crazy good. It's not just like, "Oh, like everybody else in the industry." It's like they stand out. That's the first thing is that all of those people have that.

Then they also have a really strong support system. I would say you have a very talented one or two founders who have crazy unique skillsets that are advantageous for the business, and then they have supportive family and partners with them.

If you don't have one of those things, it's really tough, because you can have a team of three founders that are all good at something, and they could get a business that does $10 million, $15 million but if they're not in a great market with a great skillset, it's going to be tough.

On the other side, if you have a really talented person, and they don't have a good support system, they, often, are their own demise. They sabotage themselves. Success is a double-edged sword, and the thing that they're really good at, they usually also have these huge deficits and they have nobody to cover them.

I think those two things have been traits in the founders that we've looked for. I do feel like we got really lucky with a couple of those companies, to be fair. I really do, because it's not like every company we invest in skyrockets and I don't want people to think that, because I'm like if you act like an idiot, there's nothing I can do, I'm not there every day.

But it's those two things and then what we do is ... The thing that's interesting is that we have, Alex and I, and then our whole team, it's like we have Alex and I, who are strategists that have complimentary skills and then we have our team who are strategists in each of their functions, marketing, sales, product, tech, customer success people, whatever.

We basically, whatever the constraint of the business is, whatever the reason it's not growing faster is, then we will just attack that first, and it's always different and it's always changing, and we just make sure that we have somebody that's on it, and we know what that constraint is, and so it's really a question of asking yourself, especially when a business is small, like a lot of them were when they came to us, it's like, "Okay, there might be seven things that are broken, which one, if fixed, provides us with the highest return?" That's it.

It's like, "Cool. Let's start there, and let's not try and do six at once. Let's start there, let's do it this quarter and the next quarter, we'll take on another."

Most people, if they took that approach would get way more done in a year than they take by, "We got to solve all seven right now." It's like, "Cool. You're going to move each of them an inch?" Rather than completing each. That's a lot of the approach that we take.

I will say that each company is different. One company we took on, I would say that a lot of our changes were strategic, and they were very skilled operationally, and didn't need a ton of help scaling the infrastructure to hundreds and hundreds of people versus another company, we barely made any strategy changes and they needed all the help with the infrastructure, and we built all the teams out.

It's just whatever the business needs, and I think we just understand business well enough to know what good looks like, so it's like, "All right. We know," and if we don't know something, I, at least, have a network where I can bring somebody else in who does, and that's a huge advantage.

Somebody's like, "Hey, we've got this Python code," so I don't fucking know that, I will bring in my friend, who I know is an expert in Python, though, and he will look at it. It's also if we don't know something, and we don't know a business, we don't invest in it.

God, there's so many businesses that want to partner with us, and I'm like, "Oh my God. I don't know the first thing about this." They get on, they explain the business, I'm like, "I don't even know what he just said." I'm like, "Yeah. We can't invest in this business. I have no fucking idea."

We always take on industries that we understand, and that our skills translate over to.

Chris Do:

It sounds, to me, like if I'm hearing this, that your ability to pick winners, because of your experience in knowing what the key ingredients are, that you can't invest, and once you have that, then we can help you, that's critical, and then it depends on if they need a strategic point of view or they need technical infrastructure help, then you can come and you can help them solve that. Right?

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah. I will say, I think it sounds much more glamorous than it is. I made a decision a quarter ago, and I was like, "I'm getting rid of the bottom three." I was like, "I'm cutting them. We're going to divest."

Because it had been a year, a year and a half, two years, and those were investments where we did not take controlling interest, because that's what we did for most of the time up until recently, about three quarters ago, we changed to taking majority.

We could not move things forward because of the person leading the company, and then if the person leading the company, we can't move things forward, if they won't let us bring in somebody from the outside to move things forward, it's tough, and so I take that on to mine. That's my bad, I didn't pick right.

That's a real thing, and I think a lot of people also don't know, in most private equity, there's portfolio theory, which is like 80% to 90% of your portfolio, like revenue and profit, comes from the top one to three companies in smaller portfolios. It's like how many companies do you have that they just never ... The market changes, the founder becomes distracted, the product never is able to get that good, a competitor comes to market. It's all the same. It's not like because Alex and Leila touch it, it's magic.

I hate dealing with that shit. That was a shit fucking quarter for me, having to be like, "Yeah. Bye." They're like, "Seriously? I thought you were going to help me," and I'm like, "But you actually don't have the capability to do this, and I have now realized that, and I suck for not having realized it sooner." That fucking sucks. I hate it. Jason knows. I come out and I'm like therapy with the content team. They're like, "What's wrong?" I'm like, "Ugh, today, I had to have this conversation. I hate myself."

But I don't want to be like normal private equity, and just be like, "Yeah. We're just going to ride along and cruise and I'll just take distributions and know that you're not going anywhere but I'll just take the money. I can't do that. It's not me."

Chris Do:

That would probably be a drag on your mental energy and your resources. Right?

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

These are not winners. Let's just cut our losses. Right?

Leila Hormozi:

Right. I don't want any money from a company that I'm not able to help have an impact on, so it's different when you take controlling interest, because it's on you. Now with the companies that we have a majority of, whether it's doing well or not, we've got to figure out what to do but we also have the ability to change everything at any point in time versus working through others. Very different.

That's been interesting for me, because I explained to you why we've picked the companies and we we got lucky with that, but, at the same time, it is much harder than, "Well, now I have this brand and this ability to recruit people that have run insane companies, that are insanely talented, and if I put them against ..." This is real. "If I put those people that I can recruit against most of the founders I speak to on the phone, who would I choose?" This person.

Then I'm like, "All right. Does it make sense that I, with every company, take a minority stake and trust that the founder's going to guide it in the right direction?" There are still some companies, like even right now in some of the pipeline, where I'm like, "This founder has got it. I just know," and I'm like, "I would hire this person to run this company," but if I wouldn't hire the founder to run the company, than why would I partner with them? And not have control.

I've taken a different approach where it's like, "There are some companies in which it makes sense," which if the question I can answer is like, "I would confidently hire this person to run this company," outside of them being the founder, then I think taking a minority interest can work at times, but also for how much ...

There's other things to factor in, which is like how much work we do, how much time we spend on the businesses, how much of an advantage we provide to them, and if I want to be able to one day put my brand behind them, do I do that for less than controlling interest?

I feel like the future goes towards no.

Stewart Schuster:

Time for a quick break, but we'll be right back.

Speaker 4:

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Stewart Schuster:

Welcome back to our conversation.

Chris Do:

You're saying, "We're pretty good but we're not magicians. There are going to be bad bets that we make, and then there's going to be the winners that skyrocket, and the ones that don't work out." Do you record content around that?

Leila Hormozi:

I don't because, in fact, I've never talked about it just because I feel really sensitive to not talking about something. It's timing. In a year, I could make content about it but I never want someone to watch it, and be like, "That was about me."

I've had it happen. It doesn't feel good. I'm really sensitive to people's feelings. There's been like two or three vlogs that were fire vlogs and I was like, "We cannot post these. Maybe in a year." The team is like, "Oh," and I'm like, "Fuck. We just can't. Timing." Because so much of what I do, it's personnel-focused and it's like ... I don't know.

I'm never going to sacrifice personal relationships for content, so even if it would benefit others, it's like, "It can wait. It will benefit them in a year as well."

No. I haven't. I don't talk about investing a lot, because I don't think it's relatable. I don't feel like I'm an expert yet, because it's been only three years, and investments take five to 10 years to pan out often.

I know that I am confident in my business acumen, I have a lot still to learn when it comes to investing, and I also am ... There's just a lot. I think that people, they romanticize it right now. I think there's a lot of people buying businesses ad doing it, and I'm like, "Oh my God. Come on." It is just as shitty as running a business. It's not better or worse. It's like they are equal. You have different shit on each side.

I'll tell you this, I had somebody that reached out to me, that used to be a client at Gym Launch, and then they said they started their own company. I was like, "That's amazing. What are you doing?" They're like, "I'm doing what you and Alex are doing, I'm taking a page out of your book, I'm taking equity in these companies."

That person was one of our bottom clients. They were just really loud. I was like, "That's fucking scary to me, that you would take equity in somebody's company when you're not even good at running your own. You're not an investor and you're not a business person."

I feel like it's really irresponsible, and I have all my years of experience in actually doing business, and then all of my anxiety to propel me to learn this very quickly, that I don't like talking about it, because it feels like it's a topic right now, and it honestly just grosses me out. It grosses me out that people think that it's cool to teach people stuff, that is high fucking risk.

You are taking on all the liability, and, by the way, if you can buy a company for no money, it's probably a piece of shit." If somebody sells you their company for no money, you probably don't want it, it's probably a liability, and so I see all of this stuff and, obviously, I have opinions about it but I also feel like I can't speak on it, because people will be like, "She just doesn't want us to do what they're doing, because they've got the secrets." I'm like, "No, it's fucking hard, dude. It's hard."

We sold Prestige Labs, the supplement company, and then someone asked me on a podcast, they're like, "Would you start a supplement company again today?" I was like, "Never."

Then all these people ragged on me, and they were like, "She just doesn't want us to make the money she made." I was like, "No. It fucking was awful. It's not a great business to get into."

It's like would I recommend private equity to most people just trying to make money and get into business? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. It is very hard, and a lot of people in the industry are very cut-throat, that you have to be working with, and the vendors and things, it's just very different than business, and so I feel like it's one of those things that you talk about in the future rather than while it's happening, because nobody will believe that your intentions are pure. They'll think that I'm coming from a scarcity mindset of thinking that, "Oh, they're going to scoop up all the companies" or something. I don't know. People say these things, though.

Chris Do:

I'm going to say this, from a very selfish point of view, and maybe make a case for it, you talked about how we learn more from our failures than from our success, that we can learn more from criticism than we can from a compliment.

I didn't know that there's these businesses that you invested in that didn't work out. I don't know I just assumed that it always worked out, I would love it for you to sit there for an hour and a half, "Here's what went wrong," extract all the names and things, so that we can just learn along the side. "That's what makes you not investable, people. Don't do this, stop doing that."

Because what we see is like, "Oh, they put in their magic. Now it's a $100 million company. Damn it. I'm never going to be that person." But in sharing like, "Okay, here's where the owner did this, and we just couldn't get them to change their mind and get out of their way," because, often times, as you coach, I coach people, it's like, "If you could just do this one thing, get out of your own way, it would be magical and rainbows and everything, but you got to stop," and they don't and they can't, they're stuck, and we realized it too late. Right?

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah. That's fair.

Chris Do:

I would love to see that. That would be such good content. I know your sensitivity, your issues about ethics but from just a very selfish, I would learn so much by hearing you say that and knowing, "Next time if I want Leila and Alex to invest in me, I cannot be that person, because it's going to fail, and they're going to throw me out."

[inaudible 00:25:58] those words.

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. That's fair. No. I understand what you're saying. I don't think it's a bad idea at all-

Chris Do:

I would watch that. I would binge-watch that all day long.

Leila Hormozi:

Our post-mortem on why a business didn't succeed.

Chris Do:

Yeah. Like, "Here are the lessons. Here's what the entrepreneur did." Abstract the names, faces-

Leila Hormozi:

Or the market.

Chris Do:

Whatever. Yeah. The market, that's a valuable lesson too. Everything should have worked and it didn't, because we couldn't see this thing coming.

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah. Yeah. The amount of businesses that even we keep in our pipeline and keep in touch with, and then the market in the last year, they've just dissipated into almost nothing, just based on a few people that were in unlucky markets, and you're like, "Damn, dude. You're a great entrepreneur but not the right time."

Chris Do:

Right. Right. You've been super generous with your time. I just want to ask you this one last question, which is what's something that people would be surprised to learn about you.

I'll start. I tell people I used to be into skateboarding. They're like, "Oh, I didn't know that." Your turn.

Leila Hormozi:

I thought I wanted to be a zoologist, so I had a ton of reptiles growing up, so I had, at one point, I think like multiple different lizards and things. When I was 14, I had a seven foot iguana, for example, so I've just always really liked weird animals, like spiders, birds, reptiles, snakes, all of it.

A lot of people don't know that I had all of those growing up I guess, so people would come to my house and they were disgusted by how many animals were in cages, if that makes sense.

Chris Do:

Do you have any animals now?

Leila Hormozi:

No. No.

Chris Do:

How come? No more seven foot iguanas?

Leila Hormozi:

We had a cat, and he died. He was really sweet. His name was Billy, short for Billion.

Chris Do:

You can't let the billion die.

Leila Hormozi:

I know. He had a heart disease.

Chris Do:

Oh no.

Leila Hormozi:

No. We haven't gotten any since him. We had a dog for a short period of time, and then we had the cat, and then we just haven't done anything since then. Now I think as much as I like them, I like to go visit them, and hang out with friends who have them, but-

Chris Do:

And then leave them behind, go back to work, and-

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah. What am I going to do? Pay someone to take care of my animal? It just seems ridiculous.

Chris Do:

Yeah. Okay. I know how to do this then. I'm going to ask you five really simple questions.

Leila Hormozi:

Oh, shit. Okay. Yeah.

Chris Do:

One word answers. Okay?

Leila Hormozi:

I'm really not giving you what you want here.

Chris Do:

No. No. I love this. Okay. Favorite fashion label brand/designer?

Leila Hormozi:

I love Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen.

Chris Do:

Beautiful. Okay. He knew. He knew. He knew. [inaudible 00:28:21] McQueen. I like McQueen too, but it's super expensive.

Leila Hormozi:

Your necklace, is that McQueen?

Chris Do:

Yes. It is. Oh my God. You do know your stuff. Okay. Number two, favorite series to binge-watch?

Leila Hormozi:

So basic but the Kardashians.

Chris Do:

Okay. Okay. All right. [inaudible 00:28:37] the information out there. Okay. Favorite band? Or one that's in heavy rotation. I know that's always hard, like the favorite. One that's in heavy rotation.

Leila Hormozi:

I don't actually know if I have bands that I listen to.

Chris Do:

A song? An era? Help me out here.

Leila Hormozi:

I listen to really inappropriate music.

Chris Do:

What do you mean? There's no such thing as inappropriate music. Is there?

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah. I would never share it, because people are like, "Why are you listening to this?"

Chris Do:

Are you a Belieber? What are you talking about here?

Leila Hormozi:

No. I like the beat, but if you listen to the lyrics, it's like, "Choke that bitch on the floor. Fuck her from behind." Then I'm like, "Oh my God." Then my team walks in my office and they're like, "Leila, what are you listening to?" I'm like, "I really like the rhythms."

I don't know. I just like it playing in the background, and then Alex will come in the car, and he's like, "What the fuck?" Just that kind of stuff.

Chris Do:

Okay. Is that like speed metal? When you say-

Leila Hormozi:

I don't know. Maybe close to some Tech N9ne, that kind of vibe.

Chris Do:

Okay. Okay.

Leila Hormozi:

Just really aggressive and dark. I am not listening to the lyrics. I like the pace.

Chris Do:

Okay. Tech N9ne, McQueen, I'm starting to see a picture here. Okay. All right. What's the thing that you hate the most about making content?

Leila Hormozi:

The first thing that popped up was that I have so many good comebacks to all these people that leave comments, but I'm too well-mannered to leave them.

Chris Do:

You should clap back. It's fun. That's the whole point of content creation.

Leila Hormozi:

Laws of behavior. If I clap back, I reinforce them commenting. They want me to clap back. I will never give somebody what they want.

Chris Do:

[inaudible 00:30:18] that algorithm.

Leila Hormozi:

But sometimes I've got such a good one, I'm like, "I'm going to fucking nail them," and then I'm like-

Chris Do:

I know what-

Leila Hormozi:

And I have to tell Alex, and he's like, "You're a bitch," and then, okay.

Chris Do:

I know what it is. Forget the know your place, just a book of clap backs that you release 15 years later while you're listening to Tech N9ne and just let it all out.

Leila Hormozi:

Here's what I have done, though, is I save the most savage comments people make across platforms and I save them in my phone, and one day, I want to make this video. I have it where it's like I'm sitting by a fireplace, I have glasses on, and then I very properly read the comments, "So Steve 414 says, 'Stupid tranny bitch. You said ..."

I think it would be a hilarious video.

Chris Do:

There's two series here.

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

The businesses that fail and what we learned about them, and mean comments read by a beautiful woman.

Leila Hormozi:

There you go.

Chris Do:

Okay. Look, I'll help you with the content, let's go.

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

Right?

Leila Hormozi:

No. I think it'd be good.

Chris Do:

You know what would be better? You read them while there's a drone shot that pulls out of the mega yacht.

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

You are just flying through every room-

Leila Hormozi:

Sipping champagne on my mega yacht, reading the comments.

Chris Do:

It's literally flying through every single room on the yacht, and it's a really long video because there's a lot of rooms to fly through.

Leila Hormozi:

That'd be great. That's a good one.

Chris Do:

What is a thing that you love the most about yourself?

Leila Hormozi:

I actually love the fact that I am willing to be completely honest. I think a lot of people, and I know because people that are friends of mine that make content, say like ... I'll say anything, and it's like, "If I am asked it, I will tell the truth," and so I think it's actually that I really do think I am a truth teller, and I have tried hard to do that, so I think that's what I like the most about myself, but I think that there's definitely times where I feel like based on the audience, how you tell the truth, I get nervous, because if I'm in a close room with just our team talking about something, I'm cracking jokes, saying things that are inappropriate, riffing, swearing, and it's like I always worry about that stuff being taken out of context.

Chris Do:

I know what you mean.

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

Because I say inappropriate things, my wife is like, "Please don't say that out loud to other people. It's funny, I love you for it, but you're going to get canceled for saying stuff like that." I'm like, "I don't know." I keep exploring the edge, but ... You know?

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah. I don't know. It's interesting. I say it out loud, it's like that's the part of myself I like the most, I think that it's probably been in the last two years, I feel like I really just accept myself and I don't try to be perfect anymore, I accept that I am not ... Almost like the very put together vision of myself with no attitude at all and very ...

I like the fact that I have mannerisms and things like that, and I don't think I used to, so I think that's it. On the other side of that, it's like I don't really show enough.

Chris Do:

It's like the Something About Mary character where Cameron Diaz is this beautiful girl who loves baseball, who swears like whatever, and is the most chill girl next door that cannot exist in real life, that's the dream version. Isn't it? A woman who is successful, who doesn't care, who drops F-bombs, and works out and does all kinds of stuff. Who is this person?

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah. I think I'm at a weird transitional point with content, because I started off being so professional, it feels like, and I think I've gotten more in the other direction but what you're describing is much closer to who I actually am, that people know me, is like I have that whole other side but I think we're trying to figure out ways to capture it where I'm in that setting, where it's not manufactured.

Chris Do:

Yeah. Yeah.

Leila Hormozi:

Then there's also the, obviously, putting it out there, even when I got my nose done, I was like ... It's funny, because people were like, "You obviously had to tell people you were going to get it done, because it was going to look so different." I was like, "You should have seen the picture they sent me of what it was going to look like after. It looked nothing like this." It looked like they took a bump off and that was it.

But putting that out there was really scary, because there were so many comments for like a month. All it was was like nobody talked about my content, they only talked about the fact that I got my fucking nose done.

Chris Do:

Right.

Leila Hormozi:

I was like, "Good lord," but through the other side of that, my female audience has tripled, and I'm like I'm sure it's because I started sharing about, "Yeah, I got plastic surgery. So the fuck what? I would get more if I wanted to. I don't care."

It's interesting, because it's like Alex talks about brand in this way, and I think it resonated with me a lot, which is like your brand is always going to change and evolve. The question just is do you lose or gain more with every change? If you want to grow a brand, you want to make sure that the bet you're making, you're like, "I will gain more from this move than I will lose," which means like I will gain more of an audience than I will lose. I will lose people, no matter, with any change that I make, but will I gain more?

I think that there's a lot of things that I will ... Because my audience, especially starting off, primarily, men, who like business, if I share makeup tips, makeup anything, fashion, they're like, "Why are you sharing this?" But then I think to myself, I'm like, "How many men in business, ultimately, are going to be Leila super fans? I see a future in which it's not that. I just got to be more ballsy.

Chris Do:

There's a couple things there. Number one is I honestly believe this, and it's because we live in a time when there's a lot of people that are going to give you their opinions, whether you like them or not, and it can be hurtful. It can affect your mood and your self-image and your self-confidence but here's my belief on this, at the end of the day, and I think you feel the same way is I'd rather have fewer fans that really show up, because I'm showing the real version of me, versus some other version. Right?

I get this comment, "Oh, Chris, you've changed a lot since nine years ago, since you made content." Right? Well, I tell them I haven't changed at all. I'm just showing you the real me now.

We all show up professionally first. We're a little scared, and then slowly, I'm like, "You know what? I'm done. Taking off the kimono. This is who I am." I know I piss off some people. I'm like, "It's cool. You have a lot of choices in the world. You can watch whatever."

This is hilarious, because you guys are in the gym owner space, because you're educating people, "I'm not going to watch this anymore." I'm like, "Fine. Don't make money. I only teach you how to make money, so who are you hurting here?"

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah. Yourself.

Chris Do:

Go do whatever you want. That's all. I'm just trying to help you better your life enough, and if I'm not for you, cool. But the opposite is the people who do show up for you, love you in ways that just transcend because you're giving information, because they're getting to see all of you.

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

That is that glue that makes that community, the audience that show up, super tight. You can see somebody has 10, 20 million followers or subscribers and they don't give an F about that person. They just tune in for the content. Conversely, you can see somebody that has 20,000 followers and people go to war for them.

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah. No. You're 100% correct. I'm excited, because we announced today, this year is the year that we split the content team, so there's going to be a Leila team and an Alex team.

Chris Do:

Ooh.

Leila Hormozi:

I think that will also help, because right now, they just work so much, and there's so much shit between the two of us, for how much we put out and how many people there are, and so it's like the ability to focus, because also we basically just ... For a long time, it was like what worked for Alex, do for Leila, but we don't operate the same way.

Also, I think I'm probably more optimized for podcast, interacting with person rather than direct to camera by myself, because that's what I've been trained to do over the last 10 years of my professional life, and Alex is the opposite, he's been trying to talk at people.

We both do that in terms of in conversation, like I'm better at having conversations, he's better at just yelling at people, not actually yelling but like, "Hi." You know?

Chris Do:

Right. Right.

Leila Hormozi:

We joke and say yelling. I think it'll be cool to see how both of our content evolves, as we create different ways of how we're doing it.

Chris Do:

Right. It's like you need different styles in content strategy, because you're two very different people.

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

Talk about similar subjects, but very different style.

Leila Hormozi:

Yeah. We have so many things we're so different with, personally. It's just like those things aren't shown through content. Everything business, we pretty much agree.

Chris Do:

Yeah. If people wanted to find out more about you, where do they go? How do they find you?

Leila Hormozi:

I would say start with my podcast, Build With Leila Hormozi, and if you like visuals, then you can go to YouTube and just type in Leila Hormozi. If not, you can go to any other social platform and type in Leila Hormozi, and you will find me.

If you're a beginner in business, I would say that we have a book $100 Million Offers and $100 Million Leads that you can find on Acquisition.com, and you can get your copies there.

Chris Do:

Great. I've read both, and they're wonderful books. I'm endorsing the books right now, guys. Thanks very much.

Leila Hormozi:

Dude, this was fun.

Chris Do:

Thanks for being here.

Leila Hormozi:

Thanks for being such a great host.

Chris Do:

Thank you.

Stewart Schuster:

Thanks for joining us. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app, and get a new insightful episode from us every week.

The Futur Podcast is hosted by Chris Do, and produced by me Stewart Schuster. Thank you to Anthony Barro for editing and mixing this episode, and thank you to Adam Sandborne for our intro music.

If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by reviewing and rating our show on Apple Podcasts. It will help us grow the show and make future episodes that much better. If you have a question for Chris or me, head over to TheFutur.com/HeyChris, and ask away. We read every submission and we just might answer yours in a later episode.

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