“Do stuff with people you like, and do more of it.”

In 2015, Leila Hormozi moved to Orange County, California, to start a career in fitness as a personal trainer after earning a degree in Exercise Science. Within one year, she became the top-selling personal trainer in the region. In 2016, she met Alex Hormozi on a dating app and accompanied him on his 4th gym turnaround. During this time, she ran a successful personal training business online, making $4,000 per month that helped support the couple while their other business, Gym Launch, took off.

It was Leila who convinced Alex to go all-in on Gym Launch. During her time in business, she has founded and scaled three other companies to $120M+ in cumulative sales across software, service, e-commerce, and brick-and-mortar, without taking outside capital. She has ascended to board positions in each of her companies and co-founded Acquisition.com, which acts as the holding company for all of her business ventures, which do $85,000,000 in yearly revenue across a variety of industries.

She is known for developing management systems that create good places to work. This article offers her advice on mastering business, based on her interview on The Futur™ channel.

Become unstoppable at selling

Part of Leila’s success comes from her strength in sales. When asked how she became so good at it, she answered, “I learned by necessity.”

Here’s her full response from the interview:

“I moved out to Orange County, and I had a degree in Exercise Science, and I said I think I can get a job as a personal trainer anywhere, which was true. I applied at six gyms and got offers at all six, but I had a couple thousand dollars in my bank account, and my rent was a thousand dollars a month, and I had to pay for gas, food, all of that… so I was like, I need to make money. I had jobs before, but never commission-based or anything like that. The thing about the job you could make money the fastest as was that you had to sell. Before, I was so averse to anything sales I just thought salespeople were gross, but I quickly learned that every business does sales – and if I actually wanted to do what I set out to do, which was helping people lose weight because I had been about 100 pounds overweight and then I had lost it all and started doing bikini competitions. So, I wanted to help other people do the same, and I realized that just because I was good at something didn’t mean that people were just going to throw themselves at me and want what I had to offer.

So when I got the job (as a personal trainer), there were twenty of us who got hired at the same time, and by the end of month one, there were three of us left because it was hard. There are a lot of preconceived notions about what sales is, which deters people from even trying to get good at it. The second piece to it is that it requires a high capacity to receive rejection. I think I just have the capacity for that, and I developed that early in life, and that allowed me to be okay with failing at so much so quickly and saying, this doesn’t mean I’m a failure it just means I need to work and get better at what I’m doing and acquire skills.

*I used this as an opportunity because I didn’t want to have to move back home because I couldn’t afford my rent. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it, that I didn’t need anybody, didn’t need my parents or another person to depend on. I remember reading four different books on sales and the common thread between them that I ***felt was that I should be good at sales because I actually believed in what I wanted them to buy. I was learning sales not to make money (although that’s the consequence of it) but because I actually wanted to help people lose weight, and I actually wanted their lives to change.

If you pull back the curtain behind the tactics of sales, everyone is trying to manufacture conviction… and I had conviction, so why did I need to use any tactics? Once I realized that, I just shared my story with everybody. I was like; this is why I came out here (to Orange County); this is why I literally moved as a 21-year-old female alone to California, packed up my stuff in my car with almost no money, because this is what I want to do for people. And I realized in sharing that with people, that was what got people to be like, “I’m onboard.”

Obviously, you can make a lot of money in sales, but I got really good at sales because it was something I wanted to sell. I really believed in it, and I knew I could help people, and I had conviction. The same is true for today. *I’m sure I’m good at sales, but it’s because I would never sell something that was shtty.”**

Key Takeaways:

• Sales require a high capacity for rejection.
• You must believe in your product and actually want to help people.
• Have conviction in what you are selling. If you have to manufacture conviction, it’s probably the wrong product.
• Share your story with people and tell them why you do what you do.
• Sell something genuinely good.

Get rid of the labels

“Growing up, I identified as an introvert. I felt like when I was in rooms full of people, I wanted to leave or go home. Over time, I realized that many people can be both introverts and extroverts; it depends on the context and the circumstances. I’m sure there are people who claim to be introverts, but in certain rooms, they would like to stay, and they like being around a lot of people, depending on who those people are. So, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve tried to relinquish myself from any label. Even my team, they’ll call themselves creatives, and they’ll know that I’m like… wait a minute, am I not a creative because I create content? I just don’t want to put myself in a box.

I think a lot of us could label ourselves within the context of a situation, but we’re never equal to a feeling or equal to a label. I am not creative; you can never be that… you can never be an emotion either. You can never be anxiety; you can only be who you are. So I think that by taking on those labels like… “Well, I’m an introvert, so this is going to be tough for me; how am I going to sell?” – you are you! You can be a creative and sell. You can be an introvert and sell. You can be an introvert and be passionate and loud at times.

When you label yourself, it’s almost like the placebo effect. Which is, you take on this label, and you might have a few attributes that within certain situations, you label yourself as this thing, but then it generalizes to the rest of your life. Then you start to show up as that label within all facets of life, and then you actually start to take on all the other attributes of that label as well. There are a lot of studies on this.

Like even the statement “I Am something” is like… no you are not; it’s not physically possible. So I think it’s saying, when I’m in these certain situations I tend to act in a way that exhibits these behaviours. And I think the language changes how you see yourself. For example, for me when I am in large rooms with a lot of really loud people, I tend to want to leave. But, when I am in a large room with people who are having quality conversations, I don’t feel the need to leave.

It starts by changing how we speak of those situations because, for me, I had a lot of really unhelpful assumptions about myself that made it hard to realize it's not “or” its “and.” It’s not I’m either an introvert or an extrovert, I can be both. It’s not that I have to sell or not sell; I can do both. It’s not that I have to be good at one thing or the other; I can do both.”

Key Takeaways:

• Don’t put yourself in a box
• Labels can sometimes be limiting; what are you beyond them?
• You can do both; you don’t have to be one thing or the other.
• If you think you can’t, you’re right. If you think you can, you’re right.

The traits of successful founders

“The most successful founders already have one skill, not a ton of skills, but they have one thing that they are incredibly good at and can be world-class at. You can see that potential in somebody and their work. Usually, it’s the engine for the company, that one skill they have that’s crazy good.

They also have a really strong support system. You have a very talented one or two founders with crazy, unique skill sets that are advantageous to the business, and then t*hey have supportive families and partners. If you don’t have one of those two things, it’s really tough. You can have a team of three founders who are all good at something, and they could get a business that does $10-15 million, but if they’re not in a great market with a great skill set, it’s going to be tough.*

On the other hand, 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. Along with the thing they’re really good at, they’ll also have these huge deficits with nobody to cover them. So those two things have been traits in the founders we look for.”

Key Takeaways:

• The most successful founders have an unfair advantage.
• Be good at one thing; get so good at it that you can’t be ignored.
• Find support either with friends, family, or others.
• Don’t become an island.

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Listen to the full interview with Leila Hormozi here.

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