How To Grow ANY Business Once You Know Its Shape | Ep 934

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Previously titled “How To Grow ANY Business Once You Know Its Shape | Ep 992” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 2, 2026

The Game with Alex Hormozi 1h 19m 2 speakers 8 chapters transcribed
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What are the four main types of businesses?

Alex Hormozi 0:00
There are only four main types of businesses. So your business is one of these four. And understanding what shape my business was has allowed me to develop a portfolio of companies that generate over $250 million a year at acquisition.com. And so if you have a business, you need to know what shape your business really is to maximize the opportunity you're in. And if you don't have a business, you should know what you're getting into so you can pick the right one for you.

How does knowing your business shape impact growth?

Alex Hormozi 0:24
So let's get started with the first shape. So what type of business is this business? I love it if you actually think about it right now, like if there's different types of businesses, what do you think this one really is? All right, now that you've thought about it, this is the shape of an e-commerce business. So in the very beginning, you'll typically have to get some inventory, especially if you wanna have a bigger business, no gigantic businesses or drop shipping. So if you want a bigger business like a brand, you're going to have to do some sort of inventory. You'll have to front a little bit of cash, right? But as soon as you start selling, because it doesn't require a lot of operational infrastructure, you can grow really quickly.
Alex Hormozi 0:59
But then you'll hit these breaking points that stop your growth flat. And so either of these will be cash constraints in the business, as in like you don't have enough money to buy more inventory. It could be... It could be traffic constraints, like all of a sudden your ads just stop, and then the ads don't perform past a certain point. It could be that you've maxed out your distribution. Let's say if your retail distribution is like, okay, we got 7,000 more 7-Elevens. It's like, okay, and then we continue to stay at that level until we get CVSs, and then we stay at that next level. And so each of these kind of unlocks typically occur when you have a supply chain unlock, or you have distribution that unlocks.
Alex Hormozi 1:38
So distribution can be literally physical retail distribution or it can be ad-based and or affiliate-based distribution. All of these different ways are promoting it so it gets it in more hands. So this is why the shape of this business looks this way. And you also can get stopped by all of a sudden you run out of stuff. Your supply chain dries up because your manufacturer can only do 1,000 units a day, and you need 10,000 units a day. And so while you find the next manufacturer, you're flat again. And this is the nature of the business that you're really in. And if you're curious, what experience do I have with e-commerce? Well, I'll give you two. So first off, Prestige Labs was a physical products business.
Alex Hormozi 2:16
We sold through a brick and mortar distribution base. We also sold through an online store. So we had both of those angles.

What challenges do e-commerce businesses face?

Alex Hormozi 2:21
I had distributors, obviously our gyms, and then also any consumers could buy directly from the store. So we had ads that were running as well. And so both those elements were e-commerce. In addition to that, the launches that we had for my last book, the world record-breaking, Guinness world record-breaking book, This is literally e-commerce. It's a physical product that gets bought through a store and then shipped out, like very straightforward. And so the reason that this video is so important before I dive into all the other four is that most people think that there is something inherently wrong with their business when it is in reality, a feature of this business, not a bug. And so the more you can zero in on, okay, if these are the big hairy problems that exist within the shape of my business, how do I put disproportionate effort on
Alex Hormozi 3:10
solving these key foundational issues or problems to this model that will allow me to out-compete all the other people in my space that don't know this. And I'm telling you, like, this is the sauce. And also sometimes you'll have to switch three PLs as you scale too. So even if you have the inventory, somebody might not be able to ship out 10,000 orders a day. Like when we did the book launch for me,

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