The Game with Alex Hormozi
The Hard Truth About Growth Most Founders Avoid. Hormozi Hotline feat. Leila Hormozi | Ep 976
10 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the special treat introduced at the beginning of the episode?
Guys, I have a special, special treat for you. This has only happened one other time in human history. This is historic, so you guys are gonna get this. And it's from downtown Vegas. My lovely wife, Lady Layla herself, Queen Lay, is coming to join us and spit some fire on Ramosi Hotline. And we're going to be taking the calls together.
First of all, thank you for this opportunity.
Thank you.
So, yeah. My name is Joshua. I run a performance-based marketing agency called Asset Access for kitchen and bathroom remodels and outdoor living companies. Currently at 8K per month, it's profit at 7K. We work on a paper show model and positioning for high-end projects, so not like discounts, et cetera, without retainers or ad spend on their ads. So we take the risk there.
Right now, it costs me around $250 to acquire a customer. On the last stat where I ran the app, I have a $1,000 setup fee and I charge $500 to $600 per qualified opponent's shell. To get them one opponent's shell, it costs at the worst time, like I'm aiming for $210. If I don't get them at least 10 appointments in the first month, I refund them the setup fee.
Now, currently, to let you know, I do have two clients on this, but I have three other clients still in tree service, which I kept for cash flow because that's what I ran before. And my question is from just what I told you guys now and from your experience, what do you see, which I currently don't see?
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Chapter 2: How does the guest describe their current business model?
So what would you do in my position to absolutely like scale this or maybe Do differently.
Are you keeping the customers?
Until I'm basically, I wanted to keep them until I'm at 10K sufficiently in the modeling and then completely ditch.
So the question was, I mean, I don't think you should cut your cash flow. You only have like four customers, right? Currently at five. Okay, so you have five customers. And that means that if you're doing $8,000 a month, you said 8000 top line 7000 bottom line, but you said your cost of getting a show is 210 on 500. Those margins don't make sense. What am I missing?
So for the AK, I'm not basically counting in the $200, which is lost and just counting the stream. Okay, the one guy I'm currently the one guy I'm currently onboarding. So I only have one guy currently on it. Yeah, the other guys currently on onboarding.
And when you say guys on onboarding, you mean a client?
Yeah. The one company I'm currently onboarding to get them into the $5,000 thing, I got his $1,000 setup fee, basically. He's not actively involved with the app. Yeah. Currently, I'm looking to scale this now, but... I mean... Go for it.
I know you're going to say what you're going to say. Well, I was just thinking that we have to run some more water through the well.
So I need to get more data.
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Chapter 3: What strategies are suggested for scaling a marketing agency?
Overall, the model of lead costs and arbitrage, there's nothing wrong with it. I've seen some massive agencies that run that model. The next issue that you're going to run into is the types of businesses that you're serving. So you're going to want to go upmarket for people who can spend $50,000, $100,000, $200,000 a month in ads.
that's what you're going to want to go after because the volatility of your business is going to be predicated on the volatility of their business. So when you go after, and this is super common for small business owners, for everyone who's listening, is like,
you go after if you go most people who are poor i'm not saying you're poor but like most people are starting out in business go after other people who are also smart starting out in business because that's where your confidence level is but their business they don't know anything either right so it's the blind leading the blind and you're like what's wrong with my business all these people are turning and they're turning because they don't know what the hell they're doing in their business either and so you're going to want to earn the right to go a market as fast as you can um
And if you have five clients that pay you what they're paying now versus having five clients and each one pays $100,000 a month, you could run the same ops and have 100 times the revenue.
I was going to say, the next thing that you're going to want to realize is that we've done the pay-per-show model, and we also had a software that used to enable the pay-per-show model.
There's two things that you want to watch out for, which is, one, when you're doing pay-per-show, a lot of times the businesses are going to think, well, if they show but they don't close, why the fuck am I paying you? And so then you're going to be really tempted to be like, oh, can I just help them sell these people?
I'm just going to also, maybe I should start a sales agency and close these motherfuckers. That's the next thing that's going to happen. The second piece to it, and by the way, don't do that. Go upmarket instead because people that are upmarket have their own sales team and they understand that concept that even though you get somebody to show, it doesn't mean that they're guaranteed to close.
You still need to have trained salespeople. So do not give in to the temptation. Don't try and serve an avatar that isn't best for you more. That's the biggest mistake people make, which is like you're serving an avatar that isn't your best avatar and you try to go above and beyond for it. You just don't want to do that. The second thing I feel like that's like 2010.
The second piece is that with the paper show model, here's the place where it goes wrong, which I saw firsthand, which is why agencies had churn with it, which is that customers want to be able to predict how much money they're going to spend with you.
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Chapter 4: How can you improve customer retention in a service business?
Yeah, that makes sense. I currently, what I currently do is I built like this lovable thing where I put in the numbers. So close rate, average contract value, et cetera. And basically I do that on the sales call though. So that's a big nugget. That's great. Because then I can always like weekly tell them like, Hey, this is how much you should spend.
And that's what you should expect in the longterm to get a return. So thank you for that. I mean, if you were me here, how would like you think about going from like 8k per month right now to like 50k in the exact model as fast as possible and offer as sustainably.
Dude, this is we answered it. So I want to ask you, what do you think we what do you think we just said?
Just want to make sure your routine that I need to get more data, and like, it's just Selma problem. And, and, and that I should not switch my business model and get done to basically convince me to get them to sell. And also make sure that they know how much they get charged. And go up market. And go up market. Yes. Up market, the one thing I want to ask.
What do you think is about to happen to us? One million in both? Because I don't think anybody. Just go up. Do you guys have an opinion on this?
Just go up. Just like in your ads or your outreach, look for people who are doing 10 times those numbers. Number go up good. Yeah. Big number good.
Okay.
Cool. You can literally have the same size company you have in terms of headcount. Literally just add a zero to what the people that you're trying to attract are and you will make significantly more money and love your life more. Cool? Yeah. Thank you.
Should I increase that up a bit? No, I don't think yet.
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Chapter 5: What are the challenges of switching from a bundled to an unbundled service model?
Dude, it's five people. You got to get more water through the well. Also, for everybody listening, it's like, okay, increase your prices, but you haven't even gotten to the threshold of delivery. So until you get to a point where delivery is stressed and you can see how your team and how your company operates when you are stretched when it comes to your client load, do not increase your prices.
You increase your prices when you know that your product and your delivery is rock solid. So we got to get more water through the pipes first. Thank you very much. I appreciate you. Next caller?
Next caller.
Hello? Hi.
Yeah, super nervous right now, but thank you for the call. You should be terrified. What if I'm nervous? My name is Jazz. I run Winnipeg Digest. It's a local newsletter slash media company with an audience of 110,000 people in Winnipeg. Sweet. So that's about 70,000 on socials, 40,000 newsletter lists in the last 18 months. That's awesome. Thank you.
We do about $10,000 in revenue right now, 6,000 profit through local advertising. Is that per month or per year? That's per month, yeah. Okay. And then we currently have six annual advertisers, mostly paying about $1,000 per month, with two paying $2,000 per month. And then the rest of the revenue comes from single one-off ads. My question is a little two-part.
So the first one is, how do I scale to a million without running out of local advertisers in the future, which I'm afraid of, or running into a supply constraint because we only send out 12 newsletters per month? So basically we have 12 primary. No, we send out 12 e-settlers per month, so it's three per week. It's every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And these are digital, right?
Yeah, these are digital e-mails. Got it, got it, got it.
So that's my question.
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Chapter 6: How can you effectively communicate pricing to clients?
That's not an issue. So put that one away. Um, you running out at space is more, uh, more possible. So you have how many people are your list?
Yeah. So we have 40,000 on the list. The city is a million people. Yeah. So the city is a million people. The 110,000 is what our audience sizes. So it's 70,000 on social media. Oh, word. You have so much room. You have so much room, so much room. Yeah, so that's kind of, so okay, so if I have room, then kind of from a rowing perspective, then I'm afraid that we'll run out of ad space.
So we'll run into a supply.
No, you're not going to run out of ad space. You're going to have to make sure that you're pricing your CPMs appropriately. So said differently, if you have, you know, 250,000 of the people out of the million in the city on your newsletter, you could charge a, I mean, every ad would be, you'd be, you know, $100,000. Like it would be a lot. Mm hmm. Yeah.
So yeah, so the space itself, obviously have limited, you don't want to send your entire newsletter is just all ads, right? That's not gonna work. The way that media scales is via impressions, and quality of impressions. And so you can charge more for the same space. That's, that's what you have to do. So it's like, how do I steal this business, you get more eyeballs.
but it's like there's not that or like with i don't know if there's enough businesses that can pay me 200 like a hundred thousand dollars per ad you know there are for sure businesses well again you're selling 12 ads a month there's a thousand dollars a month in advertising is not like many businesses can do that many businesses can do five or ten
My dad used to run, my dad's a global business owner, right? He used to spend $10,000 or $15,000 to be in like Baltimore Digest or something or Baltimore's whatever. One magazine per month went out and he would spend $15,000 to be in that thing for like a half page, right?
Okay, yeah. So that kind of sent me, I guess that kind of answers my second question too, which was, Like, it was either, okay, should I expand to new cities, stay in the current one, but niche down? So let's say go start another one, but say Winnipeg Real Estate Digest or something, right? Or just keep- I want you to keep stealing this one.
I do not think it's worth you splitting your attention right now. I think you have way more impressions to capture. The other piece that you want to consider here, though, is like, you're sending a newsletter.
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Chapter 7: What advice is given about choosing the right market for your business?
It's like, are there other places you could, like- You have 70K on social. It's like, we can charge for posts. We can charge for stories. We can charge for YouTube video integrations. We can charge for news. They're like, I would rather you do all that stuff first before even considering niching down for now.
Okay. But you would say the next step would be to niche down after like the 30K? No. I don't even want you to think about niching down.
I want you to just do more. You need way more.
Okay. Okay. And then... Okay.
Okay.
And from an acquisition standpoint of subscribers, we are currently running Facebook ads and acquiring subscribers at like $1.40. Okay. So that's fast. So my question then is, do we continue to scale Facebook ads? Because right now it takes about like three months to break even on a subscriber. Okay. So you already know that.
Yeah. I mean, that's fine.
Yeah.
Okay. And so keep dealing Facebook ads and social.
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Chapter 8: How can you leverage existing skills to pivot into a new business opportunity?
I'm about to change your life. You ready?
Yeah.
I want you to offer a 10-pack of Guide to Winnipeg's Best Restaurants, Guide to Winnipeg's Best New Spots, Guide to Winnipeg's Best Ski, Best Dessert. Literally, just put 10 different magazines, do what it was. Make that 10-pack $37, put it on the thank you page.
If you can get one out of 37 people to buy it, your cost of acquisition is zero, and then you can scale the thing to the fucking million. So those are the physical, like, physical things?
No, you can make it digital, dude. You can make it digital, it's fine. Okay, I was literally about to offer that for free in our welcome sequence, so. There we go. Okay, and, yeah, okay, no, I think that kind of answers the question. I feel like that was pretty good.
Yeah, I mean, no, that was... No, like, I mean, I've been, like, going back and forth with, like, oh, should I start a Christmas holiday lights company on top of this? No, dude.
No. What? That sounds fucking awful.
No, it sounds horrible. Do more of this. All you have to do is add a self-liquidating off from the front end. You'll be able to grow the hell out of your media. You can charge more. You can get more advertisers in. Done and done. You can also, to your concern, you can also parse your lists, right? So let's say you triple your list size.
If for some reason you can't find advertisers, you can pay more, which I wholeheartedly reject. But just to show you that you can still be creative here, you can say, I'm going to send... 12 emails to these people, 12 emails to these people, and 12 emails to these people. List A, B, and C because you made the list three times thick, and you can charge that many more times.
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