In this Q&A episode, Alex (@AlexHormozi) gives founders raw, unfiltered advice on scaling, covering everything from seasonal hiring models and family business drama to overbuilt upsells and why “doing more of what works” is still the best growth plan.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast, you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned and will learn on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Wanna scale your business? Click here.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | AcquisitionMentioned in this episode:Get access to the free $100M Scaling Roadmap at www.acquisition.com/roadmap
Chapter 1: What are the key challenges faced by small business owners?
okay hello how are you sir my name is kyler i sell landscape lighting and exterior lighting basically to homeowners north of half a million dollars for the home i'm at 310 revenue 310k 142 ebitda and what's stopping me is i literally make all that money from that lighting division Temporary lighting. So holiday lighting.
So now I know I need to add on landscape lighting, permanent lighting to be sustainable all year round. I haven't started advertising for landscape lighting except for the warm outreach that I've done to my temporary lighting customers. So now I need to start working on a proven acquisition channel for new customers. And that's what's stopping me.
okay and it's usually like christmas lighting type stuff yeah okay when you when you spin that up every year do you just hire a bunch of temps and then you guys put them all up and then you fire everybody kind of thing unfortunately yeah but we also have a washing side i talked to ed about that we might kill that so i didn't really want to get into the week that but i keep a couple on that do washing with me washing exterior cleaning concrete house washing gutter cleaning
That's actually a pretty decent business side note, but okay. You're like, I'm selling water, you know, like not a bad, not a bad gig. Okay. But you prefer the lighting business because it has higher margins and okay. So two potential ways to think about this.
So one way is you look at the Halloween store, which you've probably heard of, and they, you know, they run for 90 days or two months, whatever it is leading into Halloween. And they every year just do more and more of it. And that's the model. And he just sticks to that and he just takes off the rest of the year. And so then the question becomes, okay,
How do I continue to gain access to a scalable workforce that I can basically turn on overnight and train up in a weekend to deliver all these services? So that is not an unattractive business, to be clear. I mean, a lot of people would love to own a business that they only have to work 90 days a year and they just, I wouldn't say chill, but like kind of. Right.
And so the other nine months of the year for that business would be you building out the inroads and laying in all of the basically building out the rapid work infrastructure so that when people come in, it's just like, boom, this is the training or like, boom, we send our messages out. You guys have 14 days to respond.
And you know that every year you get verbal commitments around the year from 100 people. And you know that that translates into 20 people who are actually proficient in work. And so then you just work your basically work backwards from the model. Does that make sense?
Yeah.
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Chapter 2: How can seasonal businesses achieve year-round stability?
Do I want to solve that problem or do I want to build out basically the ascension path from temporary lighting to permanent lighting and kind of build that whole other business?
okay the way i asked the question seemed one-sided but like that's that's a that's a it's a real question yeah no it's a real question because i could spend nine months doing that but i'm not gonna lie i think i may just get like a little bored you know yeah through the rest of the nine months yeah get a dog you know well one of the things you can do and like okay so Okay.
So I define patience as figuring out what to do in the meantime. Right? So we have to figure out something for you to do in the meantime. And so the question is, what can I do in the meantime that can make my core business money during that high season? Yeah, well, I could probably pre sell that season all year.
So I did do pre-sales basically last month. We do our pre-sale, just, you know, get cashflow and just real quick side tangent. Basically I went to a permanent lighting training and the last month they actually said you can lease that permanent lighting, essentially, you know, year round lighting for all y'all that don't really know.
Yeah.
Year round lighting, but basically, you know, have that just recurring every single year. So they're leasing it basically. And then if they want, they could buy it out. So I was thinking about upselling those customers. One-year, three-year, five-year contracts and then upselling the people that are on those contracts for just year-round lighting and say, hey, do you want this thing all year?
And it's not going to cost you the $6,000 to $10,000 if you don't want to pay that up front. Of course, we'd like that. But then offer that same exact price every single year.
I don't think it's a bad model. Which one would you rather do? I think both will work.
Honestly, I'm leaning towards just figuring out the landscape lighting because I don't think it's that hard. Great margins to add on to the business. In my long-term play of making this scalable potentially to other markets, I would like a full year-round business instead of just seasonal.
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Chapter 3: What strategies can improve customer acquisition for landscaping businesses?
Okay.
I think we were talking about y'all's restaurant yesterday. You need to fix the core model. I'm pretty confident because I understand the business fairly well. There isn't some massive fixed cost. Your cost is people. It's payroll. It's not like you have some machine that you have to pay or some massive rent that must get paid before you can make incremental revenue.
And so I would probably be looking inwards first at basically how I'm compensating people and how I'm pricing. So it's likely that, so are you at capacity right now with your current team?
They think we are, but I'm feeling there's more room to grow.
Yeah. So you have a pricing issue. So you're either underpriced or overpaying or a combination of both.
Okay.
And so I would fix that first because then you'll fix cash flow and then that freed up cash flow will allow you to get more aggressive on the front end. Got it. But for me to say, hey, let's go get more customers is probably not the solution right now. Makes sense. We have to free up cash so you can breathe.
Yeah, absolutely. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Yeah, you bet.
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Chapter 8: How to differentiate between time management and business growth?
That's what I would do. I also would just, this is for everybody. A lot of the problems that you have are based on timeline. which is just like an arbitrary line in the sand that it's like, I must get to this point by this, you know, by this date, which is basically irrelevant, just made up.
And so I think at the end of the day, if you thought, well, what would it take to make this, you know, insurance company, one of the biggest in the, in the U S in 20 years, you probably grow very strategically off of this culture that has worked really, really well and trying to seed each location with the best, best seeds from the ones before.
So you just keep those values kind of all the way through. So I think that's the much lower risk path.
100%.
Hi again. Yes.
My name is... Seller Ukraine, number one seller in all Ukraine, spends lots of money on ads. You've gone to Poland and you haven't been able to get the market to convert. We talked last night. You take the words, look at the cultural differences on ChatGPT, translate your existing marketing copy back into the Polish cultural norms so that the right language is used so that it converts there.
What's the question?
wow you have you have ai here already narrow link something like this i prepare a little bit different question thank you thank you i promise that you don't remember me and we sell crypto education to a wide audience and mostly who want to meet their basic needs so there are no specific audience we make over 1 million in revenue we operate in ukraine and are watching in other countries
I want to reach 10 million. I more or less understand how by expanding to new markets. And we run cold traffic from Meta, Google, Influencers, Telegram and etc. through funnels. And one AutoWebinar funnel had generated over $20 million and still working. And we tested VSL. We put the same content in our AutoWebinar, but shorter and without comments, activities.
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