Alex Hormozi- A Case Study
Alex Hormozi’s journey as an entrepreneur began similarly to many others: with a realization that the conventional 9-5 wasn’t enough. In just over a decade, Hormozi went from an unfulfilled graduate to a hugely successful entrepreneur, a best-selling author, content creator, and investor. In this post, we’ll explore Hormozi’s journey and the lessons he’s learned along the way.
HORMOZI’S STORY
Alex graduated from Vanderbilt University with a Bachelor’s degree in 2011. At Vanderbilt, he studied Human & Organizational Development, with a focus on corporate strategy. After graduating, he took a job as a management consultant. While he seemed quite successful looking from the outside in, something didn’t sit quite right with Hormozi.
He thought he was doing everything right. He had been a good student, gotten a degree from a good school, and and earned a solid paying, stable job. Yet at 23 years old, only two years into his career, Alex realized he wasn’t living his dream. He was living the life that had been put in front of him as the “successful” path.
Wanting more from his career, Alex took a risk and decided to take on his career alone, as an entrepreneur. Driven by his passion for fitness, he decided to try to open some gyms. While the first handful of months were difficult, Alex learned everything he could about the industry, and eventually, after lots of hard work, his “United Fitness” gym grew to 5 locations.
Having opened 5 gyms, Alex looked back on his first entrepreneurial pursuit and realized what excited him, something he was good at which could turn into a lucrative opportunity. The particular part of the gym business which excited him the most were the launches, the openings of new locations and the pursuit of profit in these new locations.
Wanting to focus on this specific part of the process, Alex came up with an idea: he would travel to meet with gym owners looking to launch, and guide them through the launching process in order to maximize profit. Based on what he had learned through his prior experiences, Alex created a blueprint which proved to be very effective in filling up other people’s gyms. Realizing the possibilities of this new business, Hormozi’s first majorly successful venture, Gym Launch, was born.
For the next year, Hormozi was traveling to gyms and helping them with launches. Just by focusing on a skill he had found he was good at, he was able to make more money than he ever thought he would. He had recognized a problem that others were having, found a solution, and reaped the benefits.
After traveling to launch gyms for a year, Alex realized the stress of always traveling was getting to him. He decided to pivot, and while letting his network of gym owners know that we was suspending operations, he found yet another opportunity. Hormozi realized that he had all the intellectual property built up around how to market and launch a new gym, and deduced that gym owners would be willing to buy it off of him. Alex was essentially able to sell his knowledge he had built up over the years, make even more money than before, all without having the stress of traveling. Gym Launch ended up helping over 4,000 gyms, and in 2021, Alex was able to sell Gym Launch for $46.2 million.
While Gym Launch is Hormozi’s most famous venture, he has established some other successful businesses as well. Prestige Labs, founded in 2019, was a supplement company, again inspired by Hormozi’s love of fitness. Hormozi launched this business after struggling to find high-quality supplements to help people in their fitness journeys. Hormozi also established a business called ALAN, which is a software company that focuses on customer acquisition. Hormozi used his previously learned skills from launching gyms to establish another solution to an issue many business owners face.
Nowadays, Hormozi is more focused on Acquisition.com, a company he founded in 2020. Acquisition.com makes investments in business with positive cash flow and lots of growth potential. By doing this, Hormozi has been able to get involved in a lot of different business without having to run them himself.
Aside from being an entrepreneur, Hormozi hosts his own podcast called The Game with Alex Hormozi, has written multiple books teaching others about what he’s learned about sales, including $100M Offers and $100M Deals, and posts to a YouTube channel with more than 1.5 million subscribers. He is dedicated to helping other entrepreneurs in their journeys by spreading what he’s learned.
MEDIA
While researching Alex Hormozi, I found some interesting pieces of media he’s made. Check these out:
YouTube
“I’m broke… What should I do?”
In this video, Alex talks about his past experience of being “broke” and how he handled it.
I Built a $100M Frozen Yogurt Empire in 11 Minutes
Alex says instead of starting his gym, he almost went into the frozen yogurt business. Quite the opposite path, but in this video, he uses the frozen yogurt industry as a specific example to explain some cool business principles.
Podcast Episodes
The Game: 4 Strategies that help me not want to quit
Alex talks about the importance of longevity, and goes over some strategies he’s used to avoid burnout and frustration during his entrepreneurial journey.
The Game: DUI to $3M
Hormozi went from rock bottom to $3 million dollars in profit in 12 months. He shares what he learned during that year.
TAKEAWAYS
FOCUS ON SKILLS: During the early days of Gym Launch, Alex was selling his skills. Once he knew was skilled at launching gyms, he turned that into his business, selling his skills as the product. Alex also has said that the reason entrepreneurs are able fail time and time again and bounce back is because they have the skills, and nothing can take that away from them.
FIND SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS: Realizing gym owners had trouble launching profitable locations, Alex offered a solution. His software company ALAN solved a problem for business owners of expensive customer acquisition. His companies focused on building around an in demand solution to a problem.