What I’m thinking about: The critical gap between knowing frameworks and actually applying them…and how 11 straight hours with Alex Hormozi forced me to confront changes I’ve been avoiding.
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First, a quick update on last week’s $350K fraud near-miss:
Several of you replied saying you’d experienced similar scams, or even had fraudsters successfully close with title on the buy-side. One operator showed me the SAME guy from our newsletter using a different identity/nationality.
These operations are sophisticated, and it’s hard to imagine clever use of AI tools won’t make fraud even harder to detect over time.
Upon a few requests for the LLM prompt we used to confirm the above fraud, we built a custom anti-fraud GPT, with title company-grade underwriting in mind.
[Access the Fraud Detection GPT here]
What makes it rigorous:
- Confirmed it still catches the exact fraud we prevented two weeks ago
- Provides fraud risk score out of 100, with detailed breakdowns
- Identifies what to examine further (e.g. ask for photos of ID from different angles)
- Handles IDs from anywhere in the world
It is now standard process for us to run every seller ID through this before committing significant resources.
(Credit to Callan and the UnCommon Business team for the prompt engineering framework that powers this GPT).
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Now, about spending a day with Hormozi earlier this week…
I had stunningly won a slot to the one-day live affiliate workshop at the Acquisition.com HQ, one of the bonuses during the world record-setting $100M Money Models launch a couple months ago.
100 of us attending, and the top 10 affiliates got 30min each of fireside chat time with Alex, plus dinner with him and Leila that night (killer bonus, credit to the top 10.)
Wasn’t sure what to expect, or who’d be there.
Turns out, Alex was primarily involved for the whole day, delivering nonstop value, which is atypical for most of the ACQ live workshops.
If anything, my high regard for Hormozi increased further, and I already considered him to be one of the all-around best entrepreneurs in the world, and perhaps the single most articulate when it comes to describing business strategy/tactics.
To his credit, the Mozi Minute inspired the creation of this newsletter.
This wasn’t a feel-good conference. No “ra-ra” stuff.
Quite the opposite, I came away almost sick to my stomach considering the changes I need to make in my business.
Growth requires pain…that’s the price.
I’ve never taken this many notes at a live event. Ever.
When I recorded last Friday’s pod, I ended up speaking for 20min on just the first few lines of my notes, and realized I’ll need to do a multi-part podcast…
…and a multi-part newsletter series.
Being mindful of reading time and attention-span, I could’ve just listed bullet points of all of the key takeaways, for you to nod your head, and then forget 90% of them 10min later.
But my goal for this newsletter has been to help change your business (and life) for the better, including my own.
That requires letting each core topic “breathe.”
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With that in mind, as soon as he stepped on stage, Alex jumped into the “Mozi 6” framework.
The entire day kept circling back to this one framework, which seems to be the primary decision-tree that Hormozi applies to businesses, including his own (which I’ll share more on.)
The core question that drives everything: “Why can’t you do MORE?”
The only way you grow (or even maintain position in an evolving industry) is by continuing to do more. So what’s stopping you?
And what’s stopping you is always one constraint, more than any other (80/20 principle).
Run through them in order:
1. METRICS
You’re not tracking data. Or you’re tracking it, but not paying attention. Or you’re not tracking the RIGHT data to inform how to target the core constraint.
Different companies will have different metrics, but as a business owner, I think a fundamental metric to religiously obsess over is cash (e.g bank account balance, inflows/outflows, access to cash, and access via which mechanism/cost).
Know I’ve said it before, but no cash, no business.
If you don’t even know what you’re measuring, you can’t figure out what your key constraint is. This has to be nailed first. Otherwise you’re blind.
2. MARKET
Rare issue. But in certain industries, the underlying market truly is your constraint.
Examples: Home service business in a town of 5000 people. Soil test engineer in deep rural South Carolina. You can saturate your local market unless you’re willing to drive 2+ hours outside your core area.
For most businesses though, especially any with a digital delivery mechanism? Market isn’t actually the constraint. You’re just not being creative enough about how to access it.
This is especially apparent for real estate. Largest asset class globally, ~$400T of current value, impossible for any one company (let alone a million) to saturate. No excuses there.
3. MODEL
Like with market, rarely the core constraint. Hormozi says he’s never ran across a business that couldn’t get to $100M in enterprise value, with enough patience and focus.
(e.g. The brick and mortar neighborhood restaurant could eventually expand locations and franchise it’s model, or license it’s recipes.)
Whenever I consider a business opp or industry, I always look at what the absolute top players are doing, the folks that may be 100 or even 1000 steps ahead of you.
How lucrative is their business model?
In land, take Bedrock Land Finance, a new subsidiary of TWG Global (from Guggenheim Partners), focused on land banking for large national builders, and expected to ramp up to ~$1B in acquisitions within their first year of ops.
This industry allows for infinite expansion of it’s model. You can get as big as you have the imagination for.
4. MONEY
Much more common constraint. Breaks into three sub-categories:
Your marketing isn’t driving in enough LEADS. Are you advertising properly? How much are you spending? Where are you advertising?
(If this is your constraint, read $100 Million Leads. I won’t recap it here.)
SALES: Can you convert the leads you’re bringing in? Is your offer compelling? Is your sales team closing properly?
Alex hammered this point: Sales is perhaps the most trainable skill in business, regardless of talent. His Acquisition.com team role-plays and practices the script EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
No one is above the process.
LTV (Lifetime Value): Effectively measuring your ability to deliver your product/service.
Are you charging enough? Is your product good enough to retain customers? Is your overhead too bloated relative to revenue?
Are you doing cost-plus pricing in a commoditized market? Or are you pricing by actual value delivered?
Hormozi mentioned CAC (customer acquisition cost) will stabilize across industries over time. But LTV? Massive variance even in the same industry.
Bumping LTV is probably the biggest driver for enterprise value growth. Higher pricing, faster delivery (and cash in), reduced churn, more efficient operations…this is what the best entrepreneurs master (see $100M Money Models)
5. MANPOWER
Supply-side constraint. You have more demand than you can service.
But here’s where Alex flips it: Manpower is actually a demand-side problem.
Why can’t you hire more people? Run it through the same framework:
- METRICS: Are you measuring how and where you find (the best) talent?
- MARKET: Have you saturated the potential of the available talent? (Primarily a constraint for in-person delivery businesses in rural areas.)
- MODEL: Can your business model support these roles? The better the talent, the more lucrative your model needs to be.
- MONEY: Are you getting enough talent leads? Converting them? Paying appropriately? (Or maybe you’re overpaying and can only afford a handful when you need dozens)
Alternatively, could you shift to a different ops mechanism that unlocks more capacity with your current manpower (e.g. intelligent AI architecture)?
Alex mentioned how his current focus is bringing on 4 more C-Suite executives because that’s the biggest unlock for Acquisition.com right now.
(Other than Monday’s dedicated to meetings, he keeps the rest of his week unscheduled, so he can devote as much as that time as possible to solving the core constraint.)
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As your business evolves, as the market shifts, the constraint changes (and it’s ridiculous how often most of spend on the wrong constraint, potentially for years on end).
You have to stay on your toes (and be honest with yourself…because the core constraint is usually the hairiest problem in front of us).
There will ALWAYS be another constraint so long as the arrow of time moves forward and the game continues.
Your job is identifying it. Then letting other fires burn while you focus relentlessly on that constraint.
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Looking for funding from operators who obsessively identify and eliminate constraints, with a razor sharp eye on cash? Serious Land Capital focuses exclusively on 2X+ margin deals with a $50K minimum purchase price.
