This interview is edited for length and clarity. Leila Hormozi does not talk about her future to shock people. He talks about it because he thinks it’s the point.
The founder of Acquisition.com has opened up about six arrests, addiction, and the time he stood in front of the mirror and decided he didn’t want to be that person anymore. Not as a warning, but as proof that the same dose of excess that nearly destroyed him was the very one that built a portfolio that made more than $250 million a year by the time he was 30 years old.
Founding CEO Nathan Chan sat down with Hormozi to hear how a personal trainer with $5,000 in his bank account became one of the most respected employees in the internet business, and what he learned about leadership, execution, and telling people the truth even when it costs you.
Q&A with Leila Hormozi
Nathan Chan: He was arrested six times in eighteen months. What finally made something click?
Leila Hormozi: I think at that time I was a victim of my life rather than taking responsibility for things in my life. Many things happened with my family. I just got really angry. So I was drinking, doing drugs.
After being arrested for the sixth time, Hormozi woke up in his father’s house, not remembering what happened. He went down and found her waiting silently.
LH: I was ready for him to rush towards me. And instead, he sat on the couch, turned off the TV, and I sat down. And he was like, I’m not going to tell you what to do. I want to tell you that I think you will kill yourself if you keep doing this.
It was the first time I realized that my actions had real consequences. I was no longer a child and this was my fault. I went upstairs and took my things and left. And I just remember looking in the mirror when I got home and I was like: I don’t wanna be this person.
NC: Most people would have known that things needed to change long before that point. What makes this moment different?
LH: It was at a point where the pain of change was less than the pain of staying the same. This is where people tend to make changes. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I just said it’s not too bad the way I feel right now.
He stopped drinking, stopped using drugs, removed every piece of junk food from his apartment, and focused on self-improvement products from Tony Robbins, Les Brown, and Jim Rohn.
LH: Most people are like that, how did you do it? Where did the discipline come from? And I was like, it wasn’t discipline. It was absolutely painful.
It was not a discipline. It was absolutely painful.
NC: He moved across the country, became a personal trainer, and started from scratch. How did that class shape the user you are today?
LH: I became a personal trainer. I went to every gym that was within walking distance of where I lived. I got a job at a nearby gym so I didn’t have to spend any money on gas. I had $5,000 in my bank and my rent was $1,500 a month. I just needed to make it work.
That time selling, building client rosters from scratch, and managing survival-level finances was the foundation for everything that followed.
LH: I am passionate about leadership, I start by leading myself, because you cannot lead others unless you lead yourself. And that’s what kicked me off that trip. Starting a business is just a vehicle for how I can help other people improve their lives.
“You cannot lead others unless you lead yourself.”
NC: You and Alex met on Bumble, and he introduced you to Gym Launch on the first day. What made you say yes?
LH: I said, worst case scenario is that I end up back where I am now, I need to build my client rosters again. I can accept that. And when else in my life can I do this with minimal consequences?
The early days of Launch Gym were marked by one disaster after another: a fraudulent business partner who emptied his bank account, a merchant processor who closed their accounts on Christmas Eve, and friends who quit their jobs to work for a company that was already bankrupt.
LH: I had hot phones with different accounts on them because that worked at the time. We did everything possible.
NC: He grew Gym Launch from zero to $50 million in twenty months. But Glassdoor told a different story. What’s going on?
LH: We had a 4.9 Glassdoor high until I learned a very hard lesson, which is that you can’t let inexperienced managers make hiring decisions. We employ 35 people. We only needed five. I had the same desire that I have now. I just want to make an amazing place for people to work. I had a desire. I didn’t have the skills.
The day before he was to fire people, his HR director sent a message to one person telling him he was going to be fired. That person told the whole team.
LH: My Glassdoor went from 4.9 to 2.2.
NC: You’ve talked about struggling with wanting to be loved, and how that really defeated the people around you. How did you work on it?
LH: I wanted so much to be loved and I couldn’t. I came from the side of being incredibly empathetic, and incredibly understanding. I had to go through from there to maybe turn too far on the other side, and find my middle ground.
I realized that it is not really good to be that good, because these two people have the same effect on people for a long time. Whether I’m yelling at my team, or being polite and not telling the truth, the same result happens. That person doesn’t know what they need to do better.
A change happened when Hormozi had to let go of a friend he had hired, someone he had failed to give an honest answer to until press time.
LH: I remember at the shooting I said: if I could fire myself, I would, but I am the owner of the company. I had not given them the answer they deserved. And because of that, they lose respect from the teams.
I started following John Wooden’s stuff about seven years ago. I said, I’m a coach. What is the job of a coach? The coach’s job is to tell you: you are six years old. I need you at ten o’clock. Here’s how to get there. And that changed everything for me.
“I was faking it to avoid my feelings of discomfort.”
NC: There’s a bottom line to everything you touch: The launch of the gym, Alan, is your SaaS company. Faster, more rapid growth is always the result. What drives that?
LH: There are two things you should have. You have to build what the customer wants: the offering, the revenue model, the understanding of the market. And on the other hand, you have to say: how are we going to make that happen? Most people put a lot of resources into the first side and completely underestimate how many will need the second.
When I think of business capacity, I think of financial capacity, personnel capacity, system capacity, and thinking capacity. How many people wake up every morning thinking about this? You need all four in excess before you can get started.
LH: Most businesses fail because of a bad strategy. They fail because they are not executed well, and there is no one to tell them what execution looks like. Of all the portfolio companies we looked at, almost two of them were liquidated due to strategy. Another fifty, it was murder.
NC: He is passionate about talent. What do most founders do wrong with team building?
LH: A good place can take an average person and make them beautiful. But if you’re just starting your business and you don’t have that culture yet, guess who’s creating the culture? You are the culture. The CEO, the founder is the heartbeat of the business.
It wasn’t until I realized that everything I was doing was being heard through a megaphone and seen through a microscope by my team. They imitate all my behavior. I think everywhere: they are watching, and I teach with my actions, not my words.
NC: How do you attract great people without a great product or great compensation packages?
LH: You have to know what your offering is in the marketplace as a small business owner. For me, I don’t want it to be money. I want it to be growth. In a fast-growing company, if people don’t want to grow, they see every point of change as a threat rather than a challenge. I want people who see those inflection points as challenges.
I have a large group of people: six people, who want to hire four more. Most companies would be three times my size before they had a team that big. But I believe in the work experience the same way I believe in the customer experience.
Although it lacks an Ivy League pedigree and started at a community college, Hormozi has built a team of former founders, veteran executives, and high-growth operators who are not drawn by compensation but by tradition.
LH: I just started these companies after graduating from community college. But they come because of the gift we present: we are a place for people to grow, and we leave everyone better than they entered.
NC: Last question. What do you want people to take away from your story?
LH: Do you think we could have had great success without great failure? No. The same muscle that allows you to succeed at that level and take those risks also means you will fall flat on your face. It is a rite of passage.
LH: I became obsessed with how to build an amazing team: a team that could get us not just to 50 million, but to 50 billion. And it all starts with understanding your team as much or better than you understand your customer.
From arrest warrants at kitchen tables to leading one of the two most respected founders of the Internet business, Leila Hormozi’s story is ultimately about one thing: the moment when the pain of change outweighs the fear of change.
