A (0:00)

I just got back from Vegas. I was out there working with the Hormozy team and their VAM workshop. So this is the value acceleration method. That's what they call it. Little context. My business partner Dickie and I actually went out for their workshop series about a year and a half ago. Strongly recommend. I think it's super helpful for any business owner as long as you're doing probably north of a couple hundred grand in revenue a year. You know, they had businesses from a couple hundred grand all the way up to 10 million plus. After that workshop. They give you the opportunity to work with their executive team. This is basically the team that works inside their portfolio. And so the idea is if they were to invest in your company, this is what their team would tell you to do to grow your business. And so they really have just broken that out into a consulting offer. And so we joined that, we joined their VAM workshop. We went out last year around this time. They gave us a ton of things to execute on, some of which we were successful in executing on, some of which we weren't. And so I went out a couple of weeks ago to meet up with them again for this year and, and I wrote down a bunch of takeaways that I think would be helpful. And first, I think it's important some of the things that I learned just going to this really small workshop event. It was eight businesses in the room. Each business was doing anywhere from a million 2 million a year in revenue up to 8 or 10 million. We were the second biggest business in this room. The only business above ours was a $10 million AI SaaS platform. And one of the things that I found myself learning the most, just as an observation by being at this event, was just seeing how their team operated, you know, so it wasn't necessarily things that they were telling me or telling us that we should do. Some of the most valuable insights that I got was just being there and seeing the way that their team ran these events, you know, and I found myself jotting down notes the whole time. So a couple event observations is first, the acquisition.com team clearly leveled up their internal standard again. I was really impressed when I went out a year ago, but in the past year, you know, now when I, when I was just out there, every team member was wearing a suit, every team member had a branded name tag. Every team member, when you walked in the room, they stood up, they greeted you. I felt like I was staying at a five star hotel. And it was very, very clear how much they had leveled up their internal standard of what they expect from the people who are on the team. And I thought that was really cool. I found myself just taking little notes the whole time. Second thing is much smaller group. So I think when we went out about a year ago, the room was like 20 businesses or so and this time it was eight. That allowed us to go a little deeper on each business, which I really appreciated. It was cool to see the money models book and the Guinness World Record, you know, shrine in the lobby. I could definitely see how that's something that just, you know, like brings everybody together, rallies the troops. That was really cool to see. Also really interesting that they are able to attract so many different types of businesses. I mean, there were small, like one person consultant businesses there, there were AI startups, there were info businesses, there were agencies, I mean, all over the board. And it really made me question, like, how can, even with the content that we're creating, how can we attract wider and wider nets of writers without like losing the specificity of what we help people with? I think that's something that they've really nailed. And so I found myself just writing down a couple little ideas there real quick. If you want to write online but aren't sure where to start, click the link in the description of this video and check out startwritingonline.com this is a free masterclass I put together, sharing all of our most helpful frameworks for beginners, like proven hooks to capture your target reader's attention, where to write online to get the most distribution on your work, and little growth hacking tips to build your social audience and email list faster. Over 100,000 writers have gone through this free masterclass and many even send us emails afterwards thanking us for sharing such valuable information for free. So click the link below this video to check it out and make this year the year you start seeing success from your writing. Online team is extremely compassionate. That was a big one for me is, you know, sometimes I would see how they would use industry terms or talk about things in a way that maybe I understood because, you know, I've been in this game for a while, but someone else who's there and maybe at the very beginning of their journey or just learning all of these things, they might not know what LTV is or CAC is, you know, or MVP or all these acronyms that we use. And I thought that their team did a really good job of being able to meet people where they are and as, and then like at the same time being able to pivot to someone else. And they could get really advanced with me, but really beginner with another person and like oscillate between the two. And I just thought that was really cool. That's a great quality that you want in leaders. Very small thing. When we sat down, everybody had a branded notebook with a really nice pen. I have to say, this is the nicest notebook and nicest pen I've ever used in my entire life. And I'm not just saying that. I found myself taking notes just because of how pleasurable it was to write with this pen in this notebook. And I was like, wow, they could have given me like a, you know, a really cheap $2 notebook from Walmart, but they didn't. They went above and beyond. And that just sort of goes back to observing the ways that they've up leveled their own internal standard. So again, I'm asking myself, how can we up level our own internal standard? Definitely a power leveling of knowledge. What I mean by that is I was there for nine, ten straight hours. You know, we even did a working lunch. We didn't even really stop. We just grabbed lunch and then kept working. And by the end of the day, my brain was cooked. But at the same time, I felt like I had pulled forward six months of learning into eight hours. And that's such a unique experience. One of the things as I was reflecting on the year in 2026 that I really want to do differently is I want to invest more in my own education. So this year, one of the things I'm thinking a lot about is how to find more masterminds, how to find more workshops, how to find where, you know, I can be there for eight straight hours. But I'm pulling forward months or years of learning and power leveling myself in that way. And then a really tiny tactical thing at the end of the event, they have you fill out a survey and before you even leave the room, they're like, not that you can't get up, but they're like, don't get up until you fill out the survey. So it forces 100% completion rates on their survey. And then right at the end of the survey, they, they make you, in order to get the call notes from the day, to unlock your notes, you have to schedule a follow up call with someone on their team. And I thought that was a great little nugget. I was already thinking about ways that we could do that in our programs. Like for example, if we're running a free live webinar and we're pitching PGA calls on the Back of it. Well, we could say you can have the lifetime recording to the webinar when you jump on a call. So just little incentives like that I thought were great. So the last thing I want to share is 2026 big rocks. So these are the recommendations that they gave us. These are the things that we're going to be focusing on. Some of these fall more under my department, some of them fall more under Dickie's department, and some are both of us working on them together. So the first one which kind of falls more under mine is org structure. Our team has nearly tripled in the last year and it wasn't until this event. And they really helped. Walk me through like what the ideal scene of an org at our revenue level looks like. It made me realize like how messy a lot of our internal procedures are. We just grew so quickly. We were hiring people so quickly that we kind of need to go back and clean things up a bit. So org structure is going to be a big priority for me this year. And I think tackling it in multiple different ways, like I want to visualize it, build it in a Miro board. So that way I understand it, everyone on the team understands it. I then also want to do a second pass on individual job descriptions for each role so that every single person has perfect clarity over what they're responsible for. And then third, I want to take those job descriptions specifically for each department and give them all to the department head to then reinforce to them, hey, not only are these the people that you're responsible for, but these are the individual tasks that each person is responsible for and you are responsible for all of them. So there's just a lot of crystallizing that I think we need to go back and do. The second big one is on the sales side. So this would be more Dickey's wheelhouse. So one of the big recommendations they gave to us is right now we position PGA as a 16 week program. And then on the back, if you want to keep working with us, then we upsell people into our advanced accelerator called Liftoff. It's like continued coaching. They actually recommended that we flip them. And so on the front end we sell PGA for a year. So it would basically be the same thing. It's just PGA and Liftoff all the way on the front. And then if someone doesn't want continued coaching for a year, then downselling them on the 16 weeks of just PGA as it is. And I thought that was a really interesting change. Basically the idea there is instead of pitching 16 weeks and then an upsell later, which delays the amount of revenue and cash that you can bring in per customer. And you try and move as much of that to the front end as possible, which means you collect more cash faster, which means we have more cash to play with for advertising, which means we can promote our program more, which means we can get more students faster. Right. So I thought that was a really interesting recommendation, and we're going to go do that. We're going to execute on that this year. The third big rock is on the media team. So I am making a huge investment in YouTube and media this year. And so. So one of the things that I specifically asked for their help with was better understanding what a media team looks like, using Alex Hormozi as an example. Like, how many people is that? How many editors do you have? Do you have short form and long form? Do you have them broken out by platform? Do you have one person own each individual channel? I had a lot of questions around how to structure the media department of a business at our size, and they gave me some incredible answers. I walked away with a ton of clarity. I think we have like 70% of the team that we need. I think we're probably going to have to hire a couple more people. I think we should break out individual platforms and have individual people own individual platforms. But we're putting in a lot of work right now to 10x the amount of volume and output that we're able to do. So that's going to be a big focus for me this year. Another one for Dickie is building our outbound department. So, meaning as soon as a lead ops in, as soon as a lead expresses interest, how can we contact them or get in touch with them within 15 minutes or less, like, instantly? We already do a good job of this. But something that they really hammered home is like, you're just. You're leaving so much opportunity on the table when you know, you. Yeah, you follow up with them. But 24 hours later is very different than 15 minutes, you know, so we're really going to try to invest in ramping up that infrastructure. And then the last thing, this is where me and Dickie overlap. A question that the Hormozi team asks. And I have really taken this to heart and internalize this a lot, is whatever thing is working, why can't you just do more of it? So last year, one of the big things that we learned is that live webinars clearly work. You know, if someone listens to us, teach live for longer than an hour. The likelihood that they want to join one of our programs is very high because they can see how much we demonstrate our expertise. You know, they trust us. And so we learned that live webinars really work. Then at the end of the year, this was in November 2025, we did our first paid three day challenge. So you saw, we sold tickets, and then it was basically three webinars three days in a row. The ticket sales sort of subsidized the acquisition cost, the ad cost, and then we pitched PGA on the back end. And kind of no surprise, that led to our biggest revenue month of the year. And then we also saw the next month, December. We saw a lot of people, you know, spill over if they didn't close and join in November, they joined in December. So there's a knock on effect from that. And so one of the big things that the Hormozi team was pointing out to me is like, okay, so why can't you just do more of that? Instead of doing a challenge once a year, why can't you do it once a quarter instead of once a quarter, why can't you do it once a month? You know, webinars. If you're doing one or two webinars a month, why can't you do one webinar a week? And so I, you know, that reset my bar. I came back home, I chatted with Dickie, I chatted with the team, and I was like, we got to reset our bar. You know, why can't we just do more? So overall, loved the experience, Love working with them. They are super sharp. I found myself learning a ton in a very short amount of time. And now I feel really good. You know, we have a couple big rocks to go execute on in 2026, and that's really all we need to do. If that's just that's the only thing that we do in 2026, we will have a very successful year. And so I kind of like that we've gotten to this place where it's like, I mean, the answer is always simplicity is velocity. But now more than ever, the business is a lot bigger, but it's also a lot simpler. And so you really only have to get one or two things really right in order for the business to grow to the next level. So super excited about it. I hope me sharing these takeaways gives you some ideas of ways that you can grow and, and, you know, big goals in 2026. Let's do.