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Lifetime Gross Profit LDGP the Arms race of business LTGP the amount of gross profit a customer collects over the lifespan of a customer. In other words, how much total money you make from a customer minus everything it costs you to deliver it. Now that's easy to understand, but can be hard to figure out if you don't have a CRM or a customer relationship management tool that tracks some of these metrics for you. That's okay though. I'm going to give you some back and napkin ways to calculate it LTGP Step 1 Gross profit the first thing you have to figure out is gross profit. Gross profit is what's left over from a purchase after you deliver the goods or service. Note this isn't net profit which is what's left over at the end of the month after you paid all expenses. This is just what's left over on the core thing you sell. You then run your business on the gross profit to pay the rest of your bills and hopefully have some leftover for your pocket at the end of the month. Author Note Many entrepreneurs mix up gross profit and net profit. Gross profit is money left over after only subtracting the cost of making and delivering your product or service. Net profit is money left over after subtracting all costs. Product Example I sell a widget for $100. It cost me $20 to manufacture and ship the widget to the end consumer. My gross profit is $100 minus $20 equals $80. Also, gross margin is your gross profit expressed as a percentage of the total price you charge. Gross margin and gross profit get used a lot in similar situations. Don't let it confuse you. It's the same concept. Gross profit is expressed in an absolute dollar amount, while gross margin is the same concept expressed as a percentage. In this example, my gross profit is 80 bucks, but my gross margin is 80% aka 80 divided by a hundred dollars equals 80%. That was a good warm up. Let's do one for services. So for example, number one, I deliver services monthly. I have one account representative per 10 clients. My clients pay $3,000 per month each. My rep cost me $6,000 per month. Let's figure out the gross profit. Clients per rep equals 10. Revenue per client equals 3,000. Cost per rep equals 6,000. So I make 10 clients per rep times $3,000 per month equals $30,000 per month per representative. Assuming I have no other cost for delivering my service. My gross profit is $30,000 of revenue minus $6,000 of cost, which equals $24,000. My gross margin is 24,000 divided by 30,000 which is 80%. So my gross profit on a single customer is $3,000 times 80% equals 2,400 bucks. Cool, right? LTGP Step 1 Action Figure out your gross profit and gross margin for each thing you sell and your business overall. Hint, you may be surprised that some products you spend a lot of time on don't make you as much profit as you thought. Lifetime GROSS PROFIT Step 2 Figure out the average number of transactions a customer makes over the lifespan. If your CRM tells you this, awesome. But oftentimes they don't. And even if they do, they're often wrong because data tracking is a mess, especially if you're starting out. So it's good to understand how to do this math. So I'm going to give you a few backend napkin methods you can use depending on your circumstances. Disclaimer Figuring out how many transactions a customer makes on average is always an estimate because every day customers buy more stuff and the business gets older. As such, lifetime transactions always increase as a business gets older because customers buy more. So these are the ways I estimate it. Number one Export your lifetime customer data. Sort by number of transactions. Average out that column. Ta da. Example Average number of transactions equals four. Number two if you have a recurring revenue business, you figure it out differently. This forces us to introduce a new concept. Churn. Churn is the percentage of customers that leave between time periods. So if on the 1st of last month we had a hundred customers and this month of those hundred customers we lost 5, our churn is 5%. Last period equals 100. This period is 95. The difference is 100 minus 95 which equals 5. And churn is the people who left divided by the original amount which is 5 divided by 100 which equals 5%. Note. People get this twisted. Don't be one. If you sign up new clients during this time, it does not affect churn the same number of original people left. You could sign up zero or a thousand new clients during the same month. You still lost 5 of the original hundred and your churn is still 5% LDGP. Step 2 Action Figure out the number of transactions or churn. Now that we have this figured out, all we have to do is put steps one and two together to get our lifetime gross profit. LTGP Step three if you have physical products business, multiply average gross profit by number of transactions. Or if you have a recurring revenue business, divide gross profit by churn Percentage Physical Products LTGP example Gross Profit Times Average Transactions Per Customer equals LTGP $80 times 4 equals $360 of LTGP. That's it. Services. Example, gross profit divided by churn equals LTGP. So $2,400 divided by 5% churn equals 48,000. Bingo. C math no fun Money Math so fun. That being said, I want to make an important note. LDGP is the arms race of business. In an auction of attention, the person who can spend the most to acquire customer wins. That's Dan Kennedy. Or as I prefer to say it, the business that makes this customer the most valuable wins. After all, you can only get CAC to zero. But LTGP can go infinitely high. And in my experience, it's easier to make advertising more efficient than it is to make people stay longer. CAC is about getting customers. LTGP is about keeping customers. This leads us to the final part of our acquisition trio payback period. PPD.
Episode 11: Lifetime Gross Profit LTGP | $100M Lost Chapters Audiobook
Date: November 14, 2025
Host: Alex Hormozi
This episode centers on one of Alex Hormozi’s core business concepts: Lifetime Gross Profit (LTGP). Alex breaks down what LTGP means, why it matters more than simply acquiring customers, and how entrepreneurs can estimate and improve this crucial metric—even without advanced tools. The episode walks listeners through clear, practical steps and real-world examples to calculate LTGP, drawing distinctions between gross and net profit, and between physical and recurring revenue businesses. The tone is direct, pragmatic, and educational, characteristic of Hormozi’s style.
LTGP refers to the total gross profit a customer generates over their lifetime with your business.
It’s what remains from customer payments after subtracting only the costs to deliver the product/service (not all business expenses).
LTGP is crucial in understanding what you can spend to acquire new customers (CAC).
Quote:
"LTGP: The amount of gross profit a customer collects over the lifespan of a customer. In other words, how much total money you make from a customer minus everything it costs you to deliver it."
— Alex Hormozi (00:04)
Many entrepreneurs confuse these concepts.
Gross Profit = Revenue – Cost to make & deliver product/service
Net Profit = What’s left after all business expenses, not just cost of goods/services
Quote:
"Gross profit is money left over after only subtracting the cost of making and delivering your product or service. Net profit is money left over after subtracting all costs."
— Alex Hormozi (01:10)
Notable Moment:
"You may be surprised that some products you spend a lot of time on don't make you as much profit as you thought."
— Alex Hormozi (03:24)
Quote:
"People get this twisted. Don't be one. If you sign up new clients during this time, it does not affect churn."
— Alex Hormozi (05:40)
Memorable Phrase:
"See, math no fun—money math so fun."
— Alex Hormozi (08:19)
LTGP as the “arms race” of business: The higher your LTGP, the more you can afford to spend to acquire customers (beating your competition in the ‘auction of attention’).
Quote:
"In an auction of attention, the person who can spend the most to acquire a customer wins. That's Dan Kennedy. Or as I prefer to say it, the business that makes this customer the most valuable wins."
— Alex Hormozi (09:03) "You can only get CAC to zero. But LTGP can go infinitely high."
— Alex Hormozi (09:18) "CAC is about getting customers. LTGP is about keeping customers."
— Alex Hormozi (09:23)
“LTGP: The amount of gross profit a customer collects over the lifespan of a customer.”
— Alex Hormozi (00:04)
“Gross profit is money left over after only subtracting the cost of making and delivering your product or service. Net profit is money left over after subtracting all costs.” — Alex Hormozi (01:10)
“You may be surprised that some products you spend a lot of time on don't make you as much profit as you thought.” — Alex Hormozi (03:24)
“People get this twisted. Don't be one. If you sign up new clients during this time, it does not affect churn.” — Alex Hormozi (05:40)
“See, math no fun—money math so fun.” — Alex Hormozi (08:19)
“The business that makes this customer the most valuable wins.” — Alex Hormozi (09:09)
“You can only get CAC to zero. But LTGP can go infinitely high.” — Alex Hormozi (09:18)
“CAC is about getting customers. LTGP is about keeping customers.” — Alex Hormozi (09:23)
Understanding and maximizing Lifetime Gross Profit is essential, not just for growth but to outcompete others in your industry. Increasing LTGP—by increasing repeat purchases, customer loyalty, or margin—empowers a business to confidently spend more to acquire customers, which is critical to scaling and defending your market position.
This summary covers the actionable, educational core of the episode, with Hormozi’s typical clarity and practicality—making it invaluable for entrepreneurs focused on profitability and scalable growth.