Original subtitles

There's a single reason why most people

stay broke and most businesses stay

small. So, I've been in business for 14

years. I have a portfolio companies,

acquisition.com, that last year did over

$250 million in aggregate revenue. And

the number one excuse that I hear from

entrepreneurs about why they haven't

grown is that their market is saturated.

It's too small. There's so many people.

It's super competitive. It's red ocean.

Everyone has these different terms.

Like, I don't want to start this thing

because there's so many people doing it.

Here's what's insane. 99% of people who

say this are completely wrong. And so

unless you're selling to 140 people in a

rural town in the middle of nowhere,

your market is probably a hundred or a

thousand times bigger than you think.

And the average entrepreneur has tapped

into less than 1% of the actual market.

And so there is a massive gap between

how you see your market, how you

perceive your market, how big it

actually is. Once you figure that out,

you'll realize you've been looking at

your business through a keyhole when

there's actually a massive door in front

of you that you can open up and see what

it truly is. And so what I'm about to

tell you completely change how you see

your business's potential is total

addressable market. And you'll see why

it's actually good to go into saturated

markets. Why red oceans could actually

be an amazing opportunity for you. And

it starts with understanding why this

limiting belief exists to begin with.

For the most part, in my opinion, is

that people want to protect their egos.

They say that their market is too small.

And that's the reason they haven't been

able to scale. I can't scale my ads past

$1,000 a day because I think I've

saturated my market. No, bro. You

haven't saturated your market. You

haven't saturated Facebook. Your ads

suck. You don't know different levels of

awareness. You only know how to

advertise to an avatar that understands

the solution and product that you're

selling. As soon as you get above that,

there's a much larger market above that

that could actually buy your stuff. But

because you don't know how to advertise,

you're unable to reach it. And rather

than say, I do not know how to advertise

in a way that gets more leads. I do not

know how to to scale. Instead, you say

the market is too small. real. Now, I

want to be clear here. If you have a

local business, it is possible, like my

140 person example, it is possible that

you're in a market that literally

there's there's 140 people in your

market and you're in the middle of the

Sarah desert. Yeah, it's probably not

going to work. But most of the time,

even in local markets, if you're in like

an A, you know, or A market or B market,

there's a million people in your city,

there's 400,000 people in your city, if

you need 200 to make business work, you

are fine. There's other things that are

holding you back. If you're in basically

any other industry, which you can look

up from like Google industry revenue,

the likely that you have tapped your

market, it's almost impossible. And the

thing is is that it is still one of the

most commonly stated things and least

commonly true. And so I'll tell you a

quick story about this and then I want

to show you a really powerful visual.

When I had gym launch, I wanted to start

doing outbound. Rather, I didn't want to

start doing outbound. I was convinced to

do outbound because the story about

site. So I had a conversation with uh a

guy who was a lead sales rep. He was we

were going to we were recruiting him in

and I asked him how they currently get

leads at his company and he was actually

in the gym business. I didn't find this

out until I got into the interview and

he was selling uh gym software. I asked

him how much they were doing a month and

they were doing um 10 million a month

and I was like holy canoli. I've never

even heard of this business. And I said,

"Okay, well then how are you getting all

your leads?" He said, "Oh, we just do

outbound." And I was like, "That's

insane. I didn't know outbound could

generate that kind of demand." But here

was this company that I had never heard

of that at the time was doing five times

more revenue than I was doing and it

broke a belief for me. So let me give

you this this visual that I think is

super powerful for understanding this.

So let's imagine that this is 100% of

the pie. This is the entirety of the

market, right? So if you had 100% access

to the market, you'd be super happy. Now

this is what happens in people's minds

when a competitor comes in. So you say,

"Oh my god, there's them and there's me.

Oh, I guess I will be medium happy about

this situation." And then let's say you

have

two more competitors that come in.

Now you're very sad because you're like,

"Wait, I used to have this whole pie.

Now I only have a quarter of the pie."

This is false. This belief set will keep

you poor or at least poorer than you

would otherwise be if you adopted a

different perspective. So you currently

advertise in one way using one specific

platform and one specific medium on that

platform. And so this little this little

red let's red slice of pie here, right?

What is it in in actuality? Well, let me

show you.

This is what that little slice of pie

looks like

when we actually consider the size of

the market and the aggregate attention

that exists. It's so small you can

barely even see that it's happening. And

this could be just all the different

platforms on which content, let's say

content is how you get your customers.

Maybe this is Instagram, this is

Facebook, this is Tik Tok, this is uh

YouTube, this is X, this is radio, this

is TV, this is tabula, this is Google

search, this is direct mail, this is

email, right? Like you can keep going.

This is school. All of these and you're

here and you're saying, "Hey, I think

I've cut my market into like there's

only there's only uh I only have a

quarter of the market that's available

to me." But wait, there's more.

We still have our ads circles which

you're currently doing nothing with.

Just imagine all these circles fill up

as fast as I can. And then wait, but

wait there's more.

Now we have our outreach.

And on here we could do direct mail. We

could do DMs. We could do DMs on

Facebook. We could do DMs on LinkedIn.

We could do DMs on Tik Tok. We could do

phone calls. We could do um every single

way that you can contact another human

being one-on-one is the different ways

that you could outreach. And so when we

look at this whole thing, you had two

competitors or three competitors, one,

two, and three that came into your

marketplace and you said, "Oh,

therefore, this is now super crowded."

But the reality is that you're this tiny

little sliver of this one way that that

you get customers on this one tiny

platform and I haven't even added in the

next layer of this, which is on that one

platform. Are you maximizing every way

to advertise on there? I make a couple

Instagram posts. Okay, cool. Are you

making stories? Are you making images?

Are you making carousels? Are you doing

all the different ways of doing that?

Oh, I make YouTube shorts. Okay, great.

Are you making YouTube blogs? Are you

doing YouTube community posts? How many

of them are you making? I told you that

I wanted to to shift this belief for a

second. Um because many of you are not

being limited by your market. Not even

close to it. Even if you were, and I

want to make I want to take the opposite

perspective uh for this for a moment.

Let's imagine that you're in the

absolute biggest red ocean. Red ocean

being it's super populated. There's

blood in the water, right? Do you think

the business advice niche is populated?

Do you think there's a lot of red ocean

in business advice? Yeah, probably.

Right? Should I have not gotten into

this?

The bloodier the water, it means the

more fish are there. And so where

there's the fiercest competition,

there's also often times the biggest

rewards. Now, that being said, how do we

merge this concept with the idea of you

should niche down? Wait, Alex, I thought

you wrote a book that said, "Hey, the

riches are in the niches." Right? So,

how do we merge these two ideas? Let me

explain because I get questions about

this. In the beginning, you want to

artificially constrain the pond that

you're going after so that you can

compete in a place where the sharks

aren't swimming. Okay? So, you want to

be the biggest guy in a puddle. That's

what you want to do. Biggest guy in a

puddle. And then you say, "You know

what? I'm going to go from a puddle to a

pond because I think I'm I'm too big for

this puddle." And so, you grow. And then

you go to the pond. And then once you go

from the pond, you say, "You know what?

I'm going to go to a lake. Now I'm in a

lake because I'm a even bigger fishy.

Right now I'm in a lake. And then

eventually you get to the point where

you say, you know what, I think that I'm

big enough to go into open class, open

market and fight in the ocean. Now, if

we were to look at this trajectory,

I started as a trainer

and I talked about nutrition and stuff

and then I talked about gym stuff

and then I started talking about

business stuff.

So, you're going to have evolutions

where you can get big enough for a pond

that you can move on from the pond to

the lake and the lake to the ocean. It's

just that it's directly correlated with

your skill and your experience. And so,

the reason that the the riches are in

the niches is that when you're there,

number one, you're competing against

fewer people. And so, the upside is

capped typically. Now, it's usually

capped at way higher than you think it

is, but it is capped to a degree. And

that's okay. But as a result, because we

are niched down, we're able to charge

niche prices which give us more profit,

more pricing power because there's fewer

people. There's fewer things to compare

you against, right? And so there does

come a time where you can go uh move the

market, right? Move your market rather

um to go after a different segment or a

broader segment. So let me walk walk

through what you can how to think

through this evolution for a business.

So let's say that your current business

is this little dot here. Okay,

there are five directions that we can

move with this dot. We can go. So let's

imagine this is a you've got a triangle

of a marketplace. Okay, so this is where

you this is where you inhabit. You can

go up market. All right. So for example,

um in my gym launch days, I could

instead of serving single location

fragmented gym owners, I could go to

franchisers, right? multilocation owners

and franchisers. So I have oneoff gyms

here. Now the next direction, so this is

direction number one I can do. Direction

number two is I can go down market which

would be that I could go after trainers.

There's way more trainers. They have way

less buying power, but there's a lot of

them. There's fewer franchisers than

there are gyms and there's fewer gyms

than there are trainers. Pyramid, right?

So that's the second thing we can do.

The next thing we can do is we can go

adjacent.

So instead of gyms, I say, you know

what? I think I can help Cyros.

That's what I think I'm going to do. I'm

going to take my systems and I'm going

to go into chiropractors. That'd be an

adjacent market. I could also go

broader, right? Which would mean that I

would look at this way,

which means instead of gyms, maybe I

talk about health and wellness in

general. And so that means that I could

go after Cyros,

med spas,

anybody, you know, weight loss clinics,

all of these things are now broader.

Or I can go

narrower. So instead of gyms, I say I'm

only going to work with spin studios.

I'm only going to work with dancing

studios. So this is our

fifth. This is our fourth. This is our

third. So that gives you five directions

that you can go in to change the

direction of the market that you choose

to play it. Now, I outlined this and

what's interesting is that most people

who are especially smaller business

owners have never even defined this to

begin with and they pretty much just

accept people's money as long as they

have a pulse and a credit card. There's

obviously two requirements. Well, let's

say pulse is optional as long as they

have a credit card. Kidding that they

accept. But the thing is is that like

you want to get really really clear on

this because if you don't your customers

will be confused because they won't know

what you're really about. So the tactics

for you if you're like all right

I am not getting because typically

people will say that they are in too

small of a market because they're not

getting as many leads as they want which

are two completely different issues

right and so if you can at least believe

believe you know believe the idea that I

have um that there is other ways to get

customers than you're currently doing

which I'll refer to back here what you

do is you say how do I make content in

more places how do I make more of it how

do I make it better and then eventually

you say how do I also run ads? How do I

also pair outreach with that? And that

is how you can achieve omnipresence as a

business and so you need to do more in

more places even better consistently for

a long period of time because it's

unlikely that you've actually capped the

market. You are just too unskilled to

capture the significantly larger

percentage of the pie.

And that's okay. And that's what we stay

in for the short term. And then

eventually as you get better, you can

expand it and expand it and expand it

and you keep eating and that's all right

and totally normal. Real quick, I have a

gift for you. This is the $100 million

scaling road map. It's something that my

team and I put 200 plus hours into

building and breaking the stages of

scaling into 10 steps. All right? And so

what we did is we broke down everything

that got us basically got us stuck and

what we did to break free at each level

of the business. And if you'd like to

know what product, marketing, sales,

customer service, IT, recruiting, human

uh resources, and finance look like at

the stage that you're currently at, this

is a free gift. So all you have to do is

go to aquis.com/roadmap. You can plug in

your business information. And if you

want our help, you want my help to help

you break through whatever level of

scaling you're at. This is not a

promise. I'm just saying we'd love to

help. Um on the thank you page, you can

book a call. Uh every month we have a

workshop out here at my headquarters.

you actually talked to my real team that

does does our marketing, does our

emails, does our ads, does our copy,

does our does our does our sales, does

our finance, does our recruiting, the

real people are doing this at a very

high level. And what's really cool about

that is that they can typically find and

spot what the constraints are in a

business like that. And so it's one of

the most valuable things that I could

possibly do. Obviously, you know, space

is limited based on our actual

headquarters. Um, but if that's

interesting, on the thank you page, you

can book a call. No pressure. This is a

gift either way. It's absolutely free.

Now, I said at the very beginning, if

you're a local market, you can this can

sometimes bite you. So, I want to give

some of the local guys, which are

usually like 35% of people are listening

to this. Um, so I'm going to go real

quick for you guys, what you can

actually do to expand how much you can

make with just a single location. So,

number one is you can expand your actual

location. So, that means you knock down

walls, you add seats, uh you just

increase efficiency. Like, how can I get

more um from my existing four walls? How

do I get more out of it? Like for me,

um, when I started getting too crowded

at my first gym, I, you know, cut the

class times from 45 minutes to 30

minutes. Um, and by doing that, I got,

you know, one and a half times more

classes in. I cut out the like breaks

between classes, so again, I could fit

more people in. I could also extend and

open more hours. All of those things

expand your existing location. The

second thing that you can do is what I

just walked through, which is you add

more channels. So, okay, you're posting

on Instagram. Are you posting on X? Are

you posting on YouTube? Are you posting

on Facebook? Are you posting on Tik Tok?

Like you expand channels.

And I would say that many of you guys

have heard my rule of uh one avatar, one

product, one channel until you get to a

million dollars a year. The only

exception to this is sometimes local

businesses. Now, if you're in, I would

say an A or B market, you could totally

just do that to get to to get to a

million a year. if you're in like a C or

D market. So, I would say I don't know

what the numbers are there, but I'm

assuming it's probably like less than

50,000 people in like a 10 mile radius

of where you're at. If you're at less

than 50, then you're going to probably

need to use more than one channel to get

customers because there's just there's

just not as many people. You have to you

have to saturate that tiny market by

getting in in front of more people in

more places. The third thing that you

can do is you open another location.

So you can expand the current one, you

can add channels to drive even more into

the current one, but at a certain point,

you're going to max out your four walls.

And so you just open a new spot. And I

see that as the eventuality of most

these businesses. And I think this is

kind of interesting because a lot of

people feel like they're like, I don't

know if this is a $100 million

opportunity. It's like, well, yeah, your

one store isn't a $100 million

opportunity, but you being able to

duplicate and nail the model and then

scale the model absolutely is. And so if

you have the goal of getting to $10

million a year, you can pretty much do

it in any business. If you have the goal

with with the exception of if you are a

brickandmortar and there's 100 people in

your in your local market, probably not.

But out outside of that um that business

model, even if you were in a tiny

market, could get to 10 million a year,

you just open up in new markets. That's

all you do, right? Most people's goals

are achievable within their current

vehicle. They were just too impatient

and believe that there's another shiny

object that someone will get there

faster. But if you take the natural

extreme and say, "If I only did one

thing for 40 years, do I think I'd be

successful?" Probably. And so if you

knew that to be true, then that would

give you a very strong reason to stick

with whatever you're doing. Because let

me give you a visual for this. This is

the cost of switching. So if let's say

that you're in year three

of your current current business, okay,

or current opportunity, it doesn't

really matter what it is. So this is

one, this is year two, this is year

three. Okay? Now, what people want to

convince themselves is that they're

like, I want to start this new thing.

Okay, that's fine. You want to start

this new thing. So, let's see that year

one of this new thing is higher. Okay,

that's fine. This one is a little bit

higher than this one and year two. But

the thing is is that this is year one of

this year,

but it's year four here.

You're still behind. And not only that,

growth when you get bigger is easier

than growth when you're smaller.

and you're like, "Okay, well maybe maybe

this faster rate of growth I'll be able

to catch up.

Okay, well now you're year two, but now

we're at year five over here, right?"

And so the head start that you give

yourself by sticking with something like

sticking with it is how you get the head

start. It's how you keep the head start

that you already began. That's something

that I think so many people miss when

they're trying to go to this next

opportunity. Unless there is something

inherently wrong with the assumption

that you have and skill is not the

deficiency that you need to overcome,

which it often is. Most of the time,

people get stuck on things that I call

features, not bugs, and this isn't my

invention, is that there's an element of

your business that makes it hard.

There's an element of every business

that makes it hard. But that's what

makes it a business, and that's why

you're compensated for it. If you're in

the cleaning business, the difficulty

you're going to have is attracting and

retaining high-quality talent. If you're

in the fitness business, the difficulty

is attracting customers and customer

retention because people are inherently

really shaky um about staying with their

fitness goals, but they typically stick

with their cleaners for a really long

time, right? And so, every business has

elements that make it shitty. It's just

the name of the game. And you know what?

I'll give you a different frame on this.

So, if you were to think about different

business models. So, let's think about I

I doubt many of you guys have heard

this, so this is pretty sweet. So, let's

say that you've got uh e-commerce,

you've got uh let's say you've got

service,

you've got um let's say info, education,

media, and let's say you've got SAS. All

right, so software. Okay, so let's say

that these are four different

opportunities. Each of these

opportunities has a different shape.

So, info looks like this.

starts really fast, very difficult to

scale. SAS is the opposite. Starts

really, really slow, scales really,

really fast.

Ecom is more like this. You can scale

fast, but there's difficulty with

typically cash flow because you have to

continue to buy more inventory. Uh you

have supply chain issues. You have to

switch suppliers, switch 3PL so they can

handle your volume. All of this stuff

happens as you continue to grow. So,

it's more like it's more like this.

That's the shape of ecom, right? And

then service businesses are more like

this,

the slowest, but they are steady. And so

when you see these four shapes,

many of you guys just hit the crappy

part of whatever the opportunity that

you're on is, and then say there's

something wrong with my business,

therefore I should stop. Rather than

seeing it as what it is, which is this

is just the nature of how this business

works. This is a feature, not a bug.

It's going to be harder for you to

attract really good talent in

engineering and build software and

you're probably going to be not

profitable because most software sells

for lower ticket most for a period of

time and it takes a long time to get a

product to actually be good and so

you're going to basically burn money,

burn time for a long period and then

eventually you can scale to the moon but

it takes a long time sometimes years to

get there and a lot of people don't have

that level of tolerance. Info on the

other hand is kind of the exact opposite

of that. You can make a lot of money

really quickly, a lot being relative,

right? you're probably not going to

become a billionaire, but you can make a

million dollars and then very quickly it

gets very difficult to scale it.

I say like info is specifically more

like coaching, things like that. And the

reason for that is because there's

almost no no revenue retention. People

don't stay around. Once you learn

something, you learned it. That's why

people graduate school. They learned,

right? Service businesses, the issue is

people because it's a very people people

heavy business. You have to constantly

be hiring, onboarding, and training. And

it depends on the service you're

providing. If you provide weight loss

coaching service or weight loss

services, I use that as the example

obviously because I came from that. You

you have you have it's easy for you to

get talent because lots of people want

to talk about fitness and weight loss

and and and food all day because they're

like really into it. So it's actually

very easy to get good talent and for

below average prices because people

would do it for free. On the flip side,

customers never want to do it and so

they're cancelling all the time. If I

had an accounting firm, it's the

opposite. Accounting firms have super

high annual stick. What's the difficulty

with accounting firms? getting the

people who can do accounting. And it's

almost always this balance, right? If a

lot of people want to do it, there's

going to be a lot of competition.

There's very low barriers to entry. And

as a result, customers have lots of

options and they don't want to do it

themselves. If uh there aren't as many

options and you have supply constraint

industry, then you're going to have

issues getting talent fundamentally. And

you can look at this at the business

level, but you can also look at the at

the at the uh at the industry level. And

so I talk about demand constraints and

supply constraints at the business

level, but you can see if you are way

off track based on do you match with

your industry. If your industry, and by

the way, if you are if you are the

inverse of your industry, you're usually

doing something either really wrong or

really right. Side note, so great way to

think about it. If you can be supply

demand constrained in like the cleaning

business example that I gave, if you

give demand constraints as in I could

take a 100 times more customers than I

currently am with my cleaning thing,

well then you've either figured out

something really amazing with cleaners

to like attract them in and like you're

about to go hypers scale or you're just

starting out and you haven't done

anything yet. There's either something

really right or really wrong with what

you're doing. But most of the time you

probably match the same constraint of

your industry. And the problem with not

being experienced is you think there's

something wrong. And so then you end up

spending multiple years not being allin

on your opportunity and then being upset

that it's not growing as fast as you

want it to grow when in reality you

never really gave it a shot because

you're always looking. You're kind of

like the kind of like the guy who's in

the marriage that they're like, you

know, they they were in love a while ago

and you know they're things are okay but

they you know he's got a wandering eye,

right? He's always looking. He's always

pay you know trying to look for the next

thing, the next girl, the next whatever.

And he's like well my marriage isn't

good. It's like, well, no [ __ ] You're

spending all your time looking at these

other opportunities rather than doubling

down on the thing you got. And when you

double down on the thing you got,

usually when you take the mar it takes

way less time. I would, okay, I'm not

I'm not I'm not going to make broad

sweeping statements on marriages. All

right. But I will say that in my

experience, from my N equals one

marriage, it takes way less time to go

from like we're upset about something to

we're really good than it does to create

the loyalty, the trust, and the track

record that you have from that marriage

with someone else. Real. So, um,

with that being said, that was my my

pest resistance, if you will. That was

the thing that I wanted to talk about

today that was top of mind is that so

many people think that their market is

actually limited when in reaction their

mind is limited. And there are so many

ways to advertise, but you do not have

the skill to advertise it. And so I'll

leave you with a really powerful

question that I think is worth asking

yourself uh when you're in these

situations is instead of saying there

are no good salespeople in my market or

no one can sell like I can sell or I you

know it's really crowded which really is

usually a translation for I can't get

enough leads or leads cost too much by

the way. Um but you say these statements

just frame it into a statement that you

control.

meaning I don't have the skill to get

more leads. I don't have the skill to

attract, hire, manage a good

salesperson. I don't have the skill to

get employees to behave in a way that is

according to the goals that I have in

the business. Those as soon as you state

it in that way, guess who owns the

outcome? You. You become source. You

become the one who can change it. And so

I would just like there it just does not

serve you to cast your power outside of

yourself and give that as the reason for

why you lack the success that you want.

Here's the crazy part. You could be

right.

And so what?

Like some prizes aren't worth winning.

Like if you want to play the pity game

and you want to win the pity award for

for for person who was born with most

inconveniences or person who had the

worst things happen to them, you can win

that award. The question is just do you

want it? Is that prize worth playing

for? Is it worth competing for? For me,

when I see when I hear or see a

situation like that, there's also

something that I think is the same

power, if not more powerful, which is

this person was able to win despite

that. And that's a story that only you

can have. And the more [ __ ] up your

childhood, the more [ __ ] up the the

things that you went through to get to

where you are are, the stronger that

story is for the people who follow

behind you and look up to you, the more

you can serve as an example for other

people who have suffered the same things

that you've suffered or suffered worse

than you suffered. And I think it's like

you rob yourself of that opportunity by

protecting your ego and saying that it

was because of this other thing. And

maybe you're right, but wouldn't it be

cooler to be right about the fact that

that was true and you won instead and

you won anyways and you succeeded

despite that? I think that's a much

cooler story. And I think that if we use

if we use the story frame, which is one

of my favorite razors, which is that

when you're 85 and you're and you're

split between two choices in life, pick

the cooler story because at the end of

your life, it's the only thing you're

going to be left with anyways. And when

you have these two choices, there's

usually the the hard thing uh which is

the right thing and the other way. And

the reason that I think you should

always take the hard thing is because if

the easy thing were the right thing, you

wouldn't have had to make this decision

because you would have already done it.

And so you're only hesitating because

it's harder than you