$100M Money Models

The Night He Slept Between the Kettlebells

In 2013, Alex Hormozi was sleeping on the floor of a gym he could barely keep open. He didn't have an apartment. He'd quit business school against his father's advice and burned through his savings opening the place, and now he was living in a utility closet behind the squat racks. Above him sat a parking garage. Every night, kids raced cars over the metal expansion joints, and every night the bangs echoed through the concrete like gunshots. He gave up on sleeping at night entirely. He napped at midday in the closet and worked through the dark hours, because the alternative was running out of money in less than four weeks.

One of the gym's only members was a man who owned twenty-seven storage facilities. He'd noticed something in Alex's face after a workout. "How much time you got left to live?" he asked over coffee at five in the morning. When he saw Alex's confusion, he clarified. "How much cash you got saved up? How long does it last?" About a month. The man didn't offer Alex a loan. He drove him across the street to one of his own storage facilities and walked him through a transaction he'd memorized down to the dollar. The "free first month of storage" advertised on the sign came to $127, on average, by the time the customer walked out. A required heavy-duty lock cost $47. Tape and boxes were another layer. An affiliated moving company paid him a kickback for every referral. An insurance upgrade added another ten dollars a month. And nearly every customer, the man explained with a grin, ended up renting one size larger than the unit they'd come in for. Why? Because the "free" one was always, coincidentally, a little too small.