Alex Hormozi talks about how he gained 1,000,000 followers in 6 months. To build a strong content strategy, focus on sharing personal experiences and proven successes rather than making broad claims or giving generic advice. Start by doing meaningful work and documenting your journey, highlighting what you did and how it worked for you. Increase your content volume by repurposing ideas across platforms, ensuring contextual relevance, and including clear calls to action. Building trust and goodwill with your audience by giving away valuable insights and waiting to make asks can lead to organic growth and more substantial long-term benefits. Ultimately, expertise is grounded in lived experience, and patience and consistency are key to success.
Published on December 8, 2022 by Think Media YoutTube channel
1. **Alex Hormozi Content Strategy**
2. **Growing Followers Fast**
3. **Building Trust with Your Audience**
4. **Repurposing Content Effectively**
5. **Organic Growth Strategies**
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Social Media Content Strategy for Entrepreneurs
Video transcript
There’s an unspoken question in every person’s mind that has to first be answered: Why should I listen to you? And I think it influences how people share, how people take your content, everything. It’s the frame that the content is consumed in. You have to do things so that you have evidence that you can support why you are good. And so I think it’s really speaking on your truths rather than claiming to know the truth.
Hey, here’s what I did versus here’s what you should do. Feel the difference? I broke it into three sections to make more sense. So, section one is why did I do this to begin with? Two, what and how and how much, like what do we do to actually create that? And then third is observations.
So quick backstory, I’m gonna go through this as fast as possible. This is me when I started my business career, sleeping on the floor. I signed my first lease, slept on that floor for the first nine months, was able to get it to that picture on the left in a year. Then I opened a new location every six months after that. And then over the next 18 months, I met Layla and we did gym turnarounds. So we basically fly from place to place to place and fill gyms up. But it was a hands-on sales model. I had at our peak eight sales guys turning around eight gyms every month. That became tenuous logistically, and we were like, I wonder if there’s a better way. And so from there, we packaged our IP for a better gym model into a licensing business. And so we were able to grow Gym Launch, which was a B2B business, to two and a half million bucks a month. Prestige Labs to 1.7 a month, which was B2B2C. That was an affiliate-based business, and it was weight loss and supplements, so e-commerce. We scaled Allen to 1.6 million a month, which was B2B2C, and we just recently sold that for 46.2, and we just sold that one last year as well, which I’m not allowed to say the number, but there you go. Then we started acquisition.com, which right now does about 13 million a month. So right now, we grow three million plus internet businesses into 30 million plus sellable businesses. That’s kind of what we do now.
And so hopefully, you’re probably asking this question, which is like, what does this have to do with growing video or growing with video? Objection…
But I started making video content with three goals. So, number one was to attract internet business owners doing three million or more who align with our values. Number two is to help all businesses below our minimum deal size to just grow to the deal size. That was kind of the idea, like how do I just get everybody who’s at a million to three million or 100K to three million, whatever, just get everybody up above that level so we can hopefully work with them. And then three, to create a place where I could document and share the best practices of building world-class companies from my experience. And like, we’re not the Elon Musks and the Bezos and all that, but I wish that those guys had documented what they had done. Like how cool would it have been to see like the vlog of Amazon in 1996, right? How sick would that have been? And like every day is like, yep, almost lost the company today. Like six months later, almost lost the company again. I thought that would have been awesome. So I thought, you know, I did a really poor job of documenting everything up to this point, so I was really committed to like, all right, for this next phase, I really want to do a better job of it. So that’s the idea.
Lo and behold, businesses doing three million dollars or more started reaching out to us, which was awesome, right? Success. So I guess this might have something to do with video, but believe me when I say that no one is surprised as me about this kind of organic stuff in general, because I’ve never done it before. So we’re on this ride together.
All right, so here’s the goal for the presentation: Give you a few lessons that I’ve learned to take you from wherever you are to a little closer to wherever you want to go with this presentation. I’m so good at content. There’s the little myth. Okay, great. So disclaimer again, never done this. I also didn’t want to be famous or known for a very long time. There’s me saying I want to be rich, not famous, but several experiences changed my mind. So I’ll walk you through this really quickly.
So when Kylie—do you remember this one?—Kylie was announced that she was a billionaire. Well, that’s what I felt like that day. It’s like, what am I doing wrong? And then The Rock, you know, killing it. And then boom, he’s got a two billion dollar plus tequila brand that he was able to launch off his organic audience. Conor McGregor, 600 million with Proper 12 was probably grown by since. Now Huda is a billion-dollar brand.
And so I can be a little slow sometimes, but I could kind of read the writing on the wall. So there’s the writing on the wall. But I didn’t want to build an e-commerce brand because all those were e-commerce physical products brands. And I was like, ah, it’s not my vibe. I already did that once. It’s not like it’s not my favorite of the businesses that we’ve done. So I still kind of like dragged my feet a little bit. And that’s when I heard this guy, Nomad Capitalist, who teaches people to not be U.S. citizens. That’s not the point. So you can not pay taxes. But anyways, that’s when I heard a podcast with this guy, and he was like, oh yeah, I get about 3,000 applications a month. I was like, holy cannoli. I was like, well, if I had 3,000 applications a month, I would make at least one dollar if that were my life. And so I realized it could work for B2B, not just e-commerce stuff. I was like, that’s neat. And then I heard Neil Patel was doing 100 million bucks a year doing a B2B agency services all off inbound. I was like, okay, this might make sense.
And so again, I still was like, all right, so it does work for B2B. Organic stuff works, but I still didn’t really want to be famous. That was not my vibe. And so I met up with dear friends of ours, Lisa and Dean Graciosi, and we had a conversation that was kind of last straw here. So I was like, dude, being famous sounds terrible. He was just telling us about how like somebody like showed up at his house and threatened his kids. And I was like, that sounds awful. Like why? No, no thank you. I’m good. I’ll just pass on grass. And so he’s like, if getting harassed and attacked is the price I have to pay for the impact I want to have, then I’d pay that price every time, which totally takes away from the impact of that message. But I was like, he’s right. You know what I mean? Like he said, if that’s the price I have to pay to make the impact I want to have, then I’d pay that price every time. I was like, all right, I need to stop being here.
All right, so 18 months ago, I started a YouTube channel. Some of you guys may have seen this YouTube channel. Nosy Nation. And so I built two expensive studios to launch this thing. I started making three videos a week. Side note, important lesson that I learned on a vacation. That really one did better than my really fancy one, which then taught me that what’s inside the content matters more than the wrapper. So for anybody who’s like worried about getting started, about making it look right, I don’t think it matters. I mean, I think it matters a little bit, but it’s 80/20. So focus on the 80. All right.
And so I continued my very steady growth for that period of time, which is great. Recommend. But you know, the first 12 months we went from 600 to 70,000 to travel, which was cool. And so things were going smoothly until one day I had a chat with Grant Cardone about branding, and it reminded me that all the lessons that I learned in business applied to all this organic stuff. And so I was on this call with him, and I have the full video on my YouTube channel if you want to check it out. Yeah, he was like, bro, I’m not even going to try. He was like, bro, pull up your Instagram. I was like, okay. He’s like, pull up my Instagram. He’s like, I got 10 times the content as you. 10 times. He’s like, bro, it’s volume, bro. Volume. And I was like, that’s deep. And so I was like, you know, I should probably do more, which is a lesson that I have learned over and over and over again in business. And I’ll tell you a couple more stories about later. But like so many times we’re doing the right stuff, we’re just doing way, way too little of it.
Like I’ll tell you a quick story, which is not on this presentation. But when I started my first gym, I was told that I should put flyers out. And so I went, you know and I’m like really full of piss and vinegar, I’m gonna go do it. So the business owner told me, who was more successful than me, etc. And so I went and put the flyers out, and then like nothing really happened. So I met back up with him a few weeks later, and he was like, hey, how’d the flyers work? And I was like, uh, you know, I got one guy who called me and said I picked up his car. That was it. He’s like, what was your test size? I was like, hmm, I was like, well, I mean, I put 300 out. And he was like, dude, our test size is 5,000. He’s like, that’s what we test with. He’s like, and then we do 5,000 a day. Oh, noted.
And so it was just a really good lesson. And that happens with phone calls, like yeah, I’m doing, I’m gonna start doing cold calls. You make 10 calls every three days when you’re feeling motivated rather than doing 200 dials every day like it’s clockwork before lunch. You know what I mean? The level of effort difference is not like 2x or 4x, it’s like 50x. It’s a lot bigger. And most people dramatically underestimate the amount of volume and effort that is required to get to where you want to go, like dramatically.
And so I have so many lessons that this repeated, and I was taught yet again in a different sphere that I’m not familiar with that this was true. I’m also wearing the same shirt. So I decided to take his advice and dramatically increase the amount of content that we created and how many places we displayed it. Right? And so before I tell you, who wants to guess how many pieces of content we started putting out weekly after that call? 25? 10,000? Less than that. I would be so much more famous if I put 10,000 out. What was that? A hundred? Good guess. So we went from seven pieces of content—we got it, three on YouTube, and I just repurposed the same three on a podcast—to 80. 80 content pieces a week.
And for scale, if you remember the first line that I showed you way before the top of that is that purple line from the first graph I showed you. And so, pretty cool. And so this is what happened in those six months: we added 300,000 subscribers on YouTube, 7,000 followers on Instagram, still haven’t really cracked that one, 350,000 on TikTok, 150,000 buyers, which is cool, on Amazon for the book, 350,000 followers on Instagram, 100,000 on Twitter, and 400,000 downloads a month on the podcast. Cool, right? So basically a million-person audience within that six months.
And because I’m more of a business guy than I am a “quote influencer creator,” this is what I cared about. So the net traffic result for us as web traffic went from basically non-existent to about 100,000 unique clicks a month to the site just organically. Pretty cool. Number two is the subscribers, so I told you before. And then this is one that’s really cool for who here runs paid ads? Can I get a… Okay, some of you, cool. So this will resonate with you. So in the businesses that I had, at a 25 CPM, we were getting two million dollars a month in exposure free—not only not free, we were getting paid to do it. Crazy. Like, I’m beside myself still because I think it’s insane. So the fact that this opportunity exists right now is literal insanity to me. Like, we’re getting paid now to market. Like, what a world, right?
And so the business result from that is that we get about 400 companies a month that apply for acquisition.com so we can help them scale. And in that time period, we grew from seven million a month to 13 million a month. And disclaimer on that is that part of that was just the companies themselves grew. It wasn’t like new companies. But still, a lot in six months. And so if you’re anything like me, you’re probably thinking, well, that’s really great for you, Alex, but what about me? Which is why I made section two, which is how and how much.
All right, so here’s where you come in. All right, so let’s start with how much. So just a reminder here in terms of time, I’m not like a creator full-time. So it’s like 93/7 is probably the amount of time that I allocate towards this. And so money-wise, this costs me $20,000 a month to do. All right? You can scale this down however you want. I also don’t have a tremendous amount of time that I allocate towards it, so I have to compensate with that with money. You could probably do this on your own. I just—this is how I do it.
So we have a Twitter editor, a YouTube editor, a LinkedIn editor, a podcast editor, and an IG and TikTok editor. All right? And there’s two of us, so times two. So it’s actually $40,000 a month for the both of us, okay? The amount of time that it takes me is two days per month and four hours per week. And that is what I dedicate towards this. And so quick recap, I have a daily mind dump, which I’ll show you how I do it in a second because we’re going to show you, I’m going to show you the whole model. I do a weekly Twitter review, it takes me like four hours because Twitter is actually really important how I do all this stuff, which I’ll explain later. And if you guys aren’t on Twitter, actually, it’s my favorite platform.
We do one day a month of recording for shorts and then one day a month—it’s usually like a half day, I’ll do like four to eight YouTube videos, the ones that are direct to camera—and that’s it. That’s the jam. So that’s the how much, that’s my investment, that’s my cost to do this. And so here’s the how. And so this is the content creation model, all right? That’s the big visual, and those are the bold bullets. Fantastic.
Let’s start with the first one: test, record, inject, contextualize, distribute. So the old way that I used to do content was I would just have this ongoing email thread to myself. I know you guys have like notes or like a chain to yourself because you probably get ideas, you’re in a conversation, oh, I should make a piece of content on that, right? And then you email it to yourself. And that’s how I did it for a long time. And the new way is the Twitter web, which is being blocked by the thing as a formatted word, but I post all of those ideas as tweets on Twitter rather than just sending them to myself. And so all of a sudden, what used to be my inbox is actually just my like tweet thread, all right? And so I tweet about five times a day-ish. And the nice thing is that Twitter is a very forgiving platform, so it’s just like stream of consciousness. And it takes notes, you don’t have to pick videos or captions or… I like it because it’s just thoughts, like that’s… I love Twitter so much for that reason. And so I’ll post this stuff and I’ll be like, okay, those are the ones that people thought were interesting, and then the threads become long format and the shorts become short format or the tweets become short format. Pretty simple. Step one. Everyone following with me so far? Cool, all right, cool. Doable.
Second step is recording. Why am I doing both? I realize that because you’re like, why do you do short stuff? I was kind of against shorts, and then I realized that I’ve never actually consumed anything from GaryVee that’s long, but I like GaryVee a lot. I was like, ah, well, I guess that worked. So that’s why I do both. Right? And so I think it’s a width and depth thing. I think the shorts give you a lot of breadth, I think the longs give you a lot of depth. Right? And so there’s a visual that I put together that took me too long to say that same thing.
Great, so this is everything that I know about how to make content that “quote goes viral.” I watched a long interview with Mr. Beast. My big practice of trying to learn stuff is go to the person who’s the best at it and listen to them because they’ve already reorganized the information for you. Hack. And so he’s like, listen, all these guys make this all complex with their tags and hashtags. And if any of you guys saw that, this is not me offending you. I have no idea what I’m talking about, remember, big grain of salt. But he said it’s just CTR times watch time. That’s it. You got to get people to click, you got to get people to watch. I was like, okay, that makes sense. He’s like, and that’s what YouTube wants. They want people to be interested in the content, to get the click, and then make sure that the content fulfills the promise of the thumbnail. Cool. I was like, I can do that.
And so this is the general format that I’ve used for the longs, which is like a hook or a question that I’m answering, usually a story that’s relevant to answer the question, a framework that I’ve applied to repeat that process, and then an explanation of why I think it works. That’s it. And if I want to make longer stuff, it’s just that process with multiple stories, repeating that over and over again. The shorts is a hook or question, a hammer, which for me is my tweet. I put the tweet as the next thing I say because I already know it converts, and then I have an example and an explanation. That’s about it. That’s Alex’s million-dollar thing. There we go. Fantastic.
And so this is an example: 28 ways to guarantee poverty or 28 ways to stay poor. Right? So I made this thread, got a lot of shares. Cool. 28 rules to reprogram my mind to be rich in 22 minutes. So I have to change the headline and stuff, but the content was identical. I just did it in a video, right? And then the short ones that do well, it’s like, alright, overheard from an ABC, oh blah blah, authenticity is just a fancy word. Boom. I just make a short version of the same thing, just saying the tweet. Does this make sense? Okay, cool. And then I upload it. Fancy so far? Alright. Ta-da.
Next one is inject. So we grew the podcast actually recently from like 20,000 a month to 400,000 a month. And a big part of that was just having call-to-actions. Sounds really dumb, but I wasn’t doing it. So do it. And so the way that we did it was we recorded two versions of each of the call-to-actions. So like call-to-actions to other channels, lead magnets, share a tag. If you have a lower ticket product, I don’t, but like are you, you know, for me, I just have a book. It’s not even a cent. You know, leave a review. If you want to ask for clients or you know, send a question, or there’s my book, there’s my offer. So I would just record two different CTAs for that, and then I just inject them into the content. So this is what it might look like. So it’s like you have your CTA, one content, mid-roll content, end off. Does that make sense? So we started doing that with the podcast and it started to grow a lot. And now we’re actually doing it in the rest of the forms of content, so you’ll see that from me because this has been working. So this is me doing this, walking the talk. Alright, the point, directions, etc.
Okay, contextualize. So anyone seen this one before? Everyone see this like meme that went viral? So it’s like everybody kind of appears somewhat differently, even though it’s the same person, depending on the setting that you’re in. Right? On Facebook, you look a certain way. LinkedIn, you look a certain way. Tinder, you look a certain way. I had a sales guy who was on—this is not relevant at all—was on Tinder, and he would close every one of his dates on buying our supplements so that he could get—he was like, it always covered dinner. Savage. Anyways, just you know, shooters gotta shoot. Okay. So you have to make the stuff contextual. And so this is what we do. So this is the same video, right? It’s that same Navy SEAL video I made earlier, right? So that’s a reel, that’s a TikTok, and then that’s the YouTube short. So it’s the same thing. You just make it match the platform. Same way you would make your Facebook look different than your Instagram look different than your LinkedIn, etc. As long as you just make it contextual, I think it does a lot better because have you guys seen people just like take literally the exact same thing and post it on the wrong platform? I just think it just hurts it, and it’s just not that much effort to make it contextual. Alright, last one, distribute. Then we distribute them. Alright, so we went from seven times a week to 80 times a week in distribution. That was the result over that six-month period, which is a lot of growth. Awesome. And so we 10x the inputs and we got 10x the output. Surprising, right? So who here would like 10 times the output? Well then, you can just 10x the input. Alright, good talk.
So quick recap, alright? Content creation model: test. First thing you do, make your brain dump into something that’s actually generating content. So this is net zero time for me. I was doing it, and I just started doing it publicly. Number two is that once I have the stuff that’s winning, I record it. I record the threads as longs, I record the tweets as shorts. From there, the team injects the call-to-actions so that I can direct the traffic whatever way I want to direct it, right? And big one on this last injection thing, like if you don’t do this, because I wasn’t, you get all of these impressions and like eyeballs and stuff, and you’ll get followers, but like you don’t drive a result, which again sounds silly that I wasn’t doing this, but I told you at the beginning, you guys are better than I am at this. Number four was contextualize it. I just think it works a lot better. And then finally, you cut it and increase the volume. Cool? That make sense so far? Great. Fantastic. So was that helpful? Okay, cool.
So that concludes section two: how much and how. Fantastic.
Observations. I was going to call it musings, but then I thought no one would know what that meant. So I just gave you the traditional lip service on a content generation model. It’s kind of boring, and I don’t think it’s that interesting, which is why I tried to get through it quickly. Because a lot of people ascribe that as the reason that we grew a lot, and I don’t think that’s why. But I’m presenting it because I would end up getting a zillion questions about it, and so that’s why it’s there.
Well, I hope you are enjoying today’s session, and I wanted to let you know that if you are loving content like this, then you definitely need to go to 21videotips.com where you can actually get 21 more video marketing tips just like this from industry experts like Patrick Bet-David, Vanessa Lau, Pat Flynn, and Alex Hormozi, and so many amazing video marketers of our day. They’re sharing their best-kept business building secrets inside of this masterclass and free downloadable guide. So just head over to 21videotips.com to get instant access for free and learn how you can level up your business and brand. That’s 21videotips.com. Now, let’s get back into today’s content.
I think the real reason that we were able to grow—so I’m going to put like my real hat on for a minute—is that, and again, this is my two cents, there you go, is that there’s an unspoken question in every person’s mind that has to first be answered, which is: why should I listen to you? And I think it’s one of the most profound questions, and I think it influences how people share, how people take your content, everything. It’s the frame that the content is consumed in. So I’ll give you a real-world example. Imagine you’re talking to a guy, you don’t know anything, he’s just like talking about business, and you’re like, oh, that’s cool. And then like two seconds later, it’s like, dude, that guy’s a billionaire. All of a sudden, you’re like, right? The frame matters a lot. Elon Musk makes a tweet that’s like, I’m on the toilet, and it gets like 500 million shares, right? This guy’s hilarious, right? It’s because it’s Elon, right? And he has a brand that he’s established, and there’s context there. And so I think that we should have this question answered for ourselves and our prospects before creating content, alright?
And so imagine for a moment that I had done this whole presentation up to this point, and I had a 1,000-person total audience between all of those platforms. Same presentation. How different would that feel, right? Just imagine. Do it on stage, you don’t know me, and I have a thousand people on Instagram, and that’s it. Same presentation. You would receive it differently, right? Right. I would, because I would think it was stupid, pointless, preachy, better-than-now, full of, and if you’re so good, why don’t you do it? That’s what I would think, right?
And so we have to answer the question: why should I listen to you? And I think a lot of you are making content from a weak frame. And that’s just what I see. That’s just me witnessing it. Like, you know, it’s like the 18-year-old relationship coaches. You know what I mean? They’re real, you know? Like they’re out there. Some of you are here, right? You know, or it’s like the business coaches that are doing five thousand dollars a month. I don’t, you know, I mean, I don’t have a lot, like, you know?
So besides all the stuff that we shared earlier, the real reason that I think our audience is growing is that we’re talking about stuff that we have evidence to support. Like that’s the real. Right? So all that I said earlier, sure, you can do that. That worked for me. You might not like Twitter. I like Twitter because it’s easy for me. It’s not easy for you, don’t do it. Right? Which is why this worked for me this time. Right? That’s the context. But I think this stuff is the more kind of eternal stuff, and that’s why I was kind of like excited to get to part three. Yes.
And so I think it’s about having the evidence for your others and most importantly for yourself. Right? We built these other companies first before ever talking about how to build companies. Right? And so if you’re like, great, Alex, nice for you, so how do I make content from just starting out? Excellent question.
So there’s two frame shifts that I think have to occur: do then talk, how I versus how to, and give versus get. Alright? So let’s start with the first one. So who here hates this, right? How to live an amazingly happy life and get everything that you want from somebody who is doing this part-time and is still cutting hair. Right? There’s nothing wrong with cutting hair, but it probably wouldn’t make you an authority on this matter. Does that make sense? Some of you are doing this and wondering why it’s not working. Like, I mean, my stuff’s so much better. It honestly doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because if I had a thousand people on state, like on my followers, and I made the same presentation, you wouldn’t give it, like I’m trying, like real, right?
And so there’s a better way, I think. Alright, so this is Alex’s crazy content creation model, trademark pending. Alright, step one, do st. Step two, talk about what you just did. I know. And then do bigger st. This is a complex model, I know we’re getting to it. So here’s how it looks in the real world, alright? Hey, here’s what I did versus here’s what you should do. Feel the difference? This is what I did. If it works for you, awesome. If it doesn’t work for you, notice what? Here’s 20 of my clients, this is the stuff that I’m doing with them right now. Rosie was struggling with some skin condition. We started giving her magic pills, and look at her skin now, it’s amazing, right? But like, this is what it might not work for you, but this will work for her, this will work for him, this will work for my clients. Right? Not what you should do. As soon as you point out, people hate you because it sounds like you’re preaching. It sounds like you have an ego, and I just don’t think people like that.
And so I think it’s also switching from how I to, I suppose the other way, switching from how to to how I. So how to build a massive social media following to how I built the following that I have. Feel a difference? It’s really small but really big in terms of how people interpret your message because it’s like, thank you, I appreciate it. I think that what happens is when you say it that way, you’re pulling back and saying like, hey, I hope this serves you in some way. Like this is like me opening the kimono, this is stuff that’s working right now for me. Whereas the other way, you’re at the pulpit commanding, giving demands, you know, demands, and commanding people. And I just don’t think people like that. I mean, how many people, their entire Instagram famous people shaking their finger at you, right? It sucks. I hate it. Right?
And so I think it’s really speaking on your truths rather than claiming to know the truth. And I think too here, and there’s a point I probably make later, but I’ll bring it up now, is that everyone is unquestionably an expert on your own life. No one can question that. If I say I had oatmeal for breakfast this morning, I am untouchable. You know, it was kind of lame, but from a factual tip, like no one can challenge me on that. Like this is what I eat every day, no one’s going to be like, [expletive] you, Alex, harming the planet. Right? They’re not going to say that because like, that’s real, that’s true. No one can touch that. Right? But as soon as I say you should have oatmeal for breakfast, [expletive] you, right? It’s this big of a difference, but it makes all the impact in the world in terms of how people receive the message.
So question, who here makes the content because they want to become famous and feel good about themselves? Oh, who is making stuff because they want it to be received and help the audience? Right? And so the thing is, is you have to feed them and not you. And I think if you can make that shift, I think, in my opinion, it will be more effective.
And so if you look at the biggest influencers in the business space, because this is a space that I’m kind of in, you look at these guys, I mean, shoot, half these guys are talking here, so congrats to the event. It’s awesome. Very honored to be on stage with them. So that’s the ACCCM at work, the Alex Crazy Content Creation Method at work, by the way. Dude, talk about the s**t you did. Which one of these guys made money from their social media following, made the money they have from the social media following? Right? And so how many of these people needed the followers? None. Right?
People are like, I want to be the next this. It’s like, if you want to be the next that, then you got to walk that walk. Right? And so you probably won’t be respected as an authority on business until you’ve achieved mega success. The same reason you look at your competitors like, that guy sucks. It’s like, they’re looking at you. Right? And it’s because why should I listen to you?
And so here’s the good news, because you’re like, well, Alex, what do I talk about? Here’s the good news. You can become a niche-specific authority. So rather than going like, here’s how to live an amazing life, right? That’s like, you’ve got to be Jesus. Jesus can do that. Jesus can do that. You can’t do that. Jesus can do that. Right? So you got to go from here to like, I’m really good at helping people build ATM businesses. I’m really good at how people flip houses in Phoenix. Right? Because in that little ocean, that little pond, you can be king. Because you got to compete against 20 guys, and you got to do, you got to walk the talk, right? You got to do what you’re doing. You talk about what you’re doing. That’s it. But you can win in that little pond. And I’ll show you how to scale from there in a second. But you can do that. Alright.
And so this is me when I started. So I had a couple powerlifting records, and I liked working out. Right? And so thank you. And so the stuff that I did then was about what I was doing then. And so you can’t read it, but it says how to get rid of stubborn fat on your arms and stomach. That’s the content I was making then. And who is it relevant for? Just the members at my gym. But that was my way of adding value. And I already had a rapport with them. So they’re like, if I’m going to learn about this identical topic from a hundred different people, I’d just rather learn about it from you because I like you. And I had values-based rapport, not expertise. Like I had general expertise because I looked the way I looked. But beyond that, I’d have a PhD. It’s not like I did a ton of research. I read the same articles and just tried to make it entertaining. That was it.
And I didn’t become mega-famous for that, but this made me money. This made me enough money to, you know, grow the company that I had at the time. And so from there, I leveraged that to grow my first gym, and then the gyms after that. Right? And then from there, once the gyms grew, I started making content about how to grow gyms. Why? Except, you know, how to grow gyms. I wasn’t like, how to scale your SaaS company. You know what I mean? Like, how to reach a billion-dollar valuation. Like, I was like, I don’t know. But this is what worked for my gyms. And people are like, dude, this stuff works. I’m like, I know, because I’m doing it. I know this is how I do it. Like, I know it works. It’s how I do it. Of course I’m doing it. Here’s what’s crazy. So many people are talking about and teaching stuff that A, they have never done, and B, they are repurposing someone else’s content and making a version of it. Some of them are you.
And that’s the thing is, is like when you start talking in the theoretical and trying to teach something, it’s how to rather than how I. Right? So if you do the thing, then you just talk about what you just did. Now, later on, I think it’s the capture, capture, don’t create, document, don’t create content. But I understand that that takes resources. Like it takes money to get people around you to, you know, document your life and all that kind of stuff like that. That’s expensive. But I think just even doing recaps of like, this is the stuff that’s working right now for us in this context, people are like, thanks. You didn’t have to do that. Thanks for sharing that stuff that’s working for you, rather than how to.
And no, if you do it that way, you will not gain a mega following at first. But you will accomplish things which will set you on the path for you to be broader later. So the Gym Secrets Podcast became the game that I published from the Gym Launch Secrets book, which is how to build a profitable gym, to the 100 Million Dollar Offers book. And the difference in scale was pretty tremendous. That’s my Gym Secrets book. I still think it’s a phenomenal book, by the way, to that book, and that book’s done that in less than a year. And that other book’s been out like four years.
And so it’s not bad, it’s just sequence. People try and go out of sequence. They try and say, like, why am I not Tom Bilyeu? Why can’t—I’m doing everything Tom Bilyeu’s doing except for building Quest. Oops. Like, that’s why what he says is relevant. You know what I mean? Because the thing is, is like we want everybody here—most people seek truth, would you say? If you’re like, raise your hand if you seek truth. Okay. So the easiest shortcut for the brain to seek truth is to look at someone who’s the most extreme version and then think, okay, I don’t have to apply a lot of decision-making filtering here because now I can just absorb this because I can just take this as fact. Because if Warren Buffett says this is how I should invest, I feel okay about that source.
Even if he’s like, save your money, spend less than you earn, invest dollar-cost average into the S&P, and don’t buy gold, right? Like he says that stuff, and you’re like, okay. Now, the stay-at-home teacher who’s been saving all of her money could say the exact same thing, but she just forgot to build Berkshire Hathaway. And so the thing is, is that—and I’m actually very against the whole confidence mantra of like people being like, you gotta believe in yourself, you gotta—you have to do things so that you have evidence that you can support why you are good.
You guys are great. And this is like my favorite line from The Matrix. It’s, I think, in the second or third—I can’t remember which one it is—but Morpheus is up there, and he’s like, I feel truthfully unafraid, not because of the path that lies before me, but because of the path that lies behind me. And I think it gives a lot of spiritual strength. Because I got asked on an interview, they’re like, how are you so certain? I was like, you talk about these things like with so much certainty. I was like, well, that’s just how I’ve done it. And it’s that depth of experience and knowledge that like no one can question that we built those things. That’s truth. Those are the real numbers.
And so as long as you’re not fudging your numbers, right, and you just say like, this is what it is, then of course you’re [expletive] certain, right? Because I think confidence is self-delusion. It’s trying to make up for what you don’t have evidence for. And I think it’s a much easier practice to stop pretending and start doing the stuff that you should be certain about. And then you don’t have to have bravado. You can get up, like you can walk on stage, and people are like, that guy built the biggest king and water empire out there. Nobody clones in the front. And he built that. He doesn’t have to have confidence for people to listen to him. They will want to listen to everything that he says if that is what they want to do because they’ll just go to the person that’s done the thing that they want to do so that they don’t have to apply a lot of effort in thinking, and they can just say, I’ll do everything this person says, right?
Most people cannot separate information from source, so what we do is we just seek out good sources. I think wisdom is built through being able to take from separating information from source. A fool can give you a very wise piece of wisdom or information or a lesson, but it’s much harder to do that. And so the shorthand for most of us is just go to somebody who’s an absolute authority in this thing that has unquestionably a reason that I should listen to them and then just listen to them. The downfall of that is that you start taking stock advice from your hairdresser. I’m not bashing hairdressers right now, this is top of mind, right? And so you’re like, I trust you. What else you got? And then they start talking about things that are not their expertise, and then that’s when you get in trouble.
And so the same degree if you probably have an audience that’s asking you questions, right? Anybody have an audience that asks them questions? Raise your hand. Okay. If someone asks you a question that is not something that you have authority on, I think you gain more authority by saying, I don’t have authority to speak on that. And then you gain more respect because—because this is what happens: damaging admissions are the single greatest thing that builds trust. If I say I suck at marriage advice, I suck at, you know, giving happiness advice, I suck at whatever, but I’m really good at making high returns in the stock market. How much more believable is that than I make really good returns in the stock market and I’m really good at marriage and I’m real—and, and, and. When you admit your deficits, whatever comes after the admission of guilt or the admission of deficiency is believed more.
So if I say, hey, I really suck at a lot of things, but you’re going to believe what I say right here, that’s a sentence structure for persuasion, and you can use that in all of the content that you have forever. It’s also great for negotiating. And so anyways, I say all this to say it’s the path that lies behind you, not the path that lies in front of you, that will give you the certainty that you want to gain the influence you desire. And so my evolution for me was fitness first, and I just talked about, this is what’s worked for me. People are like, Alex, how do you eat Twizzlers and cookies all day and have a six-pack? And I’m like, A, genetics. B, I live at a gym. And C, I eat this way, right? And people are like, oh, so I can have cookies too and have a six-pack. And I was like, yes. And that was relevant for me. Some people are like super vegan superstars. Awesome. And they’re going to talk about what was relevant for them, and the people who follow will be like, that’s—I vibe with that. Cool, right?
And so I’m not going to be the best nutrition expert in the world, but in terms of like my little fiefdom, I can rule that, right? And then I moved up because I started doing well there and people started asking me, hey, how are you growing your gym? I was like, well, this is how I grew my gym. We were like, what about business in general? Like, I don’t know. I’ve never in an e-commerce business. I don’t know about manufacturing. I don’t know about software. I don’t know any of that stuff. But I know how to grow a gym. So I only talked about that. And the amount of people that that was relevant for was this many. But for that audience, everything. Right? I mean, and just for context here, there are riches in niches. Like that company made a lot of money. Just saying. Like it made a lot of money. And it didn’t make me famous at all. And so again, the question is, do you want to be rich? Do you want to be famous? Are you trying to serve you? Are you trying to serve the audience? Right?
And then the last one is like now we’ve been able to leverage that initial success to build an e-commerce brand, to build a software brand, to sell those. And then now we have a portfolio. And so now because we have businesses that span a lot of different areas, I can say, these are the frameworks that we use to build all of them. I hope this serves you. And then people can take that.
And has anybody used any of the frameworks that we’ve for Hormozi Nation? Anybody who’s been there? Anybody used those frameworks to make more money? One person? Oh, probably not. So a big part of that is that you just get better over time. And so I said this quote, and it got shared a lot: you’re not making as much money as you want because you’re not as good as you think you are. I’m just being real. Like, I don’t know, I could have done like the here’s my 17,000 content model. You know what I mean? But like, the real is that you’re probably not that good yet. Comma. And that’s okay. Like the only person beating you up is you. Right?
And so the only way to get better is volume. And the only way to get even better than volume is volume times time. Because volume—you can write this down. I don’t have this in the presentation, but this is like the equation of life. Volume times time equals skill. You got to do it a lot of times for a long period of time, and you will get better. That is a promise. You will. If you suck today, you will suck less tomorrow. And eventually, one day, you will look up and suck so little that you will actually be good. And then people will ask you, how did you become an overnight success? And then instead of saying, here’s how you cold call, you say, here’s how I did it. I hope this serves you. Right? And you can build that trust that way.
Great, Alex. So how do I make money if I’m just starting out? Fantastic. Alright, cool. Geez, always about the money. Okay, I’m kidding. Oh, that’s awesome.
So here’s a couple observations here: Give away the secrets, sell the implementation. Alright? If you want to build an enterprise that is valuable, this is how you do it. You can sell info, there’s nothing wrong with that, but if you want to build a brand, give away the secret, sell the implementation. Alright? Because people are like, you can give the whole farm away, people still won’t do it. One percent of people will do it. My business model relies on the one percent who do it. I mean, so like I bank on that, but only one percent are going to do it. So most people need help. Most people need encouragement. Most people need accountability. Most people need somebody who’s going to act as their virtual Google because they don’t want to type it in. It’s true, right?
And so one of the side notes that I have here is that if you’re not afraid of what you’re giving away, that you’re giving away too much, you’re not giving away enough. And so every time I’ve written a book or I’ve made like a presentation that ends up going live, I always think to myself like, oh God, I’m sharing everything. What will they do? They won’t need me anymore because I give them this information, they can, they don’t, they’ll just keep living their lives, and I will become obscure and nothing, you know, and I will die, right? That is what it feels—I mean, you catastrophize. But that’s real, right? It’s the opposite though. Right?
And there’s so many things I feel like that I’ve at least realized for me is a lot of things are the opposite way you expect. It’s like you only gain your life by giving it. Right? Like you only get trust from others by trusting first. You only get value back by giving value first. And so if you’re afraid of giving away all the secrets that you have, I promise you, if you make content that does not contain the secrets, 99 percent of people, who are the people who are never going to pay you anyways, 99 percent of people will just think you suck because you give nothing. So you just make fluff because you’re so afraid of giving good stuff away.
The thing that most people consume is they make one, they consume one video and they make a judgment and say, I will never consume a video from this person again. What a waste of time. And so like my big fear with every piece of content is I would rather make fewer pieces of content because I’m so afraid of somebody taking 20 minutes to consume something after watching a bunch of my stuff, watching that one and not actively deciding to stop watching but just don’t get enough for the time that they’re like, I’ll just watch something else. They don’t say like, off, Alex. They just pivot a little bit and slowly you fade away. And so I would rather have quality over quantity, but quality quantity beats just quality. Right? But I would personally, this is me, I would personally prefer to have better stuff and give away as many secrets as I possibly can to get people to start taking steps towards you.
Because what also happens is if someone goes and uses stuff from the YouTube channel and grows from a million dollars a year to three million dollars a year or five million dollars a year, they don’t have questions on whether or not we can provide value because we already have. Right? And then it makes the sales process dramatically easier because you say, what brought you here today? And they’re like, well, you made me two million dollars a year. I love you. And you’re like, awesome. Want to get to 10? And they’re like, sure. Like, how do I know it’s going to work? Because it already has. Right? And you can take that. It’s a totally different, totally different frame for the sale.
Okay, and so make your free materials better than everyone else’s paid materials. I heard this from Tony Robbins and I think it’s really true. But I think the real real is that most of your stuff is not better than their paid stuff, and so that’s why it doesn’t work. And so talk about what you really know, which is your specialty, which is your individual thing that you have experienced that no one can challenge your truth. Alright?
And so finally, you want to play games where if you wait, you win. Because goodwill compounds faster than money. Because the longer you can delay the ask, the bigger the ask can be. The longer the runway, the bigger the plane that can take off of it. And so I promise you, and this is, again, gigantic Himalayan grain of salt, with the limited experience that I have doing organic, because I’ve only done direct-to-jugular paid ads, cold calling, you know, affiliate stuff, straight pitching. I’ve only done that, but I can say that this brand is very special to me because I enjoy what we’re building and I’m in no rush to do it. And you have time. And so the longer you can wait and keep walking with people, the longer the compounding works in your favor.
Like, it’s no coincidence that the biggest people in the business space don’t need anything from their audiences. Right? Because I think that that compounding process gets interrupted when you do a hard pitch. That’s my opinion. I could be wrong. That’s my opinion. And so the idea is how can we pack when we sell without selling. Right? And I think in that way, the compounding will happen faster than the revenue would have otherwise increased if you started trying to make the money fast. And so the longer you can delay that, the better it’s going to be. And then you can understand why all these guys play the infinite game of never even wanting to do that right hook. Because it’s like, but next year I’m going to have five times the audience. And then a year later, they’re like, but next year I’m going to have five times the audience. Right? Because as soon as you shoot your shot, you dramatically decrease the goodwill. And so I think that I’ve at least adapted, and this is maybe just a different way of saying it, I know Gary’s got, uh, jab jab jab right hook. Just a personal observation that I’ve had is that you can go give give give, you don’t even have to ask. People will start handing things to you because if you deposit enough goodwill in there, it just starts coming back. And I know that sounds crazy, but like the amount of people that DM you’re like, hey man, can I give you 10 grand for 10 minutes? I’m like, no, I don’t do that. It’s like about 20 grand? Like no, I don’t do that. Right? The amount of times people inbound and they’re like, hey, can I have you on my podcast? Can I have you on my stage? Can I—all these things are happening because you’re not asking for anything and it makes people feel uncomfortable. It like, it makes people feel really uncomfortable. They’re like, how can I buy something from you? And you’re like, you can’t. They’re like, ah. And I’m like, you used to get to three million, then we can partner. Right? But that’s it. You know what I mean? There’s nothing else.
And so I think that if we can make that pivot and have that patience, but like if we’re thinking really big picture, the reason most people aren’t successful is they just can’t control themselves. Like that’s it. It’s impulse control. And so there’s three things. They did this research study that said that ultra-successful people have three common traits. Number one is they have a superiority conflict. They think they’re better than everybody. They think they can do bigger things. Second is that they have crippling insecurity of not being enough. I like that one, hits me. And then the third one is impulse control. So they know where they want to go. They have a wave, they have a way drive to not be a failure, and they stay focused on it because of impulse control.
And so the idea here is if we can do that, we will be more successful. And the reason that most people don’t make money is because they can’t wait 12 months. Like I had this, I have this 18-year-old who is my neighbor, and I said, I’m gonna have you sign a contract that says I want to be a millionaire. I was like, you got to wait five years and you can’t make any money between now and then. Would you do it? He’s like, yeah, I would do it. Every single person can do that. I guarantee you, if you delayed your ask for five years and used to provide a value to people for five years, you’d have a bigger audience than you know what to do with and you’d be a millionaire in five years. Probably happen a lot faster than that. But if you committed to doing it for five years, you would. But guess what? No one’s going to do it, and that’s why most people aren’t successful. And so if we come to these events and you have the models and all the stuff, right, but people still eat cookies when they’re trying to lose weight.
And so it’s a concept of local versus global, which is: there’s a local benefit to eating cookies. You feel better, whatever. The global benefit goes down, though, because you don’t get the six-pack you want if that’s the goal and you’re counting macros, you get the idea, right? And so most people cannot sacrifice local benefit for global. The sales guys don’t want to put the notes in the CRM even though the benefit is the entire organization because it’s a local cost, right?
And so as a side note for operations, for business, operations are supposed to bring global benefit in excess of the local cost. And so when we’re trying to achieve the things that you’re trying to do, right, the local benefit is just make the ask fast. The global benefit is the longer you can wait, the bigger it can be. And so for me, I’m like, why not wait as long as humanly possible?
So I’ll wrap this up. Speak from strengths, share your experiences to add to the body of knowledge. The problem with a lot of the social media stuff and books that are out there now is that the barrier to entry in terms of what it takes to publish content is so low it’s almost not visible. Right? So low. And so everybody can produce content. Back in the day, the only way you produced content was like after 30 years of being a researcher, you’re like, this is my entire life’s work in one book so I can add to the body of knowledge. People are like, wow, thank you for that. And that’s how content was made, right? And if you wanted to do a direct marketing piece, you had to edit it and put it on a piece of paper and look at it every single way and know that you’re going to pay 50 cents for every single person who’s going to receive it and you better be damn sure it’s beautiful. Right?
But people don’t want—like it’s so easy now to publish that most stuff is s**t. Right? Most stuff sucks and is a total waste of time. So just try and talk about the stuff that’s not a waste of time that you actually know. So you can add to the body of knowledge. If you say, hey, this is what I did, consider yourself a mini researcher. Like, these are the experiments I ran in my business, these are the experiments I ran in my weight loss clinic, these are the experiments I ran in my plumbing business. Just talk about the experience because no one can question that.
Second is that teaching on principles is difficult until you’ve achieved a material amount in the field because there are others who will teach you with more depth of experience. It’s very difficult to teach business unless you’re very successful in business because there’s just another person who someone will listen to more. Right? But no one can question what you have done. And if you have done nothing, then do something first and then talk about it. Because not everyone is an expert on everything, but you are unquestionably an expert on your own life, so you can share it.
