alex hormozi's best business advice: 10 tactics from 10 podcast episodes

the tactic: you don't need a brand-new idea. on Ali Abdaal's Deep Dive, the episode summary puts Hormozi's view plainly: "the best way to start a business is to look at what other people are doing, and do it better." a market that already pays for something is proof. a new idea has none.

try this week: list 3 businesses already making money in a space you know. for each one, write down one thing customers complain about (check reviews, Reddit, comments). pick the complaint you could fix. that's your angle.

source: "Alex Hormozi – How He Built A $150 Million Empire And His Best Business Advice," Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal (Oct 2022). listen

the tactic: on Impact Theory, Hormozi splits knowledge in two. declarative is knowing about something. procedural is knowing how to do it. smart people pile up the first kind and skip the second. his fix: "go and get money from a stranger." it doesn't matter what you sell. the point is to "get a dollar from a stranger to actually walk through the process." you'll hit every snag you didn't know about (payment processor, bank account, entity) and fix them for real.

try this week: sell something, anything, to one person who doesn't know you. a service, a template, an hour of your time. the goal is one real transaction, start to finish.

source: "Alex Hormozi on Why Smart People Stay Poor and How to Build Wealth in 2025!" (Part 1), Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu (Jan 2025). also on YouTube as "How To Make So Much Money It Feels Illegal." listen

the tactic: most people quit an outreach channel before they've given it enough volume to work. the Rule of 100 is Hormozi's fix: pick one main action (outreach, content, ads) and do 100 of it a day, so you build skill and results through sheer reps. the episode description puts it simply: "Want to perfect a skill? Do it 100 times every day."

try this week: pick one action that gets you leads. do 100 a day for 5 days. that's 100 DMs, 100 minutes of content, or a set daily ad budget. track one number: replies.

source: "The Rule of 100 | Ep 248," The Game with Alex Hormozi (Nov 2020). listen

the tactic: on My First Million, Hormozi reframes selling: "you're not selling, you're helping someone make a decision that's going to help themselves." when a prospect pushes back, don't argue, because in arguments no one wins. get curious. his example: a prospect says her husband won't approve, and he answers, "why wouldn't he? huh, that's so interesting. tell me more about that." then he asks questions until the prospect works through the objection on her own.

try this week: write down the 3 objections you hear most. for each one, write a curious follow-up question (not a rebuttal). use them on your next 5 sales conversations.

source: "From Broke At 26 To $100 Million Net Worth By 31 (Alex Hormozi Interview)," My First Million (Feb 2022). listen

the tactic: in his interview with Lewis Howes, Hormozi says small business owners price like small business owners: it costs a dollar, so they charge two or three. his warning: "if you're already starting on like a 50% gross margin, it's very, very hard to make money." his rule of thumb for service businesses is gross margin above 80%, roughly five times what it costs to deliver. if delivery costs $100 a month, the floor is $500. it also makes you ask a better question: how do I deliver this value for less?

try this week: take your main offer. add up what it really costs to deliver each month (time, tools, people). divide price by cost. under 5x? write down one thing you'll cut from delivery, or one price you'll raise.

source: "Fear of Being Poor, Validation, and Wealth (w/ Lewis Howes) Pt. 2 – Oct. '22 | Ep 488," The Game with Alex Hormozi (a rebroadcast of his School of Greatness interview). transcript

the tactic: on Diary of a CEO, Hormozi says plenty of founders are using AI "to do a lot of dumb things really fast." his test is one question: "are you making more money?" his example is a company paying about $11,000 a month for 11 virtual assistants. it spent $350,000 trying to replace them with an AI system, which is more than three years of their pay. the process worked fine. it just wasn't what was holding the business back. in his words, it was "a process they could automate, not that they should automate it because it's not the thing that's limiting their growth." they needed more customers.

try this week: finish this sentence: "we'd grow faster if we had more ___." leads, sales calls, fulfilment capacity, whatever it is. then look at every tool or automation project you have going. pause any that don't touch that blank.

source: "The Man Who Made $100M Before 32: The Secret Was To Stop Letting Them Control Me | Alex Hormozi," The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett (Jul 2026). listen

the tactic: in a solo episode of The Game, Hormozi defines focus by what you turn down. his tweet sums it up: "a focused fool can accomplish more than a distracted genius." the instruction is blunt: "I need you to take that whole list and pick one thing and then erase the rest." then work only on that one thing until it's done, with a timer running so you can see how long it really takes.

try this week: open your to-do list. circle the one task that would move revenue the most. delete or hide the rest until it's done. guess how long it'll take, start a timer, and compare.

source: "Lack Of Focus Is Keeping You Unsuccessful | Ep 787," The Game with Alex Hormozi (Dec 2024). transcript

the tactic: on The Iced Coffee Hour, Hormozi says shrinking the time between deciding and acting is one of the strongest traits of high producers. his test for any decision that's stuck: will I get more information to make this decision? if the answer is no, then make the decision. waiting a week for information that isn't coming just slows the whole business down.

try this week: write down every decision you've been sitting on. run each one through the question. anything that gets a "no" gets decided today, before you close the tab.

source: "Alex Hormozi: The #1 Strategy That Will Print MILLIONAIRES In 2025," The Iced Coffee Hour (Apr 2025). watch

the tactic: on Modern Wisdom, Hormozi points out that our brains spot threats much better than they spot upside. so he uses that on purpose, borrowing Charlie Munger's "invert, always invert." instead of only asking how to grow, he asks: "how would I absolutely destroy this business in the fewest possible moves?" then he lists those moves and does the opposite. he says some of his best ideas came from this.

try this week: set a 15-minute timer. write the 5 fastest ways your business could die (a key client leaves, the ad account gets banned, the top seller quits...). pick the scariest one and take one step this week to protect against it.

source: "41 Harsh Truths Nobody Wants To Admit – Alex Hormozi #952," Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson (Jun 2025). watch

the tactic: in a later Modern Wisdom conversation, Hormozi says the hard thing that matters most isn't ice baths. it's noticing outside forces that push your behavior against your goals: "if you're like, I want to start a business, but I am afraid of what other people will say, then it means that we are allowing those other people to control your behavior." once you say it that plainly, you realize how much power you've handed over. he makes the same point on Diary of a CEO: you have to decide whether you care more about your future than about what other people think of it.

try this week: write down the one thing you're avoiding (posting, pitching, raising prices). next to it, write the names of the specific people whose opinion you're worried about. usually it's two or three people, not "everyone." then do the thing anyway, once.

source: "33 Brutal Truths To Stop Wasting Your Potential – Alex Hormozi," Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson. watch