Alex Hormozi is a prolific business writer and marketer whose two books have sold over one million copies combined, and who has built a social media following of over nine million. This episode is a deep dive into his writing process, philosophy, and how he thinks about creating content that lasts.
Hormozi’s Writing Process
He writes in long, uninterrupted blocks of six to eight hours, only on days with nothing else on his calendar. He optimizes his entire schedule around protecting these writing days, which he calls “seasons of no.”
He outlines each book by creating the table of contents first, which he considers the hardest part. Once the outline is set, the writing follows a consistent structure: a narrative story, a short description of the concept, plentiful examples, and his personal “Alex notes” at the end.
He writes words first, then goes back to refine language, adds rough doodles as placeholders, and only creates final illustrations at the very end to avoid redoing artwork when paragraphs get moved around.
He keeps an Excel sheet of over 600 personal life stories to draw from, writing things down because he fears forgetting lessons he’s learned. He describes writing as a way to crystallize both memory and insight.
His editing process involves many drafts—he did 19 for $100M Leads, including a full restart at draft 12 after feedback from early readers. Most of his editing is “crunching down”: removing words, simplifying language, and cutting anything that doesn’t add substance.
When incorporating feedback from test readers, he follows a Stephen King method: if one person flags something small, he clarifies it; if many people flag the same section, he considers deleting the entire section and rewriting or removing it altogether.
Discovery vs. Crystallization in Writing
He describes his process as roughly two-thirds discovery and one-third getting out what he already knows. The exciting part is encountering apparent conflicts between two ideas that both seem true, then finding the nuance or framework that reconciles them.
He evaluates ideas through two lenses: validity (is this true, and in how many situations?) and utility (is it useful, and does it change someone’s behavior or decision-making?). He’s willing to abandon his own ideas quickly if they don’t hold up, but he’s “married to the truth” of getting it right.
He uses MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) thinking to break down problems. For example, content strategy can only be more, better, or different—there’s no fourth option. He constantly tries to “break” his own models; if he can’t, the framework is solid.
Book Marketing and Cover Design
For $100M Leads, he A/B tested the cover, title, and subtitle extensively. He tested variations like “$100M Promotion,” “$100M Advertising,” “$100M Marketing,” and “$100M Leads”—leads won. He tested “more people” vs. “strangers” in the subtitle, and “strangers” won 71% to 29%. He even tested whether to include “how to” at the start, and the longer version won.
He optimized the book for strangers who don’t know him, since existing fans would buy regardless. The goal was to make the value proposition clear in a split-second decision.
The back cover functions as a mini sales letter, with blind bullets that translate each chapter into a specific benefit. Specificity in the bullets (e.g., “six-part ad framework”) builds credibility and signals deep expertise.
Writing for Video vs. Books
YouTube videos are much closer to his writing outlines than to his final book prose. A fully scripted video would take five full days to write, so he uses bullet-point outlines instead and speaks more freely on camera.
For video, the hook, packaging, title, thumbnail, and first 30–60 seconds are where the biggest leverage on performance lies. He looks at high-performing videos in other industries and asks whether there’s a business version of that packaging.
His storytelling style is similar across video and books—colloquial and conversational, as if telling a friend. He follows the Stephen King advice of introducing a gun early if you don’t know what to do with a story.
”The Pain Is the Pitch”
He frames persuasion as having two weapons: promise and pain. The key insight is that you sell at the point of greatest deprivation, not greatest satisfaction. If someone just ate a steak, they don’t want another; if they’re starving, they’ll buy two.
Pain happens in moments. Effective copy captures specific, concrete moments of pain (e.g., wearing a coverall to the beach to hide your body, avoiding photos, chafing between thighs). The more specifically you describe someone’s pain, the more they trust you can solve it.
He believes many copywriters overemphasize promise. If you can describe someone’s pain accurately enough, the prospect assumes you can deliver the solution—the promise becomes almost unnecessary.
Thinking in Frameworks
He approaches business like an engineer, trying to break reality into simplified formulas. His core belief is that if you can predict an outcome by knowing all the variables, you can control the outcome by manipulating those variables.
He reduces customer acquisition to four activities: warm outreach, cold outreach, paid ads, and content. Everything else (like affiliates) requires doing one of these four first.
He believes in the 10x/1000x principle: putting in 10x more effort into a book (through drafts, refinement, and quality) can yield 100x or 1000x the results through word of mouth. In an increasingly connected world, returns are winner-take-all—the best in the world get to serve everyone.
He designs his books to be evergreen by back-testing concepts against history. For example, the value equation (people want things fast, easy, and risk-free) was true 2,000 years ago and will be true in the future, so he avoids platform-specific references.
The Table of Contents as a Living Document
His table of contents is not a summary—it is the outline and structural backbone of the book. He spends more time on it than on any other part of the process.
The evolution of $100M Leads shows how messy this process is: the original through-line was “leverage,” which he almost entirely cut. Early drafts contained entire sections (on media, platforms, audience selection, promotions) that were removed or reduced to a single paragraph.
He uses doodles and visual frameworks early in the process to work out conceptual maps, then cuts away relentlessly. His filter is always: “What does someone do as a result of this?” If it can’t be operationalized into changed behavior, it gets cut.
The final table of contents emerged from many iterations of drawing, rewriting, and pruning. What looked like a core concept in early drafts sometimes ended up as a small section, while a single line in an early sketch became half the book.
Audience and Reputation
He thinks about audience in terms of “deep vs. wide.” Wide content is useful only for beginners; deep content is useful for everyone regardless of skill level. His goal is to create content that is both deep and wide—valuable to beginners and advanced practitioners alike.
The strategic genesis of his content is to build the most valuable business brand for business owners, which creates proprietary deal flow. If more people want to do business with him than he can possibly work with, he doesn’t need to worry about negotiation tactics or having the most capital.
He places the book ask in the middle of the book, not the end, on the logic that if someone has read halfway, they’ve received enough value to be willing to leave a review.
The #1 Creator Mistake
The biggest mistake creators make is building new products for their existing audience instead of building more audience for their product. Each new product splits attention and creates multiple under-resourced businesses.
The better strategy is to find one product with recurring revenue or high repurchase rates, then keep doubling down on audience growth through advertising, content, and paid reach.
He is a stickler for written words—everything published under his name in written form (emails, books, copy, captions, tweets) is written by him. His team can only use transcribed video content for captions. LinkedIn is the only exception.
The Business Model of His Books
He sells his books cheaply and spends enormous time making them high quality. The books function as timeless assets and gateway drugs into his ecosystem—content is the first touchpoint, books are the second, and advisory events or investments are the third.
He estimates that 99% of people will never buy anything from him, but that 99% creates his reputation. So the books need to be exceptionally valuable even to people who never become customers.
He generally dissuades entrepreneurs from writing books unless they genuinely love writing and are willing to do the work. A book written in 12 weeks is probably not very good. How you launch a book shows how good you are at marketing; how well it sells two years later shows how good the book actually is.
Hormozi’s Ideal University Writing Class
He would structure it in four sections: (1) defining terms, (2) clarifying the objective of writing and why it matters, (3) teaching the rules of writing, and (4) extensive practice with fast feedback.
His rules of writing: use as few words as possible, use simpler words, vary sentence structure (short-short-long), and prioritize maximum comprehension over vocabulary concision.
He would use Twitter/X as a teaching tool because its constraints force concision and provide fast feedback. He would also use the Hemingway app for real-time feedback on sentence complexity and adverb usage.
Students would practice under strict constraints (e.g., write an entire paper in one page) with freedom of topic but strict adherence to rules. The bulk of the course would be repeated practice with immediate feedback.
