From: alexhormozi

To achieve significant wealth, defined as approximately $100 million, with limited existing skills and experience, one strategy is to focus on building a “boring business” in services, particularly those around the body, such as a nail salon or lawn care service, or even dentistry [00:20:20]. These types of services are less likely to be disrupted by AI because people often value the human exchange more than a robotic solution [00:46:27]. An example of this is CocoFit, a brand that failed because it tried to automate personal training, missing the human accountability aspect that clients seek [00:52:12].

Core Entrepreneurial Skills

Three fundamental skills are crucial for anyone looking to make a lot of money:

  • Building: This refers to developing products and services [03:45:34]. The goal is to create products and services that are so good they retain customers and even attract new ones organically [03:50:00]. Many businesses fail because their products are mediocre, leading to quick cancellations [04:03:00].
  • Selling: This encompasses all aspects of marketing, promotion, and converting prospects into customers [03:36:00]. Selling is the main driver of business, as it involves making people aware of what you offer [11:05:00]. Marketing becomes a “commoditized skill” when the product itself is excellent [04:27:00].
  • Leading: This involves the internal aspect of getting people to do what you want them to do at scale [03:30:00]. A strong leader can attract the talent necessary to scale a business, especially as the founder’s own expertise becomes a bottleneck [04:37:00].

Application of Skills: Rapid Income Generation

A practical example of using these skills to generate substantial income quickly, even with no capital, involves identifying a local business, understanding its service, and selling that service at a bulk rate [02:17:00]. By fronting the marketing capital, working leads, and negotiating a large volume of services at a discounted rate, one can create a significant profit margin while the original business handles the service delivery [02:22:00]. This strategy allows for making substantial money (e.g., $100,000 in a month) by focusing purely on marketing and sales [03:01:00].

The Importance of Skill Development and Learning

Skill development is paramount. A “meta-skill” is a skill that helps you acquire more skills, such as learning how to learn [17:32:00]. The ability to learn quickly, retain information, and implement it is a crucial meta-skill [17:42:00]. Success is often predetermined by how thoroughly one breaks down the skill requirements for a task [18:13:00].

Teaching as Training

Teaching can be thought of as training, where the goal is to change behavior [20:26:00]. This involves understanding what behaviors to reward, punish, or extinguish [20:52:00]. Rewarding behavior, even for small successes, reinforces positive actions and leads to longer-lasting behavioral changes compared to punishment, which often only works while the source of punishment is present [23:04:00]. This principle is applied to training, such as getting sales teams to adhere to a script [12:00:00].

Restructuring Education

If an education system were restructured, the focus would be almost exclusively on meta-skills, teaching people how to learn, read, write, speak, and do math [21:16:00]. The goal would be to ensure 100% mastery of a skill before progressing, rather than arbitrary age-based grading [21:37:00].

Identifying and Solving Business Constraints

Business growth is often limited by its weakest link, or “constraint” [25:31:00]. By laser-focusing on and solving that single biggest limitation, a business can grow to its next natural constraint [25:52:00]. Business problems should be evaluated based on their likelihood of impact on sales velocity, customer lifetime value, or risk [33:32:00].

The Power of Brand

A brand’s purpose is to elicit a desired behavior in its target audience by making positive associations between the brand and known positive concepts [28:16:00]. A strong brand leads to more customer loyalty, fewer price objections, and increased referrals [32:23:00]. Ultimately, branding is about teaching an audience to behave in a certain way, analogous to how traffic lights teach drivers to stop or go [32:31:00]. It’s considered the “ultimate cheat code for business” because it simplifies other aspects like sales and marketing, but it takes time and patience to build [32:58:00].

Scaling Service Businesses

Scaling service-based businesses, especially coaching or consulting models, is challenging because the value is often tied to individual expertise [45:05:00]. To scale, businesses can either:

  • Productize: Narrow the solution and productize it to the greatest degree possible, allowing even those without prior expertise to implement it [45:41:00]. This requires intense focus on a specific problem and target audience [47:10:00].
  • Focus on Talent and Culture: The quality of talent directly impacts growth [47:24:00]. Attracting and retaining top talent through a strong culture and incentives (like profit sharing or equity) is crucial [48:06:00].

Becoming Irreplaceable

For service providers, becoming irreplaceable involves:

  • Delineating Value: Clearly communicating all the small tasks and processes that contribute to the main outcome [48:40:00]. This helps clients understand and value the price [49:29:00].
  • Targeting Larger Clients: Working with significantly larger companies (e.g., Fortune 500) reduces the likelihood of them internalizing services due to the high cost and complexity [49:33:00].
  • Extreme Niche Focus: For smaller businesses, deep expertise in a narrow niche makes you invaluable. For example, becoming the best marketing agency for chiropractors in New York creates strong client retention [50:17:00]. This requires discipline to say “no” to clients outside the ideal criteria [54:06:00].

Building Trust and Credibility in Sales

While hard-closing tactics exist, building a strong brand is the most effective way to build trust and credibility, often making aggressive tactics unnecessary [01:06:26]. If a brand isn’t established, traditional methods like finding common ground, being relatable, and deeply understanding the customer’s pain points are essential [01:07:00]. For show-up rates, it’s a combination of many small efforts (e.g., quick responses, personalized videos, open loops) rather than one “silver bullet” [01:07:52].

Selling Emerging Technology

When selling emerging technologies like AI, the focus should be on the outcome or the vacation, not the plane flight or the technology itself [01:14:01]. Customers care about solving their problems and receiving value, not the underlying technical complexity [01:14:02]. Many AI businesses fail because they lack business acumen, claim to be real AI when they are not, or disregard fundamental business principles [01:14:27].

Hiring for Unknown Skills

Hiring for skills you don’t possess is one of the hardest aspects of business [01:19:12]. A strategy involves:

  • Interviewing for Information: Talk to many candidates (e.g., 10-20 experts) not just to hire, but to learn what the role should entail and the nuances of the expertise [01:19:51].
  • Data-Driven Assessment: The quality and quantity of data a person collects around their department are directly proportional to their skill [01:20:28].
  • Technical Co-founder or High-Level Operator: For technical or operational roles crucial to the business, a co-founder or an experienced, high-level operator with a real stake is essential [01:19:55]. This person can vet talent and ensure the quality of the “product” (the people providing the service) [01:00:54].
  • Outreach: The best people usually already have jobs, so direct outreach (e.g., via LinkedIn) is often the most effective way to find them [01:02:02].