How I Wrote A #1 Bestseller with $0 and No Publisher

Summary

• My Book's Success and Why Storytelling Matters: My book "100 Million Dollar Offers" sold over 200,000 copies in its first year, purely through word-of-mouth, without a publisher or advertising campaign, even before I had an audience.
• Importance of Books Over Businesses: I believe the books I've written will be my most proud legacy because they have the potential to outlive me and help more people. That's why I dedicate 20-25 hours each week to writing.
• The Power of Storytelling: Telling stories is the most influential tool because it educates and entertains, changing people’s brain waves, making them suggestible, and allowing you to influence behavior and belief systems effectively.
• Writing a Book with Purpose: Before writing a book, define the problem you are solving. A good book should be a complete solution to a narrowly defined problem. The key is serving the audience rather than aiming for personal profit.
• Big Ideas Take Time: It takes me the longest time to refine the big idea of my book – zooming in on the exact problem I want to solve and ensuring every part of the book serves to address it.
• Storytelling Framework: A story should include setting, character, desire, struggle, eureka moment, victory, and resolution. Using all five senses and "showing, not telling" brings stories to life and keeps them engaging. Choose details that matter to the story.
• Making Stories Interesting: To make a story interesting, increase the stakes and highlight the struggle. The elements of newsworthiness, like recency, impact, prominence, proximity, conflict, unusualness, and update frequency, also make stories more compelling.
• My Process for Writing and Editing: I ideate, write, and continuously refine my draft, striving for simplicity and clarity. I target a 5th-grade reading level for accessibility. Apps like Hemingway Editor assist in simplifying language.
• Receiving Feedback and Revising: After I draft a book, I share it with trusted readers who give honest feedback. Then, I use that to refine the book further.
• Discipline and Endurance in Writing: Writing a book requires significant work – I spend about 1,000 hours on a book. It gets harder the longer you work on it, but endurance is key to prune and refine the content to its best form.
• The "Leads" Book Structure: My upcoming book on leads will cover the process of getting leads in simple, actionable sections. Like my previous work, it will exclusively focus on solving the problem at hand – getting more leads.
• My Aim to Write a Book a Year: I have a goal to write a book annually while managing my other commitments. My writing advice is intertwined with practical applications for marketing, selling, and content creation strategies.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest starting with the power of storytelling in your small business, entrepreneurial journey, or personal growth. Use stories to share your experiences, making them not just educational, but also entertaining. Make sure to include the setting, character, desire, conflict, a 'eureka' moment, and resolution. Remember, use all five senses and show, not tell, to bring your stories to life.

Before you dive into writing or content creation, clearly define your purpose. Ask what problem are you looking to solve? Focus on delivering a complete solution to that problem. This will make your book or content extremely valuable to your readers or audience.

When writing, aim for simplicity and clarity. Use tools like Hemingway Editor to help simplify language and aim for a 5th-grade reading level. This will make your content accessible to a broader audience.

For editing, cut down on sentences that don't add meaning, use shorter words and sentences, and take out adverbs unless necessary. If it's complex for you to explain, it's tough for others to understand – simplicity is key.

Seek honest feedback on your draft from trusted individuals who will tell you the truth. Use their critiques to refine and improve before finalizing your content.

Remember that creating compelling content, whether it's a marketing copy or a book, takes persistence and effort. Be disciplined and patient as you develop and curate your message.

Lastly, focus on one big problem to solve with your content at a time. For a small business, it could be getting more leads. Break down that problem into simple, actionable steps or "buckets" and address each one thoroughly with practical advice, ensuring that every part of your content aligns with solving the core problem.

Through storytelling and purpose-driven writing, you can influence beliefs and behaviors effectively while providing immense value to your audience.

Quotes by Alex Hormozi

"If people aren't sharing it on their own, then it's not worth promoting because it's not good enough"

– Alex Hormozi

"The most powerful ability in the world to influence other people is the ability to tell stories"

– Alex Hormozi

"A good book is a complete solution to a narrowly defined problem"

– Alex Hormozi

"The vast majority of books that are written right now are not written because they want to serve the audience they're written because the author wants to make money from the book"

– Alex Hormozi

"If you can't make something sound simple, it's because you don't get it not them"

– Alex Hormozi

Full Transcript

just crossed its one year anniversary it sold over 200 000 copies with no publisher no advertising campaign I launched it before I had an audience it is Alex from other here it was truly off of Word of Mouth just launched a brand new book it's a 100 million dollar offers 100 million dollar offers and so people read the book and shared the book you need to create Grand Slam off if people aren't sharing it on their own then it's not worth promoting because it's not good enough I think that when I die the thing that I will be most proud of is not the businesses that I've built but the books that I've written I think the books will outlive anything else and I think that they will help more people that's why I spend right now about 20 to 25 hours a week every week on my book most authors pretty much only do that they're right for four or five hours a day and then they end their day for me I write for four or five hours then I start my day and so I wanted to do one Deep dive video into my writing process the most powerful ability in the world to influence other people is the ability to tell stories that's because you can both educate and entertain with stories it literally changes people's brain waves when they're listening to a story and they become more suggestible so I'm going to break down the elements of Storytelling how to edit a story to make it better how to increase the stakes that make it interesting to a reader and how to do it in such a way that you're actually breaking someone's beliefs that you can actually influence how they behave and once you have that ability you can use it to sell you can use it to educate you can use it to teach to reshape someone's beliefs you can change someone's character you can give skills like there's endless ways and it's the most effective way to communicate to other people that there is if you want to write a book the way that I outline these things is what's the point of writing this book to begin with what is the problem that I'm solving the vast majority of books that are written right now are not written because they want to serve the audience they're written because the author wants to make money from the book accolades whatever most books are not worth reading when writing and Publishing a book became easier was about the 1960s from that point going forward the amount of books that were published you know has exploded 1.6 million books are written per year the reason people publish has changed but I believe that great writing comes from a place of wanting to add to the body of knowledge and when you do that then it allows to compress five years into three hours or four hours for somebody and that's where a book becomes valuable next is kind of like how do you come up with a big idea and then after that I'll talk about the editing stuff from a big idea standpoint this is what actually takes me the longest period of time which is narrowing down the focus of the book to a single problem to be solved I have to answer the question very truthfully what do I want someone to get from this book the first book offers is people don't know what to sell and so that's the first problem somebody has before they can make money is they have to know what they're actually going to sell someone which is the offer and so that's why I started my book series there the next problem is they don't have anyone to sell it to they need leads and so the idea is that when someone's going to meet somebody else I have to think like where does my book come out in the wild just saying like oh I read this great book you should read it some people read that but where I think it's best is where someone's like dude I wish I had more leads people were like oh if you're suffering from that you have to read this book because now it's a solution to someone's problem the problem with most books is that they don't actually solve anyone's problem because they basically name hundreds of problems and don't completely solve any of them so I would rather very narrowly Define the problem and then solve it completely a good book is a complete solution to a narrowly defined problem and so what is the problem that we're solving and then what are the ways that I would think about solving the problem usually it's going to be three to six big buckets that are going to fit for solving a specific problem once I have those buckets I'm going to think what are the experiences that I've had that have shaped this belief that I have about this like why do I think there are these three to six buckets it's like well this is what happened in this time that's what shaped this part this is what happened this time this would shape that part when I saw the charity event at Arnold Schwarzenegger's home that we were invited to I saw scarcity in action about how are they able to sell these things that were never normally worth more than ten thousand dollars for a hundred thousand dollars there was all these other factors at play and so it was a very good story for me to transfer like why scarcity is important there's lots of different Frameworks for trading stories I will give you the one that has been useful for me you have a setting which is where this is happening you have the character the person who's doing the doing you have the desire which is the thing they want you have some sort of struggle why they can't get it you have some sort of Eureka moment that changes things achieving the Victory and then some sort of resolution they talk about this as the heroes two Journeys but not all stories have errors that have two Journeys but the externally internal and you want to tell both the external is what you can see with your eyes if you were in the room the internal is what you'd have to experience as the person emotionally and see we want to weave both of those together in the story and so someone might have the victory but it might feel empty and so it's like we want to tell both sides of that there's two kind of rules of thought that I use one is I want to use all five senses so I talk about I Smell What I Hear What I see what I can touch how things feel like I could feel the back of the chair against me my back was sore because I've been sitting for hours so I could set the setting that way by kind of describing rather than telling number two is you want to show rather than telling so I'll give an example that Stephen King uses in his book on writing which is a great book instead of saying Cheryl walked in she was his ex-wife he might say something like he struck the spot on his finger that was still bleached from where his wedding ring used to be you show the situation to the reader rather than telling them and that is also true of great copy of great marketing of great ads is that you want to demonstrate rather than saying it well then what details do you include because I could spend an entire book to describe this room but if I just said there was a pelt on the wall and it's made of wood and there was a view of water and pine trees you probably have an idea of what kind of place this is if you want to be selective about the details that you're choosing to call out because otherwise you're just wasting time now if the Pelt that I have on the wall in my mind's eye is a deer and in your mind is a buffalo does it change the story and if the answer is no then we don't need to go in more detail on it you want to be Vivid in your description about the things that matter for me I've always had stories heavily ingrained in book because I want to bring the experience that taught the lesson with it because then it gives context to why the framework that I introduced in that chapter is useful so what makes a story interesting I like to think of it as one main thing which is stakes and struggle I can give you a simple story I was at home I was hungry I couldn't find any food I realized I had my phone and I ordered ubereats ubereats arrived I ate I was satisfied that is a story it's not a very interesting story but it is a story if I tell that same story and I were to say I was hungry I'm a diabetic if I don't eat I could die and there was no food in the house as I was rummaging around my vision started to narrow I started getting cold sweats and I was like am I going to be able to get food before I pass out my family's out of town they're not going to be able to find me and so I started having thoughts about like is this how they're going to find me my body on the floor what are my kids going to think all of a sudden I created stakes in the story The Reason game shows are inherently interesting is that they literally put money on it so that there are Stakes that's why why those exist imagine you were watching a bunch of poker players play and the chips were meaningless like Stakes is what makes things interesting so there was a textbook that my buddy Dr Kashi also sent me to create better ads write better copy and ultimately write things that are more interesting what are the factors of newsworthiness and so if you think about newsworthiness it's just what are things that make things interesting and so there were seven components the more of these components that you can tie into a story The more of a story it is and they literally even talk about stories in the news like what's the story the first one is recency how far away the event was to the thing so if you think about you know hopping on Trends as fast as possible when you're telling stories the recency with which the thing occurred to when you're telling the story makes it more interesting the second one is impact of the event so if there's a story but it has no impact on the reader or The Listener it's going to be limited which is why it's on the job of the author to a select the stories that they're going to tell and then make sure that they're bridging why this is important for you as they're telling the story and then they tie it to the action items especially if you're teaching that you want someone to take as a result of that the third is prominence like if Kim Kardashian sneezes it becomes interesting because of how prominent she is and so if you can involve characters that have prominence in a story then you make the story more interesting in and of itself the next one is proximity so it's close to homeness if you will if I tell you a story of a house that's burning down it might be kind of interesting but if I told you it was your neighbor next door it's probably much more interesting to you if you have an ad and you're marketing to a local market the closer you can get the headline if it says rather than like Baltimore Maryland it says Towson Maryland which is a sub suburb or whatever they're going to be much more inclined to listen to the next thing that makes something interesting is conflict whether that's natural or whether it's between people we're here recording this video and a man with a gun walks in all of a sudden this got way more interesting and so it's because there's conflict there's tension and there's unresolved there's mystery the next one is how unusual is this thing is there something odd or bizarre or unique about this particular situation or story like if you see something that you expect your brain doesn't say oh let's pay more attention to this because it matches the patterns that you expect and see the idea is that you want someone to cast a pattern or expectation on your story and then all of a sudden you shift it and they're like whoa and then their brain will divert resources towards the story because it's not matching the patterns that they already had in their mind which means they needed to create attention to reconcile the conflict between what they expect and what is reality and the last one is the amount of times you can update this is a little bit more around news but it's like how many times can you update someone on the same thing right that's why news stories love giving updates oh we're pressing news right from the crime scene when you're telling a story it might not be always able to do that if you're fixed in a story setting you don't have to have all of these things but if you have two three or you know of these things in one story it makes it a much more interesting story hey guys the much awaited sequel to 100 million dollar offers is 100 million dollar leads it is coming out in the next 12 months realistically probably six months if you want to get on the early bird list because last time we sold out in less than an hour so if you want to get on the early bird list and just make sure that you have a guaranteed copy ready for you four distribution so you're gonna use it in getting more leads in your business go to acquisition.com anywhere and just opt in and then you'll get automatically added to that list that we can send you the link the moment it launches once you have that you have a way to tell a story now it's like okay well then how do I bridge that into a wireframe for a book and so for me my general rule of thumb is that I just put stories in where I feel like it starts to get heavy I want to deliver as much of the things they need to do in their business and right when I start to feel like it's heavy I zoom out and I create a story that creates more context and we dive back in I have my big problem the supporting arguments that lead up to that single thing and then I have the stories about how I learn each of those things to fill in the blanks for that book and then the framework for each chapter now once I had that I have a general idea of how I want to go about solving that problem everyone has different writing processes for me I go as far as I can until I realize that I have a logical inconsistency or an inconsistency with my own experiences that would prove my theory or model wrong at that point this is the part where most people don't want to do it I go back to the beginning I adjust my assumptions and then I restart the book and I write it again and I usually get a little further and then I realize that something is wrong with the model and the bigger it is the more I have to adjust the book and start over again models have to be two things they have to be useful and they have to be valid there's too many things in life that you don't want to ReDiscover and redo the work so your brain creates these mental shortcuts these mental checklists that you go through in your head a lot of of them are not documented so all the framework really is is documenting the checklist you already go through there's always a process everyone goes through to make a decision as simple as they may be which serial am I going to grab the one that's closest to me you know what I mean like it could be as simple as that there's a framework that you use and it is useful now the question is how valid is it and the validity of a framework depends on how many different circumstances it can be applied to and also still work the very valuable Frameworks like equals mc squared apply in every one that we have found to date which is what makes it so valid when I'm testing a framework I know the situations it does work and so then I start testing it in new situations seeing if it's still valid and if it isn't valid I go back to the original framework and say how would I need to adjust this so it would incorporate both and then I tested another situation and another business situation until eventually I get a framework that I can't find a way that it's wrong the longest process for me is ideating all the pieces that are going to be in the book The Next longest process is actually writing the first draft from there I go through my heavy editing of going from 12th grade language to third grade language with more pictures my goal is is that when someone reads the stuff that I have that they spend as much of their mental capacity on consuming the concepts and not translating the words into things they understand the average American reads somewhere in the neighborhood of fifth to seventh grade depending on where you read which means half of Americans read below that there's a free app called hemingwayapp.com that literally is just a pace box and when you paste your words into the box it highlights it and says this is too complicated adverb passive if you want to train yourself to be a better writer using it gives you immediate feedback because as soon as you change it the color changes and so when you talk about changing people's behavior having something that immediately gives you feedback when you make a change is the best way to reinforce Behavior quickly and so I think it's one of the best teaching writing tools that exists it's so simple you'll be amazed at how much better your writing comes out so if you have a paragraph and you can eliminate a sentence and the paragraph's meaning stays the same eliminate it if you can use shorter sentences versus a long sentence it is better to use the shorter sentence if you have a shorter word it is better to use a try to eliminate adverbs whenever possible really whenever possible like whenever you're like I'm really not sure still trying to eliminate it most times when you see an adverb it's because you did not use the right verb I walked quickly it would be much better to say I ran I always use Simple tenses so rather than like would have liked to I just say wanted or wanted to if you can't make something sound simple it's because you don't get it not them from there I go and send it to four to eight of my like ideal readers people whose opinions I value but don't hold me in high enough esteem that they're not going to tell me the truth so they're like hey I had questions here this didn't make sense or the sound of the contradiction or something else whatever and so they send me back their notes again I use Stephen King because he's just like my hero for writing but he's like if you get lots of different feedback for everyone then you did a good job if everyone's saying the same thing he's like you probably should change it once I get the feedback from those readers I create what would be considered my third and final draft then I send that to an editor for like grammar typos Etc and then at that point I have what I would consider my finished book I spend a thousand hours on a book roughly and a lot of people can't comprehend that like level of work which is also why most people can't make good stuff people think that writing a book is like just literally getting the word count to a book size and then slapping a cover on it and shipping it which is why there are so many bad books there's this visual that Stephen King gives that I think is like the best visual and it gave me hope about writing he said writing is walking uphill with a bag of rocks where you keep adding rocks the higher up the hill you go so the longer you've been writing something the heavier it feels he's like you just have to have the endurance to be able to go through the hard work pruning through the writing and killing The Darlings we're like I spent so much time on the section but it shouldn't be in the book with this particular book I went through eight full drafts so it's about 600 pages of writing to create what is now 200 pages of version 8 of the book so with the leads book I can tell you the sections of the book are understanding how to talk about leads get leads get other people to get you leads get even more leads do it those are the sections of the book right like that's very simple and then within each of those subsections is the different types of ways you can collect leads and so but all of them aligned that single point which is how do I get people more leads if this thing that I'm writing does not apply to that you take it out I'm shooting for a book a year we'll see if I get there but like that's what that's my like mental back of napkin goal is you know I still have to like run all the companies and make these videos and stuff so if you took some takeaways that you can write into your stories into the content that you make into your marketing into your advertising into the stuff you use to sell people's things you should check out my content video of how we gain 1.2 million followers in six months just using a standard step-by-step content strategy which I break down in all the detail and the stages that you can apply them within your business right now