The Best Business Book for Early Entrepreneurs to Figure Out What They’re Doing
Lessons from $100M Offers by Alex Hormozi
Every entrepreneur worth their salt has heard of Alex Hormozi, a man who lost everything, not once, but twice, and went on to build multiple multi-million dollar businesses. Alex is able to take what he’s learned about crafting amazing offers, and condense it down into a short, easy read.
One aspect that sets $100M Offers apart from other business books is the free course Alex made to go along with the book (links to both at the bottom). The structure of the book is as follows:
- Picking your Market
- Charging What It’s Worth
- Defining Value
- How to Create a Grand Slam Offer
- Stacking Bonuses
- Taking Advantage of Guarantees
- Using Scarcity & Urgency
- Creating Top Tier Names
The stories and examples Alex uses to teach these lessons are wonderful, and I would highly recommend you pick up $100M Offers to get the full experience. That said, here are the main lessons from each chapter (both the book and the course) I picked up on during my read.
Picking your Market
Overall, this section was about laying the foundation for your offer. If you don’t have a good base to start with, it’s going to be a tough time.
When considering a market to participate in, it’s important to first and foremost look at what type of market it is. Is it a shrinking market, neutral (normal) market, or a growing market? You’ll want at least a neutral market.
There are three (I would argue four) eternal major markets that every product and service fits into.
- Health
- Wealth
- Relationships
- (Happiness)
From here you niche down, and the more specific your niche, the more you can charge. You want to create something for a specific person, that solves a specific problem in a specific way that overcomes their greatest objection.
Charging What It’s Worth
In summary, what you charge can tell the customer a lot. Don’t just look at competitor price, price a little less, offer a little more, and call it good. Instead, your goal should be to price your offer to be as high as possible, but you still provide MORE in value than you charge.
A potential customer should stop and think “wow, this is expensive, it has to be on a totally different level from every other product/service.”
On top of that, if you have the customer involved in the process, they will be more invested in it. It’s the IKEA effect, people like and are invested in what they put work into.
What you pay and invest in a product will determine how you value that product.
Defining Value
When considering an offer you create, there’s a specific equation Alex uses.
(Dream Outcome * Perceived Likelihood of Achievement) / (Time Delay * Effort & Sacrifice) = Value
The goal here is to make the bottom of the equation zero; make the pain and time investment as little as possible. In theory, you can create infinite value this way.
How to Create a Grand Slam Offer
This section is the real meat and potatoes of $100M Offers, as such I’m not going to go too in depth into it. If you want to get a full picture of how to create a grand slam offer, then pick up the book.
In essence, the main lessons from this chapter appear in a series of steps.
- Identify the dream outcome: a specific person gets a specific outcome in a specific time period without some big hold up.
- List all the perceived problems a customer might have.
- Shape those problems into a series of possible solutions.
Stacking Bonuses
Alex gives a bunch of ideas on how you can use bonuses to make your offer much more appealing. There are two big ideas he presents in this section. One of these ideas is you should present your offer as one core piece with four bonuses, as opposed to just one big thing. Psychologically, people like to think they are getting more, so getting five things feels better than getting one thing.
The second big idea is to make the value of your bonuses greater than or equal to the value of your core offer. When customers see the value of these bonuses, that makes them believe that the core offer must be absolutely incredible.
Taking Advantage of Guarantees
The idea of utilizing guarantees to make your offer better is something I never even considered. However, after reading this section, it’s amazing how you can use a guarantee to improve the sales of your offer. There are four main types of guarantees you could take advantage of.
- Unconditional Guarantees
- Conditional Guarantees
- Anti-Guarantees (No Guarantee)
- Performance Guarantees
By clearly stating your style of guarantee, and explaining why, you can actually make more sales. Think of a guarantee as a way of removing risk for your customer. Often, people won’t use these guarantees, so long as you provide the value you promise. Sure, you may have a slight increase in refunds, but the net profit you’ll make is almost guaranteed.
Using Scarcity & Urgency
You’re probably already aware of how much people value limited time items. They like to be part of something, or they experience FOMO at the thought of not getting the new one time run of their favorite product line. Scarcity alone can serve as a driving force for almost any offer, no matter how bad.
Look at toilet paper during Covid, people were willing to spend hundreds of dollars for a jumbo pack. Look at diamonds, they have an artificial scarcity, since the De Deers corporation was able to create it. Look at Chanel perfume, they make one or two bottle of a product, then ONLY sell them at an in person store.
Similar to this, if you have a limited time deal, people are more likely to jump at the occasion.
Creating Top Tier Names
The final topic Alex discusses in $100M Offers is how to create the best names you can for your offers, your deals, your bonuses, your guarantees, really every aspect of your business. It’s a surprisingly simple process based on the acronym MAGIC.
- Magnet: Make a magnetic reason
- Avatar: Announce the avatar (the specific person the offer is for)
- Goal: Give them a goal
- Interval: Indicate a time interval
- Container: Complete with a container word
You don’t have to hit every aspect of the MAGIC system when coming up with a name, but it’s especially useful when naming programs and promotions for advertising. An example of this is, “Free 21-Day Mommy Makeover”.
In Summary
I would consider $100M Offers to be one of the best business books you could read. Alex stacks it to the brim with easy to understand information, and actionable steps. If you want to pursue entrepreneurship, or even if you want to grow in whatever job you currently have, $100M Offers is an incredible resource that will change the way you create your offer and how you pitch that offer.
If you’re interested in picking up $100M Offers, there is a link to it below.
If you’re interested in picking up $100M Offers, click here!
(Amazon affiliate link, I get a little kickback from this)
If you’re interested in the free course that goes with $100M Offers, click here!
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