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A couple of things that took me a long time to figure out. Um, there's this very, there's these two opposing forces of like make good [ __ ] and then make lots of [ __ ]. That you have people on both sides. I
Alex Hormozi shares his social media strategy for 2027, focusing on balancing quality and volume using Elon Musk's manufacturing principles.
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Key Takeaways
- Balance quality and quantity to achieve 'qualium' in content creation.
- Question and remove unnecessary steps in your content production process.
- Optimize for the highest return on time invested, considering opportunity costs.
- Focus on the core message and substance rather than production polish.
- Use Elon Musk’s manufacturing principles to streamline digital content creation.
What the video covers
- Alex Hormozi discusses the balance between creating high-quality content and producing a high volume of content, coining the term 'qualium' for quality volume.
- He introduces a five-step process inspired by Elon Musk's approach to manufacturing, adapted for digital content creation.
- Step one is questioning the requirements of the content creation process to identify unnecessary steps.
- He emphasizes deleting non-essential tasks, such as color grading, unless proven to add significant value.
- Simplification or optimization is key to getting the most output for the least input, considering opportunity costs.
- Hormozi stresses focusing on the substance of content over production quality or aesthetics.
- He advocates for accelerating timelines and improving efficiency by removing waste and unnecessary complexity.
- The strategy encourages raw, authentic content that prioritizes message over polish.
- Hormozi shares personal experiences and examples to illustrate the effectiveness of this approach.
- The overall goal is to maximize content output without sacrificing meaningful quality.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to the balance of quality and quantity
- 01:07Overview of Elon Musk’s manufacturing principles
- 02:13Questioning content creation requirements
- 03:04Evaluating the necessity of color grading
- 03:45Deleting unnecessary steps and fear of removal
- 04:41Focusing on content substance over production
- 05:39Optimizing for most output with least input
- 06:42Accelerating timelines and improving efficiency
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
tend to be on the make lots of [ __ ] category. Um, but these are two apparent extremes that sit where the magic is in the middle.
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And so we've referred internally to this middle spot as qualium, which is how do we create quality volume. And if you guys haven't read this book, it recently, I think it recently came out. It's called, uh, The Algorithm. It's from
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Tesla's former president who kind of reimagined some of their stuff. And basically, it's Elon's approach to manufacturing anything, right? And so if you think about what content creation is, it's a manufacturing process. It's digital manufacturing, but you're taking
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a raw input of just like recording some video and then there's an output which is going to be a post on social media or multiple posts on social media. They're going to get views, likes, shares, leads, etc., right?
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And so the five steps of Algorithm and I'll walk you through them. Um, I made this mandatory for all the people who report to me because this is the process that I, I've, I first heard about
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this two years ago, uh, from some interview that Elon did and I was like, "Man, this is really good." Uh, and they finally came out with a book on it. So, let me just walk you through it and then we'll get into content
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questions, all right? So, the first step is question the requirements and I'll give you an example. So, I say, "Okay, why does it take?" And the great, the first great way to know that something is taking way too long is to say, "How
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much actual time are you working on the thing?" So, whether this is client work, uh, or this is like you're on, you know, you're doing home services and you're working on a project. Whatever it is, like there's a certain amount of work
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that, um, that has to be done, right? Now, let's say the total time on task or total, total time that the work is being done is say 10 hours, right? But all of a sudden you're like, "But then why is
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it taking us a week to get this delivered, right? It should in a perfect world go from they sign and then 10 hours later they get." Right? So everything that's outside of 10 hours is waste from a business perspective
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because it's basically uncaptured potential value. All right. And so the idea when we asked the first step is when we question the requirements is like why must these things happen in this order? Why are we doing all these
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requirements? Why must it take this long, etc., right? And so with the questioning of the requirements, one of the things that came up I was like okay. They're like, well one of the things that we do in this, these 10 hours for example is
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that we color grade. Right? And I was like okay. Uh, do we think color grading even [ __ ] matters? And if we look at some of the best videos that I have they weren't color graded and there's some
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absolute bombs that are color graded. And I'm like okay. So how much time is this?
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And is it a requirement? Who decided that we must color grade everything? What, what, what god on the throne of YouTube and Instagram said that color grading was super important? The answer is there wasn't really one. Right? So we
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remove color grading from our, from our process step. And it's like what else can we cut? Right? And so the idea is once you figure out all the requirements that exist, we have to question the requirements and I'll give
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you the three step questions that I asked. This is not Elon's. Which is what does that mean?
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How do you know that? So what? Right? So we have to color grade. Okay.
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What does that mean? It means we have to do all this [ __ ] to the video. Okay. Now that you say that, so what? Do we have any evidence? Right? That this is going to do anything to the video? No,
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we have no evidence. All right. So why should I care? There isn't. And so when I question the requirements I answer ask those two questions. What does that mean?
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How do you know that? And so what? Right? Once we have that it's like boom.
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That's the first thing. When you have the answers to all those questions and requirements and you say okay. Well let's just delete a [ __ ] load of stuff.
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And one of Elon's rules of thumb is we should delete so much that we have to add stuff back. Which is a great litmus test because everyone's always afraid of deletion because everyone's afraid of like messing something up. But you can
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always add stuff back. It's very unlikely that in a process especially when you're building something that, um, an irreversible door. You know what I mean? It's not like you're going to blow up a machine you have or you're going to
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like, you know, one of your editors going to disappear from the planet. No, it's like the step, the step in the process that we can, we can add back if we want to. Let's just see what happens.
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And so when I first started doing this, you might have seen this video that I posted on YouTube which was, um, it was like if you're broke, watch this or something like that. Um, which I guess that's every [ __ ] video on
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YouTube, but whatever. I won't rant on that. Whatever, I'll let that go. But it was me on a plane and I did it with an iPhone. And I did it that way because I was so angry, let me
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honest, I was, I was a little peeved at the team because they were like, "We have to do all these things." And thankfully almost all that team is not with us anymore.
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[laughter] So, and so when we did the video, right, and we posted it, it became a mando one out of 10 video because the thing that mattered is the stuff in the [ __ ] video, right? And so everyone wants to
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to major in the minors, right? Which is part of the reason that I'm doing these raw videos like this 'cause like it was never about the [ __ ] production, right? And some of you guys are worried about your makeup and for the girls,
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right? Or the lighting or to be fair, this is an epic background, so this is probably a little off. But like most of the time my background looks absolute dog [ __ ] and is either, you know, blurry
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in my Death Star of a production center, which I also hate, but, um, or it's in my office, which looks horrible, right? And so my point is this is that like the thing that matters is the stuff inside.
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It's the stuff inside of the content. The content is the container, right? The stuff inside is what matters. And so if you don't have the stuff, like focus on the stuff. That's where the quality comes from. The volume is like how much
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stuff I'm going to put out. All right. So number one, what, what question requirements? Here's our big list of [ __ ]. Number two, we delete the stuff that doesn't matter. We should delete so much that we have to add stuff back
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later. Three is simplify. Another way of saying that is optimize. What do we get the most for the least? So even though something, um, might give us a return, let's say color grading gives us a return, I'll just make it up. Um, and
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let's say we can prove that, which we can't. But let's say we can prove it.
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Okay. Um, if we can prove it, is it worth it? Right? Which is a separate question. Is it worth it? So, we can get, um, let's say, let's say the total thing takes 10 hours. Okay. Let's say four of
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those hours are color grading. All right. Is it 40% of the quality of the output?
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No. Is it 5%? Maybe. Is it worth 40% of the costs? My argument, no. I would rather because we have to put the opportunity cost. If I had, if my team had nothing else to edit, then it would make sense to take the
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extra time. But they have so much other stuff to edit and it would make more sense for us to do two videos or one and a half videos at 95% than one video at 100. All right. So, hear me out on that.
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After simplifying or optimizing most for the least, then you go to step four, which is accelerate. How do you pull up timelines? I'll give you my, my version of doing this when I'm in a meeting.
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I like to finish meetings with who, what, when. So, it's my very simple management algorithm. That's about it.
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Everything else you can learn from Layla, but these three, this is what I do.
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And so, at the end of our meeting, I'm like, who, what, when, right? Who is going to do what by when? Very, very simple, right? And here's where if you want to go to the 201 level, whenever someone tells you the by when, you
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actually ask the question I started with, which is okay, uh today's Monday and you want to do this by next meeting next Monday, how much actual time is this going to take?
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Time on task. And so, people will be like, uh I think it'll take me 4 hours.
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It's like, okay. What are you doing in the next 4 hours that is more important than this?
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A lot of times the answer is nothing. In which case, great. Do it do it by end of day.
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And let me know. And so, if you ever want to speed up the movement of a team, increase communication cycles. So, that means instead of going end of week, go end of day. It's 7x is the speed of a
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team. You will be amazed at how much more you get done. So, who, what, when?
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So, who's going to do what by when? And then when they tell you when, you ask why can't you do it earlier? Now, to be clear, if someone says I got this other [ __ ] that's going on that you told me to
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do, right? You're like, "Oh yeah, I did tell you to do that." Then it's like, "Great, we'll do that after that, right?" And then that way that constant accountability just drives the whole thing forward. And so, I promise you if you want a project
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to go faster, ask for updates every day, twice a day, five times a day, every hour. I'm telling you, like, I've done this with vendors, too. So, if I'm like "Hey uh hey, I need this thing." And they're
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like, "Okay, cool, we'll get it to you tomorrow." I'll just call them in an hour and be like, "Hey, what's our progress update on that?" And they're like, "I I said I'll get it to you." I'm like, "This is very important to me.
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Like, can we can we please get this done sooner?" And then you call them again in an hour. They're like, "Dude, I'll [ __ ] get it done." It's like, "Right." So, I will force the accountability on a vendor if I need to
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pull [ __ ] forward. And so, that's fourth step is how do we pull up cycles? How do we how do we take what the expected timeline is and then reduce it?
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And then, and this is the big this is the big one which AI has destroyed for everyone.
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Step five is automate. Which is okay, how do we get the machines to do it?
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Now, here's the here's the uh here's the magic behind this. Because the access to AI has become so prevalent and so easy for everyone, everyone thinks in the first step the last step first. They try and automate [ __ ] that should not be done to begin
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with. With like cuz the only thing that is more efficient than automation is elimination. It's choosing not to do something is more efficient than automating it because it wasn't worth to do it to begin with. And so, the easiest
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litmus test for many of you people uh you people for many of you is though I am using AI, are we getting more views? Though I am using AI, are we getting more leads?
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Though I am using AI, am I making more money? And so, that's the very easy litmus test to tell you whether or not this is actually makes sense.
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And so, I will promise you that Claude or, you know, Anthropic or, you know, OpenAI etc.
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Claude and Anthropic are the same company, but, you know, company's doing the billing, right?
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Um Gemini, whatever. If they're billing you, they're billing you whether what you built was useful or not. And so if you're noticing your tokens cost going up month over month over month, but your money's not going up month over month
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over month, maybe you should consider that you're actually just blowing money on [ __ ] that doesn't matter.
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And so you maybe should start start with that process of the algorithm. All right? Question the requirements, delete all stupid requirements, simplify aka optimize get the most for the least, speed up cycle cuz how do we do it
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faster? And then finally then and only then do we bring up automation. Because then you're you're automating something that has already been maximized for effectiveness and now you're just getting the last bit of effectiveness out of it, which is
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getting the robots to do it for you. All right. Um with that being said, uh we've we've worked on our content a lot. This is the year of the trust economy. Um I think I called this at the end of last year and
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I feel like I'm more right. I think it ages like a fine wine. Um we're in we're in the we're in the show-me times, not the tell-me times.
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All right? And so that means that we need to you need to demonstrate expertise in as many varied conditions as possible with as many diverse avatars or rather the avatars that represent most broadly uh the types of customers that you serve
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solving the specific problems that they have in the way that you want to solve them that gets them the outcome they're looking for.
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All right? That is content from an education perspective that drives commerce. That is content that drives commerce. That is views that turn into cash. Right? If you're just getting you're like doing memes or doing entertainment, there's nothing wrong
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with that. It's just that you're just a media business and eventually going to sell eyeballs to an advertiser, right?
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But if you want to sell from your own [ __ ] right? Sell your own [ __ ] You want to sell community own school. You want to sell you want to sell fencing services. You want to sell you want to
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sell home design. You want to sell solar. Whatever the hell you're selling, education is the door, right? That is how you gain influence. That is how you gain authority. That you give people instructions that they can follow and
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good [ __ ] happens for them. Now, in order for them to follow your instructions, there's a couple things that have to have to happen.
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Number one, the instructions have to be easy to follow, right? Which means you got to talk in the in words that other people understand.
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All right? Number two, they have to believe you that they should that they are worth following.
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So, if we decrease the comprehension, we decrease the cost of at least understanding what to do. Right? Then we have to increase conviction that they're going to get the payoff, which makes the risk or the gamble of taking those
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actions worth it. Right? And so, this is why the proof in this trust economy world is not in the pudding, but it is the [ __ ] pudding.
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Right? The reason that proof is what matters more than anything is because tell me how you're going to grow my e-commerce store except you've never run an e-commerce store.
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Right? Tell me how you're going to teach me how to sell except you've never sold anything. Tell me how you're going to help me make content, but you don't have a personal brand.
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Right? Like it's just the big obvious [ __ ] And I get these questions all the time like, "How do I build a personal brand?" It's like, "Just do shit." You will You will get a bigger personal brand by doing [ __ ] in reality for 5
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years and then starting your personal brand. Now, to be clear, I think if you want to document along the way, as long as you state the facts and tell the truth, you're good you're good in my book. Right? But what happens is people
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are like, "How do I How do I counter imposter syndrome?" I'm like, "Bro, imposter syndrome is you feeling ashamed for lying." Oops, there we go. Is you feeling ashamed for lying because you are misrepresenting the truth. Sorry, I'm trying to adjust this thing so it's
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not [ __ ] up. Here we go. Um is you misrepresenting the truth, Jesus. This is why we can't have nice things. Hold on.
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Yeah? Yeah? Ah, [ __ ] good enough. See if that works. All right. Um And so, I'll give you an example of this whole imposter syndrome thing that you should probably just abolish from your your mental whatever.
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Here it is. So, I had a guy who came up to me uh at at one of our workshops in Vegas and he was like, "Hey, man. Um how do you deal with imposter syndrome?" I was like, "All right, what do you What
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do you sell, man?" He said, "I help agency owners uh get booked appointments." And I was like, "Okay. uh, how do you do it?" And he's like, "We run outbound teams." I was like, "Okay, that makes sense. I get
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it." I was like, "So, what are you dealing with imposter syndrome for?" And he's like, "Well, you know, I had an agency, but the agency didn't really work that that well. Uh, I didn't really make any money with it uh, because I knew how to get
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customers, but I I couldn't really keep them." I was like, "Okay." Still trying to figure out where the imposter syndrome coming from.
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And he was like, "Well," I was like, "Are you pretending like you're good at running an agency?" And he was like, "Kind of." And I was like, "Yeah, bro.
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That imposter syndrome is lying. So, yeah, you should feel bad about lying. Okay? I was like, "But if you told the truth, it probably would be even more effective. If you just said, 'Hey, I had an agency. I sucked at running an
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agency. I was really good at selling agency clients. And so then I said, well, why don't I just do that for agency owners who are actually good at delivering for clients?' And then this business was born. Everyone would be
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like, 'Oh, that actually makes a lot of sense.' And so what you forget is that the truth is the most compelling thing out there from a marketing perspective.
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The reason that state the facts and tell the truth is the number one thing that we say at acquisition.com in marketing is because it sells the most. The truth sells the most. I will say this again.
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The truth sells the most. The truth converts. All right? Above everything else. But, it has to be the whole [ __ ] truth.
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All right? It has to be the whole truth. And so he can't say uh, just half of the story. You have to say all the [ __ ] where you look bad, too. And then people will believe the
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[ __ ] where you look good. That's the That's the whole game. Right? I got asked a bunch of times throughout my career. They're like, "So, should I think I was on Diary of a CEO." He's like, "Alex, should people talk to
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you about happiness?" I'm like, "No. That's not I don't have authority there. All right? I'm the like, "Hey, you're trying to figure out how to scale your business?" That's me. You're like, "Trying to how to figure out how to sell
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shit?" That's me. I can help you there. I got a lot of proof there. Real quick, I'm going to show you the exact 10-stage roadmap from zero to 100 million plus that less than 1% of companies finish I've now done multiple times. And so I
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can say with a lot of confidence that these are the stages as head count increases that you need to get through.
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And I broke each of these down by eight different functions of the business, what the constraint feels like, like what are the symptoms of it when you're going through it, and then what steps we actually took to graduate. And we've
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done this across software, physical products, uh service businesses, brick and mortar, all of this, and it works.
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And it's my gift to you. It's absolutely free. And so the link's in the description, but you just go acquisition.com/roadmap.
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Just enter your info and it'll spit it right back to you, all free.
Topics:Alex Hormozisocial media strategycontent creationElon MuskThe Algorithmcontent optimizationquality volumedigital manufacturingcontent production2027 strategy
