Alex Hormozi glossary

175 terms from the public community list. Search or jump a category. “Lead” here is a person you can contact — not Meta’s Lead event.

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Compiled by fire_Xx for r/alexhormozi. Not official Acquisition.com. Some entries in the list say they are not his. Source on Reddit.

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Cognitive & Identity

Learning: same circumstances, different behavior. If nothing changed, you didn't learn.
Intelligence: the speed of learning. How few reps until your behavior changes.
Confidence: a trailing indicator of competence. "Confidence without evidence is delusion."
Belief: a thought you've adopted as true. Test: can you say *why*, or did you just absorb it?
Ego: the defense mechanism that manufactures unearned confidence.
Humility: willingness to admit a deficit. The precondition for changing.
Character: the standard you hold with no audience. "We fall to the standards we have when no one is watching."
Criticism: data about the critic as much as about you.
Ignorance: a cost, not a flaw. "The most expensive tax we pay is ignorance tax."
Stupidity: not "knowing and ignoring." Inaction on known information is fear, not stupidity.
God: the asymptote of power: zero latency between thought and reality.
Honesty: only provable when someone had a reason to lie and didn't.
Perfectionism: procrastination with better PR.
Comparison: not "the thief of joy," the "ruler of measurement." The judgment you attach steals joy, not the comparison.
Legacy: functionally illusory. You're forgotten within a few generations, so work for the work.
Wisdom: pattern recognition from experience. Predicting the outcome without living it first.
Talent: the starting rate you pick up a skill. Not a ceiling.
Skill: anything trainable through repetition. Patience and honesty included.
Delusion: confidence in an outcome with no evidence behind it.
Arrogance: overrating your ability relative to the evidence.
Integrity: following through on your word after the motivation fades.
Reputation: the long-horizon read on your character. Noisy short-term, accurate over time.
Identity: the story you build about yourself from your own behavior.
Opinion: a view held without evidence.
Fact: a view held with evidence.
Truth: pragmatic. True if acting on it reliably produces the predicted outcome.
Reality: what keeps acting on you regardless of what you believe.
Advice: someone else's experience, generalized. Useful only as far as their situation matched yours.
Faith: acting on a plan before you have proof it works.
Deserve: what you currently have, by revealed behavior.
Insecurity: a persistent feeling of never being enough. Common in high performers.
Fairness: a human social construct, not a property of reality or markets.
Excuses: statements we use frequently to avoid punishment.
Taboo: something society gives permission to hate publicly.
Control: organizing conditions so predicted behavior matches actual behavior.
Virtue: a behavioral skill that can be trained.

Emotional Physics

Anxiety: many options, no ranked priorities. "Solve sadness with knowledge & anxiety with a decision."
Fear: a signal, not a stop sign. "Fear exists in the vague, not the specific."
Sadness/Hopelessness: a *perceived*, not actual, lack of options. Cured by knowledge.
Burnout: not hours worked. The reward-to-effort ratio collapsing as reward cadence stretches.
Laziness: not knowing how to start. "The lazy don't know how to start. The losers don't know how to finish. The legends don't know how to stop."
Motivation: the mirror of deprivation. You want it most when you lack it.
Discipline: a consistent standard regardless of feeling. The override for absent motivation.
Passion: from Latin *passio*, "suffering." What you're willing to suffer for.
Patience: an active state. Figuring out what to do meanwhile, not passive waiting.
Impatience: good aimed at *inputs*, bad aimed at *outputs*. "Impatient with inputs. Patient with outputs."
Happiness vs. Success: Happiness is not wanting more than you have. Success is getting what you want. Opposite poles.
Trauma: not a wound. A punishing event that permanently changes future behavior in that context.
Love: what you're willing to sacrifice to keep it, not how good it feels.
Willpower: unreliable and finite. Change comes from engineering your environment in advance.
Stress: the gap between what you expected and what's happening.
Courage: action with a large certain short-term cost for an uncertain, delayed benefit.
Overwhelm: not knowing what to do next. Solved by sequencing.
Procrastination: swapping a lesser task for the one you know you need to do, because it's uncomfortable.
Envy/Jealousy: wanting the results while refusing the sacrifices.
Fulfillment: liking the outcome you got. Distinct from Success (getting what you wanted).
Boredom: the cost of repetition. Tolerating it separates skill-builders from novelty-chasers.
Distraction: whatever competes with focused action on the one thing that matters.
Regret: the delayed, larger cost of choosing comfort over the right action now.
Forgiveness: letting go of the demand that the past have gone differently. Not absolution.
Friends: people who root for you when you win and make you better.
Peer Group / Environment: the strongest lever on your future behavior. Reshape it in advance.
Decision: same as Commitment. Cutting off alternatives so one path remains.
Choice: selecting one path and accepting everything it costs.
Desire: (Naval Ravikant's, not his) a self-imposed dissatisfaction until you get the thing.
Need / Want: Need is what you'll die without. Want is everything else.
Goal: a binary filter. It moves you toward the outcome or it doesn't.
Dream: an imagined outcome with no execution plan attached.
Vision: the destination. The North Star that guides strategy.
Intention: he deprioritizes it. Judging any single situation, he weighs the observed outcome ("the signal") over stated intention, "100 times out of 100."
Expectations: a self-set bar that, kept high, sets you up for disappointment. "High commitment, low expectations."
Resilience: the interval of time a bad thing affects you. Shorten the interval. (Looser gloss going around: not treating how you feel as an input to whether you act.)
Support: when a person you interact with deliberately lowers the probability of your failure.
Commitment: when you eliminate all other alternatives.
Focus: the measured amount of things you say no to.
Guilt: not living up to your own standard.
Shame: not living up to someone else's standard.
Overthinking: seeking certainty when it isn't necessary.
Pain: signal-noise, not a performance indicator. Feeling bad doesn't correlate with performing bad.
Balance: a myth used to excuse avoiding full commitment.

Business Mechanics

Strategy: allocating finite resources against infinite options. "A big fancy word for priorities."
Leverage: the ratio between what you put in and what you get out. "Volume × Leverage = Output."
Leverage — Labor / Capital / Content / Code: (adapted from Naval) Labor is others' time, Capital is others' money, Content and Code are near-zero cost to replicate.
Volume: sheer quantity of reps. "Volume negates luck."
Constraint/Bottleneck: the single factor capping growth. "Attack the bottleneck, and ignore the rest."
Friction: whatever slows a transaction. "Create flow. Monetize flow. Then add friction."
Arbitrage: the gap between price and real value. "All business is arbitrage."
Risk: smaller than it feels. The real downside is going back to zero. "Most risk is an illusion."
"The Magic"/"The Work": the highest-value task you're avoiding. "The magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding."
Cash Collected: cash in-hand within 30 days. The only real, spendable number.
Rule of 100: one revenue action, 100 reps/day for 100 days before judging the channel.
Business: a vehicle that exchanges value for money by solving a specific problem for a specific person.
Entrepreneurship: acquiring and stacking skills to solve other people's problems for profit.
Productivity: output for the same input. A ratio, not "busy." (Sharper gloss: money out for time in.)
Systems: repeatable processes that let ordinary people produce a consistent result.
Scale: growing output without a proportional rise in cost, or the founder becoming the bottleneck.
Complexity / Simplicity: complexity is the enemy of scale. Simplicity is its precondition.
Optimization: more output from the same input by improving the process.
Work: output produced, not hours spent. Volume × Leverage. (Separate gloss: sacrificing the present for the future.)
Hard Work: doing the unglamorous task regardless of feeling. A chosen standard.
Opportunity Cost: the value of the next-best forfeited option.
Sunk Cost: spend you can't recover, so it should carry zero weight in the next decision.
Asymmetry: a bet where the upside dwarfs the capped downside.
Hypothesis / Experiment: every action is an untested guess, confirmed or killed by results.
Feedback Loop: action → result → adjustment, as fast as possible.
Data: the record of what actually happened. The only reliable basis for adjusting.
Management: getting people to do what they're already supposed to do.
Leadership: getting people to *want* to do what they're supposed to do.
Culture: the reinforced behavioral rules that make values operational, not a poster.
Values: trainable skills, not fixed traits.
Founder / CEO / Manager / Employee: Founder takes the uncapped risk. CEO sets vision, secures resources, removes the constraint. Manager keeps the system running. Employee executes it.
Gross Profit: revenue minus direct cost of delivery. The number that funds growth.
Net Profit / Margin: Net is gross profit minus operating expenses. Margin is profit as a % of revenue.
Power of Zero: working for free early, treating the unpaid rep as an investment in leverage.
Enterprise Value: what a buyer would pay today to own the future cash flows.

Offers, Marketing & Sales

The Value Equation: `(Dream Outcome × Perceived Likelihood of Achievement) ÷ (Time Delay × Effort & Sacrifice)`. From $100M Offers.
Offer: the full exchange: goods, price, terms. Not just the product.
Grand Slam Offer: an offer incomparable to any competitor's. "So good people feel stupid saying no."
Lead: a person you can contact. "That's all." Not a follower, not a view.
Engaged Lead: a lead who's shown active interest. Opted in, replied, clicked.
Core Four (traffic): the only four channels: warm outreach, cold outreach, content, paid ads.
Marketing / Sales / Advertising: Marketing makes you known. Sales converts leads to revenue. Advertising is paid media for a trackable response. (Simpler gloss: letting people know about your stuff.)
Follow Up: "The money is in the follow-up."
Product Market Fit: demand pulling the product out of the business. "Buy, use, tell."
Persuasion vs. Manipulation: same levers, opposite direction. Persuasion serves *their* interest; manipulation serves against it.
Dream Outcome: the after-state the customer wants. Necessary but not differentiating.
Perceived Likelihood of Achievement: how likely the customer thinks *they'll* get the result. Driven by proof.
Time Delay: the gap between paying and receiving. Shrink it with fast wins.
Effort & Sacrifice: what the customer has to do or give up. Strip it out.
Price / Cost: Price is what they pay. Cost is what they give up beyond money.
Pricing Power: raising prices without losing customers. An output of a wide value gap.
Commodity / Differentiation: Commodity: price is the only difference. Differentiation: comparison becomes impossible.
Niche / Avatar: Niche is a segment with a sellable problem. Avatar is the one person inside it.
Scarcity / Urgency: Scarcity limits *quantity*. Urgency limits *time*.
Bonus: an add-on, priced separately, that raises perceived value without discounting.
Guarantee: risk reversal. Shifts the downside from buyer to seller.
Naming (MAGIC): Magnetic reason why, Announce avatar, Give a goal, Indicate a time interval, Complete with a container word.
Lead Magnet: a free, complete solution to an adjacent problem, given away to turn a stranger into a lead.
Warm / Cold Outreach: Warm: people who know you. Cold: strangers.
Paid Ads: buying someone else's audience for immediate scale.
Content: free media that builds an audience over time. The audience is the asset. Hook, retain, reward.
Hook / Story / CTA: Hook buys attention. Story makes it memorable. CTA is the next-step instruction.
Direct Response: marketing for an immediate trackable action. Differs from branding by time horizon, not ROI.
Copywriting: salesmanship in writing. Its only job is to move a reader to act.
Headlines: the ad for the ad. The first line's only job is to earn the second.
Branding / Goodwill: Branding links a name to a positive outcome over time. Goodwill is the banked trust that lets you make a bigger ask later. (Mechanistic gloss: pairing something the audience knows with something it doesn't yet.)
Social Proof: proof that similar people already chose this and were satisfied.
Objection: a reason not to buy. A request for reassurance, not a final no. (Broader gloss: when *they* disagree with you — vs. an **Obstacle**, when *you* disagree with what's blocking you.)
Obstacle: a thing blocking your progress. You're on the offensive against it, not enduring it.
Closing (CLOSER): helping someone who already wants it decide to buy. Clarify, Label, Overview, Sell the vacation, Explain concerns, Reinforce.
Setter / Closer: Setter books the appointment. Closer runs the conversation to a decision.
Churn / Retention: Churn: rate they stop paying. Retention: what keeps them paying.
LTV / CAC: LTV: total gross profit from one customer. CAC: fully-loaded cost to acquire one.
Upsell / Cross-sell / Downsell: Upsell: pricier version. Cross-sell: related product. Downsell: cheaper alternative after a no.
Core Offer / Tripwire: Core Offer: the flagship. Tripwire: a low-ticket offer to convert watcher into buyer.
Referral / Affiliate: Referral: a customer from a customer, free. Affiliate: a customer from a third party, paid.

Wealth & Status

Rich vs. Wealthy: Rich is income (flow). Wealthy is assets and time-control (stock). "Rich people buy time. Poor people buy stuff. Ambitious people buy skills. Lazy people buy distraction."
Poor: consumption > production. A mindset more than a balance.
Asset/Liability: puts money in your pocket vs. takes it out. (Kiyosaki's, not his.)
Status: where you sit in a group's hierarchy. A currency separate from money.
Power: the capacity to direct resources, human or capital.
Influence: the capacity to change behavior through legitimate means, not force.
Authority: pairing yourself with consequences relevant to the observer.
Investment / Expense: Investment: spend now for a greater return later. Expense: spend with no future return.
Liquid Net Worth / Gross Net Worth: Liquid: cash available now. Gross: everything owned, including illiquid — overstates spendable wealth.

Isms & Catchphrases

"Zero to One" / "One to Ten": Zero to One: get a first version working. One to Ten: scale what's proven.
"The Gap" (vs. "the Gain"): measuring against an ideal (Gap) vs. against your past (Gain). Sullivan & Hardy's, not his.
"Reps": repetitions. The currency of skill.
"Season": a bounded stretch given to one priority. Imbalance as a phase, not permanent.
"The Work" / "The Magic": the avoided task that produces results (see the sourced quote above).
"Volume" (the flyer story): do radically more of the raw action. 300 flyers got zero; the problem was volume, not the flyer.
"Iterate": try, fail, adjust, try again, fast.
"Ship": release publicly instead of refining in private.
"Pay the Piper": (old idiom, not his) skipped costs come due eventually.
"Eat Glass": the grind tolerance the work requires. Actually Elon Musk's line ("starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss"), not his — he references the framing but didn't coin it.