Alex Hormozi’s $100M Launch: What Self-Published Authors Must Learn

What if selling your book had little to do with writing? This episode unpacks the real playbook behind one of the biggest launches ever.

📌What’s Covered in This Episode:

• Why Alex Hormozi’s $100M launch changes the way self-published authors must think about marketing.
• The surprising truth about personal branding (hint: it’s not about your personal life).
• How books amplify businesses — and why social media alone can’t.
• The 1000 true fans strategy every entrepreneur should start building today.
• Why “best seller” doesn’t mean best written — and what that means for your next launch.

📚Book Mentioned: $100M Money Models: How To Make Money (Acquisition.com $100M Series) 

🌟Ready to build authority and brand with a book, learn more about our book development service for entrepreneurs  

💛 Thank you for listening in! 😀

P.S. Don’t forget to leave a review! Much appreciated.

Transcript

[00:00:00] What if I told you that the key to selling your book has almost nothing to do with the book itself? I know. I know. As self-published authors, we spend so much time and so much energy and the grueling process of writing a book, and unfortunately. That's not even the beginning. The beginning starts here.

Stick with me because I'm about to share the masterclass that happened over two weeks ago when Alex Hormozi launched his book and sold over 2 million copies in a day. And more importantly, , how you can apply it as a self-published author, as a small business owner, as a faith-driven entrepreneur.

By the end of this episode, you'll walk away with a [00:01:00] practical strategy to sell more books without the frustration, without the burnout, without feeling like you're begging for every single sale. Hi, I'm Priscilla, a business communication strategist, and today we're reflecting on what Alex Hormozi's a hundred million Dollar Book Launch can teach us as Christian women building businesses and writing books. I'll share the lessons I learned, the myths it shattered for me, and the steps that you can take to position your book and your business for success.

Now, this launch was a wake up call when I saw. 2,324,174. Copies sold live at $25 each. My jaw dropped, like that's over $150 million from a nonfiction book, a niche book. Until then, I thought hitting number one was for the fiction giants, for the Harry Potter, or maybe that you had to be like a Shakespeare [00:02:00] to matter.

Nope. A key lesson here was that you don't need magical writing. . You need to understand the value that you bring through your book for a specific audience.

Now, here's where my mindset shifted.

Let's say, the whole process of writing a book, marketing a book, launching a book, let's say that's a hundred percent. I feel that as people who are more inclined to communicate through writing. We spend about 90% of our time on the quality of the book, right?

And we've been taught that's the way, of course the book has got to be good, but let's say, remember I said the whole process, let's say it's a hundred percent, 40% would be spent on writing a really good book. And if that means it takes you two years to write that book, three years to write that book, to bring it up to the quality that we're happy with, that's worth it. But 40% should be spent on writing the book, and 60% should be spent on promoting the book marketing the book. And here's mindset it's [00:03:00] not that writers or artists are broke, maybe it's just that writers don't understand marketing.

For those of us whose best way of communicating is writing, we often tend to be introverted.

I'll speak for myself. I tend to be introverted. I don't want to be on camera. I don't want to see pictures of myself. I don't wanna post pictures of myself. And so the idea of personal brand, I've inched into it, but it took me a long time despite knowing all the advantages of having a personal brand, even then I try to get away with it. Like now, especially with ai, sometimes I use a cartoon avatar, but it's undeniable that a personal brand is the most powerful way to build your business. Brand and personal brand doesn't mean oversharing your personal life. It's about being the face that ties people to the business.

When I watched this launch I realized that all this was possible because of the personal brand that Alex Hormozi had built, and I follow Alex, I've, watched a lot of his videos. I've read his books, a 100M [00:04:00] Leads, a 100M Offers And I realized, I don't know Alex, as a person, I don't know much about him I don't follow Alex because I care about his personal life. I follow him because he consistently delivers business value and that's what sticks and that's what 3.6 million YouTube subscribers agree on. We don't know much about Alex. But we don't need to know much about Alex. And I'm talking about, this is just his followers on YouTube, he's on LinkedIn, X, TikTok.

I don't know if he's on Instagram, but he probably is. , Repurposing the same content in different ways across these platforms, so takeaway number one for me was Lead with you. The business needs a face lead with you. Then tie in the business.

Same thing for self-published authors. People need to know you, lead with you, then tie in the book.

Books Build Brands. This isn't a new, Alex didn't reinvent the wheel. He took what was working and he amplified it with modern. [00:05:00] Marketing strategies for this attention economy that we're in. Think about Russell Brunson

his books, Expert secrets, secrets Traffic Secrets, , built his software brand. ClickFunnels

books are still the most powerful marketing tool. They say trusted source. Authority. An author is an authority, right? Nice. Play on words, evergreen, social fades, but books last. So think of your book as a brand amplifier, not just as a product. The book is what will give you authority.

Now $150 million in a couple hours of a live launch would not be possible without a warm audience. Alex didn't sell millions to strangers. He sold to people who already knew him, who had an expectation of the kind of value that he brings. People who knew whatever he's written, if it's like what he already does, this book [00:06:00] is valuable.

So he was selling to people who had already said yes to him, the warm audience that he had, and then you might say , I'm not trying to sell a hundred million dollars worth of books. Fine, I'm here with you. I see. You still would come to the concept of. 1000 true fans. 1000 people who are totally bought in on whatever you would write about in the book, whatever.

You're trying to create authority about people who've already got so much value from you that buying your book feels. Like a thank you, like you've done so much for me. The least I could do is support you. I don't know about you, but I have so many people that I follow online that if they say they have a webinar, I'm there just because they've given me so much value and I have an expectation and I also have a, gosh, if that's all I could do to thank you for all that you've done for me through your content I'm there.

If they're selling a book, you know what? I'll buy the book as a way to say thank you, that feeling of reciprocity is what you build [00:07:00] up in your audience as you give value to them. Now, this convicted me. Am I waiting until my book is ready to build an audience or am I building now? , So my book has readers waiting.

It's a totally different mindset, so build trust before you ask for the sale. And I know to some people it's my book is $9, or my book is $12. This is the attention economy that we're in, and right now , we're in a period where there is a trust recession.

People don't trust other people. It need not only to be visible. Which means they need to know who you are. They also need to trust you. To have an expectation of this is what you're about and this is the kind of value you bring consistently. So I made this mistake. I went and I felt, like most writers do, really inspired, I had a book in me and I just felt, let me write the book.

I didn't think about who I was gonna sell the book to . I didn't even think about how I was gonna sell the book. [00:08:00] And of course, like most writers, the first reality that you hit after you finished writing your book is you actually need an audience to sell their book to.

If you don't have any attention, if you don't have any trust, everything else is just an uphill climb. Most self-published authors give up, but if the message you have and the mission that you're on is important to you, then what Alex did is the play, and we should all know that marketing is the play of selling books.

So start today. There are platforms that you can use to build an audience, whether it's YouTube or it's LinkedIn newsletters, which I talked about in my previous videos, or it's a substack, X podcasting. Choose a platform that goes well with the way you communicate best.

Use that platform to build an audience. You're not sure what your book is about. Perfect. That's exactly when you should start. Let your audience tell you what resonates with them.

So begin with your end [00:09:00] goal, whatever your end goal is, and then test your assumptions. What you think your target audience would be interested in, and the data and the analytics over a long period of time will tell you exactly , what they're interested in, and then write that book.

Write the book that they would want to read. Now think about that. If you've built an audience , people have an expectation of you. People who are your true fans want to support you, and you've written the book that they want written, literally that is the book selling itself. Proverbs 21 5 says, the plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance. Consistency now leads to fruit. Later. Plan. Be diligent in the process of building an audience. I know that it's.

It will feel like an uphill climb. It's a difficult thing. If you look even at Alex, he's been at this for years. Before he blew up on YouTube. He also had a podcast, I think he was 300 episodes in think about how much time he's put into [00:10:00] his content up to this point where he can have that kind of a launch.

That's the kind of diligence and discipline that we've gotta put to promoting the work that we do and building up an audience that will be ready and waiting to buy a book when it's ready.

It used to be that, , when you wrote the book, people would learn about you from the book. If you think about the old names, Dan Sullivan, Jay Abraham, other people in the business space that we've grown to know because of their books, even Tony Robbins they wrote the book and then we knew them because of their book.

The big takeaway is don't wait for your book to build your audience. You need the audience to build the book. That script has flipped that is what an attention economy has done.

If you start with one platform, show up consistently, deliver value, freely, do that. At your launch, whether it's a big launch or it's a small launch, you will already have that momentum and the amount of time we spend writing books, this work is worth [00:11:00] it to make sure that book gets into the hands of the people that you're trying to serve.

And how that has really amplified his business brand, I think of how much audience Alex has got on social media, as well as his wife, Leila , if he had created more and more content, it would've taken him ages to get the outcome that the book launch gave him.

Literally. We now know acquisition.com and skool.com, basically the same way we know legacy brands in that space of consultancy and business advice. That's what the book launch did for him. And if you think about that, that the book has the ability to accelerate, to amplify whatever it is that your business is doing, whatever your name is as an author.

This method, yes, it's a lot of work. This is not a magic pill. You see how he goes hard. Not only that, even after having an audience, [00:12:00] the practical launch tools that he used, he had one live launch and realized, people are buying when we're live.

So guess what? They did more live launches. He did hours and hours. I think the first one was three hours, then he did another three hours, and then he did another two hours of doing a live launch for this book. He also created a package. Of books that he was upselling for $6,000 where he'd get other business owners to donate

Think about the creativity of that.

He made use of email marketing. Affiliates, paid ads. Typically people, when they've written a book, they do a lot of podcast guesting, and the reason they do a lot of podcast guesting is because they haven't built up an audience, maybe he will do podcast guesting but that wasn't necessary because. He had his audience across several platforms. He could reach out to them through email marketing. And all of these activities were done so strategically. I remember the first email was, I'm inviting you to my live launch register here to attend.

And that was followed by several [00:13:00] emails saying, Hey, if you haven't already registered to come to my live launch. I just wanted to let you know that there's gonna be, five secret guests that are gonna give this much value and then next thing it was, if you attend the live launch , you'll also get this and this, it was done so strategically, that's saying make it so good that the person feels stupid saying no, it literally was you feel stupid saying no,

so from attend my live launch, then I click to register for that and then upsell. I was upsold the book, and the book came with about four or five extra bonuses if you buy the book right away, which I did, and I've received my copy. And then it also gave you the option to say, Hey, if you are a business that would like to make sure that.

Other entrepreneurs get this book in their hands, it would upsell you to, I think, you could buy 200 copies for $5,000 it was so masterfully done done and it was tying in mission of helping entrepreneurs, which is what he has been about the whole [00:14:00] time, helping us his audience.

That he says, Hey, the reason I'm giving you content is to hope that one day when you are a million dollar company, you remember that I helped you to become a million dollar company. And you come and we partner up and we work together. And he's been true to that message from the beginning.

I actually have not yet started reading my book. I got it yesterday, , it came just in time for me to do this so remember, and I learned, this many years ago after I'd written my book and it totally made sense to me.

It says, best seller does not mean best written. It means best sold. And that was Grant Cardone on the 10 X Challenge. And for us, faith driven entrepreneurs, selling is serving it's stewardship. It's building assets today that will keep pointing people back to your message, to your mission. This is the work that if you have something to say in a book, if you have a business, if you have a core message, if you have a manifesto, if you have something [00:15:00] that you want to spread to amplify what you're doing, this is what you need to do.

Write your small business book or call out your people, let your tribe know what you're up to.

, I'd love to help you on that journey with my self-publishing services. And if you want more strategy and encouragement like this, subscribe and join me in the Faithful Founders collective. It's free for the next 90 days.

Thank you for watching this, and I hope you got something out of it. Blessings to you self-published. Others, I wish you. Great success small business owners. I wish you great success.