Hormozi's "Painless Solutions" Principle

Hormozi was on fire last Q&A. He outlined a business principle that feels revolutionary to me. I can't stop thinking about it. I'm calling it the "Painless Solutions" principle.

According to Hormozi, starting a successful online business can be simplified to two steps.

Step 1: Find a promise people want. Test promises you think you can deliver until people say "I want that". Then clearly communicate this promise in your advertising and about page, using a simple "I help {Person} to {Promise}" framework.

Step 2: Solve every painful problem your customers experience as you fulfil your promise. Doing this is well is where everyone fails, but is where the fortunes are created.

"The reason your community is hard to sell, and why your members churn, is because your solution to their painful problem is more painful problems."

Meet Bob. Bob promises weight-loss. People want his promise. One of Bob's customers tells him they have a painful problem that they don't know what food to eat. Bob creates a 3 hour long training detailing the optimal nutrition, with homework to spend 12 hours researching different diets, then advises them to go get blood work done and start weighing all their food. Bob replaced a painful problem (I don't know what food to eat) with another painful problem (I now have to spend 15 hours figuring out what to eat).

Many people think solving their customer's problems come from addition. "I need to add another training, I need to add another Weekly Call, I need to hire more customer support". But adding more things to your product means more things your customers needs to do to solve their problem. Hormozi says "you're not overwhelming your customers with value, you're just overwhelming them". It’s not “how can I make this better” it’s “how can I make this less bad”.

“Removing frustration and pain is guaranteed to improve your product. You can’t miss with those things. They are easy wins” - Sam Ovens.

The entrepreneurs that win make painless solutions to painful problems.

They experience the pain so their customers don't have to.

They eat their customer's complexity.

Here's how to put this theory into action:

Write your promise (I help {Person} to {Promise})

Write all problems your customer needs to solve for you to fulfil your promise

Delete all non-essential problems

Simplify all essential problems