Spiritual Intelligence: The Hormozi Myth

Salaam!

This weekend, entrepreneur Alex Hormozi broke a Guinness World Record for a non-fiction book launch (I read he sold ~3M copies). This has generated a flurry of hot-takes and has got many entrepreneurs asking: "How can I do that?" This launch has Muslim founders everywhere scrambling to reverse-engineer his strategy.

Unfortunately, "How can I do that?" is the wrong question to ask. The right question is: "What did it take him to get here?"

Copying Hormozi's launch likely won't make you $100M, but it might make you quit too soon.

Here's the spiritually intelligent reframe:

Success isn't about following someone else's proven formula. It's about having the faith to persist until you discover your own.

The Invisible Decades

We all want to emulate the greats. But when it comes to business, trying to emulate Hormozi's launch is like watching LeBron James play one game on TV and expecting to be able to dunk tomorrow. What you don't see are the decades in the gym, the millions spent on recovery, and the team supporting his every move.

Hormozi's launch strategy is simple:

1. Create curiosity and excitement months before the launch date by posting teasers and other hype content.
2. Run ads to get more people to attend the event
3. Offer bonuses to show up
4. Have a network of people who will promote your launch (i.e. affiliates)

Here's the catch:

Pre-launch hype only works if you've been building trust for YEARS, have serious ad money to burn, and have invested millions into a network to promote you. Hormozi has all three. Most Muslim founders don't.

He spent years scaling his ad spend to millions per month, creating content daily, and investing heavily in distribution. That's why he can drop a book and break records. Because he already did the work. But most importantly, this is his THIRD book launch. He's been launching books for about three years. The book launch before this one? It allegedly had 500,000 attendees. The years of planning and invisible work is what brings the majority of the results, not the pre-launch hype.

Another example from the guru blueprint is "ethical scarcity", where you introduce scarcity to create demand and desire for your product. This is how it goes: you're a veteran content creator and entrepreneur. You've built trust over many years and now you try this "ethical scarcity" tactic and it generates 200% more revenue. Amazing! You decide to teach it others. I'm a completely unknown entrepreneur and I have a "bias for action" and I am "implementing" what you are teaching. I go and post "I only have 3 spots. Hurry up before they are gone!". Nobody signs up. Not because I didn't implement the strategy correctly, but because I was missing a critical ingredient: trust. Without trust, no amount of scarcity or other tactics are going to nudge people to buy.

Yet every week, I watch ambitious Muslims destroy their businesses trying to follow these "proven" blueprints. Business is a FAITH game, not a tactics one. If following someone's strategy reduces your faith in your goals, then it's the wrong strategy even if it works for millions of people.

The Guru Industrial Complex

We've become addicted to shortcuts. To "proven" five-step formulas. To the idea that someone else's success story is our roadmap.

The Muslim community is particularly vulnerable to this. We're looking for "halal" success models, so when someone shares their "exact blueprint," we lean in.

Take the image above. It's from a famous YouTuber. I used this screenshot in one of my popular talks "The Spirituality of a Prosperous Business" (you can watch it here)

But here's what these success stories never tell you:

When someone says they made $1.6M in 30 days, they don't mention the five years of relationship building before that. The failed launches nobody saw. The infrastructure built over a decade. The team making the machine hum.

These narratives are dangerous if you are a small business owner with less than $1M in the bank. Because if you copy the surface-level strategies and then your launch fails, you start doubting yourself:

• "Maybe I need to give more value for free"
• "Maybe I just need to create more hype"
• "Maybe I need better copywriting"

No.

The problem is using someone's final chapter as the blueprint for your first.

The spiritually intelligent way to learn from these gurus is to adopt the strategies that they used when they were around the same stage your business is at currently. This is very hard to do because when you are successful, you forget the early days and what exactly you did back then. Don't copy the tactics Google is using today as a billion dollar company, when you are a one-person startup.

Pay Off Your "Ignorance Debt"

The screenshot I shared mentioned Alex Hormozi's concept of "Ignorance Debt" or the price we pay for not knowing what we should know by now. (I had to look it up myself 😂)

But here's the most expensive ignorance when learning from successful people online: their tactics only work if you're selling exactly what they're selling.

Let me explain with a simple example.

Justin Welsh writes about solopreneurship on LinkedIn. He sells a course about solopreneurship on LinkedIn. This is what I call a "straight line": he teaches what he does, and he does what he teaches. Clean. Simple. Replicable.

But here's where it breaks down:

Say you're a real estate agent who wants to use LinkedIn to sell more homes. You take Justin's course on LinkedIn growth. You implement every tactic perfectly. But nothing happens. Why? Because his tactics are designed to grow an audience interested in LinkedIn growth, not an audience looking to buy homes. The strategies that work for selling courses about LinkedIn don't translate to selling real estate on LinkedIn.

Here's another example that's everywhere right now: coaches who coach other coaches on how to coach. (Yes, it's as meta as it sounds.)

Their strategies work brilliantly, if you plan to coach other coaches (on how to coach other coaches 😂 ). But if you're a divorce coach helping people through breakups? Or a career coach helping engineers transition to management? Those same tactics fall flat.

This is why most gurus have only 1-2 wildly successful students while everyone else struggles. It's not that the other students didn't "implement". It's that the blueprint only works if you're building the exact same type of business as the guru.

So the real ignorance debt isn't not knowing the tactics. It's not recognizing that you need your own blueprint.

The real ignorance debt isn't not knowing the latest launch strategy. It's not knowing yourself well enough to find your own way.

The Myth of Linear Success

Success stories are told backwards. We see the outcome and assume a straight line from start to finish. "Here's exactly what I did" becomes gospel, as if success is a recipe you can follow.

But success isn't linear. It's messy, circular, often accidental.

Many clients come to me after having spent time working with the biggest names in their industry. They are often burnt out and frustrated. This is because they were trying to force their business into someone else's framework. They were so busy following the "proven" path that they couldn't carve their own

The truth about those "$1.6M in 30 days" posts? They're not lying. But they're not telling you the whole truth either.

What Actually Works

What actually works for Muslims building businesses isn't what the gurus teach:

Start with service, not hype. Build trust before launches. Let your work speak before your marketing does.

My most successful clients? No big launches. No hype cycles. Just deep relationships, solving real problems, and scaling through trust.

They built their businesses the way the Prophet ﷺ built his community - through genuine connection, consistent service, and patient growth.

This isn't sexy. It doesn't make for viral LinkedIn posts. But it works.

And it requires one magic ingredient.

Building Spiritual Fortitude

The key to writing your own success blueprint? Faith.

What "implementing" really means is: Do I have the faith to do one more iteration to get to my winning playbook?

So how do you build the faith to find your own formula? How do you develop the spiritual fortitude to persist when everyone else seems to be succeeding faster?

Three principles from our tradition point the way:

Tawakkul (Trust) Over Tactics Trust that Allah has written a unique path for you. Your success doesn't look like Hormozi's or anyone else's. Stop trying to hack God's plan with someone else's blueprint.

Sabr (Perseverance) Over Shortcuts The Prophet ﷺ spent 13 years in Mecca before the breakthrough in Medina. Thirteen years of patient building, facing rejection, staying consistent. Your overnight success might take a decade. I often ask my clients: "If you knew that it will take 15 years to reach your goal, but you are guaranteed to reach it, would you still pursue it?". If the answer is "no", you need a different goal.

Ihsan (Excellence) Over Imitation Excellence means doing beautiful work, not copying someone else's. When you focus on excellence in YOUR unique way, success follows.

Your Own Winning Formula

Here's how to know you're on YOUR path (not someone else's):

• Your strategy feels natural, not forced
• You're building on YOUR strengths, not compensating for what you lack
• Your clients come through relationships, not tactics
• You feel energized, not exhausted
• Your growth is sustainable, not explosive

Amateurs copy tactics. Professionals build foundations and the FAITH to play the long game.

The Action Steps

Here's how to start discovering your own formula:

1. Stop Consuming, Start Documenting For the next 30 days, stop reading "how I did it" posts. Instead, document what actually works for YOU. What brings you clients? What feels authentic? What compounds over time? Document what didn't work. Celebrate the "failures" as being one step closer to your success blueprint.

2. Identify Your Invisible Assets What do you have that others don't see? Maybe it's your network from your previous career. Your ability to simplify complex topics. Your credibility in a specific community. Build on these, not on what you lack. Most Muslims struggle because they overlook or undervalue a blessing Allah bestowed upon them ("Which of your Lord's favors will you both deny?" [55:13])

3. Run Small Experiments Instead of betting everything on one big launch, run small tests. Try different approaches. See what resonates with YOUR audience. Let the data guide you, not the gurus. If something exhausts you, even if it makes money, it's likely not your winning blueprint.

4. Build Your Advisory Board Find 3-5 people who've built sustainable businesses (not just had one big win). Meet with them quarterly. Get feedback on YOUR path, not generic advice. Our community is negatively impacted by the generic Islamic advice on YouTube and at mosque. Generic advice gets generic results.

5. Track Leading Indicators Instead of revenue, track: relationships built, problems solved, value delivered, and consistency maintained. These predict success better than any launch metric.

6. Develop Your Own Principles What are YOUR non-negotiables? Your unique approach? Write them down. These become your North Star when everyone else is following the latest trend.

Below Zahra and I discuss the need for faith to build your own blueprint for success. You can watch the video here:

The Real Secret

Hormozi's tactics only work because of what you don't see: A decade of grinding. Failures nobody talks about. Infrastructure built over years.

You want his results? Do his decades of invisible work. Then worry about launch strategies.

But more importantly, recognize that your work might look completely different. Your success might come through deep relationships instead of mass marketing. Through solving one expensive problem instead of selling many cheap solutions. Through patience instead of hype.

The real lesson from Hormozi's success isn't about his launch strategy. It's about his willingness to do the work nobody sees for the results everyone wants.

Your path won't look like his. It shouldn't.

Because when you stop copying and start creating, when you stop following and start exploring, when you trade the guru's formula for faith in your own journey - that's when you discover the success that was written for you all along.

Remember: Allah has already written your provision. No guru's strategy will increase it. No missed opportunity will decrease it.

Your job isn't to copy someone else's path to their provision. It's to walk your own path with excellence, patience, and trust.

The formula you're looking for? It's not in a course or a book.

It's in the work you're willing to do that no one else will see.

What's one thing that works for you that no guru teaches? I read every response.

Peace and blessings,

James