I’m a big fan of simple business principles. Not necessarily because they’re easy to follow, but because they remind you of what actually matters when you’re building something.

There is so much business advice online. New strategies, new platforms, new ways to make money, new things you supposedly need to be doing. Sometimes, you get so caught up trying to figure out what you should be doing that you forget the basics.

That’s why I love these 10 rules from Alex Hormozi.

They’re not complicated. Some might even sound obvious. But I think they’re worth thinking about, especially when you’re building a business and trying to figure things out along the way.

Here are 10 of his rules that I absolutely love, and why they make so much sense to me.

1. Not every customer is your customer.

Hormozi has said this time and time again: sell to the rich.

The idea is that wealthy customers generally have more purchasing power. They can afford expensive products and services, and they’re often willing to pay more for quality and convenience.

When you target customers with smaller budgets, you might find yourself lowering your prices just to get the sale. You could also end up doing more work than you originally agreed to because the customer wants to get as much as possible out of what they’re paying.

Of course, not every wealthy customer is easy to work with, and not every customer with a smaller budget is difficult. But your target market does influence how you price, package and deliver your services.

The only problem? Everyone is trying to sell to the rich.

So, if you’re going after customers with money, you need to give them a good reason to choose you. You can’t just charge premium prices and expect people to pay. You have to be exceptionally good at what you do and deliver something worth paying for.

2. Customers care about the value they receive, not how hard you worked.

A lot of people base the value of their services on how much work went into delivering them.

You spent 40 hours on a project, so you think you should charge more. You stayed up late, missed a few nights of sleep and worked through the weekend. Surely, the customer should appreciate all that effort?

Well, not necessarily.

Hormozi’s point is that customers care about the outcome, not how difficult it was for you to achieve it.

Instead of competing on how many hours you spend doing something, think about how you can deliver a better result, in less time, without compromising quality.

That’s a much better way to think about value.

3. Your standards determine what you’re willing to accept from yourself.

I love this one because I think your business is, to some extent, a reflection of you.

If you’re disorganized, you might find yourself allowing disorganization in your business. If you’re poor at communication, you might not notice how much poor communication is affecting your relationships with customers, suppliers or employees.

The things you tolerate in your own work can easily become the things you tolerate in your business.

Hormozi’s principle is to hold yourself, your team and your output to standards higher than what your customers expect.

For example, your customer expects a functioning website. But why stop there? Why not make sure it’s easy to navigate, thoroughly tested and actually pleasant to use?

Your customer expects you to respond to their emails. Why not communicate proactively so they aren’t constantly wondering what’s happening with their project?

Your customer expects you to meet a deadline. Why not build systems that help you deliver consistently?

I don’t think this means becoming a perfectionist or making impossible demands of yourself and everyone around you.

It means deciding what good work looks like and refusing to make poor quality your normal.

4. A small team of excellent people can be more valuable than a large team.

I think a lot of businesses make the mistake of assuming that growth automatically means hiring more people.

You get more customers, so you hire more employees. You get more work, so you expand the team. Before you know it, you have a large team, a huge payroll and more people to manage.

But is a bigger team necessarily a better team?

I’d rather have five excellent people who know what they’re doing than fifteen people who constantly need supervision and aren’t delivering their best work.

Hormozi argues that businesses should focus on hiring better people, paying them better and reducing the overall number of employees where possible.

5. Overthinking and endless planning can become expensive.

This is one I think a lot of us need to hear.

Execution of a mediocre plan can teach you more than months of planning the perfect one.

You can spend months researching how to start a business, comparing platforms, studying competitors, watching YouTube videos and planning every little detail.

And then, six months later, you still haven’t started.

The problem is that you can become so informed about something that you start confusing information with experience.

You know what other people are doing. You know what tools they’re using. You know what strategies are supposed to work. But you haven’t actually done enough to know what works for you.

You learn things by doing them. You make mistakes, get feedback, discover what needs to change and try again.

Planning has its place. I’m not suggesting you throw caution to the wind and make careless decisions.

But at some point, you have to stop preparing and start executing.

You can spend 10,000 hours thinking about doing something and still be an amateur at it. Experience comes from actually doing the work, learning and improving.

Hormozi’s emphasis on speed is a reminder that the faster you execute, the faster you get feedback and the faster you can improve.

6. Your customers can tell you things your business plan cannot.

If you want to understand your business better, talk to your customers.

They’ll tell you what they liked, what they didn’t like, what almost stopped them from buying and what they wish you offered.

And yet, a lot of businesses spend so much time trying to figure out what customers want without actually asking them.

You could spend weeks brainstorming a new product, designing a new service or planning a marketing campaign when the answers you’re looking for are sitting with the people who already buy from you.

I think customer communication should be a continuous part of running a business, not something you only do when there’s a complaint.

Talk to your customers when things are going well, too.

Find out what made them choose you. What do they appreciate most? What would they change? What would make their experience better?

You might discover that something you barely think about is the very thing your customers love about your business.

You don’t have to guess everything. Sometimes, you just need to ask.

7. Stop abandoning things before giving them a proper chance.

I think this is one of the biggest problems people have when building a business.

You start something, get excited about it, work on it for a few weeks and then decide it’s not working.

So you try something else.

Then you see someone doing something different and decide that’s probably a better strategy. You abandon what you were doing and start again.

Before you know it, you’ve spent months starting things but very little time improving any of them.

Hormozi’s original principle is to iterate one product a thousand times rather than create a thousand different products.

In other words, instead of constantly chasing new ideas, focus on improving what you already have.

I think this applies to more than products. It applies to marketing strategies, business ideas and even the way you run your business.

Some things take time. You might need several attempts before you get something right. You might need to make 20 changes before you find an approach that works.

There’s a difference between abandoning something because it isn’t working and abandoning it because you’re bored, impatient or distracted by something new.

Give things enough time and repetition to produce meaningful results before deciding they aren’t worth pursuing.

You don’t have to stick with a bad idea forever. But you also can’t expect to build something meaningful if you’re constantly starting over.

8. Being good at something means very little if nobody knows you exist.

You could create the most beautiful paintings, spend years perfecting your craft and become incredibly talented.

But if your work stays hidden in your house, nobody gets the opportunity to appreciate it, buy it or recommend you.

And that’s the problem with being unknown.

You can have an excellent product, provide an incredible service and be exceptionally good at what you do. But if potential customers don’t know your business exists, none of that is helping you attract them.

This is why I love Hormozi’s idea that your biggest competitor is obscurity.

It’s not always another business offering the same thing as you. Sometimes, your biggest problem is simply that people don’t know you exist.

You have to put your work out there. Talk about what you do. Show people what you’re capable of. Make it easy for them to find you.

And no, this doesn’t mean you need to post every five minutes or become an internet celebrity.

It means understanding that being good at something and being known for something are two different things.

You need both.

9. Give people a compelling reason to choose you.

Hormozi’s rule is to be either the best or the cheapest. Don’t sit in the middle.

I understand the thinking behind this.

If you’re neither particularly good nor particularly affordable, why should someone choose you over the alternatives?

You need to give people a reason to pick your business.

However, I don’t think every business needs to be the absolute best or the cheapest to succeed.

There are businesses that do very well because they’ve found a particular group of customers and serve them exceptionally well.

They might not be the cheapest option. They might not have the most advanced product on the market. But they understand their customers, offer something valuable and give people a reason to keep coming back.

For example, a small web design business might not be the cheapest or the most technically advanced. But perhaps it specializes in working with small businesses that need someone patient, accessible and willing to explain things without making them feel stupid.

That’s a position in the market, too.

I think the real problem is being mediocre without a clear reason for anyone to choose you.

You don’t have to be everything to everyone. But you do have to stand for something.

10. Do an unreasonable amount of work.

Last but not least, do an unreasonable amount of work.

I think this is a good reminder that you cannot expect extraordinary results from occasional effort.

If you’re serious about building something, you have to be willing to put in the work.

You can’t spend two days working on your business, disappear for three weeks and then wonder why nothing is happening.

You have to keep showing up. You have to keep learning, improving, making decisions and doing the things that move your business forward.

But I also think there’s an important distinction between working hard and simply being busy.

You could spend 12 hours doing tasks that have very little impact on your business. That’s not necessarily productive.

The goal isn’t to fill every waking hour with work. It’s to put in a serious amount of effort towards the things that actually matter.

And sometimes, that means doing more than what’s comfortable, especially when you’re building something from scratch.

You don’t get to skip the work and expect the results.

Final thoughts

What I love about these 10 rules is that they bring business back to the fundamentals.

Choose your customers carefully. Deliver value. Maintain high standards. Hire good people. Execute quickly. Listen to your customers. Improve what you already have. Make yourself known. Give people a reason to choose you. And put in the work.

None of these principles is particularly complicated.

But knowing something and actually applying it are two very different things.

You can read all the business books, watch all the YouTube videos and save every piece of advice you come across. But eventually, you have to close the tabs and do the work.

That’s probably my biggest takeaway from these rules.

Less collecting business advice. More putting the advice you believe in into practice.