The Consulting Method for Rapid Learning
Interview five experts, map the ecosystem, then distill notes into inferences
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 90%
Hormozi's fastest way to get up to speed on any domain, learned as a 22-year-old consultant briefing four-star generals on weapons systems he knew nothing about. Ask one person for the five best experts; ask each of them for five more; interview them; then recategorise raw notes, distill them into core truths, and generate your own inferences about what's right, what's broken, and what to do next.
Origin
Drawn from Hormozi's consulting days producing 600 pages of interview notes on space and cyber weapons systems, and reused as his interviewing-as-learning approach when hiring senior talent.
Core principles
- 01Information isn't scarce — filtering is; experts have spent years filtering for what matters.
- 02Talk to experts first to inherit their filter, then consume the most-filtered information.
- 03The same process doubles as a hiring signal and as free consulting.
How to run it
- 1
Find five experts
Ask one knowledgeable person for the five best people on the topic; ask each of those for five more.
Pro tip Repeat until the same names recur — that recurrence marks the true top of the field.
- 2
Interview and map
Capture what each thinks about the key questions, building a map of the information ecosystem.
- 3
Recategorise the raw notes
Reorganise all interview notes by category, moving from raw to categorised notes.
- 4
Distill to core truths
Consolidate categorised notes into the most distilled beliefs the sources share.
- 5
Generate inferences
From the distilled truths, produce your own view of what's right, the problems, and potential solutions — 'this is what we need to do next.'
Pro tip When hiring, present real business problems and rank candidates by the quality and quantity of metrics and behaviours they name.
In the wild
Fresh out of college, Hormozi had to sound intelligent to people with 30 years more experience, so he used expert interviews plus distillation to rapidly master weapons systems.
→ 600 pages of notes became categorised, distilled truths and defensible recommendations.
Hormozi hands senior candidates the actual problems of the business and asks how they'd solve them, comparing answers across people.
→ He gets free consulting and reads expertise from how granularly each candidate breaks the problem into metrics and behaviours.
Common mistakes
Starting with Google, not experts
Diving into unfiltered information wastes time; experts' years of filtering are the shortcut you skip by going straight to search.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone who must get credible in a new domain fast — founders, consultants, hiring managers.
Not ideal for
Trivial topics where a single reliable source already answers the question.
From the transcript
“you find five experts... then you ask them who are the five people you know who also know a ton about this thing”
“there's no lack of information... the problem is there's too much and so the filter becomes where the highest point of leverage is”
From the episode
The Man That Makes Millionaires: Turn $100 to $10k With This Step By Step Formula & Build An Audience From 0 Followers! Alex Hormozi
Alex Hormozi