The 3 Ds of Training
Document, Demonstrate, Duplicate — how to train anyone into a role
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 93%
Hormozi's universal training method: Document every step of doing the job as a checklist, Demonstrate the checklist in front of the trainee, then have them Duplicate it in front of you. A hidden benefit surfaces at the demonstrate step — you'll discover you don't actually follow your own checklist, forcing you to fix it until it reliably produces the output.
Origin
Presented as the standard operating method at acquisition.com for training 'anybody' into a role, and why bootstrap founders end up knowing more — they had to learn tasks well enough to teach them.
Core principles
- 01Training ability is one of the largest 'alphas' a business can have — buy talent at B-skill and lift it to A+ to pocket the delta.
- 02The act of documenting exposes the gaps between what you do and what you think you do.
- 03Reps and immediate feedback beat 'read it then get notes at the end'.
How to run it
- 1
Document
Write down every step you take to do the job successfully, as a concrete checklist.
- 2
Demonstrate
Perform the checklist in front of the person you're training.
Pro tip Watch for where you deviate from your own checklist, then correct the checklist until you can follow it exactly.
- 3
Duplicate
Have the trainee perform the checklist in front of you, correcting in the moment with many fast feedback loops.
Pro tip Interrupt constantly early on — set the expectation you'll stop them 30 times, because immediate reinforcement is how behaviour is learned.
Watch out Feedback delayed to the end of a script read reinforces whatever came just before it, not the skill you wanted.
In the wild
Hormozi trains a script by stopping the rep after the very first line — 'say it again, say it like this, go again' — reinforcing each sentence dozens of times before moving on.
→ The rep eventually 'sings' the script from having felt what right sounds like, versus the 95% who read to the end and get useless after-the-fact notes.
Immediate reward teaches a dog to sit fast; a 10-second delay triples the reps needed; a minute's delay and it never learns — the biscuit still reinforces, just the wrong thing.
→ The principle: to train people you must correct in the moment, engineering many feedback loops in a short window.
Common mistakes
Batch feedback at the end
Saving corrections until after the whole task reinforces the last thing done, not the target behaviour, and is how 95% of ineffective training works.
Never documenting
Skipping the checklist means you can't demonstrate consistently, so the trainee can't duplicate a stable process.
Is it for you?
Best for
Any founder or manager building a repeatable, teachable process for a role.
Not ideal for
Highly senior roles where the required expertise takes years and training-in isn't economical versus buying it.
From the transcript
“we follow 3 Ds which is document demonstrate duplicate”
“that biscuit is still reinforcing something just not sitting”
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