"If you cannot explain something in simple terms, then you don’t understand it"
About this Quote
Hormozi’s line is a hustle-era remix of an old power move: making clarity the ultimate credential. Coming from an entrepreneur who sells systems, offers, and execution advice, it’s less a gentle nudge toward good teaching and more a hard standard for competence. In business, complexity is expensive. It slows decisions, confuses teams, and gives mediocre operators a place to hide. “Simple terms” becomes a litmus test: if you can’t translate your strategy into a sentence a salesperson can repeat or a customer can instantly grasp, you probably don’t have a strategy - you have vibes.
The subtext is also about authority. In a culture soaked in jargon, the person who can compress chaos into a clean framework looks like the adult in the room. That’s a persuasive advantage in boardrooms, on sales calls, and especially online, where “simple” content scales and “complicated” content dies. The quote quietly rewards people who can package knowledge, not just possess it.
There’s an implicit critique of credentialism here too. You don’t get to lean on degrees, buzzwords, or “it’s nuanced” as a shield. If you understand a funnel, a market, or a hiring plan, you should be able to explain it to a new employee in under a minute.
The risky edge: simplicity can be performance, not truth. Some things are genuinely complex; reducing them can become marketing, not understanding. Hormozi’s point still lands because it’s less about dumbing down and more about owning the work of thinking until it becomes usable.
The subtext is also about authority. In a culture soaked in jargon, the person who can compress chaos into a clean framework looks like the adult in the room. That’s a persuasive advantage in boardrooms, on sales calls, and especially online, where “simple” content scales and “complicated” content dies. The quote quietly rewards people who can package knowledge, not just possess it.
There’s an implicit critique of credentialism here too. You don’t get to lean on degrees, buzzwords, or “it’s nuanced” as a shield. If you understand a funnel, a market, or a hiring plan, you should be able to explain it to a new employee in under a minute.
The risky edge: simplicity can be performance, not truth. Some things are genuinely complex; reducing them can become marketing, not understanding. Hormozi’s point still lands because it’s less about dumbing down and more about owning the work of thinking until it becomes usable.
Quote Details
| Topic | Knowledge |
|---|
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