Authority Flywheel - Lesson 4
The 15% Rule
What a heavy sell share actually costs, and the Sell-by-Teaching fix
Sell share is the one content ratio you set deliberately, and it is worth knowing what the index says it costs before you set it high.
Start with the corpus level. Sell takes roughly one post in eight, and it is the intent creators are least likely to beat their own average on: only about one in four manages it. Across creators, the average hard-sell share of a feed sits near 10%.
Then the correction to a claim this lesson used to make. There is no cliff. Lara Acosta runs 30.7% sell in her current window and still lands 14.0% of posts in the Elite band, which is not collapse. Heavy selling has a cost, and the cost is a lower ceiling rather than a floor that gives way.
The Saturation Curve
The honest version of this curve is a slope, and a shallow one. Around 10% sell share is where the cohort average sits, and the five creators with the highest elite rates all run 11.5% or less. At the other end, only one creator with a reliable window runs above 25%: Acosta, at 30.7% sell, still landing 14.0% elite, which puts her in the bottom quarter of the cohort rather than off the edge of it.
The clearest case in the index is a recovery, not a collapse. Daniel Murray's lifetime feed is 20.5% sell with 17.4% of posts in the Elite band. His current window is 11.4% sell with 25.3% elite. He roughly halved the sell share, and the elite rate climbed by nearly half again.
Alex Hormozi sits at the other end and always has: 4.9% sell in the current window, 16.9% elite. His restraint is structural rather than heroic: the teaching posts advertise the offer by being useful, so he rarely needs a Sell post at all.
The Sell-by-Teaching Framework
A conversion post disguised as a teaching post. The value is real - the method, framework, or lesson is genuinely useful.
The offer is embedded, not bolted on. The reader learns something AND becomes aware of a solution.
Instead of 'Buy my course on X' → 'Here's the 3-step framework I teach in my course on X. Step 1: [genuinely useful]. Step 2: [genuinely useful]. Step 3: [genuinely useful]. If you want the full system with templates, [link].'
Rebalancing Your Ratio
Calculate your current Sell ratio from your last 10 posts. Treat 15% as a budget you set rather than a line the algorithm enforces: the cohort average sits near 10%, and the one creator with a reliable window well above it pays in elite rate rather than getting cut off.
If you are above your budget, write trust-stage posts before the next Sell post. Murray's numbers are the argument for doing it: cutting sell share from 20.5% to 11.4% went with elite rate rising from 17.4% to 25.3%.
While you are counting posts, count how often you publish. Measured inside individual creators rather than across them, the weeks a creator publishes more are the weeks they reach more, and weekly reach rises about in proportion to volume across the whole range the index covers. Reach per post holds roughly steady while that happens. Two a week is a floor worth clearing, not a target to cut back to.
Alex Hormozi teaches frameworks, systems, and principles from paid products, and the lesson itself is complete and free. The offer is the logical next step rather than the point of the post.