The Feedback Filter
Judge advice on aligned incentives and domain competence, nothing else
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 80%
Both hosts agree you cannot middle-finger your way through life ignoring everyone — every good podcast, product, and email got better by responding to feedback. But indexing on all input is paralyzing, so Hormozi filters on two criteria. First, aligned incentives: does this person actually benefit from you doing better? Second, competence: do they have enough domain expertise for their input to be relevant? Your friends can judge your yogurt because they've eaten yogurt; your mother who's never run a business can't judge your business. The first gate ensures the advisor points the same direction as you; the second ensures they know how to row the boat. A companion rule: take life advice only from people whose dreams for you are bigger than your own.
Origin
Alex Hormozi's two-criterion test for evaluating feedback, worked out live with Chris Williamson on Modern Wisdom.
Core principles
- 01You must listen to feedback, but not to all of it
- 02Aligned incentives point the advisor in the same direction as you
- 03Competence means they actually know how to row the boat
- 04Stacking more criteria only makes the filter harder to use
- 05Only take advice from people whose dreams for you exceed your own
How to run it
- 1
Test for aligned incentives
Ask whether this person actually benefits from you doing better. Aligned incentives mean their advice points in the same direction you're trying to go.
Pro tip People rooting for you to fail will predict failure convincingly — incentive-check before you internalize it.
- 2
Test for domain competence
Ask whether they have enough domain expertise for their feedback to be relevant. Friends can judge whether your yogurt tastes good; someone who's never run a business can't judge your business model.
Pro tip Separate the person's love for you from their competence in the specific domain — both can be high or low independently.
- 3
Accept, then act
If the feedback clears both gates, take it seriously and update. The whole point of the filter is to let real signal through, not to armor yourself against everything.
Pro tip Remember every improvement in your work came from feedback that passed a filter like this.
Watch out Don't keep adding criteria — a third or fourth test just makes the filter unusable.
- 4
Reserve life advice for bigger dreamers
For direction-of-life counsel specifically, only take it from people whose dreams for you are bigger than your own dreams for yourself — a very small number of people, sometimes a parent or spouse.
Pro tip A spouse is often the most tactically aligned advisor you have.
In the wild
If you run a yogurt company and friends say the yogurt doesn't taste good, they likely have domain expertise — they've eaten a lot of yogurt. But if your mother, who has never run a business, gives an opinion on how the business works, that fails the competence gate. Same person can pass on one question and fail on the next.
→ The filter cleanly separates which of a loved one's opinions to weight and which to set aside.
Williamson notes that if he'd never changed how he did the podcast from day one, it would not be what it is now. Sales presentations, emails, and products all improved by responding to feedback — but to the feedback that came from people with aligned incentives and relevant competence, not from every anonymous critic.
→ Selective responsiveness, not blanket openness or blanket deafness, produced the growth.
Common mistakes
Indexing on everyone's input
For criticism hyper-responders, weighting every comment equally raises uncertainty and can talk you out of the right path. The filter exists precisely to stop that.
Overloading the filter
Adding more and more criteria beyond incentives and competence just makes the test harder to apply in the moment. Two gates is the sweet spot.
Is it for you?
Best for
Criticism hyper-responders who feel every comment but can't tell signal from noise.
Not ideal for
People who use 'they're not qualified' as a blanket excuse to dodge all uncomfortable feedback.
From the transcript
“number one, aligned incentives... Number two is competence.”
“you should only take advice from people whose dreams for your life are bigger than yours are.”
From the episode
41 Harsh Truths Nobody Wants To Admit - Alex Hormozi - #952
Alex Hormozi