The X Factor: Why Dolly Parton Was Impossible to Ignore | Ep 999

Alex Hormozi (0:00)

So, what is X Factor? In this tiny presentation, I'm going to break down what made Dolly Parton a superstar, and we can learn from her in making your own content and impact on the world. So, let's zoom out. In a world of infinite content, in this world of AI, how do you actually stand out when anyone can make lots of stuff with the click of a button? In a single word, it's quality, right? But quality has two components to it. There's a message and there's the messenger, and the two are inextricably linked. So, you could have a Trump or a Bernie Sanders or a Dolly Parton, and they could say a super boring random thing and still get millions of views. How? In that case, solely because of the messenger. In a different situation, you could have a no-name account, go completely viral, and in that situation, would it be the messenger or the message? It's the message. And so, it's both of these things together which create the entire package. And so, there's a lot of stuff on message and the nature of content out there, but there's very little tactical stuff on the messenger. How does the messenger themselves have X Factor? How are they more interesting? It's one of the most common things that I hear people use when describing someone who becomes popular, aka they garner interest above average, is something called X Factor. And so, in different terms, it's used je ne sais quoi, which is like a French word, which literally just means, I don't know what. But the thing is that there has to be something, otherwise you wouldn't recognize it. But it's interesting that across different languages, it's X, it's literally a variable that could be anything. Or in French, it's, I don't know what it is. But if we can recognize it, it means there's a pattern. And it's just that our ability to recognize the pattern surpasses our ability to translate it into the language. All right, so my goal here is to translate X Factor from I don't know what into I know what, to the best of my very limited ability. And so since many of you are making content and ads and putting yourself out there, let's start by defining X Factor, right? So X Factor is when a person captures outside interest by demonstrating multiple rare skills and or physical traits that do not typically coexist. And the more rarities they combine, the more the X Factor and interest by extension is multiplied.

And so here's kind of like a level of thinking, levels of X Factor. So if you have a sea of average people, if you have a hot small blonde, all of a sudden that is rarer. And so there's a little bit of X factors. There are a lot? No, but there's more than none. Now, let's say that this small blonde has big boobs, okay? That's rarer than just small hot blonde, who then also grew up in deep poverty. Huh? That's a little bit different, even rarer. But now she's really smart. That's even rarer, and also can sing amazingly well, and can write really emotional songs, and is incredibly self-aware and wise, and also a business tycoon, and also extremely feminine, well, being a business tycoon, and also has no scandals whatsoever for the entirety of her life, and has incredibly strong stances, but is beloved by black people, white people, young people, Republicans and Democrats, is deeply kind, is married for 50 plus years, and never shows her husband publicly, and had a hit every single decade for 60 years, hit the charts, and is humble. And whenever she's given flowers, she constantly deflects with jokes, and credits God, and good luck.

And so obviously, when you take all those things together, that's a hell of a lot of X Factor, and that gives you none other than the great Dolly Parton. There's literally no other human being on Earth who satisfies that criteria, which makes her incredibly rare. And so what makes them so strong specifically for her is how many of them are both rare, and also, and this is the key point, contradictory. She's sexy, but also saintly. She's a hillbilly, but she's also a business mogul. She's a bombshell, but she's also a songwriter. She's old, but she's relevant. She's a superstar, and she's humble. All of these are what would appear to be contradictions, but they're all in the same person, which makes her rare and interesting. And so each of these are rare on their own. They're rarer when someone has multiple of them. Like if someone's just a sexy hillbilly, that's rare. A bombshell and old and a superstar. Like each of these adds on top of one another. But they're rarest when they coexist all together.