| name | lead-gen |
| description | Design lead generation using Hormozi's $100M Leads Core Four. Use when creating a lead magnet, planning warm or cold outreach, designing a content strategy, planning paid ads, building referral/affiliate/employee lead-getter programs, or diagnosing "not enough leads" or an empty top of funnel. |
Lead generation (Hormozi Core Four)
When to use
Any task shaped like "get more engaged leads": designing a lead magnet, picking or scaling an acquisition channel, planning outreach/content/ads, building referral or affiliate programs, or diagnosing an empty pipeline. Assumes a core offer already exists; if the offer itself is weak, fix that first.
The procedure
Phase 1 — Define the unit: engaged leads
- A lead is anyone you can contact. An engaged lead is someone who showed interest (opted in, replied, booked). Engaged leads are the only output that counts — never impressions, followers, or list size.
- Before designing anything, write down: current engaged leads per week, per channel. If nobody can answer this, instrument it first.
Phase 2 — Design the lead magnet (7 steps)
Advertise the core offer directly when it's cheap and impulse-friendly; use a lead magnet when it's expensive or considered. A lead magnet is a complete solution to a narrow problem that, once solved, reveals the problem your core offer solves.
- Pick the problem and person. Narrow, meaningful, and its next revealed problem must be one your core offer solves.
- Pick the solution type (one of three): reveal their problem (diagnosis/audit — best when waiting makes it worse), sample or trial (best for recurring offers), or one step of a multi-step process.
- Pick the delivery vehicle (one of four): software/tool, information, service, or physical product. 3 types x 4 vehicles = up to 12 magnets per problem; rotate them.
- Test the name — headline first, then image, then subheadline. The headline is ~80% of the ad spend's leverage.
- Make it easy to consume — offer every format you can (video, audio, text, tool); multi-format lifts take rates 2-4x.
- Make it darn good — give away the secrets, sell the implementation. It must be good enough to charge for; most consumers never buy, but all of them judge you on it.
- Make the CTA obvious: say exactly what to do, plus a real reason to do it now (ethical scarcity = advertise actual capacity limits; deadlines; any stated reason beats none).
Phase 3 — Pick channels with the Core Four 2x2
Audience is warm (has permission) or cold (strangers); delivery is 1-to-1 or 1-to-many. That yields the only four moves — there is no fifth channel:
| 1-to-1 (private) | 1-to-many (public) |
|---|
| Warm | Warm outreach | Free content |
| Cold | Cold outreach | Paid ads |
Selection logic:
- Start with warm outreach (fastest first customers, zero cost).
- Then: more time than money -> post content; more money than time -> cold outreach or paid ads.
- Do paid ads last — the other three teach the skills and fund the losses.
- Channels compound; a business doing content + ads gets more from both. But max one channel before adding the next.
- Diagnosing "not enough leads": you are not doing the Core Four with enough volume or enough skill — in that order. Audit which of the four you run, at what daily volume, before proposing anything new.
Phase 4 — Scale with More -> Better -> New (in that order)
- More: crank volume to capacity. Rule of 100: 100 primary actions/day, 100 days straight (100 warm reach outs; 100 min creating content + 1+ post; 100 cold reach outs; 100 min on ads at your reverse-engineered budget). Graduate to Open To Goal: commit to outcomes, not attempts.
- Better: when more breaks, split-test the constraint — the funnel step with the biggest drop-off. One test per week per platform, log every result, four failed attempts then move to the next constraint.
- New: only when more/better returns fall below what a new spot would yield. Order: new placements -> new platforms -> new Core Four activity.
- Test at real scale: sample sizes must resolve a ~0.5% response rate (5,000 flyers, not 300).
Phase 5 — Layer lead getters (the cascade)
Lead getters are not a fifth channel — you run the Core Four to recruit them, then they run it for you. Natural order:
- Customers (referrals) — the only exponential channel. Growth = referrals in minus churn out. No referrals means: product not good enough, or nobody asked. Build goodwill (value minus price), then ask as an offer (two-sided incentive, ask at the moment of purchase, referral events, unlockable bonuses).
- Employees — train with the 3Ds: Document (checklist good enough that a stranger gets your results), Demonstrate, Duplicate. Reward direction-following; when results are bad, fix the checklist, not the person. Track payroll / engaged leads.
- Agencies — hire to learn a new method or platform, never as a permanent outsource: explicit teach-me clause, ~6-month deadline, run your team in parallel, cancel when in-house beats them.
- Affiliates — businesses that already have your leads. Qualify them by investment, pay tiered % of max-allowable CAC, activate with a fully-prepared launch (whisper -> tease -> shout), keep them via integration (they give away or sell your lead magnet).
Target: 25%+ of customers from referrals before scaling hard — fix the product before pouring on volume.
Rules and quick reference
- LTGP:CAC >= 3:1 — lifetime gross profit (never revenue LTV) over acquisition cost. Below 3:1, don't scale.
- CAC diagnosis: CAC near industry average -> problem is the business model, raise LTGP; CAC far above average (>3x) -> problem is the advertising.
- Sales-vs-ads splitter: "Do the engaged leads have the problem I solve and the money to spend?" Yes but not buying = sales problem, not a lead problem.
- Client Financed Acquisition: collect CAC + fulfillment cost from each customer within 30 days (upsell, annual prepay, onboarding fee) -> scale self-funds. Profitable-but-cash-starved is the default failure mode of paid acquisition.
- Give:ask ratio: stay well above ~4:1 (TV's 3.5:1 is the extraction floor). Growth mode: give until they ask; give in public, ask in private. If unsure what to promote, promote the lead magnet.
- Paid ads money rules: track before spending anything; testing budget per ad = up to 2x one customer's 30-day cash (1x if zero leads); scale budget = customers wanted x CAC, padded +20%.
- Ad anatomy: callout (win the first 5 seconds) + value angles (What x Who x When) + explicit CTA.
- Timeline honesty: 3-6 months to crack a new channel for someone experienced (~a year first time); 5-10 years to a $100M machine. Don't quit at 1/42 of the dose.
| Channel | Daily volume | Order-of-magnitude prior (his era — see caveats) |
|---|
| Warm outreach | 100 reach outs, 3 attempts each, A-C-A replies | ~1 in 5 reply; ~1 customer per 100 reach outs |
| Content | 100 min creating, 1+ post | Measure followers + reach monthly; constant cadence |
| Cold outreach | 100 reach outs (list -> personalize -> big fast value) | ~3% of list -> engaged leads; ~20% pickup; ~20% DM reply |
| Paid ads | 100 min on ads, run 100 days | Lose small on most tests; scale the rare winner |
Where it doesn't transfer
- The numbers are calibrated to his world: high-ticket ($299-$42k), near-100%-gross-margin info/coaching/licensing products, US, 2016-2022. At 20-40% gross margin or long-cycle B2B, 3:1 gets tight, 30-day payback may mean over-monetizing fragile new customers, and 40% affiliate payouts don't exist. Keep the lenses (LTGP:CAC, payback period), recalibrate every number.
- Cold channels aged badly. The benchmark response rates are pre-spam-filter, pre-automation-crackdown; expect 3-10x worse today. Naive volume now burns domains, accounts, and brand — the personalization half of his cold playbook survived, the automation half didn't. Volume still beats timidity; blast-and-re-blast doesn't.
- High-ticket sales theatrics (fake-reason CTAs, gift-card urgency, price ratchets) erode trust in B2B and community products. Keep the ethical version: real capacity limits, real deadlines, founding-member pricing.
- Believe the referral chapter, not the sales copy. "Advertising lets you have a terrible product and still make money" is contradicted in-book: referrals-minus-churn is the only exponential channel, and it runs on product quality. When they conflict, product quality wins.
- Affiliate machinery shrinks for most software/services to: partner with businesses that already have your leads, pay on outcomes, fully prepare their launch.
- Treat every case study as an existence proof (survivor-selected portfolio), not an expected value.
Source
Compiled from $100M Leads — Alex Hormozi (2023). The skill is the procedure; the book carries the depth (worked examples, edge cases, the author's reasoning). If this stage is where your venture lives right now, buy and read it.
