Follow These 3 Steps To Start A $1,000,000 Lead Generation Business

Neil Gupta

This is Neil Gupta from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. My question for you is: what are your first three actionable steps to creating a lead generation business? And what are the three industries you would go after in small communities?

Shaan Puri

Okay, we could do that. It's hard to come up with three, but I think we could just talk about it in general.

Sam Parr

Well, I got into this business a little bit. I was testing on a lead generation site. What I did was email another lead generation site and I just asked, "Would you buy leads from me? How much?" They said, "If your leads were qualified using these parameters, we will pay you $100 per lead." It's for a trucking website that I was working on. They mentioned that if the leads are long commercial driver license holders and I am able to verify that by getting a picture of their license, they would give me $100. So, I assumed $100 was the cheapest it would cost. I also went on LinkedIn and emailed the marketing and growth managers at the actual trucking companies. I asked, "How much do you guys pay?" They said $150. That kind of gave me a range of what I could acquire it for, between $100 and $150. Then, I drove ads and traffic to a website that collected this information, and I was able to get leads for $250. I thought, "Okay, if I just fool around and got it for $250 and they're willing to pay $150, I think there's something there that I can actually make profitable." That's what I did.

Shaan Puri

yeah I think my first step would be because I don't know a ton about lead gen I'd be like okay well who's killing it with lead gen and so I would just my first step would be like find a blueprint of success so who is a new ish lead gen site I wouldn't be looking for one that like started in 1998 and has just been cranking since then I'd be like alright what's a new ish lead gen site so something that started maybe the last 2 3 years I would go look at their stuff I'd go read an article about them then I would contact them and be like hey really interested in your business and I'd either be like I'm interested in buying your business can you tell me a little about it would you be open if you know at the right price would you be open to to selling your business and they say yes or no or I would say hey I'm really trying to learn about the lead gen business for a different category would you you know would you be down to you know talk to me for 15 20 minutes whatever and they might say yes they might say no if I wanted to make it juicier I could say hey I'm doing an article on my favorite 5 you know truck truck driver lead gen businesses or truck driver recruiting businesses I wanna feature you guys just need to hop on a call 30 minutes I'll ask you a few questions and I'll use it in the article and then in that you know article I would base it while doing that that call about the article I would ask them how they started how they get it you know how how they get the leads what's the hardest part blah blah blah and I would try to figure out a blueprint to figure out is this even the business I want to be in and is there a common formula that these businesses use like oh they all use facebook ads as their traffic source or they all use Google keywords as their traffic source then they take you to a landing page with a quick email capture and then 3 question qualifier right after that and then their business model is that they sell those leads to whoever at certain price and this only works if the leads are like you know a $100 worth a $100 or more the ones that are below that seem to struggle and I would try to figure out how much money they make and how they do it and that that'll be my first first thing is I'd be searching for a blueprint essentially that I can remix it's like alright I'm gonna 80% is gonna be the same and 20% is gonna be different so the 20% that's different might be I'm in a different category or I do it from a slightly different like you know I put a greater emphasis on copywriting or newsletters or whatever in order to generate those leads that would be my first first step

Sam Parr

and which industry

Shaan Puri

So, we have a couple of examples here. You did trucking on your own before that. You've shown me an apartment. What was it? Apartment list?

Ben Wilson

or what

Shaan Puri

was the lead gen for well what leads did they want

Sam Parr

The company that bought my company years ago was called Apartment List. Originally, they were called Vertical Brands, and they just owned lead generation sites for senior living. They owned a lead generation site for rent-to-own housing, which was like they bootstrapped, I think, around $6 or $7 million in revenue. Then they owned Apartment List, which eventually became the main company. That was lead generation for apartments. They also owned a site for cars called Autolist.com, which was acquired by CarGurus for about $30 million. That was really effective. The math is basically like this: how valuable a purchase price is the product multiplied by the frequency that one person buys the product multiplied by the number of people who have that need. For example, if it's lead generation for CEOs of small to medium-sized businesses, a small business might spend around $50,000 on that. However, they're only going to hire once every eight years. So, that kind of gives you an idea of how the math works behind the opportunity. Does you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. I'd be looking for high-ticket price things. I was going to say senior living. My father-in-law does senior living, and I see that he wants customers. A customer to him is going to pay maybe $6,000 a month for a room. So they're a customer, and they'll last on average, you know, 2 years at the place, right? So you're getting 24 months times $6,000. Their customers are very valuable. They're willing to give you $6,000 for a customer if you can send them one. Their leads might be, you know, a few hundred dollars that they are willing to pay for if you're qualified, right? If you're in the area and whatever else. So senior living was one I was going to mention. The other ones are like, you know, I see this with moving companies, construction companies, or pool construction companies. Like, oh, that's a $50,000 project to build a pool in this area. Maybe the pool construction companies are not the best at SEO optimization, so I'm going to go after that category. I think that's one where I can beat them at their own game and sell them back those customer leads. So I would look for really high-ticket price things like moving, pool construction, senior care. There's one more that I was thinking of, but it slipped my mind. But yes, things like that, I think those are great categories to go after. I can't find this client info.

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Shaan Puri

can I

Ben Wilson

Share one that I just heard about that I actually think would be pretty valuable. It's related to what you were saying about senior care facilities. There's this new kind of facility that's coming online, which is essentially like **mental health triage**. I think that's the way to think of it. You walk in, and there are a bunch of Lazy Boys with TVs in front of them. If you're having an episode or a mental breakdown, you go in there, and they might help medicate you if you need that. They'll set you up with a therapist on this big TV and just make sure you're okay while people figure out what's going on. Mental health issues are becoming more and more prevalent. So, this is actually just coming online, and these are like a new type of care facility. I feel like there's probably not a lot of competition yet for finding those types of leads, so there might be some opportunities to help people with this.

Shaan Puri

what do

Sam Parr

you even Google

Ben Wilson

It's a good question. I know my buddy Dennis is helping build one, so he told me about it, but I don't know what you would call them.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, like mental health care treatment or something like that. But I think that, you know, the general principle is you want a high-ticket buyer for your leads. You need them to be making a ton of money off of the thing. You want to have low competition if possible. The other thing is, can you use content as your lead generation? So you're not just playing a Google keywords bidding game or a Facebook ads keyword bidding game. But if you are educating people about something... So, like, I don't know, let's call it like what's that surgery that a bunch of people are getting? Like Brazilian butt lifts or something like that. It's like, yeah, there's some surgery, some new thing that a bunch of people are curious about, right? And the topic itself kind of lends itself to content or ratings or reviews or, you know, pros and cons and stuff like that. Can you create YouTube or TikTok content that's just talking about, you know, the pros, the cons, the good stories, the horror stories, whatever else? Then basically, if people are interested, you capture those interested parties who were Googling to try to learn more about it. You, as the educational source, become slightly trusted. You never need to operate the underlying business; you just sell that lead. You know, farm them to a partner who's basically like your vetted partner to do that procedure or whatever it is in a given geography.

Sam Parr

sick did we answer that ben I think it's a good ass answer

Shaan Puri

that's it one question friday

Ben Wilson

Alright, and if you want your question read live on the show, submit it by going to **mfmpod.com** and clicking on the microphone. Ask us questions!

Sam Parr

bye