One Question Friday: How To Start A Lead Gen Business

**Shaan Puri** (0:00)
All right, there's this amazing book called Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You've Got. I read it a few years ago and it changed my life.
And the reason I loved it was because it basically talks about how to get and make more money using things that you already have.
Coincidentally, today's podcast is brought to you by Business Made Simple. It's a podcast by Donald Miller, who I'm gonna tell you about in a second, but he has this amazing episode that's all related to this book and the things that I learned in this book. It's called How To Make Money With What You Already Have. It's an incredible episode. It talks about all the stuff that I learned in this book. The host is Donald Miller. I didn't know who Donald Miller was up until recently, but over the last 12 months, this is totally by coincidence. It was all separate people. They said, you have to check out Donald Miller. He's amazing. So I'm happy that he's part of HubSpot's Podcast Network. You can check it out, Business Made Simple Podcast. It's where he coaches you on how to build your business like an airplane, where the cockpit is your leadership, the body is your overhead, the right engine is your marketing, the left engine is your sales.
You have to check it out. This guy's amazing. It's called Business Made Simple with Donald Miller.

**Neil Gupta** (1:08)
This is Neil Gupta from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. My question for you is, what are your first three actionable steps to creating a lead gen business, and what are the three industries you would go after in small communities?

**Sam Parr** (1:25)
Okay, we could do that. It's hard to come up with three, but I think we could just talk about it in general.

**Shaan Puri** (1:31)
Well, I got into this business a little bit. I was testing on a lead gen site. What I did was I emailed another lead gen site, and I just said, would you buy leads from me?
How much?
And they said, if your leads were qualified using these parameters, we will pay you $100 per lead. It was for a trucking website that I was working on. And they said, if they are commercial driver license folks, and you are able to verify that by getting a picture of their license, we will give you $100. $100.
And so I assumed $100 was the cheapest it would cost. And then if I also went on LinkedIn and I emailed the marketing and growth managers at the actual trucking companies, and I said, how much do you guys pay? And they said, $150. And that kind of gave me that range of I can acquire it for 100 to $150. And then what I did was I went and drove ads and traffic to a website that got this information. And I was able to get leads for $250. And I thought, huh, okay, if I just fold around and got it for 250 bucks, and they're willing to pay $150, I think there's something there that I can actually make this profitable. That's what I did.

**Sam Parr** (2:44)
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 newish lead gen site? So I wouldn't be looking for one that started in 1998 and has just been cranking since then. I'd be like, all right, what's a newish lead gen site? So something that started maybe the last two, three years.
And I would go look at their stuff. I'd go read an article about them. And then I would contact them and be like, hey, I'm 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, at the right price, would you be open to selling your business? And they say, oh, 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 be down to talk to me for 15, 20 minutes, or 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 five truck driver lead gen businesses or truck driver recruiting businesses.
I want to 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 article, while doing that call about the article, I would ask them how they started, how they get it, 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 three question qualifier right after that. And then their business models that they sell those leads to whoever at certain price. And this only works if the leads are worth $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 would be my first thing, is I'd be searching for a blueprint, essentially, that I can remix. It's like, all right, 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 I put a greater emphasis on copywriting or newsletters or whatever in order to generate those leads. That would be my first step.