4 ways to find people
Lesson 9 of 31 in the course “Million Dollar Sales Course”. Free, with animations and a quiz.
There are only four ways
You have the gift and an opt-in page. Where do people come from? Hormozi boils it down to two questions. Do they know you or not? Are you talking to one person or to everyone at once? That gives four ways. Known people, one to one: warm outreach. Known people, all at once: content. Strangers, one to one: cold outreach. Strangers, all at once: ads. There are no other ways, everything else is a variation. If you don’t have enough people, you’re doing these four too little or not well yet.
Warm: your list is already in your phone
“But nobody knows me.” Hormozi disagrees: open your phone contacts, old email accounts, chats and social followers. Most people find several hundred. That’s how he started: he wrote free workout plans for friends, then asked them to pay, and happy clients brought 5–6 more people. By his account, that made about $4,000 a month and replaced his salary. Warm outreach is the cheapest, most reliable way to find your first 5 customers. One downside: you’ll eventually run out of people you know.
What to write: acknowledge, compliment, ask
Don’t open with “buy”. Start with something personal you genuinely know about the person. When they reply, Hormozi suggests three steps. Acknowledge what they said in your own words so they see you’re listening. Compliment something real. Ask the next question, closer to your topic. After 3–4 messages you can offer: “I’m taking 5 people for free, I need testimonials. Know anyone who’d be into it?” You’re not asking them to buy, you’re asking about friends. That’s why it doesn’t feel pushy.
What to expect: 100 → 20 → 4 → 1
Hormozi gives benchmarks for warm outreach. Out of 100 people, about one in five replies, so 20. Of those, about one in five takes your free offer: 4. One of those four pays later. The numbers are rough and yours will differ. But the point matters: results aren’t magic or luck, they’re volume. 100 messages give about one customer, 500 give five. Until your free clients start referring friends, it’s too early to charge full price. Once they do, raise the price in steps.
Content: hook, retain, reward
You don’t know that many people, and messaging each one takes time. Content talks to everyone at once. Hormozi long thought it was a waste of time, then on a creator’s advice started posting 10 times more and, by his account, gained 1.2 million new followers in six months. Every audience-growing video does three things: hooks in the first seconds, keeps interest, and at the end delivers what it promised. How often should you sell? Hormozi’s rule: give, give, give, until people ask where to buy.
Cold: go where your people already gather
Strangers don’t trust you, so Hormozi suggests two things: learn something specific about the person and give big value right away, not “wanna hop on a call?”. Brunson adds where to find those people. He calls them congregations: places where your people already gather around an interest. For Misha that’s editing Discord servers, comments under CapCut tutorials, the school media club. There you don’t spam links, you help, and people check out your profile on their own. Ads, the fourth way, get their own course. Starting with ads is expensive for a beginner.
The rule of 100
Hormozi tells of a chiropractic business owner who said he’d “maxed out the market”. Turns out he spent $30,000 a month on ads on one social network and did nothing else. Someone else in the same niche said he spends that in a week across four platforms. Hormozi’s recipe: 100 actions a day for 100 days in a row. An action is one personal message or one minute of work on content. A beginner can start smaller, but every day. Then three levers: more volume, fix the weakest step, add a new platform.
Do it yourself: a weekly plan
Map your week across the four ways, like Misha’s in the picture. Warm: how many messages a day and to whom first. Content: how many videos and where the gift appears. Where your people are: 3 places where you’ll help, not advertise. Cold: 5 personal messages to people you know something about. Ads: empty for now, you need them once the rest works. At the end of the week count: how many you messaged, how many replied, how many signed up. Those numbers show where the weak spot is.
Check yourself
- Which of the four ways is this?
Correct answer: Cold outreach: strangers, one to one. These people don’t know Misha, and he writes to each one separately. So it’s cold outreach. A personal detail and instant value matter most here. - Which first message is better?
Correct answer: “Saw your trip video, that sunset shot is fire! How was the trip?”. It’s personal and about them, not you. They’ll happily reply, and then step by step: acknowledge, compliment, ask, and only then the offer. - How should he sell in his videos?
Correct answer: Mostly give value and occasionally mention the course briefly. Hormozi advises giving far more than you ask, until people ask where to buy. Useful videos grow the audience, and sales grow with it. - What do you tell him?
Correct answer: You’ve tried one way out of four: add warm outreach and the places your people hang out, and do it daily. Like the clinic owner in the book, he drew a conclusion from one way and one week. The rule of 100 and all four ways almost always give more than it seems.
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