A listener named Neil Duketa from Toronto asks for the first three actionable steps to starting a lead generation business and which industries to target. Sam and Shaan walk through the full playbook — from finding a blueprint by reverse-engineering successful lead gen sites, to choosing high-ticket industries like senior living, pool construction, and mental health facilities, to using content as an alternative traffic source to paid ads.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host), Neil Duketa (listener, question asker)
Listener Question: How to Start a Lead Gen Business [00:00:00]
Neil: This is Neil Duketa 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: Okay, we could do that. It’s hard to come up with three, but I think we could just talk about it in general. I got into this business a little bit. I was testing a lead gen site, and what I did was I emailed another lead gen site and just said, “Would you buy leads from me? How much?” They said, “If your leads are qualified using these parameters, we will pay you a hundred dollars per lead.” This was for a trucking website I was working on. They said if the leads are people with a commercial driver’s license — and you can verify that by getting a picture of their license — they’d give you a hundred dollars.
Sam: So I assumed a hundred dollars was the floor. Then I went on LinkedIn and emailed the marketing and growth managers at actual trucking companies and said, “How much do you guys pay?” They said $150. That gave me the range: I can sell leads for $100 to $150. Then I drove ads and traffic to a website that captured that information, and I was able to get leads for $250. I thought, “Okay, if I just messed around and got it for $250 and they’re willing to pay $150… I think there’s something there. I think I can actually make this profitable.” That’s what I did.
Step 1: Find a Blueprint [00:02:00]
Shaan: I think my first step would be — because I don’t know a ton about lead gen — I’d say, okay, who’s killing it with lead gen? So my first step would be: find a blueprint of success. Who is a newer lead gen site? Not one that started in 1998 and has just been cranking since then. Something started in the last two or three years. I’d go look at their stuff, read an article about them, and then contact them.
Shaan: I’d either say, “I’m interested in buying your business — would you be open to selling at the right price?” Or I’d 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 or 20 minutes?”
Shaan: If I wanted to make it juicier, I’d say, “Hey, I’m doing an article on my favorite five truck driver lead gen businesses. I want to feature you guys — just need to hop on a call for 30 minutes, ask you a few questions, and I’ll use it in the article.” And then during that call, while ostensibly doing the article, I’d ask them how they started, how they get leads, what’s the hardest part. I’d try to figure out a blueprint: is this even the business I want to be in, and is there a common formula these businesses use?
Shaan: Like, oh — they all use Facebook ads as their traffic source, or they all use Google keywords, then they take you to a landing page with a quick email capture and a three-question qualifier right after. And their business model is selling those leads to buyers at a certain price. And this only works if the leads are worth $100 or more — the ones below that seem to struggle. I’d try to figure out how much money they make and how they do it. That’s my first step: find a blueprint I can remix. 80% is going to be the same, 20% is going to be different. The 20% might be a different category, or a different emphasis — maybe I put a greater emphasis on copywriting, or newsletters, or whatever, to generate those leads.
Which Industries to Target [00:05:30]
Shaan: So which industry? We have a couple examples here. You did trucking on your own. Before that, you showed me an apartment lead gen. What was that one?
Sam: The company that bought my company years ago was called Apartment List. Originally they were called Vertical Brands, and they just owned lead gen sites. They owned a site for senior living, a site for rent-to-own housing — they bootstrapped that to around six or seven million in revenue. Then they had Apartment List, which eventually became the main company — a lead gen for apartments. And they owned AutoList.com, a lead gen for cars, which was acquired by CarGurus for around $30 million. Really effective.
Sam: But the math is basically: how valuable is the purchase price of the product, multiplied by the frequency one person buys it, multiplied by the number of people who have that need. For example, a lead gen for CEOs of small to medium-sized businesses — a small business might spend $50,000 on that — but they’re only going to hire once every eight years. So that gives you the math behind the opportunity, you know what I mean?
Shaan: Exactly. I’d be looking for high-ticket items. I was going to say senior living — my father-in-law does senior living, and I see that a customer to him is going to pay maybe $6,000 a month for a room and they’ll last on average two years at the place. 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 acquisition, which means their leads might be worth a few hundred bucks if the lead is qualified — right area, right circumstances, whatever.
Shaan: The other ones are like moving companies, construction companies, pool construction companies. That’s a $50,000 project to build a pool. Maybe pool construction companies are not the best at SEO, so I’m going to go after that category because I think I can beat them at their own game and sell them back those customer leads. So I’d look for really high-ticket things — moving, pool construction, senior care. There’s one more I was thinking of but it slipped my mind. But yeah, those are great categories.
Mental Health Triage Centers as a New Lead Gen Opportunity [00:08:00]
Shaan: Can I share one I just heard about that I think would be pretty valuable here? It’s related to what you were saying about senior care facilities. There’s a new kind of facility coming online that’s essentially like mental health triage. You walk in and there’s a bunch of La-Z-Boys, they’ve got TVs in front of them, and if you’re having an episode — a mental breakdown — you go in there. They might help medicate you if you need that. They’ll set you up with a therapist on a big TV and just make sure you’re okay while people figure out what’s going on.
Shaan: Mental health issues are becoming more prevalent, and this type of facility is just coming online. There’s probably not a lot of competition yet for finding those types of leads, so there might be some opportunity to help.
Sam: That’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’d call them exactly.
Shaan: Yeah, mental health care and treatment, or something like that. But the general principle is: you want a high-ticket buyer for your leads — someone making a ton of money off the thing. You want low competition if possible.
Using Content as Your Traffic Source [00:09:30]
Shaan: The other thing is: can you use content as your lead gen, so you’re not just playing a Google keywords bidding game or a Facebook ads bidding game? Like, if you are educating people about something — let’s say Brazilian butt lifts, or some surgery that a bunch of people are curious about — the topic lends itself to content, ratings, reviews, pros and cons. Can you create YouTube or TikTok content just talking about the pros, the cons, the good stories, the horror stories? Then you capture interested parties who were googling to learn more about it, and you — as the educational source — become slightly trusted. You never need to operate the underlying business. You just sell that lead, farm them to a vetted partner to do whatever it is in a given geography.
Sam: Did we answer that?
Shaan: I think that’s a good answer.
Sam: That’s it — One Question Friday. If you want your question read live on the show, go to mfmpod.com and click on the microphone. Ask us questions. Bye.