The Core Four + Rule of 100 (Alex Hormozi)
The Core Four + Rule of 100
As taught by Alex Hormozi, there are only four ways to get a customer in front of your
offer. Every "growth hack" is just one of these four, dressed up. Stop hunting for a fifth.
The Core Four
- Warm outreach — people who already know you, contacted one-to-one and privately. DMs,
texts, emails to your own list/contacts. Highest conversion, smallest audience.
- Cold outreach — people who don't know you, contacted one-to-one. Cold email/DM/call.
Scales further because strangers vastly outnumber friends.
- Post free content — one-to-many, public. You give value to an audience; some convert.
Compounds over time, slow to start.
- Paid ads — one-to-many, public, but you rent the attention. Fastest to turn on, costs
money, dies when you stop paying.
Two axes make it click: warm vs cold (do they know you?) and one-to-one vs one-to-many
(private vs public). That's the whole matrix.
The Rule of 100
Pick a channel and do 100 units of work a day for 100 days: 100 outreach messages, or
100 minutes making content, or $100/day in ad spend. The number forces volume past the point
where you can fool yourself about whether a channel works.
What to use in your business
- Start with warm outreach — today. It's free and converts best. Don't pitch; open with a
genuine, human message and ask who they know who has the problem you solve.
- Pick ONE Core Four channel and commit to the Rule of 100 for a week before you judge it.
Most people quit a channel after 5 attempts and conclude "it doesn't work."
- Sequence them as you can afford to. Broke and unknown → warm + cold outreach (time, not
money). Some cash → add paid ads to buy speed. Building a moat → post content so warm/cold
compounds over time.
- Track inputs, not just outcomes. Count the 100. If the activity is real and the result
isn't, the offer is the problem (see the Value Equation) — not the channel.
- Never wait for the "perfect" channel. Done-at-volume beats clever-but-untried.
The discipline: one channel, real volume, measured honestly — before you add a second.