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Cited from real sources 6 min read Updated May 2026

A framework by Alex Hormozi

Alex Hormozi's Core Four Customer Acquisition Framework

The Core Four is Alex Hormozi's compressed map of every way a business can acquire customers: warm outreach, cold outreach, content, and paid ads. There are eight in total, he notes, but four matter for a founder making 100K and trying to reach a million. The discipline is not learning all four. It is picking one and working it four hours a day for a quarter, before adding the next. Founders who rotate weekly never get any one channel past escape velocity.

The framework

1. Warm outreach

People you know, one to one

2. Cold outreach

Strangers, one to one

3. Content

People you know, one to many

4. Paid ads

Strangers, one to many

Alex Hormozi The Business Model That's So Simple, Anyone Can Try It Watch at 01:24

The framework

A 2x2 of who you know and how many you reach

The structure underneath the Core Four is a simple 2x2. On one axis: people you know versus strangers. On the other: one-to-one versus one-to-many. Every customer acquisition action lives somewhere on that grid. Warm outreach is people you know, one-to-one. Cold outreach is strangers, one-to-one. Content is people who came to know you, one-to-many. Paid ads is strangers, one-to-many.

Hormozi names the four explicitly in the trash-business example used to illustrate that the framework is business-model agnostic:

There are eight ways in total but today we're only going to talk about four of them and they are called, unsurprisingly, the Core 4.

The point of compressing acquisition this way is not that founders need a vocabulary. It is that founders chronically confuse activity with strategy. A founder who is "doing distribution" usually means: a few warm DMs on Monday, a podcast appearance Tuesday, three LinkedIn posts Wednesday, a cold-email batch Thursday, paid ads Friday. That looks productive. It produces nothing because no single channel ever hits the threshold where compounding starts.

The Core Four is a forcing function. If you can only commit to one channel for the next 90 days, which is it. The question is unpleasant because the answer is a closed door on the other three.

How to apply it

Pick one, work it four hours a day

The discipline is in the boredom of repetition, not the genius of selection.

  1. 1

    Audit how many channels you are currently sampling.

    List every customer-acquisition activity in the last 30 days. Count the channels. If the answer is more than two, you are sampling, not running.

  2. 2

    Pick the channel where you have one unfair advantage.

    Maybe you know 200 people in the industry (warm). Maybe you write well (content). Maybe you have $5K to lose (ads). Pick where you have the smallest gap to first results.

  3. 3

    Commit to four hours a day on that channel.

    Hormozi's number, not a guideline. Four hours a day is roughly enough to push past the early plateau where most quitters live. Less than that, you are dabbling.

  4. 4

    Set a 90-day blackout on the other three channels.

    Even if a competitor's content goes viral. Even if a friend pitches you a cold email tool. Switching mid-quarter is the default founder failure mode.

  5. 5

    Measure leading indicators weekly, not lagging.

    Customers acquired is lagging. For cold outreach: emails sent, reply rate, meetings booked. For content: posts, views, follows. The leading number tells you whether your reps are improving.

  6. 6

    After 90 days, decide: scale or swap.

    If the channel produced a clear signal (10+ customers, or a clear path to it), double down for another quarter. If it produced nothing despite consistent reps, swap to the next-best Core Four channel for you. Do not add, swap.

  7. 7

    Only after one channel scales, layer the second.

    The temptation to do all four at once never goes away. Resist until your first channel runs without you. Then warm becomes the second, or content layers on top of cold.

We just got our first customers from warm outreach as in talking to people we know one-on-one. Now we're going to transition to getting our first customers from posting free content.
Hormozi on the natural channel sequence Watch at 07:25

Boundary conditions

When it works, when it fails

Works best when

  • You are pre-product-market-fit and channel selection still matters more than channel optimization
  • You can commit four hours a day, not four hours a week
  • You can resist swapping channels every 30 days when the early numbers feel slow

Fails when

  • The product itself is the bottleneck (no Core Four channel rescues a broken product)
  • You pick content because it sounds prestigious despite having no audience, no comparative advantage in writing, and no patience
  • You confuse Core Four with Core Eight and try to run all of them at low intensity

Andrew Chen would push founders to also think about the channel-product fit: which channel is structurally compatible with the product mechanic. Greg Isenberg would tell you to pick the channel where your specific ICP already lives. Both are layered on top of the Core Four, not replacements for it. You still pick one before you optimize how you pick.

The sources

Where Hormozi discusses this

01:24
Timestamp

The Business Model That's So Simple, Anyone Can Try It

The Core Four named

There are eight ways in total but today we're only going to talk about four of them and they are called, unsurprisingly, the Core 4.
07:25
Timestamp

The Business Model That's So Simple, Anyone Can Try It

Warm to content transition

We just got our first customers from warm outreach as in talking to people we know one-on-one. Now we're going to transition to getting our first customers from posting free content.
29:15
Timestamp

The Business Model That's So Simple, Anyone Can Try It

Paid ads as one-to-many to strangers

We are here running paid ads today, the fourth of the Core 4, talking to people who don't know you one to many. This is how running paid ads works.

Useful? Pass it to a founder sampling all four channels at low intensity.

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