How Enzo Carasso Grew His Agency and Became Alex Hormozi's #2 Affiliate
Enzo Carasso left a Fortune 500 partnerships role to build a lead generation agency, and within two years became one of the top affiliates for Alex Hormozi's $100M Leads launch. He and Michael talk about his first free clients, the cold email campaign behind his affiliate result, why he only sells retainers, and how training Muay Thai in Thailand changed his life.
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Topics covered
- Leaving a Fortune 500 partnerships role
- Doing free work for the first clients
- The Hormozi book launch affiliate campaign
- Targeting followers of podcasts on LinkedIn
- How the exposure filled his sales calendar
- Why he only sells retainers
- Future goals and life in Thailand
Key takeaways
- Enzo noticed he was great at getting attention with email in his corporate job, then took that skill to B2B SaaS.
- His first two clients were free. That built social proof and, more importantly, his own confidence.
- For Hormozi's launch, he sent around 600,000 emails in five weeks and sent 6,978 leads who showed up to the launch.
- The secret was the ICP: followers of the LinkedIn pages of podcasts Alex had been on.
- Borrowed authority works. Everything converts better when the brand already has a lot of social proof.
- Pay-per-meeting pricing ties your income to the client's back end. Enzo only sells retainers.
- Enzo still has no website. LinkedIn and referrals bring in his business.
Show notes
🏢 From Fortune 500 partnerships to lead gen
Enzo led partnerships for companies like Booking.com and Square. One thing kept standing out: his emails got great reply rates, even in hard industries like restaurants and hotels. He decided to take that skill to B2B SaaS.
For a while he ran the agency at night alongside his day job. Eventually the late nights became unsustainable, and he went all in.
🤝 Free first clients
His first client was a friend's marketing agency, and the second was a recruiting agency run by that friend's friend. He didn't charge either of them, and only started charging around his third or fourth client. More than social proof, he says, he needed confidence in himself.
Almost two years in, he still doesn't have a website. Most of his inbound comes from LinkedIn and referrals.
“I needed to prove to myself that I could do it”
Enzo Carasso, 4:01
📚 The Hormozi book launch campaign
Alex Hormozi launched $100M Leads on August 19, 2023. Five weeks before, he invited people to compete to bring the most leads to the launch event, with the top performers getting a call with him. After the first weekend Enzo was 12th worldwide. His team sent around 600,000 emails in five weeks across about 120 to 150 domains, and he was first by the last week.
In the final three days, the owner of a publication with a huge database overtook him. Enzo finished with 6,978 leads who showed up to the launch.
🎯 The ICP behind the result
Enzo's team noticed that Alex grows his audience by going on other people's self-development podcasts. They guessed that someone who follows a podcast's company page on LinkedIn is a true fan, not just a casual listener. So they scraped the followers of every podcast Alex had been on in the previous 24 months, ran six to eight campaign variations, and offered a strong lead magnet.
He doubts it would work as well for other creators, though. Alex's authority is unusual. Enzo's team found only two podcasts where Alex wasn't the richest person in the room.
“it mostly comes down to our ICP”
Enzo Carasso, 8:51
💼 Exposure and retainers
The campaign put Enzo on the map. He says he had 19 sales calls in the week before recording, roughly tripled the revenue he expected in half the time, and is considering merging with another agency to handle the volume.
He only sells retainers. To him, pay per meeting means unpredictable income in slow months and ties his pay to whether the client follows up. Michael agrees, adding that big companies often don't want performance deals anyway.
“My job is getting people interested in whatever you do. And that's all.”
Enzo Carasso, 16:32
🥊 Goals and life in Thailand
Enzo wants to see if he can take the agency to eight figures, and he is interested in building software that complements it. He first trained Muay Thai in Thailand in 2018 and says it was the first time he could say out loud that he was happy. Before COVID he sold everything and moved, and he has been traveling ever since.
About Enzo Carasso
Enzo Carasso runs a lead generation agency that helps companies get people interested in what they sell. He has been doing it for about two years. Before that he led tech partnerships at Fortune 500 companies, including Booking.com and Square, in North America and Europe.
Enzo left home at 17 to live in Germany, moved to Canada at 19 and studied there. He has practiced martial arts all his life, moved to Thailand before COVID, and has been traveling the world since.
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