#2 Customer Financed Aquasition – CFA
Inspired by $100M Dollar Models by Alex Hormozi. Full credit to the author—buy the book for deeper insight. My goal: give you the core ideas fast so you can improve your business’s money model right away.
Definitions before we start:
- CFA (Client Financed Acquisition:
A strategy where each new customer pays for the cost of getting them — and eventually the next one — using the profit they generate. - CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost):
How much you spend to get one customer. Usually includes ads, marketing, and sales costs — not delivery costs. - Gross Profit:
Money left after you subtract the cost to deliver (materials, labour, etc.) from what the customer paid.
Example: Customer pays £300, delivery costs £100 → gross profit = £200.
- CFA (Client Financed Acquisition:
Client Financed Acquisition (CFA): How to Grow Without Using Your Own Money
Most businesses are profitable — just not straight away.
They might need a few months to earn back what they spent to get a customer.
The problem isn’t profitability — it’s cash flow.
Waiting to break even slows growth because your money is tied up in past customers, leaving less to spend on new ones.
Client Financed Acquisition (CFA) fixes this by making each customer pay for their own acquisition — and eventually, the next one.
The 3 levels of CFA:
Level 1: Lifetime Gross Profit > CAC
Goal: Make more money over a customer’s lifetime than it cost to acquire them.
You might spend £100 to get a customer, but over months or years, you earn £300–£500 in gross profit (3×).
This is the bare minimum to be a profitable business. You’ll be profitable long-term but you might be at a loss in the beginning — so you’re growth is limited by cash flow.
Not Ideal 🙁
Level 2: 30-Day Gross Profit > CAC
Goal: Earn back your customer acquisition cost within 30 days.
That means if you spend £100 on ads, that customer brings you enough sales to make £100 or more in gross profit (after delivery costs) within the first month.
→ You never spend your own money to grow.
You can “float” your ad spend on a credit card, pay it back with revenue from new customers, and keep cycling it.
Growth becomes self-funding — but limited by your cash/credit line.
Level 3: 30-Day Gross Profit > 2× CAC
Goal: Make twice your acquisition cost in 30 days.
For example, if you spend £100 on ads and the customer pays you £300, and it costs £100 to deliver, your gross profit is £200.
That £200 covers the cost of getting:
- The first customer (£100)
- The next one (£100)
→ You’re now growing with house money.
You’re never limited by budget because each customer funds the next one.
This is the ideal level — it unlocks unlimited advertising scale.
The only question now is how to achieve CFA — how to get customers to pay you back faster and fund your growth.
In the next instalments, I’ll cover practical strategies like attraction offers, upsells, downsells, and continuity offers that help you bring in more cash, sooner — so every customer pays for the next one.