What is the Hormozi GOOD framework and why does it score audiences out of 30?
Hormozi’s GOOD framework scores a candidate audience on three 10-point axes — Pain Level, Buying Power, and Easy to Find — for a total out of 30. It comes from his $100M Offers playbook, where the original mnemonic stands for Growing, Obvious, Outsized, Differentiated. The /30 score is the field-tested compression I and most operators I know actually use to decide whether to spend money on a niche. My personal cutoff: 18/30 minimum to launch, 22/30 to scale. The last ICP I built scored 23/30. We launched. The campaign hit €4 CPL on a 6 CPL category benchmark and the client did $50K in 21 days. This article is the framework, the scoring rubric, the kill rules, and a worked example.
Why Pain × Buying Power × Easy-to-Find?
Three axes. Score each /10. Sum.
- Pain Level (/10) — How urgent is this problem for them, today?
- Buying Power (/10) — Can they actually pay for the solution at the price you’ll need?
- Easy to Find (/10) — Can you reach them at scale on one or two specific channels?
Below 12/30: kill. 12-17/30: needs work — fix the weakest axis before launch. 18-21/30: launch with a tight budget. 22-26/30: scale. 27+/30: you’ve found a category-defining niche, go all-in.
Why these three? Because they’re the three independent ways an audience kills you. High pain + low buying power = you build a free product. High buying power + low pain = nobody clicks. High pain + high buying power + impossible to find = you burn the ad budget fishing.
“If you can’t get to 18/30 honestly, the niche isn’t ready and your offer isn’t ready. Fix the weakest axis or pick a different niche.” — Operating principle I run on every client engagement
How do you score Pain Level honestly?
The 10-point Pain scale, from a real engagement:
| Score | Pain pattern | Real-world signal |
|---|---|---|
| 1-2 | Mild annoyance, no urgency | ”Yeah, I should fix that someday” |
| 3-4 | Recurring inconvenience | They mention it in passing |
| 5-6 | Active frustration, no current solution | They’ve Googled it once |
| 7 | Affects revenue or relationships weekly | They’ve tried 1-2 free fixes |
| 8 | Affects revenue or relationships daily | They’ve already spent money trying |
| 9 | Causes anxiety + decision paralysis | They lose sleep over it |
| 10 | Existential threat to their identity or business | ”If this doesn’t change in 6 months I’m done” |
For Julien — the 33-year-old French freelance consultant in my last build — Pain scored 8/10. Three converging fears: “I post on LinkedIn but nobody DMs me” (9/10 intensity), “My revenue is stuck at €3-5K/month” (9/10), “Imposter syndrome paralyzes me” (8/10). He thinks about it daily. He’s already spent €2K on courses that didn’t work. He’s not sleeping great. That’s an 8.
The honest test: would they pay $500 today, no questions asked, if they believed the solution worked? If yes, you’re at 8+. If they’d think about it for a week, you’re at 6-7.
How do you score Buying Power honestly?
Buying Power isn’t just “do they have money.” It’s “do they have unlocked money for this category, at the price you need to charge to make a margin?”
| Score | Pattern |
|---|---|
| 1-2 | Negative cash flow, can’t even pay $9/mo |
| 3-4 | Disposable income exists but is allocated elsewhere |
| 5-6 | Can pay $50-500 if convinced; no headroom for high-ticket |
| 7 | Comfortable at $500-2K; needs a ladder for higher |
| 8 | $2-10K per purchase doable; B2B budget unlocked |
| 9 | High-ticket comfortable ($10K+); spends fast |
| 10 | Enterprise budget; the only constraint is procurement speed |
Julien scored 6/10. Revenue €30-80K/year, margins tight. €500 = doable. €2,000 = he has to think for a week. €10,000 = needs payment plan. The fix: a low-ticket entry product (€500 bootcamp) that ladders up to a €10K mastermind. Without that ladder, the niche kills itself on month 3.
The honest test: what’s the ratio of “current annual income” to “your offer price”? Below 5%: easy yes. 5-15%: needs a payment plan or social proof. Above 15%: needs a ladder or a different audience.
How do you score Easy to Find honestly?
Easy to Find = can you reach this audience profitably at scale on a small number of identifiable channels?
| Score | Pattern |
|---|---|
| 1-2 | No identifiable cluster, no shared platform |
| 3-4 | They exist on 5+ platforms, none dominant |
| 5-6 | One or two platforms work, but targeting is fuzzy |
| 7 | Clear platform + targeting parameters work, but expensive |
| 8 | Clear platform + cheap, specific targeting parameters |
| 9 | They cluster around 1-3 named creators or communities |
| 10 | They self-identify with a specific job title and tagged industry |
Julien scored 9/10. Every freelance consultant in France with 1-4 years of activity is on LinkedIn (37M+ French members in 2026). LinkedIn Ads filters by job title (Freelance, Consultant, Founder), sector (Marketing, Communication, Consulting), and company size (1-10). They cluster around 5-8 named French creators (Thibault Louis, Flavie Prevot, LiveMentor, Scalezia, Nina Ramen). Targetable, identifiable, cheap-ish CPMs. Easy 9.
The honest test: name the exact targeting parameters and the 3 creators they follow. If you can’t, you’re at 5 or below.
What does 23/30 actually look like in production?
Julien’s build:
- Pain: 8/10. Daily, expensive, existing failed solutions.
- Buying Power: 6/10. €500 entry, ladder to €10K.
- Easy to Find: 9/10. LinkedIn job-title targeting + 5 named creator audiences.
- Total: 23/30 GOOD.
Translation to the campaign:
| Lever | Score-driven decision |
|---|---|
| Offer price | €500 entry product (not €2K) — driven by Buying Power 6 |
| Channel | LinkedIn Ads + LinkedIn organic — driven by Easy to Find 9 |
| Hook angle | Pain-led (“you post for months, zero clients”) — driven by Pain 8 |
| Funnel | 5-email nurture (2-6 weeks) — driven by Buyer’s Journey research phase |
| Validation | Pre-launch: 5 customer interviews with verbatims — driven by Pain 8 (need to confirm) |
That’s a campaign decided before a dollar is spent. Reverse: a 14/30 niche would have changed every one of those answers, and the campaign would never have shipped.
When should you kill a niche?
Three kill rules I refuse to break:
- Total below 12/30. No matter how exciting the niche, three sub-5 axes mean you’ll burn the budget. Walk.
- Any single axis at 1-2/10. Even if total is 18, a 1 on Buying Power kills you. A 2 on Easy-to-Find means you’ll never scale. Fix or kill.
- Pain below 6 with no budget headroom. Soft pain + tight budget = tire-kickers, refunds, churn. Worst-case combination.
I killed a niche in March 2025 that scored 19/30 — Pain 8, Buying Power 9, Easy-to-Find 2. We had no path to reach them at scale. €4K of test ads later, the kill was the right call. The 23/30 niche replaced it and shipped in 14 days.
How does this compare to other validation frameworks?
| Framework | Axes | What it tests | Where it falls short |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hormozi GOOD (this one) | Pain × Buying Power × Easy to Find | Whether you can run paid ads profitably | Doesn’t test product-market fit, only audience fit |
| Sean Ellis “must have” survey | % of users who would be “very disappointed” without you | Product-market fit | Requires you to already have users |
| Lean Startup MVP | Cohort retention curves | Long-term value | 90+ day cycle, too slow for ad-driven niches |
| Jobs to Be Done | Functional, emotional, social jobs | Why they hire your product | No quantitative cutoff |
The GOOD framework is fastest — you can score a niche in 90 minutes with 5 customer interviews. The others are deeper but slower. I run GOOD first, then JTBD on the niches that pass.
Frequently asked questions
Where do the 10-point scales come from? Is there a master rubric? The scales above are mine, calibrated against ~20 launches in the last 2 years. Hormozi’s original framework is qualitative (the GOOD acronym). The /10 calibration is operator-level interpretation. Use these scales as a starting point and adjust to your category.
What if my niche scores 18/30 — should I launch? Yes, with a tight budget. Cap the test at $2-5K. Watch the weakest axis carefully. If the weak axis was Easy-to-Find and CPLs balloon, kill in week 2. If it was Buying Power and refunds spike, kill on month 1.
Can a niche move from 14/30 to 22/30 over time? Yes, but rarely on Pain. Pain is mostly fixed by the audience itself. Buying Power can shift if the avatar’s career stage changes (a freshly-promoted manager has more budget). Easy-to-Find can shift if a new platform emerges (TikTok unlocked a lot of niches in 2020-2022). Don’t bet on the move; revalidate quarterly.
How do I score B2B audiences differently? Add a fourth implicit axis: Decision Cycle Length. A 23/30 B2B niche with a 9-month sales cycle is harder to monetize than a 19/30 B2C niche with a 14-day cycle. I keep this as a notes field, not an axis.
What’s the relationship between this score and the 17-section ICP Bible? The Bible’s Section 12 is exactly this score. You can build the rest of the Bible without scoring, but you shouldn’t ship a campaign without it. The score is the gate.
Should I score my whole TAM or just a sub-segment? Sub-segment. “Freelance consultants” is too broad — score “freelance digital-marketing consultants in France with 1-4 years of activity and €30-80K revenue.” The narrower the segment, the more honest the score.
What if the audience scores 22/30 but I have no offer for them? Build the offer. A 22/30 audience with no offer is a goldmine; a 22/30 audience with the wrong offer is a graveyard. The Bible’s Section 5 (Desires) tells you what to build.
What to do tomorrow
Pick one candidate audience. Open a doc. Write the three scores honestly — Pain, Buying Power, Easy to Find. Total. If you’re below 18, name the weakest axis and decide: fix it or pick a different audience. If you’re 18+, build the 17-section ICP Bible for that audience and ship a 14-day test. Don’t skip the score. The 6 weeks of validation it saves is real.
For the seven psychographic dimensions that turn this score into copy that converts, see the founder psychographics article. For the 50-objection encyclopedia that closes the deal, see the objection-encyclopedia article.