During the gold rush days, the people making real money were those who sold shovels and pick axes. It was in their best interest to sell the dream of finding "gold in them hills", even though they weren't in the gold industry, but hardware industry.
The Dave Ramsey leads are legitimate. For two years, I paid almost $9,000 per year for 1/4 of a metro area. I broke even year one, then did much better year two. I suspended my account because the leads didn’t fit my business model well enough to scale it.
That being said, it did everything they promised it would deliver. With all sorts of BS in the industry, this one was legitimate. I retained most of those clients from the program and still generate about $20,000 in revenue each year from it.