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WE'RE BUYING! $1M-10M EBITDA Founders - We invest and help you scale faster. To find out more, apply here: https://acquisition.com 

We invest in everything from youtube channels to local businesses to IT services. 

For everyone else, I make my money buying and growing businesses. I make this free content with the hopes you use it to grow your business enough to partner with us.

I'm going to show you how to get your first 5 customers in 10 steps.

The wild world of YouTube has videos everywhere telling you how to scale and grow, but

And so this is actually a sneak peek from my new book, 100 Billion Dollar Leads, which comes out 8-19.

You can go to acquisition.com forward slash leads.

So the first step to getting this going is you need to get a list.

Number 1, I want you to go to your email account.

Anybody that you've ever messaged or emailed.

I want you to go to every single social media profile that you have.

Go to your social media profiles where you can direct message people.

So if you have followers that you can DM, I want you to write down every single 1 of those people.

Pull out your phone, look for your contacts, and I want you to export them.

List 1 is all your email contacts, list 2 is all of your social contacts, and list 3 is all of your phone and private personal contacts.

If you add all 3 of those together, you will have a shitload more leads than you thought you did.

You're like, wait, you're going to ask me to contact these people?

Not yet, and we're not going to do it in a really weird way.

I'm going to show you how to do it in a classy way.

This is how I started every business I have and have people thank me for it.

The second step is that you pick a platform.

All right, so you have all these contacts, but you're going to have to pick 1 platform that you're going to start messaging or emailing them with.

have the most Instagram people or you have the most email contacts or you have more people on your phone than any of those, start there.

So what you want to do is you want to use something you already know about the person or prospect in order to initiate reaching out to them.

This is also just called being a human being.

What you do is you take 30 seconds, you look at someone's profile and you say, oh, they have got this thing, we have something in common, and

So for example, you can be like, hey, saw you got a baby.

All you need to show is that you took a few seconds to actually not just blast some sort

And you reach out to 100 people every single day.

So let's say you had 3, 000 people between all your emails, all your phone contacts, and every single follower across all your social medias.

It took you 20 years to send your first DM, and it'll take you 2 minutes to send the second 1.

Everything must be hard before it can be easy.

So just get over the hump, send it, just something so you can realize that you won't die.

You acknowledge, compliment, and you ask.

For example, I can acknowledge and say, oh, so you have 2 kids.

You're gonna compliment them about the thing.

You must be a super mom, working full-time and having 2 kids.

When we go to ask, we're gonna tie our ask to the compliment we just gave them.

Then we transition to whatever type of question that's gonna lead them to the service we sell.

If I was selling weight loss, I'd be like, hey, so you're a Superman,

It's not, because we're talking fucking humans.

When you're talking about this stuff, you're not going to sell them.

You asked a question, they're going to tell you stuff, and then it's gonna be like, oh yeah, by the way, do you know anyone who's looking for X, Y, and Z because I'm opening up a few slots to help people do exactly that.

You're just asking them if they know anybody.

And since you're friends with them, and since you're contacts, you're asking them for a favor.

This should make you not feel weird about messaging people.

If they say, hey, I'd like to find out more, now what they have done is they've transitioned from a lead to an engaged lead.

An engaged lead is someone who you can contact, comma, who has shown interest in the thing that you sell.

If she says, I haven't been able to keep up with my workouts, et cetera, now they have shown interest in the thing.

Well then how do I get them to buy from it?

We're going to give them the easiest offer in the world to say yes to.

They probably know that you're not that experienced.

The reason we do it for free is you say, hey I'm gonna do all this stuff for free as long as you promise to do 3 things.

And 3, leave a killer review if you think it deserves 1.

The reason I want you to start with that is that 1, it'll get you more reps.

3, you need to learn how to suck less and you suck less by doing more.

And it's way easier to get more people to work with you if you lower the barrier to free.

You're actually getting the better end of the deal.

You might be wondering why I just mushed the shit out of this banana in my hand.

And it's because the launch of my second book, $100 million leads, is both nutritious, natural, and will make you lots of money, unlike bananas.

But the event itself, where I'll be launching it on Saturday, August 19th, will be bananas.

I've spent over a million dollars on the event itself and I'm going to be giving away a secret thing that I've been working on for over 4 years to everyone who's there with me live.

It kills me inside that I cannot tell you, but I want the surprise itself to be worth it and I think it will be.

It's a day after my birthday and it's my way of giving back to you guys for being so awesome.

Click the link, register, and I'll see you guys there.

I'll tell you the quick story of Warren Buffett and Ben Graham.

Ben Graham was the GOAT back in the day for investing.

Warren Buffett was just a kid out of Columbia and wanted to go learn investing.

And he offered to work for Graham for free.

Graham said, you're getting the better end of the deal.

The actual answer was, you're overpriced.

So free was too expensive for Graham because Graham knew that he was gonna have to invest more in getting Warren good enough to actually work for him.

And so right now, these customers, and they are very much customers, because they are exchanging something for your service.

They're exchanging their time and their effort and some stuff later that you're gonna have them do.

Just because you're not getting paid doesn't mean it's free, but it is monetarily free.

You say, by the way, do you know anybody who is, describe their struggles, looking to, dream outcome, in, time delay.

I'm taking on 5 case studies for free because that's all I can handle.

I just wanna get some testimonials for my service or product.

And we're being honest because this is a first business and you fucking have no idea what you're doing so you better not take more than 5 customers on.

I just had a girl named XXX work with me to get Dream Outcome.

Even though she described the same struggle the person you're talking to is struggling with, I'd like to get more testimonials to show it works across different scenarios.

If they say no, here's a really funny way you can respond to that.

Just say, haha, does anyone you hate come to mind?

Honestly, that's when you'll sometimes get the real response.

If you don't have time to say all of those things,

the type of customer get dream outcome in time period without effort and sacrifice, and I guarantee X, Y, and Z to decrease risk.

That's if you just have that moment to deliver 1 thing of what do I do.

Some special snowflakes are gonna be like,

you should never sell your time for nothing.

So it would be unreasonable for you to be good.

Why would you want to sell sucky service to people you know?

If people don't want to work with you, even for free, then ask them why.

Because the reason that someone tells you they don't want to work with you, even for free, is because there are hidden costs associated with whatever thing you sell.

If you figure out what all those hidden costs are, you can eliminate those hidden costs and then be able to charge significantly more for your solution later compared to the other people who charge for it and still include those hidden costs.

I got solicited in this exact manner, and a guy messaged me and said, I wanna do short-form videos for you.

I will take all the stuff you already have online, and I will make them for you, and I'll even post them for you.

He started making short videos, and he started accepting payment because he had removed the hidden cost.

If people get value from this thing that you have, especially if it's free, they're far more likely to leave positive reviews, give you feedback and send their friends and family.

Once we have that we have our first customers.

So you had that big list and we hit all of them once and back again.

if they know anybody, they actually just give you people that they know that might help and you get free leads.

Because if you reach out to 3, 000 people with a free thing, you'll get 5 people who will take you up on it.

Once people start referring, that's when you know you are good enough to start charging.

When this happens, all you do is you go back up to the script that I just read to you and you change free to 80% off.

you get those 5, change to 40, then to 20.

You can go 40% over that because there are no rules.

And if at that point you're way better, you may merit that because of the value that you deliver.

Because ideally, you're charging full retail, but now you're at 10x the value.

Value that you have done has gotten better because you figured out from the feedback that these people that work with you for free have told you so that you can make it even better for people who pay you.

Once you have those people and you started transitioning, congratulations, you are in business and you are making money.

When you fill up all your slots with free people and discounted people, now you have true scarcity.

And so you can ethically sell with conviction that you really don't have that much room.

They will desire you more because you are scarce from a resource perspective and then they will pay the same or premium in order to work with you.

And then you turn to your free person and you say I am accepting somebody who is paying full boat in order to do this.

If you would like me to keep doing this for you, you would have to start paying to match them.

If they're not, no sweat, because all you did is you helped them for free.

Can I get the killer review you asked me for, or I asked you for?

And those free people, you have to love and cherish them more than anyone else in your life, because they're gonna get you business in 3 different ways.

1, they're gonna leave you reviews that are gonna get you business.

2, they're gonna send you people that are gonna get you business.

And 3, they themselves may transition into paying you,

Don't think short, think long, and you'll make long money.

Now you have paying customers, you're reaching your capacity, you're consistently raising your price because now there is more demand than you have supply.

And we have artificially created a condition for profit.

Provide value to them on a regular basis.

When you do that, you continue to reinforce and deposit goodwill in the audience because what will happen eventually is you won't even need to ask them because you've provided enough value.

You start posting enough testimonials, enough results, talking about some of the entrenched stuff that you're doing right now, that people be like, hey that's actually pretty cool, hey can I find out more about that?

And then they will actually start soliciting you.

That's how you go from 0 to hero and get your first 5 paying customers.


Speaker 0: I'm going to show you how to get your first 5 customers in 10 steps. The wild world of YouTube has videos everywhere telling you how to scale and grow, but

Speaker 1: I think people overcomplicate it. And so this is actually a sneak peek from my new book, 100 Billion Dollar Leads, which comes out 8-19. You can go to acquisition.com forward slash leads. Let's dive in. So the first step to getting this going is you need to get a list.

Speaker 2: But I don't have a list, Alex.

Speaker 1: You're damn straight you do. Number 1, I want you to go to your email account. You pull all the contacts that you

Speaker 2: have in there. Anybody that you've ever messaged or emailed. That becomes list 1. List 2 is

Speaker 1: I want you to go to every single social media profile that you have. Go to your social media profiles where you can direct message people. So if you have followers that you can DM, I want you to write down every single 1 of those people. List number 3. Pull out your phone, look for your contacts, and I want you to export them.

List 1 is all your email contacts, list 2 is all of your social contacts, and list 3 is all of your phone and private personal contacts. If you add all 3 of those together, you will have a shitload more leads than you thought you did.

Speaker 2: You're like, wait, you're going to ask me to contact these people? Slow down.

Speaker 1: Not yet, and we're not going to do it in a really weird way.

Speaker 2: I'm going to show you how to do it in a classy way. This is how I started every business I have and have people thank me for it.

Speaker 1: The second step is that you pick a platform. All right, so you have all these contacts, but you're going to have to pick 1 platform that you're going to start messaging or emailing them with. Start with the 1 that you have the

Speaker 2: most people on. So if you

Speaker 1: have the most Instagram people or you have the most email contacts or you have more people on your phone than any of those, start there. Step 3, but what do I say? You personalize your message. So what you want to do is you want to use something you already know about the person or prospect in order to initiate reaching out to them. This is also just called being a human being.

What you do is you take 30 seconds, you look at someone's profile and you say, oh, they have got this thing, we have something in common, and

Speaker 2: you can reach out to

Speaker 1: them with that as your primary message. So for example, you can be like, hey, saw you got a baby. Hey, saw you switch jobs. Hey, saw you move. Hey, you saw that movie last weekend.

It doesn't matter. All you need to show is that you took a few seconds to actually not just blast some sort

Speaker 2: of message. Step 4, you reach out.

Speaker 1: And you reach out to 100 people every single day. So let's say you had 3, 000 people between all your emails, all your phone contacts, and every single follower across all your social medias. It took you 20 years to send your first DM, and it'll take you 2 minutes to send the second 1. Everything must be hard before it can be easy. So just get over the hump, send it, just something so you can realize that you won't die.

Step 5, what do I say if they reply? You warm them up. I use a framework that I call ACA. You acknowledge, compliment, and you ask. For example, I can acknowledge and say, oh, so you have 2 kids.

You're gonna compliment them about the thing.

Speaker 2: So it's like, wow, you

Speaker 1: have 2 kids. You must be a super mom, working full-time and having 2 kids. When we go to ask, we're gonna tie our ask to the compliment we just gave them. Then we transition to whatever type of question that's gonna lead them to the service we sell. If I was selling weight loss, I'd be like, hey, so you're a Superman,

Speaker 2: How do you

Speaker 1: have time to eat right and work out? Wait a second, this sounds like selling. It's not, because we're talking fucking humans. Step 6, invite their friends. When you're talking about this stuff, you're not going to sell them.

This is fucking huge. You're not going to solicit them. You asked a question, they're going to tell you stuff, and then it's gonna be like, oh yeah, by the way, do you know anyone who's looking for X, Y, and Z because I'm opening up a few slots to help people do exactly that. You're just asking them if they know anybody. And since you're friends with them, and since you're contacts, you're asking them for a favor.

You're not asking them to buy from you. This should make you not feel weird about messaging people. If they say, hey, I'd like to find out more, now what they have done is they've transitioned from a lead to an engaged lead. A lead is somebody that you can contact. An engaged lead is someone who you can contact, comma, who has shown interest in the thing that you sell.

If she says, I haven't been able to keep up with my workouts, et cetera, now they have shown interest in the thing. Well then how do I get them to buy from it? We're going to give them the easiest offer in the world to say yes to. You're gonna make it free. They probably know that you're not that experienced.

Just be honest. The reason we do it for free is you say, hey I'm gonna do all this stuff for free as long as you promise to do 3 things. 1, you actually use my service. 2, you give me feedback on it. And 3, leave a killer review if you think it deserves 1.

Those are the terms of exchange. The reason I want you to start with that is that 1, it'll get you more reps. 2, you probably suck. 3, you need to learn how to suck less and you suck less by doing more. And it's way easier to get more people to work with you if you lower the barrier to free.

You're actually getting the better end of the deal. You might be wondering why I just mushed the shit out of this banana in my hand. And it's because the launch of my second book, $100 million leads, is both nutritious, natural, and will make you lots of money, unlike bananas. But the event itself, where I'll be launching it on Saturday, August 19th, will be bananas. I've spent over a million dollars on the event itself and I'm going to be giving away a secret thing that I've been working on for over 4 years to everyone who's there with me live.

And I would love to tell you what it is. It kills me inside that I cannot tell you, but I want the surprise itself to be worth it and I think it will be.

Speaker 2: This is a date that you're not going

Speaker 1: to miss. It's a day after my birthday and it's my way of giving back to you guys for being so awesome. Click the link, register, and I'll see you guys there. I'll tell you the quick story of Warren Buffett and Ben Graham. Ben Graham was the GOAT back in the day for investing.

Warren Buffett was just a kid out of Columbia and wanted to go learn investing. And he offered to work for Graham for free. Graham said, you're getting the better end of the deal. The actual answer was, you're overpriced. So free was too expensive for Graham because Graham knew that he was gonna have to invest more in getting Warren good enough to actually work for him.

And so right now, these customers, and they are very much customers, because they are exchanging something for your service. They're exchanging their time and their effort and some stuff later that you're gonna have them do. Just because you're not getting paid doesn't mean it's free, but it is monetarily free. So, got the round. I'm gonna give you 2 versions of this.

You say, by the way, do you know anybody who is, describe their struggles, looking to, dream outcome, in, time delay. I'm taking on 5 case studies for free because that's all I can handle. I just wanna get some testimonials for my service or product. And we're being honest because this is a first business and you fucking have no idea what you're doing so you better not take more than 5 customers on. I just had a girl named XXX work with me to get Dream Outcome.

Even though she described the same struggle the person you're talking to is struggling with, I'd like to get more testimonials to show it works across different scenarios. Does anyone you like come to mind? If they say no, here's a really funny way you can respond to that. Just say, haha, does anyone you hate come to mind? Honestly, that's when you'll sometimes get the real response.

If you don't have time to say all of those things,

Speaker 2: you just say, I help

Speaker 1: the type of customer get dream outcome in time period without effort and sacrifice, and I guarantee X, Y, and Z to decrease risk. That's it. That's if you just have that moment to deliver 1 thing of what do I do. Some special snowflakes are gonna be like,

Speaker 0: you should never sell your time for nothing.

Speaker 1: You suck. You have never done this before.

Speaker 2: So it would be unreasonable for you to be good.

Speaker 1: Why would you want to sell sucky service to people you know? If people don't want to work with you, even for free, then ask them why. Because the reason that someone tells you they don't want to work with you, even for free, is because there are hidden costs associated with whatever thing you sell. If you figure out what all those hidden costs are, you can eliminate those hidden costs and then be able to charge significantly more for your solution later compared to the other people who charge for it and still include those hidden costs. So I'll give you an example.

I got solicited in this exact manner, and a guy messaged me and said, I wanna do short-form videos for you. You don't have to do anything. I will take all the stuff you already have online, and I will make them for you, and I'll even post them for you. Like you actually just need to say yes. And so I said, yes, and guess what?

He started making short videos, and he started accepting payment because he had removed the hidden cost. If people get value from this thing that you have, especially if it's free, they're far more likely to leave positive reviews, give you feedback and send their friends and family. Once we have that we have our first customers.

Speaker 2: Now we go to

Speaker 1: step 8. You start back at the top. So you had that big list and we hit all of them once and back again. So some of those people, by the

Speaker 2: way, when you ask them

Speaker 1: if they know anybody, they actually just give you people that they know that might help and you get free leads. Because if you reach out to 3, 000 people with a free thing, you'll get 5 people who will take you up on it.

Speaker 2: I promise you.

Speaker 0: So now you're like, but Alex,

Speaker 1: I can't work for free forever. Now we're on step 9, start charging. Once people start referring, that's when you know you are good enough to start charging. When this happens, all you do is you go back up to the script that I just read to you and you change free to 80% off. And you say that's for the next 5.

Speaker 2: What do you do after that? Change the 80% to 60%. After

Speaker 1: you get those 5, change to 40, then to 20. Then you're at full price. But guess what? It doesn't have to stop there. You can go 20% over.

You can go 40% over that because there are no rules. And if at that point you're way better, you may merit that because of the value that you deliver. Because ideally, you're charging full retail, but now you're at 10x the value. Value that you have done has gotten better because you figured out from the feedback that these people that work with you for free have told you so that you can make it even better for people who pay you. Once you have those people and you started transitioning, congratulations, you are in business and you are making money.

You will at some point reach capacity. When you fill up all your slots with free people and discounted people, now you have true scarcity. And so you can ethically sell with conviction that you really don't have that much room. They will desire you more because you are scarce from a resource perspective and then they will pay the same or premium in order to work with you. And then you turn to your free person and you say I am accepting somebody who is paying full boat in order to do this.

If you would like me to keep doing this for you, you would have to start paying to match them. Are you comfortable with that? If they're not, no sweat, because all you did is you helped them for free. And they say, no worries. Can I get the killer review you asked me for, or I asked you for?

And those free people, you have to love and cherish them more than anyone else in your life, because they're gonna get you business in 3 different ways. 1, they're gonna leave you reviews that are gonna get you business. 2, they're gonna send you people that are gonna get you business. And 3, they themselves may transition into paying you,

Speaker 2: which will also get you business.

Speaker 1: Don't think short, think long, and you'll make long money. Now you have paying customers, you're reaching your capacity, you're consistently raising your price because now there is more demand than you have supply. And we have artificially created a condition for profit. So what's the 10th step? Keep them warm.

You've got this big list of people. Check in like a human being. Provide value to them on a regular basis. When you do that, you continue to reinforce and deposit goodwill in the audience because what will happen eventually is you won't even need to ask them because you've provided enough value. You start posting enough testimonials, enough results, talking about some of the entrenched stuff that you're doing right now, that people be like, hey that's actually pretty cool, hey can I find out more about that?

And then they will actually start soliciting you. And that's the game. That's how you go from 0 to hero and get your first 5 paying customers.

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