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My First MillionMy First Million

How We Got Our First 100 Customers (No Bulls**t, Specific Details) (#534)

No more small boy spreadsheets, build your business on the free HubSpot CRM: https://mfmpod.link/hrd Episode 534: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) answer the question, “How did you get your first 100 customers?” In this episode, they tell you 11 ways they did it. — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (2:00) Throw an event method (6:00) The floor-to-floor method (13:30) Magnet method (15:00) "Made to Stick" method (20:00) The no risk offer (26:00) Viral content (31:00) Use the personal story (36:00) Pissing in the pond (38:00) Booth babes method (45:30) Launchpad method (49:30) The David Blaine method — Links: • The Anti-MBA - https://www.theantimba.com/ • Neville Medhora’s blog on Hustle Con - https://www.nevblog.com/hustlecon-2014/ • Ryan Hoover in Fast Company - http://tinyurl.com/muva968r — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire global talent (like Shaan does) and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than their US equivalents. — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth 💰 Pitch your startup for a shot at a $1M investment with Sam Parr as the MC https://clickhubspot.com/pitch For more quality videos subscribe here → https://tinyurl.com/46rjnckx 🔔 Turn on notifications to stay updated with new uploads

Shaan PurihostSam Parrhost
Dec 22, 202352mWatch on YouTube ↗

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At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Sam Parr and Shaan Puri Reveal Specific Tactics for Landing First 100 Customers

  1. The hosts argue that early-stage founders should study how others got their first customers, not how they scaled to millions, and they label each of their own approaches as a named method.
  2. Sam describes using Craigslist and hosted events for his roommate-matching startup, a niche-targeted infographic campaign for his Roommates app, and a blog-plus-email-capture engine for his HustleCon conference.
  3. Shaan describes going floor to floor in a Denver skyscraper to sell sushi catering, making no-risk offers to landowners with stranded coal, and using a scavenger hunt at a craft beer festival to gather about 1,400 leads.
  4. Both stress narrow, passionate niches and personal storytelling: Shaan cites a Shepherd newsletter with an 11% click rate and posting founder stories in small Facebook groups, and Sam describes a story-led Gumroad pre-sale page for Trends.
  5. They close with launchpad and spectacle tactics, including Sam's use of an existing audience and Shaan's David Blaine-style public challenge of turning $1 million into $10 million for his newsletter, with plenty of tangents and jokes along the way.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Early traction matters more than scaling advice

Shaan argues that what matters at the start is how someone got to $10 in revenue, since you can't reach step two without step one.

Go where seekers already are

Sam's Bunk startup posted Craigslist ads and hosted events for people already hunting for apartments, rather than creating demand from scratch.

Brute-force outreach sharpens your pitch

Shaan's floor-to-floor sales taught him to find the front-desk gatekeeper, ask a yes-or-no catering question, and offer a free sample tray, and his pitch was solid by around floor 12.

A no-risk offer bypasses the trust problem

Shaan says a new company has no relationships or track record, so offering zero downside and only upside, as with his coal landowners, Hormozi's gym marketing, and a tax-credit firm, speeds up the first deals.

Niche content gets shared fiercely

Sam's city-specific roommate infographics, packed with local brands and gentle jokes, drew roughly 100,000 users because each tribe saw itself in them.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

if you're at the start, it doesn't matter what somebody did to go d- to get to 10 million in revenue. What matters is what, how they got to $10 in revenue.

— Shaan Puri

You have no track record, so you need to offer them something that has, like, zero downside and only upside.

— Shaan Puri

Niches make riches.

— Sam Parr

People will subscribe to watch me get my ass kicked. They'll watch... They'll subscribe to watch me kick ass. And even better, they'll subscribe to find out whether I get my ass kicked or whether I kick ass.

— Shaan Puri

if you can get 100, 100 of the hyper-obsessed people of a niche to actually c- give a shit about you and know about you, they're the ones who spread the word.

— Shaan Puri

First 100 customersHosting events and piggybacking on CraigslistFloor-to-floor door-to-door salesNiche-targeted viral contentNo-risk offersPersonal story marketingLaunchpad audience and David Blaine stunts

High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.

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