How I Got My First 10 Customers in One Month

And how you can too.

I was never meant to run a business.

I…

• failed out of college after 5 years
• am terrible with numbers
• lasted two months at my sales job because I sucked at it

But I’ve been running a 6-figure coaching business for years. And last year, I started a profitable company that is now growing and scaling.

Here’s how I did that as a college dropout with zero business experience. 👇

Building a life coaching practice. 📊

I told that entire story in an article last year.

In short, I…

• coached all my friends for free
• got better
• charged a little money
• joined a certification program
• got good
• charged more money
• did 1,000 sessions
• got great
• charged even more
• did 2,000 sessions
• kept getting better and raising my prices

Read the article if you want the full walkthrough.​☝️

How I started a company with no idea what I’m doing. 👶

In 3 acts…🎭

1. Get going.
2. Get good.
3. Get smart.

​Ali Abdaal uses these 3 pillars when teaching people how to start YouTube channels. But they apply to any creation.

Use the lessons and mistakes I share in this post to build your own thing.

Let’s dive in.

Part 1: Get going. 🚀

I often see new creators and entrepreneurs get this order wrong.

People want to make sure they’re good or smart before starting anything at all. They stress about making sure their thing is polished and crystal clear before stepping into the arena for battle.

e.g. Knowing exactly how you’re going to run your coaching sessions before inviting anyone to a coaching session.

But that’s backward.

You’ve never done a coaching session. So you have zero clue how it’s supposed to go. There’s no context to work with.

It’s like saying, “I will start playing piano once I am good.”

Skill. Quality. Sharpness…These things are a result of action, not a prerequisite.

So many folks want to put together roadmaps, business plans, and vision boards.

You don’t need any of those to start a business. You need 3 things:

1. a clear product / service
2. people to potentially sell it to
3. a way to take payments

Ta da. Now you’re in bizniss. 🪄

The goal is not to be pretty or graceful or clean. The goal is to come in like Miley Cyrus on a wrecking ball and figure everything out along the way.

You learn during the work, not before. I learned more from my first three sales calls than I did from reading 10 sales books.

Experience and mistakes will be your guide.

Last summer, I started having biweekly calls with a close friend. We used it to stay in touch while helping each other achieve our goals.

It leveled us up tremendously.

We each had 30 minutes to get coaching, get feedback, and build action plans. In one month, he started a marketing agency and I finished the first chapter of my book.

It’s amazing what someone can do with 30 minutes of coaching and accountability, I thought.

Bingo. 💡

I got an idea that melded all my seemingly different interests into one:

• coaching
• content creation
• interviewing
• community
• building something at scale

What if I ran a team of accountability coaches who helped content creators stay consistent, make better stuff, and grow their audiences?

Thus Grindstone was born.

I told a coaching buddy about it during our monthly chat. He loved the idea even more than I did.

“I’m on board,” he said. “Let me know when you start and I’ll be your first coach.”

Whoa. I had my first…team?

Cool. I had the product. I already had a payment processor from my one-on-one coaching business. Now I needed customers.

I used Alex Hormozi’s $100M Leads system to get our first 10 guinea pigs…I mean creators. 🐹

Because of my old YouTuber podcast, I have tons of awesome creators with big audiences in my network. I reached out to three of them with this message:

“Hey [creator who is way cooler than me]!​

How have you been? I’m starting an accountability coaching practice for creators.​

They get: more clarity, more consistency, more growth.​

We’re just starting so I’m taking the first 10 for free. No catch or sales pitch. Just want to get going.​

Know anyone who’d be a good fit for this?”

I was scared to ask. I thought it would ruin my reputation with people I have massive respect for.

One politely declined. But two posted in their communities. 🥳

I also posted on Facebook to see if any of my 1,400 friends wanted free help with their content. Two people messaged me within an hour of posting.

Two creators’ kindness, plus one Facebook post from me…and we had our 10 free customers.

I did the first call, onboarded them, then scheduled them on my business partner’s calendar.

Let the games begin. 🐎

That gave me the confidence to pitch people in random conversation. When I learned a friend was creating something, I invited them to join Grindstone for an enormous discount.

We started getting paid customers.

All of this terrified me because we had no clear systems in place. I had so many questions.

• Do I need tax forms?
• Should I try to get more paid customers or just focus on making our service amazing?
• Where should we live — Facebook group, Discord, Myspace?

Again, it’s easy to let these uncertainties keep you from taking any steps at all. But it doesn’t matter what level you’re at; questions like this will always exist.

Since we started taking messy action, most of those questions answered themselves anyway.

It’s hard to ponder over the “right choice” when you need to make a decision today.

I used the same LLC as my 1-on-1 coaching practice. I decided not to seek new customers and just focus on getting feedback from the 12 we had. And I made a Discord community.

We got going. ✅

Now we had to…​

Part 2: Get good. 📈

Friends and acquaintances sometimes ask me how to start an online business.

I used to overexplain and give 37 steps to get something going. Now I respond with a single sentence.

“Make something people want.”

The #1 lesson I learned from being in business: the market speaks.

It doesn’t matter what you think you’re worth. It doesn’t matter how hard you work. It doesn’t matter how passionate you are…

If you make something and people don’t want it, they won’t buy it.

Stephen Denny put it best:

“If dogs don’t like your dog food, the packaging doesn’t matter.”

So at this stage, I had two questions:

1. How do we make Grindstone so good, our creators never want to leave?
2. How do we make Grindstone so good, our creators invite their friends to join?

I’m a big Alex Hormozi fan. 🧔🏻‍♀️

His books and content have been crucial to my growth as a business owner and human being. I used his first book $100M Offers to make Grindstone good.

The crux of the book is to make an offer so good that people feel silly saying no to it.

We do that by using the Value Equation.

Dream Outcome: ​
What they want most.

Perceived Likelihood of Achievement: ​
How confident they are that your thing will work.

Time Delay: ​
How long it will take.

Effort & Sacrifice:
How much work it will require.

A strong offer maximizes the top half of the equation (amazing result; guaranteed to accomplish it) and minimizes the bottom half (happens immediately; is super easy).

This is why people pay $5,000 for liposuction instead of $20 / month for a gym membership.

For an obese person who never exercises, working out regularly is a daunting task. It can take a while to see results (Time Delay). It can also feel embarrassing and difficult to go to the gym (Effort & Sacrifice). 🏋️‍♂️

Regular exercise is obviously the healthier and more sustainable option. Which highlights the power of a strong offer.

So how do I make Grindstone so good people feel silly saying no to it?

Well, I went through $100M Offers like a workbook and built my own grand slam offer.

(If you want to see Grindstone’s first Offer Blueprint, here it is.) 🗺

The result? Grindstone would offer…

• 1-on-1 accountability coaching
• top 1% Creator Interviews
• constant feedback on members’ content
• Roast Sessions
• Work With Me calls (digital coworking sessions)
• a community for members to connect with other creators

A $500 / month value. For just $100 / month. 💰

Offer = done. ✅

Now how the hell do I lead and manage another human being?

Well, I lucked out. My coaching friend who signed up for Grindstone was, and is, a true A-player.

We used those early months to find a rhythm of communicating: giving each other feedback, figuring out each other’s responsibilities, and laying the foundation of this organization.

I also joined the Small Bets community to surround myself with other founders and CEOs.

Pro Tip —
Get into rooms with people who are better than you. They will expose your “unknown unknowns” and break your beliefs of what you think is possible.

I reached out to bigger creators I interviewed on my old podcast. I told them what I was up to and asked if I could interview them in front of our Grindstone community.

Rather than doing a 1-on-1 interview, I’d interview them on a live Zoom call with our creators so they could jump in with questions of their own.

I was lucky to get a bunch of high-level creators on our calendar quickly:

• CupppaJoe5 — Call of Duty streamer
• Raiders of the Lost Podcast — TV/film podcasters
• Quotidian Writer — writer/storytelling expert

And tons more. 🎙

We set up those Creator Interviews, as well as Work With Me calls where creators hop on and do deep work together.

It started with just me. 🙋🏼‍♂️

Then my cofounder joined.

Then a few more.

And then a few more.

Look at my happy face.

(Sorry to all the poor victims of my screenshots.) 🙏

We also set up Roast Sessions where we pick a random creator and give them honest feedback on their content. 🔥

I looked at a full Grindstone calendar and smiled.

Finally, I needed the most important thing of all: customer feedback.

Again, if our own customers don’t find this valuable…then we don’t need to worry about promoting.

Derek Sivers gave this advice to musicians:

“If your fans aren’t telling their friends to come to your shows, don’t worry about advertising.”

Uncle Alex says something similar:

“If you run a sandwich shop, and nobody who comes in and eats your sandwich likes it…don’t market your sandwiches. You’ll just bring in more customers who also don’t like your sandwiches and will never return. Instead, make the best sandwich in town. Customers will love your sandwich, come back every week, and bring their friends.”

e.g. Chipotle. When I’m in the US, I eat Chipotle every week. Not because they have great ads, but because I love their burritos. 🌯

So I set up calls with our creators and interviewed them about their time in Grindstone so far.

I also sent out anonymous surveys for them to fill out. 📝

They gave us incredible data. What we did well, what was lacking, and ideas for the future.

We turned all of the criticisms into action steps: 📜

• more community engagement
• more chances to connect
• easier scheduling

Feedback + practice = getting good.

Improving is a never-ending process. But we had enough creators getting great results and sharing how much they enjoyed being in Grindstone.

One YouTuber increased his following by 206% in the first couple of months.

Another hit her 5,000th subscriber.

Another wrote 4,000 words on the first-ever Grindstone call she joined…

A few creators dropped off for various personal reasons. But most stayed and have been our day 1 homies every since.

It’s working, we thought.

We’re getting good. ✅​

Part 3: Get smart. 🧠

This brings us to today.

While we’re always looking to improve and take in customer feedback…The current goal is to grow. 🌱

We moved from Discord to Skool, an all-in-one community platform.

It solved all of our “front end” problems.

• How do we make engaging in the community fun?
• How can we keep one organized calendar?
• How do we open up the doors to Grindstone?

We flipped the business model.

It started as “We sell coaching and you get a community as a bonus.” Now it’s “We have this free community and if you want you can pay for coaching.”

After one month on Skool, we went from 7 to 62 creators.

I also hired my first virtual assistant. She’s amazing.

As I sit here and type this, she’s reaching out to creators on the internet and inviting them to our community.

Next up, I’m going to use Uncle Alex’s second book $100M Leads to advertise Grindstone.

In the book, Alex shares the four ways to tell people about your stuff.

1. Warm outreach (1 to 1, people who know you)
2. Cold outreach (1 to 1, people who don’t know you)
3. Content (1 to many, people who know you)
4. Paid ads (1 to many, people who don’t know you)

Grindstone was built on warm outreach. Now we use cold outreach via my assistant.

I’m also making content like this newsletter and my podcast to build a reputation.

Paid ads will come in the future when we have more money to spend.

But we’re launching our paid community next month.

I’m exploring affiliate and partnership opportunities. And I’m also building my first-ever online course.

Here’s a sneak peek of the outline:

I’m pumped. 🤗

Creators are joining by referral. Friends are reaching out to me asking about accountability coaching. We also have a gamified system within the community where members level up and win prizes.

I joined a paid Skool community that teaches you how to run paid Skool communities. 🤯

Paying for coaching or programs like this is a huge incentive to get moving. It makes you go from “I’ll do this this month” to “I’ll do this today.”

You can pay with money or with time. We typically pay with what we value the least.

That’s where we are.

It’s been a wild ride so far and we’re just getting started.

I couldn’t be more grateful for my cofounder, our creators, and all the friends who are helping me along the way. ❤️

Our Q2 goals are set. The paid community is on track to launch next month. We have customers inviting their friends.

Can’t wait to see where we are a year from now.

Stay tuned. 😉

If you want to follow my journey to $50k/month, get lessons from top 1% creators, and join me as I travel the world with my laptop…

Find me on:

• the Doin’ The Thing newsletter
• Twitter / X

Or if you’re a creator who wants free accountability, feedback, and growth…Join Grindstone for $0.