This past week we did our first Blab. A Blab is like a video chat where you can have 4 people speaking in the chat. We had a super fun chat, but there was one question that came up that we would like to talk about today.

Everyone wants to do things to scale their new business, but there are a lot of things that need to be done that don’t scale. We have identified a few things things we want to talk about today. They involve getting early customers, building relationships and what it means to truly be a solopreneur.

Getting Early Customers

This is the most important phase to getting a business started, once you have the idea. Methods used can be cold calls and cold emailing. Things you will have to do are create scripts and content for answering questions. Cold calling won’t scale, but it needs to be done. Even local things like going door to door can be used in some situations. One on one conversations can’t be scaled. Just like how Gary Vaynerchuk started out having one on one Twitter conversations with people.

Engaging In Communities

Engaging in communities is a precursor to building relationships. Justin joined communities like the 7 Day Startup group, Founder’s Cafe and Dynamite Circle when he was starting out. He could go into these groups and get feedback from target customers. This is where some of his initial business came from.

Greg was friends with Amy Porterfield and she shared Greg’s business and contact information with her community. Greg got tons of leads from her group, and all he did was share his vision with her. Having a relationship in the first place isn’t scalable, but reaching out and trying to help others in the community is great for meeting like minded people.

If you can’t find these opportunities early on, you can create them. Speaking at events or organizing them is a great way to meet local entrepreneurs and begin the networking process. Small events are great for getting started and can help develop speaking chops. Once again, not scalable, but it may be necessary.

Building Relationships

Networking online and offline is great for building relationships. Justine says that Greg has an uncanny ability to relationship build. Greg says to become friends with influencers, don’t be the guy who asks for a selfie. That makes you not at their level. Influencers want to be with people at their level or equals.

Masterminds are another helpful relationship building tool. Plus, you get a lot of helpful benefits from brainstorming to being introduced to other networks. Talking to early customers, especially early on is a great way to get feedback.

Starting a Marketing Plan

Creating content is worthwhile because it compounds over time. It takes awhile for content to settle into search ranking and build links etc. Over time you will see results with content marketing. It doesn’t scale, but it is something that needs to be done. Spend 20% of your time creating content and 80% promoting it. When starting out, you have to do a lot of things yourself. You can’t really afford to not be involved in your business, especially when revenues are low.

You can automate some of your social media, but you can’t automate authentic conversations with people. Brian used Twitter to have conversations with journalists whose publications he wanted a write up in, such as The Next Web. Your first hire should be someone who can take stuff off your plate, so you can focus on marketing etc.

The last thing is sales. As an owner, you are the best sales person your company can have. You have the power and the title, and you know the most about the business. Fulfillment, marketing then sales when it comes to hiring, but the founder spearheads the sales. Some things will never scale, but it is mission critical to get things off the ground. If you have any questions about scale, join our facebook group to chat with like minded folks.

Resources Mentioned:

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