How to get customers in HOURS
not years
What’s good young and eager mind?
A student & good friend of mine asked me to write a post about pre-selling.
Well, it just so happens that the First Sale Masterclass that I’m running with Jen sold out instantly when we pre-sold tickets yesterday.
We offered 20 spots at $29 and are using a staircase pricing architecture to introduce ethical scarcity and FOMO.
Anyway, I’ll break down our strategy tomorrow.
Back to my friend.
Ivan who is a brilliant fella with a heart made out of what I can only assume is 24K gold said something that stuck with me:
I just want to get over the feeling that I’m a huge fraud if I don’t make the Pyramid of Giza before allowing myself to sell something.
I had similar fears when I first started selling expertise.
In fact, my fear of getting called out was the driving factor behind countless days of 12-14 hours studying entrepreneurial science.
The good thing about that is that it brought some degree of confidence.
I can always hold my own, no matter the crowd; academics, industry experts, solopreneurs, what have you.
But it’s mostly been a massive waste of time.
Becoming an expert is something you do for yourself.
It’s ego-driven.
If you look at the people who’re getting results, it’s the people who can get their offer in front of people.
How many mouthbreathers have massive audiences talking about the impact of the position of planets on mood… Or the healing powers of the crystal?
3.1M views on a completely delusional 37 min vid…
Yet you’re out here terrified to share actual value with the world? It’s almost selfish.
Btw, Professor Carl Bergstrom has a fantastic course teaching you to detect and defuse bullshit. He does a better job than I can, covering the proliferation of bullshit.
Now ask yourself, how many Professors have an audience?
The mistake rookie solopreneurs make is to think expertise is a driver of business
Once I know enough, sales will kinda happen naturally.
I’m telling you, nothing could be further from the truth.
If that were true, every academic would have a massive audience.
But to put it even more bluntly, I’m not even sure they correlate at all!
Again, pick your favorite rich Instagram fitness influencers vs. your academic studying hypertrophy (muscle growth) and nutritional science.
Experts don’t like that. I hated it too. But in this piece, I teach you how you can actually use it to your advantage.
Now, it’s important for me to point out that I’m not telling you to NOT become an expert in your field
I believe we have that responsibility to our craft and our customers.
Just don’t let it be something you hide behind.
If the goal is to build muscle and you spend 5 years doing Zumba, sure you can rationalize that by saying you had fun, but that was never the goal.
You’re rationalizing your fuck up.
Similarly, there are certain actions you must take in order to make it in the business of expertise, and hiding behind studying or perfecting the product gets in the way of that.
My student, Ivan, is currently building a YouTube editing course.
He, like many of my other students, is cursed with too much intelligence.
A mouthbreather doesn’t mind misinformation. Hell, it wouldn’t even occur to them.
But Ivan desperately wants to do a good job so he gets stuck.
Never mind that he’s already AMAZING at his craft.
He doesn’t see how high he is on the mountain.
Only how much further he has to go.
All of this is hiding.
As a solopreneur, you’re constantly fighting The Resistance.
An invisible force trying to pull you away from your greater self, who you’re trying to become, and toward your small default.
But you have to look at The Resistance, give it the finger, and talk shit about its mom.
You have to embrace that extreme discomfort.
And the best way I found of doing that is speed.
That’s why I LOVE pre-selling
You validate whether or not your market actually wants it.
Because people will say anything but money is a truth serum.
And you’re forcing yourself to only build THE KERNEL OF A BUSINESS.
What’s the kernel of a business?
An offer, an audience, and a way to accept payments.
That’s it.
Now here’s the frustrating thing…
Your natural proclivity will be to do EVERYTHING BUT the kernel.
And that’s why you get stuck.
I’ve quoted Professor Gall’s Systemantics a million times already but you simply CANNOT start with a complicated system.
You must start with a simple system that works.
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.
- Professor John Gall
Remember that systems, in general, work poorly or not at all.
And a simple system is hitting people up and asking them to buy your offer.
How do you pre-sell today?
Okay, I’ll get off my soap box.
How can you pre-sell your idea today?
What’s the smallest version of your idea? Can we test a feature of it?
Who is the audience you seek to serve? Where do they hang?
Hit ‘em up, tell them your idea, and make an offer: E.g. “I’m gonna be doing X for people like you. Looking for 10 customers at $20. You in?”
Hit up warm people first. That means all your friends, your audience, your social media connections, old colleagues, and people in your clubhouse.
Send your PayPal/bank details to customers or whip up a quick Gumroad page.
Either you’ll make at least 3 sales within 48 hours or you won’t.
Now here’s the most important thing:
THIS SHOULD NOT BE HARD.
White Belts get this wrong all the time.
They think business means having a shitty idea no one wants and finding a clever way to force it onto the market.
Business should be hard.
But not because you can’t find customers.
But because you can’t keep up with demand.
If it feels like an uphill struggle. Axe it and move on.
We’ve talked about the mechanics of this from a Type I / Type II error reduction POV before.
If you’re serious about doing this, you’ll have money in your bank account within 48 hours OR you’ll know your idea isn’t downhill.
Both are fine.
What’s gonna happen is your brain will try to find excuses to do anything other than the kernel; asking for money.
Don’t let The Resistance win.
Take a step down the path that leads you to who you ought to be and refuse to look back.
RJY
Crikey. Brilliantly simple.
I need to stop being stupidly complicated ;)
💯💡 Spot on.
> “people will say anything but money is a truth serum. And you’re forcing yourself to only build THE KERNEL OF A BUSINESS. What’s the kernel of a business? An offer, an audience, and a way to accept payments. That’s it. Now here’s the frustrating thing… Your natural proclivity will be to do EVERYTHING BUT the kernel.”