A free ten part email course
Get Your First
Paying Customer
Within 3 Weeks
Ten short emails over three weeks. Each one gives you a single job that takes under an hour, and the first lands in your inbox within a few minutes. By the end you'll have set your price and asked real people to hire you.
Free. Unsubscribe from any email. Nobody will phone you.
The move that starts it
You're One Conversation Away From Your First Job
You've read about it. You've looked at what other people charge. You might have bought a domain name.
All of that's easier than the one move that actually starts a business, which is asking somebody to pay you.
That move is the whole job. One conversation, with one person, and about ninety seconds of feeling uncomfortable. Everything changes on the other side of it, because a business with one paying customer behaves completely differently from an idea.
This course walks you to that moment and tells you exactly what to say when you get there.
Ten Emails That End With Somebody Paying You.
Here's what you'll have by the time each one is done.
- Day 1
An answer to “so what do you do?” that you can say without hedging.
- Day 3
One specific type of customer in mind, and a short list of where they already are.
- Day 5
A price you can say out loud without your voice going up at the end.
- Day 8
Ten real conversations started. This is usually where the first job comes from.
- Day 10
The exact words for the moment somebody asks how much.
- Day 12
A finished job, paid for, with the photos that go on to sell the next three.
- Day 15
Your first reviews, asked for at the moment they're easiest to get.
- Day 17
A number for what your slow replies are quietly costing you.
- Day 19
Four jobs off your plate that used to eat your evenings.
- Day 21
A plan for the next ninety days, and a decision about how big you want this.
Every email takes two or three minutes to read. The job at the end of it takes under an hour, and most of them take twenty minutes.
Where this actually goes
A Second Stream Of Money Coming Into The House Every Week.
Picture a Saturday three months from now. You did two jobs this morning and you're back by one. There's eleven hundred dollars in your account that you earned on your own.
The car payment goes out and you don't think about it. You book the week away in August without moving money around first. You walk round the shop without adding it up in your head.
And something quieter happens as well. Somebody asks what you do, and you tell them, and you don't add "just on the side" to the end of the sentence.
That's what ten customers does. Not a company with staff and an office, unless you want that later. Money arriving every week from something you built, and a bit more room to breathe.
Four Regular Customers Might Be All You Ever Need
Most of the advice aimed at you assumes you want to grow something enormous. A lot of people just want an extra fifteen hundred a month and a bit more say over their own week.
That's a real destination and you can stop there.
Four regular customers might be all you ever need. If you decide later that you want twenty, everything in this course still works. The first ten come the same way either way.
Forty Minutes A Week, And It Costs You Nothing.
You have a job and a life. This is built for that.
Nothing in here requires you to quit your job, borrow money, buy equipment or register a company. Most people can start with the phone in their pocket and something they already know how to do.
The first email lands within a few minutes of you signing up, and it has one thing in it to do today.
Written By Somebody Who Got It Wrong First
I'm Alex. I run a company called Phanz, which builds the follow up systems that small service businesses use to stop losing work.
That means I spend my days looking at what actually makes money for people doing ordinary jobs in ordinary towns, and at the small things that quietly cost them customers.
My own first attempt at a business went nowhere for about two months while I picked a name and messed about with a logo. This course is the version I wish somebody had handed me instead.
You can reply to any email in it. I read them.
Send Me The First One
Fair Questions
Do I need a business already?
No. This is written for the point before you have one.
Do I need an idea?
No. The first email helps you pick.
Is this going to try and sell me something?
The last email tells you what I do and what it costs, once. The other nine are just the course.
How long are the emails?
Two or three minutes to read, and then one job to do.
What if I fall behind?
They're just emails. Do day four on Saturday if that suits you better.
What if I already started something?
Then start at day eight, which is the one about getting in front of people. The earlier ones will still be useful if you're changing direction.
Three weeks from now you'll either have asked some people for work or you'll be exactly where you're now. It's ten emails and it costs nothing.
Send me the first one