Every founder I've interviewed got their first ten the same unscalable way — and every one of them wasted time trying to skip that stage.
A pattern across every episode
I've asked this question on the podcast enough times now to be confident about the answer. Nobody's first ten customers came from a channel. They came from people — former colleagues, a client who moved companies, one introduction that led to three.
Channels amplify a message that already works. They don't find it for you.
Why founders try to skip it
Because the unscalable version feels like it isn't real work, and because a channel feels like a system while a conversation feels like luck. So a year goes into ads and cold email before anyone has worked out what to say.
What the first ten are actually for
They're research. They tell you which words make a buyer lean in, which objection comes up every time, and what the real reason for choosing you was — which is almost never the reason you'd have guessed.