More Than A Side Hustle
More Than A Side Hustle
How to Get Your First 10 Customers (In Under 10 Minutes)
We share proven strategies to acquire your first 10 customers quickly when launching a new service business, based on our experience growing a seven-figure cleaning company without cleaning any houses ourselves.
• Get prepared with clear service offerings, a simple payment collection system, and an efficient booking platform
• Tap into your existing network—friends, family, and service providers in your life can become your first clients or referral sources
• Share your entrepreneurial journey on social media platforms where you have the most followers
• Utilize community-based platforms like Nextdoor to connect with local customers actively seeking services
• Leverage partnerships with complementary businesses such as realtors, property managers, and local service providers
• Offer limited-time introductory deals in exchange for feedback and testimonials to create social proof
• Build a foundation of positive reviews on Google, Yelp, and Facebook to attract future customers
Visit tidytrack.io to learn more about our automation systems for growing your cleaning business, or check out our Cleaning Business Masterclass for a comprehensive guide to scaling from your first client to your ten-thousandth.
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So, guys, let me show you how you get your first 10 customers in the next 10 minutes and I know this sounds crazy, right, but if you're just starting your business, one of the biggest challenges when you first launch is getting those first initial clients. It can seem like an uphill battle, and I'm going to give you a game plan to make it happen fast. So I got some notes here. We'll be going over this, and when we launched our cleaning business back in 2017, we got our first client within 24 hours of launching that's right, 24 hours and what we did was we went to a neighborhood app called Nextdoor. We advertised that we just launched our cleaning service and wasn't anyone in the neighborhood that needed cleanings, and within 24 hours, we got our first booking. Guys, and I'm going to give you some actionable steps that you can use over these next 10 minutes so that you could do the same Step number one, before you do anything. We got to get ready, so we want to have a clear service offering. So for us, we had a local service business, which is a cleaning service, right, and that's exactly what we were selling. You need a simple way to collect payments. So once you get that first customer. How are you going to be collecting payments? Is it cash, is it Stripe, is it Venmo, is it PayPal? You want to make it fast and easy for your clients to pay you, so we recommend using an online payment platform, just like a Stripecom, as an example, and they process everything Visa, discover, mastercard, et cetera making it fast and easy for your clients to pay you. Right. And you also need a booking form. So, whether using Launch27, booking Koala, if you want to use our system, tinytrack, you need a booking platform so that clients can find, book and pay you all online. Let's not overcomplicate it. We want to keep it simple and the purpose is to get started, so we want to tap into our step number two you want to tap into your network.
Speaker 1:I think the easiest way to get your first client is going to be the friends and family route, right. Any friends, any family that you have in the area and you want to let them know. Hey, you can send out a message, you can call them. I just launched this thing. I just launched this cleaning service and I'm wondering if you can lend me a hand or if you know anybody who might need a cleaning service Most of your friends and family. They'd be more than willing to support you, right? If they say, yes, great, you got them. Go out and do the service. If they say no, you want to ask them this question. You want to find out if there's anyone that they know who might need this service. Most of the time they may or may not know, but worst case scenario, they send you a referral, so that gets you at least your first two clients, right.
Speaker 1:Another thing you could do using your network, you can even let your lawn guy know One of our students who launched his cleaning business. Now he's doing 10K a month. His first client came from a referral from his lawn guy. He literally told his lawn guy hey, I'm launching this cleaning service. Do you know anybody who needs it? He said oh yeah, I got two or three clients for you Done. Right, he was able to get two or three clients just from letting his lawn guy know your barber, who you sit in that chair for hours, your hair stylist, your babysitter, someone you might know. Leverage them for referrals. But then also feedback Simple message hey, I love it. You can support me in exchange for honest feedback, right?
Speaker 1:Share your journey on social media. Do not build in silence. Guys, start posting content on what you're doing. Share your journey on launching your cleaning business, and you would love to get support. One thing people love is the come up journey. They love you when you come up. Once you up there, they may not love you anymore, but they always love that come up story. Right? Choose the platform that you have the most followers on, whether it's TikTok, whether it's X, whether it's threads, instagram, youtube, whatever it is. Just start sharing your journey on what you're doing. Share your first clients, your first wins, your testimonies and feedback, so that people in your area can start to migrate towards you. Right, and these people aren't going to be in your direct context, but they've been watching you from a distance and they would love to start supporting you on something you're doing right. So that's another way you could do it.
Speaker 1:You could use community-based platforms. Remember, I said we got our first client from nextdoorcom. That's a simple neighborhood app. If you guys don't know, go to nextdoorcom and type in the word cleaner. You'll start seeing people advertising their services day in and day out. Who they're looking for, what they're looking for a local neighborhood app right, and you'll find your ideal customers hanging out there. They might not be talking about cleaning, they might be talking about the lawn guy or some gossip that happened in your neighborhood, right. But these are people locally who are looking for your services, right, and just start answering questions, start engaging with them, provide value and even mention that you have a service.
Speaker 1:Church you guys, especially my community, we go to church every single Sunday. Tell someone at church that you have a service. Your community centers, your schools if your kids go to a neighborhood school, start handing out business cards that they might have a bulletin board. Ask if you could advertise your local cleaning service in your neighborhood, right, and they might just put that in the student's newsletters. So another one step. Five leveraging partnerships and networks. So we recently bought a home. We've been here three years now, but they're always emailing, they're always texting, they're always checking in. So why not partner with them? Hey, we just started this cleaning business. Would you mind advertising it? Do you know any people who might need a cleaning service?
Speaker 1:One of the things about realtors is that they give out cleanings as a gift that's included in their onboarding. Once you buy a home, it comes clean. I know a referral for a company. It's one of my previous clients. People would love to refer your services. They just don't know about you. So now you got realtors, you might have property managers If you have an Airbnb, daycare centers the local gym we go to has a neighborhood full of people and I see business cards everywhere. You ever thought about just putting those on the front desk asking if they could just advertise your services? They all have clients who might need your service, right? And the crazy thing is that referrals for realtors you can say, hey, if you bring me three, four clients, I will clean your home for free. So every four clients they give you, you can now give away one free clean to the realtor and that's their incentive to get you more clients. Right, and you can offer a discount or go for a free service in exchange for those referrals. Chamber of Commerce I've heard about that one being a good place attending local networking events.
Speaker 1:Also, step number six you could offer an introductory level deal for anyone who wants to try your service. You could call it a beta testing. Hey guys, I just launched this cleaning service. I'm looking to get it. I'm looking to get some clients in exchange for feedback and testimonials, only offering this to the first five 10 people. You know how many people are going to flood you for that. You're going to get more than five to 10 people to flood you.
Speaker 1:And then, once you use those first few testimonials, let's say you got 30, 40 people reaching out. Hey, the first five to 10 were complete. You know they get. They left us five star reviews, which is now step number seven, getting reviews and building social proof. So let's say, those first five 10 people, those slots fill quickly. You got now 20, 30, 40 people who are looking for a cleaning, so you can let them know. Hey, we finished those first few slots. Those people left us great, glowing reviews. We can now still offer you that introductory level pricing. It won't be free in exchange for a review, but it might be, let's say, 10% of a, 50% of whatever you decide to be fit for your business. And now you can start emailing those people. Now those are leads, some of your first leads for your actual business, right.
Speaker 1:And then now, as you're offering, let's say you got the first five to 10 people to do the services for free. Maybe those next five get a discount. But then also, you get more social proof, you get more reviews for building your business, right? So now you're getting reviews, you're getting social proof and you're building your business at the same time. And the more social proof and more reviews you got, the more people are going to see you as a higher level service and they'd be more than willing to book you at that point, right? You get reviews on googlecom, yelp, facebook, anywhere your audience hangs out, right, and we have a system called TidyTrack that actually can automate this process for you, and we've gotten over 500 4.8 star reviews using automations in our business, right? Those are some of the steps.
Speaker 1:So, step number one you want to get ready.
Speaker 1:You want to be able to have a payment platform and a booking platform. Step number two tapping into your local network. Step number three make sure you are posting your journey on social media. Step number four using local community platforms. Number five partnering with local businesses like realtors. Step number six offering a launch deal for anyone who uses your services at the very beginning.
Speaker 1:Step number seven asking for reviews, because the more social proof you have, the more people will be looking for you, right? I want you to take these action steps. Pick one of these action steps and take your first steps right, if you guys wanna learn more about the automations that we use to help us run our business, you go to tidytrackio and if you've got any questions on how to land your first customer, shoot us a message. And we also have a full platform where we call Cleaning Business Masterclass, where you can learn more about how we scaled a seven-figure cleaning business without cleaning any houses and we talk about some of these steps in a lot more detail in order to go from your first client to your 10,000th client. All right, hopefully you guys take action and we'll see you next time.