[00:00:02] Speaker A: Ramping up your business. The time is near. You've given it hard. Now get it in Gear.
It's Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart. I'm Richard Gearhart, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks and copyrights.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart, not an attorney, but I do marketing for Gearhart Law. And I am the founder of Gear Media Studios, a full service podcast studio.
[00:00:29] Speaker A: Welcome to Passage to Profit the Road to entrepreneurship, where we talk with celebrities and entrepreneurs about their stories and their business ventures. It's time for your new business journey. Two in five Americans are business owners or at least thinking of starting a business. So we like to ask our panel a question, and today our question is, what strategies did you use to get your first client or customer? Let's start the ball rolling with Mike Silvestrini. Mike, welcome to the show. What did you do to get your first client or customer?
[00:01:01] Speaker C: For our first customer, I have to go back to 2007. We were two people, pretty scrappy, and the only skill that we had really developed at that time was how to put a proposal together. And we were shipping them in every direction we could. And we finally got a bite at a place that manufactures guns, actually for a solar power plant called Smith and Wesson up in Massachusetts. So we hopped in the car and I had some volunteers, some people who were kind of believing in the idea of my first solar energy company. And I asked them to come along for their various expertise. And we met at Smith and Wesson. And Smith and Wesson, when you go into these types of manufacturing companies, there's a lot of gates of security and badges and that type of thing. So I figured there was eight of us that showed up.
Let's two of us go in and take this meeting with Smithson Wesson and try to get our first solar project. And the rest of you guys go walk around, you know, the nearby businesses because it's sort of an industrial park, knock on doors and see what happens. Well, we went into Smith and Wesson and that deal collapsed because the lawyer just didn't want anything to do with the project. But while we were doing that, my buddy Andrew walked across the street and knocked on the right door with Astro Chemicals, who wound up becoming our first solar project.
And that one was a really meaningful project for us because it was large and it was impactful and it was an early stage project in the solar energy industry of its type. And then by our third and fourth customers were Walmart And Target. So they kind of snowballed quickly from there, but it took a relentless proposal generation and just keeping with it.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: That's amazing. And it's so interesting that sometimes clients just come from places you didn't really expect. You were expecting Smith and Wesson. It didn't work out, but the guys across the street were very interested. And you landed your first customer. So thank you for sharing that, Stan. Lucian, how did you get your first client or customer?
[00:02:52] Speaker D: Skybus is a little different. How is it different? Because we offer different type of services like property management, where we manage our own properties and educational content.
I guess my first client or consumer or customer, like a tenant. Right. That was kind of like provided to me because when I bought the property, I've already had tenants living in it. However, though, to get more tenants, I came up with the idea of smart home integrated technologies in our properties, like smart lights, smart door locks, smart thermostat. So that was kind of like something like an experiment for me, you know, and then when trying it, it kind of like opened a broader market for us because we had tenants, we had people that's looking for properties that have smart technology in them. You know, not all the properties out there have, you know, smart thermostat. So my goal was to make it more convenient for tenants.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: That's great. That's an amazing strategy to entice customers with more technology. And seems like you learned from your first tenant that this type of technology could really be attractive to other potential tenants and that opened up the world for you. So thank you for that. Avitra Anakru, welcome to the Show. You're with DealMagic and tell us how you got your first client or customer for Dealmagic.
[00:04:14] Speaker E: As you know, we serve local pop and mom shops. Anybody who is on your main street. We got started off by first going and frequenting our local merchants that we would normally go to our local barbers and spa owners and restaurants where we would go and frequent and just kind of tested the water to see what their reaction would be to this kind of technology.
And we walked the streets initially and very quickly we realized that in order for us to scale, even though a lot of people love what we are offering, in order for us to scale, we have to automate the hell out of it. So straight out of the bat, we automated the onboarding process. We automated the whole sales funnel from ad to the lead generation to the signup and self onboarding. Everything is streamlined and automated and that's helping us scale across the country. In multiple categories.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: Perfect, Elizabeth.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Yeah. So we're brick and mortar. We're a podcast studio, content creation studio. So we started out podcast studio, realized there's all sorts of content you can create, and it's not just for podcasts using the video studio. We have an audio studio, we have a photo shoot room. But the way that we got the first paying client I had experimented with a couple other people was we had an open house, so we had a grand opening. And I didn't use much media to promote it. I actually have a friend who's a super networker, and I joined a chamber of commerce that she recommended. And the Chamber of commerce brought a whole bunch of people to our event. And we did put it on social media and different places. And the first client that I got was somebody I had never met before who came to the grand opening, who saw it, and and is a corporate client who's doing weekly podcast videos with me now.
[00:06:08] Speaker A: So that's great. You know, one of the things that I'm noticing in all of our comments is that there's a human touch involved, especially in getting the clients early on. I mean, we live in a world of digital, right, where we rely on the Internet, advertising, social media to try to get clients. But at the end of the day, at least, starting out, it comes down to relationships and talking with people and meeting them. Gerhardt Law is no different. I mean, when we started, our very first client happened to come from an attorney friend of mine who we had known for years and years and years. Her name was Alice Tarinis. And we also work with her husband Adam. And they were great. They were very supportive of. When we started the law firm, she happened to know a client that could use our services and she referred them to us, and they turn out to be a great client. Afterwards, we did the website and all the digital, but the first clients were people that I actually met one on one. And so I do think that that's a good lesson for entrepreneurs starting out. Don't just rely on digital. The human connection is still, you know, super important. Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show appearing in 38 markets across the United States. In addition, Passage to Profit has also been recently selected by Feedspot Podcasters database as a top 10 entrepreneur interview podcast. Thank you to the P2P team. Our producer, Noah Fleishman, and our program coordinator, Alicia Morrissey, our studio assistant, Risa Kat Bussari, and our social media powerhouse, Carolina Tabares. Look for our podcast tomorrow. Anywhere you get your podcasts. Our podcast is ranked in the top 3% globally. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram X and on our YouTube channel. And remember, while the information on this program is below believed to be correct, never take a legal step without checking with your legal professional first. Gearhart Law is here for your patent, trademark and copyright needs. You can find
[email protected] and contact us for a free consultation. Take care everybody. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
