MFM Mini - The Burrito Trick: How I Got My First 20 Customers

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  Here's a mistake that I've noticed a lot of people make when it comes to business. They make big plans. And big plans aren't bad. They're they're just like a sneaky form of procrastination. Right? Because a big plan means you're putting off action until. Number one, you finish writing up the plan. And number two, the big plan usually takes place. It plays out over weeks or months from now. And it's usually leading up to a big launch. That's a few months from now. And so I'll tell you a story about how we almost fell into this trap, but got out of it. Okay, so this is a few years ago. We were making an app for high schoolers. And and so the engineers had built like a simple prototype. Honestly, it was pretty crappy. It wasn't even in the App Store yet.

• 0:46Shaan Puri?

  We were playing with it and we kind of liked it, but we were a bunch of 30 year old, you know, hairy dudes. And so we said, we don't know if high schoolers are going to like this the way we like this. So so I told our two growth guys, I went to Tyler and Jason, and I said, all right, so those guys, the engineers, they're building this thing. How are we going to get users? And Tyler and Jason, they're smart guys. They, you know, so they grabbed a marker. They said, all right, we're up for the challenge. How are we going to get users? And they went and started brainstorming a growth plan. And so they thought, you know, they went to a whiteboard and they're writing down. We could Facebook ads, we could all these Instagram influencers, we could get them to shout us out. We could do an influencer program. We could create a referral system or referral program, ambassador program inside these high schools.

• 1:30Shaan Puri?

  And anytime you hear the word program or committee, you know, just run the other way. It's it's usually that's for things that are mature. And so if you're working on an early idea, you don't really want to be baking up full programs just yet. And so these were all good ideas. They weren't bad, but they were things that would take us weeks or even months to set up. Right? Even Facebook ads, we couldn't do because the app wasn't even live in the store. It takes a week to get approved, you know, for for a new app in the store. And so so we thought, okay, well, what are we going to do? Do we just sit around and wait or what? So we were at lunch and these guys were telling us the ideas. And then we all kind of had this realization. We have a framework or we had a framework at my startup, which was called the one month, one week, one hour, one day, one hour framework.

• 2:15Shaan Puri?

  Right? And so anytime we'd have a plan that was like this, this will take us a month to build this. This will take us two months to build this. Somebody's, somebody in the room, it's their job to say, dude, that's an awesome idea. Love that idea. I think it's gonna be great. You know, what's the one week version of that? What's, what's the one day version of that? What's something we could do today? That we could ship that makes progress towards that end future? And it's basically saying, how do I grab the rope? And tug the future forward? How do I pull the future into the present? And how do I simplify this great idea? So that we can test it out and see what happens? Because we've learned that most of our great ideas aren't so great. Uh, when they, when they actually touch customers, when they actually get, get into contact with customers.

• 3:00Shaan Puri?

  And so, um, so we agreed, we were there, we said, okay, yeah, these programs are good ideas, but let's, uh, what's the one day version? And we said, well, I could just call my, my nieces and nephews and I could just ask them if they'll try it out with their friends. So, so we called them and they were in school, so they couldn't pick up their phones. So we said, all right, well, what are we gonna do? It's lunchtime now, we're gonna wait till tonight, call them, tell them about it, get them to tell their friends. That's at least a one day thing. And so somebody asked the question, they go, all right, what's the one hour version? We said, the one hour, the one hour, the one hour, what, what can we do? And that's when we, we had the idea, we said, well, you know what? The mall that's right next to us, our office was in Soma in San Francisco, there's a big mall, Westfield Mall. We said, you know, that mall, there's always teens just walking around, like, maybe we could just go there.

• 3:44Shaan Puri?

  And, uh, maybe we could just like get them to test our app out. It's like, well, isn't that kind of creepy? It's like, yeah, but like, just do it in a non creepy way. Okay. And so Tyler and Jason, you know, they were like, all right, we got this, don't worry. And they went away to a room for like five minutes and they came back out with a poster that said, um, free burrito if you try our app. And they said they're gonna go stand in front of Chipotle, which is like, between, there was a Chipotle and like a Jamba Juice or whatever, where a bunch of foot traffic went. And they're like, we're gonna hold the sign up. And so they go and they hold the sign up and they, uh, in one hour, they had a whole bunch of people basically playing with the app at the table. Because hey, if you, if you use this app and you give us feedback. You'll get a free, we'll buy you a burrito, right? We'll buy you a $7 burrito.

• 4:27Shaan Puri?

  And so in one hour, we went from zero customers to 20 customers. And 20 is still not like, oh my God, congratulations, you've cracked growth. But 20 is a huge leap when you're at zero. And we didn't need a program that was going to give us 2,000, 20,000, or 200,000 users. But we didn't even have 20. And so those 20 pointed out a whole bunch of little things that they were like, oh yeah, like I was confused about this or like, yeah, but like this seems like a lot of work. So I wouldn't, honestly, I wouldn't really do this. I would just want to do this simple thing instead. And so we got a bunch of feedback about what to build. Plus, we got a bunch of email addresses of kids who basically were like, yeah, cool. Like if you guys make a new version of this based on the feedback, like I'll try it out. I'll tell my friends about it.

• 5:12Shaan Puri?

  And this always stuck with me. And actually, this became a thing that we did every single day that week. In fact, we would go to a high school. We would stand outside the high school again. You know, 30 something year old hairy dude standing outside the high school. It's not great, but we had our sign, our burrito sign. And, and kids were coming out from, it was like after school or whatever. They were leaving and we would get hundreds of kids to sign up for this. They thought, oh, I'm going to get a free thing. Yeah, I'll sign up. And as soon as a few people were at the table signing up, everybody else just wanted to get it too. And, you know, so we thought, oh, maybe this, maybe we'll get in trouble, right? We had all kinds of things we might talk, all kinds of reasons we might talk ourselves out of this. And sure enough, a teacher comes out, an adult comes out and they're like, excuse me, what are you doing?

• 5:57Shaan Puri?

  And we're like, oh man, I'm sorry, you know, not to alarm you. Yeah, we're just, we're a startup nearby and we're building an app that we think that high school students will love. It helps them with XYZ. And we were just looking for some feedback. And so we were here to basically recruit some beta testers. And we were waiting for her to say like, you know, get out of here before they call the cops. And instead, what she said was, "That's so cool. My kids love startups here, but we have no like startup classes or programs. Hey, would you guys be interested in coming in and talking to our class tomorrow? You know, I teach whatever, computer science or something, whatever it was in the school. And she's like, "I teach in the school and, you know, I could just let you guys guest teach for a day,

• 6:42Shaan Puri?

  talking about what it's like to work at a startup and how do you build an app? And so all of a sudden, we went from creepy dudes giving out burritos, getting maybe 10 or 20 students at a time, to being invited into the school where every hour, we would teach first period through sixth period or whatever. And we would have 25 kids per, per class. And all of a sudden, in one day, we would get 125 students as a captive audience. We're talking to them, we're teaching the class for them. It was fun and we were getting a bunch of users who all knew each other, which was even better, right? Because there's like, when you use an app that your friends use, you have a better experience. And so that was our story of having, you know, finding a way to pull the future forward,

• 7:22Shaan Puri?

  to have a high bias for action and not fall into the trap of making quote unquote, "big plans." Right? We do it because we have the right intentions. We just want it to be successful. And it seems like a big, well-written out, well-thought-out, you know, multi-stage plan is a better plan.

• 7:41Shaan Puri?

  I don't think so. I think a simple plan violently executed today is better than the, the complicated, multi-stage, multi-layered nuanced plan that we're going to do over the next six months. When it comes to early-stage ideas, just remember, ideas are, ideas and inspiration behind them are perishable. They expire. And so you want to strike while the idea is hot and not wait around falling into the trap of making big plans.

• 8:12Shaan Puri?

  All right. If you like these Sunday stories, by the way, my name is Sean and I'm one of the co-hosts of My First Million. I do these quickly, kind of on Friday or Saturday nights. Whatever topic comes to mind, I just talk about. I also do this for my newsletter. If you're not signed up for it, you should. There's, I think, about 30,000 people on the newsletter. I'm trying to get it to 100K this year. And if you like stories like this, that are like kind of simple business stories that help you be a better entrepreneur, help you get better ideas, you should sign up for it. It's just go to seanpurie.com. It's just my name, seanpurie.com. I'll put the link in the description so you can spell it out. S-H-A-A-N-P-U-R-I.com. And join the newsletter to get more stories like this on a weekly basis. All right, I'm out of here.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Hey, My First Million listeners, this is Steph from Trends. Now, if you've been a diehard My First Million fan for a while, you probably know what Trends is. But if you're new, Trends is part of the Hustle family, just like My First Million. And just like My First Million, what we do at Trends is we love building businesses. And what our team does is we find ideas, we figure out non-obvious opportunities, we use tons of different tools to surface ideas from around the web, like Google Trends, or Jungle Scout, App Annie, bankruptcy filings, funding announcements. And then we tell you exactly how to capitalize. So Trends is a weekly email. It is a community of over 15,000 subscribers that you can work together on building businesses with. And you're going to see tons of people like Sam and Sean in that community, and a bunch of other features. But here's why I'm on the pod today. We have a sick giveaway coming up. And I'm not talking about a water bottle

• 9:39Speaker 01

  and stickers. We're talking about a 3D printer. And I know you're probably thinking, Steph, a 3D printer? Weren't those like the overhyped things from a decade ago? Well, yes and no. After the hype died down, companies continued to quietly iterate, and the market is actually expected to reach $350 billion by 2035. And here's the thing. Today, you can actually get some pretty decent 3D printers for less than a GoPro, but the one we're giving away is worth $1,900. So this is a high-quality 3D printer that you can actually use to build a real business. Speaking of building businesses, at Trends, we've covered several businesses making 80 to 90% margins off the back of 3D printers, other products that are making between 50 to 200K in revenue per month, and then courses with hundreds of thousands of listeners, all around

• 10:20Speaker 01

  3D printing, so the space is huge. It's been quietly growing since the hype died down several years ago. And if you're listening to this and it's before June 30th, you can sign up for Trends and get entered to win that 3D printer and kickstart a business. Now, if you're outside of the window, you can still give Trends a shot. If you like My First Million, I have a feeling you're gonna like Trends. So head over to trends.co and we have a one-week trial for $1. And then when you upgrade, use the code MFM to get $50 off. That's the code MFM at trends.co and we'll see you on the inside.