Zero to Dollar | Build a Real App in 24 Hours

What we're doing

You have an offer a reasonable person can't refuse. Now you need the reasonable people.

This lesson answers two questions: who is this offer for, and how do you put 100 of them in a spreadsheet. No outreach yet — just the list.

Who you're actually pitching

Four things you're looking for.

1. They're independent. Freelancers, creators, coaches, solo operators. They are the business. Not corporate employees.

2. They make content. Not just the occasional photo for friends — they're genuinely out there posting. A butcher making videos about his shop. A personal trainer sharing workouts. A local café posting reels. Follower count doesn't matter.

3. They have somewhere to send people. A website, a booking page, an email — something they want people to do, use or land on. They're not just posting; they're trying to get people to do something.

4. Their link situation is a mess. Multiple @handles scattered across their bio, an ugly default Linktree with blue buttons and stock colors, or no link at all. If they already have a clean custom page — that's a harder pitch, but still worth attempting at $1/month.

People who fit:

Independent creators on IG / TikTok / YouTube with 500–50,000 followers
Fitness coaches, personal trainers, yoga teachers (creating content)
Photographers — portrait, wedding, product, real estate (creating content)
Musicians, DJs, producers, podcasters (creating content)
Freelance designers, writers, developers (creating content)
Life coaches, career coaches, nutritionists (creating content)
Small local services — tattoo artists, barbers, hair stylists, braiders, cafes (creating content)
Niche consultants — anyone whose name is the brand (creating content)

People who don't fit — skip them:

Corporate employees with no side hustle
Big brands with marketing teams
Anyone with zero audience and nothing to sell

Warning

Filter hard. Send it to the wrong person and it lands like spam, not like an offer.

Why 100?

Volume is protection against rejection. Most cold messages get ignored — that's completely normal. But at 100 leads, the math works in your favor.

"Do so much volume that it would be unreasonable for you to fail".

Rough expectation: warm leads convert at 10–20%, cold leads at 1–2%. With 20–30 warm + 70–80 cold, you're looking at 3–5 first paying customers from one day's outreach. Any smaller list and one bad streak derails the whole effort. 100 is the floor.

Two buckets — warm first, cold second

20–30 warm leads — people who already know you
70–80 cold leads — strangers who fit the profile

Start with warm. Always. Trust is already there, conversion is higher, and your first few sales give you proof when you move to cold.

Warm — anyone who knows you exist and you've had two-way contact with

That's it. They know your name, you've exchanged something. Someone you follow on Instagram but have never spoken to is not warm — that's a cold lead with extra steps.

Cold — strangers on Instagram, TikTok, X

Go to Instagram first. TikTok second. X if your niche skews tech or business.

Five clear signals that someone needs your product right now:

No link at all — their bio is just text, emojis, and @handles. Nothing clickable.
"DM me" or "DM for bookings" — they're routing everything through DMs because they have no page.
Their link opens another social — their Instagram link goes to their YouTube, or vice versa. No landing page.
An ugly default Linktree — blue buttons, stock colors, no avatar. The one they set up once and never styled.
Their email is sitting raw in their bio — unprofessional.

Every one of these is someone who already knows they have a problem. You're the solution.

Aim for 70–80 names. Mix niches so you're not hammering one type of creator.

Build the spreadsheet

Google Sheets, Airtable, Notion — whatever you already use. Columns:

Name — first name for the DM
Handle — @theirhandle on the platform you'll reach out on
Platform — IG / TikTok / X
Email — if you can find it (leave blank if not)
Phone — mobile number for text or WhatsApp (leave blank if not found)
W/C — Warm or Cold
Why they fit — one sentence: "yoga teacher, 3k IG, default Linktree"
Current link — their link-in-bio URL, or "none"
Last contact date — the last day you messaged them (leave blank for now)
Status — start at not contacted, then move to contacted, opened, signed up, paid, or not interested

Why this setup? One social plus email for everyone. For warm leads, add text or WhatsApp if you have the number. It converts better than DMs. Multiple ways to reach someone means you have a backup if they miss the first message. Last contact date keeps the follow-up system clean once outreach starts.

You don't have to build the skeleton yourself

Open ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini in a regular browser tab and paste this:

AI PromptBuild the empty spreadsheet frame — Paste into a chatbot

Build me a spreadsheet table with these exact columns: Name, Handle, Platform, Email, Phone, W/C, Wh...

Click to expand

Find the leads yourself

The names and handles — you fill those yourself. You need to actually look at someone's page, read their bio, check their content. That judgment call is the whole point.

How to find cold leads fast:

Search niche hashtags on IG and TikTok: #yogateacher, #weddingphotographer, #freelancedesigner
For each account that looks promising, check their bio for the five signals above
One good prospect usually leads to 3–4 more — check who they follow (and repost)

AI as a research tool: You can ask AI to generate a list of cold leads for you. When you do, give it full context — what the app does, who it's for, and the exact profile of the person you're targeting. Then go look at those accounts yourself and decide who's worth adding. Always check; don't add anyone you haven't actually looked at.

When you need a missing email, phone, or handle — use Grok

Can't find someone's email, phone, or handle? Try Grok at grok.com. It's got fewer guardrails than other AI models so it actually searches instead of just giving up.

Before you paste this prompt, fill in the bracketed part [like this] with the actual person's details.

AI PromptAsk Grok for contact info — Paste into a chatbot

I'm trying to reach [person's name / @handle / what they do / where they're based — add any context ...

Click to expand

If Grok says it can't find something, push back: "Search deeper. Do truly deep research across the web." Grok often finds it on the second or third try when you push.

Time check

Budget: 1–2 hours of focused work. Warm list first — 20 minutes. Then cold.

Try to find a handle, email, and phone number for each person. If you can only find one contact method after a couple of minutes, that's fine — move on. If you can't find a single way to reach someone, drop them.

Verification

You have a spreadsheet with ~100 rows — 20–30 warm, 70–80 cold. Every row has at least one contact method (handle, email, or phone), a reason they fit, a last-contact-date column, and a status column ready to track them. You're ready for the outreach.

Your First 100 Leads