Balancing the need to build with the need to sell is tricky. These two components of building a successful business are critical, and our pattern-seeking brains can trick us into believing that we need to do one first and then the other when in reality, it’s a little from Column A and a little from Column B.

I realised recently that almost every conversation I have with founders, bootstrappers, and freelancers, centres around the 2 issues of building and selling. (Often it’s a question of which to do first, but more on that later.) They seem to be timeless skills worth building in business and in life.

Do you feel successful right now? Would you text a friend right now and say “I'm feeling pretty successful today.”

My guess is a no to both of those questions (and maybe even a queasy sensation to go with the second question).

Success is one of those words that has a different look and feel in different cultures.

Mental models are about leveraging timeless principles to improve our thinking and decision-making. As Archimedes once said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” Ultimately, it’s our mind that is that lever and it’s up to us to figure out to best use it.

Almost every day, I read about, or think of, a book that makes me think “Oh, I must read that again”.

I don't know about you, but I find myself firing books into my Kindle and filling up an Amazon shopping basket of books in the ill-founded hopes that future me will surely have the time to read. He will, won’t he?

Like anyone who works from themselves, I have a litany of things I learned the hard way.

All of them have taught me things that now are a part of my subconscious judgement when making decisions.

They help me be less wrong in the future.

In speaking with founders on The First 10 Podcast about how they found their first 10 customers, I have discovered that some of these mistakes and failures are universal.

The exhaust of finding your First 10 Customers is stories of things learned. Making a career of building businesses is a marathon, not a sprint, and my hope with this post is that some things in here will resonate with others on their entrepreneurial journey.

You've got the skill, you just need the customers. Consistently marketing your services is one of the most valuable things you can do as a freelancer. It helps you understand better those you seek to serve, as well as increasing your opportunity footprint. More marketing creates higher demand for your services, and the more you can charge.

10 Mental Models that will help you to find your First 10 Customers.

When I launched The First 10 Podcast, this was the gap I wanted to address. Sure, I could have talked about marketing strategies, behavioural psychology, storytelling, idea validation, etc. but these were downstream of where we all start when we launch something new. The stories from the podcast help to fill that gap. No two business journeys are alike, but we can all learn from the mistakes, as well as the things done well, that successful business builders do in those earnest first days.

10 learnings from the first 10 episodes of The First 10 Podcast

“Companies are like vessels. They have an origin, a destination, a mission and an interchangeable crew. The power of team spirit and having an exceptional crew is a recipe for success.”

What does it mean to Trust the Process?