You Have £100 to Build a Business. Here’s Exactly What To Do

0:01Zach Thompson, I want to do something that we never do on the podcast today. I want to set you a challenge. So obviously, over the last five years, we have built our lead generation sales agency. We have a meeting to over seven figures a year. I don't want to say it sounds big, Eddie, but you know what? You got to talk numbers sometimes. Money talks. So I want to talk for people that maybe want to set up their own agency. They're thinking about it. They're looking at new ways to generate leads. They want to bring in new clients. if you were starting up the agency now in 2026 and you had no more than a hundred pounds so all you've got is free methods your own thinking outside the box but we'll give you a little bit of money in today's episode i want to talk about how we would start a lead generation agency so like where'd your head go to as the first lego block on the mantle place step one sir So we're going to write down the skills that we have, okay, that are scalable, teachable skills and things that we find easy that others find hard.

1:14Okay, so maybe you're really good at LinkedIn, you're really good at data, you're really good at cold call, you're really good at email, you're really good at direct mail. Whatever it may be, there's a fundamental set of skills that you have. we are then going to look at where those skills are most in demand so what do you find easy that other people find hard really nice that would be the first starting point okay so we've got that got that you've not spent any money wow you're a hundred pound you're not spending any money you're a business in profit you've not even started well done you're a business in profit now the next thing is probably like oh hold on a second do i go and get investment now do i go and get loads of money Do I spend loads of money on getting this started?

1:54No, you don't. Because Jack's going to tell you how to get that messaging tested before you even start. Over to you. So you want to start thinking about what problem do you solve and what are the symptoms that people that you want to work with are going to have. I mean, we're going to think about who your ideal audience is. And you know the analogy that I always think. I remember when I was driving to yours once and I pulled over because my son had been sick on himself in the back. We needed to change him. And we pulled over into one of those little lay buys. And there was a sign that says, HGV driver looking for a new compact.

2:31And I just thought that's so smart because the majority of the time it's not going to be new dads cleaning their sons up. They're pulling over there. It's going to be HGV drivers. So I think like, where are the people that have the problem that you solve? So like, if you wanted to go and find a load of emos, you might go to a mosher bar. If you wanted to find a load of country bumpkins, you'd go to a country music bar. Where are the people that you want to work with? So what problem are they facing? What are the symptoms of the problem? What is the impact of those problems? Ask yourself these questions.

3:08Do some market research. It doesn't hurt anyone to write a LinkedIn message, pick up the phone and say, like, I'm starting a new business. I wanted to get your advice. I want to reach out to this industry. What problems do you typically face when it comes to getting in front of new customers? So that when you create some sort of pitch or outreach, it sounds like it's written exactly for them. Yes, exactly. I think a really easy way to get feedback on your proposition as well. I know it might scare some people out there, but we call it a Trojan horse, right? So you don't have any go-to-market messaging yet.

3:44It's not tested. You don't have loads of money behind you. What you can do is ring up who you think is your ideal customer and say, I was hoping you might be able to help me. I'm thinking of starting a business in this sector that solves these problems. From all the research I've done and the people I've spoken to, I think there's a need for it. But I just thought I'll pick up the phone to you and find out if I'm completely off. And then you will get feedback. Nine times out of ten, I think people are going to be quite happy to give you feedback on that and say, oh, no, it's not that. It's this.

4:14That was a problem before. We're going to say, yeah, you're bang on the money. That's it. And all you need is three or four people to tell you that's yes. You end all those calls by saying, well, are you happy for me to just keep you on a bit of a waiting list on my end so when it's ready to go I can give you a call back and book some time in? Yeah. There you go. Four, five, six. I've done this low cost test on who's actually out there and potentially open to having a conversation about that. So, so far, have we still spent no money? Still spent no money. And I want to talk about, so some people will be listening thinking, okay, yeah, I'm going to reach out to them.

4:48How do I actually find those people? Because you have the goal of like, well, do I spend that$100 a month on data? Do I go to a data provider? Do I find like a lusher or something? and we did in the early days but i'm i'm talking when i say early days i mean maybe six weeks two months of me being into the business there was five six months before i came to the business where you never had data and the the the we forget that you shouldn't be trying to sell to salesforce as your first customer because you're never going to get through to the ceo of salesforce like you're going to struggle going through gatekeepers so pick your audience pick your niche who you're going to speak to yale.com google maps even if it says it's an office number most smart people if you're in business will have an office number that then redirects to a mobile number so i don't know if i can say this but if you search we have a meeting and you call the number you will go through to one of the directors because most people will have a number there so i think so many people like sleep on yale.com google but but they're putting themselves out there for their customers they want people to find them they want people to be able to get in front of them so like don't be afraid to just like use google google maps yo.com thompson whatever these tools are that are free to make your first few phone calls to start getting conversations rolling beautiful um some ideas as well for lead gen that may be creative ideas i spoke to a guy once who he did lead gen for like a really niche part of engineering um hvac which is like air conditioning units and uh like air source heat pumps and stuff like that and he said i've got 100 % close rate from what i do i'm like 100 % close rate yeah what do you do i started a podcast and everyone that wants to be a customer are people that i invite on and the whole conversation is around the problem that i solve in their space and he said at the end of it when it goes offline he was like most times people were like oh what do you actually do then how do you actually help we should have a chat and if they don't i raise it and we book a meeting but you said 100 of the guests i've had on our customers and all the goals are free like we use tools that we pay for now you don't really need a good mic you could probably don't even start with no you do it on zoom teams whatever use that that's another trojan horse example oh i'm so annoyed no one ever answers the phone jack Why, what's been happening, man?

7:17I'm ringing off data and no one answers. It's straight through to people's mums and answering phones and retirees and butchers. Man. I've got sales calls to make. You're not going to hit target this month, are you? I'm definitely not going to. If only I could find a data provider that's 98 % effective. I'm glad you asked, Zach Thompson. I'm glad you asked. Have you ever heard of Prospio? Prospio? You mean P-R-O-S-P-E-O? Wow, I didn't know you could spell. Yeah, Prospio. They are a data provider that's 98 % better than every other data provider. You should check them out. Wow, but I can't try it out for free using forward slash wham at the end of it, can I?

8:01So it'd be P-R-O-S-P-E-O dot I-O slash wham. That wouldn't get me anything for free, would I? I don't think you spelt it right, but the link's in the bio for anyone that does want the right link. Prospio Get your data Let's get into spending money then Okay so we've given away some free things So you've got£100 to spend What are you going to spend it on?

8:25This is just acquiring This isn't fulfilling the work right? No don't worry about that Don't worry about doing the work I would probably be like Looking at some sort of a bit of like a guerrilla marketing campaign. If I was starting again at£100, because the issue that you're going to be working against in that space is everyone either believes they've got some sort of crazy, unique, cool AI tool that they're like, this is what people are going to be interested in. There's a million of them. Or they're at war with lots of personalization, which is probably AI generated as well. So it's kind of hard to stand out.

9:04So I'd be probably looking at what's the maddest thing i could do and we had a conversation once jack i remember i think we were on the tube in london or maybe it was in on the train in manchester or something but we were like what's actually the worst idea that you could think of that would actually like piss someone off so start in there like what's the little piss i think you kept the idea of sending over like a court summons because it looked like a court summons the same font and the same writing so someone opened it and they were all pissed off and then when they it was like nothing to do with that it's just a similar branding i've seen people do like fake parking tickets and stuff like that stuff that would piss people off and then decide what level you're comfortable with.

9:43But it has kind of a two-point benefit. The first one is people are probably going to get in touch with you. Good, bad, ugly. The second one is people are probably going to share it on LinkedIn. It's probably going to cause a bit of fuss. So piss some people off. Some people are going to love it. Some people are going to be indifferent. But it will cause some fuss. And it's a much cheaper vehicle in terms of an initial marketing launch than doing something just like, I'll chuck a bit into, I'll test that out for 100 quid or something. Do you know, you obviously will know this story, but you might not actually remember it.

10:14There was a, in the early days, so you said, right, here's, go and target every marketing agency that's going to an exhibition. So that's what I did. I scraped the data before we came in, started calling. I rang one guy and his name was Hamish Stevenson, I think, and he ran an immersive marketing agency. So he worked with like Netflix when they wanted to do something huge and it was like an experience and it was all in the immersive world. And I hit him, blah, blah, blah. And he was like, right, what do you know about my business? And I was new on the phones and I was a bit like, and I just like don't know loads and loads.

10:49I know that you're marketing. He was like, feels like you don't really know loads about me. He was like, go away, do your research and you call me back. I'll have another conversation with you. Sound. I thought, I'm not just going to call him back. I was like, I want to make an impact. It's early days. I want to win some clients. I knew he was in immersive. The last project he'd worked on was holographic dinosaurs. So I went to the card shop. I had a little look. There was a holographic dinosaur card. Wrote it out to him. Too, Hamish, I know I balls up the first cold call. Wondering if you'll give me another chance.

11:24I know that you're into immersive stuff. This probably doesn't cut the mustard, but I hope it's near. if it if you don't like it you can give it to your son whatever blah blah blah did it bang next day when he'd received it post on linkedin reached out to me intro'd me to someone can you have a conversation with this person he posted it loads of other people inbound somebody that we know that still works with us on a regular basis like that's the kind of out the box thinking it costs four quid but do you know i mean it's got you in a room it started off with the conversation so we're thinking free shit that you can do the court stuff there the hundred pound you could probably get a hundred letters printed but more cheaper than that like 30 quid use chat gbt use a free canberra account there you go reach out to people you can be a bit disruptive so i think that's great advice how how would you get people to approach so our minimum commitment now as an agency is six months you've got to work with us for six months and if you look back at the trajectory if we have a meeting that has changed lots and lots what advice would you give to people when it comes to commitment of your offering payment terms and maybe building that first offering okay so the first one is is like a money up front thing it's weird now when i think about money up front when i first did it i'd like to think that it didn't come from a place of being like a bit of a knob about it but maybe it did who knows it was a long time ago maybe i was a bit of a knob about it but i've seen some people now like post about this on linkedin in a way that like they sound like a bit of a knob you know what i mean like you wouldn't you you wouldn't be able to go in and do that and not pay for it would you like there's a lot of like i don't know it's got like a funny thing to it now this but i would just be i was always just like quite honest with people i had a picture of my two chubby babies on my desk and i'd say unfortunately i've got these two to feed and we're a growing business we're really small the bad news is probably it's always going to be a cash upfront model at the moment.

13:23I don't know if that's something you're really uncomfortable with. I would say most times like 95%, 99 % people were like, yeah, of course, that's not a problem. And you obviously need cash in the bank to be able to fulfill. I wouldn't be playing a game at that size of business. We still don't play it of like 30-day, 60-day, 90-day payment terms just because cash flow is king. You want to be playing with money that's in the bank, it's definitely less stressful to do so. and then in terms of longevity the thing that has been a really big needle mover for us is not tying people to feeling for renewal so like let's have a catch-up at three months six months and see if you want to continue working with us actually tying that to some goals for both of us that are realistic so i'm going to get you x amount of meeting whatever it is that you do x amount of meetings x amount of deals x amount of conversations x amount of awareness click-throughs whatever it may be if i achieve that i'd love for something to be in place that then commits us to a longer term that would be my thing but if i don't hit those goals i don't want to i don't want you to commit to a longer term with me but i want us to at least be tied into something where if i do my bit you'll do your bit and we'll keep working together that's something that i wish i did from the start what what do you think about so okay so you're starting out like if so your situation was obviously very very different did you had all these children to feed and there's like mortgage to pay if you are a 20 year old who's living at home there's no real like risk or outgoing and you're just like trying to cut your teeth when we think about offering would you would you if you were younger and you sign again would you have played a different game when it comes to guaranteed results pay on results commission only like a bit more skin in the game how would you think about that depends how much personal it's really how much money i've got in the bank and i think i think the ideal scenario is to have that alex or mosey situation where you're like i get a really big cut of the pie if i prove myself first and it's totally free if i don't like that is i don't know it's called a godfather offer or something like that it's just like it's hard to refuse it's an offer you can't refuse the godfather ever um but it's that thing of like the risk is all on me it's totally free i think chris do talks about it a bit as well like as an alternative it's totally free but if i deliver what i say or over deliver i'm getting 50 of the profits i'm getting so you had the backing financially to do something like that you'd probably be able to undercut the whole market most of us don't have that so i would say you want this kind of hybrid of the risk is somewhat shared i don't know if it's going to work for you don't know if it's going to work for me but there's a service to pay for if you're happy with it then we would continue working together but there's like break clauses and stuff in there if we're both unhappy little touch points throughout the campaign but the the cash up front thing i can't stress enough if you're starting out you don't have much money is absolutely essential you will go back to being employed very quickly without money so obviously we spoke a little bit about direct mail spending money there i don't think there's been anything because obviously you go data dialer direct mail i don't think there's anything you'd need to spend any money on am i being stupid well no like the first dialers that we use that were nothing like what we use now it was like what 20 quid a month that's before that was mobile still wasn't happy to give it you weren't before that's mobile phones um so fine you can do that data is there's publicly available bits you can ring office numbers again it's not the end of the world to do that there's loads of little tricks watch our other videos to find all the little tricks to get around data but it's very feasible to do with 100 quid i did it with nothing started off with with nothing the first month there was no outgoings my first outgoing was paying you and I'm still kicking myself about was that a good idea what was uh I don't know if you feel comfortable sharing but do you do you remember the the months in terms like the revenue like do you remember like month one this happened I earned this month so I know how much I earned on a month two it was yeah it was a little yeah less than what you paid for and you really made me feel bad about it yeah just so you know mate can't feed the kids this month because i owe you 200 quid it's a long time ago uh yeah the first month i made four grand which is mad when you think about it but also not so you go okay that's 48 grand a year but it was four grand straight into my pocket yeah it wasn't like no business expenses no office no employees no one to pay none of that to put that in context we now pay about half a million pound a year in salaries shit innit um so you learn very different games but yeah it's about that and then i remember driving home from somewhere i think i've gone to actually maybe meet a client in person and on the way back three different clients rang me saying like when can you start when can you get going and there was like that buzzy feeling of like oh my god i think i've just i'm working out and i'm like i think that's over 10 grand wow And he started pecking my head.

18:39And that was on maybe the second or third number or something. Yeah, and that's when I started pecking. Exactly. That was when I started pecking your head saying. Yeah, mate. Are you going to do it? Yeah, mate. I'm just thinking about it. You know what? One massive thing that I've really, really underestimated as the business. Me? No. I overestimated and you didn't deliver. No, one thing I've underestimated throughout the business, and I know that you have too, is there are people in your life from the past so you're young it might be a bit harder if you're in your 20s your 30s even your 40s onwards you do not realize the especially if you're like posting content and you're letting people know about what you do the amount of people that you once had a connection with or you worked with or you've you've done something with or you know that go let's have a conversation in in the first year of starting the business there was people that we used to get pissed on the school field with there was businesses I used to work with they're all like because everyone goes on to do anything and that's the whole your network is your net worth because people go oh I liked him he seems like a decent guy he's doing something now there's been some mad experiences of people coming back and I'm like oh you're you're the cousin of one of my best friends and you've seen what we're doing and now that was that was one of the stories two months into the business we started work with all these mad things of like actually be careful with you can't deliver because you can always ruin relationships but you you probably want to knock on some doors of people you know tell people what you're doing ask people who knows who can they introduce you to etc i remember messaging a guy that i'd sold to before we didn't even work together i'd sold some software to him maybe six years before I sent him this message and was just like I've seen what you're doing now I've just started a business I reckon I might be able to help you would you be against the chat and he was like yeah yeah and he rang me up and he was really like oh yeah I just look can you come meet me next week and I went and met him and he was my first long-term client because he it's funny sometimes it's great in retrospect because you're like oh I was so clever to think of these things but he was the first one who said what is it and do i work with you for like six months or something and i just went yeah like oh right yeah it doesn't have to be like month by month like it's it's six months i was so we were waiting for six months and he paid every month take the early days and this has been good i think there's been some good tangible actual advice is there anything that you feel like if somebody's like fuck it i'm gonna go and set up a lead gen agency now i'm gonna set up my own business this has inspired me anything else that they should be prepared to know along the way keep out of my fucking way don't call our fucking client right is there a task yeah your task my task okay um there's a guy on linkedin who's just had a baby he works for a company called centrama he goes by the name of marco alfonso rogers i think it's actually just spelt Marco AR, Marco AR on LinkedIn, find him and just send him a message and say, congratulations on the birth of your baby.

21:54I heard you called him Jack. That's all you got to say to him. I heard you called your baby Jack. And for the first three people to do it and screenshot that message and send it to either me or Zach, first three, 750 quid, 750 quid. There you go. thank you guys see you soon bye guys