You asked for Part 2. Here it is. Quick recap: I found the whale. Opened with a genuine question about HIS world. No pitch. And instead of me chasing him... HE came back and asked ME: >> "Are you looking for lead gen at scale? What verticals?" Now here's the fork in the road. Most people fist-pump and go "YES! sign me up." And just like that, they're a customer. A small one. Hat in hand, one-down. I did the opposite. Here's my actual reply (and yeah, I waited a few days first, on purpose): >> "Hey man, sorry for the slow reply. Was at the lake house with the fam, barely any cell service (sometimes that's a good thing lol). >> I'd love to learn more about your program. >> I've got biz partners in a few verticals (like solar) looking for legit lead gen for their in-house teams. >> What verticals do you serve?" Three quiet moves in there: ✅ I wasn't in a rush. Days later, lake house, no big deal. Abundance, not "please pick me." ✅ I didn't take the buyer seat. I mentioned my partners. Now I'm not a guy who wants to buy leads... I'm a guy who could send him clients. ✅ I handed the question back. "What verticals do you serve?" Now I'm sizing HIM up. What came back? He listed every vertical he serves. Solar, roofing, insurance, mortgage, the works. Then offered to send me his calendar. He's now selling ME on his program AND booking the meeting. The buyer became the seller. Because I never sat in the buyer's chair. Real quick, before you run with this: That "I've got partners in a few verticals" line? Not a flex. It was TRUE. I actually had solar partners who needed better lead gen, and I wasn't about to become a lead-gen agency myself. So I'd been out hunting for something genuinely DIFFERENT and UNIQUE, and his wasn't your average lead-gen play. It got real results. A real fit, not a line I fed him. So purrty pls don't make stuff up. If you tell a whale (or anyone) you've got people, HAVE people. An audience, a skill, one intro you can actually make.

Whoa. The NEER post lit up. 20-something of you raised your hand for the playbook. That one was all about the WHO. Finding the one person who already owns the room. (Travis calls it NEER.) But finding them? That's the easy part. The real question underneath all those comments... Once you find that person, how do you open the conversation without sounding like every pitch in their DMs? Because this is where it stalls. And it's not a confidence problem. The offer's great. We know it's great. It's the "WHAT do I say" to get a convo rolling... What usually happens is we spot the perfect person to get it in front of... …and then just sit on it. Because nobody wants to be another "hey, wanna collab?" in the DMs. And it's hard to see how to open it like a partnership instead of a pitch. So the message never gets sent. Here's my actual first message to the solar guy. No pitch. No "got 15 min?" No mention of my tool: >> "Hey! Just joined your group and it's 🔥. >> Haven't seen anything quite like your [ping-tree] setup for helping folks run like the big guys. >> You still running your beta program?" Then I STFU! ✅ Genuine. I actually joined, I actually dug in. ✅ Specific. I named his exact strategy. That one detail proved I did my homework, not spray-and-pray. ✅ A question about HIS world. Not mine. His. I made him the star and asked about HIS baby. He lit up like a Christmas tree. Told me all about his program, how it was "crushing." A few days later (after I ghosted him), HE sent this: >> "Are you looking for lead gen at scale? What verticals?" The guy with the audience I wanted... started pitching ME. I never pitched. I just got interesting enough that the big fish swam over. Lead with THEIR world and get specific enough to prove you've done your homework's. Ask about their baby, not the pitch. The 'pitch' takes care of itself.

My AI offer already worked. Only problem was the sales were coming in a little too slooowww for me. I knew I didn't have a Prahdukt problem. I had a reach problem. The people who needed my tool the most had no idea I existed. And I wanted to get in front of a bigger (warmer) market without bleeding for it. Solar companies. ☀️ A whole market of them. The grind says build a list, run ads, cold-email a hundred doors. Nah. 🙅 I went looking for the one guy who already OWNED the room. So I hopped into a few solar Facebook groups... Same name kept popping up. One "influencer" every solar owner seemed to follow. So I did my homework. 🔍 Turns out he wasn't just an influencer. He ran a data aggregation company. A whole network of lead-gen sites that funneled leads into his software, which then dispersed them to his solar clients. Read that again. ✅ He already had the audience. ✅ He already had the connections. ✅ He already had the exact companies I wanted. And here's the part most people walk right past... His business only made money when those solar companies WON. So I didn't pitch him. I partnered with him. One short coffee date and I showed him the natural fit: His lead-gen pours people in the front door ... my Database Reactivation AI works the back door. Quietly reviving the ones who slipped through. The folks who were interested once, then went cold. His whole funnel. Every leak plugged. 🚰 I proposed a risk-free, performance-based deal, so he and his clients had ZERO downside. Without missing a beat, he introduced me to 3 of his biggest clients (whales in this space). A few weeks later my AI was living in their systems, booking meetings for their reps on auto-pilot. One of those clients did $147,000 in sales in a few weeks... 🔥 from a list their reps had already talked to and given up on. My cut? $15,000. 💰 I never sent a single cold email to a solar company. I found one guy who already had the room... and we built something neither of us had alone.

So now ya know not having money didn't stop me at age 10... And it doesn't have to stop ANYONE! If you missed Part 2: ===>Here's the Rerun:-) In Part 2... I asked an IMPORTANT QUESTION. If the $5 or $10 I made from painting on the curb number was NOT the GOLD!... What WAS the GOLD? Why is it important? Because... People who struggle all their lives.... Struggle because they work for MONEY! I don't place blame on them. They TEACH/program/brainwash us to work for money in school and in society. Here's what I figured out as a young, geeky Ron Howard-looking kid. AFTER... I gave money to my mom. AFTER... I spent some on candy, walkie-talkies, and wrist rockets... I could go to the SAME PEOPLE I painted the address number for... ...and they were happy to pay for 💥OTHER STUFF I COULD TAKE OFF THEIR PLATES💥... 👉Weed pulling 👉Lawn Mowing 👉I even got to mow a cemetery for $100 a mow. (I thought I made it big!!) 👉Car washing 👉Light Carpentry stuff (but I sucked at that and had to stop.) The GOLD was the CUSTOMERS. PLEEEEEAAASSSSEEEE... Do NOT say, "I know. I know." Because MANY grown adults still don't know!! Who gets the GOLD if someone is selling on Amazon? The seller? Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Amazon keeps the GOLD. Who keeps the GOLD in UBER? The poor guy or gal driving their ASS off? Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo! UBER keeps the CUSTOMER! In many cases... They FORBID YOU... it's against TOS to even CONTACT the customer. That's not all. Most business owners, EVEN IF they keep the GOLD (Customer), don't do ANYTHING with the customer. And they make 1/10th the money they COULD BE MAKING.... 👉Do you know WHY? 👉HINT: It's the same BOTTLENECK I had as a kid. I didn't figure out how to remove this bottleneck until I was in my mid-THIRTIES... BY FORTY... I was a millionaire. That's HOW IMPORTANT it was and how fast I got out of the rat race. But... Again... It is too important for me to just shout out.

I was a broke, freckle-faced 10-year-old boy... I was the oldest of 4 kids... My mom was single... And broke too. But I didn't let that stop me. I figured out what I now call: "A Gravel to Gold Sitch" Let's come back to that... One of my "income streams" was painting curb numbers for homeowners and renters whose addresses were either faded or completely gone. I knew my "pitch" wasn't a pretty address number. It WAS not getting COLD PIZZA because the pizza guy couldn't find your address. It WAS the ambulance, police, or fire department that found their home when every SECOND COUNTS. I'd charge $5 to $10, depending on whether I painted one or two numbers for them. (some wanted the number on both sides of the entry) Now... My investment for materials... Was about $10 to get fresh stencils, paint brushes and black and white paint. (From memory, this was a few decades ago 😁) I could paint about 10-12 address numbers from my $10 investment. Which meant $50 to $60 + tips for revenue. A $10 investment with a $60 return for an afternoon in 1977 was pretty solid. A lot of men/women were not making that... This is what I call the "Gravel to Gold Sitch"... Paint and the supplies are GRAVEL. I had the PROCESS: Take the paint and turn it into address numbers so the pizza guy and emergency services could find homes fast. Once I turned the paint into an address number on a curb... I turned a little bit of paint (gravel) into (gold)... NOW... If You Think That The money Was The Gold... HUGE MISPERCEPTION Don't get me wrong... It bought Snickers bars, walkie-talkies, and other stuff when I was 10 years old... But that wasn't the GOLD REALLY. (Hang on tight for a sec.) So... Here was my big fat problem. I was a broke kid. My mom was broke. How did I get my "start-up" capital? I PRE-SOLD! I'd knock doors and when I got a "YES."... I just had them PAY ME UPFRONT... Then I'd bike it to the hardware store and buy my supplies! I still PRE-SELL most stuff to THIS DAY as a 58-year-old.