TL;DR:
- Step 1: Momentum. Forget perfection. Your first job is to simply create motion. Spend your first hours every day on promotion (outreach, content, ads). Volume beats quality at the start.
- Step 2: Proof. Start with a free or very cheap offer to get your first fans and testimonials. Once you have proof it works, increase your price slowly with each new client. Nail it before you scale it.
- Step 3: Generosity. Give away your best ideas. Solve small, specific problems for people for free through your content. This builds trust and makes you the only choice when they’re ready to buy.
- Step 4: Scaling. Once you have a proven offer and an audience, find the one bottleneck holding you back (e.g., not enough leads) and focus all your energy on solving it with paid ads and content amplification.
It All Starts With a Blank Page
Marketing can feel like a huge, complicated monster.
You’re a founder, an artist, a maker. You have something great to offer, but a thousand different “gurus” are telling you to do a thousand different things. SEO. Funnels. Social media. It’s overwhelming. It can make you feel small and stuck.
But what if you didn’t need to do everything? What if you just needed to take one small step, and then the next?
Building a marketing system isn’t about mastering a hundred complex tools. It’s a natural process, like planting a seed and helping it grow. This is a guide to that process. It’s a journey in four simple steps, inspired by the hard-won wisdom of people like Alex Hormozi, to take you from a blank page to a system that brings you customers who truly value what you do.
You are the hero of this story. Let’s begin.
Step 1: The Momentum Phase – Just Start Moving
In the beginning, you have no data, no audience, and no idea what will work. This is a good thing. It means you are free.
Your only goal in this phase is motion.
Alex Hormozi says that in the early days, “volume negates luck.” This is the most freeing advice you will ever hear. It means you have permission to be imperfect. Your first posts will be clumsy. Your first emails will be awkward. It does not matter.
Your Action Plan:
- The 4-Hour Rule: If your business is making less than you want, dedicate the first four hours of every single day to one thing: promotion. This can be cold outreach, creating content, or trying small ads.
- Don’t Think, Do: Don’t spend a week planning a post. Write it and publish it in 30 minutes. Don’t spend a month building a website. Launch a simple landing page this afternoon.
- Track One Thing: At the end of the day, just ask: “How many people did I reach out to?” or “How many things did I post?” Measure your output, not the quality. The quality will come from the doing.
The point of this phase isn’t to get a thousand clients. It’s to create a current, a flow of energy. To get the engine to turn over for the first time.
Step 2: The Proof Phase – Nail Your Offer
Once you’re in motion, you need to figure out what people actually want from you. You can’t do this with guesswork. You need proof.
The goal of this phase is to create a “no-brainer” offer and get real people to say “yes” to it.
Your Action Plan:
- Start Free or Cheap: Offer your product or service for free, or for a very low price, to your first 5-10 customers. Your only ask in return is a testimonial and honest feedback. This removes all risk for them and gives you invaluable insight.
- The Pricing Ladder: Once you have 5 happy customers and 5 testimonials, increase your price by 20%. Get another 5 customers. Then increase it again. Keep doing this until you feel resistance—when people start saying “no” more often. Now you’ve found what the market is willing to pay.
- Listen Deeply: Your first customers are your best teachers. What words do they use to describe their problem? What part of your service did they love most? Use their exact language in your future marketing.
You’ve now “nailed it.” You have a proven offer, you have social proof, and you have a price that works. Now, and only now, are you ready for the next step.
Step 3: The Generosity Phase – Give It All Away
This may feel backward, but the fastest way to grow is to stop trying to sell.
The goal of this phase is to build trust by being genuinely helpful.
Your potential customers don’t need another sales pitch. They need solutions. The modern marketing model is simple: give away your secrets, and sell the implementation.
Your Action Plan:
- Solve One Small Problem: Create content (articles, videos, posts) that provides a complete solution to a very specific problem. Don’t just give tips; give a real answer. For example, instead of “5 Tips for Better Websites,” write an article titled “How to Choose the Perfect Font for Your Website.”
- Create Your “Teardown”: Offer to do free, personalized analyses for potential clients. A 10-minute video reviewing their website, for example. You give away immense value, demonstrate your expertise, and build a relationship. The people who are serious will naturally want to hire you for the full implementation.
- Value per Second: Keep your content dense and to the point. Respect people’s time. Make every sentence, every second of video, packed with useful information.
When you are this generous, people stop seeing you as a seller and start seeing you as a guide. And when they need a guide, they will come to you.
Step 4: The Scaling Phase – Turn On the Engine
You now have motion, a proven offer, and the trust of an audience. You have a small, hand-built engine that works. Now it’s time to add fuel.
The goal of this phase is to amplify what is already working.
Your Action Plan:
- Find Your Bottleneck: All advertising works; it’s just a matter of efficiency. Ask yourself: “What is the one thing holding back my growth?” Is it not enough traffic to your website? Not enough people booking calls? Put all your focus and a small ad budget on solving that one single problem.
- More, Better, New: Don’t reinvent the wheel. Look at your best-performing ads or content. Then, do more of it. Try to make a slightly better version. And test a completely new idea. This “More, Better, New” framework keeps you scaling without losing what works.
- Build Your Ethical Monopoly: As your system gets more efficient, you can afford to spend more to acquire a customer than your competitors. This is the goal. You win not by being the cheapest, but by providing the most value and having the best system.
Your Engine is Alive
This isn’t a rigid, mechanical funnel. It’s a living system. It’s a natural progression from motion to proof, from generosity to growth.
You don’t need to be a marketing “hero.” You just need to be a guide for your people, show up consistently, and be genuinely helpful. Start with one small step. Start today.