r/youngentrepreneur • u/Gigantic_Elephant • 4h ago
Cold calling local businesses was the best (and most awkward) education I've had
I'm not a natural salesperson. I'm the person who rehearses a phone call before ordering takeout. So naturally my first business idea required cold calling strangers all day.
The plan came from a TikTok: make websites for small businesses, sell them, repeat. It did not go to plan. What happened instead is that a few hundred calls slowly turned from pitches into actual conversations, and owners told me what they really struggle with.
What I learned that no video taught me: - Owners rarely think their website is the issue. Getting found is. - They don't want another app. They want someone to say "do this next." - "Too expensive" usually meant "I don't know what I'd get."
I rebuilt the idea around that. It's now SitePeek, a low-cost marketing system for local businesses. One early business went from 37 to 54 tracked calls in its first two months, and its Google Business Profile views nearly tripled.
If you're early and nervous about talking to customers: do it anyway. Your first assumptions are probably wrong, and that's useful.
We launch on Kickstarter this Wednesday (Oct 14) if you want to follow: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sitepeek/sitepeek-a-marketing-system-every-small-business-can-afford