How to get your first 10 customers for a new business in Dallas

Nobody has heard of you, and that is the whole problem

A new business has a product, a name, maybe a website, and zero proof. Every prospect you approach has to decide whether to trust you with no reviews, no case studies and no friend who has used you. That is why the first ten customers are so much harder than customers fifty through sixty, and why most of the advice written for established businesses does not apply yet.

I started my own agency in Dallas from exactly that position, and I now sit in BNI Preston Center, a referral chapter of about 70 businesses, where I watch new owners work through the same stage every year. What follows is the sequence I would run today if I were starting again. It is in order for a reason: each step borrows trust from the one before it. A structured referral chapter appears as step six, and I will say honestly when a new business should wait before joining one.

Step one: write down the customer, not the market

"Small businesses in Dallas" is a market. "A dentist with one location in North Dallas who gets most new patients from insurance lists and wants more from Google" is a customer. You cannot call a market. You can call a customer, and more importantly, other people can recognize one and send them to you.

Spend an hour writing one paragraph about your first customer: what they do, what they are struggling with, what they have already tried, and what would make them say yes to someone new. Keep it narrow enough that you could name five real people who fit. Everything in the next eight steps uses this paragraph, and if you skip it the steps get slower.

Step two: make the warm list before you touch anything else

Open your phone, your email and your LinkedIn and list every person who knows your name and would take your call: former colleagues, former clients from a previous employer where that is allowed, suppliers, neighbors, people from your church or your kids' school, the owners of businesses you buy from. Most people land at sixty to a hundred and fifty names. Do not judge them for fit yet.

Then mark each with one of two letters. C for someone who could be a customer. R for someone who could refer one. There are usually far more Rs than Cs, and the Rs are where the first ten customers come from. Your first week of selling is spent on the Rs, not on strangers.

Step three: the sentence you say to the warm list

Do not pitch your warm list. Ask them for help with a specific problem, which people are far more willing to give. The script is three sentences, and the third is the only one that matters.

"I have started a business doing X. I am looking for my first few clients, specifically Y kind of person with Z problem. Who comes to mind?" The word "specifically" does the work. If you say "anyone who might need it," you will get polite silence, because the listener's memory has nothing to search for. If you describe the customer from step one, names surface. Ask for an introduction by text or email, not a phone number, so the prospect hears about you from someone they trust before they hear from you.

• Send the ask by phone or in person to the twenty Rs you know best; the rest by a short personal message.
• Follow each introduction within 24 hours while the referrer's words are fresh.
• Report back to every referrer what happened, even when it was nothing. They will refer again only if they hear the result.

Step four: price the first ten to win them, not to fund the business

Your first customers are buying something with no track record, and they know it. In exchange they deserve a reason to go first. That can be a lower introductory price, a smaller first project, a guarantee that you can actually honor, or extra attention that an established competitor cannot give. Choose one, state it plainly, and attach an expiration so it does not become your permanent price.

What you want from these ten is not margin. It is permission: to photograph the work, to quote them by name, to ask for a Google review, and to be introduced to the next customer. Agree on that permission before the work starts, while the gratitude for the favor is on their side. Then over-deliver, because the first ten reviews will be read by the next hundred prospects.

Step five: borrow trust from professionals who already have it

The fastest shortcut to trust is to be recommended by someone who already has it with your customer. Use the paragraph from step one to list the professionals who meet that customer before you do. For a residential trade, that is real estate agents, lenders, insurance agents and property managers. For a business service, it is CPAs, bookkeepers, business attorneys, bankers and business consultants. For a health practice, it is adjacent practitioners who see the same patients.

Approach them the way you approached the warm list: not with a pitch, but with a clear description of who you help and a question about how you could be useful to their clients. One good partner can produce more first customers than a month of cold outreach, because every introduction arrives with their reputation attached. The difficulty is finding and meeting those partners one at a time when nobody knows you yet. Which is the case for the next step.

Step six: walk into a room where the partners already sit together

A referral chapter is step five with the search removed. At BNI Preston Center, about 70 businesses, one per category, meet every Thursday at 11:30 AM for lunch at Park City Club, 5956 Sherry Lane in Preston Center. The agents, lenders, insurance agents, attorneys, CPA, banker and most of the trades are already seated and already in the habit of passing business to one another. A visitor gets 30 seconds to say who they are and who they want to meet, and then has an hour of lunch to talk with the people who just heard it.

Our chapter reported $3,982,650 in closed business between members over the past twelve months, with 2,372 referrals given so far in 2026. Those are member-reported numbers and they skew toward members who have been in the room long enough for others to trust them, which brings me to the honest caveat for a new business. Membership costs an annual fee plus chapter meeting dues, which I will leave for you to ask about at a visit, and it costs roughly three hours a week. If you can carry that from day one, a chapter compresses the first-ten stage from a year into months. If you cannot yet, visit anyway, meet the partners in your field, and join when the first ten are behind you.

Step seven: let strangers verify you before they call

Every introduced prospect will look you up. This is my field, so I will keep it practical. Before you send a single introduction, you need a Google Business Profile with a complete description, a correct service area, real photos and at least one review, and a website of even a few pages that states exactly who you help and what you do. Without these, a referral from step three or step six dies in the search bar and you never learn why.

After each of the first ten jobs, ask for a Google review the same day, by text, with the direct link. Ten reviews from real customers within your first few months is a bigger trust signal to the eleventh prospect than any amount of design.

Step eight: turn each customer into the next one before the invoice

The moment of highest goodwill is not when the invoice is paid; it is when the customer first sees the result and says something positive. That is when you say the referral sentence: "I am glad it worked. I am still building my first clients. If you know someone else dealing with the same thing, I would be grateful for an introduction. Who comes to mind?" Then stop talking.

Track every ask and every introduction in a simple sheet: who you asked, who they named, when you followed up, what happened. Ten customers who each name one person is a second ten, and this time each arrives with a customer's recommendation instead of a friend's favor. From that point the business is no longer new in the way that matters.

What to skip for now, and where to start on Thursday

Skip paid ads until you have reviews for them to land on. Skip the logo redesign, the brochure and the social media calendar; none of them produce a first customer. Skip trade shows and open networking mixers, where a new business with no proof is the least memorable person in the room. And be realistic about a referral chapter if your customers are not in Dallas–Fort Worth, if your category is already taken, or if the weekly hours would come out of delivery time you cannot spare yet.

If the sequence fits, do steps one through three this week; they cost nothing. Then come and see step six in action. Register on the Visit page, arrive at Park City Club by 11:00 AM on a Thursday, and bring the one paragraph from step one. The visitor orientation at about 1:00 PM will tell you the cost and whether your seat is open. Even if you decide to wait, you will leave with names of partners who meet your first ten customers every week.

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