Experiment Library

Message your phone contacts one at a time

Open your contacts, go top to bottom, send a short personal note. Not a broadcast.

Search your social friends for a qualifying interest

Search your friends list for the behaviour that qualifies someone, add them to a sheet, message each individually.

Call the one person most likely to say yes

Kagan's sample sheet literally lists 'call my aunt Rhonda' at an expected value of one. Nothing is too small to list.

Email past customers with a specific new offer

Not a newsletter. One offer, one deadline, sent to people who already paid you once.

Ask five friends for one introduction each

Name the person or the type of person you want. Vague asks get vague answers.

Post the offer plainly to your own feed, once

Most people never actually say what they sell to the audience they already have.

Mine your sent folder for dormant contacts

Search for people you emailed twice and never followed up with.

Message former colleagues from every job

Work backwards through your employment history. Each job is a warm network you stopped using.

Ask existing customers where they expected to find you

Kagan's exact message: thank you for being a customer, where is the one specific place you would expect to learn about my product?

Reopen every inquiry that never bought

People who asked and didn't buy are the warmest list you are not using.

Ask suppliers and vendors who else they serve

They already sell to your customer. They are not competitors.

Work your alumni networks

School, bootcamp, accelerator, military unit, former employer alumni groups.

Ask your accountant, lawyer and banker for one referral each

Professional service providers sit on top of exactly the buyer you want.

Publish a 'here is what I am building' note

One honest post to everyone who knows you, describing what you are doing and who you are looking for.

Wholesale to retailers who already serve your customer

Daniel guessed 50 sales here and got 217. Find the businesses whose customers are your customers, and sell through them.

Build the list of every retailer in your category

Search Google for your category plus a city, or search the category on a reviews site. Collect owner name, email and phone.

Pay a freelancer to build that contact list

Kagan's alternative to doing it yourself: hire someone on a freelance marketplace to work the listings into a sheet.

Offer a partner's audience a discount and split the profit

Frame it as money for them, not a favour for you. Daniel's email led with helping the gym make an extra $1,000.

Sponsor targeted niche bloggers

One of the two components of the original Mint plan that hit a million users.

Sponsored posts on target market blogs

Pay for content placement on the blogs your customer already reads.

Influencer partnerships

Build relationships with people who have influence over your market, such as high-profile bloggers or Instagrammers.

Pitch press and bloggers to cover your story

Kagan lists PR as its own line. The story has to be interesting to their audience, not to you.

Run a giveaway with real prizes

Round up good prizes, build a sweepstakes page, and promote it hard.

Free samples to community leaders with a members-only price

Daniel's version produced nothing. It still belongs on the list, because you cannot know that in advance.

Collaborate on other people's shows and newsletters

Appear on other podcasts, shows, newsletters and channels.

Guest on podcasts your customer listens to

Pitch the show, not the host. Bring one story they cannot get elsewhere.

Newsletter swaps and paid newsletter placements

Small newsletters in your niche often convert better than large ones.

Build an affiliate programme with a commission worth having

Two percent gets ignored. Thirty percent gets promoted.

Co-host a webinar with a complementary business

Their audience, your expertise, one shared offer at the end.

Get listed on partners' resource and tools pages

Every company that recommends tools to your customer is a door.

Resell through agencies that already serve your customer

They have the relationship and the billing. You have the thing.

Bundle with a non-competing product

One joint offer, two audiences, split the work.

Speak inside someone else's community or membership

Paid communities are constantly looking for people to run sessions.

Answer questions where your customer already gathers

Be useful in public in the specific places you listed on your canvas.

Hyper-targeted SEO content

Do keyword research to find what people in your niche actually ask, then write for those exact questions.

Keyword research on question tools

Kagan names question-based research tools as the way to find what your niche is talking about.

List on marketplaces where your customers already shop

Posting your product to sites that already have your customers. Free to do.

Get into category directories and best-of lists

Someone has already written the list your buyer reads. Get on it.

Get listed and reviewed on review sites

For many categories the review site outranks your own website.

Build comparison and alternative-to pages

People search for your competitor's name plus 'alternative' with their wallet out.

Claim and work your local business profile

Photos, hours, categories, and a steady trickle of reviews.

Answer questions on Q&A sites and forums

Answer the question fully. Mention yourself once, at the end, or not at all.

Participate in the subreddits and forums you listed

Participate for weeks before you sell anything, or you will be removed.

Make how-to videos for the problem you solve

Video search results have a far longer life than social posts.

Comparison shopping engines and aggregators

Where price-led buyers start.

App stores and integration directories

If your customer uses a platform, its directory is an intent channel.

Local service and lead marketplaces

You pay per lead. Test with a small budget and count closed jobs, not leads.

Job boards and RFP sites where buyers post needs

Buyers describing exactly what they need, in public, with a budget.

Cold email to a hand-built list

Speak directly to potential customers. Build the list yourself so you know why each name is on it.

Cold calling

Kagan lists picking up the phone in the same breath as cold email.

Direct messages on the platform where they are active

Meet them where they already are rather than where you prefer to work.

Connection request plus a specific first message

Generic outreach gets generic silence. Reference something only they would know.

Cold email the businesses that serve your customer

Not buyers, partners. Fewer emails, bigger outcomes.

Physical mail to a small, well-chosen list

Fifty considered letters beat five thousand emails in some markets.

Send a short video instead of text

Harder to ignore, and it proves a person made it.

Walk into local businesses and ask for the owner

Nothing beats this for local, and almost nobody does it.

Work event attendee and speaker lists

Anyone who paid to attend has declared their interest publicly.

Reach out to people who reviewed a competitor

They have the problem, they have paid to solve it, and they told you how it went.

Contact everyone who engaged with a relevant post

Yours or somebody else's. Engagement is a signal you can act on the same day.

Follow up once more with everyone who went quiet

The follow-up nobody sends is where a surprising amount of revenue lives.

Lead with a free audit or teardown

Give away the diagnosis. Charge for the fix.

Send the product itself, free, to ten ideal customers

Cheaper than ads, and you learn what people actually say when they hold it.

Write the best content in your niche

The second component of the Mint plan. Not good content. The best.

Start a YouTube channel

The channel Kagan chose after testing five at once and comparing audience gained against work put in.

Start a podcast

Kagan lists podcasts under content marketing alongside blogs and video.

Write blog posts targeting specific questions

His sample sheet has 'write four blog posts' at an expected ten sales.

Build an email newsletter

The only audience you own outright.

Short-form video, daily, on one platform

One platform, thirty days, then judge. Not five platforms badly.

Build in public and post the real numbers

Specific figures travel further than advice.

Publish case studies of real customer results

The single most useful asset for a service business.

Build a free tool that solves one small piece

Expensive to make, then it works while you sleep.

Give away templates, checklists and swipe files

The thing people actually wanted was never the article.

Run original research or a survey of your market

New numbers get cited, and citations are links.

Give a full workshop or course away free

The best filter for who is serious.

Repurpose one piece into five formats

Same idea as a post, a video, a thread, an email and a slide.

Comment substantively on bigger accounts in your space

Borrowed attention, one thoughtful reply at a time.

Run a recurring live show or open office hours

Same time weekly, so people can form a habit around it.

Write a book or a long definitive guide

Slow, and it changes how people introduce you.

Search ads

Your name appears when certain keywords are searched.

Social ads

Ads on the social channels your audience uses.

Facebook and Instagram ads

Daniel ran these against an expected 16 sales and got zero.

Video pre-roll ads

Cheap attention if the first five seconds earn it.

Podcast ad reads

Host-read spots on small shows in your exact niche.

Newsletter ads

Often the best cost per customer available to a small business.

Retarget people who already visited

The cheapest paid audience you have.

Sponsor a paid community

Access to a room your customer paid to be in.

Native and content discovery ads

Works where the offer needs explaining before it needs selling.

Local radio or regional television

Still cheap in many markets, and still works for local services.

Out of home: transit, billboards, gym walls

Buy the specific location your customer passes, not the reach number.

Paid placement in a directory

Pay to sit at the top of a list buyers already trust.

Trade publication advertising

Unfashionable, uncrowded, and still read in many industries.

Paid product placement with creators

Pay for the placement, not the follower count.

Post a flyer

On Kagan's own sample sheet, expected nine sales.

Post in a local meetup group

Also on his sample sheet, expected five.

Sell to one specific local club or group

Daniel had a line item for a single named climbing group. It produced eleven sales.

Host your own small event

Twelve of the right people beats a room of two hundred.

Speak at a conference

Apply six to nine months ahead. The talk is the ad.

Run a booth at a trade show

Expensive. Judge it on conversations started, not badges scanned.

Run workshops where your customer already goes

Their venue, their audience, your session.

Counter displays with a local partner

One shelf in the right shop.

Markets, fairs and pop-ups

Immediate, unfiltered feedback from strangers holding your product.

Sponsor a local team, class or league

Slow, and it buys standing in a community rather than clicks.

Put an actual offer on your business card

Not your job title. An offer.

Vehicle and window signage

One-time cost, years of impressions in your own service area.

Give a talk at a library, chamber or civic club

They are always looking for speakers and the room is local buyers.

Attend the conference without a booth

Skip the stand, spend the money on being there and meeting people.

Ask one customer the twice-as-happy question

'What is one thing I can do today that will make you twice as happy with us?'

Handwritten thank-you notes

Nick Bare wrote one to every US customer, from Korea, while taking BPN from $1,000 to $100,000 a month.

Reply personally to every comment

How Kagan grew his channel early. It made the audience feel connected to him.

Give customers your actual phone number

He did this at Gambit while the company was doing more than $20 million a year.

Personally email customers to ask what they like and dislike

He still does this at AppSumo. The replies start with disbelief and end with referrals.

Ask for a referral and name the person you want

'Who do you know who...' beats 'let me know if you think of anyone'.

Make the referral reward worth having

If it is not worth mentioning to a friend, it will not be mentioned.

Run a win-back campaign to churned customers

They already know what you do and why they left.

Offer the obvious next thing

Most businesses have never once asked a happy customer to buy again.

Put your best customers in a private group

They sell to each other in front of you.

Publish customer wins with their names on them

Proof for strangers, recognition for the customer.

Overdeliver hard in the first week

The onboarding week decides retention and every referral that follows.

Send something unrequested

Not a discount. Something that shows a person was paying attention.

Book a check-in call with no agenda and nothing to sell

The most reliable way to hear the truth.

Referral loop inside the product

The invitation is part of using the thing, not a campaign about it.

Give-one-get-one, rewarding both sides

Both people benefit, so neither feels used.

A free tier your customer's colleagues will see

The account is the ad.

Shareable output carrying your name

Whatever the user makes goes out into the world with a mark on it.

Embeddable widget or badge

Customers put your name on their own site, permanently.

Public profiles or pages that rank in search

Every customer becomes a page that brings in strangers.

A templates gallery others browse and copy

Users make the inventory that attracts the next users.

Integrations with tools your customer already uses

Each integration is a listing, a partner and a reason to switch.

A certification or badge people display

Your customers advertise you to prove something about themselves.

A waitlist that moves when people invite others

Turns waiting into work the customer does for you.