First Sale to a Stranger: The Six Conditions.
A first sale to a stranger means one person with no tie to you pays for your offer. Also, it meets six conditions: no employer time, equipment, customers, name, job knowledge or favours. Break one, and the result becomes unreadable.
One sentence, one stranger.
The exercise is one sentence: get one stranger to pay you without using anything your employer owns. That rules out a friend, a colleague and the supportive cousin. Selling to strangers not friends matters because a stranger owes you nothing. So they pay only when your offer is worth more to them than the money.
The six conditions for a first sale to a stranger.
Write the six conditions down before you start, because you will be tempted by all six. First, not on their time. Then not on their equipment, including the laptop, phone, software licence and desk. Also not through their customers, not using their name, and not using knowledge you have only because of the job.
Why a favour does not count.
The sixth condition, not selling to anybody doing you a favour, is the hardest. Someone who likes you might genuinely need the thing. However, you can never separate the two motives afterwards, and neither can they. So sell to them if you want, but do not count it. A first customer without a network is the only clean signal, and a first sale to a stranger keeps the result readable.
Plan your first sale to a stranger.
Write the six conditions on one page and keep it beside you while you plan.
Name one place outside work where people who don't know you might see your offer.
From the book.
Six is a lot of conditions for one sale, and the temptation is to treat them as guidelines that a sensible person would apply with judgement. They are not guidelines. Each one of them exists because breaking it makes the result unreadable, and an unreadable result is considerably worse than no result at all, because you will go ahead and act on it anyway and never know that you did.
I Want to Start a Business but I Can't Quit My Job, chapter 12: One stranger, one payment, while you still have the job
Questions about first sale to a stranger.
What counts as a first sale to a stranger?
Someone with no relationship, obligation or reason to be kind pays you because your offer is worth more to them than the money.
Are the six conditions just guidelines?
No. Each one exists because breaking it makes the result unreadable, which is worse than no result at all.
Does avoiding their name include saying where I work?
Yes. It includes the sentence "I work at", even when said in a slightly louder voice.
Read the whole chapter.
This lesson covers one section of chapter 12, “One stranger, one payment, while you still have the job”. The book goes further, with the full evidence, the stories and every exercise.
Lessons in this chapter.
- 01 Building Credibility as a New Business: Own It.
- 02 First Sale to a Stranger: The Six Conditions.
- 03 Is One Sale Enough Validation: What It Proves.
- 04 Employee Duty of Loyalty: Prepare, Don't Solicit.
- 05 Fired for Side Business: Four Questions to Ask.
- 06 Turn a Hobby Into a Business: The Knitter's Runway.
- 07 How Long to Get First Sale: Six to Eleven Months.
- 08 No Sales for My Business: What Each Result Means.