There's a particular kind of stuck that hits the week a course goes live: the thing exists, the page is up, and nothing happens. The instinct is to fix it with reach — post more, run an ad, start a newsletter. For the first ten students, that's the slow road.

Ten is not a marketing problem

Ten people is a number you can reach by hand. It's small enough that broadcast isn't needed and personal enough that broadcast doesn't work. Treat it as ten conversations rather than one campaign and it stops being intimidating.

Where the first ten come from

  • People you have already helped with this exact problem, paid or not.
  • Anyone who has asked you about the topic — check your messages, not your memory.
  • The person who does your job at another company.
  • Communities you're already part of, where you're a participant and not a stranger.
  • The one friend who will tell you the truth about it. Start with them.

Write the list on paper before you write a single message. Ten names, no filtering for whether you think they'll say yes — that judgement is unreliable, and it's how the list ends up with three names on it.

The message that works

Short, specific, and obviously written to them. Something close to this:

plaintext
Hi [name] - I finally built the thing I keep talking about:
a short course on [specific result].

I thought of you because [the real, specific reason].

It's live but early. I'd rather have ten people go through it
and tell me what's missing than polish it alone for another month.
Want the link?

Three things make it work. It's honest that the course is early, which lowers the stakes for both of you. It asks for a reaction rather than a purchase, which is a much easier yes. And it ends with a question, so replying takes one word.

Do not launch to a list you have never emailed. A dormant list treats a first message that sells as spam, correctly. Warm it up with something useful first, or skip it and use the ten names.