Customer discovery, the polite way
Ask before
you build.
First Ask researches the businesses you want to learn from, drafts an advice-first note in your own voice, and keeps the interviews honest, so their answers decide whether you build.
Replies to answer
Calls coming up
New to send
Most "quick question" emails are a pitch wearing a disguise. Owners can tell in one line, and they delete it.
First Ask is for the other kind: a real question, from a real person, to someone whose answer could change what you build.
How it works
Everything between a hunch and a verdict.
Know who you're writing to before you write.
Every prospect arrives researched: who runs it, how they're reached, what they're proud of, what they bill with today. Each fact carries the page it came from, so nothing in your note is a guess.
- Owner (public)
- Jenna Ruiz, founder and director
- Hook
- Took the senior team to nationals for the first time this spring
- Billing today
- Class software for tuition; costumes and comp fees on Venmo
- Reach
- [email protected] · Instagram
Source: maplestreetdance.example/about
Ask for advice, in your own voice.
Drafts are short, specific and honest about who you are: twenty minutes of their experience, not a demo. Email goes from your own mailbox. Facebook, Instagram and contact forms are copied and opened for you, and you press send.
Hi Jenna, I'm Autumn. Congratulations on taking the senior team to nationals. I'm trying to learn how studios handle everything beyond tuition (costumes, comp entries, travel) and I keep hearing it's spreadsheets and Venmo. Would you give me 20 minutes to walk me through how you do it? Advice, not a sale.
Interview on a script, not on a hunch.
Notes are laid out as your interview script, problem first and product last, so you don't lead the witness. The questions your decision depends on are typed fields, and their exact words go where you'll find them later.
12. Rank your top three headaches right now.
"Collecting for costumes. Every year. I front the order and chase it for two months."
Let a rule you wrote last month make the call.
Set the bar before the first email: say, three of five owners rank the problem top three, and twenty-five signups from one channel. First Ask keeps score and says Pending until the numbers are in, so a good conversation can't talk you into a bad build.
Parents and other non-buyers are noted, never counted.
Built-in manners
It won't let you be the email you hate getting.
Follow-ups are written when they're due and wait for you. Nothing goes out on a timer.
Never a bulk sender. A handful a day, on weekdays, during business hours.
No open tracking, no redirect links. Links are tagged so a signup can be counted, and that's all.
One reply stops everything, across every campaign and channel, for good.
Business contact details only. No personal phones, home addresses, or anything about kids.
Your name, your business, a real mailing address and an easy way out, every time.
Why it exists
We built it to answer our own question.
Media Lion makes Fee-Lion, invoicing for small businesses. This fall we sketched four versions of it for dance studios, gyms, preschools and club sports, and had to decide which, if any, deserved to be built.
The answer wasn't in a survey. It was in conversations with a few dozen owners in Upstate South Carolina, and we wanted those conversations to be ones we'd be glad to receive. First Ask is the tool we wrote to run them. It's in daily use here, and not open to sign-ups yet.
Jeff & Autumn, Media Lion