u/dilshan_brev

I wanted to do something helpful for founders, freelancers, and small teams who are grinding outreach right now.

Just drop your target audience in the comments like “fitness studios in Texas”, “skincare brands in Canada”, “local HVAC companies in Florida”, “real estate agents in Australia”, whatever you’re going after, and I’ll reply with 5 verified leads for free when I can.

All leads are pulled from public sources and pretty fresh. I’ll get through as many as I can over the next few days ;)

Be honest… how many of us still open Google Maps, zoom into a city, copy business names into Sheets, check websites one by one, and repeat for hours?

It feels productive, but it’s honestly just manual data entry disguised as lead gen 😅

As someone building websites for local businesses, I used to spend more time collecting leads than actually doing outreach. By the time the spreadsheet was ready, I was already burned out.

Recently I started automating that step with LeadLu, define the type of business I want, export the list, then move straight into outreach and follow-ups.

The biggest benefit wasn’t even the time saved. It was removing the mental fatigue from the process.

Curious how everyone here handles this still building lists manually or using tools/CRMs to streamline it?

I used to manually search Google Maps for local businesses and reach out one by one.

My process was pretty straightforward:

1. Find businesses with no website or outdated websites
2. First, ask them something about their business or product (to start a natural conversation instead of pitching immediately)
3. Then slowly move into pointing out a relevant issue like slow site, no mobile optimization, or weak online presence
4. Send a short, direct message once there’s engagement
5. If they replied, I’d share my portfolio and offer help

I noticed that if you directly point out issues or pitch too early, you often get ignored. Starting with a simple question about their business works much better because it feels more natural and less salesy.

I was doing around 10 businesses per day, but it quickly became repetitive and inconsistent. Some days I’d be productive, other days I’d skip it completely.

Later, I started using a free tool to automate the discovery part (finding leads + organizing them), and it made a big difference. What used to take 2–3 hours now takes around 10 minutes.

On the free plan, I was still getting around 2–3 clients per month. After seeing consistency, I upgraded.

It’s not a shortcut or magic system, you still need good messaging and follow-ups. But automation removes most of the manual work, which is usually what causes inconsistency.

I’ve been deep in local lead gen for the past couple of years targeting specific niches + cities for agencies and service businesses. For a long time my process looked like this:
• Search Google Maps with broad keywords
• Manually click through hundreds of results
• Copy-paste name, phone, website into a spreadsheet
• Hunt for emails separately
• Then chase them with cold outreach that mostly got ignored

It was brutal. Low volume, terrible data quality, and tons of junk results. On busy weeks I’d spend 4–6 hours a day just on prospecting before I could even start outreach.

A few things that finally moved the needle for me:

1. Better search hygiene - Using very specific category + location combos instead of generic keywords dramatically cut junk results.
2. Enrichment layering - Once I had solid business data, layering on contact enrichment (without paying for bloated databases) improved reply rates noticeably.
3. Automation on the outreach side - Sequences with proper follow-ups instead of one-and-done emails made a bigger difference than I expected.
4. Focusing on volume + quality together - Getting 500+ clean, targeted local leads in under 30 minutes changed the entire game.

The biggest mindset shift was treating lead sourcing as a repeatable system instead of a daily manual grind. Once that clicked, I could spend way more time on closing and optimizing campaigns.

Curious from the community:
• What’s your current workflow for local/SMB leads?
• Still heavy on Google Maps scraping, or have you moved to other sources?
• What’s the biggest time waster in your prospecting right now?

Would love to hear what’s working (or not working) for you in 2026.

I used to manually search Google Maps for local businesses and reach out one by one.

My process was pretty straightforward:

1. Find businesses with no website or outdated websites
2. First, ask them something about their business or product (to start a natural conversation instead of pitching immediately)
3. Then slowly move into pointing out a relevant issue like slow site, no mobile optimization, or weak online presence
4. Send a short, direct message once there’s engagement
5. If they replied, I’d share my portfolio and offer help

I noticed that if you directly point out issues or pitch too early, you often get ignored. Starting with a simple question about their business works much better because it feels more natural and less salesy.

I was doing around 10 businesses per day, but it quickly became repetitive and inconsistent. Some days I’d be productive, other days I’d skip it completely.

Later, I started using a free tool to automate the discovery part (finding leads + organizing them), and it made a big difference. What used to take 2–3 hours now takes around 10 minutes.

On the free plan, I was still getting around 2–3 clients per month. After seeing consistency, I upgraded.

It’s not a shortcut or magic system, you still need good messaging and follow-ups. But automation removes most of the manual work, which is usually what causes inconsistency.

This might sound weird, but I’ve been finding clients just by browsing Google Maps.

I search for local businesses, check their websites, and if they look outdated or don’t have one, I reach out.

It’s way easier than competing on freelance platforms.

Not saying it’s perfect, but I’ve gotten a few paid projects from it already.

Feels like nobody talks about this method.

Try this method if you’re struggling to find website offers.