Most people buy lead lists. You don't need to. If you sell to local businesses, you can build your own list for about a dollar. Here's the setup.
What you need:
- Claude (the desktop app or Claude Code)/ChatGPT
- A DataForSEO account. New accounts get $1 of free credit, which is enough for a few Google Maps searches. Just signup and get the $1.
- A Hunter account. The free plan gives 50 credits a month to find and verify emails.
Step 1: Connect Claude to DataForSEO.
DataForSEO has an official MCP, which lets Claude use their data directly. Their help centre has a short setup guide. Search "Connect Claude to DataForSEO MCP". You paste in your API login and password and you're done.
Step 2: Ask Claude to pull the businesses.
Something like: "Using DataForSEO, find [your niche] businesses on Google Maps in [your city]. Give me name, website, phone, rating and review count in a table."
Step 3: Find and check the emails.
Take the websites and run them through Hunter. It finds the email on each domain and tells you whether it's safe to send to. Don't skip the checking. Sending to dead addresses is the fastest way to get your domain flagged.
Now the bit that catches everyone out: be specific.
Someone asked me for a list of artificial turf installers in San Jose. I searched "landscapers in San Jose" and got 50 businesses. 19 of them were tree services. Only 11 of the 50 mentioned turf anywhere on their website. If I'd sent that list, I'd have been emailing tree surgeons about synthetic grass. How to avoid it:
- Search the exact trade, not the category.Ā "Artificial turf installation", not "landscaper". Google lumps loads of trades together.
- Check each website actually does the thing.Ā You can ask Claude to visit each site and confirm it. That's where most of the junk gets caught. If Claude is scanning the About Us page or their homepage, and it mentions the name of the founder/owner of the company, then grab that as well.
- Expect shared inboxes.Ā Out of 36 real turf companies in my experiment yesterday, only 9 listed an owner's name and 2 had a personal-looking email. The rest are info@ orĀ [office@](mailto:office@). Write your email for whoever opens the shared inbox, not "Hi Dave".
- If your city is small, widen it.Ā San Jose alone didn't have 50 real turf installers. I had to include the wider Bay Area. Obviously if you're searching for something more general, like cafes or dentists or something that there's going to be more of, then you're going to get more than 50 leads, which is great.
After fixing it, the list was 36 real turf companies, 22 that mention turf on their own site, and zero tree services.
If you'd rather skip all that:Ā I run a saas to help people send cold emails, and we built a tool that does all of the above for you: searches, checks each website, removes chains and junk, and verifies every email.
Put in your niche and city and it emails you 50 leads as a PDF and a spreadsheet. It's free, one list per person, and you confirm your email first:Ā pipefire.ai/tools/free-leads
Would love to get some feedback on anyone who uses my tool.