Best approach to Customer Discovery

I am a startup founder based in the US. I am struggling with early stage customer discovery. I ideally want to interview people making more than $50k annual income (in person) about their biggest friction points. How do I get these interviews? Do I just go to coffee shops and ask people to talk? Or do you think I should compensate them? If I just talk to them, it is hard to qualify them and also if I compensate them, the $$$ add up. How much should I pay them? And how do I get to at least 100 customer discovery interviews? Any advise from founders?