I don't know your friend so I don't know where he's coming from but...
Sins was actually the first true RTS game I played...my closest experience to RTS before sins was with total war games...everything else was turn based (SMAC/X, Civ, Gal Civ II, etc...)...
The biggest issue for me was being overly cautious...in many turn-based games, vertical expansion is a viable alternative to horizontal expansion, and both strategies are rewarded and can win...however, in sins horizontal expansion is far more dominant...
If you can get your friend to actually expand quickly just once, it will give him confidence in horizontal expansion and he'll have no problem doing it again...it's breaking that initial barrier and getting him to do it right the first time...
Having a fixed procedure that is tried and true can help...it isn't good to always stick to the same rules, but it's still a good place to start learning...one way of doing this is for you two to play on the same team against an AI...as you do things, tell him to do exactly what you are doing...if you build an akkan, he builds a colony cap...if you attack your nearest asteroid with 4 LFs, he needs to do the same...it may be annoying and inflexible but a step by step approach may be the only way of removing his doubts and convincing him that rapid expansion not only wins, but is much less risky than it seems...