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BD64

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Whats going on Fastlaners? My first thread here on TFLF, I wanted to make sure I have another way to hold myself accountable and keep a journal of sorts. I hope that others may find value in my journey as well.

Here's a brief introduction of myself...

Currently, I am a college student at Boulder, Colorado studying business and graduating at the end of December this year. Up until recently I've always wanted a nice management job at a big consulting corporation like Deloitte or something making 60k/year. Needless to say for 21 years I have been stuck on the slowlane/sidewalk, but F*ck that. This past semester and school year so far have been absolute shit shows. Actually no, these past 21 years of schooling have gotten me nowhere, hell I'm 21 and still can't even financially support myself!?... If I'm going to be working my a$$ off either way and spending the majority of my awake hours for a paycheck I may as well go all out and strive for more!

Anyway, the books and this forum have been awesome resources and I consider myself lucky to have stumbled upon them. Its funny, now that I've been altering my mindset I see the slowlane/sidewalk narrative EVERYWHERE. Family, friends, school, you name it. I want no part of it anymore, now that I've read the books and saw the stuff going on within these forums, all that other shit just seems so miserable. Anyway, enough about me...

So for about a month I have been just going through these forms and reading books, but I've realized that is just mental masturbation. All the information will still be here when I need it, for now I just need to start doing something.

Inspired by @Fox's thread on web design and alot of the talks by @Andy Black I've decided to jump into webdesign to get myself off of the ground. Have been through all the suggested learning materials and this past week have started making cold calls this week. Finally at around my 30th cold call I managed to speak with a business owner instead of a receptionist.

On the phone he had told me that he's been getting a bunch of calls for web design, actually before I even had a chance to mention it he asked if I was calling to sell him a site! Luckily, I was able to spin the narrative a bit with the fact that I'm a current college student who is looking mostly to get some more experience and to provide genuine value. Turns out this guy owns not 1 but 3 separate businesses and all of them have websites that I can definitely improve upon! He was unsure of what I could really do for him and I was having a bit of trouble with articulating it in a clear and specific manner, so I got his email and will be giving him some more detail within the week.

The plan is to give him some suggestions based on weak points of his site and specifically how he could improve it. I will also be creating for him a mock website of sorts. Not sure of the best way to do this as I don't know how to show him the site I have created with HTML without actually launching it. Perhaps somebody has a suggestion?

Welp, that is all for now! It's not much but its better than nothing! Anyways feel free to chew into me, I bet ya'll can't do worse than my old football coach (previously a drill sergeant).

Big thanks to @MJ DeMarco @Fox @Andy Black and a whole bunch of other guys on this forum!
 
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Andy Black

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Whats going on Fastlaners? My first thread here on TFTL, I wanted to make sure I have another way to hold myself accountable and well as keep a journal of sorts. I hope that others may find value in my journey as well.

Here's a brief introduction of myself...

Currently, I am a college student at Boulder, Colorado studying business and graduating at the end of December this year. Up until recently I've always wanted a nice management job at a big consulting corporation like Deloitte or something making 60k/year. Needless to say for 21 years I have been stuck on the slowlane/sidewalk, but F*ck that. This past semester and school year so far have been absolute shit shows. Actually no, these past 21 years of schooling have gotten me nowhere, hell I'm 21 and still can't even financially support myself!?... If I'm going to be working my a$$ off either way and spending the majority of my awake hours for a paycheck I may as well go all out and strive for more!

Anyway, the books and this forum have been awesome resources and I consider myself lucky to have stumbled upon them. Its funny, now that I've been altering my mindset I see the slowlane/sidewalk narrative EVERYWHERE. Family, friends, school, you name it. I want no part of it anymore, now that I've read the books and saw the stuff going on within these forums, all that other shit just seems so miserable. Anyway, enough about me...

So for about a month I have been just going through these forms and reading books, but I've realized that is just mental masturbation. All the information will still be here when I need it, for now I just need to start doing something.

Inspired by @Fox's thread on web design and alot of the talks by @Andy Black I've decided to jump into webdesign to get myself off of the ground. Have been through all the suggested learning materials and this past week have started making cold calls this week. Finally at around my 30th cold call I managed to speak with a business owner instead of a receptionist.

On the phone he had told me that he's been getting a bunch of calls for web design, actually before I even had a chance to mention it he asked if I was calling to sell him a site! Luckily, I was able to spin the narrative a bit with the fact that I'm a current college student who is looking mostly to get some more experience and to provide genuine value. Turns out this guy owns not 1 but 3 separate businesses and all of them have websites that I can definitely improve upon! He was unsure of what I could really do for him and I was having a bit of trouble with articulating it in a clear and specific manner, so I got his email and will be giving him some more detail within the week.

The plan is to give him some suggestions based on weak points of his site and specifically how he could improve it. I will also be creating for him a mock website of sorts. Not sure of the best way to do this as I don't know how to show him the site I have created with HTML without actually launching it. Perhaps somebody has a suggestion?

Welp, that is all for now! It's not much but its better than nothing! Anyways feel free to chew into me, I bet ya'll can't do worse than my old football coach (previously a drill sergeant).

Big thanks to @MJ DeMarco @Fox @Andy Black and a whole bunch of other guys on this forum!
Ha. My dad was a drill sergeant.

Good luck with the web design. Nice place to start I think.
 

BD64

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Quick update,

Week has been pretty busy so haven't gotten to work on the website business as much as I would have liked to. The business owner I was attempting to work with fell through. I just got off the phone with him and he raised a couple issues, didn't trust me because I had no references and didn't believe that there was any need for a new website, overall just didn't seem interested. I think I may have jumped the gun during our initial call and when he said to send an email I took that as a sign if interest. He didn't actually even check the email lol! Oh well, back to square 1, this friday will be aiming for 20-30 cold calls with the goal of scheduling follow up calls. Lets try to get at least 1 site in the works by the end of the month.
 
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sparechange

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record your calls and listen to yourself
 

millerad

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It sounds like you are off to a good start. Cold calling businesses is scary business sometimes. Keep up with it. I see terrible websites all the time, and i think to myself. God I would almost fix that for free just so I wouldn't have to see it anymore.
 

BD64

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Yea cold calling is pretty uncomfortable, I've never really 'sold' much of anything either so its a completely different ballgame from what I am used to. I don't get super anxious about it, at least as much as other people seem to, so that's made it easier. For sure need to work on my sales skills tho and need to get over the "no portfolio hump". Now I'm just looking forward to friday when I can fit in some more calls! After some more thinking I may just break the day up into calling blocks, 2-3 hours in the morning and another in the afternoon with a bike ride and some lunch in-between, keep the spirits up.
 
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BD64

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Update 9/28/2017

Been hammering away at calls and experimenting with cold emails as well. For sure seeing some improvement, have a few follow up calls scheduled and one person who is already super interested! I was able to build rapport with her easily due to the fact that I'm graduating from the same school her daughter just did.

Aside from that there has been a bit of an issue thats cropped up. I built a website for a dealership and right before we could launch it I was told that due to some corporate bureaucracy issues this may not be possible. The dealership is under Hyundai's umbrella and as such so is the website. The real problem is not that we may not be able to use the website but rather I had anticipated that it would be a showcase of my work and as such have told people a but about it. So now I'm unsure of how provide examples of my work to those who have asked to see it as I had not anticipated this to happen. I've considered simply putting the site up on a domain I hope just to show people for now and then taking it down, but that doesn't seem like a great idea... For a number of reasons.

For now I need to figure out the best solution to this issue, what should I show/tell potential clients? And looks like I may have to back to square one on building up my portfolio, oh well.
 

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I will also be creating for him a mock website of sorts. Not sure of the best way to do this as I don't know how to show him the site I have created with HTML without actually launching it. Perhaps somebody has a suggestion?
Just host it on a subdomain (subdomain.domain.com)

I built a website for a dealership and right before we could launch it I was told that due to some corporate bureaucracy issues this may not be possible. The dealership is under Hyundai's umbrella and as such so is the website. The real problem is not that we may not be able to use the website but rather I had anticipated that it would be a showcase of my work and as such have told people a but about it.
You should try to avoid these issues before doing the work. I assume you were doing the site for free. It may be worthwhile to charge a small amount when starting out ($50, $100, $200) so the client has at least a little skin in the game. This way they will treat you with more respect and want to see the project through.

I would keep this site as part of my portfolio even if you couldn't sell it, again hosted on a subdomain. Who knows, maybe you will end up talking to another dealer and you will have a great site to sell them with some minor modifications to suit them.
 

BD64

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You should try to avoid these issues before doing the work. I assume you were doing the site for free. It may be worthwhile to charge a small amount when starting out ($50, $100, $200) so the client has at least a little skin in the game. This way they will treat you with more respect and want to see the project through.

I would keep this site as part of my portfolio even if you couldn't sell it, again hosted on a subdomain. Who knows, maybe you will end up talking to another dealer and you will have a great site to sell them with some minor modifications to suit them.

Thanks for the input.

Your spot on that I did it for free, the site was actually made for a family friend, before I actually showed them the site he wasn't super concerned with it so didn't look into it much, but after I showed him how it looked he finally started to reconsider and look into actually implementing it. Your probably right about having at least some sort of minimal fee tho, $50 for a page is pocket change but still demands some sort of consideration.

As for the dealership site, I'll probably redesign the site a bit to get rid of the branding and such before I host it on a sub-domain to use as an example site. Problem with this is that it won't show how I've actually helped a real business and I'll have to bullshit aspects such as car listings and such. Still not very comfortable with this solution but not really sure what else to do with it at this point.

In the meantime I've decided to get some jobs from Wordpress to help me get off the ground with the portfolio and to show proof of experience. And to just be honest with my potential clients about the situation, offering to design them mock-up pages if they are still interested. Worst comes to worst I lose out on a few warm leads that I was able to generate from a few hours of calls, not a big deal.
 
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azsno

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Quick update,

Week has been pretty busy so haven't gotten to work on the website business as much as I would have liked to. The business owner I was attempting to work with fell through. I just got off the phone with him and he raised a couple issues, didn't trust me because I had no references and didn't believe that there was any need for a new website, overall just didn't seem interested. I think I may have jumped the gun during our initial call and when he said to send an email I took that as a sign if interest. He didn't actually even check the email lol! Oh well, back to square 1, this friday will be aiming for 20-30 cold calls with the goal of scheduling follow up calls. Lets try to get at least 1 site in the works by the end of the month.

Can you contact this guy again and make him a first one free deal? No harm there right? If he doesn't like the design, he doesn't pay, if he does then there is a 3 site deal right there? Have something tangible for him to look at. Or may be tell him hey if sells and traffic don't increase in a month, then revert back to the old way, but if they do, we have a deal for the other three?

As for the dealership, how about a mom and pop operation who isn't affiliated with any corporate giant that has final say? The Dodge/Jeep websites for my local dealerships are shit, and look like a beginner (probably someones nephew) created them, horrible to navigate, and search, yet are all created under the same template so no changes there, but the independent lots have a need that I don't think is being served by the generic web-hosting platform they pay for and may be open to building a relationship?
 

BD64

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hey @azsno thanks for the input.

I did actually create him a mock-up page and showed it to him. It was a clear improvement one of his current sites but he didn't seem at all interested. We had a brief conversation where I tried to express the benefits of a better website but didn't get much of anywhere. I think I would rather spend my time working with people who are interested in the first place rather than spending my time trying to convince people who aren't, at least for now.

I like your suggestion with the independent lots, that is probably where I should have went to in the first place rather than a corporate dealership. I'll look into some local lots and see if we could make something happen there.
 

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hey @azsno thanks for the input.

I did actually create him a mock-up page and showed it to him. It was a clear improvement one of his current sites but he didn't seem at all interested. We had a brief conversation where I tried to express the benefits of a better website but didn't get much of anywhere. I think I would rather spend my time working with people who are interested in the first place rather than spending my time trying to convince people who aren't, at least for now.

I like your suggestion with the independent lots, that is probably where I should have went to in the first place rather than a corporate dealership. I'll look into some local lots and see if we could make something happen there.

You're right, it may be a waste of time as he has already made up his mind, and it's much harder to turn a no into a yes rather than a maybe into a yes. Do you have a website, designed by you, that acts as a storefront for your business, and can also showcase your work? If not, this could give you an example of your work and showcase what you offer, with the ability for others who may need your services to contact you without waiting to receive that cold call.
 
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azsno

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hey @azsno thanks for the input.

I did actually create him a mock-up page and showed it to him. It was a clear improvement one of his current sites but he didn't seem at all interested. We had a brief conversation where I tried to express the benefits of a better website but didn't get much of anywhere. I think I would rather spend my time working with people who are interested in the first place rather than spending my time trying to convince people who aren't, at least for now.

I like your suggestion with the independent lots, that is probably where I should have went to in the first place rather than a corporate dealership. I'll look into some local lots and see if we could make something happen there.

Tried to DM you, but not able to, so I posted a link on your profile. Check out this site, perhaps you could help this lady....I'll pass on any leads I come across
 

BD64

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Update 10/21/17 -

Bit of text here, so tl;dr:

Failed a lot, learned a lot. Met initial goals of getting first clients. Got a lot of work to do and not a lot of time to do it.

Been almost a month since my last update, progress has been slower than I hoped but steady.

I've gotten considerably better at selling myself and dealing with clients/potential clients. There has been quite a few rejections and conversations that have ended up falling flat. I even started making a couple sites which ended up having to be stopped due to my fault in poorly vetting and communicating with people. In the end I actually managed to make my first few sales in unexpected ways.

I actually need to give @AndrewNC credit, he was a big help in me getting my first 2 clients. He helped me realize the power of making genuine connections and why referrals are so powerful. I posted something based on this in @Fox FB group, but I think it will be relevant to a lot of people on this forum so here it is:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Especially to those of you struggling to make sales, take a moment to just look around you. Get out in your local community and simply talk to people. I'm sure most people here know a few local business owners or are a "regular" at some business. Take the time to get to know these people, build a connection and genuinely see if you can help them.

For the past month or so I've been struggling to get the ball rolling for myself. I kept pushing to cold call and make sales and get some websites done. But I never truly made a connection with people and discovered how I could help them.
Needless to say it was frustrating and I didn't get far.

This past weekend I was at a farmers market where local business owners come and set up shop. Simply talking to people and getting to know about them and their business led me to make my first sales. The awesome part, I didn't even have to sell! Naturally they would ask me about myself, when I told them about my web design stuff they actually got excited and wanted to know more. When somebody is already interested in what you got to say then you no longer need to sell them, instead just offer to help.

And listen, they weren't excited because they couldn't find a guy to do web design... On the contrary they kept getting calls and emails about it. The real reason this worked was that I kept it real and I took the time to understand them, also having social validation is huge.

Now I'm not saying that you shouldn't go out there and sell, absolutely you should be. But, especially for those who are having trouble, go out there and try something like I did. Go to a networking event or even talk to your barber next time you get a cut, see if you can help them. Get into a mindset of it is for them not for you and jobs will fall into your lap. This will help you to get that ball rolling in the right direction.

Sorry if this is a bit all over the place, I'm half awake in bed right now. Anyway, hope this helps someone out there. Feel free to drop me a line if for any reason you want to.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I have another few interested leads as well who I've gotten just in my local social circle which includes a bunch of musicians and small-time outdoor athletes (mountain bikers, climbers, skiiers/snowboarders) who I may just help out with setting up personal pages as well.

Its funny how things work. I've went from a point where I had very little work on my business to a spot where I have TONS to do on the web design side while also entering midterms week at school. I gotta do better with staying ahead of the curve and putting in that extra hustle even when things seem slow.

I think I had more to say but lost my train of thought. Doesn't help to get shit done with your roomate plays trap music that shakes the F*cking floor.
 

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