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From Spain With Love - Building a Web Design Business While Living Abroad

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

mjb234

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At the beginning of last year, I started my journey towards building a web design business from scratch. It did not go as planned...

While it only took me a couple of months to learn the basics of building a website, I ended up spending a few more months stuck in “learning mode”. You know what I’m talking about. That state of mind where there’s always just ONE more thing you need to learn before you can start getting clients.

Fortunately, towards the end of the year I got the strong kick in the a$$ I needed to start making real progress. Well, two strong kicks to be specific.

One came in the form of @Fox (you might have seen his infamous web design business thread) and his extremely helpful Youtube channel. His focus on building sales systems as opposed to just fancy looking website really resonated with me. It switched my focus from trying to build the perfect looking website to actually looking at how my current skills could help REAL businesses.

The second kick in the a$$ was self-imposed - I moved from California to Spain to live with my girlfriend. With no job lined up and barely any savings, I knew I needed to make this web design thing work soon.

Feeling inspired but knowing I needed help, I joined Fox’s Sales Legends Program and began soaking up the wisdom from him and the other veteran students of the program. It’s been almost two months since I joined and I’ve already made more progress than in the previous 11 months combined.

But I want to do more than just make some decent progress this year. I want to end 2020 making at least $10,000 per month on web design projects. That would be more than enough for me to live comfortably and also invest in growing my business even further.

More importantly, though, I want to develop top-notch sales and marketing skills. A successful web design business isn’t my end-goal. It’s just the first step on my path towards building a larger Fastlane business.

In this thread, I’ll be keeping track of:
  • My general progress towards building my business
  • The different projects I complete and how I approach them
  • Different pitfalls and challenges that come with web design
  • The different sales and marketing lessons I learn along the way

In my next post, I’ll talk about the process of landing my first few portfolio projects (two of them paid), and some of the major lessons I’ve learned so far.

Thanks for reading!
 
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MaxKhalus

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Glad to see you on the Fastlane!
I post daily on my Execution thread as a freelancer from Spain, so I can relate in some way. The key is to post frequently to keep the dream alive.

Maybe I didn't pay attention, but what "unit" will you use to measure your progress?

  • My general progress towards building my business
  • The different projects I complete and how I approach them
  • Different pitfalls and challenges that come with web design
  • The different sales and marketing lessons I learn along the way
What you added here doesn't sound very specific other than "what I learn on the process."

Also, why do you see important starting a progress thread? Many guys make great promises on post #1 and quit soon. Get it straight from the beginning to invest well your time.

Good luck!
 

mjb234

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I post daily on my Execution thread as a freelancer from Spain, so I can relate in some way. The key is to post frequently to keep the dream alive.

@MaxKhalus thanks for the feedback. Where in Spain are you based?

Maybe I didn't pay attention, but what "unit" will you use to measure your progress?

What you added here doesn't sound very specific other than "what I learn on the process."

That's a good question. As of right now, my main unit of measure is how much money I'm earning each month on web design projects.

Also, why do you see important starting a progress thread? Many guys make great promises on post #1 and quit soon. Get it straight from the beginning to invest well your time.

I wanted to start a thread for a few reasons:
  1. To track my progress in one place
  2. To create some extra accountability for myself
  3. To work on my writing and communication skills
 
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mjb234

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Getting Through the Portfolio Stage

Right now I’m in what you’d call the “portfolio stage” of my business. I know how to build a website but I don’t have any past results that I can use to sell my services.

The main challenge I’ve faced so far has not been finding my first portfolio projects but actually completing them.

I got my first client - a family friend - in October of last year. She runs a fairly successful chiropractic center but didn’t have a website yet. I reached out to her by text and offered to make her a website for free in order to build my portfolio. She happily accepted.

The plan was to build her a basic WordPress site (8 pages) and then put her on a maintenance plan when it was finished.

Even though WordPress was new to me, I was able to finish the basic build of the site before moving to Spain at the start of November. However….after four months I am still waiting for the client to send me the written content that goes on the site.

My second portfolio project came in December. I posted a message in a local Facebook group (back in California) offering my services for free or at a reduced cost depending on the project. I got quite a few leads from that post, one of them being a lawyer who was willing to pay market value for a new website.

We agreed on a final price of $1000 for a 6-page Wordpress site, with a monthly maintenance fee once the site was finished. Considering I hadn’t been paid before, I was pretty excited about the opportunity.

Even better, this client seemed ideal at first: he was incredibly responsive to emails and questions and promptly provided me with photos for the site. However, he was quite adamant about writing all of the content for the site himself. Considering how responsive he was already, I didn’t think this would be a problem.

Once again, I’ve been left waiting for content for well over a month.

As frustrating as this situation has been, I’ve learned a very valuable lesson from it.

Taking Care of the Heavy Lifting

I’ve seen other web designers such as @Fox say that they try and make the process as easy for the client as possible by taking care of things like copywriting and images themselves.

At first, I thought this was to give a superior client experience. I’m sure that’s part of it, but I see now that taking that approach also ensures you won’t be depending on the client to write good content quickly.

That means I’ll need to find clients who will actually trust me to do the heavy lifting as well. I’m assuming this comes down to making those expectations clear during sales conversations.

With these first two projects (especially the paid one), I was so eager to get the clients to commit that I barely discussed those kinds of details. In the future, I need to take my time and really emphasize that I’ll take care of the whole design process for them. Once I have some more consistent income (larger projects and more recurring revenue), I can probably afford to go at the client's pace more often.

While I’m still waiting on these two clients, I’ve kept myself busy working on a free website for my mom’s new interior design business. The site probably won’t get much organic traffic, but it will give her a good place to showcase her past work and what she can provide to clients.

I also just started a $2,000 project from my dad’s girlfriend, who owns a medical equipment supply company. I’m hoping to finish both of those projects by the end of February.

As soon as I get one online, I will start prospecting using those results to build more trust.
 

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Didn't see the tag in this thread before - great you are posting this and I know it will be a ton of value for other people. Following this thread for sure.

Some great points above - you got to be moving the project along with or without your client's help. A lot of advanced projects will depend on you being able to manage and handle your client effectively. If they could have done it already - they would have.

This is good and bad. It gives value to our service but it means we are getting paid by the same people who can sometimes be the biggest project obstacle to success!

You are well on track already with picking this up so I am sure the progress will come fast. Tag me in whenever you need me. Thanks for getting this thread going.
 

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The plan was to build her a basic WordPress site (8 pages) and then put her on a maintenance plan when it was finished.

How are you operating your maintenance plan? Does that just mean the hosting of your WP sites are under your name? And a certain amount of content updates a month? You have a great start already with 2 paid jobs right away, great job!
 
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mjb234

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How are you operating your maintenance plan? Does that just mean the hosting of your WP sites are under your name? And a certain amount of content updates a month? You have a great start already with 2 paid jobs right away, great job!

Thanks!

It's still a work in progress, but my plan is to charge a monthly fee ($50-$150) for basic WordPress maintenance. That would include monthly backups, plugin updates, and a couple hours of changes each month. Of course, it will also depend on the specific needs of the clients.

I have my clients purchase their own hosting and domains.
 

JSammich

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Thanks!

It's still a work in progress, but my plan is to charge a monthly fee ($50-$150) for basic WordPress maintenance. That would include monthly backups, plugin updates, and a couple hours of changes each month. Of course, it will also depend on the specific needs of the clients.

I have my clients purchase their own hosting and domains.

Thanks for the info. I definitely like the idea of avoiding maintenance for the clients for WP.
 

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It's still a work in progress, but my plan is to charge a monthly fee ($50-$150) for basic WordPress maintenance. That would include monthly backups, plugin updates, and a couple hours of changes each month. Of course, it will also depend on the specific needs of the clients.

A few thoughts:

1. Don't customize. See if you can sell a fixed plan. Just monthly backups and plugin updates would be enough for most clients to pay you I bet. I could even see you automating both of those things once you understand the process for a few clients.
2. Don't make changes for someone as part of this first plan. Package that as a separate, higher cost plan. You're setting yourself up to trade hours for dollars, which is what you should be trying to avoid.
3. You're charging too little (or the market is really soft, but I think it's more likely you're charging too little).
 
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mjb234

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A few thoughts:

1. Don't customize. See if you can sell a fixed plan. Just monthly backups and plugin updates would be enough for most clients to pay you I bet. I could even see you automating both of those things once you understand the process for a few clients.
2. Don't make changes for someone as part of this first plan. Package that as a separate, higher cost plan. You're setting yourself up to trade hours for dollars, which is what you should be trying to avoid.
3. You're charging too little (or the market is really soft, but I think it's more likely you're charging too little).

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll definitely take those into account going forward.

For my portfolio projects I don't feel comfortable charging much more (as I didn't charge much for the sites in the first place), but I'll definitely raise my rates as I take on more clients.
 

mjb234

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We are officially locked down for at least 15 days here in Spain. That means no leaving the house except for necessities like food and medicine. On the bright side, that means more time to focus on the business.

Since my last update I've mainly been working on finishing up four portfolio projects and reaching out to new businesses.

Portfolio Projects

I got my first portfolio site online last week and I'm hoping to get my second online by the end of this week. I'll also be implementing my maintenance contracts after a month, so I'll get be getting a bit of monthly revenue starting in April.

With the Corona crisis going on, I'm expecting my other two projects to drag on for a while. In the meantime, I'll use the two finished projects to do more prospecting.

Prospecting

This has been a bit of struggle for me so far. I've sent about 25 personalized cold emails and haven't received any responses yet. I've also reached out to around 10 businesses through social media and either got no response or was quickly turned down.

I've been avoiding cold calling (mainly out of fear, but also because there's a 9 hour difference between Spain and my target audience in California), but it looks like I'm going to have to suck it up and start calling.

My plan for the next few weeks is to reach out to businesses who might be struggling with a lack of an online presence because of social distancing policies. I want to see if any of them need help transitioning their services online. If I can help one or two businesses even with simple things, I think I can use those jobs to attract other businesses that need help.
 

mjb234

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New Client Work

The past few weeks haven't been great in terms of productivity. Still, I was able to make a little progress by getting my second portfolio site (a medical supply company) online and picking up a new project.

The new project is a local yoga instructor here in Spain who wants to remake her site and get an online course up in the next month. We originally got in touch when I made a post in a local expat Facebook group advertising my web design services a couple of months ago. Nothing came of it right away, but she reached out to me last week asking for help.

I took the project at a pretty low rate (500 euros), but I'm hoping to get some more long term work out of it. My main goal is to get this project done quickly and use it to reach out to similar businesses that need help during this shutdown. I'm also happy to be working on something other than just prospecting for a bit.

April Prospecting Challenge

I'm participating in an April prospecting challenge with some other members of the Fox Sales Legends Program.

The challenge involves:
- 30 cold calls
- 60 cold emails
-20 social media/forums posts or messages
-5 sales calls (at least 30 minutes)

This week I've gotten through 20 cold emails and one sales call (I'm counting the one I had with the yoga instructor). I'm finding it hard to get myself to cold call, but I'm going to try and get through at least 10 this evening.

Having this challenge in place has definitely helped me organize my week a bit better. The key for me now is getting up the courage to start cold calling and perfecting my initial message in my emails.
 
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mjb234

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It's been way too long since I last posted! The last two months have honestly felt like a blur.

Here's a quick recap of what's happened and what I'm working on now.

Forming my Business

At the end of April, I officially registered my business as an LLC in California.

While it may not have been completely necessary, I wanted to push myself to start thinking like a business owner and not just someone who builds websites.

I also wanted to start separating my business expenses from my personal expenses and start legally using my business name.

Two New Clients and Another Finished Project

After bringing on the yoga instructor client at the end of March, I was able to get two new web design projects: one for a life coach and one for a landscaper.

The landscaper ended up being the perfect client for the stage I'm at now. He's highly sales-focused and was incredibly responsive throughout the whole project. The website went online last week and only took about a month to complete.

Now I'm going to be doing some Google Ads work to help bring in some traffic to the site and get him some sales. This wasn't something I expected to do at the start, but I'm excited for the opportunity to learn something new and get some great results for this client.

I'm still plugging away at the other two projects, but I'm expecting them to drag on a bit.

Both clients have been pretty slow about responding to me and getting me the content for the sites. Since they both are selling their own personal brands and services, I haven't been able to come up with all the content on my own.

While I'm happy to have these projects, I'm seeing a need in the future to either narrow down the types of businesses I work with (focusing more on trades businesses like landscaping) or be more selective with the types of clients I choose.

Price also might be playing a role here. It's a small sample size, but I've noticed that my two $1000 plus projects have both gone way smoother than my free or lower-priced projects.

Expanding into SEO

My first few projects have shown me just how unpredictable a website project timeline can be.

This hasn't been much of an issue to start since I'm spending a lot of time learning on each project. But as I grow and improve, I'd like to have a more consistent income stream. One that isn't dependent on me constantly searching for clients - something I've had a hard time fitting in while working on projects.

Learning SEO seems to be the perfect solution for that.

A few people in Fox's Legends course were already getting some great results from Steve Dean's SEO Blueprint, so I decided to commit and join the program.

So far I'm in week three and I'm seeing a lot of potential to combine the web design skills I already have with this new SEO knowledge and offer clients a full digital marketing solution.

Moving Forward

My biggest challenge right now is just finding the time for everything. I'm trying to balance project work, learning SEO, learning Google Ads, and also finding time for client outreach.

Right now it feels like I'm really laying the foundation for my business success, but I also need to start improving cashflow. Expenses are starting to add up and my current projects aren't big enough to support me for very long.

That means prioritizing the activities that will actually bring in new clients. Two areas I will focus on are:

Direct Client Outreach

Traditional cold calling and cold emailing haven't been working for me. Ideally, I'd like to take a more personal, value-giving approach with my outreach.

Next week I'm going to start sending out personalized SEO video audits to potential clients. Since I've got a lot going on, my goal is only to send 2-3, but hopefully I send do 5.


Starting a Youtube Channel

I'm going to start making informative videos for business owners, giving helpful tips and strategy ideas that they can use to improve their sales online.

My plan is to share these videos on social media and specifically in groups where there are lots of business owners.

This is more of a long-term approach, but I believe giving a lot of free value to people upfront will pay off. And it will also help me improve how I communicate about my work and the value it can provide.

My plan is to make at least two videos per month.
 

mjb234

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Things have been progressing slowly but surely the last couple of weeks.

Thanks to @Andy Black 's Google Ads course, I was able to get a fairly large campaign (around 90 ads) up and running for a client in less than a week. It was actually a lot of fun and I'm really enjoying watching the first couple of weeks of data coming in.

I decided to sideline the SEO outreach for now until I'm finished with the course I'm taking. But I did start doing some web design video outreach yesterday using Loom.

I sent out 5 videos yesterday and already got one response (though it looks like a price shopper). This is pretty crazy to me since I previously sent about 60 cold emails and received one response in a whole month. Four more videos are scheduled to go out today.

It's time-consuming, especially as I'm still getting used to filming myself. But I think this extra personal touch will go a long way with gaining trust and starting conversations.

Last week, I also uploaded my first Youtube video. It's short and sweet but I wanted to just get something online to get some momentum. I definitely have to work on the "umms" and overall delivery. Here it is:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NJqKrbSRgs&t=220s
 

mjb234

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Since my last post, my focus has been split between prospecting and current project work. I also got another Youtube video up.

Prospecting

I've sent out 34 cold emails so far (using a mix of video outreach and simple messages) and have gotten 4 responses - 2 interested and 2 not interested. Not incredible numbers but a lot more promising than my previous stint at cold emailing. Having actual past results to use when contacting clients definitely seems to help.

This week is going to be pretty busy for me outside of work, so I'm only setting a goal of 15 cold emails. But I'd like to start doing at least 30/week until I get a consistent flow of new clients coming in.

I'll also be experimenting more with video outreach vs. simple emails. I'm worried that including a video in the initial email could be intimidating for some people (only 4/18 people even watched the videos I sent), but it's really too early to know for sure.

Youtube

Here's my latest Youtube video.

View: https://youtu.be/6B0F_k_VFp4


That hits my goal for 2 videos per month. Going forward I think I could do 3-4, but I'm sticking with my minimum of 2 for now.

Had some issues with the sound quality but I'm just trying to get some content up consistently. I'll worry more about perfecting the quality once my habit starts to build.


Time Management

This has been my biggest problem area this past month. As I'm taking on more responsibilities and also trying to fit in vacation time with the girlfriend this summer, this is something I really need to improve on.

I started using MJ's Fastlane Daily time tracker last week and it has already made a difference. It's a bit of a challenge to pick just ONE main thing that I need to accomplish each day, especially at this stage in my business. But just having to order my activities by their level of importance has helped me get more of the important stuff done each day.

Another thing that is going to be huge for me is cutting out unnecessary distractions while I'm working. It's way to easy to randomly check the latest Facebook notifications or even email during the workday.

Today I experimented with a modified Pomodoro timer (50 minutes working, 5-minute break) and it seemed to help a bit. Knowing that I have a set amount of time to focus increases the urgency for me I guess.

I'll stick with those intervals this week and maybe try out normal Pomodoros next week.
 
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What helps me with time management is to think that it’s not about time management, but about prioritisation.

“I didn’t have time to do that” really means “I chose to do something else.”
 

mjb234

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What helps me with time management is to think that it’s not about time management, but about prioritisation.

“I didn’t have time to do that” really means “I chose to do something else.”

That's a great point.

I like that it puts you back in the driver's seat. Instead of blaming the lack of time for not finishing things, I have to take a look at what I'm actually CHOOSING to do in each moment. And way too often I'm choosing to focus on things that aren't actually important.
 

mjb234

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I really like your down to earth style in your videos.

Thanks! That's really great feedback to hear. More than anything, I'd like to keep this channel down to earth and full of value.
 

mjb234

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My July Cold Emailing Challenge

During our last Legends calls, @Fox gave me some feedback on my current cold emailing strategy. Basically, I've been changing up my approach so much that it's really hard to track what's working and what's not.

So starting this month I'm going to do things more systematically. My overall goal for the month is to send 120 emails (30/week) and closely track the results.

My cold emails will be split into two different categories:
  1. Very simple cold emails using past results (like the ones in this video
    View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqMtb0JxWiY&t=1187s
    ) - 20/week
  2. Personalized video audit emails - 10/week
My goal is to keep things as simple as possible at the start so I can more easily make adjustments going forward. I'm doing less of the video emails because of how much time they take to make.

While I'll be keeping tracking of email open rates, response rates, and video views, my main focus for this month is to make sure my emails are actually getting responses at a decent rate. That means making the email copy as simple and non-spammy as possible, while also giving easy-to-follow CTAs (e.g. "let me know if you'd like me to send more info").

Once I start getting responses, then I can adjust my approach from there.

With a 5-day vacation coming up at the end of the month (as well as a short trip this weekend), 120 emails might be a bit ambitious. But I figure I'll accomplish more if I set the bar higher than what I think is possible.
 

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With a 5-day vacation coming up at the end of the month (as well as a short trip this weekend), 120 emails might be a bit ambitious. But I figure I'll accomplish more if I set the bar higher than what I think is possible.
I've never done this type of outreach before. I assume that each e-mail is personalized.

Is it possible to create templates that could be modified for each business? This may enable you to get more sent each week.
 
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mjb234

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I've never done this type of outreach before. I assume that each e-mail is personalized.

Is it possible to create templates that could be modified for each business? This may enable you to get more sent each week.

I have a basic structure/template that I follow, but I try to make each email as personal as possible. The real time-consuming process is actually finding the business to contact.
 

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