Andy Black
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Great post @Bekit. Thanks for putting so much time and effort into writing it.Based on your line of questioning, I suspect that you're looking for the wrong thing. If you look in the right place for the wrong thing, you could end up missing the real thing that would have helped you.
Shark's Teeth vs. Diamonds
A few years back, I went with some relatives to a place called Westmoreland State Park, where there are a ton of fossilized shark's teeth that you can find on the beach.
They're hard to spot at first. I remember feeling frustrated as I would stare at a section of the beach. It just looked like pebbles and sand to me. And then one of my cousins would reach down and pick up three shark's teeth from the exact spot where I had been looking for the last 10 minutes.
However, gradually, you get better at finding them. Once you've found a few, it's as if your brain expands. Suddenly, you can scan the ground and your brain instantly spots the unique shapes that match what you're looking for. Once this happens, you find them much faster.
The flip side of this is the fact that when you're looking for shark's teeth, you stop noticing ANYTHING else.
There could be gold or diamonds on the beach, but because your brain is scanning for shark's teeth, you're going to miss them.
Shark's teeth are great, and the really big ones are fun to find, but there's not much you can do with them except glue them to a piece of cardboard and frame them and put them on the wall. Whoopee.
Now imagine that you go to Crater of Diamonds State Park. But let's say you're still looking for shark's teeth.
Not only are you not going to find any shark's teeth, you're for sure going to miss the diamonds.
You're in the right place for a diamond. A diamond could be life-changing.
(I randomly saw an article about a guy who found a 9-carat diamond there 5 days ago. Super cool.)
But if the "pattern match" setting in your brain was calibrated for shark's teeth... bummer.
So here's where it seems to me like you are looking for the "wrong thing."
You can correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you want to see examples of the websites because you want to reverse engineer them. You want to see what's different about them compared to a basic site.
Maybe you can't fathom how a site could possibly charge $10k. Maybe you're picturing in your head that somehow, people "charge $10K for websites that are much simpler but supposedly has some copywriting and stuff to increase the client's conversions." Maybe it seems to you like some sort of trick.
So you don't feel like you can make a decision to enroll unless you can see examples of the work.
Now - there's nothing wrong with wondering, "Hey, what's the difference between a site that sells and provides value versus a site that doesn't?" That's a great question.
But you don't need Fox's examples to be able to decipher that. You don't need to enroll in anything. You don't need to pay anything.
All you need to do is go to clickbank, look at their offers that are converting the best, and study the best-performing ones.
Or look at companies that are advertising heavily over a prolonged time period, and study their landing pages. (Because no advertiser will continue to pour money into ads unless they're getting more money than they're spending. i.e. They're selling a lot.) Then, compare those landing pages to a few "average" or "typical" sites in the same industry.
You can get a ton of insight doing this, and it's a great exercise.
But let's cut to the chase: if you're subconsciously thinking to yourself, "If I can only decipher what makes a high-converting website, then I'll be able to make great money as a web designer," you're looking for the wrong thing.
You're looking for a shark's tooth in the crater of diamonds.
Because here's the thing.
The ability to make good money as a web designer doesn't start with knowing that you can build a high-converting website.
It starts with your potential client believing that you can solve a problem for them and agreeing to pay your asking rate.
In other words, it starts with your ability to...
And to be good at all that, you have to...
- Identify that potential client
- Get in front of that potential client
- Sell your services to that potential client
This is what Lex was talking about when he said,
- Think like a business owner
- Know how to solve problems, create value, and sell results (not just build websites)
- Have the outreach skills to get a hearing and close the deal
- Have the mindset and habits to support your efforts
But your ability to sell, at the end of the day, will be mostly inside your head. No one will be able to link to it. It'll be stuff like...
Fox Web School won't be able to create a portfolio of the sales skill they impart to their students. But what they can do is point to the fact that their students are making good money by following the program. And they do that.
- Do you decide to procrastinate because of fear? Or do you decide to go ahead and call that business owner?
- Do you decide to quit when you face rejection? Or do you keep iterating and refining your pitch until you close a deal?
- Do you know how to keep your pipeline full so that you always have work?
- Do you know how to get inside the mind of your client's customer so that they want to buy?
- Do you have the skills to keep your prospect listening and interested in what you're saying?
- Do you have the discipline and the habits to manage your time and do the activities that move the needle?
At the end of the day, if all you're looking for is, "What's the difference between a site that sells and provides value versus a site that doesn't," I'm sure you'll find that. And you don't need to join a program to figure that out.
But if what you really want is the ability to make good money in web design, just looking at the sites in Fox's portfolio is not going to get you there.
^^ A shorter way of saying everything above.
^^This
My main thoughts skimming this thread are:
- WHAT is being done and WHY is more important than HOW.
- I provide digital marketing services. I don't have a portfolio site. Heck, I don't even have a website. There's lots of ways to skin a cat.
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