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From 0 to Freedom in 3 Months

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

Chapas

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Day 94 - Witnessing Slowlane at its Worst

The last 10 days I have had a first row ticket to watch how the slowlane and lack of ambitions are degenerating people. It has really been sad to witness, and unfortunately I will still have to witness it for the next week.

Long story short is that our apartment is undergoing some maintanence at this moment, so I had to move in with a childhood friend for 2 weeks with our cats. He really saved our asses, but it has been so tough to live here and witness how he and the rest of our friends live.

Slowlane can be good for some people, but for some it is slowly degenerating them. For 10 days in a row I have been surrounded by people who finishes work and then just sits around on the couch, watching stupid tv-shows and smoking weed (a lot of successful people smoke weed as well, so no hate on that in general, just in this situation) every evening because they do not know what else to do. It has been so demotivating to be in this environment. I love my friend, but it is impossible for me to change him unfortunately. With that in mind it has been impossible to get anything done in the evenings under these circumstances.

Maybe it is just excuses from my side, but it is really hard to get anything done in such an environment. Just need to hustle harder when I am alone in the house.

Some small updates:

  • I have 2 paid clients. They live in a totally different part of the country, and randomly they both were in my city last week. So I finally got to meet them both over a coffee and the meetings went really great. Really awesome people. It was especially interesting to meet my second client as he used to ride Tour de France with some of my big childhood heroes. Hope that I will keep them on as clients for a long time.

  • I launched a campaign for a trial client I have been talking with since January. She is most probably going to participate in the Olympics as a weigh-lifter. She is starting to transition her services from Personal Training to Remote Personal Training. So we made a 2 week free training program that people could sign up to in order for her to convert them to montly members afterwards. So far the results have been absolutely brilliant:

    - Campaign run: 5 days
    - Ad spend: 30 USD
    - Sign Ups: 76
    - Ad spend per sign up: 0,39 USD

    With her pricepoints she basically just need to convert 1 out of the 76 people in order to be profitable. I promised to run her campaigns for 2 weeks, and after that I am very optimistic that I will land her as my 3rd paid client.

  • My friend has an outdoor fitness concept as well (like my first client) and I promised him some time ago to run a campaign for him. He has a huge network in the industry and will talk with him on Thursday and probably launch his campaign this week. Plan is to get him on as my 4th paid client and get him to refer as many people as possible.

  • The slowlane job hunting is also going on. I have a job interview today and on Monday. The job I am interviewing for today is much more interesting, however, I have a feeling that it will take up more of my time than the one on Monday. I do not have the option to be picky though as I need to find a good paying job ASAP while I keep working on gaining my freedom.
I really want to post more often, however, the last 10 days were so demotivating that I did not even know what to post. I will try to stay focused on my goal and post when I have something interesting. Thank you for tuning in guys!
 

ChristianS

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Loved to read your thread as I started to reach out for my first Google Ads local lead gen costumers too. As other said, it's very motivating.

I really hope you manage to stay on track. You will be able to live from your business within a few months for sure.

When it's difficult and motivation starts to fade always remember, there are two kinds of pain. One is through discipline and getting things done when it starts getting hard. Happiness will follow after. The other one is lifelong regret! You have to choose.
 

Chapas

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Loved to read your thread as I started to reach out for my first Google Ads local lead gen costumers too. As other said, it's very motivating.

I really hope you manage to stay on track. You will be able to live from your business within a few months for sure.

When it's difficult and motivation starts to fade always remember, there are two kinds of pain. One is through discipline and getting things done when it starts getting hard. Happiness will follow after. The other one is lifelong regret! You have to choose.


Thank you for the kind words Christian. Really means a lot that it motivates you and other people!

Sorry for the late reply. How is your Google Ads journey coming along? I hope you already have gotten your first clients in the last months time! That would be amazing :-D

I am slowly staying on track, though there have been so many more things to focus on the last month. However, we do not want lifelong regret. That is the worst pain we can ever imagine. Thanks for the encouragement. I will try to do an update later today! :)
 
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InfinityStones

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Hello. Interesting thread. But You still selling time though buddy. Because your new business has replaced your previous job. I would focus on creating a social media following by giving away good content online for free. I would do this for 3-6 months. Build a healthy following. THEN use my posts to target these customers. Also I would arrange more face to face meetings - show them the paid client and the your rep online. Personally I prefer selling products versus services. Good luck!
 

Danczyk

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Hello. Interesting thread. But You still selling time though buddy. Because your new business has replaced your previous job. I would focus on creating a social media following by giving away good content online for free. I would do this for 3-6 months. Build a healthy following. THEN use my posts to target these customers. Also I would arrange more face to face meetings - show them the paid client and the your rep online. Personally I prefer selling products versus services. Good luck!

Are you selling physical or digital products?
 

Chapas

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Day 139 - What A Hectic Month

Current Revenue Per Month: 800 USD

Yesterday I bought a bottle of redwine, and sat on the balcony reading through this whole thread. I was proud and dissappointed in the same way. Proud that I actually started something and made progress, and dissappointed that I have not reached my goals so far.

The last month have been really hectic with current client work, legalizing my business and getting a business-bank account (what a tough process!!), job-searching, apartment-hunting, spending time with friends and family I havent seen for a long time and a lot of other various things.

So this Monday I was finally offered a slowlane job and actually already started working there this Wednesday. This process of finding jobs was absolutely hell! I applied for around 60 jobs within marketing, sales and service during the last month. It was a real catch 22 experience. For the marketing jobs I lacked experience on my CV and for the sales and service jobs I was over qualified due to my Masters degree in International Marketing. So it has been much more tough finding a slowlane job, than I ever imagined. This only fuels my motivation for keep working on growing my own business, while I will work at this slowlane job. This WILL be the last slowlane job I will ever have, and I will make my best to make sure that I will not have to stay there for a very long time.

Some boring updates:

- Finally got my slowlane job. Working for a huge company with sales and service within the B2B market. The pay is actually not that bad and I believe that I can actually learn a lot from especially selling to B2B businesses. Skills that I can later transition to my own business. This job is on a 4-month long contract with good opportunities to extend the contract - however, I am happy it is only on a 4-month contract as it fuels my motivation to be able to live of my own business in 4 months. Starting tomorrow - lets see how it goes!

- Had a tough time with all these legal issues the last month. Finally managed to legalize my business and create a business bank account. Especially the latter was really really tough! My bank has a very small business section and all other banks either wanted huge money to let me have a business account or wanted me to move my personal accounts there as well (I love my current bank, so that was not an option). Finally managed to find an option that suited me, so now I have a legal company and a business bank account!

- NO MORE FLYING UNDER THE RADAR! Looking for a slowlane job I quickly realized that whenever I talked about I was freelancing and doing online marketing for clients, people did not want to hire me as they believed I would quit the job eventually. Also a lot of the contracts I got offered had clauses about you could not work for yourself or any other companies that theirs. So I realized I could not mention anything about my own business while looking for jobs. Now I can FINALLY update my LinkedIn with my own business and start to find clients in there. Finally I have nothing to hide and everything legalized. Such a burden of my shoulders and such a huge step forward!

Some more interesting updates:

- Finally send out my first invoices - and received my first payments! Now I have a legalized business and a business bank account and the feeling of sending out those invoices and receiving money on my account is PRICELESS!

- I am still on 2 paying clients. They are both really satisfied with my work and I can see that the results are coming in. So that is amazing! I expect both of these to stay on for a long long time.

- My third trial client actually had great results as well. I made a proposal to her to become a paid client 3-4 days ago - however, I still havent heard anything back from her. She is building up her client base from scratch, so I suspect that she maybe cannot afford my services at this moment. I will not work for free anymore though and gave her a really great offer - so hopefully she will reply and accept the offer at some point.

- Running a campaign for an old friend for a little less than 2 weeks now. His concept is almost the same as my first paid client (although higher price points) So far the results have been really great and he is beyond happy!

The results for his campaign:

Campaign run-time: 11 days
Ad spend: 159 USD
LP views: 312
Cost per LP view: 0,5 USD
Sign Ups: 20
Conversion Rate (LP views/sign ups): 6,4 %
Cost per Sign Up: 7,93 USD

Basically we are offering 1 week of free training. Keep in mind that 1 month of training on his teams costs around 135 USD - so if we spend 8 USD per sign up we only need to convert 1 out of 16 in order to be profitable. This is not even accounting for his CLV. Looking forward to see how many of these sign ups actually turns up to their 1 free week and how many converts to become paying members.

My goal is to convert him to become a paying members in May and feed me with referrals! Also plan to ask him to make 2 referral videos for me I can use for marketing and add to my site. This should be good!

Plans for May:

Most of my time will of course be spent on my slowlane job, and I will also be busy with finding a new apartment ASAP. However, I have still calculated my time and I have big plans for the next month.

- Launch a Danish version of my website.
- Send out around 400 cold emails to US clients
- Test Lumpy Mail campaign to around 10-20 prospects
- Send connection requests to around 600 people on LinkedIn within my sphere
- Create 2 videos - one I will send out through Dubb to LinkedIn prospects and another I will use to retarget LinkedIn prospects and people who have viewed my site.
- Create an Instagram account for my business and target personal trainers there.

I just really need to hustle. I can see that I am creating value for people, so I just need to find more and more clients. I SHOULD be able to replace my slowlane income within 4 months. If I do not do that, it just means that I didnt hustle enough!
 
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ChristianS

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Thank you for the kind words Christian. Really means a lot that it motivates you and other people!

Sorry for the late reply. How is your Google Ads journey coming along? I hope you already have gotten your first clients in the last months time! That would be amazing :-D

And now it's me who is late... Cool that you are on track. Did you reach your goals for may?

I got good feedback from people I reached out to. But to be honest no one was interested in Google Ads instead I was asked for SEO services as this is where I have most experience. Before the lead gen idea I was building affiliate websites. Perhaps not really fastlane, but I'm not very far to support my living with that. Will continue with that and than decide what to do next :)
 

Chapas

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DAY 0 - Back To Scratch

I have to announce some sad news. I am now left with 0 clients. Long story short. I lost my main client a little more than a month ago, as he decided to hire an in-house marketing girl/assistant. Not much I could do about that. Yesterday, I went totally back to 0, as I lost my first ever client. Her campaigns were doing really well, unfortunately though, she is just inches from closing down her business with a huge debt, so she has to cut almost all expenses. Her business model does not seem viable enough to generate a good revenue, and even if my campaigns were even better, it is hard for me to imagine that it would save her business.

So here I am. Starting from zero again!

It has been some very tough months. Physically, mentally and financially. I have moved to a new country (while working a slowlane job in my former country). This means that I have around 3 ½ - 4 hours commute each single day. Two different busses and two different trains across country borders. This is necessary though, as without this option I could not be able to live with my wife. What you do for love, huh!

Always look at the bright side of life.

My slowlane job is actually not that bad at all. They pay me well. They feed me even better. Colleagues and bosses are nice and casual. Atmosphere is good and the job not exhausting at all. It has nothing to do with my passion or profession, but I do work with sales and service with SME´s.

I actually do have a lot of spare time in between the calls. I cannot really justify to sit on the computer and do business stuff for myself, but I can do whatever I want on my own phone (without talking of course haha). So basically right now I am just reading and getting smarter, but I want to spend that time more productive.

I need those systems.

I need to create systems. So I spend my time wisely outside of work. Basically I can spend 2 hours in the train everyday, 3 hours at home on weekdays and a combined 12 hours on Sunday to do some work (want to keep Saturday free for my wife and I). That actually ads up to 37 hours a week, which is a normal work week. Of course I have a lot of random practical stuff I also have to do (SO MUCH actually), but I believe it should be feasible for me to work between 25-35 hours a week on my sidehustle. At least for 6 months without burning out.

Any feedback on how to systimatize my schedule? I can basically spend most of the day communicating with clients through text and emails on my own phone. So that is not included into the 25-35 hours.

Should I change something with my business?

Honestly, I believe that I have had great results with FB ads so far - so this is what I still want to have as my main product and skill. I want to add a service or two though. Was thinking about Web Design, as I already know the basics of it, and it could maybe be easier to upsell FB ads to a Web Design client. Any thoughts about that business model?

Right now I know that what I do works very well with my niche - the fitness industry. Issue is that there is not a lot of money in this niche! So I still want to focus on my niche, but I still want to broaden it a bit. Still considering how I can broaden it, without going to broad.

Plans for this upcoming week:

- Finish my Danish website and update my English one.
- Finish my lumpy mail campaign
- Set up systems and follow them strictly
- Re-think or stick to my business model

Honestly, just missed you guys!

That´s actually true. The first 2-3 months when I had this thread and wrote every day in here, is probably the happiest I felt this year. My motivation was sky rocketing and you guys inspired me every day. I still keep reading in here almost every day - but now it is finally time to contribute again!

Any feedback and advice is welcomed, and I will try to start progressing again and update this thread as much as possible, when I have anything interesting to tell.

Have an amazing day and great to see you again my friends!
 

Chapas

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Day 16 - First "New" Client

Some small updates on the past 2 weeks. Having my wife's sister visiting and apartment hunting as our lease runs out 1st of September, means that a lot of time is spend on showing around the city and find a new place to live. I made some small progress steps still.

1. After reading through the whole of @Fox thread I decided to give web design a small chance. Especially as it can lead to upselling my marketing services later on. Found a small 8 person accounting firm and cold emailed them about a free website. They instantly agreed and love my ideas, so now I am working on a small Mockup. Decided to do the site in WordPress.

I promised myself earlier this year that I will never work for free again. However, I see this as time spent on marketing and not working for free. This firm has an annual profit of around 1 million USD before tax, so this basically means that they have at least 100 B2B businesses they work with each year. The owner suggested himself that he would recommend me to his clients if they liked my work, so I see a great opportunity here.

2. Been running some ads for my friends outdoor fitness bootcamps the last couple of months. Plenty of signups, but many people bailing out on the first training in the end.

Nevertheless, we just agreed on a commission based deal. Basically I will get 33 % of each new customer after ad expenses. This is fine as it keeps my motivation high in order to keep the CPC as low as possible.

His concept has a lot of potential and in 3 months they have gone from 1 location and 2 teams, to having 2 locations and 7 teams. I can imagine in 6 months time they will have at least 3 locations and 15 teams.

Their price point is around 150 USD a month and the average CLTV is 2 months due to it being a Bootcamp. This churn rate works in favor of me as I only get paid for new customers.

Now they have between 70-100 people on their teams and the way they are expanding makes me expect them to have at least the double of that in 6 months. Heck if I can help acquire one new customer for 30 USD a month and get 25 of them, that is already 1000 USD in the bank for me.

I believe this is a great opportunity and once we find the winning formula for one location, then we can basically just copy/paste it for the rest of the locations. Never did a commission based deal before, but if this one works out for me I might be doing some more in the future.

This was just some small updates from my side. Have an amazing day friends!
 
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Danczyk

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I promised myself earlier this year that I will never work for free again.

I better work for free then for peanuts because when people pay, they think they own you and demand everything. In my case if I do something for free people just shut up and take what I give.
 

Chapas

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How is it going for you @Chapas ?


Hi buddy. Thanks for the interest.


Basically the business has been put on hold. It has been a real chaotic 6 months. Have been commuting 4 hours a day between two different countries for a full time job that wears me out and gives me no motivation every single day. This needed to be done though in order for my wife to get a residency permit in the country we are staying at.


This has been the reason I couldn't keep up with the business. Usually the 4 hour commute could be good in order to do some work, however, when you have to change between 2 different trains and 2 different busses each way, then it is hard to get any structured done. Whenever I came back home I was just absolutely smashed from the work and commute, and most of the evenings I have spent on different kind of paperwork stuff in order to get our life on track in our new country.


Looking at the bright side, my wife just recently got her 5 years residency permit in our new country. So that has freed up a lot of stress in our lives. We were kind of living in a limbo, without knowing if we suddenly had to change up all of our plans, pack our stuff and move to a whole other country.


Furthermore, I just got headhunted a couple of weeks ago. So last week I quit my job from the end of November and will start a new job 1st of December. It might still be slowlane, but for a slowlane job, the new job might be the best one for my further development.


Basically the last 6 months I have worked in 1st line customer support and sales for a payment processor, and it has been really hectic. We are so understaffed, so we are stressing with an insane amount of incoming phone calls from businesses. Combined with the micro management and the long commute, I am so happy that I was headhunted for the new job, as I could feel on my physical and mental health, that I would be able to take it anymore at my current job.


My new job I honestly do not view as a job, but a well payed education in business and sales. Salary is higher than my current job and the responsibility and freedom I was missing is finally there.


I was actually headhunted for a part time position (I was the only candidate). I had to refuse the part-time position and they instead offered me a full time job.


Basically this is a sales/marketing/business development position in a company that works with SaaS products in the SAP industry. My job would be to generate leads and book meetings for the directors both inbound and outbound. I will be their first in-house employee and I kind of have to build up the whole marketing and sales department from scratch. So a whole lot of responsibility and freedom to develop my own role.


I think I will learn a lot from this position as I have to work right next to the 2 directors aswell as the sales director. The sales are huge and take around 6-9 months. Their last sale was a deal around 20 million USD. So really excited, but also a little scared, as these amounts are so much beyond my imagination haha. Furthermore, I get a lot more of flexibility, and I am allowed to work 1-2 days a week from home. This saves me around 20 hours in transport EACH month!


My plan is still to have a business on the side and I am sure that I can implement a lot from what I learn in this position into my own business.


I have 9 days in between these two jobs and I plan to reevaluate my own business and start to take action again in this time period
 
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diogoatmelo

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Just read through the whole thread. I'm rooting for you.
It's very easy to relate to your struggle.

I do have one question though. You mention:

- Also a lot of the contracts I got offered had clauses about you could not work for yourself or any other companies that theirs. So I realized I could not mention anything about my own business while looking for jobs.

This is a clause in my contract. Mine goes even further and states that I can't have any other remunerated activities!
How did you deal with this? Did you set up your company anyway even with this clause in your contract?

Good luck and keep going!
 

Chapas

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Just read through the whole thread. I'm rooting for you.
It's very easy to relate to your struggle.

I do have one question though. You mention:



This is a clause in my contract. Mine goes even further and states that I can't have any other remunerated activities!
How did you deal with this? Did you set up your company anyway even with this clause in your contract?

Good luck and keep going!

Hi Diogo. Thank you so much for the support, and apologise for the late reply!

My boss and company are pretty flexible, and before I signed the contract I let them know that I do have my own company, but that it will not jeopardise my work for their company. My argument was that I would rather help some acquaintances with some FB Ads and earn a little extra in my spare time, than to sit and watch Netflix on the couch. He was totally fine with that, and said as long as it was not something that demanded me to be in some other office 3-4 times late at night, then I could basically do what I want.

It is a terrible clause though, and I am not even sure what to advice you. All depends on how much you need that job. I think you can always start up your own company, and I seriously doubt that they will check up on it. I would just make sure to stay low in the beginning and not speak to loudly about it.

I honestly believe that it is an unfair clause, as every employee should be able to own their own free-time. It is understandable that an employer does not want his employees to work themselves to death with a full-time job and own company, but if I want to do FB Ads in my free-time and somebody wants to pay me for it? Then I am definitely going to do that instead of watching some random Netflix on the couch.
 

diogoatmelo

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Hi Diogo. Thank you so much for the support, and apologise for the late reply!

My boss and company are pretty flexible, and before I signed the contract I let them know that I do have my own company, but that it will not jeopardise my work for their company. My argument was that I would rather help some acquaintances with some FB Ads and earn a little extra in my spare time, than to sit and watch Netflix on the couch. He was totally fine with that, and said as long as it was not something that demanded me to be in some other office 3-4 times late at night, then I could basically do what I want.

It is a terrible clause though, and I am not even sure what to advice you. All depends on how much you need that job. I think you can always start up your own company, and I seriously doubt that they will check up on it. I would just make sure to stay low in the beginning and not speak to loudly about it.

I honestly believe that it is an unfair clause, as every employee should be able to own their own free-time. It is understandable that an employer does not want his employees to work themselves to death with a full-time job and own company, but if I want to do FB Ads in my free-time and somebody wants to pay me for it? Then I am definitely going to do that instead of watching some random Netflix on the couch.


Hey, how is it going?

I actually talked to my boss and got written consent to do what I need to do, which isn't starting a company right now. So that worked out ok.

I think you can always start up your own company, and I seriously doubt that they will check up on it. I would just make sure to stay low in the beginning and not speak to loudly about it.

I believe they can find out without too much research because of Social Security. At least here, in Portugal.

I honestly believe that it is an unfair clause, as every employee should be able to own their own free-time. It is understandable that an employer does not want his employees to work themselves to death with a full-time job and own company, but if I want to do FB Ads in my free-time and somebody wants to pay me for it? Then I am definitely going to do that instead of watching some random Netflix on the couch.

Yeah, I get what you're saying. From what I understand they just don't want you to be exhausted when at the office. Or to have competing businesses of course.
 
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Chapas

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DAY 1 - Let's restart the journey

Thought I continue in this thread instead of creating a new one. A little recap for the ones that did not read this thread: I created it in December 2018 when I launched my own FB Ads Agency and this thread really helped me to execute and getting stuff done. The FB Ads Agency 'died' off in July 2019 due to a lot of different reasons (moving to a new country, new job, 4 hours commute a day and just a lot of mental stress all in all).

Do I regret it? Maybe a little, but I trust that luck was on my side. My niche was totally 'wiped' out by the Covid restrictions (and still suffers), so if I had continued with my FB Ads Agency, then my monthly income would probably have gone from $$$$ to 0 just as soon as the Covid restrictions in my country was introduced. So in hindsight the 'failure' of my FB Ads Agency maybe was for the best of it.

So what's up right now?

Covid is still with us and will probably be with us for a while. While I wish that this disease could disappear once and for all, it actually has given me one little benefit: TIME. Before Covid I was commuting 4 hours a day (3 different transports) and truth be told, I had no energy to do anything after coming home at 7 and eating dinner - as well as I couldn't do anything before work as I had to get up at 6.

Now I feel like a total different person. I wake up at 7, go for a 30-45 minutes run/walk by the beach and feel ready to start the day from my home office. Not only am I more efficient and get more stuff done at my real job - I also have the whole evening in front of me to work on my own projects. Now it is time for me to actually take advantage of all this free-time. This is an extraordinary situation, and I might as well get the best out of it.

So what's the new business?

My new business venture is nothing ground-breaking and fancy. I have been inspired by many of you in here and will start a web design business (surprise, huh?) that later can be transitioned to a marketing business.

By almost accident I stumbled upon a niche/industry in a specific geographic area that really lacks quality websites that can convert. This niche in my home-country all have amazing websites that are made to convert - therefore, I was a little shocked when I stumbled upon the low quality in another geographic area.

I quickly started to research further and the more I researched, the more I was convinced that I had to give it ago.

I have researched around 1600-2000 companies in this niche, and gathered 400 'leads' with everything from bad to absolutely horrible websites. If every 4th or 5th company in this niche has a site that can be improved, then I have a potential of 10.000 - 12.500 'prospects' - and this is just in one single geographical area. Maybe I should not call it a niche, but an industry instead.

The Goals

I have a little dream of moving to Portugal sometime next year - and therefore, I would need to have my own business or be able to work remote for remote company. My plan/wish is to do both.

Therefore, by September 2021 the goal is to make $4000 USD a month from my web design business.

Without spending ages on commuting now I will be able to allocate 20-30 hours each week to work on my venture (more is also possible if I pick up momentum)

I will create a plan for each single week and post it in here - and try to follow it as good as possible.

Hopefully I will succeed this time and not 'restart' the thread again in a years time with a completely new business venture!
 

Chapas

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Week 1:
19 - 25th October

- Refresh my Elementor + Wordpress knowledge skills (haven't worked with it for a year)
- Market Research
- Create two example sites that can be edited when pitching new prospects
- Start crafting together a small company site for myself
 

Raja

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Hi @Chapas
I have read this entire thread and have a few questions for you
1. I can infer your life got better as you got a decent paying job is it so?
2. what would happen if you had implemented on this advice by @PizzaOnTheRoof
They’re not buying the results, they’re buying the process. The results keep them coming back...

...because we can’t guarantee them good results.

You should run from any marketer that guarantees you a certain result.

I have a few issues with performance-based pricing:
  1. The PPC manager assumes 100% if the risk. No results? Oh well, the client carries on and the manager can never get that time back. At least with a flat-rate, they can still break even for their time.
  2. What’s stopping the client from walking away after they see success?
  3. What if the client simply lies about the number of sales generated?
  4. If sales dollars are the KPI here, then you better hope your client can close those leads. This is out of your control yet could cost you your income.
*If you're advertising for an e-commerce store, you can disregard #3 and #4.
Performance or commission based pricing assumes the marketer 100% of the risk yet relies on having a competent businesses owner/sales team to make something of if work.

Marketers are an integral part of any business. We're not salesmen.
3. what one thing you will do differently this time?

I believe you should think for yourself first, then you can think of the client.
 
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BarKogan$

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When creating my introduction thread on this forum, I promised myself that I would start a progress thread within a couple of days. Now I finally got to it. I cannot express enough how much motivation you guys in here give me. Even though I have an accountability partner that pushes me hard, I believe having a progress threads in here with all you bright minds, will make me push even harder to reach my goal.

Short about me for those who did not read my intro thread: 29 years old. Newly married. Born in Russia, raised in Denmark. Masters Degree in International Marketing. Lived in a various of countries due to studies and work. Number of failed businesses due to lack of determination, discipline and action-taking. Dissappointed in myself when thinking about what I could have achieved with my life already if I had not been this lazy.

Fortunately I believe that I have woken up now. I can see my path, and I will pursue it in every way that I can. My wife and I left what could have been a comfortable slowlane life in Denmark - to travel to a little beautiful place called Montenegro, in order for me to launch a business in the following 3 months. Friends think I am crazy. Family thinks I am insane. I do not care. This is my shot at a good future!

From 0 to Freedom in 3 Months. What is freedom though? It is very relative. Freedom is different for everyone. For me freedom is to do something I enjoy, can be proud of and bring something valuable to the people around me and my business. To be able to control my own life, build my future and to live anywhere I want.

If I decided to stay in Denmark and work within my profession I would have a salary of approximately 5.000 dollars a month (3.000 dollars after our crazy taxes). So I decided that the amount to buy me freedom and continue for me to evolve is 5.000 dollars a month. This is the minimum amount I want to earn per month by providing a valueable service to my clients. Easier said than done of course!

Even though my friends would say that we went ALL IN by buying a one-way ticket to Montenegro, I will not totally agree with them. Yes, I am under pressure to perform well, however, the cost of living is cheap, so we have enough covered to live 3 months here, and we will not be homeless in case it does not work out and we need to go back.

Now to the important stuff. THE BUSINESS.

The variety and broad range of my skills have never done any good for me - so this time I have decided to specialize on one skill and try to niche it down as much as possible. I have always had an addiction to keep watching courses and videos, reading to much information and books - and always postponing my actions. This is not the case this time.

I have chosen to offer ONE SERVICE to ONE NICHE on ONE PARTICULAR MARKET.

To break it down, as there is no points of keeping secrets; FB Advertising for the Health/Wellness Industry on the Danish market. (so mainstream, sorry!)

I sincerely apologize to especially @MJ DeMarco as this business does not comply with the CENTS, however, this is something I NEED to create to gain the freedom to create even more valuable and interesting business models in the future.

I am by no means a FB Advertising expert, and I do not plan to learn every information of this field before I jump in to this. I have been studying it closely for the last month, and I believe that I can offer something of value to my future clients. Otherwise I would not do it.

Today I took the first action.

Knowing that I am not in a urgent money need and that I have no portfolio at all - there was only one correct way that popped up in my brain to day to land my first potential client or two. To PROVIDE VALUE and GET RESULTS for the client - and then ask for the sale. My plan was to basically create and run the clients ads for free for a short period of time - while the client would pay for the adspend. Worst case scenario for the client if I do not perform well: he loses 100 dollars (should be affordable for every ambitious business) Worst case scenario for me: I lose the time I have spent on his campaign, HOWEVER, I will LEARN from my mistakes and do better with the same or the next client. I always think in worst case scenarios - maybe I need to focus my thinking more towards best case scenarios.

I decided to create a post on my personal Facebook profile to reach people within my network. Basically I let people know that I have finished my Masters Degree in International Marketing and were now focusing on a more digital approach to this field - especially targetted at Facebook Advertising. And before I could make an earnest living of this I would need to experiment with the things I have learned and master my skills with FB Ads. Therefore, if they knew someone who had a business that needed more and better customers - they should not hesitate to contact me. I also included that my primary focus had been on the health niche, however, if our ideas and vision matched, I would still be interested in a collaboration.

40 MINUTES. 2 LIKES. 1 COMMENT. 0 MESSAGES.

Well I guess I should find another way to reach people I though. And then it kind of blew up all of a sudden. In the next 3 hours I received: 20 LIKES. 4 COMMENTS. 10 MESSAGES.

This is where I instantly knew. This is it. I can provide VALUE here. Market is oversaturated with marketing agencies - but still people NEED help! I will be their SUPERMAN here!

It surprised me though that ALL of them were from total different industries:
- A real estate agent in Spain
- A guy running an Escape Rooms location in the centre of the capital city
- A guy owning 2 sales businesses
- A guy owning 3 SAAS companies
- A guy owning a painting company (not sure if the right word)
- A girl doing NLP coaching
- And last but not least a message from a FB Agency company about a possible job offer

There are some interesting ones around here. I will post the same post on some other channel tomorrow, and get one in my network to post it on her Facebook aswell (more contacts within my niche) and see how it plans out. Even though I am a sucker for SAAS (my heart says DO IT, but my brain says YOU ARE NOT READY YET) - I think I will focus on the businesses I can help quicker and easier and where I can provide the most value.

Sooooorry, for the long post. Got carried away again! Tomorrow I will of course TAKE ACTION again and create a much more detailed plan for the next week. Today I am just proud of myself that I took action. Even though it was not a big step - it was still a step in the right direction.

Thank you again for this amazing forum, the advice and the motivation you create for guys like me. Cheers friends!
Congrats! Im happy for you , Wish you all the best and good luck !
 

Martin.G

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I started to reading you since the beginning, so it's nice to see you again on track.
 

Chapas

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Hi @Chapas
I have read this entire thread and have a few questions for you
1. I can infer your life got better as you got a decent paying job is it so?
2. what would happen if you had implemented on this advice by @PizzaOnTheRoof

3. what one thing you will do differently this time?

I believe you should think for yourself first, then you can think of the client.


Thanks for your comment. Cool you took the time to read the whole thread as it is huge, haha!

1. You are totally right - my life got much better. First of all I needed a job in order for my wife and I to live in the EU (there are certain requirements you need to follow when your better half is from a country outside of EU). So it is actually not so much about the salary (even though it is decent) - it is more about the security factor. Had I been by myself I would probably have maxed out my credit cards, jumped on the first plane to Asia and worked on my business. It is crazy how priorities change when you grow up and start a 'family'.

2. Just re-read the advice of @PizzaOnTheRoof and it makes totally sense to me now. This is actually what I am experiencing in my job. I am in control of marketing and lead generation and I am being measured on the process - especially long term focused.

I fortunately never went against his advice as I never did any only-commission based marketing. And I would probably don't do any only-commission work right now (even though there is another thread in the forum where someone has great success with it)

3. The one thing that is different now is that I do not need to stress things and I have room for errors. Back then I was in a huge mess financially and had only 3-4 months to make it work. It was a great motivation, but also very stressful. Now I have bread on the table, a secure job and can work towards one day become self-employed.

Another key factor is that most of the stuff I do and learn in my job, I can copy/paste to my own business. Honestly, I love my job and my boss and the freedom I have to learn and apply a lot of different skill-sets that will come in handy for me in the future.
 
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Chapas

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Congrats! Im happy for you , Wish you all the best and good luck !
Thank you so much buddy. And the same to you - may we both end up in the Fastlane sooner or later.
 

Chapas

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I started to reading you since the beginning, so it's nice to see you again on track.
Gracias Martin. Hopefully this part will be just as (or even more) interesting as my first part of the thread :)
 

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Just stumpled upon this threat. First time to see a fellow man from Denmark on this forum!

Exciting journey you’ve been on. I’m actually kinda in the same boat. Recently started ny own web design/SEO business.

Can’t wait to follow your progress. No doubt you’ll make it this time. It’s just a part of the journey!
 
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Chapas

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Just stumpled upon this threat. First time to see a fellow man from Denmark on this forum!

Exciting journey you’ve been on. I’m actually kinda in the same boat. Recently started ny own web design/SEO business.

Can’t wait to follow your progress. No doubt you’ll make it this time. It’s just a part of the journey!
Ah how cool! Fedt med en landsmand her! I know we are a few Danes around - at least I have talked to some before.

That sounds really interesting. Looks like we are on similar journeys. Let's connect somewhere. Always nice to have someone to share tactics with!
 

sanadly

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DAY 1 - Let's restart the journey

Thought I continue in this thread instead of creating a new one. A little recap for the ones that did not read this thread: I created it in December 2018 when I launched my own FB Ads Agency and this thread really helped me to execute and getting stuff done. The FB Ads Agency 'died' off in July 2019 due to a lot of different reasons (moving to a new country, new job, 4 hours commute a day and just a lot of mental stress all in all).

Do I regret it? Maybe a little, but I trust that luck was on my side. My niche was totally 'wiped' out by the Covid restrictions (and still suffers), so if I had continued with my FB Ads Agency, then my monthly income would probably have gone from $$$$ to 0 just as soon as the Covid restrictions in my country was introduced. So in hindsight the 'failure' of my FB Ads Agency maybe was for the best of it.

So what's up right now?

Covid is still with us and will probably be with us for a while. While I wish that this disease could disappear once and for all, it actually has given me one little benefit: TIME. Before Covid I was commuting 4 hours a day (3 different transports) and truth be told, I had no energy to do anything after coming home at 7 and eating dinner - as well as I couldn't do anything before work as I had to get up at 6.

Now I feel like a total different person. I wake up at 7, go for a 30-45 minutes run/walk by the beach and feel ready to start the day from my home office. Not only am I more efficient and get more stuff done at my real job - I also have the whole evening in front of me to work on my own projects. Now it is time for me to actually take advantage of all this free-time. This is an extraordinary situation, and I might as well get the best out of it.

So what's the new business?

My new business venture is nothing ground-breaking and fancy. I have been inspired by many of you in here and will start a web design business (surprise, huh?) that later can be transitioned to a marketing business.

By almost accident I stumbled upon a niche/industry in a specific geographic area that really lacks quality websites that can convert. This niche in my home-country all have amazing websites that are made to convert - therefore, I was a little shocked when I stumbled upon the low quality in another geographic area.

I quickly started to research further and the more I researched, the more I was convinced that I had to give it ago.

I have researched around 1600-2000 companies in this niche, and gathered 400 'leads' with everything from bad to absolutely horrible websites. If every 4th or 5th company in this niche has a site that can be improved, then I have a potential of 10.000 - 12.500 'prospects' - and this is just in one single geographical area. Maybe I should not call it a niche, but an industry instead.

The Goals

I have a little dream of moving to Portugal sometime next year - and therefore, I would need to have my own business or be able to work remote for remote company. My plan/wish is to do both.

Therefore, by September 2021 the goal is to make $4000 USD a month from my web design business.

Without spending ages on commuting now I will be able to allocate 20-30 hours each week to work on my venture (more is also possible if I pick up momentum)

I will create a plan for each single week and post it in here - and try to follow it as good as possible.

Hopefully I will succeed this time and not 'restart' the thread again in a years time with a completely new business venture!
Great Story man wish you all the best
I have some questions about the web design business if you don't mind
Where do you find the prospects and how do you reach out to them ?
Thanks in advance
 
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