Going Fastlane Like My Life Depends On It.. (continued)

[mikecarlooch]

Awesome love to hear how it goes, that (paid adverts) in itself is a whole other game!!

Thanks!

We just uploaded 7000 contacts from our target audience into a lookalike audience.. Time to start experimenting

 

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[mikecarlooch]

We just clicked the publish button on our ads for the first time today.

What a journey so far..

 

[mikecarlooch]

We are officially spending $50 / day on ads.

I can already see this is a difficult game to play, we've already had to test and iterate multiple times.

Michael Masterson's Ready, Fire, Aim has been extremely helpful.

We are testing different sales strategies to find our OSS (optimum selling strategy)

A LOT of the things I tried in terms of promoting in this thread have been a waste of time and a distraction (like making tiktok videos, and focusing on jv partners, etc). It's just too early for some of those things..

The reality of the situation you're in really exposes your plans and forces you to do what matters.

 

[mikecarlooch]

SO! We did testing with a few different ads at $50 a day split between about 3 different ads.

One of them booked 4 leads which turned into 3 appointments that I'm going to call, and it was only $15 a day, and the others booked 0!

So what we did is took the whole $50/day marketing budget and put it ALL into that one campaign..

Let's see what happens!

 

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[Bounce Back]

What would you say is the biggest difference between the two ads?

 

[mikecarlooch]

What would you say is the biggest difference between the two ads?

Image (Winner)
and
Video (Loser)

 

[mikecarlooch]

OK..

The money has not hit the bank yet,

But I'm close to securing our first client at $1750.

The lead came from a facebook ad and the acquisition cost was freaking $7 lol

 

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[mikecarlooch]

So.. what happened?

We got feedback from the market about our offer.

Quite simply, the way we were doing it, they did not like.

However, the feedback was incredibly valuable.. And ALL of them said "if you did it this way, it would be great"..

So this gave us a challenge and we had to be creative.

It was hard, and we had to test and were uncertain, but we figured out how to do it. It worked. and, admittedly, this way makes the service MUCH more valuable than it was before..

Now we're diving back into the market for round 2..

Stay tuned

 

[mikecarlooch]

BEST. $350. EVER (FIRST SALE)

Do you guys know the story about how coca-cola started out as a pharmaceutical company? Or how Sony started out selling rice cookers?

Wow, business is really like that. We've had to change our approach and offer multiple times to offer something great, and that includes changing the demographic that we were going after.

We started off wanting to sell a software product but morphed into something completely different.

Anyways, today.. Is VERY emotional for me.

Because we've gotten our..

first sale

Months of work to finally see results on what I've built. It's a beautiful thing.

My learnings from business so far?

Never ever let someone tell you that you can copy their business and it will work for you.

Most business books are an absolute waste of time.

Randomness is abundant in business. And change will be required.

You can't read it in a book.

Thank you to @Antifragile @MJ DeMarco @WillHurtDontCare @BizyDad @Kak @Andy Black @Black_Dragon43 @Johnny boy @LightHouse and more for your amazing help on my journey thus far. I appreciate all of you even though we're basically strangers on the internet LOL

 

[mikecarlooch]

2nd and 3rd sales about to come in..

Selling this product is starting to feel easier.

 

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[mikecarlooch]

Omg . We made $700 in sales today. We have 3 people on a monthly subscription

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Omg . We made $700 in sales today. We have 3 people on a monthly subscription

I don't know what your margins are, but $700 in profit is the same as working for 46 hours (a hellish week) at $15/hour.

This is how you escape the rat-race paradigm.

 

[Bounce Back]

Nice work man! Any pivots between customer 1 and getting to 3? What is your main acquisition method right now?

 

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[mikecarlooch]

I don't know what your margins are, but $700 in profit is the same as working for 46 hours (a hellish week) at $15/hour.

This is how you escape the rat-race paradigm.

Our margins are 80-90% (probably will be a bit lower when we are able to fully automate the business) , and then my partner and I split profits 50/50

 

[mikecarlooch]

Nice work man! Any pivots between customer 1 and getting to 3? What is your main acquisition method right now?

Yes.

Facebook ads to manual outreach.

My girlfriend is currently doing the outreach, and it works even better than the Facebook ads.

She books a call with them and either my partner or me calls them to close

 

[Black_Dragon43]

Wow congrats, this is fantastic progress @mikecarlooch !

I remember when we last spoke via DMs you were perfecting the website and you were looking at adjusting the offer.

How have you changed the offer since we last spoke? Feel free to DM if it’s sensitive info you don’t share publically.

It seems like you’ve nailed down the process a lot more so you’re getting much better results. You should be looking at some more minor adjustments and then try to push marketing harder. I’d look at getting cold email set up with Instantly.ai and reaching out to 100+ businesses per day. But before that it may be wise to make a few more shifts to the offer, maybe you can get it even more viral!

 

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[mikecarlooch]

Wow congrats, this is fantastic progress @mikecarlooch !

I remember when we last spoke via DMs you were perfecting the website and you were looking at adjusting the offer.

How have you changed the offer since we last spoke? Feel free to DM if it’s sensitive info you don’t share publically.

It seems like you’ve nailed down the process a lot more so you’re getting much better results. You should be looking at some more minor adjustments and then try to push marketing harder. I’d look at getting cold email set up with Instantly.ai and reaching out to 100+ businesses per day. But before that it may be wise to make a few more shifts to the offer, maybe you can get it even more viral!

Thanks Tudor!

We switched from wanting to provide the software, to providing the end result that people are trying to get by using the software. we take away everything they need to do including the usage of software and just sell them the end result they're wanting to get.

The problem now actually is that we need to scale our internal systems to handle more demand, so we need to start putting people on a waitlist until we're actually able to handle them.

This shouldn't take too long, it's really just a matter of getting organized and working with a developer.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Thanks Tudor!

We switched from wanting to provide the software, to providing the end result that people are trying to get by using the software. we take away everything they need to do including the usage of software and just sell them the end result they're wanting to get.

The problem now actually is that we need to scale our internal systems to handle more demand, so we need to start putting people on a waitlist until we're actually able to handle them.

This shouldn't take too long, it's really just a matter of getting organized and working with a developer.

Exciting time, you having trouble sleeping? LOL.

 

[Black_Dragon43]

Thanks Tudor!

We switched from wanting to provide the software, to providing the end result that people are trying to get by using the software. we take away everything they need to do including the usage of software and just sell them the end result they're wanting to get.

The problem now actually is that we need to scale our internal systems to handle more demand, so we need to start putting people on a waitlist until we're actually able to handle them.

This shouldn't take too long, it's really just a matter of getting organized and working with a developer.

Fantastic – that's always my main advice. Sell the transformation, not the service!

 

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[mikecarlooch]

Know what’s even better than selling something? Knowing that your customers are actually happy!!

 

[mikecarlooch]

2 repeat orders so far..

Now this is awesome

 

[mikecarlooch]

I wish I could say this has been all sunshine and rainbows, but it's not.

This has been one of the most mentally challenging ventures of my life,

Currently we have 5 monthly subscribing clients and I put a halt on how many we're taking on. I can't stop thinking about it. I'm obsessed with providing these people the best service possible, taking all of their feedback, and implementing it, while putting others on a waitlist.

I'm super happy and excited but also have a degree of stress currently.

The journey has just begun..

 

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[mikecarlooch]

It's amazing how much stress ONE hire can take off of you.

One of our core activities to fulfill our service was my job since we got our first client.

But hiring this one guy, man, it's awesome..

Now to see if he can do it very well!

 

[mikecarlooch]

We formed the LLC today and made it real!

 

[NervesOfSteel]

We formed the LLC today and made it real!

Congratulations! It's a great move!

 

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[mikecarlooch]

We recently made another big decision, we're going to be getting a $15,000 feature built since what we're doing is working so well.

The reason for this feature is as follows:

It allows us to charge more for an even better service which takes our customer's perceptions & value received from us from good to great, even though they're paying more for it.

Our plan is to get this built, get it profitable, and then we'll have a very nice case for investors.

Yes, I said investors.

We're not aiming for a lifestyle business here. We're aiming for enterprise.

Honest long term goal for this company?

I'd rather have a medium-sized piece of a high 8-9 figure pie
than a huge piece of a low 7 figure company

Could bootstrapping give me freedom & autonomy quicker? probably.

But we want to take it big. We want to create something generational.

 

[amp0193]

Our plan is to get this built, get it profitable, and then we'll have a very nice case for investors.

Doesn’t need to be profitable necessarily at this stage for trying to get investors (although nice if you have it).

Adoption metrics matters the most.

What’s the user growth month over month? What’s the churn? These are metrics you can raise off of.

If you’re going to take investment and go for quick growth, you will likely be operating unprofitably as you invest into team/product/marketing upfront… with hopes of surge in user growth on the backside of that.

Congrats on traction so far

 

[mikecarlooch]

It's pretty crazy.

I used to think to myself "all I want to do is make 1 sale and i'll be happy"

now, if I don't make atleast $200 / day, it's a fail.

Soon it will be 1000, and eventually I'm aiming for 10..!!

Also, a $4/ hour virtual assistant freed up about 6 hours of my time per day. Great investment

 

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[mikecarlooch]

Hey @Black_Dragon43 your strategy is working.

We have 10 clients paying us $100 / month + performance.

We essentially have people giving us money in order to give us more money. The business model works like a charm. We don't auto-bill them, they actually make a decision on whether or not they want to purchase further.

And yes, we have repeat buyers.

Our end-of-year goal by January of 2025: 100 people on subscription + performance

Our 10 year goal?

Pivot, and put an absolute dent in our industry. Beat zillow.

Current situation:

I have VA's and 1 employee doing a lot of the heavy technical lifting. My main focus currently is sales and leadership.

 

[Black_Dragon43]

Hey @Black_Dragon43 your strategy is working.

My strategies always work Mike, that's why they call me the BIGGEST BRAIN

I assume you're doing ads to chatbot to CRM to CSV to client atm? I have a friend who is doing literarily the same thing for accountants, over 6-months they've grown from $200K to $800K – basically add $100K of biz every month lol.

I can definitely see this taking over websites like zillow IF they fail to adapt. It's much better than having the client call browse around for random properties and try to find the right ones via regular search.