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TheSmokey1

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Hi All,

I have been on the board for a short time. I am never sure what to post as an intro, but I figured I should say something. So, a little about me:
  • I have a business I started about 13 years ago. It is not really fastlane, but could be with some changes I am working on.
  • I started with very little. No college degree, no business experience, no management experience, no sales experience, etc. Just $100 dollars, a folding chair, table, and a free computer that someone was throwing away. (and a lot of work)
  • Have grown to $100,000+ mrr, 1 -1.5 mil a year, and been there for a few years
  • I am obsessed with process and automation
Just wanted to give some background, not bragging in any way. Many can and have done way better than me, but along the way I have made a better life for myself than I thought possible 13 years ago. I have decent money coming in, but also a full time staff, so that is not all for me. Even though we have not grown as much as I would like to, we have never had a year that was not profitable.

I read a ton, and TMFL was one of the best business books I have read. I started my business well before it was written, but yes, I was one that avoided it for a while because of the title and the cover (old cover).

Glad to be here, and hope to learn more and contribute what I can!
 
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Chinobey

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Hi All,

I have been on the board for a short time. I am never sure what to post as an intro, but I figured I should say something. So, a little about me:
  • I have a business I started about 13 years ago. It is not really fastlane, but could be with some changes I am working on.
  • I started with very little. No college degree, no business experience, no management experience, no sales experience, etc. Just $100 dollars, a folding chair, table, and a free computer that someone was throwing away. (and a lot of work)
  • Have grown to $100,000+ mrr, 1 -1.5 mil a year, and been there for a few years
  • I am obsessed with process and automation
Just wanted to give some background, not bragging in any way. Many can and have done way better than me, but along the way I have made a better life for myself than I thought possible 13 years ago. I have decent money coming in, but also a full time staff, so that is not all for me. Even though we have not grown as much as I would like to, we have never had a year that was not profitable.

I read a ton, and TMFL was one of the best business books I have read. I started my business well before it was written, but yes, I was one that avoided it for a while because of the title and the cover (old cover).

Glad to be here, and hope to learn more and contribute what I can!
Nice to meet you seems like you have already done amazingly well for yourself good luck moving forward.
 

MJ DeMarco

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Have grown to $100,000+ mrr, 1 -1.5 mil a year, and been there for a few years

Nice! Any details on how you started and grew? (Not looking for a web link or anything like that!)

Welcome aboard, great to have another person getting shit done!
 

jamez1515

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Nice to meet you and welcome to this forum.
You story seems quite inspiring. Why don't you created a post on your success story.
 

TheSmokey1

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Nice! Any details on how you started and grew? (Not looking for a web link or anything like that!)

Welcome aboard, great to have another person getting shit done!

Thanks for the welcome. I will certainly try to share what I can. I like privacy, so I won't share exactly what field I am in or where I am located (but I am in the US).
This is a very interesting board. I don't do most of what I see on here, and am excited to learn some new things. I don't advertise at all, I just have one website (and work a little on seo), so all of my business comes from referrals and people finding the website. I don't do any ppc, adwords, facebook ads, or anything else. So I don't have anything to contribute on that front yet.
Most of my business is service based and business focused, and the majority of revenue and profit come from services. I do some products too, but only things that complement my services or that can be used as a way in to sell my services. The services are on a monthly recurring basis, with the average customer spending $2,000 to $3,000 per month. We were able to scale to a certain point, but have had difficulty scaling beyond that. This is the problem I am working on fixing right now.

So, I don't know much about online selling, but I have been involved with many different types of businesses over the years. I would like to think I have some general knowledge I've accumulated that would apply to many starting businesses. I don't consider myself to be successful. I have a lot of goals, and most of them I have not met. I am glad for what I have done, but not satisfied with the fact that I have not reached my goals. Not being humble, not being arrogant, just being honest. I don't participate in any other forums like this one, but because I feel like there can be some anonymity on here, I can be completely honest. I am not pretending for a second to be an expert. What I do know, I learned through a lot of effort, trial and error, and mistakes.

When I started I had a full time job. I worked on my idea on nights and weekends. Once I had proven to myself that it could work, I quit my job and went 100% into my business. We built in a very methodical and unsexy way. 100% true that it has been all process that got me where I am today, not an event. I quickly learned that unless I wanted to work myself to death, I needed a way to be able to replicate what I was doing, and for me that meant people and automation.

I am a big believer in process and documentation. I started with things as basic as checklists, and it made a huge difference. I read The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. When it comes to process development, it is hard to get more simple than a basic checklist, but it works. I get a ton of pushback from people about using something like a checklist. They think that they are too smart, or it is beneath them. I remind them that airline pilots, surgeons, and astronauts all use checklists, and we are not them. What we do is fairly complex though, and just the simple checklists resulted in fewer mistakes, happier customers, and faster turnaround. We all only have so much mental bandwidth, reducing the basic tasks to a process really frees up some of that brainpower to focus on greater things. If I can make a recommendation to anyone, it is to start on this process before you think you need it. Not only does going through it help identify holes in your operation, but everything you produce can be used as training material for someone else. This helps tremendously when you need to start offloading tasks, or work to remove yourself from the day-to-day. Although we have a lot more than simple checklists now, it is still a tool we use with great effect.

I could go on and on, but have rambled enough for this post. I hope to interject anywhere I think I can add some value.
 

McFirewavesJr

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Could you please share with us a basic CENTS analysis of your own business? I'm curious to see where you think it could be improved. Thanks!
 
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TheSmokey1

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Could you please share with us a basic CENTS analysis of your own business? I'm curious to see where you think it could be improved. Thanks!

Will do. I am traveling for a bit, so it might take me some time, but I will come back and post that.
 

TheSmokey1

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As promised, here is my CENTS analysis:

Control - The amount of control is very high. We control every service we offer. No franchise or affiliate work. We don't limit our self to one product or one supplier, so we are not affected by fluctuations in offerings or pricing from them. We have complete flexibility to do or change anything.

Entry - Barrier to entry is very high to do it well and survive. It is fairly complex to do it well, and many are not willing to invest the time or brain power to figure out how to do it right. We have many competitors that open, but they quickly disappear when they realize it is not as easy as they they thought it would be.

Need - High. I guess I could post more about it, but proof is in that we are bringing in more than 100,000/month with no advertising. We don't have a single salesperson. Every client has come to us, looking for what we do. More on this under Scale.

Time - This one area that needs improving. It does take quite a bit of my time. Lucky for me, I really like what I do so I don't mind it for now. I have several ideas for the future on how to further separate my time from the daily needs of the business.

Scale - This has been the biggest negative for me, and the issue I have been working on. In the early days, we didn't focus nearly enough on things like efficiency, process, and automation. Most things were done by whoever had a piece of knowledge in their head (me at first). And, we are paying the price now in difficulty scaling. It is a big hole to dig out of once you are considerably behind. One of the reasons we don't do any advertising or sales is because we would be quickly overwhelmed and it would show to our current clients, who have been extremely loyal. This is the largest hurdle in my mind to why we have not grown much, much larger. But, I have several ideas to work on turning that around.

I love helping people, and I have learned (from being a business owner) to love solving difficult problems. I learned to welcome the difficult problems, because if it was easy then everyone would be doing it. Solving difficult problems also tends to return the biggest leaps in results, revenue, and just general satisfaction (both with clients and internally).
 
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