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Hey everyone.
I've been following the forum for a few months while reading through the brilliant TMF . Between the book and the valuable content planted in this forum, I've learned so much. Thank you!
I'm in my thirties, beautiful wife and 3 amazing young kiddos. Since I was a youngster, I had always been interested in multimedia. The web was just taking off in the mid-90s. At 9-10 years old, I remember downloading and printing hundreds of pages of video game codes at my father's school (he's an elementary teacher - retiring this year) because they had a super fast T1 line. I got into web design in '99 as a young teen, dabbling in HTML on Netscape Composer (anyone remember that?).
Anyway my interest in the web continued as I pursued a career in web design and front-end development. Mostly self taught and never did get a degree, though that never seemed to hinder any career opportunities as over the years I steadily landed the 'better' job with a solid increase in income.
I must admit, somewhere in the middle of my career I developed an itch. An itch to venture off on my own. Do my own thing, be my own boss. Mind you, this was during a time where I needed stability the most as my wife and I had just had twins. I was hired as a UI designer for a web firm and was relatively happy. During this time, I was also moonlighting as a freelance web designer. Suddenly, the inquiries really began to pick up, so 7 months after my wife gave birth, I took the risk. I left the 9-5 to work from home.
It went well... for about 6 months. The inquiries were getting fewer and further in between. Competition had increased. My one trick pony of simply ranking high on Google locally had run its course.
I didn't know what to do. I was frozen, paralyzed.
Now, up until this point I considered myself pretty good at wearing all the hats. When the calls/inquiries were coming, I was able to score meetings with prospective clients. I was able to close fairly well (this is coming from a guy who couldn't dare to pick up a phone and cold call anyone -- ohhh the anxiety!). I was always praised for a job well done and steadily retained clients for monthly maintenance work.
Once the calls stopped, my wheels came off. My system was broken and I was incapable of repairing it.
There was a moment where I realized I was an EXTREMELY inexperienced twenty-something year old who previously had the balls and faux confidence to leave a stable full-time position when I had 7 month old twins at home.
We ran through our savings quickly and had no choice but to break the lease of our rented townhome. I had to move my family in with my folks.
Humbletown.
For a year and change I ran in circles. Independent contracting here, affiliate marketing projects there. Struggling, learning, wasting, attempting... surviving.
Eventually, I found some footing. I managed to score an SEO manager position with a 12-man digital marketing agency. It was certainly a fake it 'til you make it because your family needs absolutely needs the stability right now sort of gig.
I learned so much and owe quite a bit to the challenges this position brought me.
After being with the agency for over a year, I landed a Digital Marketing manager position for another local company. It was here I evolved my self starter and solo make-it happen capabilities.
I did well here. 18 months later, I was let go (the company was struggling in other ways my marketing skills could not help). The writing was on the wall as the board had months earlier fired the CEO (whom I reported to) as well as a handful of other managers/employees.
That was about a year ago. I decided to take some time off and bond with baby #3.
During this time I hit a rough patch. What the hell was I doing? I need to be the provider and create generational wealth... not just SCRAPE BY!
I started working out, eating healthier and listening to audio books. Two books stood out to me personally...
Rand Fishkin's 'Lost and Founder', because the author's narrative and industry knowledge that which catered to my own experience and skillsets.
If the above read aroused my sleeping entrepreneurial spirit, The Millionaire Fastlane poured ice cold water over my face and said get the hell up, it's time to get to work.
I began reading up on sourcing and branding my own products. I worked at an e-commerce company (popular platform) as a web dev for a few years early on in my career, so I have the experience in running online shops.
On October 31st of 2018, I got my business license and resale certificate for internet sales. Nice EVENT, but the real work had yet to begin.
Since then it's been a PROCESS. I've been busy. I've spent money (this was never an easy thing for me in my younger years). Here are some important points of accomplishments in the last 5+ months:
- Relentlessly researched and found my niche
- Studied like hell my first product for my niche
- Sampled my product from 6 different suppliers
- Selected the suppliers I will be purchasing from
- Developed broad perspective of what my next few products within the niche will be
- Developed branding
- Designed and developed website for product
- Setup payment processing (Braintree)
- Developed seller copy for product website
- Studied like hell my core audience/s
- Built a separate website/community tailored to attracting/engaging my core audience
- Created and organically grew Facebook group (1,000+ users in 4 months) for my core audience
- Grew my knowledge in paid marketing
- Developed content marketing game plan to gain long term authority in space my audience resides
- Gained traction in Google for this website
- Implemented AdSense and affiliate links
- Hosted giveaways and questionnaires to gauge the interest of my type of product
Personally, I am pleased with my progress. Though, naturally, I've hit stumbling blocks along the way. It became apparent I will need to be able to generate more capital in order to fully get my product/brand off the ground.
With that realization, I decided it is time to take everything I have learned, failures and all and launch my own digital marketing consultancy.
In the last few days I have been looking out for small office space (300-400sqft) in the city I've been planning on moving my family to next month (after the twins finish the school year). After working from home with three kids, I need this folks. For productivity sake. I expect this will POSITIVELY increase the balance between my work and home life. The blending between the two will be eliminated and back to spending uncontested quality time with my loved ones.
So in the new small office space I plan on running with three opportunities to start:
- Digital Marketing Consultancy (revenue by way of website design and internet marketing services)
- Niche product business (revenue by way of growing my brand/selling products)
- Website Community (revenue by way to advertising, referral and affiliate marketing... this also serves as a bridge for pushing my niche product business)
I'm not sure if the intro post is where to do it, but I've seen others who share their progress with the forum. I'd love to do the same to offer any value to the community and perhaps help hold myself accountable.
Thanks for having me!
I've been following the forum for a few months while reading through the brilliant TMF . Between the book and the valuable content planted in this forum, I've learned so much. Thank you!
I'm in my thirties, beautiful wife and 3 amazing young kiddos. Since I was a youngster, I had always been interested in multimedia. The web was just taking off in the mid-90s. At 9-10 years old, I remember downloading and printing hundreds of pages of video game codes at my father's school (he's an elementary teacher - retiring this year) because they had a super fast T1 line. I got into web design in '99 as a young teen, dabbling in HTML on Netscape Composer (anyone remember that?).
Anyway my interest in the web continued as I pursued a career in web design and front-end development. Mostly self taught and never did get a degree, though that never seemed to hinder any career opportunities as over the years I steadily landed the 'better' job with a solid increase in income.
I must admit, somewhere in the middle of my career I developed an itch. An itch to venture off on my own. Do my own thing, be my own boss. Mind you, this was during a time where I needed stability the most as my wife and I had just had twins. I was hired as a UI designer for a web firm and was relatively happy. During this time, I was also moonlighting as a freelance web designer. Suddenly, the inquiries really began to pick up, so 7 months after my wife gave birth, I took the risk. I left the 9-5 to work from home.
It went well... for about 6 months. The inquiries were getting fewer and further in between. Competition had increased. My one trick pony of simply ranking high on Google locally had run its course.
I didn't know what to do. I was frozen, paralyzed.
Now, up until this point I considered myself pretty good at wearing all the hats. When the calls/inquiries were coming, I was able to score meetings with prospective clients. I was able to close fairly well (this is coming from a guy who couldn't dare to pick up a phone and cold call anyone -- ohhh the anxiety!). I was always praised for a job well done and steadily retained clients for monthly maintenance work.
Once the calls stopped, my wheels came off. My system was broken and I was incapable of repairing it.
There was a moment where I realized I was an EXTREMELY inexperienced twenty-something year old who previously had the balls and faux confidence to leave a stable full-time position when I had 7 month old twins at home.
We ran through our savings quickly and had no choice but to break the lease of our rented townhome. I had to move my family in with my folks.
Humbletown.
For a year and change I ran in circles. Independent contracting here, affiliate marketing projects there. Struggling, learning, wasting, attempting... surviving.
Eventually, I found some footing. I managed to score an SEO manager position with a 12-man digital marketing agency. It was certainly a fake it 'til you make it because your family needs absolutely needs the stability right now sort of gig.
I learned so much and owe quite a bit to the challenges this position brought me.
After being with the agency for over a year, I landed a Digital Marketing manager position for another local company. It was here I evolved my self starter and solo make-it happen capabilities.
I did well here. 18 months later, I was let go (the company was struggling in other ways my marketing skills could not help). The writing was on the wall as the board had months earlier fired the CEO (whom I reported to) as well as a handful of other managers/employees.
That was about a year ago. I decided to take some time off and bond with baby #3.
During this time I hit a rough patch. What the hell was I doing? I need to be the provider and create generational wealth... not just SCRAPE BY!
I started working out, eating healthier and listening to audio books. Two books stood out to me personally...
Rand Fishkin's 'Lost and Founder', because the author's narrative and industry knowledge that which catered to my own experience and skillsets.
If the above read aroused my sleeping entrepreneurial spirit, The Millionaire Fastlane poured ice cold water over my face and said get the hell up, it's time to get to work.
I began reading up on sourcing and branding my own products. I worked at an e-commerce company (popular platform) as a web dev for a few years early on in my career, so I have the experience in running online shops.
On October 31st of 2018, I got my business license and resale certificate for internet sales. Nice EVENT, but the real work had yet to begin.
Since then it's been a PROCESS. I've been busy. I've spent money (this was never an easy thing for me in my younger years). Here are some important points of accomplishments in the last 5+ months:
- Relentlessly researched and found my niche
- Studied like hell my first product for my niche
- Sampled my product from 6 different suppliers
- Selected the suppliers I will be purchasing from
- Developed broad perspective of what my next few products within the niche will be
- Developed branding
- Designed and developed website for product
- Setup payment processing (Braintree)
- Developed seller copy for product website
- Studied like hell my core audience/s
- Built a separate website/community tailored to attracting/engaging my core audience
- Created and organically grew Facebook group (1,000+ users in 4 months) for my core audience
- Grew my knowledge in paid marketing
- Developed content marketing game plan to gain long term authority in space my audience resides
- Gained traction in Google for this website
- Implemented AdSense and affiliate links
- Hosted giveaways and questionnaires to gauge the interest of my type of product
Personally, I am pleased with my progress. Though, naturally, I've hit stumbling blocks along the way. It became apparent I will need to be able to generate more capital in order to fully get my product/brand off the ground.
With that realization, I decided it is time to take everything I have learned, failures and all and launch my own digital marketing consultancy.
In the last few days I have been looking out for small office space (300-400sqft) in the city I've been planning on moving my family to next month (after the twins finish the school year). After working from home with three kids, I need this folks. For productivity sake. I expect this will POSITIVELY increase the balance between my work and home life. The blending between the two will be eliminated and back to spending uncontested quality time with my loved ones.
So in the new small office space I plan on running with three opportunities to start:
- Digital Marketing Consultancy (revenue by way of website design and internet marketing services)
- Niche product business (revenue by way of growing my brand/selling products)
- Website Community (revenue by way to advertising, referral and affiliate marketing... this also serves as a bridge for pushing my niche product business)
I'm not sure if the intro post is where to do it, but I've seen others who share their progress with the forum. I'd love to do the same to offer any value to the community and perhaps help hold myself accountable.
Thanks for having me!
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. Ev e hmepdi, vji vuxp O'mm ci nuwoph vuu fuitp'v eqqies vu ci vuu qmipvogam gus e kedl ug nepz vsefit vzqi + vsai nesliv wemai qez. Vjisi't ug duasti vji uqvoup ug hivvoph e qutovoup xovj e dunqepz mudevif op upi ug vji tassuapfoph meshis dovoit, juxiwis O fiwimuqif e jevsif gus feomz dunnavoph et O fof tu raovi e cov op vji iesmz qesv ug nz desiis. O'f molimz jewi vu tivvmi gus tunivjoph dmuti cz vu juni gus mitt vjep nz nesliv wemai.
