Climbing the Next Step

[Logistique]

Hello all, first of all let me introduce myself. My name is Alexandre and I joined this forum after reading the thread:


GOLD - Getting Rid of Cold Calling Anxiety Using Brute Force


It really motivated me to introduce myself. On that thread I also got a glimpse of the book ''Flinch''


So I would like to Thanks @Vilox and @diegorueda and all else that have shared on that thread for giving me the motivation. Which I need more than ever at this time of my life.


So first of all, let me introduce myself, and I will go till the very start of my life as an entrepreneur and a self made man

I dropped college at 18 after winning a poker tournament. I then played poker professionaly for about 8 years. I got quite lucky to start poker right in the boom. At the time it was my passion, I ate poker, reading book all the time, reading forum, quite like a do for business now.
Well to go short on that subject, over time poker was getting harder and harder and motivation was lower and lower so I left poker in 2013. Won over 400k over 8 years which is like 50k/year. The best point about that job was how I could travel all around the world playing poker on my laptop. But for now I didn't play in years


In 2013 I also met my wife with who I now have 2 kids. Together we started to open a website creation business, she was doing them and I was doing the publicity. Yep, still my job now.


What we do? Its not exactly a website creation website.

We started with an electrician website, I then did some good publicity for that website at the point it was getting 20-25 jobs weeks.

At that point I contacted all the electrician in and around our city and I asked them 20% of the job they do with my lead. It worked so well that I started asking for 30%.

Once we have our electrician we then offer them an array of services:

-Call Center services (We do it)
-Job placement (We do it)
-Recovering Agency Services (We send to a third party for a small %)
-A portable payment service to take debit/visa on the road (we send to a third party for a small %)

We are still doing that but we have expanded in few other services field (moving service and roofing)

But since all those years we never been able to scale well, its a 2 person business and now that we have 2 kids (My girl is almost 2 years old and my son is 6 months old) our business started to shrink.

My wife couldn't follow up the call, and I just never like to answer the damn phone. So here we are, after 10 years of work at home I am opening our office next week. We are totaly in need of employe.
We got a lease for 1000$/month 800 sq/feet
right in the old downtown best location, nice but really old office. (I will take some picture I still dont know how to put the furniture in it)

And to be honest I am not sure how it will go! Its the first time I will have an office, the first time I will work in an office. But well, we will see how its goes!

What scare me the most is what the F*ck am I going to do 8 hours straight in the same office? So here's my thought!

Since 6 months I am thinking about that office, at that time what my wife and I was in need (And we still need it yea) was a receptionist. Someone who can take our job and send them to the right guy (electrician, roofing, mover. We have many if one is not able to take the job)
But then I thought, Okay that will give me time to do other thing. But this is what we are already doing. It wont make us any money, but it will give me more time and more time for my wife.
But the cost of the office + the secretary only to answer call seems unprofitable. So I started to think how the %?&? can I make money out of an office? And the light came out bing

Cold calling.
I started to think okay so what can I sell?
You know what I can sell? Website for specialized entrepreneur.


But how?


HOW: You create a nice website, the more nice, thats important my girlfriend is the best at that, she make the most wonderful website there is. You make the best publicity I wont tell you how good it is but I am the one doing it so this is where the magic happens.

(You need to get at least 15-20 jobs a week for their profession) in our position, with SEO and PPC, its a walk in the park to get 15-20 jobs a week in 1m+ city


So you let them free trial the website NO FEE, FREE TRIAL YEA. FREE LEADS.

(You redirect your call to their personnal cellphone with a nice outbound name so they know its from you, when you get a job from me it will show on your phone as 666-666-6666


They see they get 20-25 call with your business/week. They see it, they finaly hold it, they are so used to people calling them for SEO or website creation which just dont work. Now they see it, they touch it, they feel the money. They now know you are not here for kidding, they know YOU deliver.

And thats when you close the tap.

You offer them to buy the website. If they want to taste again that good tap water, they need to buy the website for a merely 3000-5000$. They sign in?

FINE they bought the website?

A nice website it is! But after that they need to buy the publicity package and they are hook. The publicity is a quite expensive monthly package.

Rince, repeat for each services business for each city.


So here's what I am going to do in my office:

I find a real reservoir of employe! Worker at home! I did a website just for that, with the publicity, we are getting 100 of CV a day, no kidding. You cant imagine how many people just which to work at home. The only problem is people at home are lazy and undisciplined

This is WHY and this is HOW I will make that office GRANDIOSE
I want to hire ONLY MANAGER
Each manager will try to make a team of 5-10 people from HOME and then they could sell anything.

But we already have another perfect product which I didnt talk about. The heat pump. This is what we are mostly selling (Way more than website because website take a long time to put in place)

So this is how this forum came in. I was looking about what software should I use to track and to manage those people at home when they do cold calling. For a manager in the office to . This is where I started reading the thread on the cold call anxiety from Vilox.

So its time to just DO IT

Step 1. Buy furniture for the office. (I will post some pic of the empty office when I have some free time)
Step 2. Setup a good working condition for the manager to manage the people working at home. (Find good software mostly)
Step 3. Interview managers to make sure they are up to the task.
Step 4. Recruit people working at home familiar with telemarketing (10% of the 100s of CV I get a day)
Step 5 LETS DO IT

Thanks all I need to work now and I think that was long enough !
Alex

 

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[Logistique]

Okay what are my priority?

First of all, let's enumerate what my wife and I need to delegate and what we will continue to do.
The goal of all this is for her to do only website and for me to only work on the marketing.

So we need to delegate all the call we are getting so the first think we need is a receptionist.

Her main task will be to take care of all the business lead we get, it's a large task that for now consume all my time and my wife time.
We will also try to delegate our ''simple'' accountant work (We still have to do most of the job, it's complicated in Canada, my wife take care of it but we should really start thinking about hiring a professional accountant, one thing at a time.

She will also have to do a better follow up on our lead. We are working with multiple company, some of the entrepreneur we are working with are doing more a one time job. Some of them don't tell us so we don't get our %.

As of now this is already a big leak in our company because we are doing 0 follow up, it's time consuming but the receptionist will have to do it for every job. She will also have to do some advertising when she have nothing to do

We are also doing some small placement in the same industry we work in. It's not a big thing but we get around 5-10 CV for electrician/month, 2-5 for roofer, and for mover we get quite a lot but they are way harder to place than electrician or roofer. So she will need to welcome them at our office. But that's not for now, we could grow our operation as an agency placement but we don't have any workforce right now and it's not our priority.

Receptionist Task:

-Answer the phone
-Follow up each job
-Some accountability
-Post free advertising on Craiglist/kijij only when there is dead time
-Welcome visitor/worker to our office (In the near futur)

Alright first problem I get with this and I hope I could find some help here:
We are working with VOIP number, we have hundred of number for many different thing we built on the last 4 years
ALL those hundred of number are redirecting directly to our business iPhone.

I supose we will have to install a voip phone in the office and just create a new redirect rule to the voip phone? I never played with voip phone is anybody know how hard is it to setup and/or which one should I use?

I will stop here to try to find a fix to this problem, I will continue later or tomorrow

 

[Logistique]

Okay just came back from the cinema with the wife. Watched IT! Awesome movie ! She's sitting at my right and a bit angry that the first thing I do once I came back is to write here instead of taking time with her but what can I do! I need to make my head clear I will get that god damn office in a few days and I am just not ready.


Before going further I half-fixed the voip problem, after talking with my support at voip.ms (Which is good priced and awesome support)

Just have to buy a voip phone as the

''Well, you can go with any IP phone from Cisco or Grandstream, for example: Cisco SPA525G or Grandstream GXP2200 or any other models you want''

So well, I just plug that, enter my credential and plug in to the livechat and I will be good to go.

So this is it for the receptionist.

Then what to do in that office:

Okay so now we can't make any new website because my wife is already really quite busy, we are making a dropshipping business for halloween costume before the end of the season. We started last month and it's almost over, the publicity is half done and the website 3/4 but we need to put more supply. We got lot of visitor but none bought yet, we did all in french first because we have quite an edge in french. Result are shit, I suppose people don't buy much before october but well... It's starting badly and we will have to stop selling 1 week before halloween because our product wont come in less than a week and we dont want a damn inventory. So that's a lot of time wasting but well, at least the wife learned to work with shopify which is way easier than WordPress but way less customization so its have is pro and cons (Mostly cons for professional website designer but lot lot of pro for beginner, I didn't had to buy a server or anything .

The dropshipping seems like a good fit with our expertize but I still have doubt on the profitability of it. But the fact that we can make some shop and leave them running all automaticly is really tentalizing. We have another product that seems way better to monetize. We started with that product in early september but as soon as we started I though:

You know what people are going to buy next month? No? Halloween costume....

I am a bit angry that we take that turn because the product we have are shit, doesnt ship well and only work for october thats it. If it doesn't work we go to our second product that I wont mention here. If its work I suppose we should do some dropshipping for any kind of product but I have lot of doubt in my mind because I don't see much competition in those field but it's international field.....

I mean the competition for some local service we do like electrician is way more competitive than for some product I did keyword research... I know I am a smart guy but the world is large and I can't be the first guy who think about that, so if there is no competition it mean it's just doesnt work.

And anyway the dropshipping business is quite a nice business but we absolutly don't need an office for that.

There is 2 expertize we can't teach nobody: Website creation and marketing. So if we start in the dropshipping business we couldn't scale much and we will take all our time doing publicity and website for that only business. But well if its work why not we will see, as for now I see it as a 30/70 for the halloween costume and 50/50 for our other product. The big problem is this: A dropshipping website is VERY LONG to do, way more than a services website. So if I commit my wife to that job its mean I lose her for a month or 2. We will see, anyway in 3 month our son will go to the kindergarden and then we will be able to work full time and everything will be way easier.

But let's say it fail, which won't be that bad except for time wasting (Nothing is totaly time wasting, there is alway the learning win)

I want her to take care and expand our website for service leads business and the placement agency while I take care of the telemarketing and the people working at home.


The office is wrongly built for our business, its an old building in the old downtoen


=====================================================================================

What is our main field

1- Entrepreneur Leads
2- Dropshipping business
3- Staffing agency
4- Telemarketing website
5- Telemarketing Heatpump
6- Call Center

=====================================================================================

The Problem:
The 2 business which product the best result are by far the entrepeneur leads and the heat pump telemarketing

But the entrepreneur leads work in business hours 9:00am and 5:00am and heat pump telemarketing between 16pm and 21pm

I can't be at the office all the time and after 4 we have both kids which make it IMPOSSIBLE to work. Back in the day we where taking call from 7 am till midnight. Now we do 9 to 5 and we delegate the telemarketing to a third party firm which take way too much for the mediocre work they do.

The second problem is that I am not good manager and I do not trust my work ethic. I worked by my self since forever, so I have no work ethic at all, but I do know how to lead.

The Fix:
This is where the ''Working at home'' field come into play. I can get hundreds of CV about people who want to work at home. But people at home need A LOT of managing. And this is where I can really pull my game. This is innovation

I hire only MANAGER. The goal is to get a team of manager in the office where each manager have a workforce at home paid only by commission. The manager task will be to create his team from the ton of CV, to push the people to work at home at the specific hour they need to work at.


What I need to do now:

-I need to create a landing page to hire GOOD manager and do paid publicity. I already do publicity in kijiji/Craiglist/Indeed/etc etc but it's not a day

-I need to decide how I will start with the manager. Do I want them to masterize the cold calling before letting them manage other people? Or I want them to only manager people (Make sure they are online, make sure they work hard, do a follow up on the job they have to do)

The first scenario would mean I hire multiple telemarketer, when I find one that is good I upgrade him as a manager and he can then have his own team that he will manage.

The second scenario would mean I hire one manager, I give him a team, the script, I make sure he understand it and the business around it, I let him try it for some hour just for him to understand what he is working with, and then he need to apply his work ethic to the people he manage.

I supose the first scenario would give greater success in the long run but could collapse in the short run if I don't find enough telemarketer able to work at our office (They are quite hard to find by)

I will leave that post on that thinking it's time I go sleep tomorrow is apple day with the wife and the kids!

Good weekend !

Alex

 

[Logistique]

Okay was a hot day today, no apple picking but the swimming pool was nice!

So as promised, here's the picture of the office, I will enter this monday so here it is:


Okay so here's the view from the receptionist desk, on the right you got 2 room office and on the left a large free space where the manager will work. We will cut the office in two we will put a world map on the left corner of the door attached to the roof by chain its a good way to split the room in two

The first office room, will be taken by my wife and her assistant and our 6 month son !!

Second room his my office ! The door is a balcony with a view on the old downtown

Okay this is a picture when you enter the office and you take a right turn but this is where we will attach the world map to split the office in two. The receptionist desk will be right on the left facing the door:

This is when you go deeper on the telemarketer space. When you take a right turn after the receptionist desk. Ye what a nice door isnt?:

Right side:

 

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[Logistique]

Outside the office (Not my picture took it from google, there is a nice seafood restaurant downstair)

So our office is the second floor, this a picure of the balcony I was talking about in my office oh yea !!

The upper floor is going to be a shared office and we will be able to use the conference room if we ask before:

SPECIAL PIC WITH WIFE & DAUGHTER!!

 

[Logistique]

Okay here's a sketch of the office. The receptionist / telemarketer space in the back is too big than it is really and the office are a bit smaller than they really are but it's still give a great idea:



Okay so what we want here is to make the most warm office there is. But I am a cold hearted mother F*cker so I did hire my sister to do it.
People need to feel HAPPY in my office, so if you have any suggestion or anything tell me! Here's what my sister told me to put on the front door of the office:

 

[Logistique]

Food for the Mind

Here we go! It's finally THE day. I was waited for so long for that day. Since years I feel like I was unable to step up to the next level but now here we go. This is it, the next level is at my feet. So it's time to be serious. It's time to take action! This week goal will be to put some furniture in the office and to hire one receptionist. Call for the cable guy/internet guy and Food for the Mind.

I am en entrepreneur since as far as I know, even playing poker professionally I knew I was born to do business. But all this years working from home with low work ethic put me to the conclusion that what I am doing now is totally NEW. And that I am a beginner in that field so I will I always do when I am beginning at something. Read! And read more, Food for the Mind!


So here we go I purchased The Millionaire Fastlane and Unscripted :

And

Impatient to get them and read them!


This week Goal

-Read both @MJ DeMarco book
-Buy the receptionist desk and most of the furniture for my wife office and mine
-Start going at the office BEFORE 9:00 am EVERY DAY
-Install an Internet line in the office
-Interview and Hire a receptionist to start next week.
-Buy a voip phone and set it up

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

I am en entrepreneur since as far as I know, even playing poker professionally I knew I was born to do business.

I feel like playing poker and entrepreneurship is cut from the same cloth. Lots of variables, reading / predicting behavior, and ups and downs. If you can succeed at 1, you should be good at the other. Welcome to the board!

 

[Logistique]

I feel like playing poker and entrepreneurship is cut from the same cloth. Lots of variables, reading / predicting behavior, and ups and downs. If you can succeed at 1, you should be good at the other. Welcome to the board!

Thanks you MJ DeMarco for this warm welcome! I got your book by the post and they are quite bigger than I expected, I wouldnt be able to read them both in a week that's for sure. I started with the Millionaire Fastlane and I was really impressed when I read that you started your career with a limo website and you started sending lead to every limo company in the US!! This is exactly what I am doing in the services business and I am quite impress that you are the one who started the ''Lead'' business! Your book is an inspiration for every entrepreneur!

Day 1 & 2at the office

Okay so we started to put paid publicity in indeed, kijiji, craiglist, governement agency. We are bumping twice a day every listing.


So we got 8 CV for receptionist and 3 for manager.

So today I rent a delivery car and I will buy few office chair + table + receptionist desk.

Here's the list of question we will ask for the interview, any tips on what we could add/modifiy?

Hiring question:

1. What is your best quality and worst default?

2. What is your experience in the field? Elaborate

3. How can you stand out from the other candidates?

4. Why did you leave your last job?

5. What could you bring to our business?

6. A problem occur, there is an angry client calling complaining for a refund, how would you handle the situation?

7. Describe yourself in 3 words

8. What is animal would you be?

 

[Almantas]

Thanks you MJ DeMarco for this warm welcome! I got your book by the post and they are quite bigger than I expected, I wouldnt be able to read them both in a week that's for sure. I started with the Millionaire Fastlane and I was really impressed when I read that you started your career with a limo website and you started sending lead to every limo company in the US!! This is exactly what I am doing in the services business and I am quite impress that you are the one who started the ''Lead'' business! Your book is an inspiration for every entrepreneur!

Day 1 & 2at the office

Okay so we started to put paid publicity in indeed, kijiji, craiglist, governement agency. We are bumping twice a day every listing.


So we got 8 CV for receptionist and 3 for manager.

So today I rent a delivery car and I will buy few office chair + table + receptionist desk.

Here's the list of question we will ask for the interview, any tips on what we could add/modifiy?

Hiring question:

1. What is your best quality and worst default?

2. What is your experience in the field? Elaborate

3. How can you stand out from the other candidates?

4. Why did you leave your last job?

5. What could you bring to our business?

6. A problem occur, there is an angry client calling complaining for a refund, how would you handle the situation?

7. Describe yourself in 3 words

8. What is animal would you be?

My best advice is to screen your candidate with situational questions and then offer a few week probation period.

Some people suck at interview for many reasons,but outperform everyone else in the office.

 

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[Logistique]

My best advice is to screen your candidate with situational questions and then offer a few week probation period.

Some people suck at interview for many reasons,but outperform everyone else in the office.

Thanks for the advice. I will try to write few situation questions and see how it will go.

I had the objective to go at the office at 9:00 am everyday it didn't happen a single day because the office is all empty and no internet. But on another hand I started my day as if I was going there, working everyday from 9 till 4-5 which is totaly new for me.

The office is still empty but we put some furniture for my wife office:

 

[Logistique]

Day 4: The day I felt terrible and how I f*cked up

We are trying to furnish the office with only second hand furniture so that day I had to pick up my friend to go buy some furniture with our F150. But before that I have to say how are the night was. I don't wake up in the night only my wife does but that night was terrible. Usualy the kids only wake up once or twice a night that night it was both on them twice so it was very hard for my wife.

So in the morning we started as usual, filtering the CV we got and opening all our campaign. When I go I have to take the phone with me which is terrible because it's ringing all the F*cking time (Which is why we bought an office in the first place) It's almost as hard to take care of that damn phone than to take care of a kid.

So anyway, I left with the pickup to go grab my friend at 10 am to purchase some furniture. Roxane was supose to take a power nap and then I was hoping she would work with us. So anyway as soon as I go to my friend place he offer me to smoke a spliff... Just a tork or two ...


At 11:00

Im trying to call Roxane no answer, the job are filling in and I will need to close the campaign but I don't have internet, I am also waiting for the number to call to go pick up the furniture.


We smoke some more and work some less. Playing card. I should have go at 12:00 when Roxane was still not answering the phone but I stayed till 2PM. Playing card & Smoking (And answering the damn phone every 2 minutes) Around that time all our entrepreneur where busy and I really had to close the publicity. So I came back angry because she was still sleeping at 2pm. Shouldn't be angry at her she is doing so much but its the first time we didn't do shit in a single day. So I got angry at her I don't even understand how our son slept that much, anyway when I came back I was piss and this is how.

At 6:00pm & the steal from yesterday


Usualy we don't work in the night but yesterday I did something really not ethical. We are in the locksmithing business since almost the foundation of our business. But since 6 month's I lost my last locksmith. So yesterday I called our competitor to open a locked house.

I waited in front of the house with my limited f150 just to show off. When the locksmith came I told him: How they didn't told you ? We canceled the call, but come I will pay you the service charge. In the car I told him I was working in construction and that I had some locksmithing job here and there (Actually I am one of the biggest competitor in the emergency field)

He seems happy he gave me his personnal phone number. I told him working with me was 50/50 (I know he get 40-60 with the competition)

Today I started to send him some job he never answered me. I was able to talk with him 2 time each time he told me he was quite busy and that he will call back later. (He never did) Which pisses me off I was already angry so that surely didn't help.

I will try to send him some job today to see but I supose it will not working. I really don't like to steal employe but in my situation in the locksmithing field I just don't have no other choice it's this or no business at all.

7 pm, the bomb


So after that shit day we still had to do some accountability for one of our best entrepreneur. But he didn't come to the same number that Roxane came with. So he was even more piss off then I was he started yelling at Roxane and he told her to go F*ck herself. After Roxane told me what he said I picked up the phone angry and told him listen, you gonna do the number on your side, if you find error you send us I will pay the balance but it's over BYE. Hang out the phone, he called few time, send a message asking what was over bla bla bla .....Didn't answer

Cliffnote:

What a shit day I actually did nothing and I fired one of our best entrepreneur.

 

[Logistique]

Oh and I broke my F*cking world map moving it before yesterday!!!



The frame is broken in the top left. We can't see much with this pic but it's badly broken need a new frame




Anyway here's a picture that show most of the work we did this week. This is the list of CV we got we the paper we created:




On the bottom from left to right:
Task description - Information of the employee he will enter while he wait - The question for the interview

On the top we got the millionaire fastlane , I am halfway in! On the middle its the telemarketer CV we just started advertising for that so we got only 2. Then the unscripted book that I didn't had time to start, will read it after the millionaire fastlane .

On the middle it's the receptionist CV (9) and the manager CV (5) on the right

 

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[Logistique]

So far, so good


So here we go in my third day at the office.

I really though it would be HARD to go to the office everyday. But it WASN'T

I told you I was in the locksmith business back in the days but I was unable to find runner? Well I called one guy with who I used to work, he came to the office and he was really optimist about my idea, right away he told me he would help me, he is going to train his friend and manage them which is wonderful idea. So we are now partner in locksmithing!

The next day I waked up earlier and I started to tell myself that I shouldn't go to the office because I didn't had internet and I should buy some furniture and all.

So at 9:15 I got a call, it's my locksmith partner he was already at the office ready to get thing done! 15 minutes later I was there also

I didn't do the same mistake today. At 8:35 I took the bus and at 8:55 I was at the office and I can guarantee that it will be the same thing tomorrow.

Why do I take the bus if I have a truck? Well, because with the bus I can make sure that every single day I will be at the same hour at the office. With my truck I will not be as punctual as I would with the bus so BUS FTW

 

[Logistique]

Success Story

I know I didn't left any feedback here since the office is open and the reason is simple, I was writting here to keep me motivate, my main fear was to rent that office space and not going everyday. But it worked better than I could believe.

It's now a full month since I rent the office and EVERY day I am here at 9 in the morning and EVERY day I left for 5-7pm. Unfortunately most of the project I had at the start didn't work but the fact that I am going everyday at the office and working everyday make me see the futur as a clear bright sky!

It's also motivate many worker that were working on the road for us, now they come at the office take a coffee it's make them more serious working for us and more professional.

New Priority

Since a month our priority have changed. We are more focus in our services business and we are trying to improve our publicity and website to pay less google fee.




The average position of 2.0 is fixed now it's more like 1.3 average. The CTR is at 15% so nothing to worry about that. All the modification have to be done on the landing page to improve the quality score but we are working quite hard on it.



New Goal

-Grow our placement agency to the next level, that mean we need a healthcare website.
-Recruit new partner
-Find a way to make money with the office with worker in the day. With cold calling, the heat pump is still working on the night shift but in the day there is nothing. Any idea?
-Improve our quality score
-Make a live chat on every website we have
-Find a good software to mass mail (Any suggestion?)

 

[Logistique]

Front desk, any idea for office decoration??

 

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