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Deaf and Daft, getting my first sale

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

Andy Black

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Hey JP here,


Been some time since I posted on here. I know its said over and over again. Working to sell is like running a marathon. I’ve heard over and over again the saying of “business is a marathon” I respectfully disagree, I think it’s harder.

For anyone who has run a marathon. The hardest part isn’t the marathon itself, the marathon is the end and you know it’s going to finish soon and you’ll be able to go home and recover and move on with your life. I would say its much more similar to training for the marathon itself, but the training never ends.

I’ll be honest with you, I’ve been struggling with cold calls. Rejection is not easy especially when you have a 3rd party in the middle of the conversation when you’re trying to sell. I’ve tried several different routes from emailing, to texting but the best return of my time is cold calling companies that have poor websites or even NO websites at all. Back to the analogy of training for a marathon.. Preparing for a cold call reminds me of the moments before I go out for a run. I dread it and I have a small routine before I do it, but once I’m into it I have to push through till I’m done. Then I’ll have to do it again the next day and the next until I find someone suitable to sell for me.

What helped me improve in the past 2 months is the practice of prospecting and preparing before I reach out to people. I look for businesses all over ranging from Facebook to google maps to try and find businesses. Then I rank them from 1-5 from how likely do I think they’ll be interested, this depends on a number of factors from personal experience. Then I set a power hour either at 8am or 9am and I call for an hour straight.

The time block helps immensely. I usually do maybe 10-20 calls a day now because of it. In the past I would tell myself 2-3 then that’s it and back to working on the computer. The truth is, I’ve gotten at least 5x more prospective warm leads just by introducing myself and offering to email them more information.


Two books that I just read that are helping my sales move forward are

Fanatical Prospecting ( about keeping your pipeline full)

And

SPIN Selling (great mind set about sales and how to approach them - thanks to @Fox for this one! Still reading this atm)

Got around to updating my website for the business as well, Arra Development featuring my portfolio with companies and people I trust.

Also, My Wife is getting into her own FL idea and I'm helping her with the product development and marketing plan.
I never liked the marathon analogy. I was a sprinter... I like moving fast, and then recovering.

This phrase made perfect sense for me:
 
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jpanarra

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Ok maybe made 18k today,

Great experience today, I’m 90-95% sure I closed a massive sale today. This was a local guy that I found on one of the social media sites and noticed that he didn’t have a website. He wanted to meet with me to talk about the website project, in fact he wanted 3 websites. Now, I went through massive prep for 2 days reviewing questions and stuff, my wife and me got us a new whiteboard which I will be using for a YouTube channel that I plan on starting to share my business knowledge to the deaf community using ASL.

(heres some pictures of my notes and thought process)

IRmvDcf.jpg


EcYiUQx.jpg


lgtHPaA.jpg



Now, naturally I obliged and agreed to meet and talk about it, being deaf, meeting face to face is always a challenge but I usually handle myself well when its 1 on 1 and use a notepad and paper when there’s a lapse in commuincation. When I walked in there was 4 people in the room including the decision maker that I already talked to prior. (semi-freaking out at this point) Its very difficult for me to handle group conversations because I can’t catch if someone else starts talking and can really ruin the tempo of the conversation.

Regardless of this, I knew that I couldn’t focus on my strengths on asking the different types of questions and my preparation was almost for naught, and I had to limit myself to asking straightforward questions that they would have to answer simply.

Brought up critical points in making a website, and emphasized that we don’t just focus on website and its design. We focus on making websites that retains people and use modern knowledge of behavior that encourages action such as CTA(call to action) buttons. Went over a number of different things that can be done to improve and draw people such as SEO, Google Ad-Words, etc.

From what I could read, it felt really positive, and they asked for the quotes of the different websites, I told them that the one would be static and html, but the other two would require some back-end work and php coding so 5-6k for the one and then around 7k for the other 2. The feedback felt positive so if this goes through it’ll be almost 18-19k in one meeting.

Part of me wants to be ecstatic, and I was for maybe 20 minutes after the meeting but then reality set in, I’ve been here before. I’ve had big near-closes that has just not happened. So naturally I’m trying to control my emotions and think about how I could’ve handled this better.

I think next time, I need to bring an ASL interpreter with me to those meetings. However, I will not be able to pay them upfront so I’m thinking about asking a few interpreter friends of mine to consider some sort of percentage aka like 2-5% if it closes. This way if there is more meetings in the future I might have someone that might not be just an interpreter but someone who knows how to facilitate the meeting and drive things to be favorable for me and the business.

Now, if this goes through or not… I have tasted blood in the water… I’m going to make a kill sooner than later. Plan on a number of power hours of cold calling tomorrow to get my pipeline pumped up.
 
Last edited:

MidwestLandlord

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The more "near closes" you have, the more actual closes you'll have too, as you get better and better at pitching it.

Almost every time I'm close to throwing up my hands and saying "F*ck this" is when I'm really close to a breakthrough and just need to push harder.

Keep going!
 

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The more "near closes" you have, the more actual closes you'll have too, as you get better and better at pitching it.

Almost every time I'm close to throwing up my hands and saying "F*ck this" is when I'm really close to a breakthrough and just need to push harder.

Keep going!

Exactly. This times hundred.
 
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DesignerOne.

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Yep, still pounding away! I'll keep you guys in the loop.


you're on the edge, where a lot of people feel that pit in their stomach and everything's working against them, a lot of them turn around and go back. I know you're making the jump. Sooner than later it'll happen. You're killing it.
 

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Hey guys,


JP here… Busy Busy Busy. Its funny the more busier I get the less time I spend time reading about others being busy and dreaming about it. I just thought it was time for me to update with whats going on with my journey.


Massive change this month. I closed one more sale for almost $3,500 for a well known connection in a major city so this is a client that potentially will get me 10 more high profile clients if it goes well so I’m looking forward to that.

The funny thing is that’s not what im excited about. I’m excited about a new idea I’m working on. As the people who have been reading this thread all know I deal with the challenges of cold calling and prospecting due to the limitations I have with me being deaf.

So trying to come up with a solution I got in touch with some sign language interpreters that was interested in making some extra cash. I came up with an option that I can train them with all of the different sales techniques and strategies that I’ve learned over the past year. My thought process is that if I’m able to make regular sales with the obstacles I face, if I’m able to train them properly they should have some success. Then if they get an appointment they can easily facilitate you the conversation between myself and the client while they’re on a headset and speaking to me and doing the exact thing they’re trained to do as translators and communication experts. Now the thought I had was that I cannot be the only deaf business out there that can benefit from this, so this might be a decent idea if it works.

Another thing, I’ve been making videos and sharing my knowledge with the new sales people and I might be open to moving them to youtube and appeal to the ASL audience to share what I know about sales and business. I know I’m not an expert but we all gotta start somewhere!
 
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jpanarra

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Hey guys,

Making progress. My best month yet in terms of # of sales. I sold 3 sites this month for all over 1,500 and getting better at the conversations leading people to accepting the price without them even doubting it’s worth. I think that’s a massive step for me.


Also, the interpreters that I have cold calling for me seem to be on a positive pathway compared to past experiences. In the past people would just try and then give up after a few days or a few rejections and fall off the face of the earth. The people I have now are actually asking questions on how to improve and looking for strategies to actually sell stuff. I’ve been making videos to help them out via ASL and the reception has been positive.


With the little free time I have I’ve been working on learning how to write a webapp via JS ,AngularJS, and Ruby On Rails. My goal for this learning process is to become a full stack developer that is capable of building anything that comes to mind. I hope to build something for myself that’ll be able to sustain itself. I have an idea that is sort of SAAS, that’ll be able to help generate leads by digging through yelp or google. I’m still exactly not sure yet but I’ll keep you all posted on my progress!
 

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Right on! Found you through Fox's 15k gold thread. I'm about 1.5 months in and good to see others like me going full blast at this. I feel you with not wanting to call sometimes, just got to push through it or do something else productive. I'll be following this thread for sure
 

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Hey all! JP here

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! Looking to make this year my best one yet! Last year i started out as a clueless noob lurking and trying to get myself involved around here with no real direction. After finding a number of different threads and inspiration i pieced my own path from the advice i found.

Now I'm working on a web design business with a legitimate LLC and clients. Working on a YouTube channel to spread the message of entrepreneurship and the pursuit of happiness.

Here's my intro video, I plan on posting more and look forward to sharing my insights and experiences with you guys!

 
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Hey guys, JP here… time for an update!

I know that some of you saw my post on the inside, I plan to work on a business that will compliment and solve a massive pain point in all businesses and have a unique twist to it to get a good foundation as a young business.


So check it out on the inside, right now I'm just validating by sending out surveys and getting data to see where I can really put my energy to build my unique sales preposition. This is a business where I hope to get an investor involved because the start up costs might be higher than what I'm comfortable with so, I'll keep you guys in the loop but with more details here on the inside…


I hope to post a survey on here because I think it might be something that might help people on here. So once I get the ok from the mods I'll let you know when its up!

Web development/design is going okay, I have 2 more clients lined up for the next few months, I admit I need to fill up my pipeline with better leads and I need to work on improving my vetting process of which prospects are worth my time to cold email and cold call. I've noticed that the more time I spend on this stage of things I save my time by cold calling what I believe is the ideal client.


I also posted another video so check it out! I'm also open to suggestions and advice for more videos and such.

 

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Hey guys, JP here!

Remember that guy I found on social media that might bring me 18k in revenue, his assistant got back to me and it looks like they’re ready to move forward with me for the web design. So waiting for them to pay the invoice so I can get it going. So that is great news.

I’ll be honest I haven’t been cold emailing or cold calling myself as much anymore but I’m working on a system that I will be able to utilize and should be able to generate me some great leads. This ‘system’ is my current project and I plan on marketing this system to other entrepreuners and business owners that face the same challenges as I do. The website is all done with the copy. I’ll have more info on my INSIDERS thread about it. I feel like this is something ‘big’ because I’m thinking ‘bigger’ and not backing down from the challenge of a high price tag for a service that I will provide in spades compared to the others in the market space.

As for my youtube, I’m getting great feedback and people are saying that I have a good camera presence and getting more views everyday so hopefully this will help me build my personal brand and will support everything that I’m doing. Next video is up now as well!!

 

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Jesus here goes, JP here


I'm feeling like I'm falling apart at my seams.. I definitely bit off more than I can chew. The Fastlane Summit thread got me pumped. I intend to meet all of you guys next year. So this is how I'm going to do this.


I'm going to go over the personal goals then business goals to get myself back on track from now till the end of March.


I will be posting another video today. I hope to make a Video of my talking about my progress and what I got done during the week, I know I have this progress thread but I think it'll be more visible for people that I'll interact more in my local life so more social pressure based on what I'm putting out. So that’s


GOAL #1 : POST A VLOG PROGRESS PER WEEK


I'm not going to beat around the bush. Fiscally I'm in a rough spot right now. I was late on my last month's mortgage and am struggling to pay the bills. My other half lost her source of Income, so if it wasn't for the web business we would've been underwater so fast that I don’t even want to know what would've happened if I didn’t have the extra money.


There is only two people that is responsible for fixing it, and that's me and my wife. So, this gave us the opportunity to grow her side of things. We dropped the money to pay for her class so she can become a Real Estate agent. She spent the entire week taking the class and she intends to finish it by March. Now for me, I kept the kids attended and I spent the entire Sunday working on my budget. I realized that I really need to track my spending much closer and eliminate where the little expenses are being wasted.


GOAL #2 : 30 DAY CHALLENGE DOCUMENT SPENDING EVERYDAY (This roots from the concept, if I cannot keep my spending in order for my household? What will it do to my business?)


Now from all of the stress and nerves I'm a little frustrated at myself. There was a good amount of downtime where I could've worked on my two ventures, but now from all of the stress and nerves I ended up being sucked in on the Xbox a bit too much over the past few days and just kept giving myself dopamine hits. So I got real with myself last night, I downloaded all of the games on an external drive and just gave it to my wife. I told her when she thinks I'm ready to play a game and unwind she can give it back.


GOAL # 3 : NO MORE VIDEO GAMES UNTIL IM CASHFLOW POSITIVE


Now onto the business side of things



Web business is going ok not as well as I want, I have a good number of things in the pipeline I have maybe 4-5 people ready but they haven't dropped the dollar. I have one website that will wrap up soon and will get the final 50%. I have one person that needs me to do his website and he's going to be paying me either today or tomorrow. This will really help my fiscal situation at the moment.


My goal is to work on the closing side of things. I have a system(my 2nd venture) that gets warm leads lined up so I'll be using that to drive my closing rate.


GOAL #4 : Close 5 Websites at 2.5k +


Telemarketing looks promising, we have 3-5 people interested to sign up for the first group so we can validate the process. We already cut a good amount of our profits to make sure we put the majority of the risk on the business so we can tweak and improve the process and help others get themselves out there. We are in process of recruiting salespeople and are offering commission based salary. Since it’s a monthly subscription business, we are offering a creative solution for our sales people, if they bring someone on board and they will get a commission every month that person pays us for our services. This got a good amount of attention



GOAL #5: Get 5 Clients subscribed to the monthly service


Now, I will come up with a system to track all of those goals, aka come up with micro goals to help me quantitative them and achieve what I'm gunning for. I'll keep you all up to date.
 
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Hey JP here,

I had an awesome experience today, I went to a local 'coder's meetup at a incubator near where I live to try and network and meet people so I can learn more about my local community and maybe contribute in some way.

The reality is there is a challenge in trying to meet in public as a Deaf person, because in those meetups people talk in groups and ideas bounce off people so fast that I have hard time participating. Regardless, I was able to get experienced people to talk to me on my ideas, my ambitions, my motivations, etc.

I had a good conversation with this one dude that talked with me about a blue ocean strategy with my coding experience and chemistry background. If there is any idea or concept that i can develop and bring to the table to other chemists. I will still be working on my ventures that I have already, they are profitable and have room to grow. All the while I'm developing my sales skills and cold calling skills along with building a system/process that maximizes efficiency.

Now as for my goals, I've shared it via video format here. Its still not subtitled yet but i'll get around to it soon.

Now for the breaking down of my goals so I can keep track of it easier.

Goal 1 - already objective, no issues here

Goal 2 - Keeping an eye on fiances by using a spread sheet, I found YNAB so I started that but since its my first month i dont have a snapshot of my projected income. So I made a spreadsheet that will be able to track my spending on a daily basis, but I'll fill it out 2-3 times a week as scheduled.

Goal 3 - I'm ashamed, I already played an hour of games today. I found the hard drive, played an hour and gave it back to my wife. Told her to hide it better.

Goal 4 - This is a much more difficult goal because its somewhat subjective, I needed to break this down further. So what I'm doing is i made a clear routine checklist, I will be sending out 15 emails per day and cold calling 10 people per day during business days.

Goal 5 - Monthly service, Same thing as goal #4, I'm reaching out to facebook groups, personal network, linkedin groups and sending PM to people to try and to bring them value. Then if i come across someone that I believe will benefit off what I've built I'll reach out to them. I still don't know how to break this down into something objective
 

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I have reached the point of boredom again at my job. I've learned the majority of everything that's pretty interesting to me. I'm feeling like I'm spinning the wheel while I'm at my job and that is limiting my productivity for my other ventures. I know my job is limiting my ability to grow in this pathway I want. I'll be honest with you and myself. I'm terrified of walking away from this job but I'll explain it to myself why, but I'm sharing it on here. First of all I'm 28 years old, I have another 50 years of life ahead of me. That’s a long F*cking way to go.

A gear in me has shifted, I'm staring to read some of the stories differently on here. I'm also coming back to older threads and reading them in a different light as well. Like @Andy Black said a few times throughout the different threads on here. It's about the process, the journey, not the destination.

With the goal building I'm doing right now, the check lists, the 'programming' of my routines to make sure I get things done on a regular basis. I am starting to think about what is going to happen when I'm 35. I have been always thinking I'm gonna be rich and wealthy in 5 years no matter what age I am. This is going about it wrong, I had that kind of thinking for the past 8 years. I need to have a end goal, a road to travel on and my dedication to get as far as I can on that road while retaining my sanity.

As for my job, I don’t know how much longer I will last there. People are talking about the 'career' path and I'm sitting there thinking about what I want to do to market myself and do something differently instead of doing it because I'm stuck at this 9-5.

Am I really stuck? I know it’s a choice I'm making everyday when I wake up and drive there.

I have responsibilities of other people on me, children to feed, a roof to put over their head, shelter them to feel as safe as possible. That’s what my job gives me security to do. I'm not living an elaborate lifestyle, my 2 commuter cars are both over 5 years old. I make enough to pay for the mortgage and necessities and the rest currently goes to high interest debt.

So, I will continue to work on other sources of income. The telemarketing company and web design, they're a revenue stream to help me reach my goals. They can help me generate cash to pay off my debts. That has to happen before I even think about walking away from my job.

So thinking 5 years from now, I'll be debt free. Not rich, but debt free. Which will lead me to my next 5, which is walking away from my job and hopefully onto the Fastlane.

A bit more than year ago when I discovered the wisdom of @MJ DeMarco and this forum. I'm sure you've heard it again and again, MJ. Thank you for your experience and taking the time to share it with the rest of us. The way you delivered it, right of the bat the excitement and intensity was raw and I pictured myself driving a brand new car in a year or 2 to be honest. This is not realistic, the truth is mentioned in the book over and over again, it takes hard work and sacrifice. The more you sacrifice the shorter it'll take. The challenge for me is the sacrifice will be a heavy one on my kids, this means my Fastlane journey will take longer than what I will like it to be. Unlike some of the examples I've seen on here, some journeys like @biophase and @Kak takes years and decades and it feels like it happens in a span of months because I read it in a short amount of time on this forum.

Again, I have to remind myself. This is not a sprint, but a marathon. This is a recurring theme I've seen on here, but I think my gears have shifted to accept that what I'm working for today will not happen tomorrow but when I'm 35 years old.

Ok, now back to work.
 

Andy Black

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I have reached the point of boredom again at my job. I've learned the majority of everything that's pretty interesting to me. I'm feeling like I'm spinning the wheel while I'm at my job and that is limiting my productivity for my other ventures. I know my job is limiting my ability to grow in this pathway I want. I'll be honest with you and myself. I'm terrified of walking away from this job but I'll explain it to myself why, but I'm sharing it on here. First of all I'm 28 years old, I have another 50 years of life ahead of me. That’s a long f*cking way to go.

A gear in me has shifted, I'm staring to read some of the stories differently on here. I'm also coming back to older threads and reading them in a different light as well. Like @Andy Black said a few times throughout the different threads on here. It's about the process, the journey, not the destination.

With the goal building I'm doing right now, the check lists, the 'programming' of my routines to make sure I get things done on a regular basis. I am starting to think about what is going to happen when I'm 35. I have been always thinking I'm gonna be rich and wealthy in 5 years no matter what age I am. This is going about it wrong, I had that kind of thinking for the past 8 years. I need to have a end goal, a road to travel on and my dedication to get as far as I can on that road while retaining my sanity.

As for my job, I don’t know how much longer I will last there. People are talking about the 'career' path and I'm sitting there thinking about what I want to do to market myself and do something differently instead of doing it because I'm stuck at this 9-5.

Am I really stuck? I know it’s a choice I'm making everyday when I wake up and drive there.

I have responsibilities of other people on me, children to feed, a roof to put over their head, shelter them to feel as safe as possible. That’s what my job gives me security to do. I'm not living an elaborate lifestyle, my 2 commuter cars are both over 5 years old. I make enough to pay for the mortgage and necessities and the rest currently goes to high interest debt.

So, I will continue to work on other sources of income. The telemarketing company and web design, they're a revenue stream to help me reach my goals. They can help me generate cash to pay off my debts. That has to happen before I even think about walking away from my job.

So thinking 5 years from now, I'll be debt free. Not rich, but debt free. Which will lead me to my next 5, which is walking away from my job and hopefully onto the Fastlane.

A bit more than year ago when I discovered the wisdom of @MJ DeMarco and this forum. I'm sure you've heard it again and again, MJ. Thank you for your experience and taking the time to share it with the rest of us. The way you delivered it, right of the bat the excitement and intensity was raw and I pictured myself driving a brand new car in a year or 2 to be honest. This is not realistic, the truth is mentioned in the book over and over again, it takes hard work and sacrifice. The more you sacrifice the shorter it'll take. The challenge for me is the sacrifice will be a heavy one on my kids, this means my Fastlane journey will take longer than what I will like it to be. Unlike some of the examples I've seen on here, some journeys like @biophase and @Kak takes years and decades and it feels like it happens in a span of months because I read it in a short amount of time on this forum.

Again, I have to remind myself. This is not a sprint, but a marathon. This is a recurring theme I've seen on here, but I think my gears have shifted to accept that what I'm working for today will not happen tomorrow but when I'm 35 years old.

Ok, now back to work.


I must admit, I don’t think 5 years out. Currently I just live day-by-day, week-by-week, and quarter-by-quarter.

I have a direction I’m heading in, but I don’t plan that far ahead. It could be an Achilles heel, but that’s how I like to move.



“Work Less. Earn More.” is a good book by James Schramko.

One of the (many!) things he talks about is setting 12 week goals and then working towards them. If anything comes up that’s not in that 12 week goal then just shunt it to the next 12 week to review. He calls this a “buffer”... like how the learner buffers on the sides of a bowling lane can help us to hit the pins at the end.


Anyway... all that to say - you can get a LOT done in 12 weeks, and it’s a short enough duration that you can get your head down and focus on a set of pins to knock down.

And I say this because I felt you’re a bit depressed from reading your post? Resigned that things will take a long time? And maybe telling yourself stories to justify staying where you are a lot longer than you maybe need to?



My revenue isn’t high at the moment, but *how* I earn it is important.

*** Automated MRR is golden. ***

I don’t mean “passive” necessarily - just that clients pay each month like clockwork.

If your automated MRR matched your essential expenses (if you hit 1x as @V8Bill would say), then you may be confident enough to quit your job.

As soon as you quit your job and focus on growing your MRR then there will be a big acceleration - you won’t have to commute, spend the hours in work, be depressed with office conversations, or be snatching time outside work hours to work on your business.



“The Automatic Customer” by John Warrillow is another good book. It’s small, and I’ll summarize my main takeaway rather than turn you into a consumer: my main takeaway was my realisation that “I’m building a subscription business”.

When I labeled it different I suddenly saw things different.


I’m not saying you need to build a subscription business - that’s just one way HOW to get the stability from a business to allow you to quit a job.


Work out what your 1x is.

Work out how to get that consistently each month.

Come up with a 12 week plan to kill some major rocks in your way (maybe even get to 1x by automated MRR?).

Get your head down for 12 weeks and see how much you can achieve.

Adding another $250 of automated MRR can be life-changing. It shows you what can be done, and that you “just” need to scale.
 
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jpanarra

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I must admit, I don’t think 5 years out. Currently I just live day-by-day, week-by-week, and quarter-by-quarter.

I have a direction I’m heading in, but I don’t plan that far ahead. It could be an Achilles heel, but that’s how I like to move.



“Work Less. Earn More.” is a good book by James Schramko.

One of the (many!) things he talks about is setting 12 week goals and then working towards them. If anything comes up that’s not in that 12 week goal then just shunt it to the next 12 week to review. He calls this a “buffer”... like how the learner buffers on the sides of a bowling lane can help us to hit the pins at the end.


Anyway... all that to say - you can get a LOT done in 12 weeks, and it’s a short enough duration that you can get your head down and focus on a set of pins to knock down.

And I say this because I felt you’re a bit depressed from reading your post? Resigned that things will take a long time? And maybe telling yourself stories to justify staying where you are a lot longer than you maybe need to?



My revenue isn’t high at the moment, but *how* I earn it is important.

*** Automated MRR is golden. ***

I don’t mean “passive” necessarily - just that clients pay each month like clockwork.

If your automated MRR matched your essential expenses (if you hit 1x as @V8Bill would say), then you may be confident enough to quit your job.

As soon as you quit your job and focus on growing your MRR then there will be a big acceleration - you won’t have to commute, spend the hours in work, be depressed with office conversations, or be snatching time outside work hours to work on your business.



“The Automatic Customer” by John Warrillow is another good book. It’s small, and I’ll summarize my main takeaway rather than turn you into a consumer: my main takeaway was my realisation that “I’m building a subscription business”.

When I labeled it different I suddenly saw things different.


I’m not saying you need to build a subscription business - that’s just one way HOW to get the stability from a business to allow you to quit a job.


Work out what your 1x is.

Work out how to get that consistently each month.

Come up with a 12 week plan to kill some major rocks in your way (maybe even get to 1x by automated MRR?).

Get your head down for 12 weeks and see how much you can achieve.

Adding another $250 of automated MRR can be life-changing. It shows you what can be done, and that you “just” need to scale.

Hey Andy,



Love it when you respond to me. You make me think and evaluate my thoughts and how I'm communicating them! Yay for continuous improvement.



I get why you wouldn't think 5 years out. I mean, I haven't done it in practice yet, I guess I got too specific. I wanted to get the point across that I want to be at a certain place fiscally in 5 years or less. What I'm saying is I have a feasible vision that I can achieve in 5 years or less for that matter and smaller goals to get to the vision.



Thanks for the book suggestions, They're on my to read list now. Might go with the automatic customer once I finish re-reading jab jab jab right hook. I'm trying to get sales via social media, so this book is my recommended go to for that shift in marketing.



My telemarketing company is in a subscription format and once I get people to sign up, I'll start having a MMR. I've definitely picked up that concept on this forum. Subscription models is the next logical step from me eating up my hours building websites for others.





The only thing I have to ask, what do you mean by '1x' . Do you mean doubling my revenue? Enough to walk away?



Here's to Week 1.
 

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The only thing I have to ask, what do you mean by '1x' . Do you mean doubling my revenue? Enough to walk away?
I don’t know where @V8Bill ’s thread is. He talks about 2x (two ex) - getting to two times your essential expenses.

What’s 1x (one ex)? What are your essential monthly expenses?

If you have automated MRR that covers your essential monthly expenses then you’re in a good position to quit your job. (It doesn’t mean you should as each person’s situation is unique.)


For your business you can ask this too. I’ve heard it called your “key money” - the amount of money you need to earn each month just so you can turn the key and open the door to your business.
 
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Jesus here goes, JP here


I'm feeling like I'm falling apart at my seams.. I definitely bit off more than I can chew. The Fastlane Summit thread got me pumped. I intend to meet all of you guys next year. So this is how I'm going to do this.


I'm going to go over the personal goals then business goals to get myself back on track from now till the end of March.


I will be posting another video today. I hope to make a Video of my talking about my progress and what I got done during the week, I know I have this progress thread but I think it'll be more visible for people that I'll interact more in my local life so more social pressure based on what I'm putting out. So that’s


GOAL #1 : POST A VLOG PROGRESS PER WEEK


I'm not going to beat around the bush. Fiscally I'm in a rough spot right now. I was late on my last month's mortgage and am struggling to pay the bills. My other half lost her source of Income, so if it wasn't for the web business we would've been underwater so fast that I don’t even want to know what would've happened if I didn’t have the extra money.


There is only two people that is responsible for fixing it, and that's me and my wife. So, this gave us the opportunity to grow her side of things. We dropped the money to pay for her class so she can become a Real Estate agent. She spent the entire week taking the class and she intends to finish it by March. Now for me, I kept the kids attended and I spent the entire Sunday working on my budget. I realized that I really need to track my spending much closer and eliminate where the little expenses are being wasted.


GOAL #2 : 30 DAY CHALLENGE DOCUMENT SPENDING EVERYDAY (This roots from the concept, if I cannot keep my spending in order for my household? What will it do to my business?)


Now from all of the stress and nerves I'm a little frustrated at myself. There was a good amount of downtime where I could've worked on my two ventures, but now from all of the stress and nerves I ended up being sucked in on the Xbox a bit too much over the past few days and just kept giving myself dopamine hits. So I got real with myself last night, I downloaded all of the games on an external drive and just gave it to my wife. I told her when she thinks I'm ready to play a game and unwind she can give it back.


GOAL # 3 : NO MORE VIDEO GAMES UNTIL IM CASHFLOW POSITIVE


Now onto the business side of things



Web business is going ok not as well as I want, I have a good number of things in the pipeline I have maybe 4-5 people ready but they haven't dropped the dollar. I have one website that will wrap up soon and will get the final 50%. I have one person that needs me to do his website and he's going to be paying me either today or tomorrow. This will really help my fiscal situation at the moment.


My goal is to work on the closing side of things. I have a system(my 2nd venture) that gets warm leads lined up so I'll be using that to drive my closing rate.


GOAL #4 : Close 5 Websites at 2.5k +


Telemarketing looks promising, we have 3-5 people interested to sign up for the first group so we can validate the process. We already cut a good amount of our profits to make sure we put the majority of the risk on the business so we can tweak and improve the process and help others get themselves out there. We are in process of recruiting salespeople and are offering commission based salary. Since it’s a monthly subscription business, we are offering a creative solution for our sales people, if they bring someone on board and they will get a commission every month that person pays us for our services. This got a good amount of attention



GOAL #5: Get 5 Clients subscribed to the monthly service


Now, I will come up with a system to track all of those goals, aka come up with micro goals to help me quantitative them and achieve what I'm gunning for. I'll keep you all up to date.
Just reading back a bit further in your thread...

Sorry to hear about your wife’s work finishing.

Made me think of this thread:
 

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Thats what I thought it meant. I think I've read that thread but the reference didn't ring a bell.

Thanks man!

+1!! So it sounds like the ideal scenario is achieving 2x our monthly expenses.. quit threshold is at approximately 1x.
 
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Not rich, but debt free.

That's a great start.

Focus on the income side, not the debt side.

If you make $100K/more next year, the debt can be paid off quicker, optimally, in one swift stroke.

When I swung to the debt free side, it wasn't because I "chipped away" -- it was chopped off with one swing of an axe. ;)
 

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^^^ What MJ said.


“Earn More.”

“Sales solves everything.”
 

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Thanks guys,

golden common sense truth bombs ---
those things are alot easier said than done, but its truth regardless.

Speaking of sales, I got my first customer signed up to telemarketing today. So thats a good first step for the way this thread is turning out.

JP
 
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Hey guys, JP here!

Remember that guy I found on social media that might bring me 18k in revenue, his assistant got back to me and it looks like they’re ready to move forward with me for the web design. So waiting for them to pay the invoice so I can get it going. So that is great news.

I’ll be honest I haven’t been cold emailing or cold calling myself as much anymore but I’m working on a system that I will be able to utilize and should be able to generate me some great leads. This ‘system’ is my current project and I plan on marketing this system to other entrepreuners and business owners that face the same challenges as I do. The website is all done with the copy. I’ll have more info on my INSIDERS thread about it. I feel like this is something ‘big’ because I’m thinking ‘bigger’ and not backing down from the challenge of a high price tag for a service that I will provide in spades compared to the others in the market space.

As for my youtube, I’m getting great feedback and people are saying that I have a good camera presence and getting more views everyday so hopefully this will help me build my personal brand and will support everything that I’m doing. Next video is up now as well!!


Maybe put captions on your videos?

If I'm not deaf, and if I come across a video like that, I might recommend it to a deaf friend but want to vet the contents first.

Good luck @jpanarra!
 

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Maybe put captions on your videos?

If I'm not deaf, and if I come across a video like that, I might recommend it to a deaf friend but want to vet the contents first.

Good luck @jpanarra!

Captions is already on there, you just need to click the 'cc' on the bottom right corner.

Majority of my videos have captioning, I am a bit behind on writing them up and only one video left that needs my transcribing is the weekly vlog post i did last week.
 

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Captions is already on there, you just need to click the 'cc' on the bottom right corner.

Majority of my videos have captioning, I am a bit behind on writing them up and only one video left that needs my transcribing is the weekly vlog post i did last week.
I don’t think everyone knows how to put captions on. I don’t.

What about embedding them into the actual video?
 
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I don’t think everyone knows how to put captions on. I don’t.

What about embedding them into the actual video?


I'll be honest, I don't know how.

In fact I'll go look up on how to do that.
 

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I think i got it , theres a 'tag' that you can type up that will 'auto-on' the captioning wherever it's opened up.

I'm adding it to all of my videos now, so let me know if it's working or not.
 

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