Exit the slowlane - My progress thread

[PlzListen2MyDemo]

Hi all and thanks for checking this post out...............

I've been visiting the forum for a few weeks now after downloading MJ's book via audible. I've read a few books on subjects like entrepreneurship, business and self development but I think the rawness of MJ's character and his no BS straight to the point approach has been a massive inspiration. It's also put a lot of things in to perspective for me. (So if you do ever stumble across this post MJ, thanks man!)

A bit about me.......

I am, and it hurts to admit this, the epitome of a slowlaner! I'm 33 years old, I have a mortgage, a pension, I have bills to pay, loans to pay and practically living for pay check to pay check. Each morning between Monday and Friday I get up at around 6.30am, get washed, dressed, eat breakfast, kiss the Mrs goodbye before I get in to my beat up 1999 Audi A3 and sit in traffic for 40 minutes before getting in the office.

During my work day I manage a bunch of people who seem too focused on trivial matters. I have to tolerate a manager who uses phrases like "let's park that one", "let's pick some low hanging fruit" and "we're on glide path".....FML!

I manage projects that I have zero passion for and my peers can only be described as rats trampling over each other in a sewer while they race to the light at the end of a tunnel which represents a promotion to operations management. Promotion comes with a whopping £450 a month pay increase as well as a cheeky increase in working hours. That's right folks I can work hard now for 40 hours a week and £32k a year salary and if I'm lucky, I mean if I'm really lucky I'll be rewarded with a 60 hour work week and a lucrative £37k annual salary.............

And if that's not bad enough I log on to pokerstars each Sunday in the hope of qualifying for a seat in the Sunday Million and winning the whole thing so I can take a mini retirement???

Piss poor way of living right!? Reading TFM has made me realise that it's me that got me here and it's me that will get me out.........

So what now?

Essentially the goal is to "become a producer" just like MJ says it! Luckily I've never been short of ideas or ways to solve problems. One thing my slowlaner jobs has given me is the ability to be creative in solving problems and think on my feet, in fact it's probably the only thing I've ever been praised for in my slow lane career.......

I started a notebook on Evernote specifically for ideas I come up with. Usually something will pop in my head when I see a problem or observe a certain scenario which I think could be "leaner" (work talking now), I even get ideas on how something existing could be made better. As a member of the Fastlane forum I'm pretty you're all the same!

Anyway. I am, however, under no illusion that ideas are worth exactly £0 and it's the execution of the idea which inevitably propels you forward. So if my long term goal is to operate a web based business offering a product or service then my short term goals are as follows:

1. Continue to collate / generate ideas and document / research these.
2. Learn some basic web designing skills and practice web design.
3. Learn some basic SEO skills and practice by driving traffic to any site a design (purely for the practice)
4. When satisfied with competency level, repeat steps 2 and 3 by trying to validate ideas generated from step 1.

This will probably take me over 6 months, I don't know but will update with anything created for feedback.

Thanks all

 

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[OldFaithful]

Welcome to the forum. Best wishes & Godspeed.

 

[PlzListen2MyDemo]

*Update

Coming up to 3 weeks since my last update. On my original post I knew nothing about web design and only knew what Wordpress was because I subscribe to the four hour work week blog. I took a punt and signed up to Lynda.com and since then I've took 3 courses on basic Wordpress functionality, HTML Essentials and just about to complete one on CSS. My plan is to then move on to some basic Javascript and bootstrap training. I'm not bothered about being able to create a site from scratch just yet but if I can download or buy a decent Java template and jig it around to suit my purpose then it's a massive win.

On a further plus side, when it does come to hiring a freelance designer for a project further down the line then I'll know enough not to get my pants pulled down over a price. Nor will they be able to dazzle me with their coding sorcery! Mwahahaha............

Anyway, hopefully in the next 3 weeks I can provide a link to my first venture (not sue if that's allowed here?). In the meantime I would definitely recommend Lynda.com to anyone in my position. I tried YouTube and although there is a ton of resources on there I didn't think it is very well organised plus on Lynda the courses are organised well, bookmarked, progress is shown on there for each section and, so far, has come with proof of learning exercises. So in my opinion for the sake of £20 a month it's a bargain. It's not as if it's a lifetime membership or anything so can cancel when I'm satisfied I know enough up to that point......

Another quick recommendation is an audiobook I've recently listened to, and will be listening to again in the near future, which is called "Will it fly" by a guy called Pat Flynn. Good book on validating product ideas online at a low cost. Definitely one for the Fastlane library!

Thanks again

 

[relentlessaction]

@PlzListen2MyDemo Nice.. Definitely, interested in checking out what you come up with and where you go.. Keep at it. You'll get there.

For my own story to share some insight. Took some real effort + 2-3 years of building it up and taking very little sleep while working a full time job. I'm at about $40-$55k/month atm (e-commerce) and profit is less now because I've been investing back into more inventory but it takes effort and time to get it even further up $40-$55k. I plan on bringing it to $70-100k and are taking steps now to make it a "real" full fledge ecom site and make everything even more professional.

Was at about $30k/month and saved about $120k before I quit my full time job. I quit about 2 months ago. I don't say this to brag but to show you what's possible. Granted, I probably worked my damn a$$ off and way too many hours and there are tons of people who have had even greater success with probably 100x less time. But we're all on our own journey in the end and you can't compare sometimes otherwise you end up chasing different "methods" and what really makes things happen is the necessary time it takes to make it successful.

I'd say getting there is the easiest. The hardest part is always sustaining the business to produce $55k/mo (in my example) and/or doubling it's growth to $100k+/mo.

You'll definitely have to be in your own little world because nobody around you in regular life will really understand what your trying to accomplish and most won't put in the effort to get there. Your ideas and thoughts should be "people who are above you/entrepreneurs" and don't fall for living the "average/ordinary" lifestyle which everyone else does. Good luck!

 

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[PlzListen2MyDemo]

Update:

I launched my very first website around 2 months ago now which offers to pay people to wear t-shirts. I got the idea after reading about a guy called Jason Sadler over in the states......interesting guy, check him out!

As far as I'm aware no one has ever done anything like that in the uk so my plan was to set up a landing page in order to capture the details of users who would be interested in wearing a t-shirt to make a few extra £££. Mainly younger people, students, late teens, early 20's

For my first site I don't think I've too badly and it's been a decent journey so far for the simple reasons that I've;

1) Been able to set up a simple HTML/CSS site and upload this with an FTP
2) Introduced myself to capturing data into an SQL database with PHP coding which took me about 8 solid nights after work to get my head around......
3) Set up google analytics and a conversion funnel on the site
4) Used social media to get site visitors (which has been my biggest challenge by far)

At the start the plan was to set the site up and have it ready to capture personal info. Move onto phase 2 which was to drive massive amounts of traffic to the site by engaging with a target audience on social media then phase 3 would be to contact local businesses in order to sell the product of having their brand trend on and offline through t-shirt advertising.

It all seemed to make sense until phase 2 when I realised I really have no idea how to market via social media.......in two full months I've managed to get around 60 sign ups from across the uk with an average of around 2 visitors per day. Sometimes my bounce rate is 100% due to the visitor not being a uk resident etc.....

So far it's been a great learning curve and I have so much knowledge now than I did in say Aug / Sep time..........I only put the site online until end of Nov so please check it out (I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post a link but I'll make it clear that I'm not looking fit sign ups from the forum, more of a critique) www.advertops.co.uk

I don't think I'll be renewing the hosting after this month as this has been more of an experiment than anything. The next challenge is to learn more about web traffic, social media engagement and driving a targeted prospect to a site who is ready to make a purchase.

Thanks for reading


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[devine]

As far as I'm aware no one has ever done anything like that

That's because the idea is bullshit.

I don't think I'll be renewing the hosting after this month as this has been more of an experiment than anything.

Nothing comes off after one month. Especially not with this kind of website.

 

[PlzListen2MyDemo]

Thanks for the feedback Devine


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[OldFaithful]

Nay-Sayers aside, I hope you are successful in your venture. Three months isn't really enough time to flesh out a concept, but if it's only a learning project, then bringing it to completion might not be necessary. If you really think this has potential, stick with it until the market tells you otherwise. Then adjust, pivot, and keep working on your path. Best wishes.

 

[B V Marlon]

This may help you with your social media marketing knowledge:
http://www.audiencebloom.com/The-Definitive-Guide-to-Social-Media-Marketing.pdf

Check out the Adespresso pdf ebooks as well, there's loads of useful information in those, particularly for Facebook. Snapchat might be something for you to check out - I don't understand it, but from what I've heard about it, it could be perfect for your project.

You'll need to give your project more than 3/4 months to establish if it really does have potential or not. I've been going with my business for 4 months now and it's slowly building.

 

[PlzListen2MyDemo]

Thanks all, you are right persistence will pay off in the end.

Will definitely check the info you've submitted BV.

Thanks again!!


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