How to build a business with no idea, no money, no experience, and no network.

[samuraijack]

Hey there,

I'm Stephen. The title as most of you know is a rip of @IceCreamKid 's thread. The reason for that is because "no idea, no money, no experience, no network" describes me completely and also because it is catchy. One of the biggest things I got from reading TMF and Gold threads on this forum is that all the shitty things in my life such as having no money, no good lasting friendships or relationships with my family is because I was selfish, unloving and I didn't give myself to others; I didn't contribute anything of value to anyone's life.

So naturally it makes a lot of F*cking sense for me to reach out to others and try to help solve their problems . I will be emailing and calling business owners in a target market to find a need and then build a solution with their input. I get to apply copywriting principles (which I just started to learn), I get to grow some balls by calling business owners, and most of all even if I fail and nothing comes from this, I know how much I will grow as a person and entrepreneur.

My passive action that I have taken :
-Learning copywriting
-Did research on certain industries and I have my target market picked out (took way too long aka fear of failure)
-I'm using yesware for my email tracking, I have two templates I'll be testing even though I will be calling/ following up to each person on the phone regardless of response.
-I wrote the scripts/guide for the phone calls

What I need to do:
-Start creating the email list of 100 business owners tomorrow evening.
-Schedule emails tomorrow as well to go out Thursday morning, Friday morning, Saturday morning and Sunday morning.
-Make a call to one of them Friday morning before I go to work.
-Learn each step as I go. I currently know nothing on pre-selling, hiring developers, internet marketing, or even creating a website...lol

When I wrote my "why" statement a month ago, one of the biggest "why" I had was to help others like me. I learned that when a person sees someone they can relate to accomplish something they think is impossible, it suddenly becomes a little easier to believe. So hopefully as I go through this process, it will make it just a bit easier for others to follow along and join me as well.

This is for accountability as well. I bookmarked a post by @Vigilante where he flame some dude who made a post about meditation after being on the forum for 3 years I think. When I read that it scared me shitless to the point that I will never let it happen.

 

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[tafy]

I will be emailing and calling business owners in a target market to find a need and then build a solution with their input.

Your still thinking of yourself

Something better: I will call or email small business owners and help them by applying my new copy skills to their website for free.

Most local business websites copy SUCKS

So if you want them to help you by finding a need and taking their time, help them first. You will gain good experience and you can add their websites into your portfolio of work.

 

[IceCreamKid]

Most local business websites copy SUCKS

This is the most true thing I've read in a long time.

Something better: I will call or email small business owners and help them by applying my new copy skills to their website for free.

Cold calling isn't fun to me anymore. Rejection doesn't feel good. Here's an idea if you want to go the path of least resistance. Create a CD with a 5 minute critique of the copy on their website and how it can be improved. At the end of the critique, offer them a risk-free consultation. Put the CD in a bulky envelope that needs a signature upon delivery. Include a sales letter with KILLER copy.

Here's a classic copy formula to get your juices flowing:
Goal of customer+specified period of time+addressing objections

Create The Tastiest Burger In 7 Days Without Having Any Cooking Experience
Get Your Dream Girl In 24 Hours Even If You're Shy, Ugly, and Broke
Create A Forum That Attracts Thousands Of Subscribers While Having Zero Coding Experience

The pen is mightier than the sword.

Be honest and truthful with them if they ask about your experience. Don't worry, you'll eventually find a bunch of customers who like to work with you simply because of who you are and the value you strive to give.

I bookmarked a post by @Vigilante where he flame some dude who made a post about meditation after being on the forum for 3 years I think.

Learn to practice gratitude; meditation helps a lot for helping me get into an immensely grateful state. It's impossible to be angry and grateful at the same time. It's impossible to be fearful and grateful at the same time.

Good luck.

 

[samuraijack]

@tafy thanks for the input. Im not sure ifi worded it correctly but I'm not looking for business owners to help me by giving me an idea and their time, im looking to help them solve a problem they have with MY time. I agree most small business owners websites suck and they have no idea about marketing. If the owners I contact bring that up as a pain then I may go that route but that is not my goal. My goal is to target the top players in the industry, like the businesses that are top10 in google for their respective locations or the ones who spend a lot on advertisment and to help them with a scalable solution that can be offered to other growing businesses in the same industry. It will most likely be software based but i will not close out other opportunities.

@IceCreamKid I actually have been meditating everyday long before i came here, it wasnt a diss to meditation. Im doing the 30 day copywriting challenge and I have Danes checklist which is similar to your temolate. Even though I am learning copy, I dont plan on offering it as a service to small businesses, I'm only learning it for the mindset it gives me and to write my own copy. The CD idea is a great idea, i was already planning to use inbound marketing with the information ill get from the phone calls and put that out as a report to get leads. Maybe i can put a spin on thr CD idea. In regards to phone calls, rejection does suck but im sure you learned a lot from it. Its like picking up chicks, approach -> get rejected -> adjust -> approach -> get laid, except more rejections lol. Trust me my body does not want me to make the calls but I once read somewhere that the things you experience the most resistance doing, are the ones worth doing the most. I think it was in the War of Art by Steven Pressfield, good book. Thanks for the reply and for the awesome threads.

 

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[Yeezy]

How did you learn copy?
Did you do the Gary Halbert 30 day copywriting challenge or just read some good books?

 

[samuraijack]

How did you learn copy?
Did you do the Gary Halbert 30 day copywriting challenge or just read some good books?

Im still learning copy. The challenge requires you to read a lot of books so I am doing that as well. The best way is to learn is to "copy" the copy from the experts by hand and write your own copy from what you learned by reading.

 

[tafy]

My goal is to target the top players in the industry, like the businesses that are top10 in google for their respective locations or the ones who spend a lot on advertisment and to help them with a scalable solution that can be offered to other growing businesses in the same industry. It will most likely be software based but i will not close out other opportunities.

You dont understand this yet, but you are asking them to help YOU. You are asking for their time to talk to YOU, to tell YOU about their problems and to explain details of their business and process to YOU. They are most likely too busy to give YOU any thought. They dont know who YOU are and they dont care who YOU are.

You should focus on helping them, Look at some of their web copy and make a great version and email them that version and tell them that they can use it free of charge. Then you have made a connection, you have helped them and they will most likely want to help you back.

Good luck

 

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[Mark Anthony Le]

You dont understand this yet, but you are asking them to help YOU. You are asking for their time to talk to YOU, to tell YOU about their problems and to explain details of their business and process to YOU. They are most likely too busy to give YOU any thought. They dont know who YOU are and they dont care who YOU are.

You should focus on helping them, Look at some of their web copy and make a great version and email them that version and tell them that they can use it free of charge. Then you have made a connection, you have helped them and they will most likely want to help you back.

Good luck

This man speaks the truth...

What's he's trying to say is that no business owner will probably have time to talk to you if you're a nobody.

Help them like mentioned above and they'll question themselves to really figure out who, what, and why you're doing what you're doing. Which would the lead to a good relationship etc.

I know when I first started in my offline business, I didn't have the time of day to talk to anyone trying to talk to me for 5-10 minutes on the phone.

I was approached by a guy who wanted to help me for free and did all the work and suddenly I was all ears to him. I honestly helped him more afterwards than he did for me.

It does work.

 

[samuraijack]

@tafy and @Mark Anthony Le , I get what you guys are trying to say. I totally agree that if you help someone first, then they will be more open to help you in return. Btw, I don't believe in putting anyone on a pedestal, and a business owner's time is not worth more than mine (it is a very harmful belief to hold IMO). There are always more than one way of going about things, and offering to do something for them for free is one way, but don't discount others.

Btw, this process that I'm doing is almost exactly what is outlined by IceCreamKid in this thread https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...o-money-no-idea-no-education-no-problem.52285 , and by Dane Maxwell in this thread https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...-saas-membership-sites-education.48011/page-3. There are a handful of successful students of his that have done the same process just by reaching out to people.

Anyways, there's no point in me speculating whether it works or not. Time will tell. But thank you guys for the input.

Updates:
I only scheduled about 5 emails last night to go out this morning at 9 AM. I took me a while to find the owners contact info. Got a pretty quick reply from the president of a company, which is exciting. His business is targeted towards more upscale projects than I was going for but this may lead to a niche I haven't thought of. He said this week is crazy busy and to schedule a call with him next week.

Edit (Added deadlines)

It's too time consuming for me to look for emails on my own, so I'm going to outsource it. It should be pretty simple, I have specific criteria that I need the businesses to fall into. I need a list of at least a couple hundred from all over the U.S, and I'm reaching out to the ones locally by myself for now.
Hire a VA by Saturday.

I'm also going to work on creating a blog and linking it into the emails to make it more personal. I work with my uncle on and off in the same industry (although my uncle is independent only works through referrals). I am thinking of putting pics, and making posts related to the work, and also my progress in contacting the business owners. So they get to read about me, contacting them LOL. This blog will be useful in getting leads later on down the line when I offer the research to other companies.
Create the blog on Saturday.

Oh..and I have to catch up on my copywriting books. The 30-day deadline is looking mighty hard now.
Finish gary halbert's letters by Monday night.

 

[Merging Left]

Btw, I don't believe in putting anyone on a pedestal, and a business owner's time is not worth more than mine (it is a very harmful belief to hold IMO).

Whether you believe your time is just as valuable as somebody else's is completely irrelevant if the other person doesn't feel the same way.

The problem is that by cold-calling and asking for pain points, you serve to gain much more than the person you're calling. Here's an example for illustration:
You call a business owner and ask several targeted questions to figure out a potential area of improvement that you can offer a solution for. Then the call ends. At the end of the call, you've learned a million new ideas on what types of needs his business has and maybe some of them you have solutions to, but the business owner hasn't gained anything at all. They've only spent x amount of time telling you some things that they struggle with, only for you to say "great, I have a few ideas on how to approach this and I'll get back to you soon."

That's not a productive way for the business owner to spend his time from his point of view.

Whether you want to call completely cold, or open up with a copy improvement or some other suggestion, I think it's hard to deny that a potential client who has received some value from you BEFORE you ask for pain points will be more receptive to taking your call.

 

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[Razdaz87]

The above points all the same thing in common: Offer the person you're talking to value as well since they are doing the same to you. If you don't want to rewrite their copy, another thing you could try is that when you talk and discover their pain points and come up with solutions, offer them the chance to be one of the first users to try out the service or product and offer the service to them at a discounted price for the lifetime of their involvement since they were one of the first ones to help you. That way, you provide value to them as well.

 

[samuraijack]

If you don't want to rewrite their copy, another thing you could try is that when you talk and discover their pain points and come up with solutions, offer them the chance to be one of the first users to try out the service or product and offer the service to them at a discounted price for the lifetime of their involvement since they were one of the first ones to help you. That way, you provide value to them as well.

That was always a part of the plan. Its not that I don't want to write the copy, its that writing specific copy for each website is too time consuming. I'm planning to email over 100 companies. If my goal was to close a deal with a few specific companies, then yes I would do it. But right now the point of these emails is to make first contact, gauge response, and so that when I do call them, I can reference the email. It is me trying to get a feel for the market, and how receptive it is.

@tafy @IceCreamKid @Mark Anthony Le @Merging Left I was thinking of a way to apply what you guys said in here, so for the reasons listed above, instead of writing specific copy for each businesses' website, I came up with writing a general copy guide specifically for the industry.

The industry is remodeling/renovation contractors, and maybe even more specific "design and build" firms. It will be general copywriting guideline but highly customized towards their industry. Things like telling them to "list benefits instead of features", and I will look at a bunch of their websites and take the most common "features" they list, and word them into benefits as an example.

Then more general but customized stuff like using good headlines (then giving some examples of headlines relating to contracting), etc...That way I can share the same pdf or w/e format to every business I contact, but it will still be highly relevant.

I am still in the middle of the 30 day copywriting challenge and I haven't written any copy of my own yet, except for applying copy principles to my emails. So in essence, I am just taking the info from the books I read and rewording them for the market, so I have to be careful because I don't want to give out false info.

Also, with this info packet I believe I can create a page (blog or landing page?) to capture leads and share this with businesses owners I am not contacting currently. So down the line, if I do have a product to release I have business who voluntarily gave their emails to me and trust me somewhat. Does that seem like a good idea?

Btw anyone have advice on how to offer them a pdf and then telling them I want to talk to them about their problems, all in one email? It seems like an odd transition to me. I'm sure there is a good way to word it, so I'll have to work on that.

Updates:

I gathered ~60 emails myself, it is a extremely time consuming process, but I don't feel like it is good to hire a VA now. I haven't moved fast enough and taken enough action to validate this process to justify spending money on a VA.

I have to work out how I am going to make the calls, and at what time since I have work from 9-6. I would like to catch them at their slowest hours.

-Create the blog/landing page for the copywriting resource by tomorrow night.
-Practice phone script by recording, and practice on live person tomorrow night.
-Schedule the call with the owner of the company that replied last week by Tuesday. Thinking of calling to schedule instead of sending an email again, too much friction.
-Finished the gary halbert letters and the boron letters. Boron letter Chapter 22 deserves to be hung on a plaque.