Moved to Scottsdale, Growing a Web Design Firm

[sravyasri]

Loved your story. Any updates @GuitarManDan ?

 

[vth]

Welcome to the neighborhood. I'm in the metro area a bit further south - don't worry too much about the summer, its a dry heat

 

[MTF]

Welcome the neighborhood!! We have about another two months of great weather before your meddle will be tested.

Just curious: can you stay active during the summer and spend time outdoors or do people mostly stay indoors during the day and get out only in the mornings or evenings?

 

[mike24601]

Watch out for scorpions! lol

 

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[CareCPA]

Thanks! When I create the entity, will I need to make an election or is there a default that would make more sense?

This is the info I really need to dig into so I appreciate any advice. I’ve currently just been invoicing using FreshBooks and making it paid to me personally.

Need to investigate business bank accounts and all of that jazz too.

The default for a single-member LLC is a disregarded entity, so it would just show up on your Schedule C. You would need to elect to be treated as an S Corp.
Technically, if you want to be an S Corp, you have to elect within 2.5 months of entity formation (or year-end for the subsequent year), but the IRS has historically been extremely lenient on late elections.

 

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[GuitarManDan]

@GuitarManDan
Arizona heat can be brutal - and so can the cold - but the one consistently amazing time here is sunset/sunrise.

It's beautiful out during these times and honestly is the best time to be outside. Personally I try not to miss a sunset any time during the year and get up for the sunrise when I can. Nothing will capture the beauty of the desert more.

I've heard amazing things! Any recommended spots to catch a good sunset view? I still need to do some hiking while I'm here too, I've only checked out Pinnacle Peak so far, but have heard great things about Camelback and Tom's Thumb.

 

[vth]

I've heard amazing things! Any recommended spots to catch a good sunset view? I still need to do some hiking while I'm here too, I've only checked out Pinnacle Peak so far, but have heard great things about Camelback and Tom's Thumb.

Not much of a hiker myself so I can’t say. I just take it in wherever I am. With that said, any elevation gain here will make it that much better.

 

[Crexty]

Welcome man! Let me know if you want to meet up!

 

[Crexty]

get quickbooks, its worth the money. When you can, hire a bookkeeper for like $150 a month, it takes a big burden off my shoulders by letting them do it for me.

Thanks again for your help. I think I'm going to efile online myself ($85 vs. $500 with the lawfirm I spoke with). It's going to be a single-member LLC and then I can file for an EIN after.

The law firm recommended that I get quickbooks too for accounting purposes. I'm currently just using freshbooks for invoicing and I've been using google sheets to track any relevant expenses/revenue. Do you think I need a system like quickbooks with what I'm doing?

I'll also be sure to open a business bank account in the company's name after I get an EIN and after I efile.

ui

 

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[million$$$smile]

Keep grinding. Your going to make it!

 

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[Crexty]

Hey man! Happy to see you're making progress! Hope you're liking it out here (And this damn heat)

Definitely keep up the cold emails & cold calls, a huge chunk of my biz comes from doing it. Seems like its starting to work for you.

 

[GuitarManDan]

So what of you think of your first summer? Another month left and it will be smooth sailing for 9 months.

The first few days of 110+ were rough but surprisingly got used to it and it hasn't been that bad at all. I can think of a few days I was running around going to meetings wearing some business casual clothes so that was rough in this heat.

These dust storms/monsoons have been crazy though, I luckily haven't lost power throughout any of them yet.

I've heard August is the worst of it, so just a few more weeks until it started to break!

 

[bilkar1985]

Was looking for inspiration and just read your thread Dan and I like what I read!

Keep it up and updated whenever you can!

 

[andrewsyc]

I have milestones and then Arizona was one of my points of attractions. My friend said that their winter is the middle of summer, too hot to go outside. God forbid the power goes out and the ACs stop working.

Fun night life.

 

[LittleJohn]

What a week... the fashion designer's people just got back to me that they discussed and want to move forward! More to come in a more detailed post, but his assistant is calling me in 30 mins or so to figure out the logistics.

This deal will be for $4.5k.

When this one goes through that'll be $11.5k locked up in one week!

This will be my first 5 figure month ever, more than I even made each month at my old investment banking job. Thanks all for the kind words and support!!

Just wanted to say Kudos to your hustle, man!

Im sure as a young man in the Scottsdale area doing his thing its like paradise - keep it up!

 

[GuitarManDan]

Awesome hustle man - very inspiring watching you detach from the muggy east coast (I'm in coastal NC), most folks dont have the balls to say screw it, pick up and go.

Now that you have a pretty consistent hustle going and make decent money, are you thinking of ways to expand and scale beyond what you can do? Curious of your long term strategy and/or exit plan.

Hey man, sorry for the late response. Still working on getting it to making real good money before thinking of expanding or scaling.

Once I start to really get down the sales/pipeline aspect, I'm sure I'll start outsourcing portions of projects for more complex sites (for example, I'm in discussions with a commercial real estate company to make a new site with a complex listings section that they can update).

Thanks for the kind words.. it's been stressful and overwhelming, but at the end of the day I really enjoy the hustle of it and it's so so much better than working at a corporate job.

Just working on constant development personally and professionally with this experience.

 

[GuitarManDan]

I would focus on using the existing clients as referrals for getting additional work. I would also be looking how to further operationalize your work as to reduce the number of hours it takes to deliver a package. Then I would sub out the work to somebody on Fiverr so I could focus specifically on sales demos. This is because website development is highly commoditized and can be done with offshore Developers for 5 to 8 bucks an hour. Your highest and best use is on sales and the creative Design.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

Agreed, definitely making that a priority as well in terms of leveraging past clients. November has been decently slow so far, but I know December will pick up (2 existing projects will resume and at least 1 new one will be starting then that I'm close to closing now). For November, I've just been working on doing more outreach, refining my process, learning as much as I can, and taking care of housekeeping items (end of year taxes, how to pay myself from the LLC, healthcare for next year, etc).

 

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[Exhosa]

Great progress, congrats! Looking forward to regular updates. Best of luck!

 

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[Alex123]

Well done. Definitely following this. I'm currently interested in starting my own SMMA and am reading through threads like this to learn the best ways to acquire customers!

 

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[BlackMagician]

Hey Everyone,

Wanted to share a quick update as we're almost near the end of February. I've spent this month almost entirely building out SEO and monthly recurring revenue client leads reaching out to my network of people that I've built up over the past year or so (past clients, past networking connections, etc).

Last time I had this feeling, I went on to close those two huge web design deals in the same week... but I just know I'm so damn close to a huge breakthrough right now with my business.

These are all of the pending pitches that I have sent out and with some quick feedback on each unique case.

Pitched SEO/Monthly Client Pitches:

1. Doctor's Office from Networking - $500/month SEO - met with the owner, got some background on his business. He doesn't have the budget as he's just starting out for a lot so I reduced the scope and offered him $500/month for a 12 month contract.

2. Retirement Planning Firm, Previous Web Design Client - $1,200/month SEO - I met with him in person as I was back home visiting family. He really liked the pitch and really wants to work with me again, but he asked if we could do the SEO stuff later and for now work together to focus on more short term goals (mainly, building out more content on his blog which helps with SEO anyway and basically getting the systems in place so that he can handle the increased volume of customers that would come with SEO work).

3. Financial Services Firm, Previous Contact - $5,000/month for Marketing and SEO - CEO just got back from a business trip. Trying to decide when I should send a friendly chaser but obviously don't want to appear to be desperate or anything like that. Will probably wait till the end of the week.

4. Fashion Designer, Previous Web Design Client - $2,200 to $6,000/month for SEO and other Monthly Services (gave different packages) - they're still reviewing as they have a crazy busy week (the designer's new book is coming out soon and they're gearing up for that). Haven't heard back yet on this one.

I don't want to ramble on so I won't get into more specifics but I also have some organic web design leads coming in too which is great (since I can place all of my outreach focus on the SEO monthly recurring contracts).

On top of that, still attending around 2 networking events per week and still doing some client work here and there for current clients and edits (that I'm charging for) for previous clients.

The revenue number collected is still the same but I will invoice for around $600-800 for additional edits on one client site (I'm getting a great hourly rate and they are a pleasure to work with so I don't mind).

Goal Setting

This year I really want to be sure that I'm not just putting my head down and grinding away at the work and not seeing the big picture.

I want to think bigger, I want to make the most out of this amazing opportunity and I want to really blow the business up this year.

I still think reaching $10,000 per month locked in by June 30th of this year is solid because when I do that, I can reevaluate and set goals even higher for what monthly recurring revenue number I want to hit before the end of 2019.

Other Fastlaners in Scottsdale

Most importantly, this year I want to take advantage of the fact that I live in such an amazing area for being an entrepreneur and even on these forums alone there are so many amazing entrepreneurs who I'd have so much to learn from.

I know @Eskil does a great job of bringing people together so I want to make sure I really put the effort and time in to meet a lot more people out here and learn all that I can from their stories and experiences of successes and challenges.

First of All, Congratulations for your success buddy.
You are very much live example of how to build a business from scratch. Glad to read about your hustle.

As i read, you could be getting many SEO related work which will be monthly basis. so, have you hired/made a team to handle this or you will be doing it yourself?

What will you advice a fellow like me who is hustling in the same business, working 9-5 along with that. I have some success, many failures as of now in my 4 months efforts. The difficulty i am facing is being Consistent. Being there. Daily.

Family, Job, comes in between way too much and i get distracted. Though, making all the efforts to sail through all this. I am just going slowly and steady pace.

If you shed some light on my progress thread and skim through it and give some feedback and suggestions to do it better, i will appreciate. I will ask to skim through only last two months progress because early posts are just fillers.

Thanks for reading. I will be following you progress!

 

[huseyin]

hey man, I'm already inspired by your journey and would like to start my own. I have a question tho, are you doing everything yourself (webdevelopment/design) or do you hire someone? if you do it yourself, which courses do you recommend to learn the stuff that is needed.

I would really appreciate your help and advice.

warm regards

 

[BlackMagician]

I'll take a look at your progress thread but I really wouldn't want to give generic advice (ex. definitely quit your job or definitely go into XYZ business) as everyone's situation is unique.

Thanks Man. Do have a look and give your feedback there. (Progress Thread)
Yes, my situation is quite unique.

Looking back, it seems like a miracle that I made it out of that toxic environment. "I can't move away from my family"... "what will people think"... "what if I fail?"... "what if I regret this for the rest of my life?"... "it's really not that bad".

Bingo! But my questions are little weird. "I don't want to move away from my family and work somewhere else"..."what if i fail"..."what will happen of my family if i don't succeed?"... and so on.

Even after some moderate success, those same people have been saying "I didn't think you'd get this lucky" or "how can I do what you're doing?"

Haha. I am not there yet. But started hearing from others "Your current job is very easy that's why you can work on side business"... "you have skills of website/seo/digital marketing/ so its easy for you to do business without money" ... "we have pressure in our life, you don't".

Point of my rambling is that whatever choice you make isn't going to be easy, I didn't have a family depending on me and it was still extremely difficult for me, so you have to figure out what you really want and make the best decision for your situation.

I know, it's difficult. I have family who is dependent on me. Parents, sis, brother and there studies. I am the oldest son, being 25yrs old now.
Here in India, our tradition is to stay in one family. Very very difficult to leave the job and work on something foreign and have 'risk' because of scripted mindset here. That's why i am trying to achieve some moderate success and recurring clients till the end of the year to assure my family and myself that i can do better on my own instead of typical 'Job'.

Waiting for your helpful reply in my thread. Right now, working with consistency is the major issue. or so called 'Habit'. Reading Atomic Habit and trying to implement the actions.

 

[srodrigo]

Thanks for the kind words and feedback!

You know I was wondering that myself, I had one client come back and say they didn't need a website but a mobile app instead. I actually took a meeting with them figuring that if I could get an idea of their budget (they couldn't give me one) I could outsource to another firm and maybe start offering that.

Tried a few chasers though and haven't heard back, but there's definitely a big opportunity out there.

Honestly this may be out there already, but I'm still waiting for someone to make a huge company in a similar style of Squarespace or Wix but for mobile apps for the clients you want to do it themselves and not pay a crazy amount of money to make one.

Please, let us know if they get back to you and close any deal. I've seen all kinds of success, from mediocre companies that sell mobile apps for low budgets and don't make any profit, to companies that now have offices in several countries.

When I've been working for someone else, my previous experiences with mobile apps have been from alright to bad. Startups sometimes don't pay (this has been mentioned by people who build static websites on this forum), and most big companies have the resources to build software by themselves. So medium-size companies might be a good target.

Some "mobile apps builder" sounds like a cool idea, indeed. That might work for mobile apps that don't require much talking with APIs, although most of them do nowadays.

 

[Ecom man]

It really is incredible how much it impacts your mood, when I visit the east coast and go back to the miserable weather and consistent cloudy/rainy weather it really puts a damper on things.

Are you in the Phoenix/Scottsdale area? I've been making a real effort this year to try to meet more members on the forum... so cool to hear everyone's stories and what business they're involved with.




Definitely agreed, I know deep down it comes from a place of my family missing me but I think there's a big difference between someone playfully messing around with you or just joking or even just being honest and saying they miss you vs. what my brother is currently doing to me (basically making me feel like I'm abandoning my family and going to miss everything and I'm super selfish).



Thanks so much man! For 7, I agree in some cases that's part of the challenge and opportunity to really reframe it to show them it's more of a long-term investment and huge upside vs. just a commodity.

I'm going to shoot him an email for 9 and just provide him with some more value and maybe make some suggestions of what approach I'd go with and see if he would be open to opting out of his contract and then at least I know I'd have that lined up in 2-3 months or whenever he gets out of that.

I know I mentioned I'd take a look at your progress thread, apologies man I've been crazy busy. If you want you could shoot me a PM with any questions that come up and I'm much better at responding to those haha.



Thanks man, and I couldn't agree anymore, but that's a great problem to have

On a serious note, once it gets to that point, I would have to outsource different components of it, which won't be an issue at all. The SEO course I took speaks about this specifically and how he outsources different parts to trusted vendors (whether it's on-page SEO, link building, etc).

The #1 ranking is really exciting, especially since it just validates it for my potential customers and to myself too that I know I can do this and really add value.

Yeah lived in San Tan valley for about 2 years and then moved to Mesa last summer after getting tired of driving to Mesa everytime we wanted to do something lol. We loved our house in San Tan but it was really far out from any restaurants or things to do.

We now live about 5 minutes from the 202/60 interchange in east Mesa.

 

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[rblitz]

Hey All,
Annoying news is I found out I have some unexpected medical stuff going on and will need to have surgery within the next week or two, so I may be MIA for a while.

I'm reading everyone of your updates with excitement. This one not, of course.

All the best and get well soon!

 

[Telamon25346]

wow. just...wow. your thread is amazing. I'm so glad i found this thread, because you're doing almost the exact same work I do. my only problem is that I'm not that good at gaining clients the way you do . forgive me if you already said this in here, but how long did it usually take you to find a new client? did it take a few months? etc.

 

[AgainstAllOdds]

Amazing thread.

Keep it up Dan.

 

[Carlitos]

Good thread definitely subscribing to your thread. Quick question, do you outsource all of your work or you personally 100% of the work when creating these websites?

 

[GuitarManDan]

Awesome progress my friend! When you're feeling better you should come over for a beer some time again.

Thanks man - absolutely, always a fun time catching up and hearing about Stabylcam!

 

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[Dana Taylor]

Thanks for the kind words, it honestly depends on each situation. Obviously it takes longer to find the first client for a new service (now that I'm offering SEO, for example). It took a few months to get both my first web design and SEO client if that helps. Feel free to PM me I can send over more details.



Thanks man!



Thanks for the well wishes, much appreciated. It seems like the recovery is taking longer than expected (said it can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks depending on each unique case) so I'm still struggling a bit.

I've been able to at least be in constant contact with the newest clients and make sure I'm still working to overdeliver for them. Hope you guys had a great time at the Fastlane Lunch, still really bummed out that I had to miss it.



Hey Carlitos, I currently have been doing all of the work when creating sites and working on SEO campaigns. The goal is to start bringing on so much work that I need to outsource (which I'd be fine with) I just wanted to make sure I knew the ins and outs of the process before outsourcing so I didn't get taken advantage of or a client didn't get taken advantage of.



Hi Dana, awesome work.. what type of work have you been doing with your business?

Hi, I've been doing social media management and lead generation on LinkedIn.

My website isn't finished as yet however i have signed contracts from x 2 clients ready to go. Once the webpage is up they'll be able to pick the package of their choice.

Networking is King for me right now so i am actively going to networking events. I know my strength is face to face. Asked all my grienrdfor referrals with a 15% kickback for any successful clients.

I also have a young woman working on commission only to get the work in. Then I've been outsourcing the work.

Next is to drive traffic to my website and build a solid team.

How are things with you?