Moved to Scottsdale, Growing a Web Design Firm

[GuitarManDan]

Hey Everyone,

Here's a snapshot of how November played out with the businesses below. A few quick notable highlights of successes and challenges that came up:

• Hired my first salesperson that wasn't a friend/someone I knew and he made his first sale already! Documenting the whole process so that it'll be easy to flip and train others as well as things pick up
• Had a swing and a miss on the rep mgmt front, went after a new niche with outreach that worked well in the past for other industries, but the response rate has been abysmal after 2-3 weeks of running that. Pausing that campaign and going back to targeting industries I know convert well
• For the seo/web business, my own site is ranking #1 overall for a lot of popular keywords even though I haven't put too much work into it so I've been getting a steady amount of leads between organic search results and referrals so there's a good chance the seo/web business picks up a bit this upcoming month
• Even with traveling around for over half the month to visit family, still was able to have a pretty solid month, even if the revenue did dip down a bit, that was mostly due to a lack of consistent clients coming in the door from the outreach I did to the industry that didn't convert as well

Rep Mgmt: $14.5k
SEO/Web Business: $8.5k

Total for Nov: $23k

 

[MJ DeMarco]

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

Awesomely exciting! I remember the feeling, when you realize that holy-shit, next month can be much bigger because you aren't trapped into a traditional salary/hourly time arrangement. Gives me a zing remembering...

 

[NMdad]

The manager of the comedy talent agency said "do right by us with this client and we'll make sure you have plenty of work in the future".

These kind of opportunities are what boosted my technical service business.

Think: who has access to the kind of clients I want? How can I help them so they'll refer me to those prospects?

I've built relationships with salespeople at 2 software companies. Now, those companies' salespeople end up being like my sales team. The prospects I get through those pipelines are super warm, and have a high conversion rate. Waaaay easier than cold calling.

 

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[GuitarManDan]

Hey All,

One more quick update - been a busy day.

Just finished up and launched another client site and sent him over the invoice for the remaining 50% of the contract (will be $750 for the final half).

Definitely way less than I'd usually accept but it was a very very simple project (3 pages) and the business owner is a pleasure to work with so I knew it would be quick and wouldn't come with any hassles. Additionally, he's a great guy to network with so I figured it could lead to much more work.

So to update the tracker:

2019 Challenge: $8,260 Revenue / $100,000 Goal

 

[GuitarManDan]

Flying it Dan - keep going man.

Thanks man! Lots of things in the works... expecting some of these bigger deals to come through soon, exciting stuff!

Crab meet bucket.

First time I've heard this expression before so I had to look it up but yup that sounds correct. Funny enough, these conversations he seems to have with me only happen when A. he's super stressed out B. I had something go well recently.

It's not just the business stuff that's been going really well too, I'm just happier out here. I've made some amazing friends and really love the area. Just need to expect nonsense like this to come up and ignore it.

He sounds jealous and he's just projecting his own hate and failures onto you.

He should watch this movie:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00uTFVnWJMw

It's funny, I definitely expected it when I first told them I quit my job and was moving across the country... but over a year later seems random lol.

A lot of people have come around, even those who first told me I was "throwing my life away" and being really dramatic.

Whatever haha, just more fuel to motivate me to absolutely kill it.

 

[GuitarManDan]

A few quick updates from my side, good news today but not official yet (both verbal agreements):

1. Received a verbal agreement from my favorite previous web design client (financial services). I redid his site and he agreed to $1,150 per month to help with SEO and some minor site edits (which I'd be doing anyway for SEO at first). It's month to month so definitely not locked in for anything yet and also isn't officially closed.

He said he wanted to pick things up around Easter as he's hiring a few new people and busy with that.

2. Received a verbal agreement for a referral from a previous web design client for the famous fashion designer (entertainment industry too). It would include

-One-time fee for around $600 to make really small edits to his site
-Monthly contract for anywhere between $500 - $1,250 per month (he said yes but needs to figure out which plan makes sense for him)

He said he will be ready to kick things off after April 15th.

3. Following up on pending deals - have a really good feeling about a few web design deals that are outstanding that I'm waiting to hear back on.

Basically almost completely finished with the on-page SEO updates for my SEO client too so really excited to start having her site rank well.

No changes to the yearly revenue tracker (for now).

 

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[GuitarManDan]

Hey All,

Good news - not completely official yet, but I've basically closed a $3.8k website project for a friend who owns a travel company.

Really excited to work on this one as I'm friends with the owner so I know they'll be great to work with, they have amazing videos and pictures so it'll look fantastic and be a great portfolio piece (vs the typical stock photos on other sites).

So I've met with the owners a few times, we specifically discussed scope, price, etc and they said everything looks good and they want to have a call next week to discuss how we can kick things off.

Will update the revenue figures once it is official and I've sent an invoice / they've paid it, but things are starting to pick up!!

I'm expecting April to be a huge month for my business, lots of potential deals where owners gave feedback that they wanted to kick things off after tax season, so expecting big big things from this month.

 

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[Andy Black]

Hey Andy,

To be completely transparent, at the moment I feel like I'm 1-2 clients away from being 100% maxed out for the amount of work I can personally do in a day (while running everything). At the same time, in the current state I feel like I'm not making enough yet where I'd feel comfortable cutting into my profits outsourcing.

My main goal is to just keep the sales pipeline going so that I basically force my hand to get creative and outsource to start building up a scalable business (instead of doing it all myself and going crazy).

So far I've been able to manage all of the juggling between different client projects (I'm sure it's been a little bit tougher just because of the learning curve as I'm working with my first SEO clients in the past few months) but all of the clients are very happy (both SEO and web design) so just need to keep going with that and make time / prioritize to build up my pipeline and keep moving leads along towards closing more deals.

I know how it's such a common beginner mistake to just put your head down and take a step back to see the big picture, so I'm working constantly... if not on a daily basis, definitely on a weekly basis to basically question every single part of my strategy / ways that I'm spending my time.

I feel like I still have so much to learn from everyone here on the forums, so I want to make sure I'm not stubbornly going down the wrong path when I could easily make some changes (such as outsourcing more of the minutiae of web design/SEO) to really scale things up.

I guess the point of all of my rambling would be given the situation that I'm in (almost at max capacity but able to handle it all myself and don't want to cut into my profits yet) do you think it's a viable strategy to just keep doing what I've been doing and focus on closing more larger deals to in effect force myself to start outsourcing and really build out a system?

I’ve done exactly the same thing: get enough clients till I’m almost maxed out so that my new problem is that I can’t do all the work. Now I’ll figure out how to grow.

You’ve mentioned a couple of times that you think outsourcing is the way to grow. I think most books will advise that. I don’t think it has to be though. Myself and @eliquid chat about that. We have a chat in here somewhere. The thread title is something like “Andy shoots the breeze with eliquid”.

A couple of excellent podcasts are:

• www.tropicalmba.com/services
• www.tropicalmba.com/consulting

Here’s my random thoughts, although bear in mind I’m also trying to figure this out, and we all have different paths anyway:

1) If you’re going to outsource you may well have to increase prices. The first of those podcasts mentions tripling whatever price it costs you to get it done. I personally don’t want to do it this way, but want to scale by picking a different(ish?) business model, and scale via processes and technology rather than by people. Increasing prices is a valid route. That’s where @Fox ‘s course and processes really shine.


2) I do outsource development and graphic design (and book-keeping, weekly reports, Google Analytics config, conversion tracking implementation, etc). I do the Google Ads campaign builds myself. I still also do the prospecting and sales calls and account management. I’ve outsourced tasks I’m either not great at, or can be done simply.

What can you outsource already that takes you time and is easy to do?


3) MRR? I’m most interested in monthly recurring revenue. I don’t have one off offerings. Clients and prospects often want one off work. So far I push back on it and have started referring people to other businesses now.


4) I don’t want to build an agency that does bespoke work for clients and therefore needs more experienced staff. My goal is to build a productised service, then platform(s).


5) Consider offerings at different price points? What would be 10x your current price? 100x? 1/10th? 1/100th? 1/1000th?


6) Different ways of getting paid? Pay-per-lead? Pay-per-sale? Renting assets you’ve built? JV with other folks? Spread an upfront build fee across many months and make it an ongoing MRR stream?


7) Really niche down? I have 25-30 clients in many different verticals. If they were all Blacksmiths then I’d have a very different business (and probably better).


8) Sell other services as well? You’re already selling SEO as well as web design. What about Facebook (paid and non-paid), Google Ads (paid search, GDN, YouTube)? Video creation? Content marketing? PR? There’s sooo much that businesses might now ask you to do.

 

[GuitarManDan]

One more update! Spoke with the newest SEO client (fashion designer who was a previous web design client) and I got the green light to send over the invoice for the first month for 30 hours of work ($3k) and she mentioned she will have someone cut a check and send that over asap.

Just sent over the invoice and we mentioned that I will get started right away so that will cover from Jul 1st to Aug 1st. Updated numbers below!

2019 Revenue Tracker: $25,285 Revenue / $100,000 Goal

Monthly Recurring Revenue: $5,000 Per Month / $10,000 Per Month Goal

 

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[GuitarManDan]

What is life-changing money for you?

Building an agency for web design/seo isn't an option for you?

I'm currently in my late 20s and I see life-changing money as enough to retire in my 30s. The way I work, I don't think I could ever truly retire and just sit around doing nothing but I want my time/freedom back and the ability to be able to pick and choose what I can do.

I look at it this way for the web design/seo side of things - the only way I make life-changing money in that space is if I build out an agency, hire employees, etc. With how fast things move in the tech space, what I'm doing right now could be completely obsolete in a few years. If I keep things just as a one man shop and outsource for larger projects it seems like the cap is around $200k a year, which isn't anywhere near what I'd need to retire early.

I'm a quick learner and know I could kill it in another space where if I hit a homerun it means retiring in my 30s vs. making maybe $150-250k in one good year with the seo/web business.

So what that means for my short-term plans is once I get a good amount of recurring revenue with this business, I can outsource the more monotonous parts of SEO/web design and use this business for cash flow while I build up another business with a much higher ceiling.

 

[GuitarManDan]

Just a quick update to the tracking below as one of my $200 monthly clients just paid below. Also a few more updates:

It still seems odd that I'm working way less than I did last year but making way more money, but that's the beauty of building out a system and learning from so many veterans on here and in Fox's groups!

For the large contract I just closed, I subcontracted the more complex part of the website functionality out and the person I hired for that (I believe he's a member of the FLF) is absolutely killing it. We have a weekly call with the client and the client is very happy with the amazing progress we've made already in the first week.

Since I've been subcontracting more monotonous work now that I have the budget to, I've been spending my time doing outreach and working on bringing in more clients. I'm currently putting my head down to do some more outreach for SEO and preparing some proposals for some high-value website leads that came in from referrals.

Absolutely crazy that in the last 3 months I've made more than I would've month-month that I did at my old NYC investment banking job!

2019 Revenue Tracker: $43,180 Revenue / $100,000 Goal

Monthly Recurring Revenue: $2,100 Per Month / $10,000 Per Month Goal

 

[GuitarManDan]

Hey Everyone,

Good day today, back home visiting family for Thanksgiving and a referral came to me from a previous client for SEO. It's for a law firm (niche I've been trying to get into for a while) and he agreed on a budget of $1,000 per month (going month to month but he seems to have an idea that it'll be at least 6 months or so).

Sent over the paperwork and invoice for that and just waiting for now. I'll celebrate once it's official but I've been making an effort to bring on more SEO clients so glad to get more experience under my belt.

His current site is absolutely brutal from an SEO perspective so I know I can add huge value. Once it's official, I'll update the tracking numbers.

 

[GuitarManDan]

Yucks. This is terrible. Sometimes red flag don't show up until much later too. You did your part. Hope you get your payment in soon!

It's been a tough pill for me to swallow to be honest, but it won't stop my progress/growth.

Working on Wall Street for almost 5 years, I dealt with so many ridiculous people who always seemed to be furious, and I learned a lot and got great at dealing with problematic people like that, so this is really the first person I haven't been able to crack.

We did SO much more than we should've. We bent over backwards for this guy for months and months doing things to keep him happy, but his insane edits kept coming and he'd legitimately say things like "why can't we have this feature... Amazon or Ebay has it".

I had zero intention of bringing in a lawyer until he threatened me and my business. I'm going to speak with my attorney first thing on Monday to determine next steps because there's no way he pays the remaining amount.

Most likely the next step will be to tell him we're giving him X number of days to pay, and if he doesn't and he wants to go the route of the courts, as per the contract, he will pay what he owes anyway (the $6.4k) plus his legal fees and my legal fees... so it's up to him.

I just want to close this out and to be finished with this guy though - it's wasting too much mental capacity and causing too much stress that's distracting me from other deals and growing my business.

But as I mentioned before, like everything else.. it's a learning experience and I'll get better from this experience.

 

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[GuitarManDan]

Hey Everyone,

Quick update to the numbers below - I've been getting a lot of lower-end referrals for jobs that wouldn't make too much sense to take on now, so instead of just turning them away I've been working to refer them out to people I know who are starting off.

One networking contact came to me with a $1k job and I sent it to someone in a Facebook group I'm in and he provided me with a 10% referral fee so he just paid me $100 when the deal closed. I figure it's a win-win - people in the earlier stages or looking for work get paid projects and I turn those leads into some kind of revenue for myself, even if it's not too much.

2020 Revenue Tracker: $21,299.33 Revenue / $150,000 Goal

Monthly Recurring Revenue: $4,533 Per Month / $15,000 Per Month Goal

 

[GuitarManDan]

Hey All,

I want to hold myself accountable to a 2020 goal that I didn't meet. At the beginning of the year, I said by June 30th, I would have my next business idea that I would 100% commit to and start executing on.

There are a million excuses I could use to say why I didn't complete this, but what's the point of goals if you don't hold yourself accountable, regardless of what's happening in the outside world. Instead of beating myself up over it (since I know that isn't productive), I'm going to use it as an opportunity to hit the reset button and think about why I didn't hit this goal and learn how to adjust going forward so that I can be more decisive on what the next move is for me.

What I can improve on to pick out the next business venture that I want to pursue (whether that's e-commerce, a SaaS company, etc):

• I'm spending too much time working as a freelancer in my business at the moment. Fortunately, over the last month or so I've started outsourcing and giving up the reigns as I've had the budget to start handing off work to other individuals/3rd party companies who can help with tedious parts of web design & SEO. Of course with the main focus being not losing the quality and the results I've been getting for my clients. I need to continue with this trend and get my time back so that I can have capacity to work on the next venture.

• I didn't make it a priority - at first I was just trying to survive what I assumed would be a tough few months with the pandemic, but when business started really taking off, then I was overwhelmed with the amount of work on my plate. This was because I didn't have those systems in place to hand off work. I'm going to dedicate time each day (I think I'll block off a certain part of my schedule) to do research into what I feel would be the best next step for me. I feel like there's so much amazing info on the inside and gold threads that I could start with those and work to leverage the skills I've gained running this business to jump into a new venture/area.

• I'm not being proactive enough - one client I recently brought on told me that he's sold 3 businesses (one to a publicly-traded company) and him and his wife basically started this real estate business because they're bored (which I'm helping with SEO). I know times are different now, but I need to be proactive and find a way to sit down and learn from people like this in my life who have so much amazing info to share. After the fastlane summit, I joined a fantastic mastermind with a bunch of other members and we've all seen fantastic progress so far so that's definitely been a great positive.

I'm going to grab a new notebook, spend some time each day and just start formulating ideas. From what I've seen/learned from the summit and all of the successful members on the forum... the key is not trying to perfect everything and just taking action, so I'm asking that you guys can keep me accountable if I'm wasting too much time coming up/executing on an idea. Appreciate all of the help and feedback as always!

 

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[GuitarManDan]

Hey Everyone,

Wanted to share a quick update for what I've been up to since the last post a few months ago.

August has been my best month ever and between the two businesses I did just over $30k.

To be honest, the last few years ever since I hit the 6 figure threshold with my business, I felt like I'd gotten a bit complacent and stagnant, and I just needed something to get myself out of that funk.

I realized that what had helped the most when I was starting out such as learning from others, surrounding myself with people who had accomplished the goals I was after, etc. are things that I wasn't as invested in anymore and I was sort of just going through the motions.

Re-analyzing gold threads and INSIDERS threads on this forum and joining other communities/mentorship programs that I've joined where I would almost guarantee I'm one of the least successful people has really helped me get my discipline back and just aim higher.

One thing I always wondered when reading success stories on here and other communities is when someone throws out a revenue number that they hit, I wonder what's the actual profit margin and how much of that did they actually keep. To be as transparent as possible, for this previous month, my estimated margins were around 90% that I kept and there wasn't one giant payment that overinflated this month's revenue figures, it was probably on average 1.5k-2k for each client from several new clients acquired.

After getting my focus back, I put my head down and finally figured out something that I had been looking for for over a year with my 2nd business and that completely opened up a door to a new way to efficiently get new leads/clients.

It worked amazingly well (I was a bit over ambitious so I had some spam issues with the emails I was sending, but I've worked with others who are fantastic with this stuff, created a new business email and am planning to kick off more outreach in a more sustainable way in a few days where spam/junk issues won't come up).

When the system I created was working, I was effortlessly landing clients each day and it was pretty overwhelming. Now that I know the potential that's here and did all of this virtually solo, the next goals are going to be around scaling.

I've had some successes and some huge challenges in the past outsourcing work / hiring freelancers so although there's definitely some hesitation around it, I know it's the best way to go after some ambitious goals that I've set.

Still a ways to go, but it's been a solid month and a good indication that if I scale this the right way it could be huge.

 

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[GuitarManDan]

Hey Everyone,

Wanted to provide a quick breakdown for the month of December:

• Found a way to make more money from my existing client base and had some crazy days this month where it showed me the real potential with this business (had one single day this month where I did $6k+ and another day where I did $5k+).
• I'm still not even close to at capacity when I'm doing all the fulfillment myself so the entire focus going into 2023 is going to be around lead gen and getting more clients/prospects in the door.
• This was the first month in a while I didn't have a one-off project with the seo/web business so the revenue on that side dipped off a bit, but the revenue for the rep mgmt business was up over 10k+ from last month
• I know I mentioned it before, but things got so busy I didn't have a chance to do it, but I'm going to cross sell to my rep mgmt customers my web/seo services. A new rep mgmt client asked what my other business was and asked if I could help with SEO so seems like I'm just sitting on money if I don't try to cross sell.

What really made the difference this year was when I had that breakthrough to get highly targeted leads for the rep mgmt business and from there, it was steadily 20k+ months for the last 5 months of the year or so, so that needs to be the focus going forward into this next year.

I'm super grateful for the progress I've made and all of the help I've gotten from the community over the years, and I'm not sure if anyone else on here feels this way either but even with all of the progress I've made, I still feel like it isn't enough and that I'm dropping the ball all the time.

I think I'm my own biggest critic and know the potential this business has so I'm just going to harness that in a positive way and use it to motivate myself to take this thing to the next level.

There's nothing holding me back from 6 figure months, I just need to execute on it, learn from others, and keep going.

Rep Mgmt: $25.7k
SEO/Web Business: $5k

Total for Dec: $30.7k

 

[AllenCrawley]

Welcome to America's Most Livable City.

 

[GuitarManDan]

Hey Everyone,

Quick update from me as the year winds down on the year in review as I really started my biz in Jan of this year.

Right now I'm looking at just over $20k in total revenue for the business for the year, this is way below the mark I set for myself at the onset of $50k (for 2019 anything less than $100k I'll consider not successful).

I still have a few deals in discussion that could push me closer to $30-40k depending on how the year ends, but I'm trying to takeaway the positives of what I accomplished this year and the challenges to set myself up for success in 2019 with the business.

What Went Well:

• Got my first paying client from cold calling and just hustling in the beginning
• Proved the concept (really got great results for my clients thanks to my website design and copywriting that I learned from various courses and experts)
• Successfully raised my prices 5-7x (once I proved the value from past clients) to set myself up for success in 2019
• Worked with two celebrities to really give my company brand name more value than just a random website design company (adds legitimacy and great social proof).
• Read countless business, marketing, sales, and other entrepreneurship books to continually learn and grow

Summary:

I'm definitely my toughest critic, so I look at $20k and think of it almost like I failed in a way (when comparing it to the investment banking salary I got last year), but at the same time I know how much of that 20k was focused towards the end of the year on just a few deals which makes it much easier to bring in much more revenue next year.

I've gotten a lot better at business skills I never ever had to work on in past jobs (writing sales emails, sales calls, closing in person, etc) and I know I'll continue to work and grow with this.

In terms of challenges, I know I need to do a better job of getting more opportunities and getting in front of more business owners to keep a constant pipeline. This year, it's been very up and down (usually close 2 deals at a time and then get busy and after those slow down I'll just be doing prospecting for a month or two before another deal goes through).

 

[Fox]

My advice to Dan way back was once he got cash flow from web design to start moving it into his own things and leverage the skills he has built up.

Web design is not a great long term play.

But it’s a fantastic short term play to get hands on training in selling, business skills, marketing, and communication.

Web design is just a half way house for those going from a life they don’t want to a successful Fastlane venture.

 

[GuitarManDan]

Hey All,

Picked up an unexpected client today. Random real estate agent I networked with over a year ago (who referred me to a big web design job a while back) reached out saying her website maintenance guy randomly is closing his business.

Using lessons learned from Fox's courses and everything I've done so far, I dug a bit deeper to really figure out how business was and what the long-term goals were. Then she opened up about how she saw value in SEO and I mentioned that I did that.. did an in-depth free audit and she wanted to speak this afternoon.

She told me that a min of $1k per month wasn't in her budget, but she agreed to my rate of $90 per hour for web updates.

Realistically, this will be a one off of anywhere from $500 to $2k or so.. plus a little bit of monthly income for some pretty reasonable work.

Even better, she seems to really network a lot and before she even really knew me she's been referring me out, so once I work with her could be a great opportunity for an eventual SEO client or for her to refer me to others she knows.

On another positive note... saw a specialist this week for the health stuff going on and it was good news. Still have a few follow up tests and such to do, but it was encouraging. Flying home tomorrow for my friend's wedding back in the NY area so things have been crazy.

Working to keep grinding and really make it happen.

 

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[Fox]

Not to be a downer or anything, but i feel that this entire thread is just a plot to sell Fox’s webschool and membership.

LOL

It's like people who invest in proper training and then go and use it get results or something.

 

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[GuitarManDan]

Looking at your goals Dan and the current figures it looks like you are right on 100k if nothing else changes. So to hit the overall goals you only need to create 50k of additional income on top of that.

If that was fully linear it would take around an extra 2-2.5k of reoccurring SEO income each month stacked up on top of each other to hit 150k.

But I think you can do this a lot faster when you get things ready so you can sell nearly fulltime. I really hope this outsourcing goes well first time around so you can step it up as fast as possible.

Keep on the systems for now even if the initial gains aren't there right away (but hopefully they are). As soon as you can focus your efforts fulltime on selling/relationship building the progress will be massive.

Can't wait! Great work man - especially on top of what has been going on.

Hey man - thanks for the feedback and advice here. Including a few different updates below since I last posted:

• Went to my surgeon for another follow up (last one) and he said that everything was healing right and basically that I'm all set with no restrictions so that was a huge relief. Still will be a little beat up for a few more weeks, but nothing too bad and slowly getting back into normal activities.

• One of my SEO clients I brought on earlier this year... after working for a few months with them, I found out they paid another SEO company last year and they did some insanely shady stuff that really hurt their rankings. To keep it simple, they legitimately just copy and pasted content from the highest ranking competitor and changed the company names. I had an honest conversation with the owner that he needed to strip the site and start from scratch because not only was it bad SEO, but I'm pretty sure he could get in legal trouble for that. I offered to put together a simpler site for them and he agreed at the same rate I was charging for SEO, but he became a big hassle to deal with. Kept saying he didn't like the style of it and he eventually said a friend would make the site for him for free. He asked to pause the SEO services and said we can start back up again when the site is ready (not sure if that will happen to be honest, but that was a difficult client to work with so I'm not too upset about losing it temporarily). Lowering the monthly recurring below by $1k per month.

• Have a really promising financial services company I've been speaking with based in Chicago that may lead to an SEO deal shortly and I met in person with a local financial company here in Scottsdale today from an introduction from a friend. Both businesses seem like solid connections to have and would be great clients to work with so I'm just focusing on moving those forward in the right direction to set up more sales.

• Quick milestone - so far at the end of June of 2020, I've almost made as much money in 6 months in 2020 as I did in all of 2019, so it's been great to see that positive momentum with my business. Just going to try to put my head down and work my a$$ off, focus on building systems so that I can keep bringing on new clients and work to scale this. The focus in 2020 has been treating this as a business and not just as a freelancer.

I haven't updated the revenue numbers in a while, so this is including some one-off projects for current clients billed hourly and a few other one-offs for the business:

2020 Revenue Tracker: $49,199.98 Revenue / $150,000 Goal

Monthly Recurring Revenue: $8,033 Per Month / $15,000 Per Month Goal

 

[GuitarManDan]

Hey Everyone,

I wanted to share another quick update as a follow up to my last post. I ended up finding a good therapist to speak with in the area and made an appointment right away and had my first session last week.

It was strange, I won't lie - I've always been someone who focuses on the positives/opportunities and tries not to dwell on the past for things that weren't that great back then. Either way, I was glad that I took action on it because I've been considering this for a while and am curious to see if it will help or not, but I'm keeping an open mind.

I liked the fact that this specific person I'm seeing speaks with a lot of athletes and professionals looking to basically get out of their own way and maximize their potential... that's exactly what I'm seeking as well.

On the business front:

• A few of my clients have been sharing some feedback about the results they've been getting from the SEO work and it's been really encouraging and rewarding so far. They've been bringing in a solid amount of business and are really happy with me so that's been great to hear.
• One of my new clients has been so happy he asked if he could move up to the next tier of SEO package so I invoiced him for the difference and signed him up on that.
• I cut ties with my Google Ads contact as it wasn't a good fit so I need to get a new system in place to bring in leads because I don't have the time to do outreach.
• I spent time the last few weeks coming up with different business ideas and now will focus on choosing which one makes the most sense and where I can add the most value to start pursuing that.

Also, updating the numbers below:

2020 Revenue Tracker: $81,599.97 Revenue / $150,000 Goal

Monthly Recurring Revenue: $9,033 Per Month / $15,000 Per Month Goal

 

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[GuitarManDan]

Hey Everyone,

I wanted to share a quick update for the month of August with the new business and a quick overall update. Even though August wasn't my best month (the new business did $4k), from all revenue streams, it was my best month ever so it's been good to see that progress.

I did a large amount of outreach utilizing different systems that friends helped me set up and I learned a lot from that exercise. Lots of bottlenecks in the process were exposed and I'm switching up my strategy a bit with outreach and which types of clients that I want to target going forward.

What's been incredibly encouraging is the positive feedback loop has continued, almost every single client that I've worked with is happy with this new business and either asks for more services and/or refers me to a business owner friend to help them.

The demand is there and the need is absolutely there to easily meet the ambitious goals that I've set for this business, the biggest challenge is just working through some bottlenecks in the process and continuing to push forward.

Besides running this new business and my main digital marketing business, I've also been spending way too much time addressing some personal issues too so that's been a huge time sink, but I'm doing what I can to balance all of it and not get overwhelmed.

New Business Goal: $250,000 in revenue in 2021

July Revenue: $3,000
Aug Revenue: $4,000 (up 33% from last month)
Total Revenue: $16,500

 

[BizyDad]

I think the mistake I made

I don't think you made a mistake. We're entrepreneurs. We "pivot".

This is still an incredible value-add.

And an even better prospecting tool. You can use everything you learned to target companies to pitch marketing help, and truly set you company apart by taking down those pesky reviews.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

The main lesson for me here, is how it's "easy" to find new opportunity if you have the right mindset.

And what an awesome 'hustle' this can be for someone who has no capital, but can now acquire some good starting funds ... $6K in one month working on your own with low overhead? That's $72K/year. Beats working at McDonalds 70 hours a week.

 

[Vigilante]

Thanks, my main criteria was cheaper standard of living (not hard to do coming from NYC), warmer climate, and a decent population of people around my age (im a 27 year old guy).

I also was looking to check out a city in the western part of the US (lived in New Jersey and New York my entire life). I really liked San Diego but it was way too expensive when I’m just starting out my business.

I saw Scottsdale recommended on here multiple times and I had friends who used to live here who couldn’t recommend it enough so I figured why not.

Scottsdale is beautiful.

 

[GuitarManDan]

Could open the door to a nice little niche. I designed Jo Blow Comedian's website, I can do yours just as well!

That's exactly what I was thinking too! So the #1 priority was overdelivering for this client and giving him a great customer experience.

After working like crazy for the past week, I sent over the comedian the first full draft of the site and just got this feedback and I couldn't be happier:

"Hey Dan! I think this is great! I love the layout. I will try and get some high res pictures for you and a list of tour dates, music videos to include, etc by later today. But terrific work! I love it!"

I couldn't ask for a better first impression with the comedian and the management company who promised me more work if I do right by them here.

Now it's time to continue to do a great job and finish up the final touches with this site and ensure everything goes smoothly. I'll keep everyone posted.

 

[GuitarManDan]

Hey Everyone,

I know it's been a while since I updated the thread on here - I've mainly been working hard to overdeliver for the two clients that I closed at the end of April ($1500 for the comedian and $4000 for the retirement planner).

The challenge I've been facing so far is the learning curve and trying to wrap up the projects (and of course, deliver) in the quickest time possible so that I can free up my time to bring in new business. Right now the current two projects have been going on for 4-5 weeks, which is longer than I'd like, but both are very close to being closed out. Most of the delays are on the clients side... it took me about 10 days to make the full websites for the clients. It's just waiting on small items here and there with few day delays.

I've been continuing to go to networking events to work on getting some business in the pipeline.

Another challenge is trying to line up new business while I'm spending most of my time working with the few clients I have now.

I'll keep everyone posted as updates come in! On a more personal level, Scottsdale and Arizona has been incredible...

I've already made a lot of friends out here and decided to renew my lease on my apartment. I've started to date a girl I met out here too and it's been amazing for my personal development making this move. It's really great to know that I can move somewhere new where I don't know anyone and make it work.

At the moment I'm involved in a bowling and a sand volleyball league with some friends and so far it hasn't gotten crazy hot (yet) in the AZ summer!