Moved to Scottsdale, Growing a Web Design Firm

[MJ DeMarco]

Hey MJ,

I can’t take credit for this one - it was all @Fox he recognized this guy has a huge ego so he drafted up this that I sent over:

“Hey David,

Seems like I messed up that email so that is on me. What I was trying to get across was that I don’t feel like my experience is right for what you need at this point. The last thing I would want is to not over deliver on what you need.

I take feedback like this really serious so I would love to learn how I could have written that better and any other way to improve. I joined the networking group to learn so any insight into this would be of great value.

Apologies for the misunderstanding - let me know your thoughts and happy to jump on a call if needed.

Dan”

Damn that is good!!

 

[Fox]

Forget all about it and go enjoy the weekend man. Your business will be perfectly fine and “cream always rises to the top”.

 

[Ecom man]

So not trying to give you something else to add to your plate as I’m sure you’re busy with what you currently have going but I wanted to reach out with an idea for you.

I run e-commerce sites and came across an ad for a conversion optimization company. That company charges 2k a month for a 3 month term to run conversion optimization on your e-commerce site. They guarantee to increase conversions by 20% after that 3 month term or you get your money back.

When I came across this site I immediately thought of your thread and wanted to pass the info on as the idea is a no brainer from a business owners perspective. I’m currently grossing 50-70k a month (on one site during the non holiday season) a 20% bump in conversions is worth 10-14k a month to me so paying 2k a month is obviously a great ROI.

Just wanted to give you a perspective from a business owner and how you could create some monthly revenue pretty fast at 2k a customer. Heck I would honestly pay double that if they can keep increasing my conversion rates by 20% every 3 month period.

 

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[GuitarManDan]

The good week continues! Real estate client I picked up last month paid for some hourly work I did for a total of $1,845 and she just paid the invoice. Updated numbers below:

EDIT: Just a quick note, the novelty of having all of this freedom still hasn't worn off after being used to the corporate lifestyle for years and years! I had a big smile on my face today grabbing lunch in gym shorts and a t shirt when everyone else there was sweating in the 105 degree AZ heat in their suits and dress pants.

2019 Revenue Tracker: $27,130 Revenue / $100,000 Goal

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

 

[GuitarManDan]

Hey Everyone,

Quick update from my end - lots of referrals are coming in from happy clients and that's really great to see. It seems like I've been able to get solid web design work all year with basically doing 0 outreach for that (been focusing all active outreach on SEO leads).

Here's what's been going on the last few days:

1. Been focusing heavily on outreach to build out my pipeline more while I wait for some of those larger deals to come through. I have a list of 100+ businesses that I sent customized SEO audits to, so I'm following up with those that I haven't heard back from yet. Called 10 yesterday and planning on calling 20 more today.
2. Got 3 referrals in the last two days! One is from a travel company in Canada that loved the site I did (literally found my info by clicking my "site designed by" in the footer of the site), another is looking for an e-commerce site for a new pet food/toys business she's starting and her husband needs a site for the general contracting work he does. Since two of these would be e-commerce sites they could be very good budgets. Have a sales call this afternoon with the travel company and going to pitch the other two sites in a few days when I figure out price, specifics, etc.

It's been pretty cool, I purchased a white board a while back to track my pipeline (also have it in a CRM too) but I saw how relatively empty it looked and my goal for this week was to fill this out with much more leads and so far just from the past few days it's been great progress.

Need to just keep taking smart action and big things will happen!

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Congrats on the big contract, this thread is like a time machine for me and delivers incredible nostalgia -- we both got our start the same way, with the same abrupt move, and in the same city.

 

[GuitarManDan]

Hey Everyone,

Quick update as my $100 per month client just paid (set up automatic monthly payments):

2019 Revenue Tracker: $52,146 Revenue / $100,000 Goal

Monthly Recurring Revenue: $2,433 Per Month / $10,000 Per Month Goal

 

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[GuitarManDan]

Quick update, just received a $200 monthly payment from a recurring client. I pitched them on a larger SEO effort (right now just doing a few hours of work per month) which would up the payments to around $1,200 to 1,500 per month so waiting to hear back on that.

Updating the numbers below:

2019 Revenue Tracker: $52,346 Revenue / $100,000 Goal

Monthly Recurring Revenue: $2,433 Per Month / $10,000 Per Month Goal

 

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[GuitarManDan]

Hey Everyone,

Been an absolutely crazy few days on my side. First of all, it's been fantastic to have a lot of fastlaners in town that I've been able to meet up with. Here are two recent updates for my business - one challenge and one huge win:

New Client Closed - I sent chasers out to a few prospects I emailed last year for SEO help and one replied back and wanted me to come into the office to do a presentation. It was a financial services firm and the owner was also from NY so I knew it would be a great opportunity to build rapport and learn more about how I could help.

They mentioned they not only want a long-term SEO partner, but also someone to redo their whole site. I presented yesterday, and called them up today and we agreed to:

-$7,000 website redesign
-12 month ($1,500 per month) SEO package

Just sent out the paperwork and invoices (after the CEO and the other partner both agreed and said they were excited to work together and kick things off). I'll update the numbers once those get paid but it should be a 50% deposit ($3,500 for the site) and the $1,500 for the first month of SEO.

Challenging Client - The $16k client that I closed last year has been a real challenge. Luckily we have a contract in place to show exactly what we will be providing. He keeps trying to add in scope creep and although he was happy for 3-4 months in a row, now that we are ready to go live, he keeps adding in these extremely difficult features (that we never discussed before). We've gone way above and beyond to make him happy, but he just keeps demanding more and more.

I've tried to appease him throughout the process, but it's getting to the point now where he's demanding an extremely complicated feature that can't be done, and I when I sent him over an email saying in a professional way it can't be done but here's a workaround, I also mentioned that even if we don't go live, we've completed everything on our part and feel it would be fair to collect the remaining payments... he sent me back this email:

Client Quote: "I'm too pissed to even give you a coherent reply right now. I'll either send you an email in a few days or I'll see you on our weekly call on Tuesday. There is currently no reason to meet on Monday".

He literally just agreed on our call that he was "ready to move forward" and that we were done and we were going to meet on Monday to give him some training on how to get into the back-end and he was going to hopefully cut me a check for the remaining balance.

Any advice on how to handle this would be appreciated, but luckily we're protected 100% legally if he decides not to pay or threatens any legal action (contract states any dispute has to go to arbitration and he has to pay all arbitration and reasonable legal fees). We can clearly show we have delivered everything agreed upon in the contract as well. It's a good learning experience, but it's been challenging.

 

[SteveO]

Seems like you are maintaining a good attitude in the midst of all this. Very important. Shit like this is bound to happen. Work with what you have (sounds like a strong case) and don't let any of it affect your other tasks or outlook.

Good job on your progress with this.

 

[GuitarManDan]

What’s something you can offer Dan to those people who see massive improvements with your seo?

I forget who but someone at the summit had a great point about selling them on the next challenge your solution creates (after it works).

Hey man, that's a very good question. To be honest, I've been stumped when business owners tell me that they have a full book of work and can't take on anymore clients.

Usually the only thing I can think of is to speak to them about their own goals for their business. This way, not just thinking of the immediate future but 3-5 years from the road. If they want to expand the business or move into other markets, they know I can deliver with SEO + web design so that would mean more business on my end.

I could send over an email to this specific client and just ask what her plans are with this business and if she wants to continue to scale/grow it.

This is the perfect time to ask her for a referral or two. And a review.

I already have the review! But agreed, always a good idea to reach out to the happy clients about referrals, you never know.

Seems like you are maintaining a good attitude in the midst of all this. Very important. Shit like this is bound to happen. Work with what you have (sounds like a strong case) and don't let any of it affect your other tasks or outlook.

Good job on your progress with this.

Thanks Steve - the summit was a huge help to see that almost every single person I met who had been running their business for a while dealt with challenges like this.

Definitely helps see the bigger picture, this is just a roadblock and the way I make the most of it is to learn and adjust next time I'm negotiating with a client who's a huge red flag like this to not proceed, as even if the contract is a decent amount it can be so detrimental to the overall progress of my business.

 

[GuitarManDan]

Awesome stuff, @GuitarManDan. Quick question about SEO...how exactly do you market it to clients and how involved is the process? I build in Wordpress and have used RankMath to SEO optimize the two sites I've built for clients. It's only a 30-45 min process so I don't charge extra for it, but I'm wondering if there's more I could be doing.

Usually it's more in-depth than this, but very simply you're telling the business owner that there are highly-targeted leads searching for exactly what their business does and they currently aren't able to find their site, so all of those leads are going to the competition on page one. It's really just about getting your online presence in front of people actively searching for exactly what their business does in the exact location they provide those services.

It sounds like you only worked on on-page seo which I agree is a one-off project at first. The monthly work deals with off-page seo and getting high-quality and relevant backlinks to the site, content writing, making adjustments as you see the rankings, etc.

 

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[GuitarManDan]

Hey All,

The 12 month SEO contract client that I closed last month paid their monthly recurring amount of $1,500 per month:

2020 Revenue Tracker: $17,799.33 Revenue / $150,000 Goal

Monthly Recurring Revenue: $6,033 Per Month / $15,000 Per Month Goal

 

[GuitarManDan]

Hey All,

Still haven't received payment from the one client who is thinking of putting things on pause, trying to decide how to handle that. In the meantime, the site is all up and running for the financial services client who paid recently and they're really happy with how it turned out. Even said that they ran it by some clients and they all love it so that's great!

Going live with client sites like that is a little nerve wracking for the larger businesses but I'm glad it all went well.

My remaining monthly clients paid today (and the other one under contract pays tomorrow) so I'm going to update the numbers below (one client is for $1k per month the other is $1.5k so adding that in now):

Looks I'll survive April still doing decent (collected $6.5k so far, will be a minimum of $8k if the other client on the fence decides to pay). I'm going to just assume the one on the fence won't pay and will start getting aggressive for the rest of the month to bring on new clients now that I have that additional capacity. On a side note, hope everyone and their families are staying safe out there with everything going on.

2020 Revenue Tracker: $27,732.33 Revenue / $150,000 Goal

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

 

[GuitarManDan]

Hey Everyone,

Had two automatic payments go through today - one for $1500/month for SEO and one for $333 for a website that I completed a few months back (we agreed on a monthly payment plan) - updating the numbers below:

2020 Revenue Tracker: $31,265.66 Revenue / $150,000 Goal

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

 

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[Vigilante]

Love your 2020 revenue tracker and your process since you started this thread! Keep cranking. If you can thrive during this downturn, imagine what you can do when everyone is spending money again! Keep pressing.

 

[GuitarManDan]

Hey All,

Things have been so busy just realized I haven't posted in here in a few weeks, that will change going forward and I'll be back on a more regular posting schedule.

Updating the revenue numbers below - a large majority of this is from the recurring SEO clients but I've also worked on some one-off projects for new and previous clients. Most of these smaller projects are lining myself up to move into SEO packages.

A few notable highlights since my last post:

• When outsourcing part of the SEO work, something went absolutely disastrous... fortunately, I was very cautious working with this company and the second I saw the error they made I was able to take it down from my client's site before he saw it. It was extremely stressful, but luckily I was able to fix it with no damage to the client relationship and I learned from it and know exactly what I can do next time to ensure it doesn't happen again. Now the question is just do I trust this company again (they came highly recommended by several people I trust and their operations head called me and kept apologizing saying they never make mistakes like this) or do I look elsewhere. Definitely a bit of a setback, but if it was easy than anyone could just snap their fingers and have a system in place for their business.

• Started some aggressive outreach, as I have the capacity to bring on more SEO clients at the moment and I want to keep ramping things up. It's been a combo of running Google Ads for my business (that way less time on my side to actually do outreach and such) and following up with promising leads from the past. I have a few potential leads at the moment that I'm working on closing and will keep everyone posted on how that goes.

• New SEO clients - I brought on 3 new SEO clients back in mid/end of May and so far I've gotten them some fantastic results which has been a big relief. Just need to keep this momentum going and keep grinding away.. realistically to hit my 150k goal for the year, I need to really step up my game for these last 5 1/2 months or so left in the year.

2020 Revenue Tracker: $58,433.14 Revenue / $150,000 Goal

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

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Any ideas for the conversion to a more Fastlane space, from a skilled specialized unit (selling websites) to a legacy value system? It's nice to see you ramping up, just want to be careful of getting comfortable in a direct time-for-$$ trade.

 

[GuitarManDan]

Hey Everyone,

Some quick updates since my last post:

• An SEO client of mine referred their husband to me as he owns a business also. We agreed to move forward to just update his on-page SEO and basically do month 1 of SEO work for $1500. Just sent him over the invoice and waiting on them to review/pay that. We agreed to review how we could work together after that so it may be a smaller amount monthly to do off-page SEO after that's all set.
• Getting closer to closing another SEO lead that would be for $1500 per month. It's a jewelry business in AZ that reached out to me because my website ranked #1 overall for some SEO related keywords in AZ. They basically told me it was down to my business and a much larger national one, and it was nice to have that abundance mindset where I'm pretty indifferent if they sign up or not. I've always been a naturally laid back and upfront person so keeping that same style has worked well for me to close deals and it seemed to resonate with the owners of the biz. Not sure when I'll hear back but I'll keep everyone posted.
• Although I've been doing almost entirely SEO, still have a few web design leads. One e-commerce company in AZ reached out to me and their site is absolutely brutal. They told me their conversion % and it's really really low to the point where I know I'd be able to step in and help them increase conversions and sales massively. They reached out and said they've been too busy to review my proposal so I'm going to pivot off of that and talk about automation and ask what they've been spending the most time on.
• It seems like an overwhelming process to think of the next biz idea, but just like it was originally overwhelming to leave my job and completely uproot my whole life from NYC to Scottsdale... I know it'll be worth it in the long run. For now I'm just thinking of what ways I could add value in different industries and writing down ideas in a journal of mine. I want it to be something that more closely matches the CENTS framework but also something where I know I could skew value and not just be another person in the industry.

It's already looking like August will be my best month yet so far with the whole business so just trying to keep that momentum going! Updated numbers below (I've been getting recurring payments from different clients on different days of the month so I haven't been posting the exact source of each part of the revenue additions but on top of the recurring clients I still have one-off projects and sources of income if there seems to be a discrepancy):

2020 Revenue Tracker: $72,666.64 Revenue / $150,000 Goal

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

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Awesome brother, you got to be proud of the progress. Hope your 2021 shakes out even better.

 

[JunkBoxJoey_JBJ]

Proposed name change pending... Guitar “The Man” Dan ~ keep it up, great thread/work.

 

[GuitarManDan]

Hey Guys,

Just a quick update here (I'll go in and edit this later to add in more info) but wanted to just highlight quickly what's been going on with the business this previous month:

Now that I've proven the concept with this business and seen what's possible, my main focus this month was on automation and leveraging systems so that I can execute on a larger scale.

With the amazing network of entrepreneurs that I've met through the forum and since living out in Scottsdale, a good friend who is an expert at automation / systems graciously offered to help out and we worked together to find the right systems to do what I need to start scaling here so that's really exciting.

I barely did any new outreach this month and was still able to bring in $3k from current businesses that I'm working with already and the new goal is by Monday next week, to do outreach to 100 businesses as a quick test run to see how it goes with the systems in place.

I figure this run will help me identify challenges in the processes/systems that I can improve upon before really scaling things up and reaching out to much more businesses.

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

June Revenue: $6,500
July Revenue: $3,000 (-54% from last month)
Total Revenue: $12,500

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Speaking of demand...

So I heard through the grapevine what you are building and whenever you think it makes sense, please reach out. I have clients who from time to time need what you're building. Maybe we grab a bite?

Kudos on finding a problem and tackling it.

Damn, way to raise the level of intrigue!

 

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[GuitarManDan]

Hey All,

Wanted to provide a quick snapshot overview for the month of October. Since the business has been picking up, this was the first month that I've traveled (had a family member get married so I spent a few weeks away from Scottsdale for that) and even though the revenue took a bit of a dip, I still was able to produce decent results and balance traveling/seeing family with growing the business.

Rep Mgmt: $18.4k
SEO/Web Business: $8.5k

Total for Oct: $26.9k

Main goals for this month are to start getting a few salespeople on the team on a commission basis (as I just don't have the capacity to physically call up leads that I have (but I do have lists of leads ready to go). The plan is to identify someone that I trust who's based in either the US or Canada.

 

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[SteveO]

mmmmmmmmmmmm

What? You want to eat Danny DeVito?

View: https://youtu.be/Uth5Vt6bc-M

 

[GuitarManDan]

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

BTW, can I put this outside or do you want it to remain private on the Inside?

Thanks MJ! Of course, more than happy to have this on the outside. I've been a lurker on the inside for a while so I wanted to have this be a kind of introduction as well.

Not going to lie, it's extremely inspiring how much wealth there is in Scottsdale. Other friends I know who lived here said it's intimidating, but it makes me want to hustle my a$$ off.

 

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[MTF]

My hometown is Mexicali, Baja, which has the same weather as Phoenix I believe. And I can verify. Humans adapt. Although, I'm not sure how healthy is to expose yourself to extreme heath every day.

I'm pretty sure that it's much healthier to expose yourself to extreme heat than to extreme cold. And humans, as animals coming from the tropics, can more easily adapt to high temperatures and full sunshine than low temperatures and no sunshine.

 

[biophase]

I'm pretty sure that it's much healthier to expose yourself to extreme heat than to extreme cold. And humans, as animals coming from the tropics, can more easily adapt to high temperatures and full sunshine than low temperatures and no sunshine.

Living in the cold does have some advantages and I think I finally figured out why I'm always hot. It's the brown fat. Didn't know this existed before but it checks alot of boxes as to why I stay skinny and am always hot. How do I get brown fat in Phoenix, well winter still gets below 60 and I'm still wearing t-shirts and shorts.

Cool Temperature Alters Human Fat and Metabolism

 

[biophase]

Haha, I've found myself using Facebook these days only for the events feature. I do enjoy playing poker!

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Just closed a $1,500 WordPress site redo for a famous comedian!

So a little back story, a good friend of mine back in NYC told me she brought in a big client for her comedy talent management business she works for and she isn't going to see any commission on that.

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

 

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