xShepherdx's Progress Thread: Building A Fastlane Business

[xShepherdx]

Not a business related update but I finally got my finances back in order after getting rid of the last business.

And, after doing a lot of soul-searching and work on myself, I decided it was finally time to propose to my girlfriend of 10 years. But I didn't want to just do a regular proposal...

So, on a trip to Kentucky I secretly called 15+ breeders and found an amazing breeder who had a little black lab pup that was everything we've ever dreamed of. I Venmo'd him the deposit for the dog in the airport bathroom and kept the pup a secret until the proposal. I ordered a ring from china (saved about $4k lol) and I had everything set to go for the pick up date.

My whole family helped me surprise my GF with both the proposal and the pup and it was amazing. We all ugly cried tears of joy and I was able to make two of my girlfriend's life-long dreams come true in one day (get proposed to/eventually married and have a dog of her own).

Here's some photos of our little family:




P.S. I'm still working on Fastlane projects but have been spending 80% of my time getting my mindset and life back in order. The pup has helped with this tremendously and is a great source of motivation. I hope to share more updates soon!

 

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[xShepherdx]

Small win today: I just crossed $4k in revenue for May. I've never had a month above $4k before so doing that amount in 12 days feels amazing.

Lately, I've been focused on learning FB ads and so far this meme from @MitchC sums up my approach perfectly:


... except that I'm still fighting for a 1.79 ROAS

My ads are still just on the profitable side of breakeven so I'm working to reduce my CPM and improve my CTR now. These seem to be my weak points. That means better ad copy, better remarketing ads (zero sales from those yet), and working to create new creative as cheaply as possible.

If I can average a 2x ROAS I'll be over the moon so that's the target.

---

Why do I care about revenue if it's not profitable?

For a LONG time, I was convinced that my products were too niche, too specific, that ads wouldn't work, etc. But seeing the orders and positive comments has LIT UP my motivation to grow this company and removed many, many limiting beliefs I held about it.

So revenue = proof that I can use this company as a vehicle to get me into the Fastlane.

It's also given me a huge opportunity to engage with the market and get their feedback. So far it's 100% positive comments/questions on my ads and I've gained valuable insights into my audience and what they want/like.

---

Want to get better at Facebook Ads? Check this out...

If you're new to FB ads or have tried them and failed (like me), check out these two videos from Davie Fogarty:

1) How To Run Facebook Ads in 2023 - Beginner Tutorial
2) Facebook Ads - Advanced Tutorial 2022

Obviously, I'm no pro, but these videos alone took my ads from wildly unprofitable to breakeven/profitable. They took me from 0 -> 1 and now have a good foundation for growth.

I've also been loving Dara Denney's videos. She seems to have a video for every question I've asked myself and her channel is a really good resource for beginners.

With these resources, you should be all set to start experimenting with ads and getting your product out there. Don't overcomplicate things like I did, just get out there and take things one obstacle at a time.

 

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[xShepherdx]

I know I want to buy investment properties at some point, and I figured the best time to start learning is now - while I'm building up my cash pile.

So, I recently reached out to my neighbor who happens to be a real estate broker here locally. He's a SUPER knowledgeable dude but I never had the chance to talk with him outside of a quick hello when we passed each other in the neighborhood.

We met for around 45 minutes at his office and DAMN, that guy is squared away. Super knowledgeable about RE and ran a very solid operation.

He showed me how he differentiated his brokerage by providing real value to their agents instead of treating them like disposable warm bodies. I won't go into the details here, but he is 100% going to be a deca-millionaire or more within the next decade. His competition doesn't stand a chance if he keeps it up.

We chatted for a bit about the systems and funnels he's building/built, where he wants to improve, and just business in general. We totally nerded out and had a fantastic meeting. I learned SO MUCH that is applicable to both RE and my current business.

Some examples of things I'm thinking about now:

• Why don't I have a database of clearly defined SOPs for myself and my contractors?
• Why aren't my existing SPOs organized in a place that's easy for everyone to access?
• What do my funnels look like? How can I consistently fill them up with fresh leads?
• What drives the core of my business? How do I do more of that?
• Where is the industry headed? How can I take advantage of that?
• What do my people/team need? How can I provide that to them and make their jobs easier?
• What goals does my team need to set? How can I get them to achieve those goals consistently?

Leaving the meeting my brain felt like a sponge thrown in the ocean. He shared so much knowledge that my mind felt totally numb. But at the same time, it fired me up and now I have even more direction on where to go with my business.

---

One thing I can't stress enough is this: In scenarios like this, owning your own business completely changes the game.

When we started the meeting, he asked me what I wanted to ask him about. It was a very "student/teacher" question - and totally understandable as he didn't know I owned my own business.

I told him that I didn't know ANYTHING about real estate, other than what I learned in a one-semester class I took while obtaining my finance degree. So, the reason I wanted to chat with him was that I was building an e-commerce business and would be looking to buy investment properties in the next few years and wanted to start gaining firsthand knowledge before I was in the position to buy since I've never done anything in RE before.

Once I mentioned owning my own business, the tone of the meeting completely changed.

Almost instantly, we became equals. He asked some questions about my business and then DUG IN to the meat of his business operated and differentiated itself from others in the industry. It was amazing. There was no stress and he was excited to show off the cool stuff they're doing and struggling with - most of which I would have never thought to ask about and was SUPER valuable to my business.

I believe this meeting would have gone very differently if I was just an employee/prospective realtor "looking to learn more about RE" - and would have been way less helpful.

If you own your own business - even a side hustle - be sure that you IDENTIFY as a business owner and own that sh*t wherever you go.

MJ talks about Identity in Unscripted and I feel like that was what made this meeting so impactful. I identify as a business owner (even though my business is tiny) and that helped me connect with him at the level of business owner - which was truly invaluable.

---

He also invited me to come work for his company and I'm 99.9% sure I'll be taking up his offer. Not a bad outcome for someone whose opening question started with "I know literally nothing about real estate".

I think it will be a great move, but I want to give my business just a bit more time to spread its wings since I only just started seeing results. I want to get a bunch more systems in place so the business is less of a time sink and can operate without my constant attention. I'll likely do the RE job full-time and build the ecom business during the early morning/late evening.

We're planning on meeting up again in a month so I have a bit of time before I have to commit to anything. This opportunity seems way too good to pass up though. It will open tons of doors for me in the RE world, put me around a high-level operator daily, and give me even more knowledge and cash to grow the current business.

And who knows, maybe another Fastlane opportunity will be uncovered along the way.

 

[xShepherdx]

For a bit of backstory, check out my intro post here.

Since starting my business 3 years ago, I've spent been struggling to make it profitable. For the curious, this business is a digital eCommerce business operating in a creative niche.

But as of today, I am FINALLY happy to report that things are looking up. My ads are finally profitable, sales are growing, and I have an actual plan for growing the company moving forward.

To be clear, I’m not out of the “desert of desertion” yet. My site has yet to break $4k in revenue. And my feedback loop is only just starting to spit out actionable results. Things could change at any moment, which is kind of fun.

My ultimate goal is to earn enough from my ecom business (this or a future one) to live on and start buying real estate. The plan is to live cheap, house hack a duplex/triplex/fourplex, and grow my RE portfolio while scaling my income from the business at the same time. @Envision did this exact thing in my same city, so I'm optimistic that I can figure it out too.

My goals for May are:

1) Scaling up my Meta ads now that they’re finally profitable. More ad spend, more creative, more experiments. I’ve found a guy who can crank out high-quality video ads for my niche. They've been working great so I’m leaning into that for now. My goal is to profitably break $4K in revenue in May.

2) Figuring out why my email deliverability went into the toilet overnight. I was getting ~40% open rates for a while but now only 2.5% of Gmail users open my emails. And Gmail addresses make up over 80% of my subscriber list. Email has been beyond frustrating for me and this latest struggle only adds to my frustration. Any email pros here?

3) Begin publishing content on TikTok. One of my contractors had some ideas so we’ve scheduled a few months of content to see what happens. This is largely an experiment, but I’m stoked to finally have the ability to put out content regularly. If this works at all, I'll be finding someone to do content on a regular basis for TicTok, Insta, YouTube, etc.

4) Release 3 new products. These products fit into a trending niche within my niche. These 3 products will be small and marketed primarily as a bundle. The products we've developed are really sick and I think our community will love them. As a bonus, I've got a few affiliates who will be happy to do content around these products which should help.

5) Build (or find) a dashboard that allows me to easily see AOV, CAC, MER, conversion rates, and more. On a normal site this would be simple, but with paid and free products ran through the same store tracking even basic metrics becomes a huge PITA. Even checking the simplest data takes me like 20 minutes due to page load times and having to input the data manually.

This thread will be where I document my journey and share the lessons I’ve learned. So please, say hi, ask questions, and follow along with my progress.

 

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[heavy_industry]

Not a business related update but I finally got my finances back in order after getting rid of the last business.

And, after doing a lot of soul-searching and work on myself, I decided it was finally time to propose to my girlfriend of 10 years. But I didn't want to just do a regular proposal...

So, on a trip to Kentucky I secretly called 15+ breeders and found an amazing breeder who had a little black lab pup that was everything we've ever dreamed of. I Venmo'd him the deposit for the dog in the airport bathroom and kept the pup a secret until the proposal. I ordered a ring from china (saved about $4k lol) and I had everything set to go for the pick up date.

My whole family helped me surprise my GF with both the proposal and the pup and it was amazing. We all ugly cried tears of joy and I was able to make two of my girlfriend's life-long dreams come true in one day (get proposed to/eventually married and have a dog of her own).

Here's some photos of our little family:

View attachment 54885
View attachment 54886

P.S. I'm still working on Fastlane projects but have been spending 80% of my time getting my mindset and life back in order. The pup has helped with this tremendously and is a great source of motivation. I hope to share more updates soon!

That's F*cking WONDERFUL man!!

Good luck in your marriage and I hope this will be a wonderful journey!

I'm still working on Fastlane projects but have been spending 80% of my time getting my mindset and life back in order. The pup has helped with this tremendously and is a great source of motivation.

This is living proof that there is NO such thing as "work-life balance".

It's work-life synergy:

• Use the joy you get from home as motivation to work harder at your business.
• Use the $$$ generated by your business to become a better provider and protector at home.

It's not A or B.

It's A which leads to more B, which leads to more A, which leads to more B, and so on.

 

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[xShepherdx]

So, a while back I posted that a celebrity had bought my product.

For context, this person is HUGE in my niche and a bad experience with my shop could be a death sentence for my little company. Hell, this person is huge everywhere. Even my parents and grandparents knew of them. I did NOT want this to go bad. A single negative tweet would totally f*ck me.

So, naturally, everything that could go wrong did.

Order confirmation emails going to spam and not being seen, download links not working, weird website glitches, etc.

That’s not what you want when you’re dealing with someone who has tens of millions of followers and is a huge voice in your niche.

Luckily, they ended up being very patient and everything is good now. It definitely made for a stressful week though. Having your company in someone else's hands is never good. Avoid at all costs!

Despite the stress, I learned a literal TON and am actually grateful for the experience. And now I've got direct access to this person for future relationship building.

Here are the 3 biggest takeaways from this experience that I'd like to share:

#1 Stop using 1990s customer service techniques

My customer service is usually done via email. A lot of this exchange happened over Instagram which made things a lot easier. They sent me a video, I sent one back. Boom, problem solved!

After they sent the first video, I slapped myself because of how dumb I’d been. (Regular email? Really? That's the best you can do?)

It turns out that in 2023 people don’t want to read instructions. Even if they’re well-written.

But they will watch videos. And videos can be kept and reused just like email templates.

If I had taken a moment to record a quick Loom in my first email to this person SO MUCH of this trouble would have been avoided.

Now every customer question gets answered via video with accompanying written instructions. I tested it this morning on an inquiry and it made things way more simple and the customer really appreciated it.

I’ve also made it way easier and more clear on how to contact support on all our socials. My goal is to answer questions where customers are most comfortable and stop forcing them to use email. They can email us if they want (and that’s still where I’ll route most people), but I’m set up to respond everywhere now.

If you have the chance, try responding to a customer inquiry with a Loom or video accompanied by your regular email/message. It's pure SUCS.

#2 Keep it simple, stupid.

I watched clarity’s recording of this person using my site and they seemed confused at a few points. Mainly on the final thank you page, as there were no instructions on what to do above the fold. Just some stuff about setting up their account and checking the welcome email.

They never saw their download links like 10 pixels below the fold.

So now I’ve added one simple line of text above the fold on the thank you page:

“Your download links are below”

How else would they know to scroll if I didn’t tell them to?

I learned to stop assuming people know how to use the site and actually tell them (or show them via video like in point #1).

That was a design flaw on my part but it’s been fixed now. I'm going through and refining my mobile optimizations so that buying and accessing products is super easy on a phone.

#3 Stop assuming your users all fit the same avatar

Prior to this experience, I held the assumption that almost all of my customers were relatively new to the niche.

That influenced how we designed our products. We did everything with that avatar in mind.

I never actually considered that well-known celebrities or big professionals might use our stuff. But they are. Several of them now.

So now instead of just telling my product designers “We make stuff for new people, so keep that in mind and make it super simple, obvious, etc.”...

I also get to layer in “Remember, X big celebrity will be one of the first people to get their hands on this product. Let’s make sure they love it too.”

I think layering this into my product feedback will drive us to create even better products that appeal to way more people. Our product quality has always been high, and this is added motivation for everyone to keep raising the bar.

it's also shifted how I see my company. After 2-3 years of working with no real results, this validated the value I bring to the market and encouraged me to keep pushing things forward. Now I'm super motivated to grow the company and make sure the marketing and website are always on point.

As Johnny showed in this post, there are several ways to skew value in your favor and build a highly successful company. Everything needs to be top-tier from now on.

---

Final Thoughts

I listened to this podcast by Alex Hormozi today and it resonated with this experience. I literally HAD to figure out this stuff in order to win the celebrity over. I couldn't let anything slide or be done half-a$$. That put my brain into a whole new mode and I saw my business in totally different ways. I can hardly even explain it.

Before I was unconsciously comfortable with small growth and an average business. But now that big names are using our products my mind is screaming that everything NEEDS to be on point - which will only help us grow faster. Otherwise, I'm doing them a disservice.

It's like the game changed overnight. I guess it did kind, actually. I have a tangible direction to go in now that's been guided by the market.

Try putting yourself into a position where you HAVE to succeed or else (insert big consequence here).. I'm willing to bet that you'll pull it off.

---

P.S. @Johnny boy your post about stress and "blowing through things that the average person wouldn't have the stomach for and would make them cry" was incredibly helpful while going through this. I read that right before this person bought and it helped keep me calm throughout the whole process.

Funny enough, midway through this ordeal I went to a family member's house where some overweight job-hating slowlaners were talking about their jobs being stressful because "Debbie broke up with her man but now she wants him back and won't shut up about it and do her work that doesn't affect me at all".

It just made me laugh. 10 minutes before that conversation I was DM'ing a huge celebrity who could make or break my company. And I wasn't even too stressed at that point. It had become normal and I was deep in problem-solving mode.

It was a surreal experience and showed me that it's such a different world when you start taking this stuff on.

And I realize that my experience wasn't even crazy compared to what most other business owners go through. But I'm actually looking forward to the next challenge now. That means I'm growing.

So thanks for the post. Your perspective has always been super helpful!

 

[Saad Khan]

Small win today: I just crossed $4k in revenue for May. I've never had a month above $4k before so doing that amount in 12 days feels amazing.

Lately, I've been focused on learning FB ads and so far this meme from @MitchC sums up my approach perfectly:
View attachment 48768

... except that I'm still fighting for a 1.79 ROAS

My ads are still just on the profitable side of breakeven so I'm working to reduce my CPM and improve my CTR now. These seem to be my weak points. That means better ad copy, better remarketing ads (zero sales from those yet), and working to create new creative as cheaply as possible.

If I can average a 2x ROAS I'll be over the moon so that's the target.

---

Why do I care about revenue if it's not profitable?

For a LONG time, I was convinced that my products were too niche, too specific, that ads wouldn't work, etc. But seeing the orders and positive comments has LIT UP my motivation to grow this company and removed many, many limiting beliefs I held about it.

So revenue = proof that I can use this company as a vehicle to get me into the Fastlane.

It's also given me a huge opportunity to engage with the market and get their feedback. So far it's 100% positive comments/questions on my ads and I've gained valuable insights into my audience and what they want/like.

---

Want to get better at Facebook Ads? Check this out...

If you're new to FB ads or have tried them and failed (like me), check out these two videos from Davie Fogarty:

1) How To Run Facebook Ads in 2023 - Beginner Tutorial
2) Facebook Ads - Advanced Tutorial 2022

Obviously, I'm no pro, but these videos alone took my ads from wildly unprofitable to breakeven/profitable. They took me from 0 -> 1 and now have a good foundation for growth.

I've also been loving Dara Denney's videos. She seems to have a video for every question I've asked myself and her channel is a really good resource for beginners.

With these resources, you should be all set to start experimenting with ads and getting your product out there. Don't overcomplicate things like I did, just get out there and take things one obstacle at a time.

I don't want to brag, but I'm the Chad media buyer.

Doesn't mean I've had screw ups. We all learn one way or the other.

All I care about is whether the campaign is profitable and converting better than my category's average.

This is all you need to get good results with PPC

Good Creative
Good Targeting
Good Offer

You need to get these 3 things right, let facebook do the rest of the heavy lifting.

Focus on principles.

If your conversion rate is shit but you know that you're targeting your market than something is wrong with your offer. And your creative sometimes.

If your conversion rate is good but CTR is horrible you need to work on the creatives.

Lastly, check if you're really targeting the people you want to target.

Put me infront of any PPC platform and I'll look for these two things first.

The median CPC of a niche + the conversion rate of a niche. Then I would try to do better in both.

 

[xShepherdx]

Ecom Business Update

Hiring that ad agency was probably one of the best decisions I've ever made with this business.

The amount and depth of their testing and strategy are 100x what I could have ever done on my own.

And, most importantly, everything is being done without me needing to spend any time on ads.

So now I'm free to grow the company in other ways that only I can do, which is mainly building industry relationships and building/releasing new products.

I should have done this way earlier!

---

Real Estate Agent Update

I passed my licensing exam and met with the broker & his team again.

In a month or so I'll be fully onboard with them and they've invited me to attend any of their trainings or team meetings in the meantime. I'm hitting all of these since it's free learning and will help me get up to speed faster.

As a bonus, the associate broker was super cool and is way into systems and automation. So I'll be learning more about how they set up their business to be as automated as possible. This will be helpful for both selling real estate and growing my own business.

Overall, this brokerage seems like a great place to learn because I'll be around people who are focused on crushing it every day.

 

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[xShepherdx]

Been busy lately so a lot has happened since the last update.

Good news first: I broke 6k in revenue a few days ago!
Bad news: My sales are way down and nothing seems to be working all of a sudden

Right before Mother's Day I was spending about $200/day on ads and getting $400+ back in revenue. Life was great and the feeling of "IT'S FINALLY WORKING" was incredible.

However, on Mother's Day Eve my ads just stopped working and I've averaged around $50 in sales/day since then. I quickly shut off the ads, re-evaluated things, and still have no clue why everything stopped so suddenly.

In my search for a cause, I discovered that my prioritized FB events - almost all custom conversion events - were poorly set up by an idiot (me) and were no longer accurate due to website changes. In addition to those events, the events on my FB pixel (via the helper tool) were even further off because they hadn't been changed in like 2 years despite massive changes on the site. Ooops...

As soon as I saw that my events were way off, I realized I needed to move back to the standard conversion events (mostly for my sanity). It also appears to be the general consensus that they will work a lot better since FB's algorythm knows what a purchase or add-to-cart is. The algorithm doesn't know what a "Paid Add To Cart v2" custom conversion event is or how to optimize for it as well, it seems.

So, I completely changed how my free downloads were delivered and effectively removed them from the shop.

Now I have a single "Get all of our free downloads" form embedded on several pages around my site and a secret page that they get access to once they click the link inside the welcome email. This secret page is WAY easier for my users to use because it features all of the free downloads as individual direct downloads all located on one page. It also totally separates them from my store, so now I can run standard events like everyone else. (Man, I've never wanted to be like everyone else so badly before.)

Looking at my ads data, I found that 99% of the visitors from my ads were on mobile. This was not the case before, so I checked my site on mobile and it was clear that I needed to optimize a few things to make it even easier for people to buy. So I changed all of my product pages to be more optimized for mobile. No results on this yet, but it should be a change for the better.

Lastly, I changed all the prioritized and pixel events so they actually make sense now. I also enabled the FB conversions API using this tutorial. It was crazy easy and I should have gotten it done way sooner.

All of this should provide my users a much better experience, my pixel better data to learn from, and ultimately bring my ad costs down.

Splitting the free and paid products has also helped me with some email list issues I was having, which is a nice bonus. Now, people are more incentivized to actually read the welcome email since that's where their access is. My Gmail open rates are steadily climbing now so it's wins all around.

Now that I've gotten everything switched over I'm running a Memorial Day sale to get some fresh data flowing and see what happens. I'm very interested to see how my ads perform now after making the change.

---

I also had a very nice chat recently with @Saad Khan who taught me a TON about marketing. The dude really knows his stuff!

I had several big takeaways from the call, but the one that surprised me the most was that you can use ChatGPT to help define/refine your customer avatar. This is something I've struggled with forever and his method was pure genius.

Unfortunately, that's his secret sauce so I won't spoil it here. If you want to learn how to do it you'll have to ask him to share or figure it out for yourself. But seriously, DO ask him to share. It's worth it even if he charges you!

What I can share is that he is GREAT at simplifying marketing and explaining things in a way that a smooth brain like me can understand.

For example, here's how he explained what each layer of FB ads:

Offer/product -> Real value you’re providing
Creatives -> Convey that value to your audiences (Build up perceived value)
Targeting -> Makes sure that the creative is shown to the right people

It's probably dumb to most of you, but hearing it this way really helped FB ads "click" for me and gave me a tangible guide to follow. Now I constantly ask myself stuff like:

"Am I showing potential users enough perceived value?"
"Am I showing that perceived value to the people who would actually value it?"
"Where in my ads funnel are my drop-off points at?"

That combined with his data-driven "think like a scientist" approach was immensely helpful and I feel much more confident with ads now.

---

Last thing: My video guy and I tossed a bunch of ideas back and forth and came up with some ads that look very organic and also show off that sweet, sweet perceived value very clearly.

The final versions should be done by later next week and I think they're going to be 1,000x better than what I've been using. And, they're cheaper, way easier to make, and will help show/teach viewers how to use the product. Wins all around again!

 

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[xShepherdx]

After a lot of thought, I decided to give the company to one of the contractors I've worked with for over 3 years.

Aside from myself, this contractor put the most work into the company and is in a WAY better position to make it profitable. All they need to do is keep doing what they've done for the last 3 years - which is content, content, and more content.

The rest of the systems are set up for them to win almost immediately.

Unfortunately, as someone who doesn't make content in my niche, the costs to grow the company outpace any returns I could earn from the products we sell. The math just doesn't work unless I'm the one continuously creating everything from scratch.

So, as of today, I no longer own this company.

I'm now in the process of onboarding the new owner and honestly, this is the best I've felt in years.

My customers will be taken care of, the new owner has a clear plan to grow the brand, and I'm FREE (other than the onboarding, but that's actually fun).

I consider this a successful exit in all ways except for financially, which I'm 100% okay with on this one.

I built a strong brand recognized by many people in my industry - including several of the big dogs at the top. I learned a TON of skills related to e-commerce and business in general. I learned EVEN MORE about myself, how I work, what I like, etc.

I've learned so much over the past few years that I'm excited to share with you all.

If anyone is interested, let me know below and I'll share my biggest takeaways and lessons learned.

If not, I'll be starting a new progress thread on the inside once I get something new rolling. That thread will likely be much more valuable than this one - or at least that's the goal!

 

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[xShepherdx]

What are your data sources? Can you download data each morning from them, drop them into tabs in a Google Sheet, and then your dashboard automatically updates?

Woocommerce, FB Ads Manager, Google Analytics, and Klaviyo.

Right now I'm doing the caveman method of filtering the data on each platform and manually inputting that into a spreadsheet each that time I want to see a certain metric.

I hadn't considered just doing an export for each platform and dumping that into a Google Sheet that automatically populates a dashboard tab.

Done that way, tracking metrics would be like 10000x easier than what I'm doing now. Especially if I take the time to make charts that show historical trends like last 30 days, 14 days, etc. I'm gonna do some Googling on this tomorrow and see if I can set something up.

Thanks for the nudge @Andy Black. I'll re-read the thread you sent me about it too.

 

[Andy Black]

I created 3 videos a few years ago that might help:

• https://www.youtube.com/@excelcorner

Here's a post with a screenshot of our "Weekly Trading" Google Sheet:

• Building long-tail Google Ads campaigns for fun and profit

 

[xShepherdx]

My goal for May was to profitably break $4k in revenue. That's too easy.

My goal now is to profitably crush $6k in revenue - or roughly double my previous high.

That's only ~$194 in revenue per day. I've been well over that for the last few days. All I have to do is keep up the momentum.

To accomplish this, my objectives for May are:

• Make my ads more efficient and scale them up. Right now my CAC is running near breakeven with a slight skew towards profitability.
  • I'll need to learn a ton more about FB ads. I feel like I'm only scratching the surface here so I've built a playlist with a ton of tutorials in it. That's my Netflix now. If anyone has any go-to videos or courses, please let me know!
  • Test new creatives - A new video should be ready to go today and I'm working on getting more done ASAP. Gonna test some UGC/TikTok type of stuff that I can make myself as well as more professional ads made by my video guy.
  • Continue increasing ad spend while profitable/breakeven. I'm getting steady conversions and positive feedback/comments so FB's algorithm should naturally become more efficient over time(...right?).
  • My target is 2x ROAS for the month. I've achieved this in small spurts before, but it's not consistent enough yet. It's time to make 2x seem embarrassingly low.
• Launch at least one new product. I have one that's basically ready to go, I just need to plan a launch for it and get marketing videos done. This should be fairly straightforward now that I'm figuring out ads. We're also trying something new with this one, so I'm really interested to see how it goes.

After reading this post in @Matt Lee's "The MOST Useful Thread" I realized I've become comfortable with my mediocre life. F*ck that. So this month I'll also be:

• Doubling down on my workouts by making a program and sticking to it. Part of this is getting a gym membership and starting Kinobody. Gonna go look at gyms in my area today and sign up for the best one. I will have abs by the end of summer.
• Using GoalSumo.com to ensure I do basic stuff like washing the car, vacuuming, etc. All the boring stuff that slips through the cracks but adds to the clutter in my life. My goal is to make basic stuff like this a weekly habit so that it's painless and my home/workspace stay clean - which is when I do my best work. This also impresses/helps the girlfriend, so that's a plus too.
• Learning more about ADD as I've been struggling with it for years. I recently picked up Gabor Mate's book Scattered Minds and so far it's been very illuminating. Getting my brain firing on all cylinders will be important as my business continues to grow and I take on bigger and better challenges. I think fixing my relationship with my ADD is a key part of it.
• I attended a Toastmasters meeting the other day and had a blast. I don't struggle with a fear of public speaking, but my delivery and "Ummms" are killing me. I recently sent a video to a celebrity and realized after sending it how much better the video would have been if my speech was even just a bit more clear. I want my speech and videos/interviews to be as good as possible, so I'll be joining my local Toastmasters as a member at this week's meeting.

Let's do this!

 

[xShepherdx]

I'm happy to report that the business has crossed $8k in sales for May - double my initial goal of $4k. We also did ~4.5k in profit - whatever FB bills for ads (probably around $900, could be less though).

The new video ads should be done by the end of the week and I'm excited to get those going.

I also need to look at our remarketing ads more closely as 99% of the purchases have been from our prospecting ads. I switched the FB ads from ABO to CBO to see if that helps - so far FB has spent a lot more on remarketing than I did before and the frequency is up. Now it's time to dial in the creative + positioning of each ad. Maybe I'll add a coupon code or some sort of special offer and see how that goes.

Goals for June:

• $12k in revenue
• $4k in profit
• Have functioning system for getting consistent social post made + published
• 2.5x ROAS on FB Ads

How I Plan To Get There:

• Test new ad creatives every 2 weeks
• Test new ad copy/angles every week
• Post YT shorts, TikTok, & IG reels 2x/week (same content)
• Refine systems and build SOPs for myself and contractors to follow. My priority systems are:
  • Ad Creation & Goals
  • FB Ad Management, Testing, & Goals
  • Social Media Content Creation, Publishing, & Goals
  • Website Changes, Testing (CRO), & Goals

Long Term Goals:

• Have my video guy post social content 4-5 times a week on YouTube, Instagram, & TikTok. This will require good systems, planning, and a good bit of cash while we figure things out. Based on my audience and the response to our ads, I think consistently pushing social content in front of our target market will be the way to go. I have a decent plan laid out, I just need to formalize it and get to work. Going to start small on this one ASAP.
• Scale up FB ads to the point that it makes sense to hire someone like an agency to handle everything. Being so in the weeds with FB and the website has distracted me from noticing things at the top-level and slowed our product pipeline a lot. This is a ways off, but I want everything to build to that.
• Release new products once a month. Trends move fast in this industry and people are always wanting that hot new thing. This costs too much right now, but after I dial in the marketing we should be able to go all in on products. Right now my goal is to release new products quarterly though so I'm holding off releasing anything new while I dial in the marketing.
• Get the email flows to convert consistently. Things are working better since changing how the free products are delivered but there's still a TON of room for improvement. Not going to focus on this right now as I've got enough on my plate, though I check metrics and make small adjustments weekly. Still (not so) silently begging @Simon Angel to write his email marketing mega thread.

June is going to be a busy month and I'm excited to get after it.

 

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[xShepherdx]

Ecom Update:

I had a hugely helpful chat with @MitchC who helped me see where I was going wrong in my ad setup. He also inspired me to start using Canva for making video ads and now I'm able to do them on my own.

So now I only need my video guy for specialized videos, which is big because I can create + test ads/offers much more frequently and cheaply now within a proper ad account structure.

Unfortunately, sales have dropped back down to where they were before I started focusing on FB ads which is a bit demoralizing. I'm still spending $100/day on ads but have struggled to maintain breakeven on my ads this month - even with the new video ads and a solid account structure.

My plan now is to do some video ads for my other best-sellers/offers and see where that goes. I'll also be releasing the new products I've got ready to go and see if that improves things.

The only goal I achieved for June is building a system for getting my ads done, which makes sense because those goals SUCKED lol.

While reading The 4 Disciplines of Execution, I realized 3/4 of my goals were LAG measures, while only one was a LEAD measure. (Learn more about Lag vs Lead measures here)

This month, I'll be focused on my LEAD measures, which right now are mainly creating ads and releasing products.

---

Getting Licensed As A Real Estate Agent:

Class is going well and I only have a week or so left. So far, I've learned a TON about RE that will be helpful as both an agent and an investor.

My goal is to start working under a brokerage ASAP and get some sales/industry experience. I've surrounded myself with good people so getting licensed and working should be fun and very educational.

That said, my goal with being an agent is to learn about the industry from the inside, stack cash for my own RE deals, and search for other business opportunities. I don't see myself being an agent for more than a couple of years max.

Which brings me to the last part of my update...

---

An Opportunity In RE:

Throughout the class I've casually mentioned that I own my own business. This has led to a bunch of conversations with realtors, brokers, and educators - all of whom say they're struggling with their own businesses in one way or another.

One person asked if they could hire me to help them with a specific issue they're having. After chatting about their business, I'm very confident that I can help them out.

We talked for an hour and I sent them some basic stuff to work on. I also mentioned that I charge $100/hour for my services and can do X, Y, and Z for them if they want. They were open to hiring me at this rate but wanted to do some of the easy stuff for themselves first. I'll check back in a week to see what they still need help with.

For now, my plan is to hop around "Andy Black" style and help people as a sort of freelancer while I figure out what specific problems people in RE are facing need and how much they're willing to pay to solve those problems.

Ready, fire, aim...?

---

TLDR / Wrapping Up / Summary:

1) My ecom business has been a great learning tool that I'm starting to leverage into different opportunities. Being able to show people that I've built my own business and know what it's like to be an owner is a huge advantage. That said, I'm getting really burnt out and am considering selling/dropping this business if things don't improve significantly.

2) Getting my real estate license has already opened up a bunch of doors for me and I'm not even licensed yet. As soon as I'm licensed, I'll be working for the broker I mentioned in my previous posts. That guy is a high-level operator and I'm sure I'll learn a ton from just being around him.

3) As I get more into the RE industry I'll also be looking for ways to help people and provide value. I see a lot of opportunities here and have already started laying the seeds for other ventures.

Overall, this month has been tough. It sucks to go from making a bunch of sales, gaining momentum, and feeling on top of the world to a tiny trickle of sales, no momentum, and feeling like you're right back where you started.

I'm very hopeful about the RE stuff, but the ecom stuff doing so poorly this month has honestly messed with my head a bit.

---

July Goals:

• Get my head right and my confidence back to 100%
  • This will be achieved by:
    • Re-focusing on lead measures, not lag measures
      • I tend to feel the best when I'm clearly and visibly working towards goals I can control
    • Finishing up some of the books I've been working through
    • Going camping for a week with family
      • Stepping away for a bit always helps clear my head
• Create 3 new ad angles for my other offers
  • I have the products and angles picked out, now I just need to fire up Canva and make some ads & variations
• Release a new product and see how that helps
  • I know which product I will release, so all I need to do is:
    • Create the product page
    • Determine what the product launch discount/bonuses will look like
    • Write the launch emails
    • Create 3 ad angles for this product using Canva
    • Get 3-5 of my YouTuber contacts to do content around the new product
      • I'll also ask them for UGC-style content for ads
• Pass my licensing exam to become a real estate agent
  • I'll need to study a bit for this but it shouldn't be a problem
• Start working with the broker / start working as an agent
  • This will require me to:
    • Set up a new LLC + bank account
    • Purchase lockboxes, signs, and other stuff like that
    • Learn how to use MLS and the other systems that the brokerage uses
• Do a few hours of freelance work on the side to determine if there is a viable business there
  • Right now, this is mainly just side cash + data as I'll be very busy with becoming an agent and getting first-hand experience in the industry

 

[xShepherdx]

So far July has been a better month and the agency hasn't even started anything yet.

I've been working to revamp our Discord community and am prepping my video guy to start doing social content for YT/IG Reels. We've got a decent plan laid out now we just need to make it happen.

The main goal is to provide high-value content that is relative to our products. We will start by showing people how to use our products to solve their problems. That seems to be the shortest distance to the sale so we will start there and branch outwards as necessary.

It's crazy to think that just a few months ago I was praying just to get one sale per day...

And now when I get 5 I'm like "hmmm, why weren't there 10 sales today?"

Once I started making a couple hundred per day this sh*t got addicting fast

 

[xShepherdx]

Alright, made some big changes over the last few months and now have a way better direction for where I'm going.

1) I'm 99.9% done transferring the old business to the new owner. Everything's been handed off, now we just have to announce it publicly. My buddy is already smashing it as the new owner and I sleep great at night knowing my customers are taken care of.

2) I quit being a Realtor. It was a great learning experience but I couldn't shake the feeling that it felt like an MLM and I would always be stuck doing the worst parts of the job. I ran some #'s and even if I executed great, the money just wasn't worth the effort or stress. Fun experience, but definitely not the "business" for me.

3) I got a seasonal job at Target doing order fulfillment. Now, I'm getting paid $15/hour to shop for other people and see what's popular. At 30 years old with a bachelor's degree it's not a glamorous job but I needed some quick cash to get financially stable again. The biggest takeaway from this is that people are spending a TON of money on all kinds of crap. It's been said many times on this forum but now I think I get it - THERE IS LITERALLY MONEY AND OPPORTUNITY ALL AROUND US!

4) I've been working on myself a TON. I've been taking medication for ADD for a while now and it's had a huge impact on my life. I never realized how much it had held me back but now that I'm on the meds I'm working on developing new habits & behaviors that will hopefully result in me weaning off the meds eventually. Target has actually been very helpful in giving me lots of chances ("Reps") to test my new behaviors and build new habits. I feel like a whole new person and the tiny amount of cash I'm earning has really taken the stress off. I'm actually way happier now and am being who I want to be, which has helped in both my personal life and the pursuit of a Fastlane business.

5) I committed to doing eCommerce and finding products that meet very specific criteria to sell, such as being a physical consumable product that can hold premium pricing, makes use of a growing trend, already exists & is being sold, and that has lots of attributes to skew (aka problems to be solved). I've found something that meets all my criteria and looks promising so I'll be testing that out soon.

To find this idea, I read the first few chapters of Breakout Advertising and watched these two videos:

1) Moiz Ali On Selling His Natural Deodorant To P&G For $100M, Investing In Manscaped, & Holding Cash
2) From A Farm In Finland To A 9 Figure Empire | Tero Isokauppila

My plan now is to finish researching for the new product, get some mockups / MVP's ready, and start testing ASAP. I also need to do a proper plan/timeline for this now that things are finally stabilizing a bit again.

 

[Oso]

Not a business related update but I finally got my finances back in order after getting rid of the last business.

And, after doing a lot of soul-searching and work on myself, I decided it was finally time to propose to my girlfriend of 10 years. But I didn't want to just do a regular proposal...

So, on a trip to Kentucky I secretly called 15+ breeders and found an amazing breeder who had a little black lab pup that was everything we've ever dreamed of. I Venmo'd him the deposit for the dog in the airport bathroom and kept the pup a secret until the proposal. I ordered a ring from china (saved about $4k lol) and I had everything set to go for the pick up date.

My whole family helped me surprise my GF with both the proposal and the pup and it was amazing. We all ugly cried tears of joy and I was able to make two of my girlfriend's life-long dreams come true in one day (get proposed to/eventually married and have a dog of her own).

Here's some photos of our little family:

View attachment 54885
View attachment 54886

P.S. I'm still working on Fastlane projects but have been spending 80% of my time getting my mindset and life back in order. The pup has helped with this tremendously and is a great source of motivation. I hope to share more updates soon!

This is phenomenal.

Congrats, my dude. I wish yall all of the success and happiness in the world.

Edit: I'm just gonna say it: you 3 are too beautiful and wholesome for me.

Cheers.

 

[xShepherdx]

For some reason, creating ads + managing them is something I find myself resisting and putting off.

I have the framework and tools, but creating good ads is taking me FOREVER and is preventing me from getting other important work done.

So, I took a leap and decided to hire a marketing agency to do our Facebook and Insta ads.

I ended up going with an agency that:

• Was already working with someone in my industry and had gotten them results
• Was way more professional than other applicants and had their own systems set up really nicely
• The agency owner hopped into my ad account on a Zoom call and gave me a list of things he could improve on based on what they had done for my peer. He was very open about what they would do, what had worked for the other brand, what he noticed I was doing wrong/differently, etc.
• I actually liked talking with the owner and his team. They were fun to talk to, open, and professional. Lots of shared values.

They were also one of the more expensive agencies to apply, but based on the above I felt they were rockstars and could actually deliver results. There were several other agencies that were cheaper but all I felt was "meh".

This was a big (expensive) decision but I think it will allow me to focus on creating + releasing new products more consistently and engaging more with the community in meaningful ways.

---

Over the last week or two, I've spent a lot of time thinking deeply about these quotes:

"What got you here is not going to get you there" - Marshall Goldsmith (& like 400 billion other people)

"Volume negates luck" - Alex Hormozi in this video

"The easiest way to force growth is to delegate it." - @Johnny boy in this post

"Life is a gumball machine. It has white, orange, red, and golden gumballs in it. You can insert a coin, twist the handle, and a gumball comes out of the tube. Most gumballs are white. Then there are a few orange and red ones, and only one or two golden balls in the machine.

The white gumballs symbolize business ventures you try to make work but don't yield any adequate feedback for iterating the product or service your venture offers. Red gumballs symbolize ventures that generate negative feedback, according to which you can either better your product or service, or give up the venture as a failed idea. Orange gumballs symbolize positive feedback - your business starts to generate income, people like your product, but it's not a massive success. Golden gumballs symbolize the jackpot - a venture that masses and masses of people respond to, for example if you solve a problem millions of people have. A golden gumball makes you rich." - @MJ DeMarco in Unscripted

These quotes have helped me adjust my thinking/mindset and start seeing this business as something bigger than just a solo project with a few contractors to help out.

As a result, I've been constantly asking myself questions like:

• What would it take to compete at the top of my industry?
• Who would I need on my team to make that happen?
• What are my personal strengths and weaknesses?
• How will my team 10x these strengths and/or cover my weaknesses?
• How could I RADICALLY increase the volume of interactions in the marketplace?

These last couple of months have given me a lot of red and orange gumballs to work with, and now I have a ton of ideas on how to get even more of them.

I'm forcing myself to level up and loving every second of it.

---

Real Estate Update

I've passed my course and just need to take the state licensing exam which is scheduled for later this month. I've heard it's pretty tough so I'll need to dedicate quite a bit of time to studying.

Once that's all done, I'll be reaching out to the broker and moving forward with getting licensed.

Overall, the class has been super helpful and I've learned a TON of helpful things about RE. I've also made some good contacts with people who have spoken to and/or taught the class.

From what I've gathered, I'll hate pretty much everything about being a realtor. That has given me a lot of motivation to grow my eCom business and has also helped me see my business in new ways.

 

[Andy Black]

Build (or find) a dashboard that allows me to easily see AOV, CAC, MER, conversion rates, and more.

What are your data sources? Can you download data each morning from them, drop them into tabs in a Google Sheet, and then your dashboard automatically updates?

 

[MitchC]

I also mentioned it in @Lex DeVille 's thread here. Most folks won't do it. That's part of why I'll beat them.

GOLD! - EXECUTION - How to Create a $2k+/mo Passive Income Website in 30 Days (or Less)

Hi, first of all great post! I've got a question. When you say "Product creation" do you mean actually recreating the digital product itself? Or just creating a product listing on the page? Since you're talking in very short amounts of time, I'll assume it's the latter, but I want to be on the...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

Nice. I think lex replied to you exactly what I’m thinking, he needs to scale up and get things working before bothering with this.

Even only doing this once a week seems a little pointless with such little data.

The OP mentions free products, paid products, email open rates, bundles, new products, CAC MER conversion rates, google analytics, yet the revenue goal is only 4K a month.

I think he needs to take a step back, get out of the weeds and data, pick a product, offer and audience, run some ads and scale up.

It sounds like Facebook is starting to work, I would pick a product and audience, probably whatever is working, throw 10 videos in a dynamic creative adset, and increase the budget by 20% every day as long as it’s profitable.

I wouldn’t even pay for klaviyo or bother sending emails at this point.

Oh man I see TikTok is mentioned too. Man this just sounds exactly like how I was a couple weeks ago, I think you were saying you were doing the same @Andy Black

 

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[xShepherdx]

I don't want to brag, but I'm the Chad media buyer.

That's fantastic, I've been hoping to hear from more people with eCom experience. Especially the Chads/Gigachads

This is all you need to get good results with PPC

Good Creative
Good Targeting
Good Offer

You need to get these 3 things right, let facebook do the rest of the heavy lifting.

Simple and brilliant. Thanks for the reminder - it really doesn't need to be more complicated than this!

If your conversion rate is shit but you know that you're targeting your market than something is wrong with your offer. And your creative sometimes.

If your conversion rate is good but CTR is horrible you need to work on the creatives.

Dang, this is super helpful! Looking at my numbers now and I think my offer/landing page needs some work too.

Lastly, check if you're really targeting the people you want to target.

Put me infront of any PPC platform and I'll look for these two things first.

The median CPC of a niche + the conversion rate of a niche. Then I would try to do better in both.

Another gem. I looked up the average CPC on Facebook by Industry and found this chart that gave me a realistic target to shoot for:

Thanks for taking the time to share all of that. It was very helpful and I really appreciate it!

 

[DCG]

Ecom Business Update

Hiring that ad agency was probably one of the best decisions I've ever made with this business.

The amount and depth of their testing and strategy are 100x what I could have ever done on my own.

And, most importantly, everything is being done without me needing to spend any time on ads.

So now I'm free to grow the company in other ways that only I can do, which is mainly building industry relationships and building/releasing new products.

I should have done this way earlier!

---

Real Estate Agent Update

I passed my licensing exam and met with the broker & his team again.

In a month or so I'll be fully onboard with them and they've invited me to attend any of their trainings or team meetings in the meantime. I'm hitting all of these since it's free learning and will help me get up to speed faster.

As a bonus, the associate broker was super cool and is way into systems and automation. So I'll be learning more about how they set up their business to be as automated as possible. This will be helpful for both selling real estate and growing my own business.

Overall, this brokerage seems like a great place to learn because I'll be around people who are focused on crushing it every day.

Glad to see that ur doing well

 

[FastNAwesome]

Congrats my dude and best wishes from the heart!

Really happy for you!

 

[MitchC]

I’m not a email expert but search Klaviyo help for instructions on adding a dedicated sending domain and warming it up if you haven’t already

Nice work on getting profitable

You’ll hit 4K easy

What’s your AOV and margins like?

To be honest at the volume you’re doing I’m not sure I’d worry too much about all that data

I’d work out if your ads are profitable, or if you are profitable over all, either daily or weekly, and that should be enough

If you’re making money then scale up what’s working

Once you have bigger volume the data will be more useful

For example, unless you are split testing with enough traffic, and have similar traffic, knowing your conversion rate isn’t going to be all that useful

This could be horrible advice, I’m probably the first person to ever give the business advice to not worry about knowing your numbers and I’m sure it’s a good habit to get into, understanding and measuring those things so they can be improved, but yeah, just my opinion

Why aren’t you using shopify? Do you think you could switch now before it’s too late?

Once you scale up then I’d invest in better tracking software like triplewhale, then I’d scale further and start looking at other numbers like conversion rate

Right now, I’m my opinion, the numbers should be:
How much did I spend on ads
How much did I make in sales
What were my costs
How much profit did I make

You should be able to scale spend just looking at those numbers

 

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[Andy Black]

Yeah, for most of our clients we manually enter weekly data into a Google Sheet. I call it the Weekly Trading sheet. I posted screenshots in one of my progress threads.

I also mentioned it in @Lex DeVille 's thread here. Most folks won't do it. That's part of why I'll beat them.

GOLD! - EXECUTION - How to Create a $2k+/mo Passive Income Website in 30 Days (or Less)

Hi, first of all great post! I've got a question. When you say "Product creation" do you mean actually recreating the digital product itself? Or just creating a product listing on the page? Since you're talking in very short amounts of time, I'll assume it's the latter, but I want to be on the...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

 

[Andy Black]

Nice. I think lex replied to you exactly what I’m thinking, he needs to scale up and get things working before bothering with this.

Even only doing this once a week seems a little pointless with such little data.

The OP mentions free products, paid products, email open rates, bundles, new products, CAC MER conversion rates, google analytics, yet the revenue goal is only 4K a month.

I think he needs to take a step back, get out of the weeds and data, pick a product, offer and audience, run some ads and scale up.

It sounds like Facebook is starting to work, I would pick a product and audience, probably whatever is working, throw 10 videos in a dynamic creative adset, and increase the budget by 20% every day as long as it’s profitable.

I wouldn’t even pay for klaviyo or bother sending emails at this point.

Oh man I see TikTok is mentioned too. Man this just sounds exactly like how I was a couple weeks ago, I think you were saying you were doing the same @Andy Black

I enjoyed mucking about on TikTok etc. I even had a chat with a Google Ads client 20 mins ago and was able to explain what the benefits were and how to get started simply... from experience not theory.

I dropped video again this year to focus on the channel I know best.


I'd do those Weekly Trading sheets even with barely any impressions and visitors. Check out my progress thread to see me soing it even with €5/day spend.

Measure - Report - Analyse - Act
(I did a thread about that years ago.)

Or MJ's:
Act - Assess - Adjust

 

[Saad Khan]

That's fantastic, I've been hoping to hear from more people with eCom experience. Especially the Chads/Gigachads

Simple and brilliant. Thanks for the reminder - it really doesn't need to be more complicated than this!

Dang, this is super helpful! Looking at my numbers now and I think my offer/landing page needs some work too.

Another gem. I looked up the average CPC on Facebook by Industry and found this chart that gave me a realistic target to shoot for:
View attachment 48814
Thanks for taking the time to share all of that. It was very helpful and I really appreciate it!

I'll share the biggest lesson I learned in 2023.

Principles over gimmicks. In everything you do.

 

[xShepherdx]

Thank you, I will absolutely look into that.
In my case the problem was that I changed the title on the top of the page that says "home" and WP automatically changed it to an underlying page then. I made a workaround and said a few words that I dare not repeat here.

P.S. and thank you for the tough love. I worked through many google results, but totally forgot to ask chatGPT about this one although I use it a lot . Could have made my life easier...

+1 on using ChatGPT for fixing or customizing things within WordPress. It's my go-to nowadays for website stuff.

 

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[Matt Lee]

He also invited me to come work for his company and I'm 99.9% sure I'll be taking up his offer. Not a bad outcome for someone whose opening question started with "I know literally nothing about real estate".

I'm having vibes similar to another well-known Gold thread on here. You probably know which one I mean . I'm excited to read your updates. 1+ sub!