How I'd Go From $0 - $10k/m If I Had To Start Again

Going from $3k per month as an employee, to $10k per month running my own business was the most life-changing step of my life.

It was also the hardest.

I got a first-class degree in Entrepreneurship and started no less than ten ‘businesses’ over the space of 8 years without ever earning more than $35k a year.

Then I hit gold.

Within 90 days I was doing $10k a month.

Today I’m going to show you EXACTLY how I’d go from $0 to $10k/m if I had to start from zero again, without the skill set I have today.

1. Pick A Skill

I’d start a service-based business, because they often require very little investment capital. To charge money for a service, you have to be able to perform a skill or offer knowledge that people are willing to pay for.

When choosing a skill, make sure it’s a painkiller and not a vitamin.

Pick something people really need, not want. Most things people need stem from one of the following biological needs:

Sex
Shelter
Food
Drink
Sleep
Warmth/clothing
Money

Whilst money isn’t a biological need, it helps you achieve most of those things on that list, so it should be included.

I can think of several boring billion-dollar companies in each of those categories. That’s because people need them.

Whilst it can be tempting to come up with a sexy new business idea, if it doesn’t solve one of these needs, your chances of success are slim.

What I wish I’d known earlier, was that almost all the businesses I had tried to start were ‘vitamins’. They offered nice-to-have products and services. Some businesses I tried to start include a ‘Fresher Survival Kit’, a caffeine replacement pill, a fitness programme marketplace and a Zorbing park. None of them solves a real need.

My marketing agency solved a real need. Most business owners are highly driven by money. Often the hardest part of business is acquiring customers. Providing a service that helps people acquire customers is a painkiller. It solves a big need, so people are willing to pay for it.

If I were starting over again, I’d choose to start another marketing agency that focuses on one specific service.

If I were broke, I’d move back in with my parents, get a job as a marketing assistant and save enough money to live for three months, plus $1k for start-up costs. If you want to skip this stage, you could borrow money, but I don’t like debt.

If you can’t get a job in marketing, you’ll need to spend evenings and weekends doing free courses online and watching YouTube videos about marketing. 100 hours is enough time to become an ‘expert’ in almost any marketing channel. You want to choose one specific marketing channel to become a master at. Here is a list of channels I’d choose from, in order:

Local SEO
SEO
Web Design (using a no-code tool like Webflow, Squarespace, Wix etc)
Cold email
Cold calling
Copywriting
Google Ads
Meta Ads

The reason I favour things like SEO and Web design is that they are very high-margin services. You can do $10k in revenue and often take home $8k. With ads, the company has to pay for ad spend, which means they’ll have less budget to give to you.

Smart business owners realize their time is too precious to spend it learning every marketing channel inside out, and that they are better off outsourcing it to an expert. By spending 100+ hours learning about one channel, you’ll know 10x more about it than 90% of business owners.

The reason I’d get a job and then quit to go full-time when it’s time to launch, is because I’m a big believer in burning bridges as a way of motivating myself to make something work. With no income and a dwindling pot of money, I’d be super motivated to work night and day 7 days a week to make my business work.

2. Build A Website

Once you have become an ‘expert’ in a particular marketing channel, you’ll need to build yourself a one-page website to sell your services. I built my business to $50k/m with a one-page website built on Wix. It doesn’t need to be fancy, it shouldn’t cost more than $100 to build (including the template) and it shouldn’t take you more than 2 days. These days I prefer Webflow.

Buy a domain and connect it to the website. You’ll also want to create an email on your new domain for yourself. Make it [email protected].

For the sake of this article, I’m going to assume you chose to become an expert in web design as your chosen skill to sell.

Whatever service you choose, I’d highly recommend productising it.

If you offer web design, your offer could be:

Upgrade To A World-Class Website For Just $2,495
- Increase online conversions by up to 25%
- Improve your website speed and Google ranking
- Includes up to 10 pages

You want to make it a no-brainer offer that you are confident in delivering. You also want to sell the benefits, not the features. The benefits here are increased conversions and improved Google rankings.


3. Pick A Target Market

Unless you live in the middle of nowhere, it’s almost always better to start local. People prefer working with local people, and it gives you a common ground to chat about on the sales call.

I’d target business owners and founders with 1-10 employees within a 10-mile radius of my house. If you live in London, there are 66k people on LinkedIn that match that profile.

When you reach out to people in your local area, they are MUCH more likely to give you the time of day.

At my agency, we’ve sent tens of millions of cold emails for 2,000+ companies and the best-performing campaigns are always the local ones.

Once you exhaust your local market, you can look to spread geographically.

4. Acquire Clients

Step 1:

Note: You can do this step while still working your job

This is the part people struggle with the most. To acquire my first 100 customers, I’d use cold email.

I’d start by signing up for Apollo for $99. I’d use that to find the email addresses of 2k people in my target market, then run the list through Bouncer to verify the emails. You should have around 1k verified emails. Sign up for Quickmail, connect your email account and upload your list of contacts.

I’d then send an email copy like this:

Hi [name],

I was checking out [your_company]’s website and I was hoping you might be able to help?

I quit my job recently to pursue my passion of web design. I have taught myself to become an expert in designing websites on Webflow.

I’m looking to build a couple of websites for free for local businesses to help build my reputation. All I ask for in return is that you allow me to use you as a case study and to write me a testimonial if you’re happy with my work.

Would you allow me to create a new website for you, completely free of charge?

If that’s of interest, perhaps we could schedule a quick call to discuss what a new site would look like? Or I can swing by for a coffee?

[signature]

Send that to 100 people every day until you find 3 businesses that will let you build them a new site. It shouldn’t take long.

The business will be happy to cover minor costs such as hosting etc.

Limit the offer to a 10-page website, and charge them a nominal fee to cover your time for extra pages.

Chances are they’ll end up hiring you to manage their website full-time, but the point of this is to get three case studies, testimonials, and references so you have some social proof.

Step 2:

Note: At this stage, I’d quit my job and go all-in on the new business.

Now I’d go back to Apollo and get 15,000 verified emails.

Email 200 people a day with a copy like this:

Hi [name],

I was checking out [your_company]’s website and I was hoping you might be able to help?

I’m a web designer based in [city].

Have you considered updating your website?

Getting your website load time under 4 seconds will increase your conversion rate by 25%.

I have built websites for several local businesses, and they are super happy with the results.

I’m self-employed, so I can offer world-class design at half the price of typical agencies.

Is updating your website something you might consider in the near future?

Would you like me to run a free quote for you?

[signature]

This email will get you good engagement, which will keep deliverability high.

It’s your job to then encourage those prospects to book a call with you.

By sending 200 emails per day, you should get approximately 20 Zoom calls booked every month.

You should be able to close 4 of those into paying clients.

At $2,495 per website, you’ll be doing $10k/m.

You should also be able to encourage some of your clients to pay you a retainer to maintain their website and make regular changes, plus some of them will want more than 10 pages and be willing to pay you more.

Also, ask each of them to refer you to someone else they know who might want a new website

Every month, go and get yourself a new 15,000 prospects to email from Apollo. By month two or three, you’ll experience deliverability, but you’ll have enough money to pay an expert to run your campaigns for you.

Soon I’ll write an article showing you how I went from $10k-$200k/m, and how you can copy the same process.

Questions

If you’ve got any questions or ideas you’d like to run past me, reply to this email.

I respond to every email and I’m happy to help 🙂