^ Great feeling. Unstoppable Force of Nature is my way to describe it.

This week was a bit of a wash for me.

I spent Monday moving flats. On Tuesday, I did a one day visa run rotation to and from Hong Kong.

The pretty much wiped me out. Other than regular hourly work, I didn't accomplish anything Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

I'll be back on the horse tomorrow (Monday).

The previous several weeks have been very productive (it's amazing how much you get done when you get serious and put the time in) and I'm going to get busy riding that wave again first thing tomorrow.

Fuck. Had a truck stolen last year (only an old one) and my old insurance company have 'not invited renewal' through my broker. Nearest quote for a fleet policy the same as we've been running is more than double, at £5.5k.

Think I'm going to have to sell some vehicles and insure them individually again. There goes another day on office work, and no doubt with a heft increase in insurance cost to boot.

for people who dropship, can anyone recommend a good fulfillment center alternative to Amazon in the US?

An interesting story.



Almost two months, I have sent a shipment to a Chinese Ebay customer. It was not that cheap - If I remember correctly, it was $120+ (+ shipping).



On my part, I did everything correctly - I have sent to the correct address, provided tracking etc. In the messages, he said that he really was looking forward to it. All in all, I have made a fine profit.



Today, I have received a notice from the post office, telling me that I have received a box from Germany. I was puzzled, because I have not ordered anything from there.



When I came to the post office, I was in shock...that package from Germany was...the aforementioned package that I have sent to China!! I have paid a small fee, and took it home.



When I came home, I googled a little bit, and found out that I can actually keep both the package and the money (customer did not pick it up, and thus, he voided Ebay Buyer Protection). Now, if I follow Ebay TOS, I am in the right, but morally...I do not know. He paid a lot for it, and I really felt...bad looking at the package. No matter what the Ebay TOS says, I am nothing more than a thief.



I have decided to contact my customer, and to tell him that I can send the package again (at his expense), or to refund him (- shipping and restocking fees). Even if he does not answer...I know that I did the right thing. And I know that God, or whathever higher force, will appreciate this.



I am a businessman...and a human being as well. I will never forget that fact.

Same thing happened to me.

I hit the customer up for the additional shipping and sent it out again. I even did it once for free in hopes in gaining future business. Reputation is everything out there these days.

Quote: (07-06-2017 01:29 PM)Irenicus Wrote:  

An interesting story.



Almost two months, I have sent a shipment to a Chinese Ebay customer. It was not that cheap - If I remember correctly, it was $120+ (+ shipping).



On my part, I did everything correctly - I have sent to the correct address, provided tracking etc. In the messages, he said that he really was looking forward to it. All in all, I have made a fine profit.



Today, I have received a notice from the post office, telling me that I have received a box from Germany. I was puzzled, because I have not ordered anything from there.



When I came to the post office, I was in shock...that package from Germany was...the aforementioned package that I have sent to China!! I have paid a small fee, and took it home.



When I came home, I googled a little bit, and found out that I can actually keep both the package and the money (customer did not pick it up, and thus, he voided Ebay Buyer Protection). Now, if I follow Ebay TOS, I am in the right, but morally...I do not know. He paid a lot for it, and I really felt...bad looking at the package. No matter what the Ebay TOS says, I am nothing more than a thief.



I have decided to contact my customer, and to tell him that I can send the package again (at his expense), or to refund him (- shipping and restocking fees). Even if he does not answer...I know that I did the right thing. And I know that God, or whathever higher force, will appreciate this.



I am a businessman...and a human being as well. I will never forget that fact.

You are doing the right thing. Don't forget that your time is valuable, so a handling fee is appropriate (you can forego that if you wish, but it is a consideration).

Personally I would put a time-frame on it as well. Tell him he has to respond/pay within a week (or 2 if you wish) or you will abide by the EBay Terms of Service and you are only doing this in order to do your best to complete the transaction.

In February i started some affiliate marketing websites and have continued to do so. My best made $200 last month and the others combining to about $100. I also partnered up with someone and bought a site, from that one my part was $300 last month. Totaling $600 100% passive. I have been making new websites since and have close to 10 now, most doesnt make any money yet but they are climbing the google ladder.

I'm from Scandinavia and the sites are all in my native language, the coming days i will get a translator from fiverr and get the best one translated into another Scandinavian language(which i understand, but cant write it very good).

Today i will buy software for accounting and get that going, havent used the money generated so far and want to start making them work by outsourcing stuff. I have paid all expenses with my private money.

The coming week i will also try to finish the site im currently working on, im 100% not interested in that niche so every word is a pain, but i think its a really good niche.

In the near future i will translate all sites into one of the other Scandinavian language if it goes well with the first. I will also start a English site outsourcing all copy.

I'm not putting in tons of hours, just try to work a little bit every day. In the beginning i worked my ass of and sucked up all information i could from my friend and mentor.

^^^^This is what it sounds like when a person stops dreaming and starts doing.

Keep up the good work.

Quote: (07-08-2017 03:20 AM)Suits Wrote:  

^^^^This is what it sounds like when a person stops dreaming and starts doing.

Keep up the good work.

Yep you gotta put in that work. I am making over $1000 a month just from one weekends worth of work per month and I game in the nights while doing it. This is on top my regular job!

I still have a little managing to do throughout the week but all in all its easy money.

Stop dreaming.. Research the fuck out of it and get moving.

Quote: (07-08-2017 01:42 AM)Burn Wrote:  

In February i started some affiliate marketing websites and have continued to do so. My best made $200 last month and the others combining to about $100. I also partnered up with someone and bought a site, from that one my part was $300 last month. Totaling $600 100% passive. I have been making new websites since and have close to 10 now, most doesnt make any money yet but they are climbing the google ladder.

I'm from Scandinavia and the sites are all in my native language, the coming days i will get a translator from fiverr and get the best one translated into another Scandinavian language(which i understand, but cant write it very good).

Today i will buy software for accounting and get that going, havent used the money generated so far and want to start making them work by outsourcing stuff. I have paid all expenses with my private money.

The coming week i will also try to finish the site im currently working on, im 100% not interested in that niche so every word is a pain, but i think its a really good niche.

In the near future i will translate all sites into one of the other Scandinavian language if it goes well with the first. I will also start a English site outsourcing all copy.

I'm not putting in tons of hours, just try to work a little bit every day. In the beginning i worked my ass of and sucked up all information i could from my friend and mentor.

Really nice work. Congratulations.

Finished up one contract, landed another small one (few thousand bucks), knocking out a small free job for a friend that talks me up to all his business contacts.

Been doing a solid 9-10 hours of work 6 days a week, with aroond 25% of those hours working on improving my skills.

I need to start hustling on advertising. It's one thing to get word of mouth contracts hear and there, but I need to treat this as a business not a side project hobby where I wait for the work to come to me.

Tomorrow my goal is to scout out the local competition. Some targeted google searches and walking around downtown areas looking for any related flyers in coffee shops, longues, etc.

Quote: (07-08-2017 03:20 AM)Suits Wrote:  

^^^^This is what it sounds like when a person stops dreaming and starts doing.

Keep up the good work.

Thank you, will do!

Quote: (07-08-2017 08:52 AM)This Is Trouble Wrote:  

Really nice work. Congratulations.

Thank you!

Hope its ok to use this thread as log/accountability.

This week I have:
- Hired a translator to translate the first site.
- Continued to work on my current site, not as much as i wanted but a little every day.
- Got accounting software and started to play with it. Its a headache and i will probably pay someone to do it.

The coming week i will:
- Have all text written on my current site.
- Have the translated site up and running.
- Have a second site sent for translation if all goes well with first.

Goal every month is to have higher income than the one before. After half this month im on pace to beating last month.

Have been scaling up my consultancy lately, and did a big email push to a list I had a Filipina VA harvest from an online database. The push went pretty well, I harvested about 6 fields, and used 3 of them to switch the type of email I sent. I used close.io to do the actual mailing, worked well.

Anyway - positive results. I sent about 500 mails. Got about 20% response rate, most of them saying they weren't interested. Some saying they were interested but had no money. Some with some actual interest.

One of them after a couple calls has turned into a client that wants as much of my time as I can sell him for the next 6 months. Kicker of course is that he's my second client that wants that, and I still haven't managed to hire someone else to take some of this work.

I guess it's a quality problem.

Quote: (07-17-2017 02:07 AM)Malone Wrote:  

Have been scaling up my consultancy lately, and did a big email push to a list I had a Filipina VA harvest from an online database. The push went pretty well, I harvested about 6 fields, and used 3 of them to switch the type of email I sent. I used close.io to do the actual mailing, worked well.

Anyway - positive results. I sent about 500 mails. Got about 20% response rate, most of them saying they weren't interested. Some saying they were interested but had no money. Some with some actual interest.

One of them after a couple calls has turned into a client that wants as much of my time as I can sell him for the next 6 months. Kicker of course is that he's my second client that wants that, and I still haven't managed to hire someone else to take some of this work.

I guess it's a quality problem.

Those rates are pretty good.

When you say it's a quality problem, what do you mean? The quality of the online database your VA got the emails from, or the quality of your own email follow ups to those who are interested?

I mean it's a high quality problem to have: more paying work than I can service. Sorry, bit of an idiom from my youth.

It's actually a bit of a chicken and egg thing. I should really have hired before I got more work, but on the other hand I don't want to spend a ton of money hiring someone and then not have any work for them for months.

I'm cheating a bit here, hopefully I can manage it.

Quote: (06-28-2017 10:03 AM)El_Gostro Wrote:  

Also, anyone with web design skillz available here? I need to buy a new domain and theorethically I'd take the opportunity to actualize my site which needs a migration to wordpress...

Did you get this sorted out?

Quote: (07-17-2017 03:22 AM)Malone Wrote:  

I mean it's a high quality problem to have: more paying work than I can service. Sorry, bit of an idiom from my youth.

It's actually a bit of a chicken and egg thing. I should really have hired before I got more work, but on the other hand I don't want to spend a ton of money hiring someone and then not have any work for them for months.

I'm cheating a bit here, hopefully I can manage it.

I ran a consultancy for many years, and you definitely do NOT want to hire before getting more work. As you said, it seems like a chicken and egg thing, but the moment you increase your expenses with the hope of filling pipeline, you've set up a large hole for yourself to fall into if you cannot fill pipeline (for whatever reason).

The better way to play this is to book work, but with delayed start dates. Eg: start conversations with prospects right now, but you say your "team is only available Aug 15th" (for example). This way, you don't decline work, but don't have a huge work load yet, and you buy yourself time to find and train people to do the work. It can get very very scary if your work pipeline goes dry, or if projects fall through, and you have high fixed expenses in terms of staff.

I know CleanSlate also recently started freelancing remotely, and services businesses are great for margin when you are starting out, but there is an art to scaling it beyond yourself and 1 or two people and keeping your profits and sanity intact.

Happy to answer any questions via PM, and if there is interest I could also drop a datasheet.

I'm definitely very interested in a data sheet. I've been consulting/freelancing quite a few years now, but this is the first time I've tried to scale it up with physical office, sales efforts, the whole thing.

Although the real motivation for this office was to have space for the physical product I am developing (one of my employees is a hardware engineer.) That then led to wanting to make the extra space pay for itself.

I spent the last two weeks working very long days on a couple different client sites. It was exhausting, but I wanted to make as much money as possible before the slow summer period.

The slow summer period starts this week and I'll have limited client work to do for the next four weeks, which means that I can throw myself into product development. I'm spending the weekend getting rested up from the last two weeks and will start getting busy on Monday.

My goal is to emerge from the 4 week period with my first client-ready product completed. It's a realistic goal, as success is right around the corner and I need just one more push to get it finished up.

Will be posting weekly updates here.

I admit I have previously considered having my own business but never had the guts to do it so I admire the guys in this thread and I tip my hat to them.

Okay, I'm gonna call upon some RVF wisdom if I may:

My company is registered, it is ready to do business. I can't go into much detail about what the business is because it is a very small niche that I'm sure would easily give away my identity to anybody who stumbles upon it. if you'd like to know more shoot me a PM and I'll go into depth. My target audience is individuals who make between 200k-1m/yr. The service I will provide is a luxury that only the wealthy can afford.

The problem I am running into is finding clients in this bracket. Are there any places or methods that any of you guys know of to find wealthy clients? Any information is useful. Thank you in advance.

^Golf course and medical conferences

Quote: (07-22-2017 05:33 AM)Australia Sucks Wrote:  

I admit I have previously considered having my own business but never had the guts to do it so I admire the guys in this thread and I tip my hat to them.

Easy for me to say, but since you have to work hard anyway... why nor work hard to set up something that you really want & like? Plan your move... and go for it... since you have to grind anyway

Quote: (07-16-2017 01:19 AM)Burn Wrote:  

The coming week i will:
- Have all text written on my current site.
- Have the translated site up and running.
- Have a second site sent for translation if all goes well with first.

Goal every month is to have higher income than the one before. After half this month im on pace to beating last month.

- Have all text written on my current site.
I have not written all text on my current site, not due to laziness though but rather underestimation of time the other things would take.

- Have the translated site up and running.
The site is up and running, logo is on its ways and almost all affiliate links are in order. I have to substitute some of the products, but shouldnt take long. Overall this task took so much more time than i could imagine.

- Have a second site sent for translation if all goes well with first.
Second site is sent to translation. I learned some things from the previous site and so this time i gave instructions to the translator that should save me a couple of hours worth of work.

Happy with the week and got some insights. I have been struggling with writing the copy, probably cause that has been 90% of the work i have been doing since February. When i started to focus more on management-stuff(?) that really got me going and i worked effectively for hours every day. I will continue to do so, i will finish my current site but after that i will not write any more copy myself, i will outsource the copy i need and focus much more on bigger picture strategy.

The coming week i will:
- Finish the site i sent to translation, this is a large goal. Hopefully i get it back soon, so i get a couple of days. This site is more than 50% larger than the previous.
- Get my new translated site 100% done.
- Finish the copy on the site mentioned before.

With one week left of this month, i have beaten the results of the previous month . The months end is also usually the best week, so very exciting.

Other than business:
Gym
5 gym sessions done(weekly target=5).
I focus on the compounds, as soon as i manage 3x5 i add weights and try to do 3x3. If i manage the new weight, i try to do 3x4 and so on.
Added weights to 90kg at squats, did 3x3 with ease, very nice because i was afraid in before hand.
In bench i was sooooo close to be able to add weights. Did 5x5x4 at 80kg. Tomorrow i hopefully can do it and add weights to 82.5.
Did 5x122.5 in deadlift without much problem, 125kg this week.
I weigh 73kg.


Girls
Decided to approach at least 1 girl every day.
Yesterday was the 9th day and i have approached 14 girls. I got 4 numbers. I managed to get one up to my apartment within 10-15 minutes of meeting, didnt have much time since she was meeting her sister, but i escalated as quickly as i thought possible. Managed to touch boob, ass and kiss her before she had to leave. Didn't answer my text the day after, i guess its true that if you "raise the heat very high but not close" there is a high risk the girl will not want to continue later. Got a number yesterday, will text her later today. The other numbers are now cold.

I find i enjoy writing this little sunday-log with what happened in the week and what i will work on in the coming. I realize though that the posts is as much about girls/gym and so on as business. Let me know if i should post somewhere else.