How I paid off $50k debt using offline marketing - Thanks to the Warrior Forum!

42 replies
Hey Warrior,

This post is to say thanks to the Warrior Forum and also provide you with my tips and advice.

Around 4 years ago I was in around $50k of debt, caused by spending far too much on cars and holidays.

I came online to find a way of making an additional income to help pay off my debts, this was pushing me further and further into debt as I was buying product after product which claimed to show me how to make money online.

When I came across the Warrior Forum I was convinced that what I had just found would sure as hell help me get out of debt and get my life back on track.

I read a post about providing internet marketing consulting and services to offline businesses so I set about creating some sites and getting them ranked on Google to make some sales, once I had some proof of results I should be able to sell these services to businesses all day long – that was my thinking.

I got taken down with a double hernia injury which left me unable to work for about 3 months (my truck driving job was delivering heavy equipment and I was unable to lift), with my debts mounted upon me, no income for the foreseeable future and only a little over £100 in my bank account I knew that I had to provide services to small businesses right now!

I invested in a cheap website design course so that I could at least understand the technical side of web design and provide very basic & cheap website design services.

I posted an advert on Gumtree (The UK’s version of Craigslist) and within 24 hours I had made my first sale over the phone. This first sale totaled to be the equivalent of one week’s wage in my Job. (Just over £300)

I worked this model for three months I was off work and then returned to my Job because although I was surviving, I was sick with the worry of my debts. I went back to driving trucks and continued to build my business around my Job.

Now I have:

• Paid off every single penny of my debts
• Quit my job as a truck driver
• Built a six figure offline marketing business
• Saved my old employers company from the recession by carrying out Internet Marketing services that have actually grown his business
• Taken a local plumber from a £5k a week business to a £15 - £20k a week business and still growing well towards having our first £1 million year in 2013! And I have negotiated a partnership with the local plumber for this business

All of this was done from scratch but it hasn’t been an easy ride!

I wanted to make this forum post today to help those who are getting started in offline marketing or any business to succeed much quicker than I did.

Here are my 5 tips based on the past four years of my life and business:

1. Focus on the marketing of what you are selling and outsource the service delivery

If you are not marketing then you are not making money, plain and simple.

I got hooked up on 2 key areas of service delivery which I didn’t need to. They were building the websites for clients and doing the SEO for those websites myself.

Getting myself deep into the "how to" of SEO wasted thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours, both of which could have been spent on marketing to get more clients.

Everything can be outsourced to reliable service providers online via odesk, elance or freelancer.com or even here on the Warrior Forum.

The biggest thing to look for when outsourcing is the outsourcers feedback and their ability to communicate with you. I always speak to my outsourcers over Skype before hiring them. Also ensure that your requests to your outsourcers are as detailed as possible, this helps you to get the job done right on the first attempt!

2. Immerse yourself in marketing knowledge, this is the most valuable part of your education

I don’t mean just Internet Marketing, but marketing in general and how to generate the maximum revenue for each customer (of yours and your clients if you are working with offline clients).

Continually learn from the best in the marketing world, I regularly travel to Internet Marketing events to network with & learn from the best in our industry.

This increases your value to your clients as you can advise them on how to generate additional revenue into their business but more importantly create more profit out of everything that you do in business.

3. Charge what you are worth and show your clients what you can do to their bottom line

When I first started out I priced my services far too low, this meant I had to sell to more customers to get myself out of debt.

By selling your services cheaply you will get business easily but in my experience the customers looking for cheap services (especially SEO) will be the ones who are the most demanding in terms of customer support yet my higher end clients never bother me with customer support issues and when they do they are easy to deal with.

4. Decide if offline marketing is the route you actually want to take before doing it!

Offline marketing worked for me to get myself out of debt while helping business owners locally and throughout the UK.

If you are in the financial hole I was in then Offline Marketing could well be the best route for you to pull yourself out of that financial hole.

I don’t actually take on any clients now, I just work with current clients and fired the time sucking ones to allow me to focus my time and effort in building my online business, helping others to become successful.

5. Treat your business like a real business

No matter if you decide working with clients is right for you or not, you need to treat your business as a business and always be looking to improve & grow.

Nothing happens to get your business started or continue to move your business forward without taking any action and that is unfortunate reason why so many people fail to change their financial situation.

Plan weeks ahead, and focus on your tasks daily to reach your goals.

Set yourself marketing productivity goals, these may be contacting x number of businesses per day , posting x number of helpful posts in small business forums per day, posting x number of freeads per week etc

Ultimately in business if you are not marketing then you are not making money so always be marketing, learning & studying it

If you have any questions for me then Ill be glad to reply in the thread below for you, ask your questions below and I will check / reply each day
#$50k #debt #forum #marketing #offline #paid #warrior
  • Profile picture of the author John Durham
    Awesome sharing here. Thank you.
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  • Profile picture of the author Adamw
    Great story, I never thought of advertising on Gum tree. I'll have to pay that some serious attention.
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    • Profile picture of the author sandalwood
      Great story. Isn't no debt a great feeling? Keep at it and pretty soon you may be knighted and stand along side Richard Branson.

      Tom
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  • Profile picture of the author RichAnderson
    Wow thanks my friend.. great post !
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  • Profile picture of the author danwood
    Really inspiring, thanks!
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  • Profile picture of the author PeakConfidence
    $50 is no small feat either!
    I heard Les brown once say "Making a million dollars was the easiest thing ever........ BELIEVING I could do it was the hardest thing!"

    Thanks for the inspiration
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  • Profile picture of the author Rearden
    Great story and congrats.

    Your inspiration is truly global.
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  • Profile picture of the author Monetex Marketing
    Congratulations mate for getting rid of the dept!
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  • Profile picture of the author Antonio J.
    Great story. Now that you managed to pay off that debt, making a profit should be really easy for you.
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  • Profile picture of the author ih8themall
    This is a fantastic story. Congratulations and thank you for sharing!
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  • Profile picture of the author Ron20
    Hello mate! Congratulations! Even I am from the UK and i have recently started an seo business as well. Could you tell me what is the best and fastest way to get clients? Would it be cold calling? Cause this has worked a bit for me in the past..

    I would love to learn from you and I hope that some day I am successful like you people like you inspire me a lot Also by the way I just turned 20
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    • Profile picture of the author peter_jones
      Hi Ron,

      Thanks for your questions and first of all congratulations on taking action at only 20 years old in order to create a better life for yourself!

      Gumtree always worked well for me as does just plain old cold calling and appt setting.

      Try coming with a different angle than just selling SEO - your customers dont want SEO what they actually want is more customers & ultimately more profits and SEO is a route to that.

      Peter

      Originally Posted by Ron20 View Post

      Hello mate! Congratulations! Even I am from the UK and i have recently started an seo business as well. Could you tell me what is the best and fastest way to get clients? Would it be cold calling? Cause this has worked a bit for me in the past..

      I would love to learn from you and I hope that some day I am successful like you people like you inspire me a lot Also by the way I just turned 20
      Signature

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  • What at great post! It should let us know that if you focus and treat this marketing like a real business, then it will pay you like a real business.
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  • Profile picture of the author ianeire
    Great story, you are not inspiration to us all!! I too am going down the road you have received taken, hopefully I can be as successful! Any other tips for us?


    Posted from Warriorforum.com App for Android
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  • Profile picture of the author watsonovedades
    Thanks for posting this
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  • Profile picture of the author markcr
    Banned
    so are you doing web design or S.E.O.?

    Nice story.
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    • Profile picture of the author peter_jones
      Hi Mark,

      I started of by offering website design, back when I knew nothing about business or marketing.

      I have sold, web design, seo, ppc management, mobile websites, custom database systems (to help a company improve how it runs its internal processes), web copywriting and sms text services.

      Basically if i feel it will help them to be more profitable and they agree then thats what they buy

      Peter

      Originally Posted by markcr View Post

      so are you doing web design or S.E.O.?

      Nice story.
      Signature

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  • Profile picture of the author mzl23
    You reminded me of the time I read, if I remember correctly, the Four Hour work week. Despite myself being thick headed, his advice was to learn one thing and be extremely good at it.

    Thanks for sharing your great wisdom.

    I have the run before I can crawl syndrome, but I really enjoyed reading your post. It gave me something to reflect upon.
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  • Profile picture of the author KINGOS
    Pete, thanks for an inspiring post. Most people -myself included- tend to over analyse and critique things a lot. This of course slows us down and paralyses us when we could be up and running.

    Guys, action is key here. You don't need to read or watch all the training materials out there. Get started, make your mistakes, learn from them and move on. Hopefully, you too will soon post your success story here.
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  • Profile picture of the author altruismme
    Awesome, Valuable and Though provoking Advice..
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  • Profile picture of the author zavhara
    Great post, especially from someone having success in the UK, but can you get the well paying clients from Gumtree? I've thought to advertise on there but there seems to be people charging real low prices services, so I didn't think gumtree would attract the high paying customers.
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    • Profile picture of the author raferj
      Great info! Gives me inspiration that I can do it too!

      Can you tell me who you used for outsourcers...
      like who you used for SEO in order to get a clients website ranked higher on Google, PPC for clients, etc. And how effective they were.

      I am in the same debt boat.

      Thanks,

      Ray
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  • Profile picture of the author Seantrepreneur
    Nice work!!

    I love when Warriors come back and share their success stories with the rest of us! It gives hope to those who think it's too hard or just flat out not possible!

    I'd say pretty much the best advice given here is number 1! Read and reread that one as many times as you need to for it to sink in.

    Good stuff!

    Sean
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  • Profile picture of the author rolltide
    Awesome story! Congrats on your success!
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  • Profile picture of the author MalBryc
    Great story - The mention of £GBP currency gets me inspired as a fellow UK Warrior!

    Thanks for sharing!
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    • Profile picture of the author wagsgraphx
      It's always good to hear people's success stories. You never know who that little bit of transparency will help. Thanks for posting.
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  • Profile picture of the author Austin357
    Great message and action!
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    • Profile picture of the author raferj
      Hey Peter,


      When you built websites for say 10 plumbers, what WP theme or template did you use and
      how did you keep each clients site different so they didn't all look the same?

      Ray
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  • Profile picture of the author imcta
    Good Sharing Buddy.
    This is why we call ourselves Warrior Sharing Spirit in this WF.
    Thank you so much.
    Bye.
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  • Profile picture of the author venethia
    Great! I love this story and real case study/story. I will get your WSO OTO as son as possible. We need many more real case study.
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  • Profile picture of the author Brent Young
    Great story
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  • Profile picture of the author Michael Ten
    Great tips. I have some debts that I really want to wipe out, too!
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  • Profile picture of the author Adell
    Thanks for sharing
    It give a sense of direction when you are now getting started.
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  • Profile picture of the author SparkletMedia
    Banned
    Love inspirational posts like this.

    Well done mate.
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  • Profile picture of the author smoor2012
    This is all excellent advice. I am working towards getting out of debt myself and have begun a little bit of offline advertising my business plus a system that will help others build what they are already in. I have some other things in mind that I will work on after the first of the year.

    Congratulations on getting out of debt and thanks for the article. You evidently had some talent and marketing sense to begin with.
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    PM me and I will respond as soon as possible

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  • Profile picture of the author H.Miller
    This is a really great post. Thanks so much for sharing. Very inspirational!
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  • Profile picture of the author Bayo
    Truly inspirational and well done.

    I would be interested in capturing and using your story on a blog of mine Inspiration for The Soul with your permission of course.

    It has nothing to do with offline or internet marketing, but this is still a great story that can inspire people.

    BAYO
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  • Profile picture of the author sadneck
    Amazing post, thank you for sharing!

    I especially like points 2 and 3. You are absolutely right that you should immerse yourself in all types of marketing, (not just internet marketing.) It is important to learn your craft in every way possible. And point 3, charge what you are worth. It takes time and money to get a good business going, so do not undercharge for your services.

    Thanks again, and cheers!

    Andrew
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  • Profile picture of the author HCVNI
    Thanks for taking some of your time to share this with us.
    Good luck.
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    • Profile picture of the author Kaizen5
      Nice post and a inspiring one too. I always hesitate to offer service if I am not able to deliver a satisfying product at the end. Although I have had success with my small niche affiliate projects, which I designed, adapted and optimized for better results in the rankings.

      I guess the biggest problem is to find a reliable freelancer who is doing a great and honest work.

      Have you started selling your service without invoices? (Stupid question, but I have no clue how it works in the UK) :rolleyes:
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