I had this idea for a product that would help new business owners struggling to keep from going out of business in year 1.

I had been talking to contractors, home service providers of all types for quite a few years. Think patio people, landscapers, electricians, power washing companies, pool leak detection companies...anyone that we had hired to come to our homes.

Their stories were all very similar, if they had made in through year 1, it had been tough. They would advertise, waste money on ineffective strategies, hope for more word of mouth business & sign up for high $ lead generation services that nearly broke the bank.

When I'd ask some basic questions about generating their own leads online - they'd usually tell me that they had a cousin or nephew that built a website for them for cheap and it had not worked out.

They'd take great pride in telling me which sources of leads they had cancelled. When I'd walk through the numbers with them, I'd often realize that those were sources of business they should have doubled down on, not cancelled.

I was pretty sure that, with the right tools, I could take them through all of these steps in a day - or at the very least, they could watch the videos in a day, and take more time - but still...realistically, they could have a lead generating campaign in a week at most, that they had created, that they owned and understood. One that they could turn on, pause, turn up, monitor, improve quality, optimize - be proud of having created.

It would include all of these components:

Buying a domain
Hosting that domain
Putting an email address on that domain
Create their own logo that looked good enough (without hiring a designer)
Create their own color palette that would pop.
Build a landing page to catch that traffic
Build multiple CTA's and 2-step forms to convert that traffic into leads
Some simple follow-up components and ancillary pages.
Testimonials - Before & After Photos
The psych behind what to focus on, so that customers call you
Inserting videos on their site
Consent / legal disclaimers /Terms
Redirects
Testing
Building a traffic campaign targeted locally and to their service type
Basic tracking code in place
Cost Per Lead strategies
Optimizing, improving cost and so on...

There was definitely some build up time...researching and buying equipment, lighting, camera and screen recording experiments..took an editing course..switching editors a few times. I burned a couple months getting ready to film the 1 day course. 🥲

But - as I was about to start filming....we had just sold our home in Florida. It was time to move back to the midwest. Timing was terrible. I was literally shopping for backdrops when I realized there was no way I could start filming, until we got settled on the other side, in the next house.

Sigh....so I paused.

For what turned out to be 4 months.